Information Technology Usage: The Indian Experience

This paper attempts to understand the current state of Information Technology (IT) usage in select Indian organizations based on a questionnaire survey of business executives and IS staff of select IT-savvy organizations. In recent years, rapid changes and developments in the IT domain have created new leaders in the market place. Corporates, the world over, are leveraging on these developments through efficient supply chain, inventory control, and business intelligence applications for gaining an edge over their competitors. The Information System (IS) developed by these organizations is non-replicable thus providing the differentiation. Though Indian companies are aware of concepts such as supply chain, inventory control, etc., the actual implementation of such concepts is not that widespread. Also, the IS function in India is yet to establish itself as a mainstream business function. It is in this context that this paper makes an effort to understand the importance of IT as a key driver for business strategy and recommend to the industry to adopt some of the best practices prevailing in organizations worldwide. The analysis of the responses indicates that there is a discrepancy between the opinions of business executives and IS staff regarding the adequacy of the current IT systems. This situation can be remedied by implementing some of the suggestions which are as follows: The business executives and the IS staff should be located in the same place to integrate IT into the mainstream of business. Business intelligence application needs to be included in the portfolio of applications for business use. The Indian industry needs to be stepped up to the ‘informate’ stage as it is still in the ‘automate’ stage. CIOs have to play an important role by linking IT to business strategy. Information needs of the executives are increasing and necessary steps for imple- menting data warehousing and OLAP solutions need to be taken. Supporting IS should be put in place to facilitate decision-making. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be clearly identified and incorporated into the IS to monitor the health of the organization. These initiatives are expected to have the following implications: tighter integration of IT with business strategy transformation from the ‘informate mode’ to the ‘transformate’ mode implementation of newer business intelligence tools development of information-based decision-making culture better understanding of organization's KPIs by the IS staff.