Business and Information Technologies Study

A Seminar on “Business & Information Technologies” to reveal the findings, so far, of the survey of the international project on this topic was held at IIT Bombay on May 25, 2005. 

The “Business & Information Technologies study” originated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), to study the impact of new information Technologies on business and Industry structure; work process inter- organizational relationships, concepts of control and hierarchy and so on. IIT Bombay partnered in this project, for conducting the Indian part of the study.

Prof. Uday Karmarkar, LA Times professor of Technology and Strategy and Research Director, Center for Management in the Information Economy Anderson School of Management, UCLA, Los Angeles, spoke on the survey carried out in USA while Prof. Atanu Ghosh, School of Management, IIT Bombay, revealed the conclusion of the first survey carried out in India.  Prof. Uday Karmarkar said, “The purpose of the BIT survey was ‘to develop a ‘base-line’ understanding of the Impact of IT on business practices worldwide’. We wanted to know how industries globally have changed or are changing due to information technology.”

He said that currently the research is being carried out in various countries such as India, Argentina, Chile, France, Italy, Germany, Korea among others. The survey was carried out among a range of industries such as FMCG, Retail, Telecom, BPO, Pharma, Media and Entertainment, Finance etc. Speaking about major results of the survey in USA, Prof. Karmarkar said that Information, Knowledge and Decision processes are being increasingly automated due to increasing role of IT. Organization structures are becoming more flat and span of control is widening. IT has also enabled organizations to go global and expand beyond geographic boundaries. Although it’s also taking its toll on the employee count. Commenting on changing global economic scenario, he said that economies around the world are growing at tremendous pace. He further said the employment market in US is shifting towards service sector from manufacturing sector. Indian economy too is growing as a service oriented economy and people in service sector are paid more compared to production. 

Further he said, “USA is generally perceived as most technologically advanced country, whereas it lags behind in the implementation aspect. Scandinavian Countries such are far better technologically equipped than US. Even Estonia is a world leader in e-Governance.” 

Prof. Atanu Ghosh spoke about the findings of the Indian survey. Over 74 organizations participated in the study. The survey comprised of a varied set of questions covering diverse business practices, technology adoption, transfer, outsourcing and its impact on the organizational structure. The responses were categorized into three categories, namely services sector, manufacturing sector and the financial services sector.

The survey indicated that the Indian business is changing to deliver better value to the customers and maintain their position in a fiercely competitive scenario. The survey produced some interesting results with long term implications on the productivity and efficiency of the Indian business sector. Going on with common terms with US, Indian findings also showed increase in number of employees facing the screen across all sectors and organization structure becoming flatter. 

Further, it showed increase in the need for IT skills in lower levels of the organization. The demand for executive decision making tools is increasing across all the sectors while Security is becoming a major

concern with all the organizations and the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity is being realized. Outsourcing seems to be limited to market research in non IT and programming, network management etc. within IT. Websites are largely being used as platforms to provide information, except in the financial sector, where transaction processing services are also made available through the website. Organizations are becomingly increasingly more conscious about monitoring of customer facing interactions. 

With increasing technology adoption and deployment, production costs, commercial costs, internal communication costs and service costs have decreased with technology adoption while technology costs have increased. Technology has also played a role in strategic areas including the understanding of customer satisfaction for current products and services, competitor knowledge and customer buying behavior. Over half the organizations surveyed are increasing production/services bases in other countries, trade in other countries and distributors/branches around the world. Over a third reported an increase in the number of countries in the supplier base.  Prof. Ghosh said that the second phase of the study would resume soon in India with bigger sample size and more detailed study. 

These presentations were followed by talks from Prof. Bernard Menezes, KReSIT, IIT Bombay on “Enterprise Application Security”, Mr. V. S. Srirangrajan Asst. VP- Corporate IT, A.V. Birla Group on “IT deployment at Birla Group: Challenges Faced and Benefits Gained.” The seminar culminated with an enlightening panel discussion on “IT Deployment by Indian Business Sectors: Road Ahead”. Around 110 delegates had participated in the seminar from the academia as well as industry.