A Framework for Assessing Innovations, Business Models and Sustainability for Software Companies Using Hybrid Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making

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The management staff of software companies are constantly looking for ways to build market advantage and win business strategies. Introducing changes in companies is a costly process and carries the risk of poor allocation of resources. This article provides decision-makers with a tool that increases the chance of making the right business decisions and can also be a guide in the transformation of business models. The scientific aim of this article was to simultaneously cover three areas, innovation, business models, and sustainable development, to develop a scheme enabling the construction of rankings of the elements of these areas in a version dedicated to software producing companies. Rankings, which are built using the hybrid Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method, indicate to decision-makers the need for building strategic development plans, which aspects are the most important, and what the order of possible implementations should be. Based on a multi-criteria analysis, it was found that (i) in terms of innovation, companies should focus their attention first on implementing product, process, and technological innovations; (ii) within innovative business models, attempts should be made to produce IT systems using virtualization and dockerization, as well as efforts should be made to closely bind customers with the offered products and services and offer temporary rental of IT systems instead of classic licenses; and (iii) in the context of the classic three levels of sustainable development, companies should focus primarily on economic and financial issues.