How ICT affects business processes

Abstract

Throughout my work experience, I realized that ICT generates changes on the business processes in a way management has not expected. Such changes have a big impact on the company, subsequently the importance to understand them is extremely important. This motivated me to contribute to ICT and economic science, and to generalize conclusions that will help managers in similar situations. Descriptive method, quantitative and qualitative analysis, statistical methods, generalization and specialization, comparative analysis, mathematical and graphical methods were used in this paper. The research included 209 companies from all Croatian regions, 61% small, 21% medium and 18% large enterprises, classified by total revenue, number of employees and all types of business sectors defined by the national classification. The research search for data on how much the implementation of ICT has led to changes in business processes of the Companies The aim was to find out whether the introduction of computers, computer networks, the Internet, wireless internet, e-mail, common databases or electronic business has led to a change in the business processes of the Company. An affirmative answer was received from 79% companies and a negative answer from 12% companies, while 9% of them answered that it was not certain whether there was a change. Therefore, in 79% of the surveyed companies, changes in business processes occurred due to the implementation of some of the ICT. Whether there is a relationship between the presence / absence of changes in business processes and individual independent variables in this study was analyzed here by the chi-square test. As independent variables suitable for this test, the following four variables were used, as in the previous chapter: firm size (small, medium, large); total revenue (smaller, larger, large); business sector of the company (manufactoring, utility); number of employees in the company (smaller, medium, larger). Nine percent of the Companies that gave the answer "I'm not sure" were excluded from these analyzes. The practical contribution of the paper is reflected in the ability to use the research results in the real sector. The paper provides information from previous researches, author's views, conclusions and practical data consequently, that other researchers will be able to critically process, replicate, modify or apply. In addition, this paper may be an incentive to explore the impacts of ICT in other areas of the economy.