Impact of Organisational Intranets on Profitability in Organisations

Abstract

Organisations are being forced to invest heavily in the deployment of information systems (IS) to obtain value and benefit in the new knowledge-based environment. Organisational intranets are being used as the platform for developing and deploying critical business applications to support business operations and managerial decision-making across the Internet-worked enterprise. Executive Information Systems (EIS) grew out of the information needs of executives. Web-based technologies are causing a revisit to existing information technology (IT) implementation models, including those for EIS. Some technologies include intranet, Internet, extranet, e-commerce business-to-business (B2B), e-commerce business-to-consumer (B2C), wireless application protocol (WAP), including other mobile technologies. The author conducted a survey of 31 well-established organisations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which successfully implemented EIS. A validated survey instrument was administered to an EIS stakeholder in each organisation surveyed to rank Web-based technologies in order of their perceived impact on EIS implementation in organisations surveyed. The author reports that an organisational intranet has the highest level of impact on EIS implementation in organisations surveyed in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Given this impact, justifying investment in such IS and IT should be carefully evaluated and quantified.