Impact of Information Technology in Business Decisions of Selected Service Sectors

In this paper an attempt has been made to investigate the impact of information technology in Business Decision Making in various Service Sector Industries. Decision making is a hard task in business fields. It becomes even more complex as most of the service sector companies deals with problems related to the uncertainty of the service demand. A very systematic and practical approach has been adopted for finding the impact and effect of information technology on the overall business decisions and to explore the challenges that must be faced to provide intelligent strategies for efficient management and decision making that will increase organization’s competitiveness and profitability. In the past two decade, businesses in India and globally, have invested heavily in the technology such as e-Mails, texting, websites and apps, ESS, DSS, MIS, intranet, internet, e-Commerce, telemarketing, net banking, CRM software, e-payments, data mining, data warehousing, to bring improvements in quality of customer services, scale and specialization in products, developing new marketing strategies etc. This study examines the contribution of Information Technology (IT) to a growth in services. Data at the firm level is employed to investigate how IT as a key technology, combined with non-technological determinants, can influence firm’s performance. The study develops an argument that IT is one of the major success factors at the present time, and this particularly holds true in the case of service firms, primarily due to their fundamental characteristics of interactivity and intensity of information, which are highly compatible with this technology. It becomes all the more vital to address these issues for the service sector industries as they enjoy a dominant position in their contribution towards socio-economic development of the country. Present study addresses these issues as to what level the involvement of IT is important and crucial for these businesses and also suggest a model of IT success for the service sector industries in India.