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'Indian companies don't make optimum use of IT'

The CEOs who participated in the study were drawn from sectors such as industrial, consumer and healthcare, banking and finance.

T O D A Y

• It's all politics! • Satyam overhaul • Poor use of IT • Maharashtra's IT year

The survey suggested IT usage was limited to routine applications and was seen as a separate function, not as an infrastructure that enables all functions across an organisation.

Three fourths of the companies included had operational local area networks while half had wide area networks. Though almost all companies understood the link between IT and productivity, most only used applications such as spreadsheets and word processors.

Use of more sophisticated applications was not widespread, according to the study.

Only 40 per cent of respondents used data warehousing that enables companies to harness available historic data.

Only 15 per cent of the companies said they used enterprise resource planning software. "This is somewhat surprising because data warehousing is a technique that utilises data generated by standard software applications such as ERP. It is uncommon to find companies using data warehousing without ERP,'' says the study.

In response to a question on the increasing use of IT inputs in strategic decision-making, less than a fifth of the CEO respondents replied in the strong affirmative.

Again, although 83 per cent of the companies had a home page on the Web, only 30 per cent conducted business on the Net. Only 13 per cent actually performed online transactions.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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