En studie om inköpsprocessen av IT
Title: A study about the purchasing process of ITLevel: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael LindströmTutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens HögskolaKeywords: IT-investment, purchase, decisionProblem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective. The purpose is also to see if it differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company and where the problems usually emerge in this process.Method: The study is based on a theoretical framework about IT investments and how a purchasing process might look like. It all lead up to a summarizing model made by the authors of this thesis and it shows all the different steps in a purchasing process. The study contains three interviews where two of them were in big companies and one in a smaller company.Conclusions: This study shows that depending on the size on a company the decisions are made in one or several levels within the company and that the amounts of levels increase with the size of the company. A smaller company got better possibilities to get information from the end-users and the rest of the staff to make better requirements on the IT solution, which could increase the chance for an IT solution to satisfy their needs. The price of the IT-solution matters in the choice in what to buy and it seems like the price sensitivity increases the smaller size a company is. All company sizes wants long terming relations with a few suppliers. The problem often emerges in the progress to gather the requirements for the IT solution and also in the communication with the suppliers. The problem comes from misunderstandings between the company and the supplier because of different use of language. It also creates problems when there is lack of knowledge amongst the people making the specifications of the requirements for the IT solution.