Industry-centric benchmarking of information technology benefits, costs and risks for small-to-medium sized enterprises in construction

The evaluation of information technology (IT) is a perennial problem for businesses as they seek to improve their performance and sustain a competitive advantage. While businesses are increasing their expenditure on technology to keep abreast of competitors, organisations in the construction industry have become 'technological laggards'. Both the Federal and State Governments in Australia have recognized the pivotal role that IT can play in improving industry performance and consequently firms are being, encouraged to embrace IT. In obtaining performance improvements, the benefits, costs and risks of IT should be identified and subsequently managed and controlled. Yet, there is an absence of anchor measures that managers can confidently employ to monitor the performance of their IT investments. This paper presents findings from a questionnaire survey that sought to determine the benefits, costs and risks of IT investments from 126 small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Australian construction industry. The questionnaire findings revealed three key findings. First, different organisation types significantly differ in the amount they invest in IT but this is not influenced by firm size (i.e., in terms of turnover and number of employees). Secondly, strategic benefits vary with different organisation types. Third, the way in which employees adapt to change as a result of IT implementation differs with firm size. Based upon the reported findings a series of benchmark metrics for benefits, costs and risks of IT were propagated. These metrics can serve as a reference point for initiating benchmarking, which should form an integral component of the IT evaluation and learning process. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.