Motivations and Trends for IT/IS Adoption: Insights from Portuguese Companies

Abstract

Over the past few decades, information systems and technologies have taken on a wide variety of roles within organizations, ranging from operational support to the strategic support of the company. Therefore, there have been significant changes in the motives for their adoption that are vital to understand to guarantee that investment is properly managed. With the purpose of identifying and characterizing the motivations currently behind the adoption of information technologies in large Portuguese companies, which systems the companies have been implementing, in which systems they intend to invest in short-term, and what is the current role of information technology within the organization, we carried out a study with the participation of several chief information officers. The findings of this study reveal that the reasons for adoption and the role that information systems and technologies play is evolving in Portuguese companies and that the adoption of certain types of systems like Enterprise Resource Planning systems is now consolidated, whereas the adoption of other systems like Business Intelligence systems should increase significantly in the near future.