This chapter focuses on the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) in strategic communication and market research. One addresses, among others, the role of computer-based information systems (IS) and IS management in contemporary businesses; the intelligence cycle and the types and categories of IS and their utility to operational and strategic activities of a firm. Furthermore, it discusses the increasing digitalization of societies, and therein, the challenges of digital business communication and business digitalization. Seminal aspects are here uncovered with this regard, as the copiousness and overdependence of data analytics, the phenomenon of big data, the concentration of economic agents over platforms, the use of web-based value chains, and the shift to “reintermediation.”
TopIt is recognized though that at different stages of the business activities, with more or less sophistication, functions as planning, organization and controlling existed long ago in craftwork, family-ventures and industrial enterprises, regardless of the technological acumen.
For ages, the management of business ventures, even in the Hellenic notion of Xenophon´s household/property management, encompassed endeavors like, the control of costs with materials or staff (inputs); the execution of production timetables and delivery of schedules (transformation), and price registering; or verification of the customer´s satisfaction (outputs). However, technology shaped our modern world, including the operationalization of strategy-related tasks.
One could then ask: So, what´s the role of computer-based information systems and Information System´s (IS) management? In an organization, the role of technology is a whole disruption from the fashioning and unfolding a company´s strategy until the most quotidian activities; herein, contributed furthermore to the evolution of the analysis function as to the screening of the whole market´s ecosystem; well, technology is everything nowadays!