College of Business and Economics

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    Information Communication Technology (ICT) Adoption in UPAREZ Business Plc.
    (Addis Ababa University, 2016-06) G/Yohannes, Mengistu; Andualem, Getent (PhD)
    Information Communication Technology has become a significant expression of human activity that has contributed and still contributes much to countries’ economies, social welfare, and cultural heritage. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) competitiveness is basically affected by political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. Information Communication Technology (ICT) as part of technologies, it is one of the contemporary factor affecting different areas of business organizations towards their competitiveness. UPAREZ Business PLC is a SME. It has invested a lot on ICT to maintain its competitiveness. However, Some SBU and department don’t know the potential factors affecting ICT adoption and have not used any formal ICT adoption model. ICT use (utilization) varied among SBUs and departments. Thus, the objective of this research is to identify factors affecting ICT adoption towards the competitiveness SMEs in the case of UPAREZ and develop a custom made model for the company with particular emphasis on influence of ICT on competitiveness. In order to achieve the above objective interview, questioner and document observation were used as an instrument for data collection, and mixed research methodology were implemented for data analysis. Contrary to the common understanding of SMEs, UPAREZ has invested a lot in ICT. Factors top management/owner support on ICT, centralized business management, owners/manager’s ICT awareness, improved market performance, ease of use, speed up business processes, size (number of sales outlet or customer), increased efficiency and effectiveness, government’s regulation and law, improved and quality service delivery, quality of IS systems and capabilities, link internal and external business processes, reduced business costs and supplier collaboration were the most impotent enabling factors affecting the ICT adoption. The barriers to adopt the ICT were of inadequate ICT strategy, lack of government incentive, lack of perceived economic or other benefits to the unit, reluctance of personnel to use ICT, lack of localization-Amharic user interface, lack of training& consulting, new versions of existing software introduced too often (support fee) and expensive hardware/software, which creates inconsistent ICT adoption in strategic business units (SBUs) and departments on UPAREZ. The company has to minimizing the resistant barriers and exploit the enabling factors of ICT adoption to reinforce its competitiveness through ICT. The overall factors, barriers and perceptions affecting ICT adoption were identified and a custom made ICT adoption model for the company has been developed. The company and CT suppliers could able use the model by considering their existing contexts.