The Korea Business And Information Technologies (Bit) Survey

The Korean economy has been transformed to an information economy gradually. According to the GNP study conducted by our team, the primary information sector which produces information goods and services as a final product explains 46.1% of year 2000 GNP. The proportion of information economy used to be 40.4% in 1990. In spite of the importance of the information economy, research on the business and information technologies has been limited.The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) project was initiated by the Center for Management of the Information Economy (CMIE) of UCLA in 2003. This project is to understand the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICT) on business practices over an extended time horizon. The BIT project consists of three parts: first, the annual survey of firms to collect data on how firms are using new technologies, and how firms, industries and economies are changing as a consequence; second, tracking the evolution of economies through analysis of national accounting data and GNP figures; third, in-depth study of industry segments.• The Service and Logistics Research Center at Korea University has taken part in the project since 2004. This report presents the results of the survey which was conducted in Korea in 2004–2005. Some of the key results of the survey were as follows.• The technologies used most frequently by organizations are websites/e-commerce, groupware/productivity tools, enterprise resource planning (ERP). In spite of its popularity, radio frequency identification are the least adopted technologies by organizations.• Even though the lists of most/least adopted technologies are similar, the adoption rates between Korea and US show big difference.• Since new decision-making tools and online technologies become increasingly available, workforces need to retrain constantly to keep up with changing technologies.• IT function is most frequently outsourced by organizations, while finance, accounting, payroll are the least outsourced business functions.• Order placement, Order tracking/fulfillment, integration with ERP/SCM, and customer complaints management have been automated by over one-third of the organizations. However, content management of web sites and sales calls automation are the least-automated CRM functions.• Direct purchasing, long-term purchasing contracts, and catalogues are most frequently used purchasing mechanisms.• In business performance, production costs, commercial costs, and customer service costs have been reduced seriously. However, technology costs, internal communication, and R&D costs have increased. The revenues and profits have increased due to the technology.• Trade in other countries, number of production/service bases, and number of countries in supplier base have increased as globalization progressed.