Assessing information systems practices in manufacturing SMEs

This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey carried out on a sample of 30 manufacturing SMEs in Northern Italy. The research focuses on the assessment of the Information System (IS) currently implemented in the considered organizations and aims at identifying strengths, weaknesses or inconsistencies, obtaining useful information in order to address new IT investment and to improve user satisfaction and corporate performance. With this paper we investigated the relations among IT expenditure, how the information system supports activities, and the deriving level of user satisfaction. The links among these aspects were examined subject to various endogenous and exogenous factors, such as corporate IT culture, business dimension, control structure, market approach and so on. Empirical results seem to support a direct link among IT expenditure (more specifically running expenses) and the amount of activities supported by the IS, and show a strong relation among the support of relevant activities by means of the IS and user satisfaction. Various endogenous and exogenous factors were found as relevant antecedents of corporate expenditure.