Assessing the Strategic Value of Information Technology

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Information Management, grade: 2,0, University of Göttingen (INSTITUT FÜR WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK), course: Informationsmanagement, language: English, abstract: This report aims to take a critical look at an article from Paolo Neirotti and Emilio

Paolucci, both working at the Politecnio di Torino Technical University, Department of

Business and Production Engineering. The article surveys the strategic value of IT on

companies, specifically those who are active in the insurance sector.

Neirotti and Paolucci claim in their work that many IT projects fail, although companies

today are aware of the pitfalls of IT investments and that many IT applications have

become commodities. Obviously IT has a strategic value to firms but they have not

determined how IT management capabilities and IT governance schemes explain

commonalities and differences in their use of IT (Neirotti & Paolucci, 2007, p. 568).

They analyzed the insurance industry in the US and Europe through 20 case studies and

also made an analysis on 30 Italian firms (panel study).

This report is going to throw light on the conclusions made in that article and evaluate

them from a new perspective.