Information technology and business practices in Germany: Results from the 2011 bit survey

Information Technology (IT) plays a fundamental role in the global economy. Our continuous analysis of firm-level data helps decision makers to better understand IT use in companies and its business applications. This article reports on the findings from the 2011 Business and Information Technology (BIT) project in Germany which surveyed 220 companies across all major industries. We present the descriptive results of this survey structured by a framework of seven major topic areas on IT use in the firm. The key findings show that after the 2008/09 economic crisis, budgets for IT are growing again, strongest in the area of IT security. Business applications such as ERP and Groupware have become established products, while Business Process Modeling, Instant Messaging, and Social Web are still on the rise. Regarding the impact of IT, workforce is becoming more mobile, which increases the need for IT skills especially on the executive level. However, organization structures are hardly affected. Particularly, neither IT outsourcing nor the business units’ IT enablement, substantially diminish the importance of the IT function. Yet, IT outsourcing has become a popular option for several IT-related processes. Business process outsourcing (BPO) still remains on a moderate level.