ABSTRACT
This work is the result of a research made in 27 supermarkets of different sizes. The aim of this survey was to evaluate the impact of the informatization in the management of those companies. The commerce business and particularly the supermarkets have invested less in Information Technology (IT) than the industries and service business. The research methodology used in this work was the survey. The main investigated aspects were: the most important IT structures, the most important IT projects, Critical Success Factors (CSF) for IT projects and the impacts of the informatization in the supermarket operations. The analyses were based on the managers’ perceptions in relation to the aspects which were mentioned above. It was observed that, in general, the medium size supermarkets have client/server network as IT structure. On the other hand, the full size supermarkets use, mostly, the mainframe. Point of sales (POS) was considered the most important IT project among the enterprises, followed by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), and finally, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). According to people who were interviewed, the “high management support” and “integration among the areas of the company” were the most important CSF. Finally, it was realized that the most remarkable impact seen by the managers in the present level of informatization in those supermarkets was the agility in the assistance to the client.
KEYWORDS
Informatization; Supermarkets; Information technology; Critical success factors
