La valutazione e l'impatto della "prontezza ICT" nelle piccole e medie imprese

This paper analyses the strategic, organisational and structural conditions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to fully exploit the potential of the information and communication technology (ICT). In other words, we investigate under which conditions the "marriage" between SMEs and ICT can be "a happy one" rather than a relationship affected by misunderstandings and lost opportunities.

To this purpose we build an interpretative framework relating the "ICT readiness" (a measure of the aforementioned conditions) to two key dimensions: the "strategic vision of ICT", which is closely related to how the top management looks at ICT opportunities, and the "ICT maturity", which evaluates the ICT infrastructure and applications of the firm. Our framework is then adopted in a pilot case study, that of Lanterna Alimentare S.p.A., a medium enterprise producing and selling bakery products.