FIRM’S STRATEGIC THINKING IN THE CONTEXT OF BUSINESS INFORMATIZATION

This paper discusses the factors of business change management in the context of transition from traditional to computerized business systems. The factors of change management are presented as a firm’s strategic characteristics in the context of the relationship between traditional and computerized business management. The purpose of the research is the systematization of strategic characteristics of business informatization, and ranking and positioning of strategic characteristics in the context of competitive relationship between traditional and computerized business management. The aim of the research is to select and systematize strategic elements of business informatization into a small number of features that can be grouped as common factors according to certain criteria. The interdependence of strategic characteristics was established based on a factor analysis. This method was applied to real data obtained through business informatization questionnaires. During our study on strategic characteristics of business informatization, we collected data from 41 large and medium-sized companies in Croatia in the period from 2011 to 2014. The study included 15 strategic characteristics of business systems that were considered in the context of the factors of change management. Factor analysis of the data was performed using SPSS 21.0, and systematized into fi ve steps: 1. The first step was the reduction of the number of attributes and determining the initial results to extract factors. 2. The second step was defining the factor matrix after rotation of the factors. 3. The third step was the interpretation of the extracted factors. 4. The fourth step included testing for significance of results by determining the values of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. 5. The final, fifth step was the post-optimal analysis. By arranging the factors into groups we have focused on key areas of activity. We have also discussed various approaches to strategic thinking in the context of business informatization when combined with different levels of competitiveness.