MANAGING INFORMATION TECNOLOGY IN MODERN COMPANIES AND CROATIAN BUSINESS PRACTICES OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY USAGE

Constantly increasing importance of managing investments, applications and usage of information technology dictates necessity of putting IT topics on the top of the top management agendas. Companies are investing more and more from their investment budgets into IT and are aiming to use it as a tool for accomplishing sustainable competitive advantage on the market. With clever usage of IT, companies can make their business processes more efficient, establish better relationship with their customers and build proper business modelsfor exploiting increasing number of Internet users via e-business capabilities. Croatian business practices of using information technology are still considerably behind current practices in modern succesfull companies on the developed markets. Research about IT usage in Croatian companies confirmed that statement and showed that Croatian companies can improve their usage of information technology. This represents an opportunity for Croatian companies to move on the higher level of their efficiency and productivity and touse IT as a strategic tool for becoming more competitive in the global economy.