Relationships Between IT Applications and the Type of IT Professionals Required by Hungarian Enterprises

Abstract

Information is one of the most significant resources of enterprises. It is vital to creating organisational processes, ensuring efficient operation, allowing for decision-making and liaison with their business environment and exerting influence on market players. Changes in market and legal conditions call for prompt and flexible adjustment, which is impossible in the absence of highlydeveloped and efficient information systems. IT professionals are responsible for developing and
operating IT applications. Nowadays businesses are hit hard by the lack of qualified IT professionals.
Our research strives to identify the factors influencing the demand of Hungarian companies for IT professionals. Our choice fell on this target group from the entirety of businesses since we could not find detailed databases on sole proprietorships. Considering that IT professionals are set the task of implementing and operating information systems, we have analysed the topic from this aspect.
Nevertheless, several studies have confirmed that the information system applied depends on corporate size. Therefore, our research objective is to show the impact of corporate size, the information system used and the ways it is utilized on the company’s demand for IT professionals.
We formulated hypotheses that we investigated by empirical research. Based on the statistical analysis of the data sample we confirmed that corporate size in fact has a bearing on the type of information system used, and the manner of its utilisation as well as the demand for IT professionals. However, when we try to answer the question whether corporate size influences the kind of IT professionals needed (systems developer or operator), independence between the two variables must be confirmed.
Our findings have confirmed that the type of information system in place at the enterprises (ERP, or ‘island’ systems) does influence the demand for IT professionals. Our sample does not allow for identifying a relationship between the type of IT service used and the kind of IT professionals that are needed.
Technical literature forecasts the further spread of cloud-based services. Hence, we analysed such services, their impact and acceptance separately in our research.