Analysis of IT Governance on Spanish Organizations - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 448

Figure 8. Organizations with well defined pro-
cesses and organizational structure

Figure 9. Responsible for the IT function

Processes and Organizations ness indicators (contacts from the website, stocks

rotation, etc.) are monitored frequently (Figure 9).

All the SMOs had their organizational structure
defined, according to the ISO 9.001 standard or
in an internal established way. Regarding a clear
definition of roles, responsibilities and different
committees (board of directors, steering com-
mittee), only 4 companies had such definition.
About business processes, the same comments
apply: only 4 companies (the same companies)
had the business processes clearly defined and
implemented(Figure 8).
Regarding the IT function, the research tried to
identify if this was performed internally or, else,
was outsourced. Only 4 companies performed
this function internally. Two of them were the
real estate promotion and the pharmaceutical
companies described above. The other two were
the biggest company and a company on the interval
of 51-150 employees.
The second aspect to be discovered is the
person or charge responsible of IT. In general,
there is not a CIO, except on three organizations.
The decisions are taking (except on the agrarian
organization) at the next levels:
Regarding the follow-up of IT initiatives, this
is done at the same level that makes the decisions,
but only on terms of budget and timing. Only in
the four companies with processes and organiza-
tions well defined things such as ROI and busi-

IT Governance Processes

The existence of chargeback mechanisms, and
SLAs, was also analyzed. The IT function is
considered as a cost center. Only on the two com-
panies described above (real estate promotions
and pharmaceutical distribution companies) the
costs of IT are considered on the product pricing,
and cost/benefit analysis of the IT investments
are performed.
Regarding communication, there has not been
identified on any of the companies communication
mechanisms specifically focused on IT Gover-
nance on any company.

the second phase

The first phase finished last year, and did not con-
sider the recent publications mentioned before: the
standard ISO 38500 (ISO 2008) and the Calder-
Moir framework (Calder 2007). The conclusion
of the first phase led the author to consider a new
research, a new phase, focused on identifying spe-
cific information about IT governance practices.
The questionnaire was structure as follows: