IS Staff Expenditure of expenditure Information Telecom Expenditure . IS Budget as a Percentage of Revenue Percentage of revenue devoted to IS budget that is directly under the control of IS Information Week Output Measures Sales Based Market Share Total company sales as a percentage of aggregate sales of companies with the same major SIC code. SD Mean SD . Telecom 14.6 21.8 10.1 10.5 n.s. The efficient and inefficient units were compared in terms of the input variables, output variables, client-server investments, and investments in outsourcing.
Efficient units have higher measures for all performance variables.
This difference is especially high for sales based measures. In contrast, inefficient units have fewer IS employees even though they invest more of their revenues on information technology. Interestingly, investment in client-server technologies, a technology that is receiving significant attention lately, is greater for more efficient firms. Similarly, efficient firms invest more in outsourcing, suggesting that outsourcing improves the IS units efficiency. Discussion DEA provides information on the input reduction and output augmentation efforts that managers of the inefficient units should examine.