e-Readiness Assessment within the Iran’s Automotive Industry

Abstract: With the growing impotence of internet, it has been a major catalyst for
change in many industries such as automotive industry. In fact, the
Internet-based concepts and technologies like e-commerce are increasingly
being used in every sector to enhance the productivity through facilitating
trade, exchange of data , and automation of the business processes as well
as workflows.

Also considering automotive industry as an area that has warmly embraced
the use of information and communication technologies such as “e-
procurement” for buying, “e-design” for product development, “e-supply
chain” for logistics and e-commerce for sale and after-sales services, the
importance of new technologies such as e-commerce becomes clear since it
enables sustainable competitive advantage for organizations and that’s the
exact thing that Iranian companies need to achieve to survive and compete
in global markets.

However, to implement and utilize such internet-based technologies for
achieving business targets and bringing about changes, first of all, it is
important to evaluate the readiness level of companies in accepting and
implementing those technologies to ensure a productive and beneficial
implementation.

This research aims to investigate the level of e-readiness in Iran Khodro,
Co. the country's leading vehicle manufacturer in the region and possibly
the biggest industrial conglomerate in the Middle East, through its “sale
and after sale service” arm (IKSA organization and about 700 official
agents of company all over Iran), which are the downstream of Iran Khodro’s
Supply chain. So this thesis clarifies how e-ready Iran Khordo is to
utilize productively new and online technologies to achieve foreseen
benefits.

Also findings give a clear comparison between e-readiness level of Iran
Khodro Co. and that of some leading organizations in UK. Besides by
recognizing the sub-categories of research’s framework, an in-depth
analysis on e-readiness level of Iran Khodro’s agents in different cities
of Iran is done to reflect some effective solutions for managers to
eliminate the existed gap among company’s agents in the case of their e-
readiness level. Ultimately a modified model is presented to contribute in
theory by clarifying the importance and relationships among attributes of
thesis’ main framework.