IT Usage
The extent of IT penetration in the consumer, local business, industry and research sectors is considerably low. There are many Malaysian companies that have the potential to computerize their businesses or upgrade their computer systems but have not yet done so.
A quick comparison with Singapore is telling
High Tech Comparison
Category Malaysia Singapore Area Miles(2) 127,584 247 GDP $70.6 Billion $68.9 Billion Engineering Grads 10,730 12,936 Engineers Average Salary $34,690 $59,695 Computers Per Capita 0.02 0.18 Source - Far Eastern Economic Review
As in most other countries, computers are widely used in banking and insurance sectors. These sectors have large companies, many which are government linked companies or multinationals. Most companies accord priority to their accounting needs and usually small and medium size companies concentrate on computerizing their accounting and financial systems before moving on to other areas of management. This conclusion is also supported by findings from a survey conducted in 1994 on IT utilization among business organizations in Malaysia.
According to the survey, the incidence of IT utilization and integration is larger among organizations involved in providing goods and services as compared to those dealing with products manufacturing and distribution. Finance and receivables systems are the business areas with heavy IT usage. The results of the survey show that while most departments use computer system, the bulk of applications (45.5%) were in the traditional areas of finance and accounts, administration, and data processing. Only 3.1% of the respondents use sophisticated technologies such as decision support systems or expert systems.
With the prevailing trend of system downsizing, businesses in the small scale systems market are expected to continue to grow over the next five years with a forecasted compound average annual growth rate of 49.2 per cent in unit shipment and 41.7 per cent on shipment value through 1998.
Continued economic growth is expected to push more technology to the masses but this will take time and continued education, and it seems possible in the next several years to come on par with Singapore.14
