SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE ENTERPRISE (SME'S) IN TODAY'S ECONOMY

Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME's) in today's Economy



Small and Medium Size Enterprise

Introduction

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are key engines of major economies, but usually constrained by tight budgets, lack of skilled personnel, tough competition from other SMEs and large enterprises, and certain state policies and laws. Accordingly, SMEs have sought after a good means improve SMEs' competitiveness, in particular, in e-business. The success and performance of an SME inevitably is affected by its competitive edge over whatever business offers similar products and services. Successful enterprises always take into account competitiveness as an essential intrinsic feature of business success, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises where being competitive is a key issue to survive and guarantee a long-term evolution. Importantly, competitiveness is almost always considered synonymous with the quality and achievement of an SME's strategies and objectives, together with its productivity and ability for designing and producing and market products and services superior to those offered by the SME's competitors.

Competitive, of course, is also, at least partially, the result of relationships between firms and local business environment, while at the same time being dependent on social and economic objectives synergy and influenced by factors from external environment (Porter & Ketels, 2003). A critical step for an SME to achieve a competitive edge is to adopt, where advisable, a good e-business model which captures the vision of a SME in consideration of the needs of its customers who will ultimately cause the success, of lack thereof, the SME. This becomes especially important when SMEs are reluctant to adopt e-business solutions, failing to see the value of such solutions. Business today is under increasing pressure to improve performance, and success largely depends on a company´s ability to re-invent itself to adapt to changing circumstances. So, it is necessary a close cooperation exists between business and IT functions within a company, in a manner to enable the company to adaptable convert strategic business goals into effective IT solutions (Corbett & Molloy, 2000). Not surprisingly, lots of research has been done on the issue of strategic alignment. A key observation from such research is that the empirical findings indeed support the hypothesis that those organizations that successfully align their business strategies with their IT strategies will outperform those that do not.

A good alignment leads to a more focused and strategic use of IT, which, in turn, leads to increased performance (Chang & Reich, 2007). While taking into consideration the particular constraints that most SMEs are faced with, we need to provide a cost-effective way to help business managers, engineers and stakeholders in general with the adoption of an e-business model. But, how do we systematically address, and hopefully achieve, strategic e-business/ IT alignment? The main objective of this research is to provide a practical and lightweight interview-based method to help with aligning high level business concerns with IT strategic ones, using simple, yet useful, techniques and models, while deploying some best ...