Using Information and Communications Technology (Ict) to Establish Competitive Advantage Within a Small and Medium Enterprises

Using Information and Communications Technology (Ict) to Establish Competitive Advantage Within a Small and Medium Enterprises

Title: Using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to establish competitive advantage within a Small and Medium Enterprises in India: A case study

Overview

Background

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), according to the Department of Business Innovations and Skills, there is no universally accepted definition that defines the scale (small, medium or large) of an enterprise, however the European Union defines SME’s to be the enterprises having employees to a maximum of 250 (BIS, 2009). The government of India has defined SME’s to be the enterprises with an investment of above INR 10 million and below INR 100 million (Emerging SME’s of India Auto Components, no date), nothing but investments ranging £140K - £1400K.

Short description of case study participants (use Compnay A and Company B) and their industry

Defn of competitive advantage………………..????

Porters quote – Understanding ‘How to use ICT’ would be of paramount importance and critical for the businesses than ‘whether to use ICT or not’, for their competitive advantage (Porter, 1985).

It is important for the businesses to understand how they can deploy ICT in order to gain competitive advantage in their respective markets, as its benefits are clearly evident. For example using internet to provide customer support or track down leads for new customers. Successful implementation of ICT offers competitive advantage for large and SME’s on the long run (Throp, 1998).

Owners in SMEs have little concern towards the importance of ICT stragey and planning (Beckett 2003) but Yap et al (1992) found that management involvement is crucial to ICT success.

ICT is found to play an important role in any organisation (Kai-Uwe brock, 2000). It might be argued that a larger organisation might be able to make better use of ICT to achieve a competitive advantage but SME’s have a greater need for ICT based solutions because they typically lack the resources and robustness of a larger business to...

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