Ict, e-business and Small and Medium Enterprises

E-business adoption challenges: lessons from EBIP 

Barriers to the adoption of e-commerce are also changing over time and may vary along the 

adoption ladder. For some SMEs sophisticated in the use of e-commerce, the barriers mentioned above 

may be unimportant. But they may face other challenges as they change their management and 

organisational structures and restructure business processes to make better use of the Internet and the 

potential of e-business.  

The OECD’s EBIP (Electronic commerce Business Impacts Project) study undertook in-depth 

interviews with 217 firms that were early adopters of Internet and e-business strategies (OECD, 2002a). 

This cross-country, cross-sector study showed that firms view competence factors (e.g. management 

attitudes, skill levels, training) as the most positive factors for them to successfully adopt e-business 

strategies and these factors were mostly favourable for them. Technology factors (e.g. how to ensure 

interoperability with different e-commerce systems, network reliability and flexibility) were also highly 

favourable for them and were of less concern than competence factors. Cost factors (cost of reaching 

customers, cost of engaging in e-commerce, telecommunication costs) were also seen as largely positive 

for adopting firms when compared with benefits from e-commerce and e-business. On the other hand 

confidence factors (e.g. brand image, transaction security, legal structures, IPR issues) were of lower 

concern on average but were more often seen as being negative, particularly in areas such as protection of 

IPRs and general legal structures. 

The EBIP set of early adopting firms showed interesting differences between small and large 

firms (small defined as less than 250 employees). Small firms were less positive about confidence factors 

in general than large ones. In particular, they were less positive and more negative about legal structures 

supporting their on-line activities and were considerably more negative than large firms about intellectual 

property protection. On the other hand, in the confidence area, large firms were more negative about 

transaction security (they are also more likely to be transacting on-line than small firms), and were more 

negative about the pull-through effects of government on-line efforts. The other major difference was in 

the technology area, where small firms were more negative about available technologies and less positive 

about having to choose among competing transaction systems, but overall were considerably less 

concerned (either positively or negatively) than large ones about network issues and conflicting systems. 

This suggests that successful small firms are able to master technological challenges internally, but are less 

sure of commercial exploitation and the wider business environment. 

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In other areas small and large firms had similar concerns, except that small firms generally had 

less well-formed opinions about factors affecting their Internet efforts, either positively or negatively. 

Interestingly enough, this group of early adopters was not particularly concerned about general cost 

factors. For example they were positive about costs of engagement (investment costs) in e-commerce and 

highly positive about their strategies reducing costs to reach customers, with small engaged firms being 

almost as positive as large ones (OECD, 2002a). 

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