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In today’s competitive economy cost savings, business process automation, opening of new markets, time to market, client satisfaction, competitive advantage and business intelligence are becoming important drivers for business growth. Large enterprises have always invested in enterprise applications to achieve these goals but small and medium enterprises were, and in some cases still, having difficulties in accessing or capitalizing on the technology to achieve these goals. Some small and medium businesses are focusing on core traditional business processes and do not see any business justification into an IT investment unless they are asked by an important business partner to adopt a technology oriented relationship for example an insurance broker may be asked by a large insurance underwriter to use an insurance brokering system to exchange policy information.

We believe that the technology is not the only answer but understanding and analysing business needs, business processes, organisation business environment, and required changes is an important step to choose the right technology or solution that will provide the anticipated business benefits, reduces the impact of changes, meets the business needs and specifically, fits the targeted business environment and importantly be affordable and accessible to small and medium enterprise community. Just as SMEs should have business plan and strategy there is an increase priority to develop an eBusiness plan and related strategies to ensure SMEs long term survival and successes. Deloitte’s MacLeod believes that it is equally as dangerous to ignore e-business and underestimate its impact, as it is to plunge into it without proper planning.

SMEs are under increasing pressure to capitalize on the technology affordability to start developing eBusiness plans and strategies and use internet applications as a mean for growth and profitability.

Until now it has been difficult, for small and medium businesses to choose among on-line business models or to tap into enterprise business applications such as customer relationship management, supply chain management or enterprise resource management applications to run their business effectively and smoothly because mainly of the following reasons:

Lack of confidence,
Lack of impartial and professional advice,
Prohibitive costs (although debatable as more inexpensive solutions are provided online),
Investment Risk (Risk can be minimized if SMEs choose to subscribe to an online solution service provider),
Difficulty in defining or understanding the business case,
Data and Transaction Security

Decision makers often seek advice from business partners or close friends and rely on their experience or expertise to make a decision in implementing IT solutions without a professionally defined business case. Although there is nothing wrong with this approach but relying on these sources as the only best practices provider for IT strategies may lead to disappointing results.

According to National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE), in 2001 the US-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published its second set of “E-business Readiness Rankings “for over 60 countries. Countries were ranked on the basis of their overall e-business environment, e.g. how conducive were conditions in these countries to the development and fostering of e-business opportunities. Overall Australia was placed 2nd with a score of 8.29 compared to the US, ranked 1st, with a score of 8.73.

This ranking is very important for the Australian SME business sector as it demonstrates that we have an e-business environment to help businesses automate business functions and processes internally and cross organisation boundaries to improve efficiency, profitability and productivity .

In Australia, 33% of small businesses and 67% of medium businesses have a website. Is this business improvement? Not according to Professor Janice Burn from the We-B Centre for Research at ECU. "The majority of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make the mistake of thinking that a website is nothing more than an electronic version of a listing in the telephone book, which does not actually help companies to increase the amount of business or the procurement process," said Professor Burn. "A simple website, or more correctly, portal, can be considered the first wave of adopting web technology."

Fairfax Business Research reported in March 2002 that most small businesses plan to develop Internet-based e-procurement activities in the next 12 months. While most small businesses are connected to the Internet, just 10% have the aim of letting their customers access their billing. A quarter of small businesses want to establish online catalogues and a web site. Most of them claim that online product service and support through contractual and product support are top priority.

According to RBM research reports just 9% of small businesses that place orders online also provide an online payment facility. About 32% of small businesses use supply chain management systems for business-to-business applications. These systems are estimated to save 10% on supply chain costs for large enterprises like Woolworths. For the smaller companies, who wait an average 69 days to payments, online procurement provides timely access to larger trading partners.

Business Application Service Providers (BASP) are starting to deliver reliable, robust and secure internet business solutions at much lower cost. SMEs with lower budget and greater flexibility can take advantage of this. It is a great time for SMEs to invest in appropriate IT solutions for increased productivity and improved efficiency.

E-business means doing business using internet technology to increase organisation efficiency or profitability. SMEs can use the Internet to conduct Business to Business transactions, business-to-customer (B2C) transactions, business-to-employee (B2E) transactions (for example, between your sales department and mobile sale reps) and business-to-government (B2G) transactions.

e-Business solutions to increase SMEs efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction

e-Accounts and e-Billing: Accounts and billing information can be made available as an online service to customers and business partners as well as orders and payments generated electronically. This solution will interface with the inventory system, customer relationship management and accounting system to reduce operating cost and manual processes.

e-Inventory: You can create a secure online inventory system where both the suppliers and store managers have a clear view of all inventory data. Information flows freely and collaborative forecasting supports automatic restocking processes and batch inventory data update.

e-Procurement: Buyers and supplier are connected through the Internet to facilitate the purchasing of goods and services. The procurement cycle is fully automated and the process is full integrated with other internal business processes such as inventory, accounting and so on

e-HR: You can use an Intranet network to give staff access to company information and HR functions like reimbursements, Leave, Expense account claims. HR validation processes can be fully automated.

e-Project Management: You can use an extranet network to store project schedule, budget, and documentation, assign task, schedule events, monitor project progress and risks, manage and monitor project change requests, and so on. Using a central location for project management provides an audit trail to increase responsibility and responsiveness and to ensure that organisation project management standards are applied and project data is current and available on demand.

e-CRM: Customer is both the most valuable, and vulnerable asset. So e-CRM system must play an important tool in capturing customer data and business transactions to ensure the highest quality customer profiling, customer satisfaction and maximise each opportunity that presents itself from a customer interaction

e-SCM: Supply chain management is a way to supervise the flow of products and information as they move between suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and finally consumers. Successful SCM allows an organisation to anticipate demand and deliver the right product to the right place at the right time at the lowest possible cost to satisfy its customers. Combined with the CRM system the SCM can provide important increase in productivity and efficiency (Knowing what your customers want and get it to them on time at the lowest price possible)

e-BMS: Business Management Systems are currently used to give the business an overall picture of much of what is going on in the organisation as well as zoom in on the business department such as financial, accounting, sales, inventory, and human resources and so on to make an informed decision

Business Intelligence: Data about clients, prospects, competition, business partners, business transactions and so on are analyzed and used into an informed and profitable decision making process to make organisation more efficient and more competitive. Data is a vital factor in making efficient business decision