E-Business: Adoption, Strategy, and IT Challenges for SMEs Report

This report examines the adoption of e-business applications within small to medium enterprises (SMEs), focusing on the challenges and opportunities these businesses face. It delves into the theoretical aspects of e-business, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning and resource-based views. The report explores e-commerce business strategy models, including the use of online marketing tools and social media, while also analyzing the success of companies like Amazon. It further investigates the information technology issues that can impact e-business, such as server problems, security concerns, and the need to manage excess workload. The report concludes with recommendations for IT and business alignment, emphasizing the importance of organizational development and the maximization of results to achieve long-term success. The study highlights the importance of understanding the e-business environment and adapting to technological changes to achieve sustainable growth. The provided references support the analysis with insights from various research papers and publications on e-business strategies.

E-BUSINESS

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Theoretical Aspects of E-Business..................................................................................................1
E-commerce Business strategy Model.............................................................................................2
Information technology issues in e-business...................................................................................4
Recommendations & Conclusion....................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
The study is about the e-commerce applications adoption among the small-medium enterprises.
The research focuses on the adoption of e-commerce where the characteristics include the small
management teams with strong owner influence and the lack of staff in a specialized area like
information technology. It include the management set for the multi-functional and limited
control over business environment where the limited market share is set for the lowering of
employee turnover and reluctance is to take the risks and avoid the sophisticated software or
applications. SMEs generally tend to face slower technology adoption rate and then there are
difficulties about the technology benefits when compared to the large organization (Soto-Acosta
et al., 2016). The ecommerce adoption levels are different which is based on how the laws are
limited to internal readiness and use of ICT.
Theoretical Aspects of E-Business
The fundamental goals of the business is to perform better than the competition which is
important to be analyzed at the different levels of abstraction. Here, the study is about the open
innovation with sector levels and country level approach. The theory highlights about the
theoretical framework with resource-based views. The e-business planning is considered
important for the company as it helps in determining the global e-business environment with
focusing on the GP, macroeconomic stability, unemployment and the different rates of inflation.
The social cultural aspects are depending upon the dissemination of ICT where there is a proper
use of e-commerce and government dimensions through certain policies and strategies (Aithal,
2015). The industrial levels are set with the competition, innovation of the companies with
productivity that help in building the financial capability and the operational development as
well. The analysis of the e-commerce is based on the facts which include the different levels of
industry, company and the globalized levels where the Global Competitive Index is worked upon
through marketing structure and the capacity planning (Cassidy, 2016). The social cultural
dimensions, technology and the macroeconomic dimensions help in analyzing the growth of
GDP structure with the handling of inflation rates as well. The companies like Amazon have
been able to help the people on a large scale with enabling the customers to buy the goods
electronically and then focusing on the personalized service as well. They are also able to track

the behavior of the customers online and then providing the suggestions to the customers, based
on the information that they have.
E-commerce Business strategy Model
The e-commerce business strategy is to choose the market with the products and services online
so that the people can enjoy on a variety of tools and techniques (Turban et al, 2017). Hence, the
online marketing benefits are not inly for working with sharing the information about the
products but also the business activities. The big benefit is about measuring the ability to
evaluate the processes from the time when the customer enters a site to time. The social media is
a new tool which helps in offering the opportunities for the companies and then reach out the
individuals with establishing connections with the groups as well. The company with the e-
commerce applications focus on the promotion of products and services with provisions of data
and the information. The promotion of the products and services with the provisions are
depending upon the value-added links that help in processing the online sales, ordering and the
payments through order status enquiry and the links are then including the framework, as per the
requirement. The model of the business includes the APT strategies. The framework of the
innovation and adoption includes the factors where the adoption procedures works with the
perceiving of relative factors like the perceived compatibility, costs and the information intensity
as well. The environmental contexts include the competition and the pressure from buyer and
supplier as well (Yang et al., 2017).
Considering the strategy model of Amazon, the company focus on the effective methods of
communication, where it uses to drive the page views and stay higher in the search rankings so
that the customers can do some of the work. With this, there is a higher stuff to crawl in the
website so that it becomes easy for the company and the users to retrieve the data and the
products which are needed by them (Cassidy, 2016).

The company has been able to focus on the integration of different set of actions with creating a
sustainable advantage over the competitors. The competitive analysis with opportunistic strategic
decision making is important with effective response to the unexpected opportunities and the
problems. It includes determining the customers with the target segments that includes the
convenience of browsing a larger section of books with value propositions set at a lower pricing
strategy. The business model includes the delivery of the better customer experience, their
savings and the convenience to the consumers where there is an expansion to the merchandise
range and different countries. The seller customers need to work on handling the retailers and the
marketing promotions among the companies. It includes the leverage of the own scale to offer
the white label e-commerce services to the retailers. Amazon web services have been able to
work with the cloud infrastructure which includes the storage services with handling the leverage
scale and platform expertise to offer infrastructure as a service (Wiengarten et al., 2015). The
business model highlights the leverage scale and platforms where the expertise is based on

offering the infrastructure as service and stimulating the retail of electronic content through use
of innovative device and content delivery models.
Information technology issues in e-business
With the e-business, there is a possibility that certain information technology issues bring a
downfall of the business as well. The server issues are considered to be the major problem where
the hosting company servers might experience a downtime. So, to reduce the risks of the server
issues, there is a need of certain backup servers which can ensure the uptime 99.5 percent times.
There are other hosting companies which are also able to place a limit on the bandwidth which
does not require a lot of bandwidth but as the business grows, there is a exceeding of the
bandwidth allotment as well (Rodrigues et al., 2016). The problems of the security issues comes
with the IP address which leads to the decrease of the e-business website where there is a rapid
change in the Ip address that leads to the decreased stability of the website. Hence, the IP address
problems should focus on the site stability with providing a better source of internet service
provider. The security issues are related to stealing the confidential and the other information
along with the customer data. Hence, there is a need of increasing the customer confidence with
security the website and purchasing the secured pocket layer or SSL certificates which are based
on handling the other additional factors as well.
With the globalization, it is seen that the people need to compete in the market globally and then
focus on the wider aspects of the customer base where the potential is for the greater profits and
then dealing with the reality as well (Cherif et al., 2014). The excess workload includes how the
customers are seen to be becoming more demanding for the increased growth of competition.
The increased expectations are then coupled with the lower IT budgets which helps in providing
more services at a less price. The talent has been considered to be a challenge and the
opportunity where the organization needs to bring a balance between the gender ration at the
time of giving opportunities. Hence, the on-time performance and the quality becomes a major
concern for the companies and the IT projects need to be handled with the specific budget and
time (Chao, 2016). The alleged needs are to establish the budget and deadline where the scope is
to understand about setting up the failure which affects the delivery of the products as a major
goal to the project.

Recommendations & Conclusion
The IT and business work needs to focus on the organizational development and realize about
the maximization of the results to provide a complete guidance on achieving and maintaining the
IT culture. The services are based on business alignment tools which is undergoing the
significant evolution through the though processes which tends to shape how the challenges are
aligned to strengthen the business.
IT can help in achieving the long-term success through the value delivery to the stakeholders.
There is a need to understand about how IT affects the organization with business and managers
working on the engagement in IT investments (Turban et al., 2017). The technology change can
help in improving the performance with meeting the objectives. The need is to govern and
establish the decision-making patterns in the organization that have been emerging due to the
critical dependency on IT.
References
Aithal, P.S., 2015. Concept of Ideal Business & Its Realization Using E-Business Model.
Cassidy, A., 2016. A practical guide to planning for E-business success: how to E-enable your enterprise.
CRC Press.
Chao, K.M., 2016. E-services in e-business engineering. Electronic Commerce Research and
Applications, 16, pp.77-81.
Cherif, E. and Grant, D., 2014. Analysis of e-business models in real estate. Electronic Commerce
Research, 14(1), pp.25-50.
Rodrigues, L.F., Oliveira, A. and Costa, C.J., 2016. Playing seriously–How gamification and social cues
influence bank customers to use gamified e-business applications. Computers in Human Behavior, 63,
pp.392-407.
Soto-Acosta, P., Popa, S. and Palacios-Marqués, D., 2016. E-business, organizational innovation and
firm performance in manufacturing SMEs: an empirical study in Spain. Technological and Economic
Development of Economy, 22(6), pp.885-904.
Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2017. Electronic commerce
2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.

Wiengarten, F., Bhakoo, V. and Gimenez, C., 2015. The impact of host country regulatory quality on the
value creation process in e-business supply chains. International Journal of Production Research, 53(16),
pp.4963-4978.
Yang, Y., Yang, B., Humphreys, P., McIvor, R. and Cadden, T., 2017. An investigation into E-business
service in the UK telecommunication manufacturing industry. Production Planning & Control, 28(3),
pp.256-266.