Abstract:

Appropriate deployment of e-business solutions potentially enhances firm efficiency and effectiveness. This is no exception for SMEs. Despite extensive research in this domain, there have been limited works that explore the extent to which SMEs successfully align diverse e-business capabilities to their strategic business functions. This is an important issue to investigate; considering limited resources that are commonly faced by most SMEs which in turn forces them to be more selective in e-business-related investments. This study hence explores the current state of e-business alignment of Malaysian SMEs. Self-administered survey approach was employed to obtain perceptions of owner/manager of SMEs pertaining to (i) business process importance and (ii) present e-business capabilities that support their business processes. Responses from 140 firms indicate inconsistent level of e-business alignment across various business functions. A cluster analysis further reveals three (3) distinct groups with different characteristics of e-business alignment namely: low fit, moderately fit, and highly fit. Despite several limitations, this study has provided insights on how e-business penetrates across firm’s operation and the extent it corresponds to the most important functions of business. This study therefore suggests that firms relatively have different priority over e-business to support their business. These findings have also provided more insights such as why some firms do not progress into higher e-business ladder that further justifies unequal deployment of e-business solutions amongst firms.