Abstract:

Technological advance over the last decades created an atmosphere in which the organizations are forced to look actively for new options for cost reduction, in addition to, simultaneously, seek advantages to compete more effectively in their markets. This context requires focused, swift, more flexible and more competitive organizations which must, many times, implement radical changes, in the way they conduct business, employ people and use technology. This work focuses the e-business maturity stages of Portuguese SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) and large enterprises. Our goal is to identify in which e-business maturity stage they are and explore the relationship between their e-business maturity and the associated constrains to ebusiness evolution (previously identified in an exploratory study).