Barriers to the adoption of online supply chain solutions in small and medium enterprises

Abstract

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to identify and measure the perceived importance of barriers in the SME community to the adoption of internet business procurement and supply chain solutions.Design/methodology/approachThis was a telephone survey of a sample of 173 Canadian small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), stratified by size of company (small and medium) and according to whether they were distributors, retailers or manufacturers. The data were analyzed statistically through an analysis of variance approach.FindingsFew differences were found between SME internet adopters and non‐adopters. There is a need for education for all SME management on the benefits and drawbacks to using e‐business solutions. Inter‐organizational information systems that are required to link supply chain partners can be a serious barrier to online solutions. There is a significant dependency among supply chain partners in decisions on adopting online links. Flexibility, agility and ability of SMEs can help them to use partial e‐business solutions for low volumes of business, but this approach can be very ineffective when transaction volumes are large.Practical implicationsThe results from this paper can help to direct future efforts to encourage SMEs to adopt e‐business solutions.Originality/valueThis study differs from other SME e‐business adoption studies, in that it includes relationships with supply chain partners that play a large role in the adoption of innovative e‐business solutions, transaction volumes which, for many SMEs that have not adopted e‐business, may be too small to justify automated supply chain linkages, and transaction volumes with a company's biggest customer or supplier.

A survey based analysis of IT adoption and 3PLs' performance

“…In fact, high transaction volumes, solely, justify the adoption of technologies for achieving automation and innovation in supply chain processes (Archer et al, 2008). A positive correlation between the size of the companies and IT adoption has also been found in the present study and has also been highlighted by other contributions in the supply chain management field (Pearcy and Giunipero, 2003).…”

Recent trend of e-business in Canada

“…The study concentrated specifically on the requirements of SMEs and recommended six categories of e-business readiness measures to be implemented for evaluating how a country could perform in terms of providing a positive e-business readiness climate with some examples in Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, and Singapore. Archer et al (2008) measured the importance of challenges in the SME community to the adoption of internet business procurement and supply chain solutions by executing a phone survey among 173 Canadian SMEs based on the type of business; distributors, retailers or manufacturers. They found limited differences between SME internet adopters and the others, which was a necessity for education for all SME management on the benefits and drawbacks to implement e-business solutions.…”

Understanding SME intention to use the internet for managing supplier information

“…Factors that have been identified in the literature as significantly influencing SME IT adoption, with particular focus on Internet adoption, include owner perception of benefits, organizational readiness, owner innovativeness, organization size, customer pressure, competitive pressure, supplier pressure, support from IT vendors, information intensity of products, and low business volumes (Mehrtens et al, 2001;Belussi, 2005;Al-Qirim, 2005;2007;Beckinsale et al, 2006;Archer et al, 2008). However, some of these same studies find few significant differences between SME adopters and nonadopters (Belussi, 2005) as well as no support for the influence of suppliers, competition, IT vendor support, and size (Al-Qirim, 2007;Beckinsale et al, 2006;Archer et al, 2008). Clearly, there is a need for continued development of our understanding of the factors affecting SME Internet usage.…”