Small and Medium Enterprises and ICT

Abstract

It is commonplace for governments to have policies to encourage the growth of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as they can help to directly alleviate poverty by increasing income levels and creating jobs. However, as the global economy becomes increasingly reliant on information and communications technology (ICT) to receive, process, and send out information, the small businesses within the Asia-Pacific region – which form a significant portion of their developing economies – have yet to reap these benefits evenly. This is because obtaining such opportunities rests largely upon the ability of SMEs to engage in the regional and global economic business networks which, in turn, demand provision of a prerequisite level of access to and use of ICT. Unless these prerequisites are in place, these SMEs are set to lose out on opportunities to integrate into the global supply chain, bid for outsourcing businesses, and increase their internal productivity and efficiency. KeyWords: ICT, ERP, SMEs, Knowledge-Based Economy, CRM, SCM.

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