Implementing Electronic Commerce in SMEs — Three Case Studies

• Authors: A. J. Davies;A. J. Garcia-Sierra
• Venue: BT Technology Journal
• Year: 1999

In recent times electronic commerce has been accepted as a bona fide business practice in the commercial world. However, most research and news coverage has focused upon the usage and practices of large firms. In 1996 the Electronic Commerce Innovation Centre, at Cardiff University, secured funding from the European Regional Development Fund and BT to manage a two-year project aimed at researching electronic commerce implementations in small-to-medium-sized enterprises. In late 1998 funding was received from BT to extend the project for a further two years.The aim of the project is twofold — firstly, to undertake the implementation process of making electronic commerce solutions widely available, and, secondly, to monitor and research the usage patterns and the effect of these technologies not only on the smaller companies independently, but also on their customers, suppliers and collaborators (i.e. the respective supply chains). Resulting from this research, the paper provides three case studies of the electronic trading activities of smaller firms based in South Wales.