The web, the spider and the fly: a cautionary tale for SMEs going online

INTRODUCTION Electronic Commerce 1 is not seen as a core activity for most small enterprises in Australia and it is quite often considered too expensive, technologically complicated and unsuitable for the small business environ-In spite of the reluctance of Australian SMEs to enter the online world, there are a growing number of small organisations developing websites to market their products and an increasing number of enterprises conducting online transactions and selling their products directly to customers via the Internet. Therefore, SMEs appear to be slowly overcoming their reluctance to enter the online world. Whilst this is considered a positive step in increasing the presence of SMEs in the online environment, most SMEs lack IS expertise (Kole, 1983, Yap et al., 1992), and turn to the services of website design consultants to assist them in developing an online presence. In Australia there are more than 1000 website design consultants (DIST, 1998) having a strong impact on the Small and Medium Enterprise sector, particularly in their efforts to enter the world of online commerce. The question asked by this paper is as follows: To what extent do SMEs feel their individual business needs are understood by website design consultants in order to ensure a successful venture into the world of online electronic commerce? In an attempt to answer this question, this paper incorporates a case study of two Western Australian online SMEs who contracted website design consultants to produce their sites. The SMEs chosen were established retail businesses rather than start-ups as it was felt that established businesses would already have a general business plan or strategy. Different website design consultants were used in each case. A review of the literature shows that an important factor in the success of online enterprises is their ability to align business processes with Further, several important issues have been identified in the literature regarding SME use of external consultants in the management of Information Systems. These include a clear understanding of the client/consultant role and the importance of SME involve-that most SMEs accessing the Internet tend to use it primarily for communication and information gathering with a small percentage actually using the Internet to conduct electronic transactions. Small Business Opinion Survey of Western Australian SMEs indicated that the majority of SMEs surveyed used the Internet for communication purposes and that electronic transactions only formed a small proportion of Internet usage (see figure 1): The Institute …