Framework For Integration of E-Commerce In Indian SMEs

Indian SMEs have established themselves as a strong contributor to India's GDP but they face a stiff competition globally and the situation in the domestic market is also heating up amidst new wave of economic reforms. There is an urgent need of exploring new dimensions so as to create some blue ocean for the SMEs to enable their growth through inflow of money. E-commerce as a tool helps attain this. A number of enterprises have emerged in the past decades, which enjoy the benefits of e-commerce. Further, e-commerce is now being seen as a logical area where SMEs can take support from in order to overcome their increasingly felt inefficiencies in operations and to increase the revenues. The paper analyzes the current status, adoption vis-à-vis business value and core business activities for which SMEs can leverage Internet based technology. Further, a framework has been designed for SMEs as how to inculcate e-commerce and technology to increase business value, in a step-wise manner. The paper stresses for a larger, complete integration of Indian SMEs to explore various possible avenues.