In terms of technological sophistication the results in Table 3 show that more than 80% of the firms in both groups adopted office support systems such as word-processing and presentation software, while over two-thirds of the firms adopted a decision support system such as a spreadsheet. These findings are not surprising since these two technologies often come in one standard package such as Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes. Local
area networks were also adopted by two-thirds of the firms in both groups. This suggests that, for firms in this sample, this technology is becoming more essential for internal communications. However, more sophisticated and expensive software, such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing and computer-assisted
production management, are not widely used by either group of firms.