Future Plans for E-Business
More firms agreed with the statement that e-business will be a transformational force for change rather than leading to incremental changes. HITECH SMEs in particular saw the Internet as supporting major future growth thrusts. All firms tended to believe that the Internet would be central to business strategy, although the average score of about 3 on the 5 point scale also hinted that other business priorities would come into play. The implication for strategy makers and policy advisors is that e-business is becoming a mainstream part of business planning in many SMEs (Figure 6).