For external expertise, each respondent was asked whether their firm seeks advice from specific external experts such as consultants, vendors, government agencies and accounting firms. A simple Chi-square test was then performed on the frequencies of Yes and No answers to these questions. The results in Table 7 show that the two alignment groups only differ significantly in their usage of the expertise offered by government agencies and
accounting firms. The percentage of firms in the aligned group that seek advice from relevant government agencies and accounting firms was found to be higher than those in the not-aligned group. While the finding deviates from common belief and those of previous studies (Thong et al. 1996; Igbaria et al. 1997; Thong 2001;
de Guinea 2005), it again indicates IT maturity among the owners/managers of SMEs by choosing the less
expensive, convenient and possibly more trusted advisors for their IT projects.