Business strategy and e-business initiatives in Indonesian B-to-B manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

Transforming SMEs into e-business is one of efforts to improve the competitiveness of SMEs. However, the initiatives of e-business can not be separated from the company's business strategy. This means that the transformation of SMEs towards e-business follows the company's business strategy. However, SMEs often do not clearly define their business strategy, and this strategy is seen as the company's commitment to customer demand. For manufacturing companies, manufacturing systems literature calls this commitment as competitive priorities which is a part of the manufacturing strategy and reflects the business strategy. This study describes the alignment between e-business initiatives with the competitive priorities. This study uses business process approach to find e-business initiatives. Business processes that are supported electronically by SMEs become the pivot domain for the alignment process. This study shows four types of e-business initiatives that are identified from empirical studies and explains the relationship between each initiative with competitive priorities to be fulfilled by B-to-B manufacturing SMEs.