eBusiness Change Management in SMEs: An Initial Investigation

Very little has been published on best practice approaches to managing eBusiness change for SMEs, particularly at the level of the small business. SMEs are however increasingly implementing more advanced eBusiness solutions, and in turn could benefit from adopting a more informed manner to taking on some of these change management challenges. This potentially has implications in terms of the long-term cost of implementing eBusiness change, and has relevance to future uptake of eBusiness. This exploratory paper presents work conducted as part of the Opportunity Wales Advance Welsh eBusiness support initiative. It focuses on understanding more about issues related to the management of staff in SMEs when moving forward with eBusiness change. The paper concludes there is need for firstly, greater consideration of these softer skills in eBusiness training, and secondly, a more integrative approach to eBusiness change management training and education – rather than eBusiness and change management being considered as separate disciplines. The case study approach used in this paper also presents a number of interesting examples of the change management challenges that can arise, and illustrates how the SMEs overcame these.