ICT industry challenges in adopting ICT: a case study from the West Midlands, UK

The successful operation of companies in most industries is becoming increasingly dependent on their ability to adopt and utilise ICT systems. However, ICT adoption often requires: knowledge of business and IT, investment in IT infrastructure, plans to invest and training in new technologies and other aspects. Many companies lack these factors, resulting in a steady increase in the demand for ICT services and products. Often, ICT adoption has been considered to be a complex problem by SMEs, however the problems are mainly due to it being tackled inappropriately. Instead of government initiatives starting to solve the problem by empowering those SMEs which are in ICT industry who are ICT service or product providers, most initiatives have been targeting all SMEs in all sectors. This paper presents a qualitative ICT adoption research conducted on 206 ICT SMEs in West Midlands (UK), the majority of whom were face-to-face interviews. The findings show that most ICT SMEs challenges result from the factors which are related to lack of knowledge and skills to adopt new technologies. Specifically, these companies are not provided with the appropriate training and they find government initiatives not always helpful. The paper suggests the best way to retrain SMES as a key aspect to address the challenges faced by the ICT SMEs in the region.