Categorization of ICT role for service-based small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Information and communications technology (ICT) has a high impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) business. It enhances SMEs capacity for innovation and adds greater value to their service in order to attract more customers and produce greater returns to the company. The purpose of this paper is to categorize ICT available in the market for SMEs according to its roles. The study used different examples from the literature review and from the authors' observation of ICT solutions in the market. The output of this study developed new ICT categories such as automating devices, knowledge dissemination, business productivity systems, contacting, entertaining, marketing, storage, tracking, and transactions technology. Moreover, in order to demonstrate the usability of these categories, the authors have conducted preliminary integration of ICT categories with different service types. The findings of this integration offer managers different ways to think about the existing services and choose the most suitable ICT categories that can help to improve services operations or create new services