Appropriation and expansion of information and communication technologies in the productive chains as determining for competitiveness of smess

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies have had uncountable benefi ts in organizational processes being the increase in sales, decrease of total costs, customer satisfaction and supplier improvement, more effi ciency, optimization of personnel education, communication improvement with the stakeholders and global positioning, some of the most important issues to consider. However, a direct relationship between the intensive use of technologies and organizational development is evident due to the size of the company (Big and medium sized companies) considering that the small sized ones which concentrate the largest population (99.3% in Colombia), are the ones with the lowest performance (World Economic Forum, 2011). Consequently accepting the role given by the Colombian Ministry of Information and Communication, they have opened up to a new phase if the Digital SME initiative in order to expand the use TICs and internet (50% of the SMEs in 2014) and at the same time generate competitiveness and productivity in the country. This way, it is possible to counteract of the evidenced attitudes of recent studies (Cisco, 2009; Fundes, 2009; operators, 2010) about the scarce usefulness of TICs and a similar investment levels on them. Also, the marginal use of e-mail service, bank transactions and payments made from homes and cyber cafes. This is confi rmed by an amazing 7% of small companies using internet and TICs, (DANE, 2006 and others). To achieve this, a three pillar strategy has been designed and implemented based on: concentrators, productive chains and killer applications, together with alliances with public and private entities. Such a program and execution requires research, innovation and development before, during and after in order to demonstrate hypothesis such as the competitiveness determination of the SMEs based on the use of TICs.