The Study On Digital Divide Between SMEs And LEs

Information and communications technology (ICT) has proven to be the key technology of the past two decade and become vital for almost all economic and social development. ICT producing and ICT services sectors are major contributor to labor productivity and growth. Computers and the Internet are now extensively diffused among firms in developed world but adoption of integrated e-business processes and sophisticated technologies are slow. The disparities between industrialized and developing countries in terms of accessing and using the ICTs exists, is called global digital divide, There are also different types of digital divide within a country such as income digital divide, age digital divide, gender digital divide, called social digital divide.Privatization, liberalization, free trade, emerging market competition, and Globalization changed the way enterprises conduct the businesses. Businesses are shifting to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. Relatively few firms have comprehensively adapted complex e-business applications, i.e. supplier and customer relation ship management, knowledge management, and enterprise resource management. The ICT access divide between small&medium enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises (LEs) is Lessing, a new digital divide with respect to more advanced applications may increasing, called e-business divide, or e-business digital divide. Internal and external integration of different business functions is found more in large firms as compared to small firms. Firms that have competitive advantages, including a skilled and innovative workforce, readiness and openness to organizational change, benefit significantly from deployment of ICTs along their value chain system. E-Business divide, between SMEs and LEs, need to address and measure, every country has different business environment, so need measurement tool that can meet their requirement. The main aim of this research is to explore the digital divide between SMEs and LEs in Pakistan and to design a policy recommendation to bridge the digital gap between SMEs and LEs. A new e-business divide index has constructed with the help of expert survey, using Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for pair wise comparison of the decided indicators in the index. The index is made of5core dimensions:1, Awareness/Motivation,2.ICT access,3.ICT Skill,4.ICT Use,5.ICT Impact. The index has proven to be a useful tool gauging the Digital Divide between businesses. The field survey has done by an other questionnaire for collecting data to measure the Digital Divide between SMEs and LEs, using the newly constructed index. The questionnaire is designed according to the indicators in the index, so that the data may be easily incorporated in index, It has been observed and conformed that SMEs are lagging behind in the awareness, skill and use part of the Digital Divide, especially in the sophisticated applications and technologies, i.e. supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relation Ship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence (BI), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), e-logistics and reverse e-Logistics.A policy recommendation has put into words to bridge the digital divide, keeping in view the challenge and barrier of SMEs, i.e. lake of awareness, lack of ICTs skill, and financial constraints to achieve the complicated and expensive technologies and solutions.ICT awareness raising campaigns to be realized, cloud computing,(software as a service, private deployment model) is suggest for easy, quick, affordable access and use of ICTs for businesses. ICT skill to be developed by e-training services. The government should make the e-business use encouragement policies, the government, concern ministries, developing bodies and supporting institutions should coordinate well to bridge the gap.