-Explain the purpose of the application

-Explain the benefits of the e-readiness assessment to the organization

-The page also provide link to assess e-readiness

2.

B2B e-commerce maturity dimension

-Provide brief explanation on the B2B e-commerce readiness

-Describes all eight readiness dimensions namely personal traits, organizational features, competency, technology, business process, market forces, supporting industries and government.

3.

Maturity levels

-Provide brief description of all four maturity stages from stage 1 to stage 4.

4.

Maturity Assessment

-Enables data capture activities and prompting results and analysis on the assessment

-Provides strategic solutions based on the result obtained

6.

Contact us

-Provide researchers name and contact address to establish authority and credibility of the researcher.

7.

Terms and conditions

-Establish respondent confidentiality and privacy

On successful completion of the questionnaire, users are presented with a report that summarises their overall maturity level as well as e-readiness stage for each aspect (refer Figure 2). This allows companies to focus on, and improve on, those specific aspects. This maturity assessment report includes data in textual formats. Once the results of the assessment are shown, users are given a series of recommendations based on their maturity stage levels. The recommendations can help SMEs to progress to the next maturity level. Overall it is advisable for SMEs to focus on seven strategy recommendations as below:

Ÿ Develop positive perceptions and attitudes towards B2B e-commerce through providing motivational devel- opment programs to develop self-efficacy, motives, needs, capabilities, and expectations on B2B e-com- merce among top management and employees.

Ÿ Increase top managemnet support through encouraging top management to equip themselves with manageri- al and technical knowledge on B2B e-commerce business model, concepts, process, policies, procedures and solutions so that the project will have high priority and receives the required financial resources and atten- tion.

Ÿ Provide appropriate technical and management training courses which emphasize on acquisition of skill of know-how and know-why to increase knowledge, skill and positive perception on B2B e-commerce tech- nology. The training modules also should reflect differences between types of organization, functional orientation, level of personnel and level of employee’s competencies.

Ÿ Increase technology resources and set priority. Organization needs to be equipped with the telecommunica- tion networks, backbones, switches, routers, multiplexers, as well as internet with broader bandwidth that in- clude all of its parts.

Ÿ Continual improvement on business process and products through thorough understanding of their product transactions and specifications. This will allow companies to better design the B2B e-commerce process and offer greater value to buyers and sellers.

Ÿ Mutual beneficial relationships with trading partners, supporting industries and government through encour- aging open communication and cooperation between different functional departments which can increase business process effectiveness and efficiency The risk-sharing agreements and strategic alliances between smaller players and industry leaders can also increase prominence in the strategy and able SMEs to compete more effectively with large players.

Ÿ Continuous review on B2B e-commerce application and systems. For SMEs that are ready to introduce B2B e-commerce application or those already have B2B e-commerce application in place, it advisable for them to create a more fault-tolerant atmosphere to further encourage success in B2B e-commerce development. They need to continuously review B2B policies, procedures, training modules, and supply chain business opera- tion which is an impediment to the further development of B2B e-commerce.

Even though the application has been derived from solid research base, the application evaluation is needed as it is a proactive measure to ascertain its validity, acceptability, applicability and usability. Thus, in order to ensure the practicality and the usefulness of the application developed, there is a need to verify the model and its feasi- bility. Taking into account the satisfaction of user requirements, the idea of validating the application is gener- ally taken to prove that it works satisfactorily for SMEs other than those from whose data was derived. In addi- tion, the validation through users should demonstrate the feasibility, practicality and integrity of the application.

To facilitate the evaluation process, thirty-five SMEs from agro-based industry were given hands-on usage of the application prototype developed in this study. SMEs as a potential user of the application were selected through convenience sampling method based on the listing in SME Corp web sites, Members of AgriBazar Portal Malaysia’s (both are the latest update listing of June 2010) and Halal Directory 2008. The target group of this application evaluation and validation exercise was either the CEO, owner of the organization, or project manager who is in the best position to relate to the subject matter. As mentioned, the e-readiness assessments are done through the BeMA application, which the users were asked to enter their input regarding B2B e-commerce readiness elements into the questionnaire set in the application. On completion of the assessment and certification exercise, respondents were given a standard questionnaire evaluation form covering areas of functionality, usability, accuracy, attractiveness and benefits of the model. Figure 3 illustrates the flow of the process.

Respondents were encouraged to include any additional suggestions enhancing the application. However, if the respondents do not agree with the e-readiness assessment results they may give comment and suggestion in the form provided. The evaluation relies on the judgement of the respondents as to whether or not he/she agrees with the statements in the context of their organizations. By looking at the e-readiness analysis and its solutions provided by the application, users are able to assess whether the application is justified to be the proficient tool to measure B2B e-commerce maturity in SME in the real world environment. The respondents need to ensure that their responses are consistent and reflected throughout.

The extent to which the respondent agrees or disagrees with the statement is graded on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neither Agree/Disagree or No Opinion, 4 = Agree and 5 = Strongly Agree. An average score was calculated for each element. The results from the assessment of the model revealed that in terms of average and standard deviation score, all respondents basically agree on the usability, effectiveness, attractiveness, accuracy and benefits of the application. In terms of frequency analysis about 28 (80%) SMEs agree that the application is usable to assess organization e-readiness. Only one respondent indicated neither agree or disagree on the usability of the model, and the other 6 (17%) strongly agreed on the usability of the model. From the perspective of model effectiveness, about 29 (82%) SMEs agreed on the effectiveness of the model, while 5 (14%) of the respondents strongly agreed that the e-readiness assessment results are easy to understand and effectively highlight the areas of readiness that company need to address. The results also shows that most respondents (70%) are satisfied with the e-readiness analysis results and thought that the e-readiness results accurately reflect the current B2B e-commerce readiness level in the company. While the other 4 (11%) SMEs, strongly agreed on the accuracy of the e-readiness assessment results. However, about 6 (17%) SMEs neither disagree or agree. The evaluation findings also highlighted that about 29 (83%) of the SMEs agreed that the resolutions suggested in the application are able to improve the maturity level of B2B e-commerce. Only

about 1 (3%) of SMEs neither agree or disagree on the resolutions provided to them, while the other 14% strongly agreed that the suggestions are comprehensive and meaningful. In terms of the benefits of the application, majority (80%) of the SMEs agree that the application is beneficial to the SME as it gives a clear result of an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses regarding its readiness for B2B e-commerce, about 3 SMEs (9%) strongly agree while the other 4 (11%) neither disagree or agree. The results provided from the assessment, allowed the respondent to do comparisons and to assess whether the application reflects the real B2B e-commerce maturity of their organizations. On the whole, the evaluation results are encouraging and most respondents verify the validity of the application. They are also enthusiastic for future use of BeMA. From the evaluation assessment it can be concluded that:

Ÿ The application is usable as it addresses all aspects of B2B e-commerce that SMEs need to consider to achieve e-readiness.

Ÿ The application is easy to understand as it provides easy to understand reports and highlight e-readiness aspects that company need to address on.

Ÿ The application accurately portrays the current maturity level of the organization which reflect the integrity of the application as a valuable maturity assessment tool.

Ÿ The resolutions provided in the application are acceptable to be used as guidelines for organization to achieve a higher maturity level. However, further research on B2B e-commerce readiness best practices from expert advices will add more value to the application.

Ÿ The application is also beneficial to SME as it highlight organisations’ strengths and weaknesses. Through the application, SME can strategize and plan their resources effectively with respect to B2B e-commerce implementation. In general, the evaluation exercises have demonstrated the practicality and the integrity of the application.

The research intends to provide maturity model as a practical guidance to other researchers. In order to ensure its successfulness, the systematic research process of the B2B e-commerce maturity model was used. The model was generated in conceptual form, which was subsequently developed through evaluation from subject matter experts in B2B e-commerce. The model has been refined and improved by incorporating the significance e-readiness factors which were measured by the index score. However, to prove that the model provides an accurate and well structured representation of SME’s environment, BeMA validation assessment by SME was done. Overall, the evaluation results are encouraging and most respondents verified the validity of the model. They are also enthusiastic for future use of BeMA. Thus, based on the validation and assessment results, it is worth pointing out that the model and the application have proved its practicality in SMEs context.

The research also proved that the theory and findings have thus supported the B2B e-commerce maturity model. With the adoption of the proposed B2B e-commerce maturity model, SME is hoped to be better prepared to manage B2B business transaction in a more efficient way. However, due to the growing complexity of SME business environment, the indicators focused in this research should not be treated as definitive for SME yet. Further analysis of organization capability and their impact on the conditions of the environment are needed in order to increase the granularity of the B2B e-commerce maturity model.