SMEs Experience of Collaboration and Their IT Maturity

Small and medium enterprises will benefit from collaborative business networks with IT support. The focus in this paper is on SMEs and their inter-organizational collaborative experience. Collaboration between SMEs is regarded as an effective way for the SMEs to gain some benefit. However, effective collaboration relies on effective IT support. Consequently the level of IT maturity within SMEs is viewed as central for gaining some benefit. We are not arguing the slogan: "Just add IT!" as IT and collaboration can together provide benefit. The paper is part of a larger research project based on empirical collections from several sources of research carried out in parallel in two adjoining European regions (Northern Germany and Southern Denmark). Several data acquisition methods have been applied in the collection of data for the project. Qualitative interviews have confirmed the importance of collaboration and IT maturity in the reflective view of the companies. These conclusions are also supported by theories and concepts of clustering of organizations and their networks. Through a survey questionnaire a group of randomly selected companies from the two European regions were approached. In this paper analysis is carried out on the basis of the data obtained through the survey questionnaire. Generally, SMEs regard the collaboration with other actors - especially with suppliers and customers - as very important for their business success. The experienced level of collaboration as well as the practiced level of IT use is high. Furthermore, we find that the level of collaboration experience and the level of experience the company has in utilizing IT are positively related. These two measurements might be co-evolving. Our motivation for this descriptive paper is the development of IT applications supporting the collaboration between companies and especially tools for configuration of virtual enterprises. In this both collaborative maturity and IT maturity of the SME companies are required. We interpret the levels of maturity as well as their correlation as an affirmation for our continued systems development.