E-business as a multifaceted application has vast capabilities to support today''s business. Nevertheless, these capabilities do not equally benefit all firms. Therefore, appropriate selection of e-business solutions would substantially enhance firm efficiency and effectiveness. Despite extensive research in this domain, there are limited works that explore the extent to which SMEs successfully align diverse e-business capabilities to their strategic business functions. This is crucial considering that SMEs have relatively limited resources and thus make them more selective in e-business-related investments. This study therefore explores the current state of e-business fit (alignment) among Malaysian SMEs. The next attempt is to reveal any possible patterns that represent firms with respect to their e-business alignment characteristics. A self-administered survey was conducted on 140 SMEs owner/manager in order to investigate present status of e-business alignment across various business processes. The results generally indicate that firms perceive a relatively higher level of alignment in terms of information searching, sales, and internal-related functions relative to other functions. A cluster analysis further classifies firms into three (3) groups with somewhat distinct alignment patterns. Despite several limitations, this study has provided insights on how e-business penetrates across firm operation and the extent to which it corresponds to the most salient functions of the business. This study, therefore, supports the claim that SMEs have different priorities over e-business solutions in support of various business functions. These findings have also provided more insights such as why some firms do not progress into a higher e-business ladder.
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