Sketching Fuzzy Plan for Implementation of E-Business in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

In the past three decades significant developments in IT and communication systems in the world has caused some under-developed countries to become sensitive to new opportunities and undertake an all-out planning for their development and increase their economic and social growth to narrow their gap with developed countries and be able to compete with them. For such an aim, e-commerce has been lent too much credence specially in the small and medium size businesses. Our study here seeks to analyze the elements required for implementing e-business plans in small and medium-sized enterprises. To this end, we present a fuzzy map-based methodology in order to explore the most important critical success and failure factors for implementing e-business plan. Conducting an analysis on 61 criteria led us to the conclusion that factors like development, education and management of human resources, production timeframe, foreign relations management, communication systems and financial management are among the important critical failure factors.