Critical Success Factors in the Development of Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce

Abstract

The ubiquity of the Internet is enabling many enterprises, including small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to develop cost-effective electronic business-to-business (B-to-B) relationships. Currently, little is known about what strategies and tactics lead to successful adoption of B-to-B e-commerce. The purpose of this paper is to determine the critical success factors (CSFs) that underlie the development of Internet-mediated B-to-B e-commerce. A candidate list of CSFs was developed from academic and practitioner literatures. This was followed by a case study of organizations engaged in supply-chain B-to-B e-commerce relationships in the transport and logistics industry. Among the CSFs identified by the CIO respondents, four stood out as being uniformly important: holding a clear e-business vision, customer readiness, top management support, and creative, flexible managerial thinking. The CSFs identified by the CIOs are compared to those found in the literature, and the discrepancies are identified and discussed.

Keywords:

• E-commerce
• business-to-business
• interorganizational systems
• supply chain
• critical success factors