The access to the telecommunications infrastructures, regarding data-transmission costs and speed, mainly to the SMEs which are not located in urban zones, is pointed as the biggest obstacle to the practice of electronic commerce. Nevertheless, other difficulties may exist, either at the services offer level, insufficiently spread at regional and local level, or at the level of not knowing the applicable legislation to this sector.
The electronic commerce practice financing, as well as the ignorance of the electronic marketing practices and respective adaptation to the value chains of the several products and services, are equally pointed as difficulties.
The majority of the SMEs considers essential the participation of the State in the digitisation of its operations and communications with the companies.
Proposal actions:
Public initiatives: pointing out ?Digital SMEhttp://www.poe.min-economia.pt/3000/3190_main1.htm? , in the framework of Operational Plan of the Economy, aiming at the dynamization of the SMEs? participation in the digital economy, and the approved projects in the scope of the ?Digital Cities?, inserted in the axle ?Portugal Digital? of the Operational Plan of the Society of the Informationhttp://www.fct.mctes.pt/pt/programasinvestimento/posi/posifiles/posi.html.
Infrastructures and e-cohesion: the main issue is the importance of broadband infrastructures in not urban regions, underlining the role of the operators in the presentation of offers that answer to the enterprise area needs.
Internationalization: taking into account the low presence of the national SMEs in search engines, portals and foreign emarketplaces, we must envisage the accomplishment of spreading campaigns of the national SMEs in those foreign, national, regional, sectorial digital platforms (for further information, consult the report on the
?Benchmarking national and regional e-business policies for SME?, of the European Commission Enterprise DG). Regional actions: pointing out the enterprise associations action, intending to gain the sinergies that can be created among the associates and international partners of these associations, through the advantages of the electronic business knowledge.
Sector-based actions: considering the different adhesion levels to the electronic commerce by some national enterprise sectors, it will be necessary a greater pledge of the public entities and the enterprise associations, aiming at a larger participation of sector companies which are not so familiar to the electronic commerce (for further information, consult the site "The European e-Business Market Watch http://www.ebusiness-watch.org/marketwatch/", of the European Commission Enterprise DG).
Emarketplaces: after the emergence of several portals and emarketplaces, as much of horizontal nature as vertical, the adhesion levels foreseen had not been reached yet, since the SMEs intend to participate in emarketplaces directly related to its activity sector (for further information, consult the study on
"The E-marketplaces - strategies of selection of portals B2B" (This information is only available in Portuguese version), of the Management School of Oporto and Digital Partners). Electronic cooperation: taking into account the fact that the electronic markets contribute for the integration and the visibility of those who participate in them, we must promote the creation of regional emarketplaces for the promotion of products and services of one determined region (examples as http://www.andalucia.orghttp://www.andalucia.org/, http://www.algarve.comhttp://www.algarve.com and http://www.vitrocristal.pthttp://www.vitrocristal.pt, among others).
Electronic services offer: the SMEs feel that the dissemination of the of the information and communications technologies offer in the national territory do not join with the local needs, so that it is desirable that we proceed, among others measures, to the promotional effort of support solutions to the electronic commerce, using regional and local distribution channels.
