Explorative research on challenging factors encountered by SMEs operating in developing countries deploying an IT transaction platform

In this paper, the challenges encountered by SMEs operating in the Base Of the Pyramid (BoP) deploying an IT transaction platform have been identified. The main focus of this research is to identify the most important challenges in the following five categories: Human Capital, Research & Development, Technologies, National policy and Regulatory environment and Market Information. With the help of an online distributed survey which posed statements to the respondents, a ranking of the challenges has been made, giving quantitative insight into what challenges are most prevalent for SMEs operating in the BoP deploying an IT transaction platform. Furthermore, qualitative data in the form of answers to open questions posed to these SMEs have been gathered to identify additional challenges and gain deeper insights into challenges faced by these SMEs. A selection of the most relevant challenges have been further investigated with help of secondary data to give a more reliable and in depth analytical insight. The ranking and qualitative identification of the challenges faced by SMEs in the BoP deploying an IT transaction platform helps businesses to base strategy on and researchers to identify relevant challenges to do in depth research on.