Efforts to increase awareness should focus on concrete benefits, be industry specific, and target the right audience

Governments need to understand where SMEs are in their decision-making process in order to conduct more focused workshops. Since adopting ICT requires investment in both time and financial resources, SMEs generally go through distinct stages of careful analysis. Initially, the SMEs become aware of the benefits that ICT can bring to their core business through channels such as word of mouth, media, and workshops. If they believe that ICT indeed has the potential to improve their business, they proceed to the next stage, where they consider whether or not to adopt ICT. In this stage, SMEs try to find out the exact costs and benefits of implementing ICT by obtaining price quotes and seeking advice from supporting agencies or other SMEs. The best way to describe the benefits of ICT is to use terms that the owners are familiar with, such as rate of sales growth, market share, and return on investments, cost reduction, and development of new products or markets. This way, SME owners can connect abstract ICT benefits with how ICT can concretely affect their core business. They need to internalize the benefits before they are willing to make an investment. When SMEs become convinced that the benefits do in fact outweigh the costs, they will begin to adopt ICT into their business practice. If the experience proves to be positive, SMEs may either increase their investment or move towards the final stage of using ICT to innovate in their business practices. SMEs generally prefer products and services that are easy to use, easy to implement, and low cost1.