ICT AND ERP APPLICATIONS CHALLENGES IN ROMANIAN SMEs

Small and Medium-Size Enterprises represent the spinal cord of most European Union countries’ economies. In Romania, the SME ”Cinderella” has been increasingly attracting the attention of SMEs specialists and agencies because, after Romania has joined the EU, this sector needs consolidation so as to add value to the national economy. The new information technologies can function as drivers to increase SMEs’ efficiency and productivity in the current global economy. The grand players in the IT industry have been increasingly considered SMEs. “Heavy” names such as IBM, Oracle, Compaq or Microsoft are developing SMEs projects, both for equipment (servers, flexible technological architectures), and for integrated solutions (ERP, CRM, BI, SCM), solutions which were initially targeting large businesses only. Small Business is already becoming an important segment that the whole IT industry is targeting. Romanian SMEs must consider this trend and be prepared for the “technological fashion”. The heavy survival test cannot be passed without this support.