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This article investigates how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been used to add value to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa, particularly in the retail, production and service provision sectors. This empirical study had three objectives. The first objective was to find out which ICTs South African SMEs are currently using. The second goal was to investigate what SME owners perceived and what value ICTs added to their operations. Finally, the various barriers which SMEs face when adopting ICTs were looked at. It was found that ICT does indeed add value to SMEs, the use of ICT differs between different sectors, and South African SMEs encounter a number of critical barriers in the process of adopting ICT.

Background: Business intelligence (BI) has become an important part of the solution to providing businesses with the vital decision-making information they need to ensure sustainability and to build shareholder value. Critical success factors (CSFs) provide insight into those factors that organisations need to address to improve new BI projects’ chances of success.

Objectives: This research aimed to determine which CSFs are the most important in the financial services sector of South Africa.

Method: The authors used a Delphi-technique approach with key project stakeholders in three BI projects in different business units of a leading South African financial services group.

Results: Authors regarded CSF categories of ‘committed management support and champion’,‘business vision’, ‘user involvement’ and ‘data quality’ as the most critical for BI success.

Conclusions: Researchers in the BI field should note that the ranking of CSFs in this study only correlate partially with those a European study uncovered. However, the five factors the authors postulated in their theoretical framework ranked in the seven highest CSFs. Therefore, they provide a very strong validation of the framework. Research in other industries and other emerging economies may discover similar differences and partial similarities. Of special interest would be the degree of correlation between this study and future, and similar emerging market studies. Practitioners, especially BI project managers, would do well to check that they address the CSFs the authors uncovered before undertaking BI projects.

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