Influence of ICT in the Industrial Sector MSMEs

Introduction

In the business sector, the use and adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) generates earnings of an economic nature, not only for enterprises, but also for the general economy. In this sense, as mentioned in (Meza, 2014), ICT has proven to be one of the sectors with the highest growth rate in the Mexican economy. This claim is supported by the fact that ICT induced growth has been above 9.5% for that past two years and accounts for 5.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Furthermore, ICT represents an opportunity for economic due to several factors such as trade agreements, a high degree of acceptance by the business community, a highly qualified workforce, geographic location and competitive costs.

On the other hand, part of the access and use of new technologies linked to the Internet allow businesses to compete in a market that is increasingly open and competitive, to generate autonomy, and to encourage collaborative learning. This has led to a better understanding of the environment, and has facilitated the adoption of new strategies to fully capitalize on these benefits.

In this chapter, we present the influence of ICT on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) within the industrial sector of the Papaloapan Basin. To illustrate this effect, the chapter concludes with a case study based on the city of San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec. Tuxtepec is the economic center of the region and the second most populous city in the state of Oaxaca. The impact of Tuxtepec on the industrial, commercial and service sectors of neighboring municipalities extends into the neighboring states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Puebla and Veracruz. This investigation was also carried out to determine if MSMEs are yet able to access, use or exploit ICT to improve productivity and competitiveness.

This knowledge is significant because, at present, the vast majority of these enterprises are still in the micro category with only a very small percentage of ever rising to the medium-sized classification. There was also a need to better understand why so many new enterprises fail shortly after their inception.

This chapter is structured as follows: The evolution of ICT within the business sector, where we talk about ICT background, technological tools for business management, entrepreneurial Web pages, social networks and marketing; Related work, indicating the differences with this chapter; The economic activities of MSMEs as they pertain to ICT evolution within the industrial, commercial and service sectors; Finally we present the case study of the influence of ICT in MSMEs Papaloapan Basin, where the classification indicated turns business occurs, the application of the instrument of data collection and diagnosis of the use of ICT.