Creating a Market Niche Using Information Technology: The Case of Xpress Print

AbstractInformation technology (IT) plays an important role in enhancing the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). IT enables these companies to re-design and streamline their business processes, to develop new products and services, and sometimes, to even transform the basis of competition. This paper examines how a small printing firm in Singapore deploys IT to create cooperative strategies to form internal and external linkages along the firm’s value chain. Today, the firm is a multi-million dollar enterprise as it has created the market niche to produce time-sensitive financial research reports expediently, and with uncompromising reliability to its customers. The case provides some insights into the strategic use of IT for SMEs.