This thesis looks at the challenges of establishing environmentally sustainable supply chains in Swedish Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through the lens of buyer-supplier relationships. Despite SMEs' important role in innovation and employment, there is little research on sustainability in this sector, particularly on buyer-supplier dynamics. Existing literature emphasizes the potential benefits of strong buyer-supplier relationships but does not investigate into their role in SME sustainability efforts. This study aims to fill this gap and provide insights into the barriers to sustainable supply chain development in Swedish SMEs. It aims to educate policymakers and practitioners about the importance of fostering long-term partnerships within SME supply chains. The purpose of this study is to explore how buyer-supplier relationships influence sustainable practices in the supply chains of Swedish SMEs. Utilizing qualitative research methods, the research involved interviews with multiple SMEs to gather insights into the dynamics of these relationships and their effect on sustainability efforts. The study examines the role of trust, communication, and mutual sustainability goals in strengthening these relationships. The findings indicate that robust, trust-based buyer-supplier relationships are essential for fostering sustainable supply chain practices. Such relationships enable better collaboration, which is crucial for SMEs aiming to overcome limitations related to their size and bargaining power. The study also shows that a variety of factors influence SMEs' efforts to become more environmentally sustainable. Examples include industry, customer and supplier size, and new regulations. This thesis contributes to the literature by describing specific challenges and effective practices relevant to Swedish SMEs and suggests that enhancing the quality of buyer-supplier interactions can significantly impact their sustainability outcomes. Practical recommendations are offered for SMEs to optimize their supply chain sustainability, highlighting the importance of strategic partnerships in achieving environmental goals.

In dynamic landscape of global business, the role of Management Accounting Practices (MAPs) has become increasingly pivotal, especially in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This thesis investigates the utilization and frequency of MAPs within SMEs, focusing on a comparative analysis between a developed country, and a developing country. Drawing upon existing literature, this study delves into the similarities and differences in MAP adoption and frequency of implementation between the two countries. The findings reveal significant distinctions in the adoption rates and sophistication of MAPs between Swedish and Indian SMEs. Swedish SMEs demonstrate a more mature and comprehensive integration of advanced MAPs, facilitating strategic decision-making, cost control, and performance evaluation. In contrast, Indian SMEs exhibit lower adoption rates and face challenges in fully integrating these practices into their operations, primarily due to external factors such as infrastructure limitations and economic instability. Despite these differences, the study underscores the importance of standardizing and adapting MAPs to suit diverse economic contexts. By understanding the unique challenges and adoption patterns in different regions, SMEs can better leverage these tools to enhance their sustainability and overall business performance.

In the thesis I focus on the role of small and medium enterprises in the Czech republic since 1997. I deal with their importance for the Czech economy and changes in their status and role after the accession of Czech republic to the EU. I also devote to comaprison of role and status of small and medium enterprises in the CR and EU. On the example of the Operational Programme Enterprise and Innovations I analyze the impact of support programs on the position of small and medium enterprises in the CR, their importance and reasons for support.

In the business-to-business (B2B) financing industry, financiers offering financing to SMEs are finding it increasingly difficult to attract new customers and to retain existing customers. One way of attracting and retaining customers is by creating superior customer satisfaction, as it is believed that customer satisfaction leads to loyalty which ultimately results in customer retention. Customer satisfaction could also be an important indicator as to whether customers would want to build long-term relationships with financiers. With the current tendency towards the standardisation of financing products and services, building and maintaining relationships with customers is becoming increasingly important as a way to distinguish financiers from their competitors and, concurrently, to ensure survival. However, not all customers want to build long-term relationships with financiers. It is therefore important that financiers should identify those customers who have positive relationship intentions and focus their marketing efforts on these customers. The primary objective of this study was to develop a framework for relationship intention, satisfaction, loyalty and retention of SMEs in the business-to-business (B2B) financing environment. The descriptive research of this study is based on information gathered through quantitative, self-administered electronic surveys that were distributed among a South African financier’s (Business Partners Limited) customer database. In total, 120 SME respondents participated in the study, resulting in a final realisation rate of 12%. Results from this study indicate that the relationship intention measuring scale used in this study was valid and reliable in the B2B context within the financing environment. Results also show a significantly large positive relationship between respondents’ overall satisfaction and their loyalty towards Business Partners Limited (BPL), as well as a significantly large positive relationship between respondents’ loyalty and retention towards BPL. In addition, respondents with high relationship intentions showed higher overall satisfaction with loyalty and retention towards BPL than those respondents with moderate and low relationship intentions. Furthermore, the results indicated that respondents with moderate relationship intentions have higher overall satisfaction with BPL than those respondents with low relationship intentions. Respondents with moderate relationship intentions also displayed higher loyalty and retention towards BPL than those respondents with low relationship intentions. The results furthermore showed positive linear relationships between respondents’ relationship intentions and their overall satisfaction with BPL, between respondents’ relationship intentions and their loyalty towards BPL, as well as between respondents’ relationship intentions and their retention towards BPL. The results did not point to any clear parallels between respondents’ business size and their overall satisfaction, loyalty or retention. However, this study found positive relationships between respondents’ relationship intentions and their satisfaction, loyalty and retention. It is especially noteworthy that customers showing high relationship intentions overall, also showed a higher inclination to be satisfied, to be loyal and to become repeat customers (thus indicating retention). It is therefore recommended that financiers should rather use their customers’ relationship intentions and not their business size as focus, because strong positive relationships exist between respondents’ relationship intentions and their overall satisfaction, loyalty and retention. It is furthermore recommended that financiers should focus their marketing efforts and spending on customers with high relationship intentions as these customers tend to show higher satisfaction, loyalty and retention than those customers with moderate and low relationship intentions. Future research may consider using the relationship intentions measuring scale found to be valid and reliable in this study to other B2B contexts to determine the applicability thereof in other industries. Also, future research could consider testing the antecedents of relationship intentions, such as perceived brand equity, perceived organisation equity and perceived channel equity to determine the influence thereof on customers' relationship intentions. Finally, the study can be replicated under financiers’ B2C customers to determine whether relationship intentions are also applicable to these customers in the financing environment. / PhD (Marketing Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Generally, it is accepted that small businesses are becoming increasingly important in terms of employment, wealth creation, and the development of innovation in the global economy. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail before reaching maturity, mainly due to inadequate entrepreneurial skills to establish and grow their businesses. It is, therefore, vital to understand the management abilities that are required to enable start-up businesses to survive. This study's main aim is to propose a risk management training tool to assist business start-ups to mitigate their risks. This is expected to allow for increased business start-up success rates. The aim of the proposed risk mitigation tool will be to provide training to allow small business owners to deal with challenges they face. The tool should assist with minimising the risk of failure and therefore support increased growth and survival of small businesses. The research questions aimed at achieving the primary objective deal with: *The typical risks per start-up phase for small businesses *How to mitigate the risk per business start-up phase *How best to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage business start-up risk per phase. The research was conducted by means of a literature and empirical study. The literature study reviewed business start-up phases, challenges facing start-up businesses, project life cycle phases, critical factors leading to project failure, project risk management, and principles of serious games design. The challenges facing start-up businesses were tested empirically in practice by means of a measurement instrument, and subsequently evaluated. The size of the sample used was 58 entrepreneurs from start-up businesses. The results from this study show a need for improvements in the following skills for start-up owners/managers: risk management skills, entrepreneurial skills, people management skill, business management skill, and financial management skill. This study proposed a tool to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage start-up risks per phase. The tool is proposed to be a blended model tool. Thus, the tool consists of the workshop part; whereby, the facilitator is face-to-face with the trainee, and post-training application-based support. / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The new millennium is the time for entrepreneurship both nationally and internationally because the new millennium has many opportunities, afforded by technology and global communications, as it is filled with challenges and uncertainty. The South African government has identified the important role small- and medium-sized enterprises have to play in employment creation. The first step towards economic development is creating new businesses; the second step is ensuring sustainability through value creation. Value-based management can be defined as a management approach that maximises long-term shareholder value, which is incorporated in the business’ strategy and goals, through the identification and management of key value drivers, whereby all employees think and act like shareholders. To ensure value creation takes place, some form of control mechanism is required. Managerial decisions and actions to create shareholder value, therefore, are measured through a metric, and employee performance is linked to the value created. Value-based management is not a staff-driven exercise but focusses on better decision making at all levels. Value-based management metrics are based on the idea of comparing cash flows generated by a company against the cost of capital in generating these flows, and thereby measuring shareholder value. Understanding what drives value in a company is essential for creating shareholder value, as well as how these drivers affect one another. This will enable all stakeholders, from senior management right down to the shop floor, to make the right informed decision that will result in creating and increasing shareholder value. Entrepreneurship can be defined as a dynamic goal-oriented process whereby an individual combines creative thinking to identify marketplace needs and new opportunities with the ability to manage secure resources, and adapt to the environment to achieve desired results, while assuming some portion of risk for the venture. Entrepreneurship is about the exploitation of perceived opportunities by individuals, based solely on personal judgement and visions. These are either not seen by other individuals, or they are unable to bear the risks of acting upon them. Without effective and efficient management by objectives, and management of projects, a small business cannot function. The decision to invest in an entrepreneurial business can be viewed as a hard evidence-oriented, substance-based process and investors discount the figures in a business plan, as these figures are wildly optimistic as well as padded by entrepreneurs. A venture capitalist sometimes chooses to invest in a new venture, even if the discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis results shows that the net present value is a negative reason, being that the DCF approach does not take into account the flexibility obtained by active management. The environment faced by the venture-backed firm is highly uncertain, making overlooking this flexibility a particularly serious problem. Private equity is potentially one of the most expensive forms of capital financing. New and emerging firms are usually the issuers of private equity, as these firms cannot raise money in the public markets, or they are public firms going private that require massive amounts of private financing. Smaller unlisted companies regard the Johannesburg Securities Exchange’s Alternative Exchange (AltX) as a stepping-stone to bigger things, including graduating to the main bourse of the JSE. Capital structure is arguably at the core of modern corporate finance, and a simple capital structure as a form of competitive strategy, as fewer physical assets contribute to organisational flexibility, and as a result, small firm owners often weigh the benefits of expansion against the benefits of remaining small. Performance evaluation is an important tool in continuously improving performance in order to stay competitive. Performance evaluation and benchmarking positively forces any business to constantly improve and evolve. Benchmarking a firm’s financial results against its own peers or industry averages enables management to identify the relative strength and weaknesses of the firms and as a result, ensure better future planning. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric linear programming technique that computes a comparative ratio of outputs or inputs for each unit, which is reported as the relative efficiency score. DEA assists in identifying areas in which a firm has strengths and weaknesses (relative to competition) and when improvements are needed (relative to peers). DEA can indicate the level of improvement required, and provides a consistent and reliable measure of managerial or operational efficiency. A two-stage DEA model was developed to benchmark performance in terms of value creation in the first stage, and in the second stage, share price performance. The study was designed to evaluate companies at operating level (day-to-day activity) as well as company level. In addition to the two-stage model, a single stage model was developed as a separate analysis in terms of output maximisation regarding share prices. As far as could be determined, it was the first time this type of research was done on South African companies listed on the AltX. Furthermore, the study is the first to apply a benchmarking technique to determine the relative efficiency of companies to convert resources into value-based performance measures and to convert the same measures into share-value. The majority of companies listed on the AltX are not efficient in reflecting company performance in share prices by means of value-based management principles. A very limited number of companies were able to be efficient simultaneously in creating value and reflecting the value created in the share price. Based on the efficiency frontier in terms of value creation, a very limited number of companies listed on the AltX are deemed efficient. The majority of the companies are not able to create value at the levels of the efficient companies. A small fraction of the companies listed on the AltX is deemed efficient based on the efficiency frontier for reflecting value creation in share prices. AltX companies’ share prices have the potential to increase significantly in value, if all companies were efficient in reflecting created value in share prices. Small and medium enterprises should give more attention to value-based management principles in the process to create shareholders’ wealth. In light of the evidence that the value creation process must start with educating the management of small and medium enterprises on the concepts and principles of value-based management, it would also be highly recommended that small and medium enterprises should make value-based management part of the business’ strategies and goals. Small and medium enterprises must identify and manage key value drivers. This process is not a generic process, as each business is unique in its own way. It is important for management to understand the key value drivers in order to get employees to understand them. The management of small and medium enterprises are warned against a short-term value maximisation focus at the expense of long-term shareholder value creation. Any reward and recognition system should not reward short-term benefits, but rather should focus on long-term, sustainable initiatives, that will create value in the long run to the benefit of all stakeholders involved. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

In the business-to-business (B2B) financing industry, financiers offering financing to SMEs are finding it increasingly difficult to attract new customers and to retain existing customers. One way of attracting and retaining customers is by creating superior customer satisfaction, as it is believed that customer satisfaction leads to loyalty which ultimately results in customer retention. Customer satisfaction could also be an important indicator as to whether customers would want to build long-term relationships with financiers. With the current tendency towards the standardisation of financing products and services, building and maintaining relationships with customers is becoming increasingly important as a way to distinguish financiers from their competitors and, concurrently, to ensure survival. However, not all customers want to build long-term relationships with financiers. It is therefore important that financiers should identify those customers who have positive relationship intentions and focus their marketing efforts on these customers. The primary objective of this study was to develop a framework for relationship intention, satisfaction, loyalty and retention of SMEs in the business-to-business (B2B) financing environment. The descriptive research of this study is based on information gathered through quantitative, self-administered electronic surveys that were distributed among a South African financier’s (Business Partners Limited) customer database. In total, 120 SME respondents participated in the study, resulting in a final realisation rate of 12%. Results from this study indicate that the relationship intention measuring scale used in this study was valid and reliable in the B2B context within the financing environment. Results also show a significantly large positive relationship between respondents’ overall satisfaction and their loyalty towards Business Partners Limited (BPL), as well as a significantly large positive relationship between respondents’ loyalty and retention towards BPL. In addition, respondents with high relationship intentions showed higher overall satisfaction with loyalty and retention towards BPL than those respondents with moderate and low relationship intentions. Furthermore, the results indicated that respondents with moderate relationship intentions have higher overall satisfaction with BPL than those respondents with low relationship intentions. Respondents with moderate relationship intentions also displayed higher loyalty and retention towards BPL than those respondents with low relationship intentions. The results furthermore showed positive linear relationships between respondents’ relationship intentions and their overall satisfaction with BPL, between respondents’ relationship intentions and their loyalty towards BPL, as well as between respondents’ relationship intentions and their retention towards BPL. The results did not point to any clear parallels between respondents’ business size and their overall satisfaction, loyalty or retention. However, this study found positive relationships between respondents’ relationship intentions and their satisfaction, loyalty and retention. It is especially noteworthy that customers showing high relationship intentions overall, also showed a higher inclination to be satisfied, to be loyal and to become repeat customers (thus indicating retention). It is therefore recommended that financiers should rather use their customers’ relationship intentions and not their business size as focus, because strong positive relationships exist between respondents’ relationship intentions and their overall satisfaction, loyalty and retention. It is furthermore recommended that financiers should focus their marketing efforts and spending on customers with high relationship intentions as these customers tend to show higher satisfaction, loyalty and retention than those customers with moderate and low relationship intentions. Future research may consider using the relationship intentions measuring scale found to be valid and reliable in this study to other B2B contexts to determine the applicability thereof in other industries. Also, future research could consider testing the antecedents of relationship intentions, such as perceived brand equity, perceived organisation equity and perceived channel equity to determine the influence thereof on customers' relationship intentions. Finally, the study can be replicated under financiers’ B2C customers to determine whether relationship intentions are also applicable to these customers in the financing environment. / PhD (Marketing Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The new millennium is the time for entrepreneurship both nationally and internationally because the new millennium has many opportunities, afforded by technology and global communications, as it is filled with challenges and uncertainty. The South African government has identified the important role small- and medium-sized enterprises have to play in employment creation. The first step towards economic development is creating new businesses; the second step is ensuring sustainability through value creation. Value-based management can be defined as a management approach that maximises long-term shareholder value, which is incorporated in the business’ strategy and goals, through the identification and management of key value drivers, whereby all employees think and act like shareholders. To ensure value creation takes place, some form of control mechanism is required. Managerial decisions and actions to create shareholder value, therefore, are measured through a metric, and employee performance is linked to the value created. Value-based management is not a staff-driven exercise but focusses on better decision making at all levels. Value-based management metrics are based on the idea of comparing cash flows generated by a company against the cost of capital in generating these flows, and thereby measuring shareholder value. Understanding what drives value in a company is essential for creating shareholder value, as well as how these drivers affect one another. This will enable all stakeholders, from senior management right down to the shop floor, to make the right informed decision that will result in creating and increasing shareholder value. Entrepreneurship can be defined as a dynamic goal-oriented process whereby an individual combines creative thinking to identify marketplace needs and new opportunities with the ability to manage secure resources, and adapt to the environment to achieve desired results, while assuming some portion of risk for the venture. Entrepreneurship is about the exploitation of perceived opportunities by individuals, based solely on personal judgement and visions. These are either not seen by other individuals, or they are unable to bear the risks of acting upon them. Without effective and efficient management by objectives, and management of projects, a small business cannot function. The decision to invest in an entrepreneurial business can be viewed as a hard evidence-oriented, substance-based process and investors discount the figures in a business plan, as these figures are wildly optimistic as well as padded by entrepreneurs. A venture capitalist sometimes chooses to invest in a new venture, even if the discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis results shows that the net present value is a negative reason, being that the DCF approach does not take into account the flexibility obtained by active management. The environment faced by the venture-backed firm is highly uncertain, making overlooking this flexibility a particularly serious problem. Private equity is potentially one of the most expensive forms of capital financing. New and emerging firms are usually the issuers of private equity, as these firms cannot raise money in the public markets, or they are public firms going private that require massive amounts of private financing. Smaller unlisted companies regard the Johannesburg Securities Exchange’s Alternative Exchange (AltX) as a stepping-stone to bigger things, including graduating to the main bourse of the JSE. Capital structure is arguably at the core of modern corporate finance, and a simple capital structure as a form of competitive strategy, as fewer physical assets contribute to organisational flexibility, and as a result, small firm owners often weigh the benefits of expansion against the benefits of remaining small. Performance evaluation is an important tool in continuously improving performance in order to stay competitive. Performance evaluation and benchmarking positively forces any business to constantly improve and evolve. Benchmarking a firm’s financial results against its own peers or industry averages enables management to identify the relative strength and weaknesses of the firms and as a result, ensure better future planning. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric linear programming technique that computes a comparative ratio of outputs or inputs for each unit, which is reported as the relative efficiency score. DEA assists in identifying areas in which a firm has strengths and weaknesses (relative to competition) and when improvements are needed (relative to peers). DEA can indicate the level of improvement required, and provides a consistent and reliable measure of managerial or operational efficiency. A two-stage DEA model was developed to benchmark performance in terms of value creation in the first stage, and in the second stage, share price performance. The study was designed to evaluate companies at operating level (day-to-day activity) as well as company level. In addition to the two-stage model, a single stage model was developed as a separate analysis in terms of output maximisation regarding share prices. As far as could be determined, it was the first time this type of research was done on South African companies listed on the AltX. Furthermore, the study is the first to apply a benchmarking technique to determine the relative efficiency of companies to convert resources into value-based performance measures and to convert the same measures into share-value. The majority of companies listed on the AltX are not efficient in reflecting company performance in share prices by means of value-based management principles. A very limited number of companies were able to be efficient simultaneously in creating value and reflecting the value created in the share price. Based on the efficiency frontier in terms of value creation, a very limited number of companies listed on the AltX are deemed efficient. The majority of the companies are not able to create value at the levels of the efficient companies. A small fraction of the companies listed on the AltX is deemed efficient based on the efficiency frontier for reflecting value creation in share prices. AltX companies’ share prices have the potential to increase significantly in value, if all companies were efficient in reflecting created value in share prices. Small and medium enterprises should give more attention to value-based management principles in the process to create shareholders’ wealth. In light of the evidence that the value creation process must start with educating the management of small and medium enterprises on the concepts and principles of value-based management, it would also be highly recommended that small and medium enterprises should make value-based management part of the business’ strategies and goals. Small and medium enterprises must identify and manage key value drivers. This process is not a generic process, as each business is unique in its own way. It is important for management to understand the key value drivers in order to get employees to understand them. The management of small and medium enterprises are warned against a short-term value maximisation focus at the expense of long-term shareholder value creation. Any reward and recognition system should not reward short-term benefits, but rather should focus on long-term, sustainable initiatives, that will create value in the long run to the benefit of all stakeholders involved. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Generally, it is accepted that small businesses are becoming increasingly important in terms of employment, wealth creation, and the development of innovation in the global economy. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail before reaching maturity, mainly due to inadequate entrepreneurial skills to establish and grow their businesses. It is, therefore, vital to understand the management abilities that are required to enable start-up businesses to survive. This study's main aim is to propose a risk management training tool to assist business start-ups to mitigate their risks. This is expected to allow for increased business start-up success rates. The aim of the proposed risk mitigation tool will be to provide training to allow small business owners to deal with challenges they face. The tool should assist with minimising the risk of failure and therefore support increased growth and survival of small businesses. The research questions aimed at achieving the primary objective deal with: *The typical risks per start-up phase for small businesses *How to mitigate the risk per business start-up phase *How best to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage business start-up risk per phase. The research was conducted by means of a literature and empirical study. The literature study reviewed business start-up phases, challenges facing start-up businesses, project life cycle phases, critical factors leading to project failure, project risk management, and principles of serious games design. The challenges facing start-up businesses were tested empirically in practice by means of a measurement instrument, and subsequently evaluated. The size of the sample used was 58 entrepreneurs from start-up businesses. The results from this study show a need for improvements in the following skills for start-up owners/managers: risk management skills, entrepreneurial skills, people management skill, business management skill, and financial management skill. This study proposed a tool to teach entrepreneurs to identify and manage start-up risks per phase. The tool is proposed to be a blended model tool. Thus, the tool consists of the workshop part; whereby, the facilitator is face-to-face with the trainee, and post-training application-based support. / MSc (Computer Science), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Human Resource Management (HRM) consultants are becoming more common. Simultaneously there is a lack of HRM in small and medium enterprises (SME’s). SME’s states neither to afford, nor have the time to perform HRM in their business. This thesis is a Working Scholarly essay based on qualitative method, based on ten semi- structured interviews. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether external HRM consultants can help SME’s with their HRM work. The questions to be answered are: - What business opportunities there are for HRM consultants to work with SME’s? - What obstacles HRM consultants working towards SME’s face in the market? The survey was conducted using a “data triangulation” of three different target groups where all participants originated from different companies. Interviews were performed on ten people with knowledge of HRM. Five of those interviewed with specific knowledge of HRM consultants working towards SMEs. The interviews were analysed by categorizing and placed into a SWOT analysis to identify the HRM consultants' business opportunities in relation to SME’s. The study's results showed that the HRM consultants have good business opportunities to work towards SME’s but there also exist some obstacles and threats. / Human Resource Management- (HRM) konsulter blir allt vanligare samtidigt som det råder brist på HRM-arbete i små- och medelstora företag (SME-företag). SME-företagen påstår sig varken har råd eller tid att utföra HRM-arbete. Studien är en Arbetsvetenskaplig uppsats utarbetad ur en kvalitativ metodansats baserad på tio stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer. Syftet med studien är att undersöka huruvida externa HRM-konsulter kan hjälpa SME-företag med deras HRM-arbete. Frågorna som ställs är vilka affärsmöjligheter det finns för HRM-konsulter att arbeta med SME-företag, samt vilka hinder HRM-konsulter som jobbar mot SME-företag möter på marknaden. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av en datatriangulering av tre olika målgrupper, där samtliga deltagare kom från olika företag. Intervjuer utfördes med tio personer med kunskap inom HRM, varav fem stycken med specifik kunskap om HRM-konsulter som jobbar mot SME-företag. Intervjuerna analyserades genom kategorisering och placerades in i en SWOT- analys för att kartlägga HRM-konsulters affärsmöjligheter gentemot SME-företag. Studiens resultat visade att HRM-konsulter har goda affärsmöjligheter att arbeta gentemot SME-företag men att det även föreligger en del hinder och hot.