Digitisation is key for staying competitive. However, the impact of digitisation on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) business performance remains under-researched in the extant literature. To make effective technology adoption decisions, entrepreneurs need to understand the concrete added value of and return on digital solutions. Towards this end, a systematic literature review is conducted by analysing 124 publications in peer-reviewed journals between 2009 and 2019. Articles were extracted from commonly used databases including EBSCOhost, Emerald, ResearchGate and ScienceDirect. A state-of-the-art report on digital value creation was delivered. The analysis reveals 14 verified added values that can be ranked according to number of mentions and classified into financial as well as strategic digital benefits. The most cited returns are efficiency and effectiveness, cost reduction, productivity growth, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage. The most quoted digital solutions are social media, websites, cloud computing, and data analytics.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 67 citations exist upstream.