Incremental Digital Transformation of U.S. SMEs: A Low-Disruption Implementation Model Without Radical Business Process Reengineering

This article addresses the managerial problem of digital transformation in U.S. small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) when radical redesign of business processes is often infeasible because of financial, workforce, and organizational constraints. It develops and substantiates a practical low-disruption model of SME digital transformation that does not rely on radical business process reengineering. The study is designed as an analytical review with design science logic and secondary profiling of open evidence from the U.S. Census Bureau, NCSES, SBA, NIST, and OECD. The empirical context draws on the Annual Business Survey, Statistics of U.S. Businesses, the Business Trends and Outlook Survey, and the SBA Small Business Profile. The article proposes the LITE-DT SME model, which comprises six stages: Baseline, Stabilize, Modularize, Integrate, Selective Intelligence, and Scale. The model suggests that SME transformation should usually begin not with AI, ERP replacement, or robotics, but with process baselining, data stabilization, basic cybersecurity, modular SaaS adoption, and gradual integration. The contribution lies in distinguishing digitalization, digital transformation, and radical business process reengineering in the SME context and in introducing low-disruption digital transformation as a managerial construct. The study is limited by the absence of firm-level panel data and does not claim a causal performance effect.