ICT and e-Business in the Pulp, Paper and Paper ... - empirica

Pulp, paper and paper products
In theory, the P&P industry seems to be well suited to trade its products on e-
marketplaces, as many of the products can be standardised and described with clear
technical specifications. However, as argued in this section, the significant market power
of the large (and often internationally operating ) companies in this industry has enabled
them to establish their own marketplaces and to successfully prevent intermediation on a
larger scale. Moreover, e development and deployment of the papiNet® standard, which
was predominantly driven by large players from the industry, has also been a strategic
move to prevent the market entry of third party operators. The use of a shared standard
facilitates direct B2B trade between companies; the provision of a smooth infrastructure
for online trading could otherwise have been potential competitive advantage of thirdparty
e-marketplaces.
Consequently, since all evidence points to a very limited use and impact of e-
marketplaces in the P&P industry, the topic is not followed up in more detail in this study.
As of November 2006, eMarket Services 85 lists only seven internet trading platforms for
pulp and paper products, four of them focusing on North American or Asian markets.
While companies from the P&P industry are mainly the sellers on these platforms, buyers
include printing mills, publishing companies and dealers of paper.
4.2.4 Impact on work organisation
It is widely recognised that ICT can have
significant impact on work organisation in a
company, because the introduction of new
technologies tends to go hand in hand with
changes in work processes. In the pulp
and paper industry, the effects are probably
less visible on the overall organisational
structure of a company, than in how
work processes are organised.
In fact, companies from the P&P industry
observe that the most significant impact by
far of ICT is on business process efficiency
and work processes. About two thirds of all
firms interviewed observe a positive impact
in these areas. Hardly any company has
experienced a negative impact; the other
third have not experienced any impact due
to ICT (see Section 5.1).
Exhibit 4-9: Companies observing a
positive influence of ICT on internal work
processes
Pulp & Paper (EU-10)
1-9 empl.
10-49 empl.
50-249 empl.
250+ empl.
All 10 sectors (EU-10)
0 20 40 60 80
36
49
66
70
64
61
Base (100%): Companies using computers.
N (for sector, EU-10) = 964.
Weighting: Totals (for the sector and for all 10
sectors) are weighted by employment. Figures for
size-bands are in % of enterprises from the sizeband.
Questionnaire reference: H4
Source: e-Business W@tch (2006)
85
www.emarketservices.com, a not for profit project, funded by the trade promotion organizations
of Australia, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands, with co-funding
from the European Commission, DG Enterprise & Industry during 2004-2005.
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