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

Pulp, paper and paper products
3.9 Summary
Main findings
The P&P industry is a near-perfect yardstick for the state-of-play in ICT adoption and
e-business activity, at least among the ten sectors studied by e-Business W@tch in 2006.
For many of the indicators, figures for the P&P industry are very close to the all sector
total and represent very well the average situation in manufacturing industries. The P&P
industry is neither among the avant-garde in ICT adoption (such as ICT-related sectors
themselves), nor is it in any way a slow ICT adopter, such as the footwear and – in parts
– the food and beverages industries.
A similar result was obtained in 2005 for the machinery & equipment manufacturing
(M&E) industry. In fact, the P&P and the M&E industry have some structural
characteristics in common, are traditional manufacturing industries and share a similar e-
business history: in both industries, ICT have been intensively used in production
processes for many years. Now, companies are increasingly recognising ICT and e-
business as a valuable tool for marketing and customer service.
Survey results show that companies from the P&P industry use ICT quite intensively in all
application areas along the value chain: for procurement processes, in production, for
inbound and outbound logistics, marketing and customer service. As in most manufacturing
industries, improvements in supply chain management by integrating business
processes with suppliers and customers is probably the main focus of all activities.
Differences by firm size, not by sub-sector: structural differences between the
two sub-sectors (P&P manufacturing, paper converting) do not show up in the
survey results. According to these results, it is the firm size that matters, not the
sub-sector in which firms operate.
ERP as a backbone for B2B integration: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
systems are widespread among P&P companies (45% by employment said they
used ERP), compared to most other sectors studied by e-Business W@tch. These
systems constitute the basis for many advanced forms of e-business in
manufacturing.
Supply chain management: According to the 2006 e-Business Survey findings,
ICT are intensively used by P&P firms to support logistics and supply chain
integration; emerging technologies such as RFID are not yet widely adopted,
though.
Online marketing is gaining momentum: almost 30% of firms said they accepted
orders online and more than 20% (by employment) that they used a CRM system;
this is more than on average in the 10 sectors studied and shows that e-marketing
is quickly gaining momentum among several manufacturing industries. It further
confirms results from the machinery & equipment industry in 2005.
Size and costs as the main barriers for small firms: SMEs that do not practice
e-business see two main barriers that prevent them from doing so: they feel that
their company is "too small" for doing e-business, and that they “cannot afford the
required technologies”.
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