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

Pulp, paper and paper products
4.1.4 Implementation status
papiNet® is a mature standard with significant implementations in four continents and in
a wide range of company types and market segments. Companies who use this standard
to communicate key supply chain information to their trading partners often also use it to
communicate with multiple sites within their organisation. Exhibit 3-4 ("Sites and Entities
using papiNet") presents the number of entities (meaning different companies), sites
(company facilities, of which there may be several per company) and planned
implementations of papiNet® over a three year period. A "planned" implementation is one
which is expected to become operational in production within the following 6 months.
Results from the most recent benchmark survey conducted by papiNet® show that the
228 companies who were using it at the end of 2004 had linked together 466 sites. A link
is defined as a “from-to trading partner relationship for a given continent”. Companies
who report using papiNet® for internal communication are not included in this analysis,
only their external linkage.
The 2004 data represents a growth of 50% from the 2003 survey. Experience has shown
that 90% of those who plan to implement in the following six months actually do so. This
survey has been very conservative in reporting the success that the papiNet® standard
has received by introducing a stricter set of criteria than the earlier benchmarks. Thus it is
estimated that 310 companies at around 600 sites worldwide had implemented the
standard by end of 2005. The benchmark survey has been discontinued, so this figure is
difficult to corroborate. If this impressive growth was achieved and is continued, it
demonstrates that papiNet® is perceived and accepted by the industry as a very useful
and hence successful standard.
These survey results are difficult to link to those from the e-Business W@tch survey of
2006, which finds that about 3% of NACE 21.1 (manufacture of pulp, paper and
paperboard) companies in the EU-25 said they used papiNet® (see Section 3.3.1). NACE
21.1 comprises about 2,270 firms in the EU-25. 3% of those would be only about 70
companies. However, since the e-Business Survey also included micro and small firms,
results are probably not directly comparable to those from the papiNet® user survey.
Among large firms, more than 10% said in the e-Business W@tch survey that they used
this standard. In any case, both figures are of a similar magnitude.
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