beyond pt 0 23/1

Health
Significant efficiencies stand to be made in pharmaceutical supply chains.
New service modes and channels to the consumer will be developed, as
will expanding electronic modes of operation, such as telemedicine.
Considerable potential gains in terms of reduced ‘avoidable incidents’
were also identified although still difficult to quantify at this stage.
No direct impacts are identified at this time in this sector in the interests
of producing a conservative estimate of the impact of e-commerce.
Education
E-commerce will provide greater opportunities for distance education and
improved efficiencies through online processes to bypass traditional
administrative functions. Greater reliance on e-commerce is an
increasingly unavoidable requirement when seeking to conduct
educational services over multiple campuses, through distance learning,
and to attract foreign students.
No direct impacts are factored in to this pilot study, although it is clear
that this will result in an understatement of the benefits.
Agriculture
A high reliance on accurate information and large distances between
producers and customers makes this sector conducive to the benefits of
e-commerce. E-commerce provides additional opportunities to
generate operational efficiencies such as obtaining better weather and
stock information or bypassing intermediaries and locating cheaper
inputs. It also allows agribusinesses to market products more
effectively to wider audiences.
It seems likely that much of the savings to be experienced by the
agriculture sector will be due to efficiencies in other sectors from which it
buys its inputs.
Mining
Despite conducting a large proportion of transactions in the industry
electronically, it is not clear that there will be as profound a change in
this sector as there will be in others. Nonetheless, general
opportunities for disintermediation (cost saving) and re-intermediation
(new costs) are still expected to occur as use of e-commerce expands
throughout the economy.
When looking at the modelling of these impacts it seems reasonable to
factor in modest savings in retail and wholesale margins in the sector
(i.e. reduced costs through some disintermediation) in the purchase
of inputs.
3.2 Some overarching points
Drawing the above impacts and other points made in various sections in
Part 2, it is possible to discern some broadly applicable impacts on
business. Many of these relate to challenges that individual business are
increasingly going to have to come to terms with. They do not generally
impact on the overall level of activity or industry costs, and so will not be
factored in to the modelling process that follows, but they should
nevertheless be factors of increasing importance in the strategic thinking
in business for some time to come.
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