The European e-Business Report The European e ... - empirica

The European
e-Business W@tch
Section III: The European e-Business Scoreboard 2005
Introduction
The spider and diamond diagrams of the e-Business
Scoreboard visualise the importance of ICT and e-business
applications for 10 sectors of the European economy. The
Scoreboard aggregates 16 component indicators. For reasons
of consistency and comparability, all data are derived from
the e-Business Survey 2005 of the e-Business W@tch.
Normally, benchmarking activities of this type imply that a
higher score stands for a better performance. In this context,
however, the main objective of the Scoreboard is not to
make a statement about the e-business performance of sectors.
Rather, the Scoreboard is intended to show the different
importance which information and communication technologies
can have for various sectors of the economy.
The component indicators
The Scoreboard is composed of 16 component indicators for
ICT and e-business which are grouped into four categories
(according to business functions). Spider diagrams show the
results for each component indicator. Diamond diagrams
show the compound sub-indices for the four categories. The
categories and component indicators are:
Category
A Basic ICT infrastructure of the enterprise
Component indicators
A.1) Enterprises connecting computers with a LAN
A.2) Internet connectivity index
A.3) Remote access to the company network
A.4) VPN access to the company network
B Applications for internal business
process automation
B.1) Use of an intranet
B.2) Use of online technology to track working hours / production time
B.3) Use of Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems
B.4) Use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
C Electronic procurement and supply
chain integration
C.1) Enterprises purchasing at least 5% of their supplies online
C.2) Use of specific ICT systems for e-procurement processes
C.3) Use of Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems
C.4) Use of online technology for inventory management
D Electronic marketing and sales
D.1) Enterprises maintaining a website with a content management system
D.2) Use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems
D.3) Enterprises selling at least 5% of their goods and services online
D.4) Use of specific ICT systems to support marketing and sales
The scale – normalisation
For the e-Business Scoreboard, values of component indicators
were normalised, based on mean values (for the 10 sectors)
and standard deviations. The scale shows the multiple
of a standard deviation for a specific sector. 0 equals the
mean value for all 10 sectors. The size of the green square
indicates the (relative) e-business intensity of a sector.
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