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

The European E-Business Report 2005
Quality assurance
Quality assurance is a very sensitive issue in many industries, for example in the food & beverages
industry with its perishable goods. ICT can assist companies in establishing and improving quality
assurance mechanisms. Some of the e-Business Activity Views have addressed this issue.
The commercial association E-Piim ("E-Milk") is a dairy co-operative owned by Estonian milk
producers. In order to provide quality assurance and take full advantage of modern technological
solutions, E-Piim launched already in 2002 an SMS-based milk quality feedback system. After the
quality of milk has been checked by e-Piim, a milk producer receives immediate feedback via SMS
and/or e-mail. Prompt feedback enables the producer to implement immediate changes in the
production system. This solution has generated a remarkable increase in the quality of raw milk.
Fire Eater A/S, a small Danish manufacturer of fire preventing systems and fire fighting equipment (40
employees), uses ICT based systems for quality management. The company buy a standard quality
management software system. Software modules cover document handling, environment and work
environment management, calibration and maintenance, management of certificates and standards,
failure reports, customer satisfaction surveys, and audit plans. The company reports that the system
has improved information flow and storage of data, and to comply with regulatory demands.
1.7.3 Conclusions
The systematic collection of e-Business Activity Views, which was substantially extended compared to
2004, proved to be a valuable source of information for the purposes of e-Business W@tch. Activity
Views help to understand and contextualise the results of the survey, and to assess the implications of
e-business for firms and sectors. Some of the lessons learned, moreover, can be considered of
general interest for enterprises or other institutions that may carry out similar initiatives. Issues such as
the users’ acceptance in determining the success of e-business initiatives, the importance of a
commonly shared vision whenever initiatives involve various players, or problems related to the
standardisation and the establishment of a common vocabulary for interactions, go beyond the
specific experience and can be taken as general recommendations.
The examples also show that “off-the-shelf” e-business solutions, for example for ERP, e-
procurement, or CRM, are widely used across the sectors covered. This is also confirmed by survey
results. On the other hand, many companies and cooperative projects invest in the development of
niche-applications or services fulfilling special functions which is not readily available from the shelf.
However, the experience made by correspondents and editors when gathering information about reallife
e-business activities also shows that it is not always possible to assess the outcome of ICT
investments in terms of exact figures (e.g. "increase in sales", "costs saved in % of total costs"). Many
companies cannot (or do not want to) provide such figures. In some cases, when ICT systems have
recently been implemented, it may also be too early to make a valid assessment of impacts. In other
cases, there is a causality problem, as business changes can possibly be attributed to several factors,
including overall changes in the market environment.
Activity Views rather have their strength in providing examples for the motivation of companies to
invest in e-business, how they go about this task, and about challenges they have to address. In this
regard, the Views collected for Sector Studies provide good evidence on e-business activity in the EU
in 2005.
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