Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
Exhibit 3-5: Outsourcing trend: percentage of companies that have increased / decreased
their outsourcing activities in 2005
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Footwear (EU-10)
0
22
All 10 sectors (EU-10)
-3
26
Outsourcing has decreased
Outsourcing has increased
Base (100%): Companies that have outsourced ICT services. N (for sector, EU-10) = 108.
Weighting: in % of firms. Questionnaire reference: C2
Source: e-Business W@tch (Survey 2006)
ICT expenditure and investments
The average ICT budget of a company from the footwear industry, including hardware,
software, services and personnel, corresponds to about 5% of total company costs (see
Exhibit 3-4). Interestingly, this percentage is practically aligned with the respective allsectors
average. About 20% of all firms from the footwear industry said that they plan to
further increase their ICT budgets in 2006/07, compared to the current budget. Less
than 5% said that they will cut down on their budgets (see Exhibit 3-6). Thus, a majority of
about three quarters say that they will maintain the current level of spending.
However, survey results also show that among micro footwear companies and, more
importantly, among the large ones there appears to be a trend towards downsizing ICT
budgets. In the latter group, in fact, more companies stated that they intend to decrease
their ICT budget than increase it. It can be argued that this may indicate the extreme
pressure on costs, and possibly also some disappointment with the outcome of earlier
ICT investments. Moreover, these results should not be over-emphasised, because the
number of cases on which this observation concerning the large firms is based is very low
(N = 22). With regard to all firms, the budgeting trends are similar to the overall picture
among the 10 sectors studied this year by the e-Business W@tch.
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