Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
3.4 Internal and External e-Integration of Processes
The use of ICT and e-business to support and optimise intra-firm processes has become
increasingly important, particularly in manufacturing. By digitisation of formerly paperbased
processes, information and documents related to incoming or outgoing orders
can be seamlessly processed along the company's value chain; orders can be linked
with production and inventory management, and the underlying software systems support
controlling and management by enabling full transparency of all business processes.
Furthermore, collaborative processes within and between companies are supported,
such as information sharing among employees (for example by use of an intranet),
planning and demand forecast, organising and archiving documents, and human
resources management. In general, ICT applications for these purposes are
predominantly used by large companies initially and eventually by medium-sized firms.
3.4.1 Use of software systems for internal process integration
In the footwear industry, only about one in ten companies uses an intranet, which can be
a useful platform for the secure exchange of information within a company and, possibly,
the implementation of internal training programmes. This is only about half as much as on
average in the 10 sectors studied this year by e-Business W@tch (see Exhibit 3-13). It is
also a lower figure than was reported for the textile industry in 2005 (17% of firms, 45%
by employment).
Exhibit 3-13: Use of ICT systems for internal process integration
Intranet
Accounting
software
ERP system
Document
Management
system
Weighting % of % of % of % of % of % of % of % of
empl. firms empl. firms empl. firms empl. firms
Footwear (EU-10) 27 11 69 58 23 7 12 11
Micro (1-9 empl.) 8 53 5 10
Small (10-49 empl.) 18 75 12 14
Medium (50-249 empl.) 42 71 34 13
Large (250+ empl.) 45* 88* 40* 5*
All 10 sectors (EU-10) 42 23 70 57 19 11 19 13
Micro (1-9 empl.) 19 50 7 11
Small (10-49 empl.) 28 70 16 13
Medium (50-249 empl.) 43 85 25 19
Large (250+ empl.) 76 88 45 42
Base (100%)
firms using
computers
firms that do not
use ERP systems
firms using
computers
firms using
computers
N (for sector, EU-10) 769 663 769 769
Questionnaire reference D1a D1e D1d D1c
* Data only indicative due to low number of observations (N ~ 25).
Source: e-Business W@tch (Survey 2006)
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