Footwear Industry Footwear Industry - empirica

Footwear
Use of ICT for e-procurement processes
As in 2005, e-Business W@tch asked companies whether they "support the selection of
suppliers or procurement processes by specific ICT solutions." The rationale for this
question is to further test whether electronic procurement is in fact a systematic and
digitally integrated process in a firm, or rather an occasional business activity without
much significance for the overall business.
In the footwear industry, only about 5% of firms (representing about 10% of sector
employment) reported the use of specific software solutions or internet-based services for
e-procurement (see Exhibit 3-18). This shows that there is a considerable gap between
the percentage of companies placing at least some orders online (~30%) and those that
use special software for doing so (~5%). It can be assumed that companies without such
software place orders mainly through websites or extranets of suppliers, which does not
require any special e-procurement system. The digital back-office integration of
procurement related processes (all the way from ordering to the receipt of goods /
services) is probably not in advanced state in these cases.
Those companies which have procurement systems in place use tend to use them for
several functions, mainly for finding suppliers in the market (53%), inviting suppliers to
quote prices (50%) and for placing orders (56%). These findings are quite in line with the
picture in most other sectors (see Exhibit 3-20). About one out of every five footwear
companies with special ICT systems for procurement said that it runs online auctions
among suppliers. This is a relatively higher incidence than in most other sectors (7% on
average).
Exhibit 3-20: Sourcing and procurement processes supported by specific ICT solutions
100
80
60
40
20
0
53
63
50 58
56
Finding suppliers in
the market
Inviting suppliers to
quote prices
75
Ordering
goods/services
19
7
Running online
auctions
Footwear (EU-10)
All 10 sectors (EU-10)
Base (100%): Companies using specific ICT solutions for e-procurement. N (for sector, EU-10) = 62.
Weighting: in % of firms. Questionnaire reference: E8
Source: e-Business W@tch (Survey 2006)
58