The European e-Business Report 2004 - Berlecon Research GmbH

The European E-Business Report 2004of them (15% in EU-5) have invested in a broadband connection equal to or above 2 Mbit/s. 37% ofemployees in the sector work in firms that have Internet access with more than or equal to 2 Mbit/sbandwidth, whereas only 7% of sector employees work in companies that still use analogue dial-upmodems to access the Internet.Exhibit 2.3-3: Use of ICT Infrastructure by firmsfrom the electrical machinery and electronics industriesLocal AreaNetworkWide AreaNetworkRemoteaccess tocompanynetworkWirelessremote accessto companynetworkInternetaccessSector total (EU-5) N=502 N=502 N=502 N=502 N=502% of employment 89 55 61 25 98% of enterprises 60 11 27 7 980-9 employees 53 8 24 5 9710-49 employees 74 9 24 7 9950-249 employees 93 31 52 14 100250+ employees 95 75 73 35 98All (9) Sectors (EU-5) N=4516 N=4516 N=4516 N=4516 N=4516% of employment 61 29 37 10 95% of enterprises 32 5 16 4 89Base (100%): all enterprises. EU-5 (DE, ES, FR, IT, UK). Weighting: Figures for size-bands in % of enterprises. Figures fortotals are weighted by employment ("enterprises comprising … % of employees"). Reporting period: March/November 2003.Internal business processesSource: e-Business W@tch (2004)Knowledge management: The diffusion of Intranets among companies belonging to the electricalmachinery and electronics industries is nearly twice the percentage as on the all sector average (39%compared to 21%). This is directly linked to the larger penetration of WAN and Internet use within theelectrical machinery and electronics industries, since an Intranet is often the first, comparativelysimple, application which companies can develop within a corporate network.Online technologies for internal processes: The electrical machinery and electronics sector is veryadvanced compared to other sectors in the usage of online technologies to support internal processes.The most widely used application is sharing documents online and performing collaborative workusing the Internet. 26% of firms in the sector currently use this basic application. Other applications,such as automatic reimbursement of travel costs online, are used to a lesser extent.ERP: Time to market constitutes a big issue throughout the electronics industry. One of the challengesthat the industry has to meet is deciding which products should be manufactured on a continuousbasis and which ones on a discrete scheduled basis, with a view to handling market changes andshortened product life cycles. The ability to tie customer point of sale data via a company's advancedplanning and scheduling system and an ERP system to the plant floor is providing significantcompetitive advantages to leading companies. ERP systems are currently used by 13% of enterprisesof the sector, representing 45% of employment, which is one of the highest adoption rates across allsectors studied by the e-Business W@tch.102