The European e-Business Report 2004 - Berlecon Research GmbH

The European E-Business Report 2004Sectoral e-business profiles: manufacturing and services are differentICT have different functions for enterprises depending on the nature of their business activity. Itdepends, for example, on whether firms are dealing with large numbers of consumers or mainly withsmaller numbers of other businesses, on the kinds of goods or services they produce, and on thespecifics of the industry value chain. 6For firms from manufacturing sectors, increasing the efficiency of supply chain processes has beena key objective for many e-business projects in 2003/04. Moreover, large manufacturers have set upor use sophisticated e-procurement platforms to cut down on procurement costs. Services are evenless homogeneous than manufacturing sectors. Retail companies, for instance, focus on procurementand logistics related opportunities. Tourism, on the other hand, is experiencing the power of theInternet as a new channel for marketing and sales, with significant impacts on the value chain.Exhibit 1.1-1:The e-Business Index for 10 sectors(eEurope 2005 benchmarking indicator 7 )A) ICTInfrastructureB) E-BusinessActivityTextile 47 23Chemical 82 54Electronics 91 74Transport 98 91Craft & trade 29 24Retail 50 53Tourism 59 64ICT srv. 100 100Business srv. 75 51Health 38 29E-Business Index (2003/04)(Benchmark)ICT srv.TransportElectronicsChemicalBusiness srv.TourismRetailTextileHealthCraft0 20 40 60 80 100273835516561718510095Source: e-Business W@tch (2004)Among the 10 sectors studied by the e-BusinessW@tch in 2003/04, the most intensive use of ICTand e-business is made by companies from theICT services sector (which includes telecommunicationsand computer related services), manufacturersof transport equipment and of electronicsand electrical machinery. There is a caveat withrespect to the automotive industries, though, as itis mainly the large players that drive e-business inthis sector. Many of the small firms are much lessadvanced in their ICT use.The chemical industries and firms offering businessrelated services are also rather intensive e-business users. Again, there are differencesbetween large and small companies and by subsector.Knowledge-intensive and operationalbusiness service companies, for example, havedifferent profiles regarding the role of ICT.Tourism and retail are "e-specific" sectors whichuse ICT for very specific purposes. Tourism is theleader in e-commerce with one third of all companiesselling services online. In the retail sector,different business models have emerged, mainlycombining traditional channels with online. Pureonline retailers are the exception and are concentratedin a few niche markets that lend themselvesto e-commerce.The textile industries (among the manufacturingsectors) and the health & social services sectorare among the late adopters of e-business.Although this is partly explained by the dominanceof SMEs in these sectors, there is still untappedpotential. The health sector, one of the largest ineconomic terms, is believed to have substantialcost saving potentials through e-business.67Evidence on the differences in e-business impacts for manufacturing and services is presented in thecontribution from Tony Clayton and Peter Goodridge, UK Office for National Statistics (see Chapter 3).Cf. Methodological Annex, Specific Notes, No. 110