The European e-Business Report 2004 - Berlecon Research GmbH

The European E-Business Report 2004Online procurement practice at Aksel Kjersgaard is limited to goods such asmachine parts and software. However, the Internet has been a valuable source ofinformation about suppliers and their products in the past six years.Results• While comprehensive e-business use may not be useful for many small furnituremanufacturers, the Web offers opportunities for increasing the number of endcustomers and intermediate vendors, selecting more and better suppliers aswell as improving customer service.AIR-CRAFT – E-PROCUREMENT AT AIRBUS INVOLVING CRAFT COMPANIESBackgroundActivitiesResultsAIR-CRAFT was a project supporting e-business relationships between AirbusHamburg and small local construction enterprises. The project had a budget ofaround 950,000 Euro and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Educationand Research (BMBF) from August 2001 to July 2004.The starting point of the project was the fact that professional buyers in large firmsare increasingly replacing traditional paper-and-telephone forms of procuring craftservices by catalogue- and network-based platforms. In the case of recurringservices, catalogue-based online procurement can streamline business processesand save internal process costs in the large firms.Airbus Hamburg implemented a catalogue-based online platform for acquiring craftservices in 2003, offering craft firms the opportunity to connect to this catalogue.The craft firms knew that they needed to respond to this offer in order to stay inbusiness with Airbus, particularly because Airbus is seeking to buy craft servicesexclusively through its electronic system in the future. That is why representativesfrom the Hamburg Chamber of Crafts and Airbus initiated AIR-CRAFT, whichresulted in 23 craft firms from six construction and construction-related industriesgetting linked to this Airbus platform.AIR-CRAFT’s core objective was to make craft employees familiar with handling e-business applications in order to increase craft firms’strategic competence in e-business and develop new markets for them. Furthermore, it was sought to provethe feasibility of linking craft firms to e-business platforms and to prove theeconomic viability of e-commerce.AIR-CRAFT included three special issues, namely the development of standardisede-procurement systems, qualification modules and the formation of a co-operativecraft service supply.• AIR-CRAFT strengthened existing supplier relationships through joint developmentand usage of e-procurement tools and reduced process costs.• AIR-CRAFT was meant to make craft firms familiar with electronic service cataloguesused by large companies’procurement departments. However, as eachlarge enterprise has its own catalogue, standardisation of service catalogueswould be required in order to allow craft firms to service various largeenterprises.• Craft firms retain reservations about the possibility of adequately describingservices in standard catalogues at all.128