The European e-Business Report The European e ... - empirica

Chart I-3:e-Business Index 2006 by countryBased on 16 ICT indicators(in % of firms from a country),aggregated into two sub-indices.Population: firms using computers from10 sectors (see Chart I-1)Source: e-Business Survey 2006Among the 10 sectors surveyed in 2006, companies from ICT-related industries (telecommunications,ICT manufacturing) tend to have the most advanced ICT infrastructure and to make the most intensive useof e-business (see Chart I-1).In manufacturing, e-business developments have become synchronised across most sectors. Supply-chainintegration is a common e-business objective for these sectors, and many of the ICT requirements andapplications used are therefore quite similar. The footwear industry is a possible exception – e-business is notas widely used as in other manufacturing sectors.The development is mostly driven by the large companies, particularly in manufacturing (see Chart I-2).While this is uncontested, results for medium-sized enterprises raise a question mark; the survey of 2005 hadindicated that they had caught up with large firms in their e-business activity; the benchmarking scoreboardof 2006 shows a wider gap. However, there are some differences between 2005 and 2006 in the sample ofsectors and the choice of component indicators for building the index.From a country-perspective, companies from the Nordic countries appear to be the most active users ofe-business (see Chart I-3), particularly among the SMEs. For many of the other countries covered, however,differences are not very pronounced and do not show a clear pattern (e.g. data for France, Germany, Italy, Spainand the UK). Benchmarking ICT adoption by country is quite complex, as results partly reflect other factorssuch as industry structure (e.g. the absence of large companies or the dominance of micro and small firms canexplain for a comparatively lower level of ICT adoption).19