Sectoral e-Business Watch(SeBW)

of European Commission
Viirya
www.viirya.org
March, 2008
Mission and objectives
• Support European Commission DG Enterprise and
Industry in ICT and e-business policies
• Enhance competitiveness of ICT sector
• Facilitate uptake of ICE for European enterprises
• Study and Assess impact of ICT
• Highlight barriers for ICT uptake
• Identify public policy challenges
• Engage dialog with stakeholders
• SeBW is to support informed policy decision-making
in ICT fields including innovation, competition,
structural policy
• Period - Jan, 2007 ~ June, 2008
 Policy context

Go Digital
2001 ~ 2003
eEurope Action Plans 2002, 2005
i2010 Strategic Framework

eBSN

Lisbon 2000 objectives Renewed Lisbon

2005
 Policy background
• Lisbon 2000
• Address the necessary changes and actions to next decade in
economy, society, employment
• Preparing transition to knowledge-based economy and society
• Modernising European social model, combating social
exclusion, investing in people
• More coherent and systematic approach for appropriate
macro-economic policy mix
• eEurope Action Plans as a key instrument to Lisbon objective to
make EU most competitive knowledge-based society by 2010
• i2010 Strategic Framework stress ICT’s critical role for
productivity and innovation
• Businesses’ lack of interoperability, reliability and security may hamper
productivity gains
 Initiatives
• Go Digital (2001~2003), an umbrella policy to support
SMEs in using ICT
• Identify and disseminate best practices and showcases of e-business
SMEs
• Make SMEs aware of benefits of e-business
• Identify and discuss practical obstacles
• Disseminate Go Digital policy
• eBSN (e-Business Support Network)
• Focus more on network and exchanges of good policy
practice
• Build on benchmarking of policies supporting e-business
• Successful policy initiatives too isolated, their efficiency
could be enhanced by learning each other and sharing
practice and information
European e-Business Reports

• e-Business Watch’s main annual publication

• Summarizing sector studies and featuring
contribution from international authors of e-
business development
 EBR 2006/2007
• The state of e-business adoption in enterprise
based on e-Business Survey 2006

e-Readiness e-Activity e-Impact

Infrastructure Integration
For individual
Investment Cooperation
For industry
Interoperability Procurement
For policy
Management Marketing
e-Business Survey 2006

• By means of representative telephone

surveys
• Forth survey after 2002, 2003, 2005
• Scope of 14081 interviews with decision-
makers from 29 European countries
• With focus on sectors and SMEs
eBiz Studies on sectors
• Food and Beverages
• Textile, clothing and footwear
• Paper products
• Publishing and printing
• Chemical, rubber and plastics industry
• Pharmaceutical industry
• Steel
• ICT manufacturing
• Construction
• Tourism
• .....
 Food & beverages
• Comparatively low level of ICT and e-business adoption
• Good level of internal process integration and SCM activities
• Distribution drives F&B companies to e-business practices - e-
invoicing, inventory management
• Standards, interoperability are hot due to impacts as
tracebility
• Open source software use increases as its lower price and
adaptability
• Cost of software solutions affects smaller companies
• e-Procurement use in F&B lags behind other sectors
• e-Marketing and sales are focused mainly on distribution chain
• Innovation through ICT is perceived as process innovation
• Company size & cost are main barriers
e-business trends in F&B
• Internal processes automation
• Compliance with food safety regulations,
increased competition, cost-efficiency
• SCM, CRM
• Food manufacturers and grocery retailers
reduce costs and inventory levels
• Mobile & RFID
• Inextricably connect with SCM and QA
issues
Policy implications of F&B
• Improving e-skills, among especially SMEs
• Small companies face difficulties in coping
changes ICT & e-business bring
• Facilitating compliance with quality and
safety criteria
• Provision of relevant information & training of
ICT use
• Promoting favorable innovation environment
• Promotion of value-chain cooperation, sharing of
good practices and participation in business
network
Textile, clothing and footwear
• TCFI e-business level is below average compared
to other manufacturing sectors
• Small size of companies is important reason e-
business is not a major role for operation
• Regional disparities, gaps in diffusion & usage of
ICT especially sophisticated ones like SCM, CRM
• Collaborative online design is relatively deployed
well
• Complex sector supply chain relations are rarely
measured and assessed in terms of response time
or prices to enhance efficiency
Policy implication for TCFI

• Increasing efficiency of product development

• Raising awareness, encouraging e-business
technologies for SME support policies’ focus
• Encouraging micro, small companies adopting
basic infrastructure
• Encouraging standardization
• Promoting ICT related training
 Tourism
• Tourism industry scores in middle field
regarding overall use of ICT and e-business
• Overall internet connectivity is below
average of other sectors
• Also the level of usage of ERP, e-
procurement
• Customer expectations, market competition
are main drivers of e-business
• Small size of most companies and costs of
acquiring technologies are main barriers
 e-business trends
• Dis-intermediation
• ICT enables tourism service providers to interact directly with
customers
• Re-intermediation
• ICT solutions also provide new opportunities for traditional players
and emerging online intermediaries
• Market consolidation
• Dynamic packaging
• ICT developments in aviation industry
• e-Ticketing
• Customer self-service
• Bar-coded boarding passes
• RFID for luggage handling
 Policy implications
• ICT have influence on consolidation of
intermediaries
• Lead to strong oligopolies with negative effects on
competition
• Policy should monitor and intervene market
concentration if necessary
• Initiatives to promote networking and cooperation
• Encouraging adoption of e-business in micro and
small companies
• Promoting ICT infrastructure and e-integrated
business processes
• Encouraging innovation and R&D in e-tourism