Online Usage by Businesses

Around nine out of ten companies in the US (93%) and UK (86%) are now using the Internet for activities such as CRM, marketing, order fulfilment and selling to deal with customers according to research by Taylor Nelson Sofres Information Technology. In stark contrast, six out of ten (60%) companies in Japan and fewer than four out of ten (36%) companies in France are using the Internet as a marketing channel or customer service mechanism.

Similar results are found for Internet usage across key internal business functions such as employee schedule management, knowledge management, supply chain management and training, with companies in Denmark, France, Japan and Singapore reporting fewer internal uses of Internet applications than their US and UK counterparts.

Overall, US and UK companies claim to use an average of five different Internet applications out of the ten that they were able to choose from, ie CRM, email, employee schedule management, knowledge management, marketing, order fulfilment, selling, supply chain management, training and wireless access to the Internet. In comparison, the average is between two and three different applications in the other countries surveyed.

These findings suggest that the US and UK have developed a more comprehensive use of the Internet for a wider range of applications by investing more heavily in e-solutions in recent years. In contrast, companies in countries like Japan and France have typically focused on more traditional methods of marketing and selling products and have been slower to adopt wider Internet applications, beyond email.

Whilst companies within the US and UK markets are likely to have invested more in e-solutions in recent years than their Japanese and French counterparts, the research indicates that around two thirds of companies in both the US (63%) and UK (66%) intended to decrease their Internet-related expenditure over the next year. In contrast, similar proportions in France (56%) and Japan (61%) expected to increase Internet-related expenditure over the same period of time. This could be explained by the fact that markets such as the US and UK have already made significant levels of investment in e-solutions and are now starting to realise the benefits of this investment, which is not the case in other markets.

Chandra Chaterji, Senior Vice President, Taylor Nelson Sofres Information Technology commented 'Our findings show that some markets have clearly been much faster than others in realising the potential of the Internet for business applications other then email. In many ways this is a reflection of the cultural differences towards doing business in different countries. In Japan, and to some extent in France too, face-to-face contact continues to be extremely important and the more impersonal approach of an online transaction may still not be considered to be a satisfactory way of conducting business. Nonetheless, there seems to be a realisation in markets like Japan, France and elsewhere that investment in e-solutions has lagged behind that in some other major economies and there is a need to start exploring the full potential of online applications to businesses in the future.'

This study was undertaken using on line interviews conducted during July-August 2001 with 555 IT decision makers in six countries (Denmark, France, Japan, Singapore, UK and US). Results from Taylor Nelson Sofres' E-Solutions Adoption by Businesses study are available upon request.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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