The majority of Irish companies consider e-business to be an important strategic issue, according to a comprehensive survey conducted for Enterprise Ireland. The survey of Irish businesses' attitude reveals that 90 per cent of the Irish companies surveyed believe that e-business will increase in importance to their businesses over the next three years and that 70 per cent have begun to implement e-business strategies.
The survey of 630 companies, conducted by Quaestus/Bizzmedia for Enterprise Ireland, also indicated that companies are treating e-business as a company-wide issue rather than an IT issue. In 45 per cent of the companies, the chief executive was responsible for e-business strategy.
Other survey findings were that 55 per cent of companies have a Web site, with 73 per cent of all respondents expecting to have a Web site by mid-2001. 40 per cent of companies say they currently deal with or, over the next 12 months, will be obliged to deal with customers electronically.
The development director of Enterprise Ireland, Mr Pat Maher, said that while the results were encouraging, there was still a lot of work to be done. "While awareness is high, adoption of ebusiness is still in its infancy and many companies have not yet begun redesigning their business processes to facilitate e-business," he said.
The results coincide with the issuing of Enterprise Ireland's second call for proposals from companies wishing to develop and adopt an e-business strategy under its E-business Acceleration Fund, which will allocate awards totalling £10 million.
The organisation says it received around 97 applications from its first call for proposals, which was issued in April. More than half the applicants were from Dublin and a high proportion of these were from the international services sector. The winning proposals from the first call will be awarded in September.
Enterprise Ireland will be seeking applications particularly from manufacturing companies and those based in the regions for the second call for proposals.
