ITC E-Trade Bridge Network Symposium

Geneva, December 2003

E-Readiness
Şule Őzmen, Professor
Marmara University
Istanbul, Turkey
 Where are we coming from?
“e” as a way of doing things
 If “e” is a way of doing things one must first decide what
“things” are supposed to be done?

 Remy mentioned that at the enterprise level “management

readiness” means designing strategies, building production
capabilities and the competence to manage export transactions

 Yuri stated that the competence to manage export transactions

I.e., “export readiness” means the ability to get orders, fulfil orders
and maintain a satisfactory level of working capital (get paid)

Now that we know the right things to do, we will look at

“e” as not a way of doing the right “things” but as a
way of doing the right “things” in the right way
“E” as a way of doing things

“e” can be used in and by all

Main Purposes
Resource Resource Resource
Creation Distribution Utilization
Macro level
Yes
(Government, policy levels)
Meso level Yes
(Trade Support Institutions)
Micro level Yes
(Enterprises)
 What happens when
“e” is used as a thing to do?

FAILED FAILED
 Resource utilization in an
enterprise
Understanding E-readiness

First determine the processes with which the enterprise utilize its
information resources
human resources
financial resources
physical resources
network resources
to its business (marketing and production)

 Second, determine whether « e » would improve

effectiveness
efficiency of these processes.

 Third, determine whether the enterprise has the resources to use « e ».

The primary aim of e-readiness
assessment

should be to determine the benefit that an enterprise can

potentially derive from applying
Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
to the management of its business by measuring:

The potential gain to the enterprise from ICT

The rate of ICT utilization within the enterprise

The ability to access the resources needed to apply ICT

 Use of an e-readiness
assessment tool

Potential benefits from ICT is But ICT utilization is

the tool should help to:

identify:

 the gaps in the enterprise’s utilization of ICT

 the areas where the enterprise stands to benefit from

ICT

 the reason of low ICT utilization rate

 lack of resources ?
 misallocation of available resources?
 Using E-SME

E-SME helps trainers and consultants to determine

weaknesses as described and allows the
development of interventions.
Gap Analysis Results of Turkish
SMEs
In the basic e-readiness dimensions
Significant gaps are observed concerning:
strategic orientation,
international aspirations, ICT & e-trade planning
general understanding of ICT usage
identification of specific benefits of ICTs?
implementation plan of ICT adoption
computerized applications
human resources (qualifications of personnel)
allocation of financial resources
information sharing
No gap in basic infrastructure availability
physical assets such as computer and
Internet access
 Using E-SME: Example 1

Producing packaging materials

172 employees ,
Revenue: $15 million
Export : 35 %
Exporting to Israel, Bulgaria, Ukraine, USA
Successful in adopting and utilizing ICT, identified itself as late
adopter
No significant gap is diagnosed by e-SME tool
Manager mentioned that;
planning phase of ICT adoption and utilization progressed
gradually according to the need of the enterprise.
what increased their success is to make need assessment at
first
 Using E-SME: Example 2
A Construction Enterprise with 40 employees.
Revenues at $10 million. No exporting
identified itself as late adopter
No significant gap is diagnosed by e-SME tool.
First computerized process was accounting system.

Manager mentioned that

they have adopted according to their assessed needs

right ICT should be selected and utilized in order to save time and
money (right resource allocation) in addition to obtain qualified
information and enhance decision making process which lead to work
efficiently
He recommends to other enterprises that selection and utilization of
ICT is very important and should be done on the basis of the e-
readiness assessment which helps to identify the need and
opportunity to analyse the gap
Using E-SME: Sample Responses
 It is not good business practice to invest millions in e just for the
sake of « e »

Enterprises should understand what « e » is and what it is not and

what it is for and must recruit staff with that understanding and this
does not mean hiring computer literate people

We have « e » in our enterprise just for the sake of e. No body

knows what for

« E » can serve several objectives. It is difficult to decide which

objective needs to be served. Careless selection has always failed.

Instead of spending months and years to replace infrastructure, I

recommend gradual replacement. Each step should be taken after
the success of the previous is established.
Thank You
Q&A
 Additional Examples

One of the enterprise recommendation about the hardware and

software investment worth mentioning here. This enterprise
categorized itself as in the innovator phase in ICT adoption
which refers to the earliest ICT adopter. She got annual revenue
of 1.4 million euro and 20 % of its revenue is from exporting. It is
a family owned and managed enterprise having 23 employees.
They export automobile and building glasses and windows to
Poland, Greece, Check Republic and Germany. The second
generation of the company owner who is a young marketing
manager of the company graduated from a credible University
in Turkey seriously recommend to other enterprises not to
spend money for ICT unconsiously and urge to adopt ICT but
advise them to identify their ICT need first and then make the
investment when necessary.
Adoption and utilization sequence
in Business process
 The benefit derived from softwares related with accounting
system can be more easily understood by the enterprises. Natural
consequence of benefiting from these softwares is the integration
of financial sytems to the accounting systems. ICT utilization then
continued with order fulllfillment, production planning, inventory
management and logistics.
 One of the surveyed enterprise exactly followed this path in
adoption and utilization of ICT. After the above sequence of
adoption, they mentioned that utilization in human resources
management came afterwards. Then they recommend to establish
Intranet and continue with Web presence and start e-trade finally.
This enterprise is in textile industry producing towels bathrobes
and exporting to European countries and USA, has a reveue of 12
million dollars. 450 employees are working for this company and it
is generating 95 % of its revenue from exporting. When this
enterprise is evaluated individually, no gap has been observed in
almost all of the measured items.