UK trails way behind rest of EU in e-business

Firms on Continent are much more likely to use e-business systems than their UK counterparts

UK companies have fallen well behind other EU countries in their use of e-business methods, such as CRM and e-invoicing.

This is according to the latest statistics from the Digital Agenda Scoreboard, a data analysis of the progress of European member states since the European Digital Agenda was launched at the beginning of 2010.

The UK performed quite well in other areas, particularly e-commerce and broadband provision, but was below the European average in all the e-business categories.

In 2010, the UK's e-business results were as follows:

• 64 per cent below the EU average when integrating internal processes

• 42 per cent below the EU average when using analytical CRM software

• 81 per cent below the EU average when automatically exchanging business documents

• 74 per cent below the EU average when sending or receiving e-invoices

• 33 per cent below EU average for implementing electronic supply chain management systems

These figures have improved by up to 64 per cent in some cases since 2009.

UK-based enterprises are also not taking full advantage of e-government services, using about 35 per cent less than the European average.

The use of e-procurement services was found to be 14 per cent below the European average.