Benefits flow as 'e-asy does it' sector starts to click

摘要

The manufacturing and engineering sectors are often seen as somewhat slow on the e-commerce uptake. In the seemingly countless surveys attempting to find out how ready the UK economy is for e-business, the sectors tend to fare badly compared to whizz-kids such as the Eggs and Tesco.corns of financial services and retail. The Quiet Revolution — a study by the CBI and KPMG Consulting, and one of the most comprehensive yet — is typical. When companies were divided into 'e-pioneers' and 'e-laggards', manufacturing had the fewest innovators and highest number of sloths. Happily, there are now plenty of firms bucking that trend — and not just among the industrial giants with their multi-million pound IT budgets. Smaller manufacturers and their suppliers are now doing great things on the internet too. Some of these companies recently found themselves flying the flag for the sector in the E-Commerce Awards 2001, a government-backed scheme designed to recognise innovation by smaller firms and judge how comprehensively they have achieved their e-commerce design objectives, or 'briefs'. Each of the five companies profiled in this article were shortlisted in their own region and all prove — in these post-'e-babble' days — that there are real advantages to be gained from a judicial marrying of the best in the 'old' and 'new' economy traditions.