firms in this survey in Germany. Differences are observable when asking about Extranet usage 

and the usage of call centers. Depending on the chosen definition, Extranets connect additional 

establishments of the same firm as wide area networks and can offer access to suppliers and 

customers. Given that most SMEs have only one establishment, the low diffusion of Extranet 

technology might be a consequence of the missing necessity to connect other establishments over 

wide area networks. To test this assumption a supplementary question about the usage of 

Extranet technology to connect additional establishments is needed, i.e. in addition to the 

questions about the functionalities of Extranets to allow access to suppliers or customers. 

Interestingly, the usage of electronic funds transfer (EFT) is higher among SMEs than among 

large establishments. This may be primarily due to the usage of online banking by SMEs which 

may also be viewed as a type of EFT, while large establishments use such personnel intensive 

and non automatic ways of transferring money less often. It should be noted that this electronic 

form of banking is widespread within Europe, but is not available, for example, in the US. It is 

fundamentally different and far exceeds what US banks refer to as electronic banking. The 

semantic meaning of EFT is therefore different for large establishments and accompanied by 

EDI transfer, rather than online transfer. Consequently, the two figures for SMEs and large 

establishments are not directly comparable and need to be interpreted cautiously. 

An additional remarkable difference between SMEs and large firms, the usage of call centers, is 

somewhat more complex to explain. While the differences between the industry sectors are 

explainable (manufacturing: product information; retail/wholesale: mail order business; 

banking/insurance: telephone banking), the difference between SMEs and large firms might be 

explainable by the personnel cost intensive nature of call centers which therefore are only 

available to large firms.  

TABLE 3  E Commerce Readiness by Size of Firm and Industry 

Total

a

Establishment Size

a

 Industry

a

Percent using: 

Small

b

 Large

c

Manufacturing Retail/  Banking/ 

Wholesale 

Insurance 

E mail 

100.0 100.0 100.0  100.0 

100.0 

100.0 

Website 91.8 

91.7 

100.0 

90.5 

92.0 

94.5 

Intranet 

84.4 84.4 84.4  77.8 

85.9 

88.8 

Extranet 

22.3 21.7 51.5  38.8 

15.9 

36.6 

  accessible by suppliers  

14.0 

13.6 

32.6 

27.4 

8.5 

28.5 

  accessible by customers 

11.8 

11.4 

28.7 

23.1 

8.4 

13.7 

EDI 

67.7 67.7 70.2  56.6 

71.1 

65.4 

Electronic funds transfer 

86.6 

86.9 

71.9 

94.9 

85.2 

77.2 

Call 

center 

30.3 29.8 55.7  26.4 

29.3 

50.6 

Notes:

a

 Results are weighted by the total number of establishments in an industry by size of firm.

b

 Small firms are defined as firms with 25 to 250 employees.  

c

 Large firms are defined as firms with more than 250 employees.  

Source:  CRITO Global E Commerce Survey, 2002 

Although Table 3 depicts a broad diffusion of e commerce enabling technologies, the survey 

offers no information about the intensity of usage, the impacts on traditional working processes 

or even the resulting efficiency. To analyze the character of e commerce readiness, a purely 

descriptive comparison is not especially useful. Consequently, a DEA model described in the 

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