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Business services
Definition
Services enterprises attributed to "other business services" (NACE
Rev. 1 74) cover a wide range of activities. On the 3-digit-level
there are eight sub-groups, on the 4-digit-level the number of sub-groups
rises to 15. Activities covered in this sector are:
NACE
Rev. 1 |
Business
activity |
| 74 |
Other
business services |
| 74.1 |
Legal,
accounting, book-keeping and auditing activities; tax consultancy;
market research and public opinion polling; business and management
consultancy; holdings |
| 74.2 |
Architectural
and engineering activities and related technical consultancy |
| 74.3 |
Technical
testing and analysis |
| 74.4 |
Advertising |
| 74.5 |
Labour
recruitment an provision of personnel |
| 74.6 |
Investigation
and security activities |
| 74.7 |
Industrial
cleaning |
| 74.8 |
Miscellaneous
business activities not else classified (for example: photographic
activities, packaging activities, secretarial and translation
activities) |
Main reasons for selection
- Economic importance of the sector: Business services is a huge
sector both in terms of employment and value added. More than
two million enterprises employ close to 13 million people and create
a value added of about 485 billion Euro. This is the largest
amount
of value added among all sectors covered by the e-Business
W@tch, and the third largest number of employees after health and
retail.
- Importance of SMEs: SMEs play a very important role in
the business services sectors, compared to most of the manufacturing
industries.
They make up for 99% of all enterprises, they produce 60% of
the sector's turnover and employ more than half of the persons
working
in the sector.
- E-business intensive sector: Survey results
of the e-Business W@tch show that the importance of e-business
is above EU-average
in the
business services sector. In addition, the gap between SMEs
and large enterprises with respect to e-business activities
is less
pronounced
in this sector than in many other sectors. Business services
could therefore serve as an e-business model for SMEs from
other sectors.
- Importance of ICT for the sector: For those
parts of the business services sector that are based on information
and
knowledge, ICT
and e-business have significant implications: The efficiencies
of accessing, compiling and distributing information are
considerably enhanced. The Internet puts any sort of information
at the
fingertips of connected knowledge workers. This applies
to information necessary
for producing the services (e.g. legal documents, research)
as well
as to new business opportunities (e.g. through tender databases).
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