For a list of indicators see The selected indicators for the e-Business Survey 2003...

The e-Business [email protected] relies to a large extent on its own (annual) European e-Business Survey, conducted among decision makers in firms from all European countries and size-bands.

The questionnaire used in the survey covers all relevant aspects including ICT infrastructure, e-business activity and impact. The questionnaire takes into account methodological work of the OECD on e-business and e-commerce.

Other sources used by the e-Business [email protected] to collect data include:

• Time-series from official industry statistics (mainly from Eurostat) for covering the economic background of sectors
• Sectoral statistics as available from industry associations through reporting from their member organisations, mainly as an additional source for Sector Reports
• Other statistics from secondary sources, such as special surveys other than the e-Business Survey, as far as they are helpful to consolidate findings or to fill gaps which the e-Business [email protected] cannot deal with through own primary research activities

The set of e-business indicators covered by the annual decision-maker survey can be grouped into three main categories: infrastructure, activity and impact.

• ICT infrastructure and skills development: The e-Business [email protected] collects data about the adoption of ICT infrastructure in companies, the demand for ICT skills and abour firms' activities to develop the requested qualifications among its staff.
• E-business activity: With respect to e-business activity indicators, the main difficulty is to obtain information about intensity of usage. It is comparably easy to ask enterprises whether they use certain e-commerce and e-business applications. However, when it comes to assessing the relative importance of these processes and activities (for example, online sales measured as a share of total sales), most companies do not have this information readily available, or refuse to provide information. For this reason, the e-Business [email protected] has adopted a pragmatic approach and works with proxies (e.g., asking for percentage ranges rather than for exact percentages). 
• E-business impact: Measuring impacts of e-business on enterprises continues to be the area which is most difficult to measure with quantitative metrics. A major difficulty is that it is impossible to isolate e-business activities as potential factors of influence from other factors (such as for instance the general economic conditions, or management issues in general). 

For a list of indicators see The selected indicators for the e-Business Survey 2003...