China's e-Business Market Achieves Greater Prosperity in Manufacturing Industry

BEIJING, May 28 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: HK08235), recently released its article on China's e-business market in China's manufacturing industry.

The e-business market in China's manufacturing industry has prospered

The e-business trading volume in the world's manufacturing industry reached $8,928 billion in 2007, up by almost 5 times over the $1,840 billion in 2002. This shows that there has been a greater understanding and application of e-business across the manufacturing industry. In addition, the e-business market in China's manufacturing industry reached a size of RMB949.6 billion in 2007, up by 34.9% over 2006, greeting a period of sound growth.

Thanks to a more and more favorable policy, economic, social and technological environment, manufacturing enterprises in China have increasingly realized the advantages of low cost and high efficiency which e- business has brought to them. In particular, large-sized manufacturing enterprises as represented by BAOSTEEL, FAW and SAIC play an important role in the e-business field. They not only use third party e-business platforms to conduct online trading but also establish their own e-business websites and even set up their own e-business companies to be especially responsible for e- business trading. This no doubt plays a positive role in the overall improvement of e-business in China's manufacturing industry. It can be said that as the manufacturing industry continues to grow, the penetration and application of e-business will continuously improve the level of IT applications in manufacturing enterprises, thus driving forward overall industrialization.

The e-business market in China's manufacturing industry diversified

-- Diversification of market entities. The e-business market in the manufacturing industry mainly refers to the market in which enterprises and links in the manufacturing industry use IT and e-business platforms to carry out e-business trading. It mainly includes integrated e-business websites, vertical e-business portals and self-built e-business portals in the manufacturing industry, as well as system integrators and equipment suppliers that are an important link of the e-business market within the manufacturing industry.

As far as the value chain is concerned, the manufacturing industry must adopt e-business to optimize its industry chain structure, improve industry efficiency and realize their values; the market-oriented nature of e-business means that it must make profits. This also determined that the main entity of the e-business value chain of the manufacturing industry is manufacturing enterprises, while various e-business application platforms form the core. Among them, the concerned administrative departments directly affect and determine the development direction and trajectory of e-business in the manufacturing industry, while the equipment suppliers and system integrators form the foundation of the value chain, and channels and agents integrate and connect the whole value chain, and ensure stable flows through the chain.

  Fig. 1: The E-Business Value Chain of the Manufacturing Industry
          http://www.ccidconsulting.com/upload/13092.jpg

          Source: CCID Consulting, Jan. 2008

-- Diversification of e-business types. These mainly include three types. The first type is of integrated e-business websites; such e-business websites include Alibaba, http://www.ccgp.gov.cn/, HC360.com and http://www.globalsources.com.cn/. They mainly provide comprehensive enterprise and product information in the manufacturing industry as well as third party B2B or B2C e-business trading services. Through online search, member services, e-business certification and online trading, these websites often provide services to manufacturing enterprises and different clients, with profits helping to carry out website building and reconstruction. The second type is of e-business websites in vertical manufacturing industry segments. These websites mainly include such vertical search websites as made-in-china.com, http://www.jx.cn/ and chinacars.com. They mainly provide special manufacturing enterprise and product information in vertical industry segments as well as third party e-business trading services. These websites often get profits through advertising, business promotion and member services, and provide manufacturing enterprises and clients with special online services. The third is of manufacturing enterprises' self-built portal e-business websites. These are mainly e- business websites built by BAOSTEEL and FAW. They mainly provide clients with product information, quotations, comparisons and online trading services. Such e-business websites achieve direct communication between manufacturing enterprises and their customers. They make direct and electronic transactions, and strengthen customers' reliance on manufacturing enterprises.