The Spanish business fabric is essentially made up of SMEs, according to the reality reflected in studies by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Large companies are 0.17% of the total and, being few, they are the ones we hear the most about business digitization: Telefónica (Telefónica Tech), Cellnex Telecom, CaixaBank, El Corte Inglés, Fundación La Caixa and many others. others such as Mapfre, Banco Santander, Inditex, Mercadona, BBVA, Melia Hotels International, Iberdrola and Naturgy. They are digitally transformed and exert a 'tractor effect' on the rest of the companies, which are 99.83% of the total number of firms in Spain.
The Spanish economy will be digital when the vast majority of micro-enterprises (less than 10 employees), SMEs (10 to 249 employees) and other companies are digitized and Big Data, Robotics, 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Connectivity, Cloud Computing, E-Commerce, 3D Printing, Cybersecurity are digitization technologies that are not only used by large companies to be more productive, competitive, effective and efficient, but that their benefits extend to the society as a whole and the entire Spanish business fabric
Therefore, before talking about business digitization in Spain today, it is essential to first know what 'business universe' we are talking about, when we say that, according to the INE, 99.83% of our companies are SMEs: a percentage that marks the predominance of micro-enterprises (0 to 9 employees) that constitute 94% of private sector companies as of October 2021, with a total of 3,417,000 companies.
By sectors, the type of company in the service sector continues to be predominant, with 74% of all firms (a percentage that has remained stable over the last decade). In the state calculation, the construction sector appears a long way behind, with 11%, which means 324,000 companies, followed by the agricultural sector (9%) and industry (6%).
After this brief introduction, let's see what the INE tells us, with data from a study carried out by Advice Strategic Consultants, about the use of digitization technologies by our companies in the period of the 2020/2021 pandemic, which, also in this, supposes a before and after.
The most basic thing is the infrastructure: personnel who use computers connected to the Internet for business purposes. 65.7% of employees in companies with 10 or more workers used computers for business purposes in the first quarter of 2021. For their part, 59.4% used computers with an Internet connection.
Two out of three companies with an Internet connection use social networks, 3.6 points more than the previous year. For its part, the characteristic that has increased the most in the last year is the purchase of cloud services (cloud / cloud computing). Specifically, it has risen 4.2 points, to 32.4%. For their part, 80.2% of companies with an Internet connection use a digital signature, 2.3 points less than in the same period of 2020 if we compare it with the current year.
No one is born knowing and training is essential
16.4% of companies employ specialists in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in 2021. This percentage is 2 points lower than in the same period of the previous year. The percentage of companies with women ICT specialists fell two tenths and stood at 5.7%. Although there is an important note: it is not like that in all sectors. For example, in distribution/retail, more than 50% of the microenterprises have women specialists in digitization technologies to train the rest of the staff, solve problems, etc.
Other digitization technologies in companies
Of the other technologies studied, the most used are the use of tools to manage information within the company (ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning) and those that manage customer information (CRM = Customer Relationship Management), with 51.7% and 41.8% of companies, respectively. Both have increased by 6.3 points compared to the previous edition in which they were measured, in the years of relative economic prosperity prior to the pandemic, in 2018/2019.
On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the technology whose use has increased the most (10.9 points). It is now used by 27.7% of companies. Companies that carried out Big Data analysis stands at 11.1% and, finally, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used by 8.3% of companies. It is important to note that, versus so many studies that tell us that these technologies are being widely used by Spanish companies, in reality we find that these reports are marketing tools, demand generation communicated to the media, but that they have no statistical rigor. Below, the reader of El Confidencial Digital will be able to see, as always in our case, that there is a "Technical Data Sheet", which explains the methodology, the sample, statistical segmentation criteria, company size, number of employees, billing, community autonomy, habitat size, etc. There are 26,000 interviews with companies with a statistical representativeness index of 98.08% and a margin of error of +-1.2%. Therefore, it is not the same to say that 83% of Spanish companies use Artificial Intelligence as to say the current real data: 8.3%...
@JesTVIOandM This is something you will need to change in the BIOS settings of your computer. Each model is different… https://t.co/bCYXOxwQDx
— Rachel Feinberg Thu Mar 18 23:39:31 +0000 2021
Teleworking has been one of the fads -ways of working- that we have heard about the most during the pandemic, sometimes without criteria: the farm worker cannot telework. The Spanish companies that allow teleworking, according to their number of employees, are as follows: the total is 50.6%. Companies from 10 to 49 companies, 46%; companies with 50 to 249 employees, 72%. And finally, large companies (more than 250 employees), which allow (but do not require) teleworking, reach 85.5% of all large companies: that is, almost all of them, since they do not reach 4,000.
Use of ICT by autonomous communities: there are differences
Companies with 10 or more employees located in Catalonia, the Community of Madrid and the Basque Country present the highest intensities in the use of ICT and technologies digitization in the first half of 2021. Valencia and Andalusia would follow. On the other hand, at the opposite extreme, companies from the autonomous communities of Extremadura, Cantabria and the autonomous city of Melilla have the lowest percentages of ICT penetration and digitization in their companies. It must be noted that the pandemic has had nothing to do with these differences between communities because, ten years ago, our studies and the INE showed a similar reality.
Sales through the vaunted electronic commerce
26.9% of companies with 10 or more employees made sales through electronic commerce in 2020 and 2021. The volume of business generated by these sales reached 275,398 million euros, with a decrease of 10.4% compared to 2019/2018, before the pandemic. More companies have used e-commerce in 2020 and 2021, but the total volume of sales was lower than before the pandemic.
E-commerce purchases
32.3% of companies with 10 or more employees made e-commerce purchases in 2020/2021. The total volume of orders for goods and services was 222,011 million euros, with a decrease of 14.7%. Purchases through e-commerce represented 22.7% of total purchases by companies with 10 or more employees, compared to 23.5% the previous year.
We finish with the methodological note:
The main objective of the Survey on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and electronic commerce in companies is to obtain the necessary data that measure the use of ICT and electronic commerce in companies in the member countries of the European Union.
Following Eurostat's methodological recommendations, the survey has a double temporal scope; the variables on ICT use refer to the first quarter of the year in which the survey is carried out, while the general information on the company, electronic commerce and ICT training refer to the previous year.
Type of survey: continuous, annual.
Population scope: companies that belong to sections C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N and group 95.1 according to the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE-2009).
Geographical scope: the entire national territory.
Reference period of the results: the variables on ICT use refer to the first quarter of the year in which the survey is carried out, while the general information on the company, electronic commerce and ICT training, are refer to the previous year.
Information reference period: first quarter of the year in which the survey is carried out.
Sample size: variables according to year. For companies with 10 or more employees: around 15,000 companies and for those with fewer than 10 employees: around 11,000 companies. Total companies interviewed: 26,000.
Type of sampling: sampling stratified by company size, economic activity and autonomous community.
Collection method: multi-channel: by Internet (CAWI) and regular mail.