Sales of goods and services over the Internet accounted for 17.2% of company turnover in 2021, 0.2 percentage points more than in 2020, reaching almost 50,000 million euros, 10.7% more, divulges this Monday the INE fair.
According to the “Survey on the use of information and communication technologies in companies”, published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), “Compared to the European Union (EU-27), Portugal registered lower proportions in this indicator in 2015, 2016 and 2020 and higher in 2017 and 2018, registering the same proportion in 2019″.
According to the INE, last year 19.6% of companies sold goods and/or services through electronic commerce, which represents a variation of +2.5 percentage points compared to 2020.
By sector of activity, highlighted “accommodation and catering”with 39.1% of companies that sell through electronic commerce (+4.7 percentage points compared to 2020), followed by “commerce” with 32.3% (+7.6 percentage points) and “information and communication” with 17.7% (-4.0 percentage points) .
Of the companies that made web sales, 98.1% did so for clients located in Portugal42.3% in other countries of the European Union and 31.6% in the rest of the world, which represents an increase of 1.0 percentage points in customers located in Portugal and a decrease of 7.9 percentage points on foreign customers.
The INE questioned companies that sold goods and/or services through websites, apps or electronic commerce portals (excluding EDI – Electronic Data Interchange) to other countries of the European Union about the difficulties experienced in 2021 in these sales, with the proven results “significant changes compared to 2020”????????
A) Yes, 32.9% mentioned the high costs of delivery and return of products. for sale (+13.2 percentage points compared to 2020), 24.3% difficulties related to the VAT system in EU countries (+17.4 percentage points) and 8.9% restrictions imposed by partners sales to sales to certain EU countries (+0.3 percentage points).
Already 6.9% indicated the lack of knowledge of foreign languages. communicate with customers (+3.5 percentage points), 6.7% difficulties related to resolving claims and disputes during sales (-0.6 percentage points) and 5.1% adapting product labeling for sale to other EU countries (-0.1 percentage points).
Regarding the percentage of sales of goods and/or services through electronic commerce over total billing, in 2021 the companies with 250 or more employees (22.7%). However, in this section there was a decrease of 0.7 percentage points compared to 2020.
This year, 96.9% of companies and 48.2% of people at work have access to the Internet for professional purposes (+0.4 and +3.7 pp, respectively, than in 2021) and the 85.7% of companies provide portable devices that allow mobile Internet connection for professional purposes (+17.2 percentage points compared to 2021), covering 28.1% of the employed (+4.2 percentage points compared to 2021).
This year, 74.7% of companies have service staff with remote access to the company’s email system, 65.0% to company documents and 63.9% to company management applications or software, with 47.7% of companies holding remote meetings at through the Internet.
In 2022, 20.0% of companies have personnel specialized in ICT (Information and Communication Technologies, +0.2 percentage points compared to 2020), with emphasis on the “information and communication” sector, with 80.1%.
In 2021, 6.2% of companies hired or tried to hire ICT specialistsand of these, 61.4% had difficulties in filling these positions.
The ICT functions in the company were carried out by external providers in 78.2% of the companies and exclusively by them in 53.8% of the companies (+5.8 percentage points and +4.0 percentage points respectively, compared to to 2019).
In 2022, the main ICT security measures used by companies are strong password authentication (84.0%), information backup elsewhere (73.7%) and network access control (62.5%).
Last year, 11.5% of companies experienced at least one problemeither the unavailability of ICT services, the destruction or corruption of data, or the disclosure of sensitive data, due to an ICT-related security incident.
The most mentioned consequences of these incidents were the unavailability of ICT services due to hardware or software failures and attacks from outside (8.3% and 2.5%, respectively), followed by destruction or corruption of data due to malware infection or unauthorized intrusion, and hardware or software failure (2.1% and 1.8%, in the same order).
Regarding the consequences of ICT-related security incidents, it was found that the lack of availability of ICT services was the most frequent, in 2021, felt by 9.7% of companies, followed by the destruction or corruption of data, with 3.4%, and finally the disclosure of confidential data, with 0.7%.
The INE data also indicate that, in 2022, 7.6% of companies use industrial or service robots, a decrease of 1.5 percentage points compared to 2020 (9.1%), once again highlighting the ‘industry and energy’, with 16.2% of the companies using industrial robots, and not presenting great differences between the rest of the sectors.
In 2022, 73.2% of companies apply some measure that reduces the consumption of paper or energy of ICT equipment: 72.0% of companies apply some measure that reduces the amount of paper used for printing and copying, and 45.0% apply some measure that reduces the energy consumption of ICT equipment.
Source: Observadora
