Pharmaceutical cos. expand e-business

In a global industry analysis conducted by KPMG International, a professional services organization, the pharmaceutical industry is currently behind other brick-and-mortar industries in terms of e-business growth, but is moving rapidly to accelerate progress.

The findings are reported in the KPMG study "The e-business value chain: Winning strategies in seven global industries," which was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in cooperation with KPMG in June, 2000.

"The pharmaceutical industry was last out of the gate in adopting e-business early on, because the benefits just weren't obvious," said John Morris, European chair for chemicals and pharmaceuticals. "But that's changed because of increasing pressures."

According to Morris, these pressures include the need to search for new ways to bring drugs to the market faster, the need to trim costs and the need to market products more precisely and cheaply. Pharmaceutical executives are feeling shareholder pressure as well, and to a higher degree than most other industries, according to the survey respondents.

As an indicator that the pharmaceutical industry is getting more aggressive with e-business, 82% of pharmaceutical companies expect in 18 months to offer at least limited transactions through their Web sites, up from the current 21%. During this period, pharmaceutical executives project on-line sales to increase from 3% to 14%.

Industry executives predict significant progress in the area of supply chain management with respect to on-line exchanges. For example, use of industry-specific on-line exchanges for supply chain management will increase from 6% of companies to 49% in the next 18 months, along with an expected increase in multi-industry exchanges from 12% to 36%. PR