ICT Use By Businesses in Finland

Finland has an exceptionally strong ICT environment for businesses, with a well-developed telecommunications infrastructure, a heavy investment in cutting edge technologies such as an extensive national wireless communications system, a highly-educated and technologically savvy workforce and a regulatory system that has been implementing policies aimed directly at fostering capitalism and free-market competition throughout the ICT sector. From a business standpoint, all of this equates to an environment rife with available technology options and services - options and services with costs set by market forces, permitting businesses great flexibility in making their ICT decisions.

As a result of this, Finland has seen extensive adoption and implementation of ICT by Business. Although this information is dated, by the Fall of 1997 over 66% of Finnish wage earners said that their work involved using a computer. By 1999, 33% of male employees not only used a computer, they had their own assigned computer at their place of work. This number rose to 39% for women. Additionally, 31% of men and 33% of women had access to outside email from work, while 30% of men and 31% of women had the ability to access webpages from work. (2)

On a broader level, in 2000, 95 of businesses with more than 5 employees used computers in their operations, with this number rising to 100 for companies of over 100 employees. For these same companies, the use of an internal LAN was 58% and 98%, respectively, with 84% and 98% allowing use of the internet. 62% of companies with over 100 employees had their own intranet, yet use of EDI for the same demographic was only 40% (3)

Finland has seen extensive adoption of the Internet as a business tool. Reasons for general internet use by Finnish businesses range from 83% for general information use, to 55% for financial transactions, 42% for competitor analysis and 34% for personnel recruitment. When Finnish businesses use the internet as customers, more often than not it is for supplier research (73%), receiving digital products (59%), ordering goods and services (36%) and electronic payment (15%) (4)

Interestingly, these numbers correlate almost directly to those seen on the individual consumer side of ICT, with Finns in general, both for personal and for business use, using the Internet primarily as a means of conducting product research and comparison, but refraining from using it as a tool of actual commerce.

For Finnish businesses, constraints on the use of the internet inlcude threat of hackers (26%), cost to develop and maintain (13%), slowness/instability of communication and work hours lost to surfing (both at 10%), and concern over technical complexity (3%). (4) Again, these numbers come close to mirroring those seen on the individual consumer side, where security concerns and not technical aptitude are a primary driver of the hesitancy.