Skills shortage no excuse for poor ebusiness take-up

NEWS Speaking at the opening of Internet World France, he said Europe has not done enough to promote or use ebusiness. "There are pockets of activity and investment, so you cannot generalise. But on the whole not enough is happening," Eckelmann said. "If you look at the major sectors, the big leaders have dabbled but not embraced [ebusiness]." He complained that the skills shortage is too often blamed for prohibiting ecommerce strategies, and called on the industry to take more of a lead in training and retraining. "There are almost one million vacancies in IT in Europe at the moment and this could be the biggest limiting factor for ebusiness. There are very few places in Europe which have a sufficient supply of talent. But you can retrain people from other fields more than industry and users think," Eckelmann said. Eckelmann also claimed Europe will only succeed if companies start focusing on customer service rather than technology. "The age of adolescence and irrational behaviour is over and customers are taking over. Customers do not want fancy, whizzy capabilities - their expectations are growing. They are looking for simple, reliable and responsive systems tailored to their own needs," he said.