ICT in enterprises in 2020

Enterprises
ICT usage in enterprises

Between May and September 2020, Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, conducted a survey on ICT usage in enterprises[1][2].

It appears that while 86.6 % of enterprises with at least 10 employees have a website, only 23.9 % have online ordering or reservation options or booking services, such as a shopping cart. Furthermore, only 11.4 % of enterprises allow the tracking of orders placed on their website. However, for 73.4 % of enterprises, the website contains a description of goods or services and price information.

Relations with customers via the website are possible for 8.9 % of enterprises via a chat service where a person replies to customers and for 3.4 % via a chatbot (virtual agent).

Moreover, the Survey on ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises 2020 allows us to draw the following conclusions:

  • Seven enterprises out of ten have access to the Internet via a fixed or mobile broadband connection with a download speed of at least 100 Mbit/s.
  • A quarter of enterprises sent invoices in electronic form in a standard structure suitable for automated processing. Paper invoices are still predominant.
  • Half of enterprises buy cloud computing services[3] on the Internet.
  • Two enterprises out of ten perform big data[4] analysis internally or externally for all kinds of data sources.
  • A quarter of enterprises use the Internet of Things[5] such as interconnected devices or systems that can be monitored or remotely controlled via the Internet.
  • 6.2 % of enterprises use 3D printing.
  • One enterprise out of ten uses industrial or service robots[6] .


[1] Enterprises with at least 10 employees.

[2]Survey organised at the European level based on the Regulation (EC) No 808/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 and on the Regulation (EC) No 1006/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009.

[3] Cloud computing refers to ICT services that are used over the Internet to access software, computing power or storage capacity.

[4]Big data are generated from activities that are carried out electronically and from machine-to-machine communications. Big data analysis refers to the use of techniques, technologies and software tools for analysing big data.

[5]The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to interconnected devices or systems, often called “smart” devices or systems. They collect and exchange data and can be monitored or remotely controlled via the Internet.

[6]An industrial robot is an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use. A service robot is a machine that has a degree of autonomy that enables it to operate in complex and dynamic environment that may require interaction with persons, objects or other devices, excluding its use in industrial automation applications.