Scottish Ecommerce Report

Earlier this year, we were asked to contribute to a Scottish Enterprise Report regarding the importance of ecommerce to the Scottish Economy and the opportunity that ecommerce offers to businesses in Scotland.

Naturally, we were delighted to contribute to the report’s findings.  For some time now, we have been advocating the opportunities and potential that ecommerce offers Scottish businesses both from a local and international perspective and it’s great that public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise are now recognising the impact that ecommerce has and can have on the Scottish economy.

The report is available to read here – Scottish Ecommerce Report

It does make for interesting reading.  Some notable findings include:

• The importance of ecommerce to the Scottish economy – with an estimated 200,000 direct jobs in ecommerce contributing £10 billion in direct Gross Value Added (GVA) i.e. 10% of Scotland’s GVA associated with Scotland’s £31 billion in e-commerce sales per annum (of which about £8 billion of sales are over websites).
• Highlights the significant opportunity e-commerce presents for Scotland, and in particular for exporting and international capability.
• Scottish business could do better with room for improvement as we appear to be lagging behind our English counterparts.  As we have said for some time now, ecommerce offers Scottish based businesses a massive opportunity both domestically and internationally so it’s about time more got on board and embraced it.

To summarise, the  report  highlights the opportunity that ecommerce offers Scottish business, ourselves included. It also outlines barriers that need to be addressed to ensure that when Scottish businesses do embark on their ecommerce adventures they do so with the right tools at their disposal.

It would be good to hear your own thought on the report and we would be happy to pass any comments you have on to Scottish Enterprise.