According to a survey by Ernst & Young and the National Association of Manufacturers, less than 1 percent of small- and medium-sized manufacturers are advanced users of e-commerce. Most of these manufacturers derived only 2 percent of their 1999 sales from the Internet.
Although most companies (72 percent) use the Internet to attract new customers, far fewer use it to streamline operations (46 percent) or find new suppliers (30 percent). And, less than 10 percent of manufacturers are connected electronically to more than half of their suppliers.