Submitted by Contributing Editor Mary-Anne Goldsworthy
cec@gbus.cc.monash.edu.au
http://www-mugc.cc.monash.edu.au/cec/index.html
Mary-Anne Goldsworthy is Executive Officer of the Centre for Electronic
Commerce at Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill,VIC 3842
The CEC is a national independent consulting, training and research centre for electronic commerce services to assist industry and government, and specifically SMEs (small to medium enterprises).
The first is from The Australian Financial Review . It addresses China.world.net (CWN), one of many initiatives in the Asia Pacific region that are using the Internet to facilitate and encourage trade opportunities between businesses. CWN links businesses in the Asia-Pacific rim via the Internet through the use of an on line directory assisting businesses in Australia to trade with the Chinese speaking business sector in the region.
Then we have articles from The Australian and The Daily Commercial News that report on results of two different surveys on the usage of online services by businesses and chief executives in Australian organisations. Both surveys highlight that CEOs are becoming increasingly computer literate with many accessing the Internet and believing that the Internet is a worthwhile business application. The surveys also highlight an increased expenditure by Australian companies on their web sites and Internet business strategies indicating the increased up take of online technologies by Australian businesses.
A consortium of Internet and business groups launched an Internet service aimed at building trading links between Chinese speaking regions and the rest of the Pacific Rim in early August.
The service, china.world.net (CWN), would provide an Internet "match-making" service, modelled on Internet dating services, between Australasian companies hoping to trade with the Chinese speaking sector in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and elsewhere, and vice-versa, said management director Mr Joseph Yuen.
The initiative would initially be targeted only at the Sino-Australian community, however, offering specially tailored Internet access and training. Special software, capable of publishing Web pages and other Internet data in Mandarin would be made available, together with translation services to and from Mandarin, officials said.
Ultimately, the Australian service would just become the first spoke in the wheel of Pacific Rim Internet companies all connected to a central host in Beijing, said Mr Raymond Fairs, CWN chairman.
Using a network of replicated, or mirrored, Web servers, companies from around the region would be able to promote their products and services in an online business directory, similar to those already supplied by the business councils, he said.
While the directory would be accessible on the Internet free of charge from November, companies wanting to be listed would have to pay a subscription fee dependent on where they appeared in the directory's hierarchy, Mr Fairs said.
Internet connectivity into China is already heavily regulated, with government concerns about pornography and ethics taking the form of strict censorship of content.
Since CWN was an initiative aimed primarily at the business community, which apparently isn't interested in porn or politics, such censorship wouldn't be a problem, Mr Fairs said.
Nevertheless, CWN had entered into negotiations with the Chinese Government and was confident that, by Christmas, it could do an arrangement to establish Internet links into China that would be "virtually free" of censorship, so long as the traffic remained within the strict business framework, he said.
The Internet business directory descriptively entitled The Official Directory of Prominent Australian Enterprises for use by the Peoples Republic of China Government Authorities, Instrumentalities and Enterprises will be published by the People's University Press in Beijing and will be available in paperback late next year.
An impressive 60 percent of chief executives use the Internet solely for business purposes, a national survey by information technology consultants, Morgan & Banks, has found.
The survey, covering investment and use of the Internet by corporations and smaller companies, also revealed 70 per cent of chief executives and management directors believed their investment in web sites had been worthwhile.
Many companies are adopting internal Internet applications using intranets, according to the survey.
The national business manager of Morgan & Banks information technology consulting and recruiting strategies, Mr Kevin Charman, said yesterday big banks, insurers and other financial services sector players ranked among the biggest spenders when it came to business Web sites.
"Professional services firms are also using the Net aggressively," Mr Charman said.
"We were stunned by the amount of companies which are spending more than $100,000 on the Net , while some corporates are spending $200,000 on their sites and business Internet management strategies."
The survey found the majority of companies using the Internet for their business were successfully investing significantly smaller amounts on their web sites.
"The majority of smaller and medium sized companies are spending from $20,000 to $40,000 on setting up their homepages", Mr Charman said.
The survey is the second conducted by Morgan and Banks in the past year specifically tackling how the internet is being used by business.
The latest survey, which forms part of Morgan and Banks technology issues survey series, was carried out six months ago among senior management in a wide range of companies.
Mr Charman said the take up of the Internet by Australian companies would have dramatically increased since then.
"We will carry out another national survey later this year and expect to draw some significant new business trends from that", he said.
The company surveyed included those from the telecommunications, engineering, distribution, financial services, government, health and medical, IT, manufacturing, resources, services and transport industry.
Morgan and Banks interviewed CEO's, managing directors, finance directors and finance controllers, IT managers, sales directors and sales managers.
Mr Charman said it was encouraging to find the "buy-in" to using the Internet for business strategies had occurred at the top end of the boardroom - CEOs and chairmen.
"The positive trend coming from the boardrooms that there appears to be far more awareness by CEO's about what the Internet can actually do for their business."
This was a total change from the past few years when many boardroom chiefs came under fire for being computer illiterate and divorced from many technology/business issues.
"The awareness of the Internet and Intranets has grown significantly in the boardroom."
Mr Charman said a solid recruitment demand for business Internet managers, web designers and business analysts had now been spawned from the rapid uptake of business Internet sites".
Good Internet managers who had strong business analysis skills could command salary packages around $80,000 to $100,000.
Mr Charman said the disappointing trend in the survey was that the distribution, food, transport and health industries appeared to lag far behind in the take up of the Internet.
"But we believe that slow trend will be reversed when we carry out our December Internet Business take up survey", he said.
Many Australian businesses expect the Internet to make a difference to bottom line profitability in the next two years, according to a survey conducted by Frank Smithers and Associates.
The research polled 345 members of The Executive Connection (TEC), a national network of chief executive whose member companies range in annual turnover from $3 million to $800 million.
The research revealed that over one third (35 per cent) of the 265 CEOs surveyed had personally used the Internet, with 28 per cent of respondents currently using it.
The results indicate that usage by Australian CEOs is set to increase substantially, with 75 per cent stating that they are likely to be using the Internet over the next 12 months.
The majority of those respondents who stated they have used the Internet use it from home (58 per cent), with 42 per cent using it from work. A fifth of the companies surveyed have a home page on the World Wide Web.
Of the respondents who are using the Internet, 20 per cent indicated that they found the Internet useful for winning new business and 25 per cent expected the Internet to make a difference to their bottom line in terms of overall profitability.
The majority of these respondents, 55 per cent, expect it to make a difference to their bottom line in one or two years and 25 per cent believe this will take effect in two or more years; 13 per cent expect the Internet to make a positive impact on their business within six months.
"Our CEO members have been showing an increased interest in the Internet over the past six months and many of them want to gain knowledge", said Chris Levy, Managing Director of The Executive Connection.
"The results of our research show that many of our CEO's are hoping that it will bring benefits for their businesses.
"I don't believe that the CEOs really know what impact the Internet will have on their business as the technology is still at the early adoption stage".
Of those CEOs who have used the Internet, about 61 per cent have used it for between six and 12 months. One fifth of respondents access the Internet several times a week, 20 per cent access it once a week, 17 per cent every day and 16 per cent less than once a month.
Most used the Net for research (64 per cent) while the next most frequent use of the on-line service was to communicate with other businesses (38 per cent).
Using the Internet as a means to promote the company accounted for about 17 per cent, while 18 per cent used it for reading magazines, 18 per cent to communicate when travelling, and 16 per cent to make social contact.
Other uses include networking for commercial purposes (14 per cent), networking for academic purposes (11 per cent) and games/recreation (13 per cent).
A number of answers were given by respondents as their preferred means of gaining further information on the Internet.
The most likely source (52 per cent) was from work colleagues, friends and family.
Other sources included in-house computer specialists (39 per cent) and on-line service providers (32 per cent), newspapers (25 per cent) and computer magazines (23 per cent).
Nearly all (96 per cent) of CEOs surveyed had access to a personal computer, with about two thirds of respondents using a PC on a daily basis. The majority (79 per cent) of respondents who had access to a PC used an IBM compatible machine, with 54 per cent of respondents using a modem.
Australian CEOs use their PC for a variety of purposes including word processing (76 per cent), spread sheets (66 per cent), correspondence and memos (59 per cent).
Other notable uses of personal computers by CEOs include processing business data (50 per cent), presentation packages (44 per cent) processing personal files and records (40 per cent), faxing information (40 per cent).
Other uses include accessing on-line information services (28 per cent), processing personal financial data (28 per cent), creating graphics (27 per cent), internal electronic mail (25 per cent) and electronic mail/on-line services (20 per cent).
On average, 67 per cent of those surveyed used their PC daily, while 15 per cent used it weekly and 14 per cent less often.
"The research has proven that the Internet has climbed the corporate ladder and is a real issue for Australian CEOs", Levy said.
"The Internet could be a dynamic business tool and we will continue to monitor its acceptance and the impact it is making among CEOs in Australia."