Little guys helped on to net

The infrastructure is in place. After millions of dollars of Government subsidy, and a small dose of competition, about 93 per cent of New Zealand households can now access Telecom's Jetstream DSL (digital subscriber line) internet service, or the fibre, wire and wireless offering of its competitors.

Now e-regions, a grouping of the regional representatives who worked with the Government on the Project Probe regional internet roll-out, wants to get that infrastructure working.

It has pulled together a number of players including Telecom, NZ Post and Dunedin e-commerce software developer e-Media to drive adoption of internet commerce by small exporters.

Cabinet has put up a substantial sum to seed the initiative, according to e-regions executive director Judith Speight.

Tagged Comet Launchpad, the initial plan is to give 2000 small and medium enterprises e-Media's Marketeer web store software, along with three months of free hosting and three months of Jetstream. To qualify, firms must sign up for 12 months of Jetstream.

Northland, Manukau City, Taranaki, Wairarapa, Wellington, Canterbury, the West Coast and Southland will be targeted first.

Participants will also get a discount on Palmerston North-based polytechnic United College of Learning's applied e-commerce certificate, a web-based course covering such basics as e-commerce design and marketing, business systems analysis and industry analysis.

Comet (Central online management and export trade) sponsors say Launchpad is not a free trial for businesses to assess e-commerce software. Even with the best tools, online success requires a commitment of time and input from you, the site at getcomet.biz says.

Speight says that after Probe, the regional committees wanted to continue collaborating to ensure the benefits flowed through.

"We realised we could get involved in market making, looking at regional needs and creating mechanisms for commercial investment," Speight says.

Comet is just the first initiative. E-regions is looking at 21 projects covering health issues, collaboration, information and communications technology training, export links, weather forecasting, tourism, agriculture management software and upskilling prisoners.

Speight says e-Media was selected as the tool for Comet after extensive evaluation, and its origins in Dunedin probably counted in its favour.

"We were looking for representation from organisations from regions which were more remote," she says. "People challenged by distance often come up with innovative solutions."

"This exercise is not about the pieces of the chain but the passion of individuals who want to do business anywhere and any way."

e-Media chief executive Carl McNeil says e-Media was offering a set of tools rather than an e-commerce portal, a business model which has failed more often than it has succeeded.

"We have been doing this for almost five years. We have solid and successful platforms with more than 100 customers transacting online," McNeil says.

Sites range from simple brochureware and catalogues to major transactions.

"We take a crawl, walk, run approach. A customer may start with brochureware, then learn to understand content management, putting up catalogues and product descriptions, then putting in systems to deal with inquiries and some way to transact business.

E-media has three related products: the Marketeer e-commerce system, a content management tool it has developed called Viatx, and Harmony, a document sharing and collaboration tool.

McNeil says Viatx was an acquisition e-Media has done further development on to make it stronger and integrate it with other products.

"Marketeer is 100 per cent our baby from the ground up. There are plenty of e-commerce products, but I doubt anything comes close.

"The interface and features were driven by requests from small businesses, rather than being something we built and tried to impose on them."

McNeil says existing Marketeer customers average about $3400 in monthly sales, with about 80 per cent of revenue coming from overseas.

"That is incremental revenue, so we have small businesses adding $3000 a month to turnover.

"If New Zealand as a whole can get 10,000 small and medium enterprises online adding to their turnover, that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the country.

"Even if we get 1 per cent of the 273,000 small and medium firms, that will make a huge impact."

McNeil says Marketeer is integrated to the Australian and New Zealand banking systems, whereas many of its competitors have a North American focus. It is also agnostic about which internet service provider customers want to use.

Bruce Parkes, Telecom's general manager of government and business relations, says Comet fits with where Telecom sees the country moving after Probe.

Now widespread broadband coverage has been achieved, the focus is on uptake.

"In the business market, that means focusing on how to use broadband to help small business become large business through increased productivity or sales, particularly though exporting," Parkes says.

He says Telecom's current pricing for internet access isn't seen as a barrier to customers, despite recent claims by Australian analyst Paul Budde that outrageous pricing is slowing the uptake of broadband and mobile data applications.

"A lot of what this initiative is about is demonstrating value to business. We want to get a set of ingredients that work to the market."

Parkes says Telecom is seeing an explosion in demand for broadband in the residential market, and wants to get the right mix of ingredients for the business market.

"It might take a few gos to get the mix right."