How to Use This Guide
Electronic commerce is changing the face of business and all business people should be thinking about the implications.
The guide is designed to give you enough basic information to start assessing the opportunities open to your business. It will:
- give you some understanding of how the Internet may affect your business
- offer an insight into how other small New Zealand businesses are taking advantage of e-commerce
- provide some practical advice on how to get started, and
- alert you to some of the pitfalls and issues to be addressed.
In writing the guide, we have kept the needs of beginners in mind as well as those with more experience. Beginners will benefit from reading the whole book from beginning to end. The more experienced may prefer to use it as a reference book, and to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
The guide is divided into three parts.
Part 1 explains what e-commerce is and the changes it is likely to make to the way we do business, and looks at the changes driving the rapid growth in e-commerce.
Part 2 looks at the experiences of a few New Zealand businesses that have taken the plunge, and are now successfully using e-commerce and the Internet as important business tools.
Part 3 provides some practical guidance and advice. It outlines some of the issues you need to think about.
We have assumed that you already know what the Internet is, and that you know about e-mail and the World Wide Web. But if you need more information on these topics, there is a brief explanation at the back of the Guide. There you will also find a list of places to go for more help. There is also a Glossary to de-mystify the jargon, so you'll feel more confident when you deal with suppliers of specialist services.
Although we can't tell you how to run your business, or what changes you should make, at the very least we hope that this guide will stimulate your thinking, and help you begin the task of navigating through the changes, avoiding the pitfalls, and maximising the benefits.
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