"E-commerce for small businesses" paper frame

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Bibliographics

Grant, S. (1999) E-commerce for small businesses . In: Leng et al. (eds) Innovation Through Electronic Commerce, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference (IeC'99) Manchester, England. November 1 - 3, pp. 65-72. ISBN 0 9537238 0 1

Authorship

Simon Grant
Connect,
University of Liverpool.
(now independent).

Abstract

A large and increasingly important motivation for small businesses is to collaborate with other companies either as business partners, outsourcing providers or in virtual businesses. However, they are often unaware of the potential of electronic commerce, and have unanalysed business systems. Five stages of electronic commerce maturity are distinguished: immaturity; on the Internet; strategy decided; ready to implement; and integrated. To use Internet technology successfully in commerce, the business processes involved must be understood and documented. For this, a new kind of systems analysis is needed, focusing on mutually acceptable information flows across the boundaries of the small business.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. The current situation of small businesses in e-commerce

• Types of business
• Gaps in small business awareness of electronic commerce
• Lack of current systems analysis in micro-businesses

3. Stages of maturity in e-commerce

• Proposed stages
• Comparison with other maturity models

4. New approaches to systems analysis and e-commerce support

• Readying a small business for e-commerce
• Systems analysis techniques
• Suggested systems analysis methodology for small businesses
• Requirements of the Internet systems analyst and designer

5. Conclusions

References

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C. Charlton, C. Gittings, P. Leng, J. Little, & I. Neilson (1996)

"Connect: A University Initiative to Support the Exploitation of Internet Related Technologies by Small Businesses". In: Proc 41st ICSB World Conference, Stockholm, pp. 249-269.

C. C. Charlton, S. Grant, P. H. Leng, & I. E. Neilson (1998)

"Promotion of Electronic Commerce by a Regional Centre". Electronic Markets 8 (2). http://www.electronicmarkets.org/netacademy/publications.nsf/all_pk/958

J. Crinnion (1991)

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C. Huemer (1999)

"Modeling Inter-Organizational Systems with UML". In: Global Networked Organizations: 12th International Bled Electronic Commerce Conference, Bled, Slovenia, June 7-9, pp. 566-580.

T. W. Olle et al. (1991)

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S. Poon & J. Strom (1997)

"Small Businesses' Use of the Internet: Some Realities". In: The Internet: The Global Frontier, The Seventh Annual Conference of the Internet Society (INET 97), Kuala Lumpur, June 24-27. http://info.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/C2/C2_1.HTM

E. Schwartz (1997)

"Webonomics". Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.

D. Whiteley (1998)

"EDI Maturity: A Business Opportunity". In: C. Romm & F. Sudweeks (eds.) Doing Business Electronically. Springer-Verlag, London.

D. Whiteley (1999)

"Internet Commerce - Hot Cakes and Dead Ducks". In: C. Romm & F. Sudweeks (eds.) Doing Business on the Internet. Springer-Verlag, London.

Endnote

This paper has been accepted for the IEC'99 conference.

The author would be happy to collaborate in developing appropriate methodology, tools and techniques.