eOneNet offers to help SMIs go online

The Star, September 22, 2000

eOneNet.com Sdn Bhd, which is organising an e-business ownership campaign for small and medium-sized industries (SMIs), will sponsor websites for 500 SMIs to encouraged them to get online.

The e-business ownership campaign, which is the first held in Malaysia to encouraged local businesses to go online, is jointly organised with the SMI Associations of Malaysia and the National SMI consultative centre.

eOneNet.com is an e-local business portal specialising in helping small businesses get online with its non-technical and user-friendly Web Creator 2000. eOneNet.com president and chief executive officer Fione Tan May Yee said going online was still an added channel for doing business and it still needed to have a physical source and certain services.

"The Internet is one of the appliances to do business and go to the global market with minimum cost," Tan told a press conference after the launch of the e-business ownership campaign, eOneNet.com websites and WizOffice.com website yesterday. Tan said the Internet was not only for the big player but small businesses could also make it big if they did not commit the deadly sins of websites.

According to Tan, the 10 deadly sins include over-spending on web development, over spending on advertising and promotion, web projects led by technical people, lack of valuable content, high burning rate, poor customer service, low credibility, poor web design/copy writing and no/poor promotion. "The e-business campaign kicked off with an e- business conference and more tan 200 participants, mostly SMIs, attendant," tan said, adding that survey showed that mere 2% of the participants had their business online.

The e-business conference which started on Wednesday and ended yesterday, had a total of 17 speakers, comprising mostly chief executive officers and directors of top websites in Malaysia and Singapore who shared their experience in starting and promoting a websites successfully.

According to Tan, similar e-business conferences will be held in Penang by the end of next month, followed by Johor Baru and Kuching.

SMI Association of Malaysia president Looi Teong Chye said some SMIS had difficulty in retrieving e-mail and were not comfortable with the Internet, so the e business campaign was to boost the level of its usage and doing business online.

Apart from the e-business campaign, the three organisers are planning an Internet campaign for the SMIs, which will be launched early next month.