Case Studies

Case Study 1 | Case Study 2 | Case Study 3 | Case Study 4 | Case Study 5 | Case Study 6 |

Case study no 1:
Alpine Adventure Path Project

http://www.maffra.net.au/alpine1.htm For the business development pages

http://www.maffra.net.au/alpine For the tourist pages

The Alpine Adventure Path Project involves businesses with an interest in servicing tourists located in the Alpine region in Gippsland.

The group have developed a 10-year strategy plan to increase tourist numbers into the area and ultimately create employment for people living in the area.

This is not the first Strategic Plan that has been developed for the area. The concept had been tackled before and had resulted in a number of strategy plan documents that had not resulted in any practical implementation.

Travel, time and loss of income are the main deterrents in expecting businesses to be actively involved in the development and implementation of outcomes. This can be a long term process with adverse impact on small business, particularly when meetings occur in locations that are up to 6 hours drive.

Technology offered a means by which stakeholders could participate in the formulation of a strategy plan, and more importantly remain involved throughout the relevant implementation stages. Bill Jackson, Manager of the Maffra Telecentre contacted stakeholders and invited them to collaborate ideas and develop a practical strategy that would result in remote communities utilising the alpine asset for "jobs creation through travel and tourism". He organised an email list, provided by the Gippsland Community Network and took on the role of facilitator of this discussion forum and the greater project.

Participation in the discussion conducted via email was significant. The forum ran for two months and culminated in a public meeting held at Glenmaggie in late April. The issues addressed by the forum included visitor numbers, ability of the parks to support large numbers, customer service, ability of communities to provide required level of service, investment capital, and employment growth, or the potential to generate significant growth in employment in the area.

Issues that arose from the discussion were published on a web-site as priority activities to pursue, allowing participants to endorse or challenge them. The final strategy plan was published on the web site for easy reference for all involved.

A number of activities or projects identified in the strategy plan have since been implemented. The people making use of the technology and participating in discussion and organisation of project activities varies depending on the stage of the project. During the implementation of specific projects only the individuals/tourism operators that stand to benefit directly from the outcome will be involved in the email discussion, which on average is about 20% of the total number of stakeholders.

The most recent outcome was an exercise to assess the potential of the Back Packer market conducted in the Ensay/Swifts-Creek Omeo area in November last year. This involved defining, organising and delivering a 3 day package for Back Packers to sample the area.

A wide cross section of the community were involved; accommodation, transport, food outlets, sporting club, farming sector and a local school collaborated to provide an array of services and activities, and developed an itinerary to appeal to the Back Packer market. This was conducted via email requiring only one visit by the facilitator to the region for an initial meeting to explain the working of the electronic network.

Key Points

• The role of technology in supporting this sustainable industry cluster has been significant, though not the sole reason for its success.
• The email discussion list and web-site has enabled the group to meet regularly in a virtual environment to develop ideas, organise activities and work collaboratively.
• Individuals experience immediate benefit by accessing critical content and in turn, make valuable contribution, which increases the value of the technology.
• The role of the facilitator in driving the development and implementation of the strategic plan has been very important.
• The project has been successful because the goal of the project is highly relevant to all who participate in it. Everyone involved stands to benefit in the long term

Case study no 2:
Pine Rivers Tourism Association

www.brisbanehinterland.com.au

Pine Rivers Tourism Association is a local tourist association, which services the Pine Rivers and Brisbane Hinterland areas to the north and west of Brisbane. The association currently has about 40 members. These include small and large businesses in tourism, hospitality and many related industries.

For the Pine Rivers Tourism Association, it makes sense to have one web-site for the region where tourists can find out about the local scenery, events, places to visit and things to do.

This means that individual tourism operators don’t have to spend time and effort preparing web pages and keeping them up to date, and information is not duplicated. Instead, the members of the association have contributed equally for a web site to be professionally built and maintained to detail information and maps of the region, business listings for members and links to individual web pages of tourism operators that have them. Each member has paid $100 for this site to be built and maintained for a year. $100 is a lot more manageable than $500+ this is one immediate benefit the group experienced.

Having one web site that links to individual operators’ sites, that is maintained and registered with search engines has created a stronger and more attractive array of services as well as increasing chances of "being found" on the web by potential customers.

The members of the association also have a list server to allow easy transmittal of email messages to the group. This technology makes it easier for the group to organise collaborative marketing events. Last year the group had a stand at the Brisbane Holiday Expo. The list was used to organise the roster for people to man the stand, get sponsors, remind people what progress had been made and ask for prizes and displays. Before the list-server, it tended to be only people who went to the association meeting or happened to speak to the right person at the right time who found out what was happening.

The Centre for Electronic Commerce conducted a survey on 25% of the members.

The most common (unprompted) response when asked what the benefits of being are member are, both prior and since the introduction of the technology, was networking followed by sharing information and ideas. They all claim to refer cliental to other members of the association.

Other benefits stated included:

• contact with people with hospitatility experience
• being able to talk about mutual problems,
• joint promotions & participation at trade shows, increased exposure
• encouraging a local tourism association to speak with one voice
• proactivity
• being informed
• access to tourists

Case study no 3:
GreenNet

www.greennet.com.au

GreenNet is an online service for the horticultural industry for buyers looking for stock and for suppliers (or growers of plants and trees) listing stock.

The suppliers pay to have a listing on Green Net. The suppliers are GreenNet’s customers. Buyers search the databases of Green Net looking for stock, then they contact the suppliers to make sales.

Approximately eighty suppliers currently list stock on the site and up to 500 buyers are using it on a regular basis, from all over Australia.

GreenNet is a small organisation, operating with limited finance. E-mail is a cheap, immediate and efficient tool to target market potential customers, and therefore used extensively. It has also been effective; as the number of growers paying for a listing on the GreenNet site continues to grow.

GreenNet, have sourced the e-mail addresses of every known tree and plant grower/supplier (or potential customer) in Australia.

When a buyer is wanting an item that is not listed in GreenNet by any suppliers, GreenNet send an e-mail to all of the known tree growers, notifying them that a buyer is wanting to purchase this item. The grower then contacts Green Net and is put in touch with the buyer. This has proved to be an extremely successful way of marketing the value of paying to list stock with Green Net. After a while suppliers can see that Green Net has access to a lot of buyers, and contact Green Net to pay for a listing.

The GreenNet web site allows online ordering, although only a few have been put through. GreenNet estimate about 5% of sales that have resulted from buyers finding stock on the site, are conducted via the online ordering facility.

It is difficult for GreenNet to demonstrate to suppliers whether any sales have resulted from their listing. A sale usually takes place following discussion and negotiation with the supplier as so many variables are involved such as availability, quality and condition of the plant, the variety, what sort of climate it will grow in, what sort of insecticide it has been sprayed for etc.

However, a lot of buyers use the site regularly. They like the anonymity aspect – being able to browse without buying. GreenNet are looking at introducing a permission-based function where buyers can nominate whether their details can be passed on to a supplier after browsing what stock they have available. This may help to demonstrate to the supplier whether sales are due to their listing on GreenNet.

Case study no 4:
Birchip Cropping Group

www.bcg.org.au

The Birchip Cropping Group (BCG), located in the Wimmera-Mallee region, Victoria is a community-based, non-profit agricultural organisation run by farmers, for farmers. BCG conducts agronomic research on cereal, pulse and oilseed crops grown in the region. Their mission is to "improve profitability and long term viability of Mallee and Wimmera communities through research, demonstration and exchange of ideas amongst farmers and industry groups".

The Group operates on the premise that if rural communities are to survive, they need to attract industry, government and educational institutions to their region. Its success is far exceeding initial expectations. In 1993, about 10 local farmers established a group to conduct farmer-driven agronomic research specific to the area. The result has been a rapid growth in membership to 500 across four states. The Group employs six staff and has an annual turnover of almost $700,000.

Most of the members’ benefits involve physical interaction.

A web site has been built to support existing business and related activities of the group. Some of the applications are still in development.

The results of all experiments conducted on crops are published in a password restricted section of the web-site which keeps all members informed and learn from the experiences.

The Group make use of an e-mail to fax gateway to distribute regular bulletins to share information on weather forecasting, results of cropping trials and other activities and events undertaken by members of the group. This allows the members who don’t have Internet connection to also receive the information.

The Group is implementing a pilot for supplying barley to dairy farmers. Farmers are expected to enter data via website. Basically this is a sales exercise to consolidate one product to sell to one customer.

Case study no 5:
Grower Direct

www.growerdirect.com.au

Grower Direct is a project in development/pilot user phase, this is not a regionally based cluster, but a vertical food industry cluster on a National level, which aims to link food producers to the international export market.

The Grower Direct target market is the world's top 100 supermarket chains and their category managers.

E-commerce will play a significant role in the project - A system (currently under development) will allow registered members who are food growers to enter information about their available produce and forecast their supply.

Produce specialists will then be able to access this information and negotiate trades with large international buyers.

The pilot involves a select group of growers, many of which have only ever sold their produce on their own and are not sure about working with other growers, who may be their competitors in the domestic market. However export is a different ball game – the real competition is produce from other countries.

Case study no 6:
Adacel Technologies

Adacel Technologies Limited last year opened a regional software engineering centre at Wodonga in North East Victoria.

The centre has trained young people to be software engineers.

The staff are now providing programming services for Silicon Valley based companies and major Australian corporations. The Internet enables them to send their product to the U.S. It is a fast, efficient and low cost way to deliver to the client. Work-in-progress and completed code can be emailed as an attachment to the client in the U.S.

As a result of demand from clients outside the region, the Wodonga region has potential to grow a culture of experienced IT professionals to meet this demand. In time this may classify as a regionally based IT cluster.