Some criticisms are levelled at e-business that are frankly ridiculous. Included amongst them are the following.

"Sensory deprivation"

The criticism here is that people still need to handle the items that are for sale. Examples that are usually given are greeting cards and flowers. It is maintained that people need to pick and open greetings cards and need to see and smell flowers. This just isn't true.

Greetings cards need to be seen and the Internet is a perfect vehicle for viewing them. They can be indexed under the topics that one sees in shops: "Birthday"; "Sister"; "Humorous". Electronically, they can also be arranged under a variety of these topics, so that a viewer could request humorous cards for a sister's birthday. This ability to focus the viewer's choice cannot be accomplished easily in a shop. The "sensory experience" can be more enjoyable.

Flowers that are intended to be delivered by a different florist, who may be in a different country, have been very successfully sold over the Internet. It is appropriate for us here in the southern hemisphere to recall that the northern hemisphere has different seasons, so that flowers that we can send to people in Britain may not be in flower here at that time. Indeed, they may not be generally available in New Zealand at any time. Similarly, people in Britain may be able to send our native flowers to us here although they will not be able to see them in a British florist's shop.

It becomes obvious, after only a little thought, that e-business can enhance the customer's experience through images of products that can be rotated, magnified and even perhaps "walked through" beyond the experience of photographs in printed catalogues.

"Loss of community"

It has been maintained that electronic communication does not bring all the qualities of direct face-to-face communication. This is another error. Communication with strangers has the same qualities whether it is conducted through ICQ or at a cocktail party: it is banal; it keeps to a simple programme of what people do to make money, what the weather is like, what was on television and how many children people have. Firm, long term friends often communicate face-to-face with a shorthand that can be replicated equally well in written letters or electronic mail.

It is simplistic to blame electronic communication for a loss of community. First, a definition is needed of "community". Can a street of suburban houses, where people only communicate when they are out in their gardens, really be regarded as a community? Is a shopping mall a community? This should be an issue that we are fully aware of in New Zealand, where the Maori communities, established in independent whanau, were eroded. Today, some Maori leaders are trying to think through how they could revive those communities to retain their culture without destroying their people through poverty and ill-health.

Even if we can reach an effective definition of "community", we shall then need to determine whether electronic communication has had an impact on a community and the degree to which the results of that impact are attributable to it. By this, I mean that a single cause may have an impact that causes an effect, without the effect being brought about solely - or even principally - by that cause. If a ship is unseaworthy and sinks during a storm, then the storm will have contributed to the loss of the ship but the principal cause will be the ship's condition.

This is an issue on which managements - and their consultants - need a clear vision that has not been obscured by unrelated or non-existent issues.

"Individual alienation"

It has also been argued that moving towards shopping and conducting financial transactions over the Internet will reduce people's opportunities to interact personally with other people. It is a hard argument to justify, in view of the attitudes exhibited by some customers and some sales staff. Electronic communication avoids the queues, rudeness, inaccuracy of information and inability to handle a full range of transactions that are often exhibited in personal interactions.

It is sometimes stated, in favour of person-to-person communication that "interactive is not interpersonal". Quite what the logic of this statement is, apart from "one thing is not another thing" is not clear. What is clear is that some "interpersonal" transactions may be less user-friendly and less satisfactory than some "interactive" ones. When I move money from one bank account to another through a bank web site, I am given a reference number for the transaction that I can record in case something goes wrong. When I do the same thing over the counter at a bank branch, I am given nothing. When I use an ATM to discover my current balance, it is done more discreetly and with less need to prove who I am than when I try to do the same thing over a bank's counter. We should be more concerned about whether a transaction is effective and verifiable than with whether people are smiling at us and making small talk.

I have also seen it stated, in a publication that should know better, that "the only outcome we can guarantee from the connected world is the ability to live in enhanced isolation". Given a society based upon families, this is arrant nonsense. Anyone who believes that they become less isolated because they talk to people in shops, in pubs, or anywhere outside their home is placing too much significance on trivial interaction between people in these situations.

Management, and especially their consultants, need to understand the true nature - and the true significance - of transactions between people and how a transition to electronic transactions will really affect the relationships between their organization and its customers and suppliers. Technology, used properly, represents a powerful medium for improving an organization's relations with both these groups. Of course, we should ensure that we do not adopt something like the terrible voice-mail systems of the 1980s, where callers found it impossible to speak with a real person and could be led in a loop of button-pressing in their attempts to get answers to their questions. At the same time, we should evaluate any new technology with a view to discovering whether it will be valuable to us rather than with a prejudice against it because it is new.

If our new technologies are aimed solely at meeting the needs of customers who know what they're looking for, we shall be missing one of the vital ways of differentiating ourselves competitively. Changes in markets, in our customers' perceptions of our products and services, and in our competitive position can be reflected quickly and effectively in our electronic "shop-windows". There are now strong arguments that sustainable brand loyalty can be built through electronic transactions even more effectively than through personal transactions. Systems' ability to record and recall an individual customer's preferences can be presented smoothly and immediately to that customer, so they feel welcomed as someone of value.

Business strategies need to be partly driven by technology. It is not sufficient for any organization to develop its business strategy and then to look for technological "enablers". The organization must allow its strategy to be reshaped by the technologies that are available. The days of organizations looking for a way of computerizing their manual functions have gone; they need now to be looking at ways of incorporating the new processes and outcomes that new technologies can provide.