Internet access: Hinder me no longer [opinion]

So what went wrong? Why didn’t the Internet give your small business the edge it needed to obliterate the opposition and become a large business? Well, for the few who jumped in early ¬– and got it right – that’s exactly what happened.

For the rest of us in small business-land who didn’t call our company Google, the Internet just became another place we had to conduct business, like it or not, or get left behind. Some of never bothered, doing quite nicely with the local shopfront. Most of us tried to varying degrees to get the Internet to work for us instead of against us. And therein lies the problem. We mostly regarded the Internet as another way to do business. What we should have done was chosen the Internet as the only way to do business.

That doesn’t mean closing the shopfront and going exclusively online. What it means is doing what we do once and only once and doing it right. It means having all your brochures and sales material and pricelists on the Internet and not having them in ten other places. It means your customers can get the information they need and so can your sales staff and they are all looking at the same page. Sure you’ve got your buy prices somewhere else but that’s about the only thing you should be hiding.

Service and support documents should all be online and only online. Every customer who finds the answer to their own question without calling you is money saved and a happy customer. Of course you have your phone number there for those who want their hands held. Goes without saying. But when your holding their hands you should be reading from the support area of your own website. And think hw much faster the new staff will catch on if they can just spend the day reading your website. The keen ones will probably do that before the job interview.

If you can get your order entry and invoicing online as well then you’ll be on the way to far greater efficiency. Lots of ordinary SME packages like QuickBooks and MYOB support online access by your staff and customers in the latest versions. And they can also make it easy for you to sell to online customers. They’re the people you’d never have met before the Internet. So yes, the Internet can be a right royal pain but since you can’t avoid it, why not exploit it and make it the centre of your business model. Couldn’t be any worse than the muddle you’re in now.