The Smart Executive's Guide to Internet Trends
Published in The Forum, 2001
You see it everywhere: doomsday reports of the downturn in the Internet economy, the death of dot-com after dot-com. When the Internet was at the height of its hype, you probably felt like your business was being left behind. Now, you are glad that you didn't drop everything to pursue the Internet gold rush.
No matter how deeply you dove into the dot-com excitement, the question remains: How does the Internet industry impact the way you do business? Is Internet technology all hot air? Was it just a fad that came and went, and now you continue business as usual? If you invested heavily in technology, will the Internet downturn bring you down with it?
Not necessarily! The pendulum of excitement over Internet promise swung higher and faster than anyone anticipated, and now it is swinging low just as quickly. Like all pendulums, it will reach a balance between excitement and disappointment as time goes on. What every company must understand is that the world of business has been irrevocably changed by the arrival of Internet technology. Now is the time to set aside the rose-colored hype and look at how the new tools can legitimately enhance your business. Internet technology can:
- Increase the scope and reach of your marketing efforts
- Raise the level and reliability of your customer service
- Apply cost-saving technologies throughout your company
- Utilize new channels and efficiencies of communication
These positive impacts are real, when applied with expertise and common business sense. While not a "cure for all ills" or a quick fix for a bad business model, there are many opportunities for a business to profit from Internet technology. To avoid most negative impact of the "great Internet shakeout", follow a few common sense rules when pursuing Internet technologies.
1. Be wary of depending too much of your company's success on the success or existence of a purely dot-com business. Instead, build relationships with well-established companies who are utilizing the Internet in ways that help your business. While completely Internet-based business models that work will eventually be developed, it may take decades to work out the bugs. The most successful of businesses now are those that see how the Internet can extend their existing strengths and direction, and how it can mitigate their costs.
2. Balance your Internet/information technology investment with the returns you might realistically get. Some myths about e-commerce and the marvels of the Internet include:
- "Build it, and they will come!" Just because you have a
website doesn't mean it is useful to your customers or potential customers.
Take the time to discover what they really need from your business that
you can provide via the Internet.
- "Once you have e-commerce ability on your website, you will
reach millions more customers!" Not necessarily -- you might be
better served by using the Internet to increase the loyalty of your
existing customers.
- "It costs too much to do anything useful with the Internet" or "It won't cost anything, and the return is huge!" The truth is somewhere in between, depending on your business and needs. Be prudent about spending too much or too little. You get what you pay for -- but only up to a certain point, and beyond that you're spending too much.
3. Improve your business processes with automation or new technology in small steps, evaluating each step forward for the results it brought in terms of return on investment. When you see a return on a given step, take another. If a step results in a drain on your resources, try something else. Like any new development in your business, there is risk -- but you can lessen the risk with careful planning and agile exploration of new ideas.
4. Seek out others who are succeeding in integrating the new technologies into their brick-and-mortar businesses, and follow their example. Use industry magazines (CIO, Harvard Business Review, Red Herring) to gather information about what is working and what isn't for other companies like your own.
5. Don't run from it. Change is all around us. Business will never be the same. Accept that new demands will continue to arrive and strive to change your business model to include more flexibility for trying new technologies. Invest in educating yourself and your key executives on the art of change management and constant company transformation. Those are the skills of future business survival: learning to analyze and react positively to a constantly changing environment.
Apply these tidbits of technology wisdom, and your company will not only survive the great Internet shakeout -- it will thrive in the brave new world of business.