Using Internet Opportunities to Expand Your Business

Managing your business effectively in this emerging high-speed business world depends on how fast you gather, manage and utilise relevant information in your core business area. Even if you have not started your business, relevant information at your fingertips is what you would require to move your business. Do you want to raise capital for your business? What if I show you a way to go about it?

How fast you gather and use feedbacks from your customers in order to improve your product or services, the marketing strategies being employed to deliver your goods and services, inventory management and other business processes, differentiate your business from competition.

Information should continuously flow as fast as possible within your workplace, among your employees and also outside your business for efficiency and effectiveness.

In our financial sector for example, I watch with rapt attention the keen competition going on among the banks. The ones that will be on top will be ones that have fully integrated information technology into every area of their business. The speed at which they get information from the market, disseminate it among their knowledge staff, analyse it and provide an answer to the customers' need will be the distinguishing factor amongst them. This can only be achieved with a robust digital system.

The different departments or sections of your business should have relevant information to aid decision making, on time. For example, the production department of a business should have the right information to act on the quality of goods being produced and how it suits the customers' demand, if such information is not made available in good time, they will not deliver their job effectively and by extension get to the market before their competitors. This reduces efficiency and profitability in that business.

Relevant information about your business can be at your fingertips through the use of digital technology. It helps you get information quickly from many sources and to analyse that information from many perspectives too. This for big as well as small businesses simply means the use of the internet, an email system, a software application and a website.

Managers and owners of businesses should recognise the strategic importance of using these tools.

The internet for example, has made it possible for businesses to share information, have business collaborations and also embrace e-commerce on the world wide space. Indigenous software applications that will help organise your work and ensure that time and energy are not wasted on routine chores, should be employed.

With these tools in hand, businesses will become more effective in their service delivery. They will have the unlimited opportunity to partner with experts all over the world thereby making them much bigger and better. The multiplier effect of using these web tools will be a strong and viral economy for Nigeria.

Let me ask you, in your business, how well have you employed the use of the internet in getting information and marketing your product and services? How are you using technology to improve your business?

To fully incorporate a digital workplace in your business, majority of the paper works should be stored on the computer in retrievable formats; the use of emails and online tools encouraged. Your work place should be 'paperless'.


A Paperless Workplace Makes Your Business Effective

Michael Hammer and James Champy, in the book: Reengineering Your Business said "It is sobering to reflect on the extent to which the structure of our business processes has been dictated by the limitations of the file and folders". A paperless office can be regarded as a workplace where all the paper works are replaced by storing them on computers and on the web. The paper processes are replaced by digital processes with the use of computers, the internet, intranet, softwares and email facilities.

This doesn't mean here that it is the computers that are going to do the thinking for your business, for example, you still need to find answers to what customers think about your product, the problems they want you to solve for them, where the new market is in your business and other vital questions. What the system does for you is that it provides relevant statistics in good time for you to work with and think out the solution to questions you have at hand within a short time.

The idea of a paperless office is necessary to remove the high heap of papers and files which characterises our establishments and businesses. Most times it becomes difficult to find relevant information when needed. Going through the heaps of reports to find marketing information, invoices or sales number to work with becomes cumbersome.

Some of the advantages of having a paperless workplace are that

-It removes delays caused by paperwork

- It reduces the incidence of lost documents either through fire or other means.

-It removes bureaucracy in our offices and business.

-It makes for efficiency in business, relevant data are kept in view for the knowledge workers to work with and thereby concentrating on customer needs, how to solve them, and value added services.

-It will reduce the paper consumption in our businesses.

-Routine processes of a business can be automated with software applications removing wasted time and energy for knowledge workers and this also encourages software development in Nigeria.

-This eliminates administrative bottlenecks in business.

-This helps business to perceive and react to its environment to sense competitive challenges and customer needs and how to provide timely responses to that.

To achieve this for small businesses is simple, have a website for your business, use the internet to access relevant information and opportunity in your area of business, use the email service to disseminate information within and outside your workplace over the intranet and the internet. The intranet is a network designed to organise and share information and also carry out digital business transactions within the company. It has features associated with the internet like the web pages, browsers, email, newsgroups and mailing lists but it is accessible only to those of the organisation.

Encourage your staff to use email services to communicate, reports should be sent to them through the email before a meeting. This will give them the opportunity to analyse data and information before hand and make their contributions during meetings. With this, time being wasted in meetings will also be reduced.

Find opportunities to market your goods and services online (e-commerce), store information in databases and use software to handle routine duties and integrate every data to suit your business.

You don't have to be an expert before you get things right in this perspective, just know what the use of internet and technology generally will do for your business and hire an expert to put them in place for your business advantage.

It is not only businesses that need this; government establishments should also be digitalised so that vital information can be within the reach of businesses and individuals. To show you how important this is in a nation and its growth, Ghana was given an award recently for embracing e-government fully in Africa by the United Nations. We should get this right as soon as possible and improve on the way businesses are being done.
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