|
E-Business
Cost-Effective
IT: E-Business, by Richard Sonnier
Houston
Business Show "Advisor" Richard Sonnier, of the Information
Technology Services firm Nimble Services, Inc., provides weekly
information on our show about business technology issues. He can be
reached at 281-445-4800 x250 or rsonnier@nimbleservices.com.
This week I will
discuss E-Business.
Billions for E-Business
Since Google, the Internet search company went public last week raising
$1.67 billion, it looks like the Internet business cycle is turning
back up. Can your business become the next big E-Business? Absolutely,
the giants of the Internet who raised billions in capital like Google,
Yahoo, and Amazon really focus on two core values:
There is no reason why you cannot do the same.
Time Drought
If you save people time, your E-Business will be a winner. We live in a
time drought. With Internet technologies you can save your customers
time in many ways. Some examples are:
- Make information available online at their fingertips. Bring the
information to the customer instead of forcing the customer to come to
the information.
- Index information so the customers can find what they want faster.
- Provide more information about products and services than
traditionally available. The Internet makes the cost of providing more
information very small.
- Integrate information by pulling together different information
into one easy-to-use source.
- Update information so that it is always fresh and current.
Printed information is old the moment it hits the paper.
Quality Brand
Your E-Business has to deliver outstanding quality and service since
you have much less, perhaps no, direct person-to-person contact with
the customer. While you are saving them all this time, you have to
constantly assure them that everything is working smoothly. You have to
build your brand with these customers so that they come back to your
E-Business. Amazon does a really good job in this area. When you buy a
book from Amazon, they provide lots of information about the product
and every step of the purchase and delivery. They take good care of
you, and you rarely need to call them on the phone. This is where most
E-Businesses fail. Instead of building a brand, most E-Businesses
compete only on price, not quality.
Recipe for the Your E-Business
If you want to be the next Google, you should:
- Pick some business you know.
- Analyze how a customer uses that business especially how the
customer's time is managed.
- Determine how to save customer's time.
- Convert that time savings into dollars.
- Raise some capital to start the business.
- Implement and execute your plan.
Next week, I will discuss IT
for marketing your business.
|
Home
• Services
• Case
Studies
• Whitepapers
• Forum