Over the past several months, readers of this column have been exposed to many justifications for, and advantages of, creating and maintaining an effective internet strategy for virtually any business of any size. The general focus has been, for the most part, on marketing your business, attracting, serving, and keeping customers; all in the name of increasing revenues. True, an effective internet strategy brings in eager customers from far, and increasingly, near but a study done by a major research firm in the United States a few years ago found that typically it takes 8 dollars in revenues to have the same effect on a company's bottom line as just 1 dollar in cost savings. Although your own numbers may vary slightly, it should be of interest to every business owner who has resources invested in the internet, how that investment can be used to save operating costs as well as bring in more sales. In the early days of computerizing the workplace, there was a lot of buzz about the possibilities of a paperless office; of eliminating the use of postal mail, faxes and all paper based documents in the office environment. Well it didn't exactly happen then, and some would argue with the proliferation of inexpensive desktop printers and copiers, that today we are using more paper than ever before. Why were we not able to achieve or even approach these goals by taking advantage of the computer displays we sit in front of every day? For one thing, company networks were isolated, and complicated to access. It was tedious if not impossible to access information stored on company network from any remote location, and too often even from another department or office in the same building. Well, most of those issues have slowly gone away because the internet has provided the platform to change all that, and a company with a website has the basis to take advantage of a new reality. Savvy businesses have realized this and are enjoying considerable cost savings and efficiencies. What these companies have found is that their websites designed and maintained with good intention to broadly appeal to customers, suppliers, business partners and community, are inhibiting opportunities to provide specific and cost effective utility to each group individually. The content designed to portray who a company is and what they produce, for example, has little value to the employees of that company on a daily basis, yet other information such as policies, procedures, and training considered inappropriate for mass consumption is invaluable to the internal organization. By simply partitioning off an area of your existing website and controlling access via login you can provide the same convenience to your employees that you have worked hard to provide to your customers. Managing convenience to employees translates to efficiency and cost reduction, opening up a whole new world of cost saving opportunities. The concept of an "intranet" is probably older than that of the "internet" itself, but the two are now able to come together in a way that can provide efficiencies previously only dreamed of. Remote offices accessing up-to-date forms, files, procedures, and training materials via their internet connection; Human Resources, Financial Reports, Employee Feedback, Document Management, and Online Training provide just a few examples of internal company operational areas that can be managed more efficiently and effectively using a web-based intranet. Customers can view operations manuals, maintenance tips, account status, and even multimedia training sessions all online. Suppliers can view purchase specifications, design changes, inventory levels, and all can be organized in ways that best serve each individual audience using convenient search and other database tools which streamline posting and access. The resulting efficiencies save considerable costs in administration and productivity loss and the potential platform already exists for all for all of this in the existing website. Whether an Intranet for employees, or an Extranet for those outside your organization, expanding the utility of your website by adding well managed and access controlled areas can allow for a wide variety of cost saving applications and tools. Providing enormous opportunity for better collaboration, coordination and effectiveness of your overall operations and communications will affect your bottom line, and remembering the formula at the beginning of this article, these are dollars worth chasing. |
