Why business should be investing in information technology

Excerpt of Report by Jeanne-Vida Douglas. BRW Magazine

Technologies once limited to only the biggest budgets are now affordable for businesses of any scale. Here are five of the most rewarding. 

Information technology has been the biggest driver of productivity since mechanisation took over from manual and animal labour at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Research from Finland suggests that access to simple data storage and processing computing facilities will increase the productivity of an average worked by 9 per cent a year; access to the internet will boost it by 14 per cent; mobile computing will increase worker productivity by 32 per cent.

Nonetheless, small businesses, which stand to gain the most from investing in It services, are often the most reticent to take advantage of the opportunities technology provides.

Unlike their larger counterparts, SMEs are often founded and run by specialists. The real estate agent, the carpenter and the distributor all know their trades, but don’t necessarily have the time to investigate emerging technologies or sit down to create a strategy for how a certain piece of software or hardware might make their businesses run more efficiently.

Those who take the time to investigate and invest in IT, however, often establish for themselves a substantial advantage over their competitors, and ultimately enable themselves to exploit the access to resources, staff and range of customers that would otherwise be out of their reach.

WEB MARKETING

Although 80 per cent of small businesses in Australia use the internet, and almost 43 per cent go online to place orders or buy products and services, fewer than 25 per cent of these businesses actually extend such a service to their own customers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports.

Having grown accustomed to static $500 websites, many smaller companies balk at the cost of creating a more dynamic and effective web presence, and as a result are losing potential customers.

“It’s hard when you’re a small business – especially in the trades – where you know that spending $20,000 on your machinery or tools will increase your productivity, but you don’t really understand how investing that money in your website will boost your business,” business manager for the Melbourne head quartered construction company 4Walls, Kelly Savvides, says.

Nonetheless, by integrating search engine optimisation technology into the company’s website, 4Walls was able to respond in a more targeted way to web-based searches. And as a result, it could win more work.

“There is no point in having an aesthetically pleasing web site that no one can find,” Savvides says. “We only need to win one contract as a result of being easier to find on the web and we cover the extra cost of making it more functional.”

With 80 staff scattered across Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, removalists King & Wilson decided to make a substantial investment in the technology underpinning its company website in 2004, to offer customers the opportunity to get quotes and customer service over the internet.

Using technology from Melbourne web software specialists bwired, the company paid off the extra cost within a month due to increased sales.

“Investing in the internet totally changed the way we advertised. We pulled out of the Yellow Pages in Sydney and Melbourne because the internet was generating enough work,” managing director Andrew Wilson says. “At first we thought about the internet in terms of look and branding, but we found out more about how people look for information on the web and now we just keep tweaking the site and get more business as a result.”