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Everyone has now heard about the information superhighway, e-mail, and the World Wide Web. You may be thinking that, possibly, you are missing out on this great new revolution - that somehow, if you knew more about it, you too could be 'coining it in'. In this short article I will try to explain it all in simple terms so that you can make your own decision.
This is probably the least hyped part of the electronic revolution, it is also the easiest to understand and is also probably the most useful. Think of e-mail as a clever fax machine. With a fax you can send and receive pages of information. You can do the same with e-mail but without having to print the pages first. For example: instead of printing out your order to a supplier and then faxing it, all you need to do is click a few buttons on the screen and the message can be e-mailed - not to a public fax machine - but directly to the person who will deal with your order. When you receive an e-mail, rather than having to rekey all the information - it is already on your computer - all you need to do is copy and paste it into any other application such as a report in a word processor. E-mail messages can be forwarded to whoever needs to deal with the message next.
E-Mail can save time and telephone costs
Replacing the fax machine for a lot of business communications is a minor advantage of e-mail. A much more important advantage is that e-mail can be more effective than the telephone for non urgent routine communications. Even a short telephone conversation will take some five minutes - if you are lucky enough to speak to the correct person the first time. Non urgent phone conversations can interrupt and delay work that is more important. How many times have you been in the car on the way home, when you remember that important task, that was not completed because you were side tracked by the ringing of the telephone? How often have you taken a phone message for a colleague and forgotten to pass it on? Even if you never, ever, forget to pass on a message, how often have your messages gone astray or got garbled in the passing. How many times have you had to phone back to clarify an earlier phone message.
A short e-mail message can be composed whenever you want to - you have a written record of your message. The recipient can pick up your message at his convenience, when it will probably also be convenient for him to deal with your request. He cannot forget what you said in your message as it is there on his PC to review.
All e-mail is sent at local telephone rates. How much are you now paying on your international and long distance fax and phone calls? How many of these could be replaced with e-mail?
As with everything else there are drawbacks that need to be considered. If your email address is posted on the web sooner or later you will be on the receiving end of junk email. One of the benefits of email is the ease with which it can be forwarded - this is also a disadvantage as anything you put in an email message may be sent onto many other people without your consent nor your knowledge.
News Groups, Mailing Lists, and Forums
An example is probably the best way to describe a Newsgroup: Suppose you are a breeder of Oranics (a very rare breed of small horses) and you want to discuss the finer points of breeding Oranics with other breeders. You could start a Newsgroup devoted to the breeding of Oranics and invite other interested people to subscribe. Any message posted to the Newsgroup can be read by all subscribers to the Newsgroup. Any one can respond to any message, and the conversation will be seen by all subscribers.
Mailing Lists are similar to Newsgroups, but instead of having to periodically down load the messages, each message posted to the list is then forwarded to all the members of the list. Instead of reading the newsgroups you can subscribe to a mailing list and have the details sent to your mail box.
Also similar to the Newsgroups are the discussion forums hosted by CompuServe and other internet access providers - these are worth a visit. I have found the computer related ones an invaluable resource; ask a question and you will be amazed at the number of experts in the field competing with each other to give you the best answer!
Unfortunately many Newsgroups contain nothing more than gossip and tittle-tattle, also many have been overrun by get rich quick schemes and other unsavoury advertising - if you have children keep them away or keep a close eye on what they are reading.
The Internet and The World Wide Web
Once you have mastered e-mail the next step on the information superhighway is to start surfing the web. This is where things can get very expensive: you will not realise just how much time you have wasted till the telephone bill arrives! I would advise sitting down with a stiff whiskey or two before opening the bill!
Having issued the wealth warning - could surfing the web be useful from a business point of view? The answer, I think, is a qualified yes. There is a lot of useful information out there - the problem is finding it quickly and not getting sidetracked into following some links that seem more interesting at the time, and yes there is quite a lot of pornography out there but (I understand) the pictures are not that good and take a long time to download. If your competitors are on the web then it is worth a visit to their site. There are quite a lot of search engines that may come up with interesting information if you do a search on subjects relating to your own company, try http://www.altavista.digital.com/. A search of news groups may prove interesting try DejaNews at http://www.dejanews.com to see who is saying what about you and your competitors.
Your Own Web Site
'If it wasn't worth it - all the large companies would not be there!'.
The larger companies are there because they can see a possible source of profit and are afraid of missing out on the bonanza. There are many stories of web sites that are making a fortune. These I think should be taken with a pinch of salt. The sites that are probably making money are those selling pictures on a pay by view basis (maybe the quality is better if you pay for it?). Possibly the search engines are making money thru advertising.
But probably the greatest benefit is to existing businesses that use the internet as a tool to improve their existing business.Read the story by Michael Schriner of how MicroVision Computer Products used the internet to make the business grow and become more profitable.
The main reason for most companies being on the internet is to provide information about themselves and their products to the general public and their customers and suppliers. Treat your web site like an entry in the yellow pages - but with the added advantage of being able to answer many of your potential customers and suppliers questions before they need to phone you.
Some companies are using the internet to save costs: If you think about it, if you are answering the telephone and most of the questions are similar then putting the info on the web must be a lot cheaper, on the condition that your target audience has access to the web. Examples that come to mind are train timetables, freight transport (see http://www.ups.com/tracking/tracking.html).
(c) Mike Choroszewski, article created - August1997, reviewed 1998 and 1999. This article may be reproduced free of charge on the condition you link back to this page and let me know how and when it is used. Mike Choroszewski is an independent computer consultant with over twenty years in the computer industry. He has been using e-mail and the internet for the last three years - and can provide the telephone bills to prove it! He would welcome any feedback by e-mail to Mike@amcho.com.
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