Building Business Systems for Fun & Profit

Since it's very much a focus in the media and the business community at the moment, I wrote up a few ideas on how your I.T. strategy can help your small/medium business to survive and thrive during an economic slowdown.

Have a read and let me know what you think.

A friend called today, asking me to recommend a PC/Windows consultant who could do a simple network setup job in her office.

She figured that since I am immersed in the small business I.T. industry, surely I could help her avoid the unreliable or downright dodgy consultants and find someone who would show up on time, do the job right the first time and charge a reasonable price.

I couldn't do it!

Yes, we have come across a lot of PC consultants over the years, but there are absolutely none that I could recommend.

Every time I thought of someone, I realised I would have to qualify my comments about them: "Well, you could call so and so, but.....". All I wanted was a consultant that I could recommend without any 'buts', and I couldn't come up with a single one!

How embarrassing is that? And what a sad indictment of our industry - a truly dismal result!

Unfortunately that's the same thing I hear again and again from small business owners - virtually no one is happy with their PC consultants. I.T. on Tap has acquired a lot of new customers who were keen to see the back of their consultant and happy to get that whole raft of problems off their shoulders.

I can't think of too many industries that have survived and continued with such dreadful customer satisfaction levels. The reason is simply that it's been an essential service with no alternatives available - until now.

Let me ask you something: when you're dealing with someone in a business context and you notice they have an email address like joe.bloggs@yahoo.com or party-dude@hotmail.com, then what sort of assumptions do you make as a result?

Lately I've been noticing the number of people I communicate with who are still using a free email account or an email address from their ISP. I can't help but form some preconceived ideas about them as a result, and surely I'm not the only one?

I mean: come on! It's 2008 already, if you haven't even registered a domain for your business then I'd question just how serious you are? You can register a domain for only $7 to $40 per year, and a reasonable hosted email account can be had from only $10 a month.

Of course, without a domain you can't have a website either - even the most basic 1-page brochureware website...

So if you won't even make the modest investment of time & money to present your (Internet) self in a reasonable light by branding your communications with your own Internet domain, then how can you justify asking for my business?

No more excuses! You wouldn't have launched your business without at least a phone number for customers to call you and a postal address for them to send the cheques to. So you shouldn't be trying to do business in the 21st century without at least a basic Internet presence and that means a domain, an email account that uses it and a website. Hop to it!