Small office, home office : Netting a tool that will become vital

Like it or not you cannot ignore the Internet.

The Internet is a worldwide network of linked computers that youcan explore for free. To access the Internet you pay an Internetservice provider (ISP) around pounds 10 to pounds 15 per month andafter that everything else is free. Some companies that provideextra services add a time-based usage charge on top of the basicconnection fee. For the busy professional most would agree theInternet is an invaluable source of information and communications.

The two most important components of the Internet are electronicmail, known as e-mail, and the World Wide Web. E-mail lets youcommunicate with people all over the world almost instantly but itis probably most useful in dealing with people that you have strongbusiness relationships with.A useful feature of e-mail is that you can reply to a mail sentto you with just a single click and so you can set up a veryefficient dialogue. But e-mail can be very impersonal andmisunderstandings can easily arise. So for personal contacts usethe phone or have face-to-face meetings.The Web can be a real marvel. It consists of pages of linkedinformation. If you run a building company one of your suppliersmight have a Web site detailing its products. By clicking on linksyou can first choose timber supplies, then check that the companyhas the specific type of timber you need in stock.For professionals the Web, linked with search engines that indexthe Web, can prove an invaluable research tool, but it can be slow."The value of the Web in general can be overstated for businessbut the ability to research and get information is most important.It really is information at your fingertips instead of getting on abus to a specialist library," says Jonathan Bulkeley, generalmanager of AOL in the UK. "If you need a government statistic or afiling paper or some information on the oil business, odds are youwill find it stored electronically and usually available at nocost." And, says Mr Bulkeley, while finding that information on theWeb might take some time, it is usually still quicker than"traditional methods".But the Web can also have a proactive role. "It is the Web'smarketing and communication ability that is especially importantfor small business," says Richard Woods, corporate communicationsconsultant at UUNET UK. "A small company can get a Web site for afew hundred pounds a year. With that they can expose their productsand services to a wider audience particularly internationally."The Web can be a useful place for business intelligence, saysNick Gilbert, news editor of Internet World. "If you needinformation on your competitors, now that so many companies havetheir own pages, the Web can be a good place to look. You can alsopick up a lot of information from sites which offer good businessresources. For example, the DTI has a web page that is quitehelpful for small companies."So how do you decide who to sign on with?"There are over 200 ISPs in the UK alone and there is not awhole world of difference between them," says Mr Gilbert.The number of subscribers a company has can be a usefulyardstick and some companies have higher-priced business servicesthat do seem to offer a higher level of service, he says. Ingeneral he suggests checking out the company's record on servicewith colleagues and in magazines. Setting up with a decent supplieris important as your e-mail address is usually tied to thesupplier. So if you decide you have to part company with them youwill have to change your e-mail address, which could be a costlyand time-consuming business.Gail Robinson, editor of Internet Magazine, says it is worthmaking the distinction between Internet service providers andonline providers which major on providing their own content as wellas access to the Internet. "As far as relevant content for a smallbusiness goes, CompuServe is pretty impressive and they have thelargest subscriber base in the UK. AOL is also pretty good in thisarea too. The likes of CompuServe and AOL also have good set-upsoftware which makes it easier to configure for a non- technicaluser. The down side of these services is that they do tend tocharge more for their services than straight access providers."As far as straight Internet access goes, look at features suchas cost per month for unlimited access, quality of softwarebundled, the technical support hours. And give them a call beforeyou subscribe so you can see how they handle customers. InternetMagazine publishes a list of access provider performance testsevery month."For many businesses the Internet will rapidly become asimportant a business tool as the telephone or the post. It is worthspending a bit of time researching who you will put your businesswith.