Your Company and the Internet

Many companies are contemplating Internet usage, now that all their peers abroad are online. But their concepts are fuzzy.

In September 1996, when the last installment of COMversations appeared in PC Quest, the Internet was still relatively new to Indian businesses. Much has changed since then, but it is still rather sad to see that not much has happened in terms of corporate acceptance of the Internet and its advantages.

However, in recent times, Indian companies have begun changing their attitude. Not willingly, one would assume. The FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factor continues to dominate, and along with that now come the horror stories of companies that tried and failed. Well, not exactly failed, but not successful.

Much of this springs from the fact that most companies have absolutely no clue on what is required of them when one says "get on the Internet". Ask around within the company, and you will see many different interpretations of "being connected". Management tries to assimilate and digest these interpretations into something they can understand and deploy.

In this installment of COMversations, I will try and clear up a few issues that I keep running into when I deal with our corporate clients. I will do so by addressing the various interpretations of "Corporate Internet access".

"The Web is the Internet"

The World Wide Web (referred to as the WWW or "the Web") is not the Internet. It is just one of its many "layers", and while it does play a significant role in the Internet’s growth and corporate usage, it has pretty little to offer in terms of day to day communication requirements of a company.

Unfortunately, many companies interpret "being connected to the Internet" as "everyone can surf". This has some rather alarming implications for management. It implies that many of the employees will waste their time aimlessly surfing around on company time. It implies that the company has to invest in pretty heavy duty "pipes" (that is leased lines to the Internet) which cost the earth.

Security of the company’s local network can be compromised through external access.

A reality check is required here. However much your employees may clamour for it—Web access and the ability to surf from their desks is not a serious requirement. Few people have the ability to do focussed Web-based research, and unfortunately, this is a facility that is more often than not going to be misused.

One e-mail account for the company is enough

Oddly enough, most companies in India assume that having a single e-mail account for the firm is more than sufficient—after all, one has only one fax, right?

Wrong.

E-mail is not fax. It is as personal as a telephone extension on your desk. Try getting by with a single phone in your office, and you will see what I mean. Unless you have e-mail addresses for each key-person in your company, you will lose all benefits of having e-mail at all.

This is because of the way e-mail works. One expects a single person to read the message one sends via e-mail—the owner of the e-mail address. Because of this, one tends to assume confidentiality and will be more open in such a message than one would be in, say, a fax message, which is likely to be read by many people.

However, if your e-mail address looks something like yourcompany@giasdl01. vsnl.net.in, then it is fairly certain that this is a common address, shared by a number of people, and hence you can forget about getting any sensitive or crucial information via this medium.

A lot of you will be pointing your fingers at the high cost of having e-mail for everyone in your company. "How many VSNL accounts do you think we can take?" and the mind-boggling logistics "you expect all my people to dial into VSNL every hour or so to pick up their mail?" But relax, I know what I am talking about. Getting a domain (yourcompany.com) is easy as falling off a log these days. And once your have that and a little bit of mail-space on a server somewhere, you can use solutions such as good old Linux. (Yes, the same one that came free of cost on the May 1998 PCQ CD) to set up an internal mail server that exchanges mail with the outsider. And you can have hundreds or thousands of e-mail accounts—all for free. Each user in your company will have his or her own address (user@yourcompany.com). And an additional bonus—you can now have internal e-mail as well, which is a real productivity booster!

"Gotta have a Website!"

OK, so you would like to have your own Website. You would like to advertise your products, and have zillions of orders pouring in from the 70+ million people who frequent the Net these days.

Reality check: Most Websites do not earn you any money or snag any orders.

Most Websites are basically online brochures, and at the most offer information that is already available elsewhere. The business of designing and maintaining dynamic Websites that attract people is a difficult one, and unless you have the resources and the willingness to support such an activity, you would be better off not trying—it is easy to alienate the very people you are trying to attract.

If you resign yourself to that fact, you can put up a few well-designed Web pages. Spend some money and get a good job done. Don’t ask someone in your office to learn HTML and expect them to be able to put together a professional looking set of pages! Treat your Web pages like your corporate brochure—they are designed by professionals who know their job.

And try and update the pages whenever you have something new to offer, such as a new product.

Let them know!

One of the biggest crimes we have seen is that of "info-hide". People take all the trouble of getting e-mail for everyone, and a Website, and they don’t let anyone know!

Once you have e-mail for everyone, make sure that people know about it—every visiting card and letterhead should carry this information to make sure that people know about it and use this facility.

Ditto for your Website. This is especially important if you advertise having your Web address (Universal Resource Locator) featured in an advertisement. It’s almost a guarantee that anyone reading the ad will look at the Website soon for more information. One of the most effective ways of using an URL in an advertisement was by a well known company a few years back—they had a doublespread ad in a well known business publication, which had only their URL printed in huge, bold letters and nothing else. Irresistible—everyone who read that fired up their browser just to find out what this was all about!

Winding down

As we have seen, "being on the Internet" is not such a big deal after all—it is easy to set up, and costs pittance. So why not go out and do it? You already have most of the know-how (past issues of PC Quest have detailed just about everything you need to know, and more is coming up). All it now takes is your green signal, and in a short while you will be able to drawl (in your best accent).

"Sure, we are on the Internet. Are you?"

Cheerio!