Thursday, September 13, 2007 Ng: IT as competitive resource By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
AS somebody whose twin passions are entrepreneurship and technology, I have always thought these gives me advantage when managing a technology company since I can traverse and understand both sides of an issue.
However, when I read an article in Baseline magazine, one of conclusions in a survey of 152 CEOs and senior executives of mid-size companies was that EVEN if you are not managing a technology company, there is a decided advantage if the founder or CEO understands technology.
The survey concluded that the more IT-savvy the business executive was, the faster the company was able to expand. In fact, of those surveyed, three out of four CEOs said they were totally involved in decisions about information technology, while almost half of those who rated themselves as “geeks” reported reaching 100 employee milestone in five years, compared to only one third of those who were not IT savvy.
What lessons did the survey present? First is that those who view IT as a strategic or competitive resource tended to grow faster than those with just enough technology for employees to do their jobs.
The CEOs said the most important thing to consider to expand the business is to recruit and retain good employees. The second most important thing is to manage IT to make it a competitive advantage.
Anyhow, one of the things I noticed is that many entrepreneurs or businesses have not invested in their own e-mail system.
I still meet a lot of businessmen who, when they present their cards, list their e-mail addresses as those from Yahoo! or Hotmail.
I even know a lot of government officials and even government agencies that have Yahoo as their official e-mail provider.
I do understand how people, who only have a handful of staff, don’t want to invest in an e-mail system. After all, Yahoo! or Hotmail is free! However, there is a very good reason that they should invest in an e-mail system.
First, of course, is reputation and prestige. Any serious business is expected to have a website and an e-mail address that uses yourcompany.com
However, having an internal e-mail system goes beyond image building. In this time and age, the most important resource that one must have to gain competitive advantage is information.
Let’s say you have three staff members and three sales people. In order for them to be productive, they need to have their own e-mail addresses and you go ahead and get them a free Hotmail account.
So all their transactions are on Hotmail. They don’t even have any backup of their mails!
Let us say that the sales person leaves your company. Where is the information trail, all the records and e-mails of the transactions and the leads?
When your sales person leaves the company, he takes with him all the mails, contacts and leads he accumulated during his employment. You’ll have to start from scratch.
In our company (and you should do it in your company too!), we insist that they use only the company’s internal e-mail system, and they are not allowed to use free e-mail systems to conduct transactions. This is to ensure that the company will have the necessary records in the system when the person leaves or is not there.
