Do Business Well

If there is one single factor that has enabled small growingcompanies to compete on a level playing field with large corporations it is the availability of ever greater computer and othertechnological capacity at lower costs. Entrepreneurs can now easily acquire the computer power that during the 1960s and 1970s filled entire rooms of large corporations and cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Increasingly, technology and information management are being used by small growing companies to achieve competitive advantages. Mail-order firms can immediately access past buying records of customers who call in orders, determine availability of products, make the charges, and initiate the packing and shipping—all with a few keystroke taps on the computer.

Small manufacturers and distributors can give overseas distributors access to computer networks that allow viewing of backlogs, inventories, and other essential information.

The effect of such advances is to allow companies with the appropriate technologies to service their customers more quickly and efficiently than competitors lacking the technology. Thus, a dry cleaner that can access the records of a customer by entering the last four digits of his or her phone number has an advantage over a dry cleaner that must manually search through all the clothing on its racks for a customer who has lost a cleaning slip.

In discussing their approach to doing business, companies should articulate how technology and information management fit into the operations and ongoing success of their companies. This is about more than how the accounting or database management takes place. I’m talking hereabout the integration of technology into the company’s most important operations—an overall business system of technology and information management.

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