How to use broadband to revolutionise your business

Getting broadband into your business shouldn’t just mark the start of faster internet access. It should also trigger a revolution in the way you do business.

Broadband means fast always-on internet access. And it’s starting to change the way many businesses work.

As you take your first few steps, have you taken into account all the advantages broadband offers?

Speed

While announcing plans to turn News Corporation into an internet company in 1999, Rupert Murdoch said: “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow”. That’s great news for you starting your own business. Because you can design and plan your business to be fast from day one.

People expect speed these days. They expect to be able to buy on the internet with just a few clicks, or get a reply from a business within an hour or two of sending an enquiry. You need to build your customer service around this and use your broadband connection to drive it.

If you don’t have the staff to man the phones all day, consider using live support, where people can “chat” with your staff through your website. Email is a very acceptable way of communicating, and an efficient way to handle numerous conversations at once.

Reduced travel and communications costs

A fast broadband connection should help you reduce the amount of business travel you have to do. You can set up conference calls using internet phones easily, and video calls and conferences are common too.

By using a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone you can make phone calls through your broadband connection rather than down the voice line. And that brings a huge cost advantage – you typically pay nothing for calls between VOIP phones, and much reduced or fixed charges for calls to 01 and 02 numbers. The best known VOIP provider is Skype, but for business Vonage is considered better and allows you to use a normal phone.

Broadband should also save you postage costs as you no longer need to send as many letters thanks to email. Free storage sites such as Dropboks remove the need to have to post CDs full of data (someone should tell the government!). And for stuff you do have to post, you can buy cheaper postage over the internet.

Save on software and hardware costs

A fast broadband connection changes the kind of computer and software you need. You can rely more and more on services provided to you over the internet, meaning you have less software on your laptop.

Why pay for Outlook when you can use Google Apps? Why buy Word and Excel when you can quickly download OpenOffice for free, or use Google Documents or the Zoho suite online?

Virtually every major piece of software that you use on your computer has an online replacement, many of them cheaper or free.

Relying on internet-based software changes the kind of computer you need. It means you don’t need a massive hard disc or lots of memory – just enough to run an internet browser. That’s what’s making revolutionary laptops like the Asus Eee PC popular. You can get a brand new tiny laptop that’s internet ready for just £189 + VAT.

Be more efficient

There are hundreds of online services that will help you be more efficient, and which only really work with a broadband connection. You can better manage information, have to do lists that remind you when you need to do things, keep track of your customers, track time spent on projects, and gather all the information you want in one place.

Best of all – every single example there is free.