HOW BUSINESS IS SPINNING THE WEB

Everyone's heard that you can buy consumer items, such as flowers, on the Internet's World Wide Web, though few real consumers have actually bought them. But I believe business use of the Web is changing. Around the corner from the "cool" graphics and consumer goodies, a growing army of utilitarian Web sites is starting to appear.

These aren't places to buy stuff . . . they're business tools that may soon challenge traditional product brochures, catalogs, faxes, "phone tag" and meetings with salesmen. Some of the sites that're already on the Web offer a preview of what's to come:

FedEx's home page, for example, lets you see where your shipment is, when it was delivered and who signed for it.
The Thomas Register of Manufacturers (those green books you see in purchasing departments everywhere) is up, too, with a page that lets you look up the manufacturer of just about any product you can think of.

And Alaska Airlines has a virtual departure gate on the 'Net. You can't actually take off from it, but you can check flight schedules and fares, make reservations and even buy tickets.

And this is just the beginning. Business people everywhere will soon use the Internet to contact key customers and suppliers around the world at a fraction of the cost of phone calls and faxes. Let me give you an example.

One of my clients, a world-class industrial equipment manufacturer, recently noticed that a competitor has its spare parts catalog up on the Web. Parts mean big money in their industry, so the company I'm working with will soon launch its own Web site to catch up.

My client's engineers have been thinking Internet too. Though they often need to refer to parts catalogs for the components they use in new products, several of these catalogs are outdated. Unfortunately, they don't always know which ones. This creates a perfect business-to-business marketing opportunity for the 'Net . . . not only for buyers, but for sellers too, who can cut--or even eliminate--some of their printing costs. By updating their product information on the Web, and e-mailing out the changes, sellers can make sure their customers always have the current data.

As Fedex and others have already discovered, the Web's also a great place to support customers after they buy. A well-constructed Web site can answer help calls faster, cheaper and more uniformly than is possible now . . . and do it 24 hours a day without paying 'round-the-clock operators.

The Internet's evolving quickly. Two years from now you may not be wondering "Where have all the flowers gone?" But you will marvel--as you did with fax just a few years ago--"How did I ever do business without it?"

CONTENTS OF BULLETIN 96.2

Top of the page: How Business is Spinning the Web
Feature article: It's Your Serve(r): Watch Out for the Net
New cartoon by Randy Glasbergen