Pcs Enable Small Businesses To Compete With Bigger Rivals
One of the surprises of the personal computer, for me at least, is that it has done even more for small businesses than for big ones.
Don’t get me wrong. Virtually every kind of business has benefited from the PC.
But I think small firms have gained proportionately more than big ones, simply because they started out so far behind technologically.
The speed with which small companies embraced PCs surprised me. In the earliest days of the personal computer industry, we assumed that most of our customers would be big businesses. After all, computers had always been one of the advantages that big businesses had over smaller players.
In those days, 20 years ago, computers were not personal in any sense. It is a sign of how attitudes have changed that today we think of the computer as a tool of the individual, even in a large company.
That computers are helping small businesses compete and succeed is good news for entrepreneurs and the economy alike. In the United States, for example, small companies represented 66 per cent of the new jobs created between 1976 and 1990, according to the Small Business Administration.
Small businesses are destined to become even more important as electronic networks make it easier for small businesses to find clients and customers and as large corporations continue to re-engineer their operations. Increasing numbers of people will start or work in small firms.
It used to be that when a large company made a brochure, it looked a lot better than a small company’s flyer. When you called a large company to talk about your account, you expected to reach a specialist who would get you a quick answer. You didn’t always expect that level of service from a tiny company.
The personal computer has evened the competition in many respects, giving little companies tools to match those of big players.
Today’s small-business owner can do it all - bookkeeping, customer service, sales, marketing, graphic design, even product development - with the help of a personal computer equipped with appropriate software. That’s because the PC, like the smallbusiness owner, is a one-man band.
I enjoy hearing how individuals and small companies have put information technology to work. When I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago, I was told of how Ted Sluymer of Holland uses a PC equipped with an integrated set of software applications to compile and set in type an annual review of cars. His most recent edition, available in bookstores throughout the Netherlands, is called Autoboek ‘95.
When Sluymer started publishing the catalog of cars back in 1979, it took him three months on a typewriter to lay out the material for printing. Now, using a PC, he does it in a week.
Then there’s Shultzy’s Sausage Inc., which a few years ago was about as small as a business can get. Don Schulze, the owner, had a single shop in Seattle with 10 stools, and yet he used software to conduct his business professionally and project a polished image in his newsletters, invoices and other forms.
Don often comes to mind when I think about all the different kinds of tasks a small-business owner is expected to perform.
Today Don has two shops and a thriving wholesale division which competes head-to-head with major food distributors. Don said he might have gotten by with hand ledgers and checkbooks if he had limited himself to one store, but using a computer was a practical necessity for his business to grow.
We’ll never know how many of today’s businesses wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for PCs, but the number must be large.
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