An Internet presence has two sides

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Internet Strategy

Introducing Internet technologies in a company serves different purposes. A Web site is a way to publish information, but the very same technologies will allow you to acquire information.

The three main attractions of the Internet

Often a Web site is considered to be THE attraction of the Internet - this is not necessarily true. Basically the Internet will offer three important functionalities:

• An information source
• A communication means
• A publication means

With a prudent approach, the main attraction of the Internet to companies should have been that of a fast and low cost information source, which responds to an immediate information need always present. However, Web sites seem to have seduced many more companies than information search systems have.

The second attraction is that of a communication means with partners, clients and suppliers. This functionality also corresponds to an immediate and ever pressing need for optimisation and speeding up of information flows.

Information publishing (on a Web site) really only arrives after these first two functionalities, as the impact of a Web site is often indirect and uncertain.

It is extremely important for a company to find the balance between publishing and acquiring information with the Internet. Far too many companies blindly publish information accessible to everybody. It is not a question of limiting access and hiding all valuable information behind passwords and secured systems, but it is important to weigh the value of information to clients against the value to competitors.

Shaping an Internet presence is first of all a question of searching good and relevant information sources on the Internet - and to afterwards monitor the trends. These things can be done with a business intelligence system or manually in the beginning. In this way you will find interesting sources, and realise that some of the freely accessible information on the Internet, was information that you used to pay for. A business intelligence system can substitute many of your information sources and thus globally represent a zero investment.

When starting information search, you will almost automatically begin also sending and receiving messages by means of Internet technologies, thus taking advantage of the second great attraction, simply because it makes things easier.

The second important thing to do is to create a Web site which can attract new clients - the Web is especially well adapted to attract clients from abroad, if it is well marketed. It is very unlikely that a Web site directly creates a revenue, if it is not continuously updated and animated, but the Web site will have the capacity to reduce other communication costs (catalogues for example). Instead of a traditional mailing that may cost 1$ per person reached, a small Web site promotion will cost virtually nothing and may have the same impact. It is important not to confuse this opportunity with unsolicited e-mailings, which cause more damage to your image than revenue. Rather, what could be intented would be publishing promotional information on the Web site, and perhaps distributing it on a proprietary mailing list where people have already indicated their interest in such information.

The two sides of an Internet presence are complementary and any Internet strategy should contain both. An unbalanced Internet strategy will not prepare your company for the next steps to take with the ever changing Internet technologies.