Richard Morochove -- Small Business Technology Is <br></br> Changing the Way We Do Business

Last issue we talked to business consultant and broadcaster Richard Morochove about how small businesses can use technology to create business advantage. This issue, the interview continues with insights about how technology for small business is changing the way we do business.

Q: What are the biggest changes you see happening right now in technology for small businesses?

A: We've talked about some of them: the rapid pace of communications, for example. Certainly the growth of the Internet is a big change -- the fact that you have to have e-mail, you have to have a Web site. It's starting to make a difference whether you have your own domain. People are starting to say that if your business e-mail is just joe@aol.com or something, you're obviously a small-time player. You may have a better image if it's joe@yourdomain.com. So not only do you now need an e-mail address, it also now helps if you have your own domain.

Q: What about changes to the information within the business? Are people feeling the need to be more integrated rather than having the bookkeeper and the project managers with their information on separate PCs?

A: It's pretty simple to set up a peer-to-peer network these days, so the technology has gotten easier that way. But I'm still seeing islands of data in small business that are using applications that don't necessarily talk to each other. You don't necessarily have to have everything talk to everything else. For example, you don't necessarily want the sales rep to have access to the payroll database. However, the sales rep probably should have access to at least some of the customer records because what if a customer calls and says, "I still don't have that order I placed last week. What's happened to it?" You want the sales rep to have an answer. It's more efficient for the business and more satisfying for the customer, if, instead of bothering the bookkeeper or the shipping clerk, the sales rep can just look up the status and immediately tell the customer "There was a back-order, but it should ship tomorrow." So integration isn't about allowing everybody access to everything, but allowing everyone access to the information they need to do their jobs, whether it's on their PC or someone else's PC or on a server somewhere.

There are even some small companies that are becoming quite far-flung. It's changing from the days where everyone in a small business came every day to one office. There are more of what I call virtual small businesses, sometimes people working independently, maybe from their homes, and who function as one business. Sometimes they may be working thousands of miles away from each other across the country. How do they share information? And you have some companies like, say, NetSuite who supply accounting and CRM software as a service on their Web site. So as long as these far-flung employees have Internet access and a Web browser, they can log into these applications on a central server and communicate that way and have access to all the data that they need.

Q: How about security and security threats to small business on an information level. How is that changing?

A: Well, malicious software is certainly a threat -- everything from viruses to worms to spyware on the computer. You just have to look at this latest worm that was attacking Windows* 2000. Microsoft just announces that it's a threat and makes a patch available, and a week later the worm is running rampant because companies didn't take the time to apply the software patch. So it's a challenge, particularly for small businesses that may not have a formal IT department and may not even have a full-time IT person. It's often a part-time responsibility for one person whose efforts may be supplemented by a technical expert that the company has on call. You can't just say, "Well, I'll update these things once very six months." To run a secure operation, you have to be far more proactive in updating your operating system.

Fortunately, you can now automate a lot. Microsoft has improved its system for upgrades, so you can set up your computers to get automatic updates. Interestingly, that's what has finally persuaded a number of my clients that they need to go from dial-up to broadband Internet connections, because that makes it easier to do these automated software updates.

The other thing that you need to run a secure operation are some good internal defense mechanisms: good anti-virus software, good anti-spyware, and a firewall to protect everything on your internal network from the "wild and wooly" world of the Internet. Small businesses without IT staff should invest in some professional help with this. I would have them do a checkup, have an IT professional come in for a day every 3 to 6 months and review their OS patch levels, their security software and everything. Considering the costs of data loss and other security breaches, it's cheap insurance.