For businesses, Internet decides those who win

Late last year, executives at Biomedical Structures LLC realized their outdated Web site and lack of a focused Internet marketing strategy was probably costing the growing medical- components manufacturer new business.
So the Warwick-based firm reached out to Precision Web Marketing, an online-marketing consultancy located less than two miles away in the same community, to help them develop a strategy to lure new business through the Web.
“A lot of our business is in the United States, but we also want to be able to hit the international market,” said Linda Perle, Biomedical Structure’s technical marketing specialist. “We didn’t have a lot of information. Was our Web site doing anything good for us, was it doing anything bad for us, was it doing anything for us?”
Precision Marketing made some quick changes to Biomedical’s Web site that include the ability to see who’s visiting the Web site, how long they visit, and whether they arrive through online ads Biomedical runs on Google and Yahoo. Acting on the Internet consultant’s advice, Biomedical Structures has also begun sending a quarterly e-newsletter.
Effective online strategies are becoming increasingly critical for businesses competing in the global, 21st-century marketplace, said Jack Templin, an IT consultant in Providence who spearheads RI Nexus, a Web portal for the state’s IT and digital media community operated by the R.I. Economic Development Corporation.
The Internet is driving productivity gains and product and service innovations in virtually every industry. Top companies are leveraging the Internet’s potential across their businesses – from the back office to the front lines of marketing, sales and support, and practically everywhere in between, he said.
“The Internet is not optional,” Templin said, speaking May 6 at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s 2008 Business Expo at the R.I. Convention Center. “In virtually every aspect of business, the Internet is playing a key role in deciding the winners and losers.”
WRNI, Rhode Island’s local National Public Radio station, will launch a comprehensive new Web portal when the sale of the station from Boston University to local ownership is approved by the state attorney general’s office.
GLAD WORKS, an advertising, marketing and design firm in Providence, worked with WRNI to develop a new Web site that will enable its radio reporters to blog, file longer versions of their stories on the Web and post digital photographs and eventually video to accompany their reports, said Joe O’Connor, the station’s general manager.
“GLAD WORKS has helped us design not only a new logo but a new site that can bring us to the new millennium,” he said. “That’s absolutely critical to our survival.”
Speaking at the Business Expo, Templin made a pitch to Rhode Island’s business community to buy their Internet services from IT providers headquartered in the state.
Rhode Island has a pool of local Internet expertise as deep as any community its size in the country, he said, with an estimated 50,000 members of the state’s IT and digital media community working at large corporations, startup ventures, in academia and in government.
Hundreds of IT and digital media firms headquartered across Rhode Island offer services that include online business-strategy consulting, Web-site design and development, Web-application design and development, Web-site hosting, networking services, online marketing, Internet security, and digital, audio, video, and animation, Templin said.
“Internet services are available locally and in spades,” he said.
Working with local Internet-service providers offers several advantages, Templin said. Among them, Templin said the quality of their services match what can be found in Boston and New York City, but at significantly cheaper prices – with New York firms charging twice as much and Boston firms charging about one-and-a-half times as much for the same Internet services.
Local IT and digital media companies are knowledgeable of the local market, and there are often opportunities to form strategic partnerships and entrepreneurial ventures, he said.
The ability to work face to face with consultants and vendors cannot be underestimated. And companies that do business in the same community are more likely to work at resolving problems that arise in an Internet project than firms that share the same network, he said.
“Internet projects are fraught, they frequently go awry,” Templin said. “If I know I’m going to see you … every week for the rest of my life, I’m going to treat that project a little differently. And this actually goes a long way. People want to take care of their community. These are our relationships.”
Aside from the benefits that choosing a local IT firm offers individual businesses, Templin said that bolstering the IT-and digital-community sector is at the core of the state’s economic development strategy.
“We have to strengthen this sector,” agreed Saul Kaplan, the EDC’s executive director. “We have to support people that are working in this sector – companies that are starting, companies that already exist. This sector pays the highest average wage of any of the sectors that we’re focusing on, and this is a very important part of how we’re going to strengthen Rhode Island’s economy.” •

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