As the speed of travel increases on the information superhighway, the number of businesses using e-business is also rapidly growing. But implementing e(for electronic)-business solutions isn’t an easy task. According to one Rhode Island-based consulting firm, it takes a variety of business, technical, and creative skills to get e-commerce solutions up and running.
Keynote Media, Inc. a Providence-based consulting company has been maintaining Web sites since 1996. But over the past year, the company has begun to shift its focus – even planning to re-launch under a new corporate name next month – to help non-traditional types of businesses meet the changing demands of their customers and clients through e-commerce solutions.
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”In the more business to business market, the companies that have the most to gain are non-traditional companies,” said Charles Kroll of Keynote Media. “They have the most to gain by connecting with customers, suppliers, and replacing Internet technologies with new ones.”
Kroll said businesses can save almost 25 percent in their operating costs by switching to Internet-based solutions in the areas of e-commerce, customer data collection and mining, supply chain automation, Web site development, networking and systems integration.
”The Internet is good for more than Web sites,” Kroll said. “The Internet is the great equalizer for every kind of company.”
In the past, he said, smaller companies have been excluded from e-business solutions because many of the firms that implement this kind of change deal only with Fortune 500 companies.
”The solutions we provide are for high-end solutions,” he said. “We are focusing on the traditionally under-served companies, the old-line businesses with hundreds of employees and less.”
Kroll said the company’s philosophy is bold but simple.
“There is not a business in existence that could not realize major operating efficiencies and improvements in customer or supplier management by implementing a solid e-business strategy,” he said. “E-business systems cut overhead while increasing productivity, communication and accountability.”
Kroll said the cost of implementing the program varies, depending on the size of the business, but noted that companies should see it as an “investment” rather than a “cost.”
”The pitch is the hard and fast numbers,” he said. “We can show that this is an investment and we are a fixed cost.”
Still, Kroll said, his company has struggled to break into the Rhode Island market, and instead does much of their work in New York.
”Nobody else really does what we do here,” he said.
But Kroll is confident success isn’t far in the Ocean State.
”If companies don’t do it somebody else will,” he said. “Customers and clients will dictate soon or later, and they are demanding more.”
