Insisting on Service Guarantees

In India, service guarantee is still regarded a premium. Manyservice providers simply refuse to provide any service guarantees. While theinitial impact of competition was seen in prices, the next level of competitionwill focus on providing reliable services and offering some level of serviceguarantees to customers. With ISPs being allowed to build their owninternational gateways and use alternate mediums of last-mile access, it is hightime that you as a corporate insist on signing a Service Level Agreement (SLA).You can start by asking the ISP to guarantee that your dedicated connection isnot down for more time than a pre-agreed interval. If your ISP has aninternational gateway, then an international private leased-line should comealong with a minimum bandwidth throughput guarantee. The bandwidth Quality ofService (QoS) guarantee offered by US ISPs are upwards of 99 percent. You canstart from a lower level.

Managing the Internet Strategy

One needs a thorough inspection of how the Net is being usedin the organization to find out the real performance of the Internet connectionat your workplace or find out the benefits of using the Internet. It is herethat web usage management enters. While Internet benefits companies by improvingcommunications, turnaround time, market awareness, etc., if used withoutobjectives, it can make employees ineffective. No-management of Net usage couldlead to wastage of resources and time and more worryingly abuse of the facility.With a huge library of pornographic material available at a click of the mouse,the Net is not just the parents’ but IT manager’s nightmare come true.

Managing the Net not only keeps a check over wastage andabuse of the Internet access, but it can offer new ways of utilizing the variousinformation and communication resources that it provides. It also gives a goodopportunity to frequently review the activities and objectives of the Internetstrategy in consonance with your company’s business goals. This way you canalso keep a check on whether the company is under-spending or over-spending onthe Net connection.

The easiest way to manage the Internet usage is toblock/filter certain sites that you think are abusive and personal in nature.While this may restrict and minimize the wastage of Internet access, it onlyfocuses on the negative aspect. How does one encourage and increase the usefulaccess of the Internet? For this purpose, the management has to decide on anInternet usage policy and see to it that the frameworks are best adhered to.

Bandwidth managers can be installed behind the routers ofyour company to report the usage pattern of your company on the whole. Abandwidth manager can identify where the traffic is getting choked and how. Thisallows the company to take preventive measures in terms of usage or additionalinvestments on bandwidth. For frequent changes, one needs to subscribe to anInternet connection that can be scaled up to higher bandwidths without much ado.Check out with the ISP, whether it can provide you a fractional bandwidth thatcan simply be multiplied to its full capacity. One can also go in for flexible-bandwidth connection, which can provide a normal bandwidth throughputof a certain speed in ordinary periods and a much higher bandwidth during burstyperiods.

Save Money Through the Net

Considerable saving in your communication bills is the firstsign of being benefited by using the Net. E-mail is the cheapest way for longdistance communication available today. One can in fact even discuss a fewcrucial things through swift exchange of e-mails. VPNs is yet anotherapplication that uses large public network as a communication medium, thussaving precious amounts of money for the company.

Using an intranet can also reduce operational costs of anorganization in terms of manpower and resources like paper documents andtraining facilities. Additionally, if one has a private leased-line betweenoffices, inter-office fax and telephony can be routed through this dedicatedlink using Fax-over-IP (FoIP) and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technologies, thus savingon the STD charges.

Earn Money Through the Net

There are some direct ways of selling via the Internet. Theeasier part is that of pre-sales pitch. One way of doing this is to host a goodweb site, which actively updates itself with information about the company. Thesite should not appear to be just a brochure/catalog of products that yourcompany sells, but should carry information that will interest your potentialcustomers. Another effective method, and probably more tested, is e-mailmarketing. The trick here is to maintain a qualified database of potentialclients to whom you can send your company’s mailers and update them about newschemes. However, giving them an option to choose not to receive your mail wouldbe appreciated.

As the rules of e-commerce get crystallized, you can providean ordering page on the web site, thus enabling your customers to check yourproducts online and give orders directly on the Net. The payment mode can beoffline, as well as online. For the latter, you will have to tie up with apayment gateway provider. It requires considerable investment on securityfacilities to win the trust of customers for online
payment.

The one big question is how much is to be invested on this?While Internet offers a variety of services and tools which can improve bothcommunications and information storage and retrieval, it need not necessarybenefit an organization right from the word go. As the usage pattern of Internetintensifies, the learning curve and overhead involved also goes up. Individualcompanies must decide how far they want to go. Most Indian businesses still donot own an Internet domain or have a dedicated link with a local server. Bothcost as well as technical knowledge are impediments for smaller organizations.However, one just cannot shy away from Internet when competition meansinformative advantage and fast turnaround. Internet strategy can be implementedby companies in a phased manner—invest as one grows.

Also one must carefully explore the feasibility of any new service beingplanned out.