Blogs, websites and the march of progress

Today Random Ramblings moves into the world of the blog. No longer will I be able to wander around assorted subjects without fear of contradiction. From today you will be able to counter with cries of ‘Rubbish!’ or whatever comment you feel compelled to make. While this transition isn’t quite as important as the move from black and white to colour TV or the improvement of the PC over the typewriter, it is for me an opportunity to further improve my communication with the outside world.

In parallel with the arrival of the blog is the launch of a new website. Please have a look at it and read about the cast of characters who are willing to risk their reputations by working with me from time to time.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to be involved with a pilot for an initiative to bring enterprise and innovation into schools. This is in recognition that the needs of the 21st century workplace will be very different from those of the last century. Just looking at the manufacturing sector; a million jobs have disappeared from the UK in the last ten years and undoubtedly this trend will continue. The twin effects of process automation and re-sourcing manufacture to low cost economies has caused this decline.

The UK is changing to what has been referred to as the Knowledge Economy, that is one based on skills in science, technology, communications, business and finance. But these skills alone will not be enough, a ‘can do’ attitude and a willingness to be flexible and responsive to change will be essential to survive. And I might add, a recognition that looking after the customer is more important than ever before. The Internet enables us to shop anywhere in the world and it also allows us to shame the guilty and praise the good.

Recently my Broadband connection kept dropping on a random but increasingly frequent basis. The support from my service provider was by means of standard print-outs - ‘how to do this’, ‘how to check that’. As I worked through the possibilities and gradually eliminated them, I would communicate with their technical support team. Back would come more standard print outs, often telling me to do what I’d told them I’d already done. It was a very frustrating experience which, for anyone who might be suffering similar problems, was eventually resolved by installing a different modem.

In contrast, the construction of the David Wike Business Development website was an object lesson in customer service. It was built with software supplied by Web Studio (http://www.webstudio.com/) in San Diego, California. Any query fired over to them was answered overnight. Clearly they carefully read and understood the question, then sent back a very precise answer in straightforward English, free of IT technical jargon. It was a pleasure to deal with them.

And of course, this experience also demonstrates how developing technologies change the way we work. It isn’t so many years back that PCs were introduced into the work environment and as we became more skilled in their use, the need for secretarial support was greatly reduced. Then along came the Internet and we suddenly had a growth industry of website designers. Now for an investment of not too many dollars anyone with reasonable IT skills (and a good back-up team!) can build a professional website. Does this suggest that just as we need few typists these days, in the not too distant future we will need far fewer professional website designers?

My thanks go to my associates who have offered their views and encouragement along the way. A special thank you to ‘the technical back-up team’, Sharon at Web Studio in sunny San Diego and Charles Rapson of Rapson Advertising in less exotic Solihull for his expertise in on-line marketing. And, of course, to my ‘IT department’, aka my son Richard who, after a day’s ‘proper’ work, spent a good few hours sorting out the problems that I encountered along the way.

Stop Press!
Associate Trevor Gay of Simplicity has just emailed to say he’s had an article about the NHS published in a leading US business newsletter. You can read it at: http://thestevies.com/SmallBizNews/July2007.html

David Wike