" Whatever made you successful in the past, won't in the future."
Lou Platt, Chairman and CEO H-P

Most SME's are probably still trying to figure out how to successfully - and profitably - apply the old Internet technologies but are now in 2007 confronted with the new Internet. This new Internet is now often described as Web 2.0 and social networks, among other terms. Any wonder you as an SME business might be inclined to say you are bamboozled.
The danger of course is that SME's will simply avoid making any investment in an online e-business presence. That would be a mistake. These technologies need to either become less complex or SME's need a solution provider not just a service provider. And one that can reduce or potentially eliminate the bamboozle factor. Hopefully in due course Business Online Australia can meet all your needs in this regard and certainly that's our aim. Technologies of course are not going to become less complex, however their complexity doesn't need to be exposed to SME's as a daunting challenge, which seems to make techies happy but is often unnecessarily expensive to you and your business.
BOA has over 30 years of experience in ICT and is familiar with this trend that has proven to be a trend unprecedented in any industry in recorded history.
BOA has been established to cost-effectively service the online priorities of SME's and to identify and deliver value adding solutions, now and into the future.

Some of the areas BOA is focused on are:

How to inexpensively get all SME's online. This is now possible but not with old services adapting traditional businesses using old Internet technologies. (No, we are not trying to bamboozle you.) (See our first solution from over 5 years of research...State of the Art Business Directories...)

Integrating fragmented services that now cost SME's more than is necessary given state-of-the-art technologies can cost-effectively combine them. This problem is not unusual and has been identified throughout the 200 years of the Industrial Revolution as common in the early stages of a new technology. Therefore it raises the obvious question about why it should be still happening and why, with such technologies as the Internet? Well, SME's have only had the first 10 years of this unprecedented new technology to try and figure it out. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of SME's doing this individually is obviously unnecessarily costly in more ways than one. If you go to the above mentioned link you will find some basic answers. Not THE answer but at least a start and with a solution to match it.

Researching any area of digital and online technologies SME's are now using but will be increasingly using for any business productivity and efficiency attributes that BOA will be focused on identifying for SME's. Clearly after decades and billions of dollars governments are unable to do this to the extent they claim to . ( A case study of a recent e-commerce government initiative that ended up being closed down and cost $150 million plus over 5 years, will soon be available for download, just in case you needed some extra proof.)

Researching all areas of government for waste and duplication, including compliance costs that can be reduced or eliminated through business online. Government of course has a natural conflict of interest in doing this so obviously when they claim to be doing it they don't do it well. (See NSW Government finds A$640 million in waste a year...)We think (we know) there are opportunities in this respect. All government has been claiming to be transitioning to e-Government for about 7 or 8 years now for productivity and other reasons (reducing waste!) but what is clear is that government is running and paying for dual systems; the old paper bureaucracies and their new electronic online bureaucracies.

These are just some of the areas we are focused on and in time and with enough members and subscribers we will be able to contribute more to delivering valuable short to long-term benefits to all SME's.

The Cost of Resisting Change

Most if not all of the advances in these digital computer and online technologies have mainly originated in the more developed and advanced economies and as laboratories for being the first users and early adopters of such technologies they become observable experiments in real time. However because they are advanced economies with established dominant businesses, there becomes a clear issue that can probably be best described as a culture of "resistance to change". In other words the dominant businesses in these economies (say the 30 OECD nations) have such well established and valuable commitments to traditional business models they must do everything they possibly can to attempt to maintain a balance between the old and the new. The bigger these organisations become and the longer they exist the more momentum they build, consequently the force necessary to change their direction increases. This means not innovating and not prioritising state of the art solutions, because quite simply to do so means they create the potential for and sow the seeds of their own destruction. SME's (and also less mature advanced economies) do not have this inflexibility but typically though have had to rely on these dominant interests to deliver their inferior version(s) of state of the art solutions. (Of course you don't get told you are getting less than the best that is possible. Quite the opposite. See the example .. Is Telstra stifling innovation...As one example.) They can't of course but now SME's do not have to remain locked - in to this time frame set by the dominant business interests, as they remain basically focused on protecting the past.

The flexibility of SME's when aligned with state-of-the-art solutions such as the directory platform identified by BOA, among others, has the potential to introduce competitive forces that significantly benefit not only SME's but consumers as their customers and in less drawn-out time frames.
Relying on vested interests to innovate and deliver state-of-the-art-solutions is logically unreliable and as the past 10 years and more proves.

Membership in Business Online Australia is an investment in innovative solutions and services of benefit to SME's now and into the future.

There is no charge for Foundation Membership. By simply registering with BOA we will be able to use unique attributes of the Internet to develop our services to help you Value Add your business.

Register as a Foundation Member...

Any information you provide to BOA will remain private and retained in strict confidence and not sold or transferred in any way to any third party without your authorisation.