Here's lookin' at you - 20 years on

Twenty years ago, I hadn't heard of the internet, the love of my life was footy, and I was sure I'd never wear a suit. This article in The Age this week got me thinking about everything that's happened since the birth of the internet in Australia 20 years ago.

We're talking to a logistics firm at the moment.

Forget twenty years. When I cottoned on to the internet 10 years ago or so, we would've mostly talked about design and content. If I'd met them in my first few years at bwired, I probably would've introduced them to Sam, and together we would've talked about how the internet could really change their business - allowing them to quickly and easily update information and receive enquiries from their customers online. Do you remember when content management systems were new? How about when small changes to content cost the earth and took days to get done?

Today, we're asking questions about their business. What it does today, how it's changed over time, and where the business is going. More importantly, we're able to talk about how we can use the internet to fast-track their strategy, exploit new technologies and opportunities, and transform a mishmash of systems into a labour and error-saving machine.

Logistics is not an online business. We're dealing with large volumes of freight that needs to get to where it's going (locally, nationally and globally) in the shortest time possible. It gets to where it's going in a pretty traditional manner - trucks, trains and planes. So why go online? We've been doing pickups and deliveries since long before the internet, right?

What if you could eliminate a service bottleneck and key source of errors by allowing customers to self-serve the majority of bookings and enquiries? What if you could reduce customer frustration and call volume by providing tracking visibility online? What if you could connect the online enquiries and bookings, the credit card sales and backend accounting, and the dispatch and delivery information to get a full-circle picture of the business in numbers in real-time? And with the internet we can do all of these things and more. Traditional businesses can and should do online - today more than ever before.

Twenty years on, the internet is everywhere. It's not about selling the dream, the internet is a big part of how we do business today. Had the same site for five, ten, twenty years? Stuck with a lazy site that does less than your worst performer? Twenty years from now, where will you be? Start fresh in 2010.