BT Ignite fires it up for small business

All small businesses need to get email. But sooner or later they'll need to pay for a 'business class' internet if they want to step up to ecommerce. So says Grant Broster, head of internet for business in BT Ignite's Application Services division.

Broster sees a collision course threatening between consumer demand for internet access and business demand. "The demand from the consumer side is for access to be cheaper, and from the business side for it to be more reliable. Ultimately, there is a 'business class' internet developing here.

"If you want the 99 per cent up time on your email infrastructure, then you'll have to pay more for that. Small businesses shouldn't mind that in the long run, but they'll probably need an economy class service to begin with."

Speaking candidly

In the meantime, Broster admits that "we are not doing what rising customer expectations demand. On the website we are delivering, and on internet access we are close. But on the email infrastructure service we still have some way to go."

BT's portal for SMEs, 'BT Click for Business.com', has won praise from vnunet's Manage IT site (http://manageit.vnunet.com/Features/1115716), but Broster confesses to reservations. "I'm not happy for us to become a media company. Moreover, I don't want to subsidise the content industry. The internet is a struggle as it is without our doing that!"

Keep it simple, stupid!

In talking to busy small business directors about the internet, Broster insists that BT keep its message simple enough for a child to understand.

The first thing Broster did after joining BT from the Mitel Corporation, a Canadian telecommunications products company, was to "simplify our message, reducing all communication to essentials. Instead of trying to get twelve things through, we go for just one or two. And we make those things principles, not arty-farty marketing messages. "Basically, I tell small businesses: 'Get connected and get email'."

Conservative with a small 'c'

Broster maintains that the relationship between a small business and its most important partners is "the inverse of the situation of big companies".

"Small businesses are only really interested in dealing with companies with a long track record. They don't take split second decisions on the basis of a name they've just heard. They are conservative with a small 'c'," he says.

"Big companies, on the other hand, are readier to engage with trendy startups. After all, they're not going to get hurt if things go wrong."

He insists that "BT is really good at supplying services to small businesses on the basis of track record. We're always going to be there."

Small business directors are often wary of IT, and Broster says he appreciates why. "Their scepticism of IT is quite well placed, in my view. Cash is king when running a small business, and so spending cash on stuff that doesn't bring in money or reduce costs is a total waste."

Broster describes the main target for BT Ignite's application services as "the general owner-manager who knows nothing about IT, but does know everything about his or her own business".

Internet a 'two-edged sword' for SMEs

Not that Broster sees the internet as a simple subset of the IT industry. "In the mid-nineties, Andy Grove and Bill Gates were admitting that 75 per cent of their profitability was coming from email. Previously, computing had been about word processing and doing Excel spreadsheets. Now it has to be about communication."

But it's not all rosy. For small companies, the internet, he warns, is "a two-edged sword. It enables big companies to pretend they are small at the same time as it enables small companies to pretend they are bigger. All of the SMEs I talk to have recognised that. For example, the High Street food outlets realise that Tesco is encroaching on their space to appear more local".

"On the other hand," he continues, "we are at a point where the decision to get onto the internet is a no-brainer for SMEs. Ninety five per cent of small businesses are going to end up online, and the only ones who won't will capitalise their businesses and get out altogether".

Bringing it all back home

Broster is optimistic about the future of UK small businesses, despite the gathering economic storm in the US. He believes many of the same conditions that generated ten years of continuous high growth among American hi-tech small businesses, are being replicated here.

"The VCs are getting into it, and there is now a good pool of talented managers who have, like me, come back from North America, and there are more to come. About one-fifth of the managers I met in North America were not from there. Those guys are taking their fortunes back - to India, Eastern Europe, or, indeed, to the UK."

"So, we'll just have to see where this marriage of conservatism and entrepreneurialism in the small business sector heads," concludes Broster.