A Bit About Me

Since leaving permanent employment with Reuters in the autumn of 1997, I’ve worked with many companies in the UK both large and small. I’ve written business plans for start-ups and B2B marketing collateral for firms like Vodafone and BT. I’ve also been asked back as a consultant for Reuters on major client-facing web projects.

In my Reuters days between 1988 and 1997, I worked in many European capitals, most of the major Asian capitals and financial centres from Istanbul to Tokyo by way of Bombay, Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Taipei, as well as New York and Johannesburg.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, to put it frankly, I’ve put in some miles and time watching business at work in many different environments. And I’ve yet to come across an instance where technology – and the web in particular – cannot play a part in improving internal processes, customer service, marketing, and sales.

In 1998, in a column for Internet Business magazine, I wrote this:

There is a current IBM advertising campaign on television portraying various business types confronted by the internet. In one ad the punchline is ‘I don’t know how to do that’. In another, in
response to one exec stating that the company must get a web presence, another exec asks, ‘Why?’ IBM has hit on the two key elements reflected in that survey figure, namely ignorance and ignorance.

It is not the thought of large companies missing opportunities for growth that is so depressing, however, but that what the large companies do so many smaller companies will copy. If our larger
corporations, with advertising and marketing budgets to spend, feel they cannot justify a web presence then it is easy for the small businesses operating in their shadows to feel free to follow suit. But if
anything is likely to turn today’s minnow into tomorrow’s pike snapping at the tail of the bloated big boys it is clever use of the web.

Over ten years later, things are still suprisingly depressing. Although many smaller companies have a web presence, that’s it. Today’s small business web site is about as alluring as yesterday’s back of the paper small ad or about as much good as an entry in Yellow Pages.

The saddest part is that many businesses feel they’ve ‘tried the web’ and it just hasn’t worked for them. And yet, a web presence is now so much more than a simple site and just as the opportunities for really engaging with customers, partners, suppliers, and the channel are proliferating, many companies are choosing to ignore the web’s potential.

So, that’s where I come in. Take a look at my What I Do page to see how I work. In essence, I want to help you the incredible, flexible, and useful web tools available to keep your business thriving in the months and years ahead or, perhaps, to inject it with a new lease of life.