Cost Control uses

One of the more effective uses of the Web is for cost control. A key management mantra is "do more with less", where the Web excels.

We have already seen the use of the Web for customer service in a previous lesson. Organizations are using the Web for customer service not only to provide better and on-demand services, but also to decrease substantially their costs. Customer support by e-mail, file and text downloading, became a cheap and fast way to solve customer problems.

One location for updating and maintenance of documents and other references.

• Organizations generate a variety of documents and other references to be used in many, geographically dispersed, locations. In the past, keeping track of who had what version of a given document was a nightmare.

• Placing these documents on the Web guarantees that there is only one version and location to look for the documents, while saving the costs of distribution and control of these documents.

• Updating and maintenance costs of the same documents are substantially decreased. There is no need to keep track of various versions existing in remote locations, duplicate and send the appropriate update. All is done in one location.

• Another substantial cost saving effect of the Web is the immediate availability of the information. How many mistakes, errors, wrong deals, etc, can be prevented by simply having the information made available are not yet known, but the savings corresponding to lost time, business, etc, should be substantial.

Paperless media

• We have heard about the paperless office of the future. This may never come to be, but the Web is a substantial step in this direction.

• The paper and copying cost savings of placing documents on the Web are also significant. Nobody seems to be able to create a form, report, or send a memo, mail, without sending copies to everybody else in an organization! Even on e-mail, people seem to have kept this practice!!!! The Web advantage is that there is only one original that whomever is interested can read.

• The savings with document distribution in today's global organizations are also considerable. The Fax phenomenon of the past is indicative of the need of fast document distribution at low cost. The Web can do more than the fax did for organizations, for it can reach even more locations, including homes, without the phone line cost of each fax transmission. If it compares favorably with the fax, it makes the cost of regular mail (snail-mail) too expensive.

low cost, high quality media

The Web is in its infancy as an advertising media. The latest estimates of the Internet Advertising Bureau puts the total for Web advertising in 2002 on the six billion dollars ball park figure. In the next two years this amount is foreseen to surpass the 10 billion dollars mark (in the last two years Internet advertising has fallen significantly after a peak of 8 billion in 2000). See the sites below for more in advertising statistics, etc.

• Net Marketing
• Ad Resource - Advertising Statistics

Intranets: the internal Web

• Here comes the Intranet (BusinessWeek) - a classic.
• Overview - another classic.
• Complete Intranet Resource (CIR)
• Intranet Journal

This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubmail.ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on October 30, 2003. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.