Computer savvy at your service

Nation's Business, March, 1998 by Tim McCollum

The patients may not notice it, but the Harding Nursing Home has gone high-tech.

The nurses and other staff members of the home in Waterville, N.Y., are still there to provide the human touches. But behind the scenes, a network of computers has begun taking care of the information tasks that people used to perform to keep everything running smoothly.

Owner Robert Harding says computers have become a necessity in health-care facilities, where complex information chores must be completed efficiently. These chores include accounting, Medicare and private-insurance claims processing, keeping records on patients, and coordinating information with doctors, hospitals, and government health-care agencies.

"There's been a tremendous increase in the demand for detailed information," says Harding, whose family has run the 92-bed Waterville home for 45 years. "It's become important to have central stores" of information.

Building those centralized databases required an investment in desktop-computer and related network hardware and software. It also required something Harding knew he lacked: the expertise to link those elements into a system that would run smoothly and reliably.

Like many small-business owners, Harding was reluctant to hire a network professional, whom he might not have been able to keep busy over the long haul. Instead, he contracted with Express Data Products in nearby Utica, N.Y., a reseller of computer equipment made by Hewlett-Packard Co. of Cupertino, Calif.

Thanks to its close relationship with Hewlett-Packard, Express Data was able to install Harding's PCs, network server computer, and tape backup system -- all quickly and correctly. The reseller then tied the components together using NetWare software produced by Novell Inc. of Orem, Utah.

Express Data also installed productivity software, including an accounting program, and constructed databases of patient records to make them accessible over the network using a software program called Lotus Notes, created by Lotus Development Corp., based in Cambridge, Mass.

Harding says working with Express Data allows him to have ongoing local expertise when it's time to add capabilities to the network or to repair equipment. "They come out and set up the workstations for us, and they are up and running with no re glitches," says Harding. "And if there a problem, they come out and solve it."

Businesses such as Harding's are becoming an important market for technology manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard. Although the corporate market enables these manufacturers to make single-customer sales of hundreds or even thousands of PCs and related software and services, the big-company market is limited.

To increase market share, manufacturers must focus on small businesses, says Raymond Boggs, director of small-business research with IDC/Link, a technology-market-research firm in New York City. And those small firms, which are increasing their technology spending at a faster rate than corporations, he says, should benefit from this newfound attention.

In addition to Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer Inc. in Cupertino, Compaq Computer Corp. in Houston, IBM Corp. in Somers, N.Y., and Micron Electronics Inc. in Nampa, Idaho, have begun aggressive courting of the small-business market.

They follow the lead of software companies such as Intuit Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., and Novell, which have been selling to small businesses for several years.

In the process, all these vendors are learning that small companies have needs that are significantly different from those of big corporations, says Boggs.

For example, entrepreneurs such as Harding usually don't have computer staffs to select and implement new technologies, so they need vendors to provide that expertise. Consequently, service has become a major part of vendors' sales pitches to small businesses.

Some vendors are setting up consulting operations that can respond to customer questions by phone, through the Internet, or more directly through local resellers and consultants. Some are also offering products and services engineered with small-business needs in mind.

Hewlett-Packard was one of the first computer companies to take the latter approach. Two years ago, the company introduced a line of PCs designed to be easy for small businesses to install and maintain themselves. It also has created a small-business unit that provides one-stop sales and support for all of Hewlett-Packard's computer and printer products for "Small-business customers want products that are easy to buy and easy to use," says Kim Tchang, Hewlett-Packard's director of small and medium-sized business.

IBM recently took a highly publicized step into the small-business market, as it tries to turn entrepreneurs on to computers and the Internet. Like Hewlett-Packard, it is building its offerings around technical expertise and service.

IBM's ServicePac program, for example, allows entrepreneurs to purchase a fixed number of customer-support telephone calls to IBM technicians with expertise in more than 80 software applications. The company also has assembled a network of IBM experts and independent business partners to help small firms implement technologies for solving business problems.