MAKING THE Switch - incorporating technology into small businesses

Black Enterprise, Nov, 2001 by Paula Mccoy-Pinderhughes

Warren says he is retiring in a couple of years, and has already started identifying people who might be interested in continuing the Executive Carriages II name. But at what price will he sell the business and at what cost to him (see "What Is Your Company Worth?" July 2001)?

Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, assistant professor of information technology/systems at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says lack of time, experience, or capital should not preclude African American entrepreneurs from seeking IT skills and services and bringing these tools into their organizational structure.

"In general," Payton says, "the adoption and implementation of technology among small business lags that of large organizations. For minority-owned businesses, the barriers to technology adoption appear to be increasingly challenging."

Beyond mere sales increases, says Payton, other benefits of employing technology in business have been well documented. "There are many small businesses that are currently engaged in a number of online activities, including research, document exchange, downloading software, obtaining business news, and ordering business goods and services. The studies suggest failure to adopt IT results in a slower increase in sales revenue, productivity, and industry exposure."

After years of operating with little more than a stand-alone PC and a dot-matrix printer, Bobbie Edmonds, principal in the Law Offices of Bobbie Edmonds in Fort Worth, is now a staunch believer in making the switch. "Technology has substantially increased the productivity of my employees and myself," says Edmonds. "The office has a network installed, and, of course, access to the Internet, where I can do research online using Westlaw, Lexus-Nexus, and other research tools."

Edmonds admits that when she hung out her shingle in 1987, she knew that she would need a PC to type in legal briefs and make changes. But as time went on and business picked up, she was slow to make the change.

A critical barrier to African American business owners' adopting technology is attitude toward change and the technology itself. Payton says, "Negative attitudes toward technology make the implementation and adoption process unsuccessful. In fact, such attitudes can, likewise, stall the process entirely."

Ultimately, Edmonds knew that she would have to upgrade her current system. However, fear, she admits, is what held her back from making the move. "My fears were probably the same ones that every entrepreneur or business owner goes through: the fear of change, the fear of not understanding how the newest gadget operates, and, of course, the favorite, `It's too expensive,'" remembers Edmonds.

"If African Americans stake claim to a `too expensive, it's irrelevant, maintain the status quo' attitude toward technology, they stand to forgo the long- and short-term benefits of it," says Payton.

E-mail and spreadsheet applications such as LotusNotes, Microsoft Excel, and Hotmail offer efficiencies that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Use of planning tools like Quicken or Microsoft Money are valuable, especially for tracking expenses. And building and maintaining a Website, or hiring a professional to do so, will have long-term benefits for your enterprise.