How to Speed Up Your Business's Reaction Time

One of the key competitive advantages you can put into place is speed. Most customers value speed when a company is giving a price, confirming an order, delivering product and reacting to problems. Many customers insist on it and will go elsewhere if you're slow. Small business has an inherent advantage with regard to speed because there is less organization to react to events. When you have an inherent advantage, you have to turn it into a competitive advantage.

Technology is the key to turning your potential fast reaction time into a real speed advantage. While large companies struggle to put together massive databases and data warehouses so that orders and deliveries can be processed in real time, small businesses can achieve real time processing of most business functions using off-the-shelf software. For example, with relatively few products and small quantities in stock, small businesses can give customers direct access to the in stock numbers and let them order live using the same data as in-house personnel. If something goes wrong, the problem is manageable in terms of personnel being able to track what material has gone where and taking over manually functions which aren't working. Try doing that when you're shipping several million dollars worth of product every day.

IT World magazine has published an article on a similar subject which they call zero latency. It means that customers interact with company data without any time delay. The article gives some good examples and advice but is also interesting because it discusses what large companies have to do to achieve zero latency - obviously it's not easy.

If you read the above article and examine what your small business would have to do to achieve real time customer interaction, the extent of your potential competitive advantage will become very clear.

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