By Joey Gardiner, 23 May 2000 00:15
NEWS Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to get online in greater numbers or risk losing their business to Web-based competitors. The claim comes from UK e-minister Patricia Hewitt, in this week's News in View, which focuses on the launch of Colt Telecom's Web-hosting centre aimed at the SME market. Despite reports suggesting the UK is falling behind other EU countries in terms of ecommerce, Hewitt maintains Britain really could be the best place in the world for ecommerce. She told silicon.com: "Small businesses really need to get online because there are huge opportunities in the new economy to get to new markets and improve their supply chain, and there are also terrible threats of other people taking their business." Jonathan Watts, MD of Colt, added that a reliable infrastructure was vital to enable this. "If you encapsulate the Web in your business it becomes your business. You operate with it day to day, and you talk to your customers with it. If that Web server goes down you're out of business," he said. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said the Web provides a level playing-field for SMEs to compete with big businesses. David Hands of the FSB said: "Ecommerce isn't for every SME, but every SME should consider it." You can watch the full News in View programme in silicon.com's Call Centre Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a37628 )
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