Not so much a luxury, more an essential

Jan 22 2009 by Dominic Edmunds, The Journal

TO the majority of the football world Manchester City was, frankly, mad to offer £100m for Kaka. He may be an exceptional footballer, but surely in light of the current economic climate, he is nothing more than ‘nice’ to have, an extremely expensive luxury, and shouldn’t we be cutting back?

But in business what are luxuries and can we really survive without them? And is the web a businessman’s Kaka?

In reality, the web is far from being ‘nice’ to have, it is fundamental to a successful business, and in many instances it is out-performing comparable physical retail.

Businesses are adapting, they’re attacking the credit crunch head-on and not with excesses and obscene luxuries but with common sense and smart strategies. We’ve all heard in the past, ‘It’s the marketing budget that is the first to go’, but it’s not something we’re hearing now and that’s because the marketing budget invariably includes ‘digital’, the cost effective, tangible and responsive tool that businesses need to weather the storm.

Never before have I been so inundated with such vast quantities of email marketing as I was in the run up to and after Christmas and I relished it, the competitiveness and the reassurance that businesses weren’t crumbling. Further support for this trend in online investment comes from the British Retail Consortium, who reported that online sales for December 2008 had grown by 30% when compared to December 2007; all this despite the Armageddon on the high street.

The web is very much central to modern life. We have all embraced its benefits, using it to perform the most mundane tasks, such as setting up a direct debit, to the more satisfying, such as booking a holiday and in the same way, it is essential to businesses if they wish to reach all of us.

So, the web is it ‘nice’ to have?

In business today, something is either essential or not. The truth is that the world of business has never been more black and white (or black and red) and there is a huge amount of reassurance that business online -– the web, the internet however we refer to it – is firmly in the black, much like the bank account of Manchester City’s new owners.

Dominic Edmunds, Operations , director of Sunderland-based Leighton Digital, the cost effective, tangible and responsive tool that businesses need