The news tonight is that oil has hit $140 dollars a barrel. People in the know in the transport world are forecasting that we are getting very close to the point when we'll all think very hard before getting the car out to go to work; that public transport will face increasing demand, and there'll be a significant increase in working from home or from a more local office.
My immediate thought is how do we prepare our small business to meet this challenge in terms of the travel issues, both from an environmental angle and because higher fuel costs are the equivalent of a reduction in earnings for staff who drive to work. Can we use ICT to help the process ?
So how do we reduce our need to travel ? At ScotlandIS, getting to the office means jumping into the car for all of us, but we're already using a number of technology solutions to allow us to work from home (mostly) a couple of days a week.
A combination of broadband, wireless networks, email, skype, and google docs let us work pretty seamlessly from home. Of course, at first we were all a bit unsure whether this would work. If you couldn't see your colleagues, were they really working? Were you working ? Or just sloping about in your pyjamas, over a leisurely breakfast, surfing the net for holidays ... actually of course you very quickly find that whilst people might take a bit of time out to hang out, the reality is that people do put the time in, and the work definitely get done.
To date we have used some relatively Heath Robinson systems such as call forwarding for incoming calls to the office, and we do have to be careful we've rationalised versions of documents that have been worked on away from the office. So to move seriously to more virtual working and reduce the amount of travelling we do to meetings, events etc we need to take further steps.
More sophisticated telephone systems will let us transfer calls to wherever we are without the caller being aware of call rerouting. We are already looking at a number of web based solutions to meet our database and office documentation needs. We're increasingly using conference calls to replace meetings, but this tends to be for "internal" meetings, such as team discussions, or project work, and for Board meetings. I have to admit the function I'm not comfortable about "virtualising" is the accounts - but with some thought it could be relatively easily done.
One of the biggest next steps we could take would be to seriously embrace video-conferencing for meetings. And to encourage people who normally expect to meet in person to try the video conferencing option.
We run a host of events over the year - and whilst sometimes there is no substitute for meeting people in the flesh, some of these events could be replaced with webinars, and other options such as virtual worlds.
Many of these solutions have already been adopted by large companies, but for small businesses these moves can be quite challenging, in terms not only of the technology but in business culture. However a number of factors are making this easier. The technology is much easier to use, suitable competitively priced software solutions are increasingly available, and new ones come along every day. You do need to look at the security issues,and in particular at how you protect sensitive data, but again there are robust solutions available.
On the business culture front, there is increasing evidence that staff seriously value the increased flexibility these changes allow, and some early indicators of productivity improvements.
For many small businesses all of the above is possible - it won't work for everyone, but it could make a considerable difference to the quality of our working lives - not to mention being kinder on the wallet !
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