How Has the Internet Affected the Business Environment?

The Internet has had a big effect on the business environment. The Internet has changed business and life immeasurably in as many ways are there are Internet sites.

From the heady days of the rise of the dot coms to the current onslaught of social media, the Internet and its various online manifestations have changed the world as surely as the automobile on a paved road ended the domination of the horse and buggy on a country lane.

The Internet has changed:

• The way people communicate with each other and where and how they work
• The way businesses sell their products
• The availability of data and information about businesses
• How businesses do everything from order goods and materials to file taxes or hire employees.

Businesses Adapting to Technology

Modern business has always adapted to technology, but no one could’ve envisioned the pace and the rapidity with which Internet expansion and access has changed life in every direction.

The business environment has tried to adapt has quickly as the Internet has given it cause to change and change again. The truth is that business has gotten whiplash in how it keeps trying to keep up, and the ways in which the Internet has impacted the business environment continue to change and grow.

Progress and change in the Internet almost outpaces the human mind in trying to follow its manifestations, and the myriad changes that follow inexorably in its path.

Steady Rise of the Dot Coms in Business

Business wasn’t the fastest to embrace change when it came over a computer screen and through an online modem. Back in the Clinton days of the 1990s, the Internet was used by the public mostly as a means of communicating in chatrooms and IMs, and most of that was hosted by America Online.

Business began to see a future in e-commerce - selling goods and services online - but that was before Amazon, and ebay was still an outback where (very) small sellers sold goods that were hard to find elsewhere, and waited for checks and money orders to arrive by snailmail.

This clearly was not the most efficient way to do business, and larger brick-and-mortar ventures didn’t see much use in establishing an online presence. There wasn’t any way to easily take credit card payments online - this was before the heady rise of Paypal - so why bother?

Who even heard of a checkout, much less a cart for purchases on a computer screen? There were free websites where one might set up a store, but most of the business was done the old fashioned way: by the customer calling in their credit card number, or by sending out a check or money order.

The rise of the dot coms, though, was just around the bend, and when they came business changed...forever.

Boom and Bust...and Boom

It’s safe to say most businesses really didn’t “get” the Internet. As a means of selling merchandise, it was slow and inefficient. As a way of alerting the public to a company - or a cause - there weren’t enough people online, and “online” at that point had barely advanced to 486 IBM PCs and 2400 baud modems.

“Online,” as far as many company executives could see, was comprised of whatever space in the ether was occupied by the industry giant, AOL.

But once young entrepreneurs grasped how to create and market websites, business was shaken to its core with the rapidity of Internet growth. These young geniuses had taken the business environment by storm. Many companies were left running behind, trying to hire IT people who knew anything about what made the Internet tick.

By then, though, the first overcapitalized dot coms were starting to crash and burn quickly, and business became shy. But only for a moment.

The Internet was the rage, and there was no stopping its impact on the business environment.

Social Media and More

In the last few years, all the tens of millions of websites selling onlookers everything from toothpaste to cancer research awareness to presidential candidates had barely gained their footing before social media came onto the scene.

In an instant, anyone who had a website now needed another online expert to introduce them to the vagaries of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other portals.

Smart phones, and other ways of accessing the Internet without the need for a computer, had freed people to share and receive information at a greater and greater pace. The truth is that the business environment is forever changed because of the rapidity of online innovation.

It’s easy to see how people, and the business environment, are still struggling to keep their heads above the Information Age. It’s hard, almost impossible, for anyone to know what it will all mean a year, even two from now.

One thing is for certain: the rise of the Internet has affected human life to an unprecedented, unanticipated degree. The way the Internet has impacted the business environment is only one part of that equation, but a huge one, indeed.