BUSSINESS IT ONLINE(BIO)

I'm hoping you've seen today's announcement that Business IT Online (BIO) has extended its range of offerings for small businesses to include an online office supplies shop.

By adding a fully-stocked e-commerce site to BIO's offering, we can now justifiably call the site a one-stop-online-shop for small business services.

So, why did we do it? Why did we do what nobody else has done (to my knowledge, anyway) and release an e-commerce site alongside our web-based software applications for small businesses?

Here are some reasons why:

1. Because our vision for BIO has always been for it to be a 'one-stop-shop' solution.

While those with plenty of loose change may opt to shop with specialist suppliers and pay a premium for specific services, those that are looking to save usually look to the likes of supermarkets and one-stop-shops for savings on price and efficiency. This is confirmed by excellent performance from supermarkets relative to the broader retail sector since the recession hit hard.

Small businesses are relatively cash and time poor. The more tools, web sites, applications and services required to perform their day-to-day activities, the more inefficiencies that are introduced into their lives. Inefficiencies hurt small businesses. BIO's objective is to reduce these inefficiencies and make the running of a small business easier by offering integrated services on one site.

2. Because e-commerce is good business.

Nic Brisbourne recently referred to projections from Forrester that 2009 will be a good year for e-commerce. There is still plenty of room for growth in e-commerce over the coming years as more and more people realise the benefits of shopping online.

There are a good number of ways for us to innovate in what is a relatively tired area of retail and while many of the large industry incumbents are battling to win blue chip accounts and managing a lot of costly inventory, we intend to provide an outstanding service for SMEs.

3. Because we are revenue-funding the business.

Web 2.0 is full of businesses that have successfully raised millions of pounds in funding for their Internet ideas. Some of these are pre-revenue and many of them are pre-profit.

While the VC-funded Web 2.0 bubble has been exploding, with mixed results for investors, we have beenbuilding a business that uses sales to fund growth. So far, we've successfully combined a subscription model with an advertising model and now we're adding a third revenue-stream to the site to further bolster sales in the form of e-commerce. Revenue-funding might be less sexy. But it works.