ALTHOUGH the Internet has been established as a common and accepted technological facility in our everyday lives there remains an inordinate lack of understanding amongst business owners and managers in how to assess and appraise the potential of this medium in commercial application, if any, for their particular business.

It is normally standard procedure in business to conduct a feasibility study based on predefined variables that are ascertained to be of influence before making a decision to commit resources to a specific project. A difficulty confronting business in the earliest days of the Internet occurred due to there being very little corroborative data available to confirm or refute the exaggerated claims that accompanied its debut. Compounding matters for business owners and managers were the added difficulties of engaging the services of appropriately qualified and experienced personnel who not only had the technical knowledge, but also, were intuitive with its application especially in commercial deployment.

The resulting consequences were there existed very few rules or procedures when it came to establishing a successful Internet strategy. Indeed, many people working within the industry had completely opposing views as to the best way of designing and developing an online presence. Inevitably, people and businesses either lost their investment or failed to realize the financial windfalls that had been confidently forcasted.

The Internet eventually fell from grace and into commercial disrepute resulting in a mass exodus in departure as well as denouncement and disassociation of its commercial potentiality in identical fashion to the tide of investors who, only a short while before, had besieged and embraced its potential with unconditional meritorious worth. However, despite the Internet fluctuations in fortunes since its commercial inception in the first half of the last decade of the twentieth century, its potential as a viable utility in commercial application could never be earnestly discarded. Its unprecedented capabilities to convey information in significantly reduced cost ratios in comparison to existing and more traditional methods as well as to an escalating global audience - estimated to be in excess of 700 million people - remained, and still remains, too attractive a concept to ignore.

The prospective financial rewards to commercial enterprise in the advent they are able to create and sustain a successful Internet presence is indelibly fused in corporate rationale worldwide, thereby, obviating any notion of withdrawing from future investment in the technology. Subsequently, the challenge for business has long since past the deliberation stages of whether, or not, it would be pertinent or worthwhile to create and maintain an Internet presence. The answer has been, and is, unequivocally YES!

The question of deliberation now revolves around how best is an Internet presence achieved, advanced and sustained.

Peter Brereton is the resident copywriter at Octopius