Power Surge

Eric Schechter, president of Great American Events Corp. in Scottsdale, Arizona, says his 20-employee promotions and marketing company would be hard-pressed to put on its annual conference without computers to prepare materials and manage registration lists. "In fact," says Schechter, "we couldn't do it without technology. If the network goes down, we're in trouble."

Despite using e-mail for only a little more than a year, Wesman already sees it as indispensable. "My business wouldn't run without e-mail and Internet access," she says. "All our clients want to e-mail us."

Technology helps small businesses compete on a more level playing field with bigger businesses and eventually become big businesses themselves, according to Russ Finney, an IT professional who reports on business technology for New York City Internet directory service The Mining Company. "If you want to move from a 25-person operation to a 100-person operation and then a 500-person operation," says Finney, "having that technological backbone is [imperative]."

This article was originally published in the November 1998 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Power Surge.