Erikka Askeland: Why firms can never be too connected to customers

One in four small businesses in Scotland isn't connected to the internet and doesn't seem to give a fig about it. Should we be tearing our hair out over these intransigent souls awkwardly unaware of the rules of our brave, new electronic world? Should we demand the Scottish Government provide iPhones for all in an effort to boost connectivity and thus productivity?

The Scottish Government report, Research on Broadband and Business in Scotland, insists that broadband undoubtedly brings "significant benefits to business".

There will be quite a few of us - and by "us" I mean those whose main job entails sitting in front of a computer terminal most of the day - who will agree that the statement is incontrovertibly true.

For most of "us", the world comes crashing down when you can't access e-mail accounts or the web. Our blood pressure rises if access is just a bit slow. And while most of "us" probably admit that we could waste a little less time on Facebook and Twitter, we have no idea how these 25 per cent of the small business population gets by without e-mail to communicate with suppliers, colleagues and buyers.

It has become a policy shibboleth that more and faster connectivity is unfailingly good, particularly in rural areas where the white heat of global industry can be piped down a fibre-optic cable or transmitted through the ether right into the heart of the croft. With a little help from the internet, farmers' wives can become lingerie tycoons while youngsters can trade lives of hard physical toil to become asset traders or software developers.

Yet there has been little said about the deleterious impacts of digital expansion on the rural economy. Thanks to internet access, people can order stuff they want off a website rather than support declining local shops. And the mass closure of bank outlets in small towns was the hard reality of the promised land of internet banking.

But trade body ScotlandIS doggedly insists we are missing a trick. Its own recent report said the Scottish economy could grow by an extra 12 billion over the next five years if the country better embraced digital technologies.

Which might go some way to explain that same body's tight-lipped "welcome" to the Scottish Government's pledge of 1.5m to promote greater digital participation in its Digital Strategy announced this week.

Sure, money is tight, but Scotland has the lowest level of broadband penetration in the UK. And 1.5m falls some way short of remedies suggested by ScotlandIS's such as the appointment of a "digital champion" or tax breaks. Polly Purvis, executive director of ScotlandIS, said it was a "good first step" but that there is "much more work to do".

Another recent report from think-tank Reform Scotland said: "Digital connectivity is to the present day what canals and railways were to the first industrial revolution." Yet anyone who has seen the Caledonian Canal stretching from Inverness to Fort William might take some pause for thought. The canal built to connect the Highlands to the world was obsolete by the time it was finished, replaced by rail and then road.

Of course, no-one who has enjoyed the beauty of the Caledonian Canal would say it should never have been built. And perhaps its legacy is not one of the folly of investing in communications infrastructure, rather the opposite - build the infrastructure now before what we end up with is already way behind everyone and everywhere else.

John Cooke, chief executive of the Mobile Operators Association, says broadband, either with smart phones or through cables to computers, will support communities. "Small local businesses don't exist in a vacuum. They need staff and customers. They need good digital connectivity because that will allow remoter rural communities, in the Borders or the Highlands, to remain sustainable in the long term."

It will also give industries a chance to be born and grow there. For even the most traditional rural folk, there are new digital lifelines such as Etsy, a global website allowing craft makers to sell a range goods to a worldwide audience. This could be a boon to those farmers' families. Indeed it always makes me a bit frazzled to wonder why Etsy, an American website, wasn't developed in the Highlands.