IT is ubiquitous - almost anything we want to we can do online without having to pick up the phone - from ordering our shopping to booking a holiday. It suits us this way as it's faster and more convenient and we can carry out these tasks at a time that suits us best - often in the evening when we have some spare time and businesses are closed for the day.

There's a small part of industry, however, that's been much slower to adopt these time-saving measures - they largely fit into a category called personal care services: hair salons, photographers, music teachers, cleaning companies, plumbers, vets, dentists - to make an appointment with these companies, I still have to use the phone.

This isn't actually an issue for me, but I imagine it is problematic for the business as the phone lines have to be manned. In the small nail salon that I attend bi-weekly, the phone rings regularly and my technician stops working on my nails to take the call adding many minutes here and there to my appointment.

The low levels of adoption in the personal care services industry is probably down to a number of factors one of them being availability of low cost IT systems. Up-front capital investment and then installation and running costs can be too much to bear. The recent availability of cloud computing solutions, whereby there is no requirement to install or host any systems locally; the system is simply accessed via an internet browser and is usually charged on a pay-as-you-go model thereby avoiding any capital investment.

There are a number of systems becoming available for these small personal care services businesses such as Reserviz , an online solution for automating your appointment book. As a customer, I can simply search and select my hair salon, view all available slots with my stylist and confirm my appointment, oh and while I'm at it, I can see that my nail technician is free immediately afterwards and since they are just over the road, I'll get that appointment scheduled as well.

The result is win-win all round: technical staff feel rewarded as they can concentrate on their clients, clients can manage their diary online at a time that suits them best and the small business benefits from lower reception costs and improved efficiency.

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