A Google executive made a simple but profound statement at an event held earlier in the year in Adelaide: “We don’t go online – we live online.”

The comment, made at the ‘Let’s put Adelaide on the map’ event co-hosted by Business SA, Google, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, goes to the heart of where businesses, large and small, now sit in the digital world.

It is a basic fact of corporate life which brings opportunities to be grasped and risks to be mitigated.

Research commissioned by Google from Deloitte Access Economics in 2013 categorised small businesses on a scale from ‘very low’ to ‘high’ digital engagement. ‘Low’ engagement was defined as a business having a website and using social media for marketing purposes with ‘high’ being companies that used all the digital technologies including search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

The event heard that small businesses with a high digital engagement were two times more likely to be growing revenue than their ‘low’ engaged competitors, were earning twice the revenue per employee, and were four times more likely to be hiring staff.

It’s a compelling set of numbers which makes the case that business success today requires knowledge and a proficiency in the digital space. Those business owners who may be uncomfortable with the speed of change are only going to find themselves increasingly isolated and left behind because the digital revolution waits for no-one.

Other statistics make the case to be engaged online at a very practical level. The Google event heard that an online search is now the first way that people find a telephone number for a business, and 82 per cent use a mobile phone to do so.

It’s timely and important to meet – and utilise – the new online realities.