Salesforce Starter is Salesforce’s new solution designed to help businesses more easily try, buy, and get value from Salesforce’s CRM solutions. While the first iteration of Salesforce Starter has been available since August 2022, the Summer release, announced on August 2, adds new marketing capabilities to the solution—and makes Starter a much more formidable contender […]
Category: Blog – Laurie McCabe
GreenRope Brings New AI Features to Its Unified CRM Platform
I was initially introduced to GreenRope CRM in 2021. I interviewed its founder and CEO, Lars Helgeson, about the company’s focus on sustainability and its unified platform for sales, marketing, and operations in this blog. In fact, the GreenRope brand name reflects this strategy— “green” is revenue and sustainability, and “rope” underscores the company’s premise […]
Top Takeaways from Dell Technologies World 2023
Resiliency is an essential quality in the ever-changing technology industry. Since its inception in 1984, Dell has proved its resiliency many times, reshaping its strategy and offerings to stay ahead of the technology curve. Last month, I had the opportunity to attend Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. This year’s event coincided with the latest […]
Sustainability Matters: ESG Trends and Strategies for Small and Medium Businesses
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies and programs are now common practice for most large, publicly traded corporations. Despite recent efforts to politicize ESG, these companies are staying the course — and for good reason: The ranks of socially conscious customers, employees, and investors are on the rise—and these stakeholders want to do business with […]
Zoho Expands Its Ambitions On Multiple Fronts
After a four-year hiatus due to COVID-19, Zoho’s Zoholics event was back in Austin, TX the first week of May, featuring an analyst track that I attended. The dominant takeaway is that Zoho, which already sells more than 60 business applications in 160-plus countries, is expanding on multiple fronts. The company is doubling down in […]
From Skateboards to Farm Equipment: How Shark Wheel Is Reinventing the Wheel and Its Financial Processes
By SMB Group’s Kelly Teal, Contributing Analyst, and Laurie McCabe, Co-founder It’s not every day that someone quite literally reinvents the wheel. But that’s just what David Patrick and Zack Fleishman did about 10 years ago. Now, after a decade of prototyping, testing, and strategizing, their efforts are paying off. Their company, Shark Wheel, has […]
New Report Reveals How Key Trends and Challenges are Impacting Financial Management
What are the key trends and challenges that SMB financial professionals are facing, and how are they impacting business and financial management practices? These are the questions we explore in this new report, 2023 State of Finance Automation: SMB Financial Management Insights & Trends. The insights in the report are based on BILL’s State of […]
Dell’s New APEX Managed Device Service: A Game Changer for SMBs
Finding, hiring, and retaining quality IT people is a struggle for many small and medium businesses (SMBs) with 1 to 499 employees. The situation is most severe at the low end. In businesses with fewer than 20 employees, 47% say that they have no formal IT support, and 22% report that non-IT staff look after […]
Top Takeaways from Workday’s AI and ML Innovation Summit 2023
As the name implies, the theme of Workday’s AI and ML Innovation Summit 2023 for industry analysts (held March 13-15 at beautiful Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA) was artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). While other ground was covered, AI and ML topics were the centerpiece of most of the presentations and discussions. Co-CEOs […]
5 Ways Small Businesses Can Achieve Greater Impact With Limited Resources
—By Guest Contributor Ben Richardson, Director, Acuity Training Small businesses are the backbone of the global economy and play a crucial role in creating jobs and driving growth. However, given their limited resources, small enterprises frequently encounter substantial obstacles in attaining their objectives. However, there are several steps SMBs can take to ensure that their businesses […]