COVID-19, also known as the novel coronavirus, is having a devastating effect on small and medium businesses (SMBs)—the engine of the U.S. economy and those around the world. But how deep and broad is the impact? SMB Group is providing answers to this question in our new, free eBook, sponsored by our partners, Acumat...
Category: Business Solutions
How Xero is Adjusting Customer Experience in a World That’s Gone Sideways
We are all reeling from the impact of the coronavirus. The new normal isn’t what anyone wants—or probably could have even envisioned. What worked a few weeks ago—in our personal lives and our businesses—likely won’t work now. As I discussed in this post, all companies need to figur...
Barriers to SMB Technology Adoption—and How to Get Over Them
Are you one of the many small and medium business decision-makers who knows that you need to figure out how to do a better job of putting technology to work for your business—but aren’t sure where to start?
Zoho’s Big Plans for Small Businesses
Until recently, Zoho’s focus been on the small business market, which now accounts for more than 80% of its customers. But over the past couple of years, Zoho has launched a concentrated campaign to win business in larger accounts. All too often, once vendors go upmarket, they slowly but surely lose focus on the small businesses that “brung ‘em” to the dance in the first place. However, as I...
Zoho Ups the Ante on Data Privacy
Most people are well aware that we are actually paying for the “free” applications we use with our data. From Facebook to Google to Pinterest, vendors monetize user data through advertising and by tracking and selling our data to third parties. But many people are not aware of the increasing scope of these practices. In November, for instance, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had...
Life in the Fast Lane: Acumatica’s Cloud ERP
Acumatica bills itself as “the world’s fastest-growing cloud ERP company.” While this kind of marketing slogan can be hard to prove, Acumatica is providing convincing numbers to back up its claim. In January, I attended Acumatica Summit, the company’s annual customer conference, where CEO Jon Roskill announced that Acumatica now has more than 6,500 inst...
Intuit: Democratizing AI and ML for Small Businesses
Intuit wants to democratize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for small businesses—many of whom lack the time and expertise to take advantage of these technologies on their own. To that end, the vendor has been steadily turbo-charging its solutions with AI and ML capabilities to make them “smart”. In 2019, Intuit increased the number of employees working in AI by 60%. Th...
Convention Vs. Zoho Conviction: Challenging the Norms of the Software Industry
According to Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho, “Thoughts become opinions, which evolve into convictions.” As we heard from Vegesna at the Toronto ZohoOne event in early November, Zoho holds some very strong convictions that have put it on a very different path than most of its industry contemporaries.