Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. Lester R. Bittel, The Nine Master Keys of Management This seems to be especially true when it comes t...
Tag: technology
What Are Integrated Payment Solutions and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published January 30, 2011 in Small Business Computing) What are Integrated Payments Solutions? Integrated payment solutions are tools that your business can use to integrate accounting, customer relationship manag...
Does Your SMB Marketing Message Need a Makeover? Seven Questions to Ask
Countless technology vendors are targeting the increasingly coveted yet still somewhat elusive small and medium business (SMB) market. We do our share of message testing and market strategy work with them, and attend innumerable briefings from other vendors aiming to make their mark in this crowded space. All too often, we see some warning signs that indicate gaps a vendor hasn’t created a str...
Top Trends Most Evident at the 2010 Small Business Technology Summit
Back in the beautiful Live Free or Die state after attending the 2010 Small Business Summit earlier this week. This is a fantastic event coordinated by Ramon Ray and Marian Banker, and held at the Digital Sandbox in the financial district in New York. Wheth...
2010 Top 10 SMB Technology Market Predictions
Fellow SMB analyst Sanjeev Aggarwal and I have teamed up to bring you our top ten technology related predictions-plus three bonus predictions--for the SMB (companies with 1-1000 employees) market for 2010. Details for each prediction follow the list below. Remember to vote for your top prediction
Another Plea for Plain English!
Yesterday, I was listening to NPR’s Here and Now at lunch time while running a few errands in my car. I tuned into a great story about the “Plain English Campaign”, which was founded in 1979 by now 71-year old Chrissie Maher. The organization’s mi...
IBM Lotus Foundations: A Real Choice for Small Businesses and Partners
As I mentioned in a blog I posted after Lotusphere 2009, IBM Lotus has been reluctant to go head to head with obvious rivals, particularly Microsoft. At Lotusphere, however, the company came out swinging, declaring intentions “shatter Windows” and “change desktop economics” with Symphony, the free Lotus desktop suite, and compete aggressively against Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) with t...
What Will Social Networking Displace?
Just a couple of years ago, many people were still debating whether digital social networking was just a flash in the pan. With social media growth surging, that that debate is over. People have moved on to try and figure out where social networking is headed—as evidenced when I Googled the “future of social networking” and got 542,000 results. Now of course I didn’t read all of them, but a co...
Six Signs that It’s Time to Bring Your Cloud Speak Down to Earth
I know its hard to believe, but industry insiders often make and drink too much of their own Kool-Aid! Unfortunately, this seems to be happening all too frequently with cloud computing, the latest in a long line of our industry’s over-hyped buzzwords. Here’s how to tell if you need to come back down earth when communicating about "t...
Reading the Top Trends Barometer at the 2009 Small Business Summit
Just got back from Small Business Summit 2009—an awesome event put on by Ramon Ray (www.smallbiztechnology.com) and Marian Banker (www.primestrategies.com ) at the Digital Sandbox in New York City. Turn out for the Summit was terrif...