SMB

It's not enough to have just a website, or just social media profiles. Businesses need to have both, and the traffic needs to flow seamlessly between them. Numerica Credit Union was looking for a way to offer customers a useful tool on its Facebook page while driving traffic from Facebook to its sit...

Microsoft unveiled the new versions of its Office suite and and Office 365 subscription-based service on Monday. The updated Office has an intuitive design that makes it touch- and stylus-compatible, and usable across a variety of devices running Windows, including tablets and smartphones. It's also...

EXPERT ADVICE

Finding a Billing Model to Fit Your Startup

Picture this: You're a young entrepreneur who's had that a-ha! moment that most only ever dream of. You've found your niche, built your offering, compiled an impressive team of engineers and salespeople that checkbook-wielding VCs are drooling over -- you're nearly ready to take the world by storm.

The fallout from Facebook's May IPO continued Tuesday as venture capitalist Paul Graham of Y Combinator warned Silicon Valley startups that they may be in for a stretch of hard times. In a letter, Graham states that a prominent investor he knows seems sure that the bad performance of the Facebook IP...

Engaging the customer has always been fundamental to doing good business. It's just that now that engagement often starts in digital, social media realms. The trick is to figure out how to make one's content as interesting as all the other content that shows up in the newsfeed, and this is where soc...

GOVERNMENT IT REPORT

New Venture Firms See Major Opps in Federal IT Market

U.S. government agencies are looking everywhere they can to cut costs -- including the cost of information technology. Tight budgets will be the dominating factor in federal IT procurement over the next several years -- at least. Yet in the face of budget discipline -- and even slightly projected de...

EXPERT ADVICE

Putting a B2B E-Commerce Twist Into the SMB

Business-to-business selling on the Internet, or B2B e-commerce, is one of the fastest growing segments of the small-business marketplace. As businesses flock to the Internet to find vendors for essential products and services, B2B e-commerce is rapidly expanding, both in terms of total revenue and ...

OPINION

Counting the Cloud’s Blessings

It amazes me that there are still analyst reports and other industry studies questioning the value of today's cloud solutions. While there is no question that the return on investment will vary depending on a variety of factors, there is plenty of evidence that anyone who employs cloud solutions tho...

It's been difficult in recent years for many people and small businesses to get the loans they need from banks and other traditional lenders, but there are a variety of alternative models. One is person-to-person lending, offered by companies like Prosper, which essentially lets individual people ...

EXPERT ADVICE

Telework: The New SMB Imperative

One of the most significant workplace changes of the past decade has been the steady increase in telework and flexible work arrangements. In the past, the ability to work remotely from time to time might have just shown up on a "corporate perks" sheet handed to new employees. Today, telework is no l...

EXPERT ADVICE

6 Keys for Going Global With Your E-Commerce Op

For U.S.-based retailers, running a successful global e-commerce business takes the right balance of strong local marketing and effective operations. While it is essential that retailers cater to local customer experience expectations, it is also critically important to abide by local laws and regu...

OPINION

Seed the Cloud

Turn on an episode of Seinfeld and return with me to the 1990s! This summer the National Venture Capital Association released results for the second quarter of this year, showing that $7.5 billion was invested in 966 deals. This represented an increase of 19 percent in dollars and deals over the...

After six years of debate over patent reform, the U.S. Senate last week overwhelmingly approved the America Invents Act, a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. patent system that intends to weed out unnecessary patents and put the country more on par with international patent procedures. The bill, authored...

Many small-business owners may not realize that the cloud plays a big role in their business operations, and its importance is growing every day. I'm often asked, "What exactly is the cloud, and why does my company need it?" Simply put, the cloud hosts resources and applications that are accessed th...

OPINION

Seeing Clouds Everywhere

I'm still surprised by the range of companies and nonprofit organizations moving to the cloud, and pleased to hear about the business benefits they are gaining from their decisions. An illustration of this growing movement is a series of webcast interviews I recently conducted of CXOs from a variety...

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