IBM Smarter Commerce for Midsize Businesses – Future Trends

—by Laurie McCabe, SMB Group, in partnership with Brent Leary, CRM Essentials  
To help companies understand IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the SMB Group and CRM Essentials are working on a series of posts discussing how technology is empowering today’s customer, and why companies have to change their approach in order to build strong relationships with them. [...]

Dell Extends its End-to-End Storage Story for SMBs

Storage is a key requirement for today’s small-to-medium business (SMB) and mid-market enterprises. As the amount of data multiplies, and the need to protect critical data grows, SMBs now require many of the same data storage capabilities as larger enterprises.

With these requirements in mind, Dell recently announced the acquisition of AppAssure–the company’s first acquisition since [...]

Swimming with the Smarter Customer: The Speedo International Story

—by Laurie McCabe, SMB Group, in partnership with Brent Leary, CRM Essentials

Recently, Brent Leary and I had the opportunity to talk with Gareth Beer, Ecommerce Manager for Speedo International and learn about how Speedo International is applying smarter commerce philosophies and solutions to better serve its customers. We think Beer’s insights about Speedo’s experience in [...]

What Can We Learn From This Year’s Holiday Season?

—by Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
In conjunction with IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the SMB Group and CRM Essentials are working on a series of posts discussing how technology is empowering today’s customer, and why companies have to change their approach in order to build strong relationships with them. This is the fourth post in the series.

Christmas [...]

What Can We Learn From This Year’s Holiday Season?

—by Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
In conjunction with IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the SMB Group and CRM Essentials are working on a series of posts discussing how technology is empowering today’s customer, and why companies have to change their approach in order to build strong relationships with them. This is the fourth post in the series.
Christmas [...]

Cisco OnPlus: IT Infrastructure Advisory and Management Services Solution For Small Businesses

–by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group
Last month, Cisco introduced a new IT Infrastructure advisory and management service solution designed for VARs to provide to small businesses with less than 100 employees. Delivered via Cisco’s value-added reseller (VAR) channel, Cisco OnPlus enables VARs to offload the mundane, time-consuming tasks of managing a network environment [...]

Slideshow: Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2012

Each year, the SMB Group offers its Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions. In 2011, we created a slideshow version. Due to popular demand, we’ve created a slideshow version of our 2012 predictions, which are summarized below.

Economic Anxiety Lowers SMB Revenue Expectations and Tightens Tech Wallets
The SMB Progressive Class Gains Ground
The SMB Social Media Divide Grows
Cloud [...]

Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2012 from the SMB Group

Last week  we published a report card on our last year’s top 10 market predictions for 2011.
Here are the SMB Group’s Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2012! A more detailed description of each follows below.

Economic Anxiety Lowers SMB Revenue Expectations and Tightens Tech Wallets
The SMB Progressive Class Gains Ground
The SMB Social Media Divide Grows
Cloud Becomes [...]

Smarter Commerce for the Midmarket: An Interview with IBM’s Ron Kline

Here’s an edited transcript of the podcast series that Brent Leary of CRM Essentials and Sanjeev Aggarwal, of SMB Group recorded with Ron Kline, director of marketing for IBM’s midmarket division, about IBM’s Smarter Commerce solutions for SMBs.
If you’d like to listen to the recorded podcast series, select below.
Brent Leary: We’re really excited [...]

Are You Ready? Transforming Your Business for the Smarter Customer

—by Laurie McCabe, SMB Group

In conjunction with IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the SMB Group and CRM Essentials are working on a series of posts discussing how technology is empowering today’s customer, and why companies have to change their approach in order to build strong relationships with them. This is the second post in the series. [...]