Sage Summit 2011: Tackling the Sage NA Branding Challenge

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Sage Summit 2011, Sage’s first combination partner and customer event. I’ve been attending Sage partner, customer and analyst events for several years, observing and commenting on its ongoing attempts to unify it’s corporate brand across multiple small and medium business (SMB) solutions. Earlier this year, following Sue Swenson’s [...]

Changing Customer Service Channels: The Gap Between Social Media Haves and Have Nots

Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials

How quickly is social media catching on as an engagement channel for SMB customer service and support? It depends on who you ask—and has significant implications for both SMBs and traditional CRM vendors.
In our joint SMB Group-CRM Essentials “2011 Small and [...]

Social Business: Why Having a Plan Matters

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 to getting business value out of social media. [...]

HubSpot: From Breakthrough to Breakout

I’ve been very impressed by HubSpot, which helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) optimize and streamline their inbound marketing programs (see my 2009 interview with HubSpot Marketing VP Mike Volpe) for a while now. Looks like others are impressed too—as evidenced by HubSpot’s announcement that it has raised $32 million in a Series D funding [...]

What is Hybrid Computing, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on June 9, 2010, in Small Business Computing)
What is Hybrid Computing?
A hybrid computing platform lets customers connect the packaged small business software applications that they run on their own internal desktops or servers to applications that run in the cloud.
As discussed in What is Cloud Computing and Why Should You Care?, more software [...]

Getting in the Social Media Management Game

Social media management for small businesses is a very hot area. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about social media management solutions available to help small businesses manage their online and social presence more efficiently and effectively. While this is still a very nascent area in terms of customer adoption, there has been a bumper [...]

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. Whether due to Ramon and team’s hard work and great marketing, or [...]

SAP Aims for SME

I dialed into SAP’s SME (small and medium enterprises) Global Business Update Call a couple of weeks ago. Jeff Stiles, SVP, SME, Volume & Ecosystem Marketing, provided analysts a recap of recent SAP SME highlights, and shared strategic directions for 2010. I’ve been following SAP in the SME market since it acquired TopManage (which later [...]

What is Social Media Management, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on March 4, 2010, in Small Business Computing)
What is Social Media Management?
As described in the column “What is Social Networking, and Why Should You Care?” Internet-based social media make it easier for people to listen, interact, engage and collaborate with each other. But, as the volume of social media venues and conversations rises, [...]

What Is Green IT, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published in Small Business Computing, December 29, 2009)
Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and insiders often add to the confusion by over-complicating things. To help add a sense of [...]