Entrepreneurs are a rare breed. Although start-up activity has been on the upswing, just 0.34 of the adults in the U.S. for example (or 340 out of 100,000) started a new business each month in 2009, according to the Kaufman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. Women entrepreneurs are even more exceptional, accounting for just 29% of all U.S. businesses, as indicated in a recent American Express s...
Author: Sanjeev Aggarwal
SAP Business One: Big Business Capabilities on a Small Business Budget
SAP has forged its corporate identity in the large enterprise space, serving the likes of Coca Cola and Dow Chemical. But, while attending SAP's Sapphire user event last week, I had the opportunity to meet with Andreas Wolfinger, Global Head of Solution Management and Product Management for SAP Business One, and Jennifer Schulze, Director SME Solutions Marketing (who I interviewed in this
Social Media: How Does Your Small Business Stack Up?
Social media offers small businesses an inexpensive, relatively friction-free way to accomplish different business functions, from generating new leads to getting input for new product development. Consequently, it's not surprising that small businesses are rapidly moving to take advantage of it. How far along the social media curve is your business compared to your peers? We’ve picked some ke...
The New Dell and What it Means for SMBs: Takeaways from Dell’s 2011 Solutions for a Virtual Era Event
Twenty-seven years ago, Michael Dell launched Dell with $1,000 and a streamlined sales and manufacturing model that revolutionized the PC industry. Sticking with this playbook, Dell achieved similar success in the server market, once again disrupting the status quo. However, times changed, and Dell started to look like a one-trick pony. As Michael Dell himself acknowledged at last week’s Dell’...
Dell and Boomi: Doubling Down on Integration
Originally published 4-26-11 as an SMB Group research brief in .pdf format, available here. When big companies gobble up smaller ones, you always wonder whether the acquired company will get swallowed up into the belly of the beast, der...
Is There a Method to Social Media Madness?
By Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials SMB adoption of social media for sales, marketing, product development and customer service is on the rise – but how are SMBs tracking, analyzing and measuring the success of their social media endeavors? In our joint SMB Group/CRM Essentials “2011 Small and Medium Business Social Business Study,” we su...
What is Systems Management, and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published March 23, 2011 in Small Business Computing) What is Systems Management? Systems management is an umbrella term that refers to the centralized management of a company’s information technology assets, and it's o...
Intuit and Salesforce Partner Up: Who’s the Big Winner?
Last week, Intuit and Salesforce.com announced that they would partner to integrate Intuit QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online small business accounting software with Salesforce’s small business CRM editions (Contact Manager, Group and Professional). Under the terms of the deal, Intuit will resell a pre-integrated version of the Salesforce CRM application via Intuit’s App Center (as well as Intui...
Is there a Method to Social Media Madness?
Co-authored by: Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie...
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 ...