Co-authored...
Author: Sanjeev Aggarwal
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 t...
Salesforce’s Dimdim Acquisition–Adding to a String of Collaboration Pearls
The SMB Group has followed (and used!) Dimdim, which has provided innovative, easy to use Web conferencing services in a freemium model with very liberal terms of use, for a couple of years. In January, Salesforce.com acquired Dimdim for $31 million. Immediately afte...
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 announceme...
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...
SMBs Open a New Front Door with Mobile Web Sites
Ten years ago, SMBs were just beginning to understand the need for and value of building web sites and storefronts. Today, SMBs are at a similar point when it comes to building mobile web sites and enabling mobile transactions. Why is this important? 4.8 billion users browse the web via a mobile device compared to 1.7 billion users who browse the web via other means, ...
SMB Mobile Spending Trends from SMB Group’s 2010 Mobile Solutions Study
As part of the recently completed SMB Group study "2010 Small and Medium Business Mobile Solutions Study," we performed a detailed analysis of U.S. small and medium business (SMB) spending on mobile devices, applications, and services. As explained in this study, SMBs (1-999 emplo...
What is a Virtual Desktop, and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published November 30, 2010 in Small Business Computing) What is a Virtual Desktop? A virtual desktop means that a user’s desktop environment (the icons, wallpaper, windows, folders, toolbars, widgets, etc.) i...
SMB Group Top Ten 2011 SMB Technology Predictions
Here are the SMB Group’s Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2011! A more detailed description of each follows below. 1. Mobile Commerce Lifts Off 2. SMBs Demand that Vendors Bring Order to Social Media Chaos
Top Takeaways from Pervasive’s 2010 IntegratioNext Conference
Wow the déjà vu is just too strange! In June of this year, I attended Pervasive’s Metamorphosis Partner event--during which IBM announced that it would acquire Cast Iron. Now, in November, during Pervasive’s very well-attended IntegratioNext User Conference, Dell announced plans to buy Boomi. As I w...