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Planning a small business project

One of the many hats small business owners wear is called project management. Project management is simply setting an objective to do something — create a marketing piece, update your website, develop a new product — and then getting it done.

There are a million little things that need to be done to accomplish the objectives you set out to do — planning and organizing resources like people, money and time — so that’s where project management comes in.  Continue reading “Do Small Business Owners Need Project Management Certification?” »

The last three weeks has been full of exciting reviews of innovative cloud-based applications, great interviews with experts, and tips to help you run your small business that can’t help but make you more successful. We’ve shared how important it is to research any software provider, cloud-based or not, before purchasing to ensure the safety of our data.

We have also learned about developing lean small businesses because being lean is an imperative in today’s financial climate. Then we learned why we might want to mix community development and business in a new way by incorporating the cloud.

Continue reading “Grow Your Small Business Lean And Smart” »

I promised Gareth Berry at Unleashed Online Inventory Management Software that I would mention that the software is going through an upgrade and in May 2012, there will be a new version of the solution. The new version will be easier to navigate, more pleasant to look at and sport an improved dashboard.

I also decided that even with the upcoming changes this is a product worth writing about.

Unleashed , is a vertical product — meaning if you are not of the industry that includes export/import or warehousing — you probably won’t have much use for this solution.  But, any business that needs to manage multiple warehouses full of product (or stock) will find Unleashed quite useful, as it automates many of your processes and helps you understand the whereabouts of your inventory. Continue reading “Unleashed Inventory Management Software Organizes Your Inventory and Keeps Tracks of Stock, Billing and More” »

 

As part of our series of  interviews with  business management experts, we had the opportunity to talk with a leading customer experience expert about strategies and insights in the industry.

Barry Dalton is a customer experience strategy and technology leader with over 24 years of experience designing and implementing loyalty strategies, business processes and technology architecture.

His expertise is on customer-centric operations and technology across all channels with particular industry focus on outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications and technology. His passion is to help companies  leverage emerging channels for customer service including Social Media, SMS and Self Service.

Let’s dive into his precious insight on what it takes to always “think like customers.”

Continue reading “We Can All Think Like Customers — Interview With Customer Experience Strategist Barry Dalton” »

Today businesses need a way to improve customer care. Most disgruntled customers leave a business, not due to a poor product, but due to poor and inadequate customer care. Many businesses use ticket based systems that send out emails that look automated and impersonal.

In addition, these systems often do not allow for many customer care representatives to know the customer’s history in an easy to access manner. Unlike traditional email packages, Help Scout is made for customer service. Consider the features you need to be able to provide excellent client care and Help Scout has it — like the ability to see what other representatives have done for the client, the ability to pass off a problem to another rep, and the ability to truly assist clients, unencumbered by location.

dollar sign in the cloud

It’s imperative that small businesses, in order to stay lean, pay close attention to their accounting. From time and project tracking, to improved productivity, to accurate invoicing, all these issues relate to accounting. You have to track time and projects in order to send accurate invoices.

You have to account for all of the functions of your contractors and staff in order to improve productivity.

Without addressing all these issues, and monitoring your results, there is no real way to plan for the future of your business.

Here are five tips that can help you move your business in the right direction.  Continue reading “Five Tips For Solving Small Business Accounting Problems” »

How to Set Up a Successful “GoLive” Meeting after a Cloud Implementation

by Jennifer Marsh May 11, 2012

So you have decided some time ago to develop or migrate an application to the cloud. After the cloud development is finished, testing is complete and the business owners are happy with the results, IT managers set up a “go-live” meeting to discuss implementation of the application from staging or development on the production cloud [...]

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A Cloud-based Accounting Tool that Delivers : Review of Xero by VM-Associates

by Chris Bliss May 10, 2012

Our cloud migration consulting partners VM-Associates have been reviewing Xero cloud based accounting software. As they have awarded a rare A+ rating to Xero and granted them their seal of approval for what they consider an “impressive all-in-one accounting solution”, we have decided to republish this review to the benefit of our readers. Read on for [...]

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Maximizing your CRM Experience Further: Review of Maximizer CRM

by Rakesh Sharma May 9, 2012

Much like life, cloud applications also get better. About a year ago, we reviewed Maximizer CRM, a pioneer in the cloud-based CRM space. Today we will revisit this app because the solution’s developers have included several enhancements based on customer feedback. We will look at its new interface and features and see how they can [...]

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Team Knowledge Sharing: A Review Of Bloomfire

by Stephanie Watson May 8, 2012

Today, we review Bloomfire, Inc ,   company dedicated to team knowledge sharing. The big idea is to ensure that people who have questions are connected to those who have answers in an easy-to-use SaaS application. A team leader can create a personal Bloomfire with a customized URL, invite team members and start sharing tribal knowledge – [...]

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