I’m a very small operation so it’s much easier to manage the mobile telecommunication needs of my company as opposed to say an operation that has 10 or 20 employees.

With this in mind and as more companies allow their employees to bring in their own devices it’s even MORE important that companies ensure they are managing these devices. The management must include security, inventory and even the spiraling monthly bills (oh and apps).

IBM recently introduced new software to help organizations better manage and secure the explosion of smartphones and tablets in the workplace, while also managing laptops, desktops and servers.  According IBM’s press release:

In addition to the new mobile security and management software introduced today, IBM also announced the acquisition of Worklight. Worklight accelerates IBM’s comprehensive mobile portfolio, which is designed to help global organizations leverage the proliferation of all mobile devices — from laptops to smartphones and tablets.

Your smartphone is a gateway onto your network. Your tablet has critical company information. Your notebook has personal customer information. You’ve got to protect it all. Work with your local technology consultant to help.

Here’s a few things you can do to protect your mobile assets:

• Inventory them and know who has what
• Ensure security software is installed on all mobile devices
• Ensure you can remotely manage or at least wipe clean any corporate information
• Monitor the data usage of your mobile devices so your bills don’t get out of control
• Train your employees in how to get the most out of their technology

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People have too much email these days. Even the best of us, those who try to add some sort of sanity to our inboxes, have a hard time every now than then (I try to keep mine below 50, which is very tough at the moment). As part of our business relationship with Business on Main, we at Smallbiztechnology.com would like to share a few tips on how to keep that inbox in check, and your emails in line. First tip, in case you haven’t noticed: assume that everyone has too much email and is crunched for time. This will save you from writing and sending unnecessary emails.

2. If your message is less than seven words, put it in the subject line – This one may be hard to value, but if all you’re emailing is a question, or a confirmation, the use the subject line. No need to repeat yourself in the body of the email, and using the subject line is certainly a lot better than just hitting reply, or keeping the subject line blank.

3. Email is not always the answer - Email is not the best method of communication for everything. If there’s a misunderstanding that needs to be straightened out, then use the phone or talk to the person face-to-face. If you need an answer right away, email might not be your best bet. If you need to discuss confidential or personal information, then don’t even consider using email.

4. If you’re not going to reply to an email right away (or simply delete it), then don’t open the email in the first place – It’s tempting to open up that email as soon as it arrives in the inbox, but unless you’re going to take immediate action on it, then don’t do it. This will lead to your inbox filling up with old emails, and those important messages to get lost in the shuffle. Don’t worry. The email will still be there when you have the time to do something about it.

5. Set aside email time – Especially for small businesses and professionals, there’s valuable information in all that email. Set aside time each day to do something about the cluttered inbox. This will keep your inbox from overwhelming you, and you’ll find that by setting aside time, you can do a better job of tracking all that information coming in. Plus, it’s a lot better to make the time for these things, instead of trying to find the time.

Our inboxes can get out of control very easily, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and we don’t have to make it that way for other people. Just like all other media of communication, there’s a proper way to conduct your emails and to handle email communication.

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So you’re NOT in the services business, but you’ve got physical products that you need to GET from suppliers and SHIP to customers. You’re not Amazon.com (yet) nor are you Dell (with multiple warehouse turn overs a day)  but you have similar needs and resources.

What can you do?

I’m not about to give you a full blog post on shipping and logistics but I can tell you that if you’re looking for help and really to OUTSOURCE a lot of the pain of supply chain and customer fulfillment this is quite doable.

Companies such as UPS, FEDEX and DHL have lots of experience in shipping goods around the world. Alibaba is a great online service to help you find suppliers, especially in China. About.com has a great resource here as well

One of the big pain points companies have is how can they get the warehouses they need and the fulfillment services they need, especially as they grow from a regional company to a national or international one.

Shipwire recently announced the launch of their new web site, which is a huge resource of all things storage and shipping.

According to their press release:

The Shipwire website has been redesigned from the ground up to better highlight the world-class cloud-logistics capabilities for both new entrepreneurs and established mid-market brands seeking to go global. The new featured content includes:

• Expand Overseas – Reach markets in North America, Europe and Asia like a local seller.
• Reduce Time and Costs – Ensure every shipment sent to buyers is optimized for the lowest shipping costs and delivery times.
• Instant Sales Channels – Easily connect your sales channels and expand into emerging ones like Social Commerce.
• Expand Distribution Partnerships – Sell to retailers, drop ship and sell through flash sales sites and social networks.
• Customize Your Delivery Experience – Look good to your buyers using intelligent routing, professional packaging, and delightful extras for your customers and retailers.

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TrackVia is a very powerful tool for creating online database. You know those projects where you have a list of information that fits into Excel but then you have other information tied to that list or need to dynamically sort and arrange it? Or those days when you have “that list” but also want people to add their own information and Google Docs doesn’t cut it. TrackVia’s something you should consider.

They’ve come out with an upgrade to their online database (they call it an application builder) and these new features include:

• Chart Buffet: A new chart wizard allows users to select or create virtually any type of chart or graph imaginable, including bar and pie charts, scatter charts, progress gauges and even interactive geomaps that plot data summaries by country, state, county or city.
• Dynamite Dashboards: Users can create custom dashboards – collections of reports on a single screen – displaying their reports in the exact order and layout they want. Additionally, TrackVia’s new dashboards allow users to display real-time URLs, allowing users to pull together disparate online systems into a single view.
• Simple Sharing: Reports and dashboards can be shared instantly with users and non-users via email. Users can also publish public views of reports to websites, as well as post reports to Facebook and Twitter.
• Share This, Not That: Built-in content settings provide TrackVia users with even greater control over their reports and dashboards, ensuring the right content is shared with the right people at the right time.
• Hands-free Reporting: With the new release, users have even more options to set automated reporting schedules or instant alerts around user-defined triggers such as time and date, activity or workflow milestones.

Other online database include Zoho DB, Intuit’s QuickBase and Caspio. Check ‘em all out, if your’re tired of the restrictions that Excel has on you.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~3/NWsygM0JVFA/

Customers are talking about you in their homes (they and their mom) and online to thousands of others. What they say in their homes you don’t know about but you surely better know what they are saying and who they are saying it to, online.

When customers leave your retail store and complain on their Facebook status that one of your clerks was a rude jerk, do you know about their complaint.

From Marketing Sherpa, here’s some ways that Dairy Queen has found to improve its reputation online and better serve customers:

If the issue is something simple like just being unhappy with a single product, or the customer’s experience was “just unpleasant this time,” the team will send out a gift card to get that customer back into the store to make another purchase.

Because each store is an independent franchise, if the problem is rude employees or a refusal to refund money, the corporate team at Dairy Queen has to rely on each individual store to handle these issues.

Two lessons Dairy Queen has learned is to not wait for an unhappy customer to contact you – be proactive and second is to listen to customers to improve product development and placement. You’ll hear TripIt’s Scot Hintz speak about this at the upcoming Small Biz Big Things in San Francisco on Feb 7th and the Small Business Summit in New York City on March 6th

Read the full article on Marketing Sherpa.

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I travel from time to time but I don’t use a lot of paper in my travels.

However, in many industries paper is really a big part of this business. This includes financial advisors, insurance agents, real estate agents and so many others. While you professionals must use paper, this does not mean you can’t scan the paper and digitally store it for future retrieval or processing by your office.

When on the road you want as few gadgets as possible. Xerox has a neat portable, wireless scanner that lets you scan a document and send it right to – pretty much anywhere. Imagine being able to scan a document and seconds later your back office team has it and can start working on it.

Xerox Mobile Scanner ($250) does this and more. You can see a video of it here.

Here’s what David Pogue writes, in the New York Times

In creating its Mobile Scanner, Xerox didn’t bother reinventing the wireless wheel. Instead, it worked with the Eye-Fi people to develop a customized version of their magic little card. The chief enhancement: The Xerox version of the Eye-Fi card is capable of transmitting PDF documents wirelessly, not just photos. (It’s worth noting that it’s otherwise a standard Eye-Fi card. When you’re not scanning, you can pop it into your camera and transmit photos wirelessly from it.)

When you unpack the silver plastic Mobile Scanner (it comes with an attractive black carrying case), the only setup is inserting the Eye-Fi card — a 4-gigabyte model — into a slot on the back and charging up the scanner’s built-in battery, either from a wall outlet or from your computer’s USB jack.

There are only two buttons: Power and Mode, which lets you choose which kind of scan you want: a color photo, a black-and-white PDF document or a color PDF document.

Check out his full review in the New York Times.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~3/pMJxMzgSyoo/

We’ve learned from legendary companies such as Amazon.com, Zappos, Ritz Carlton and many other great brands that customer service is essential. Great customer service is not accidental but takes several things, all must work right:

• Management who believes in customer service
• Employees who believe in it
• Training of employees in how to do great customer service
• Tools to enable a growing company to consistently deliver customer service

One of these tools is Salesforce.com’s Desk.com (developed by Assistly).

According to the Salesforce.com press release:

Desk.com enables businesses to deliver personal customer service by offering a help desk that is social, mobile and simple to use and deploy. Built with social at its core, Desk.com allows any business to instantly work with customers over any major social network. Desk.com Mobile allows companies to carry a help desk in their pocket and answer customers on the go. Finally, Desk.com is so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend. Businesses can sign up for Desk.com for as little as $49 a month per agent.

John Rote, director of customer experience at Bonobos, one of the speakers of the 7th Annual Small Business Summit said:

At Bonobos, we need to move quickly because if we don’t support the customer, there will not be a customer to support. We have a huge volume of inquiries and a small staff, so customer service is everyone’s job.  After deploying Desk.com in two days, we had a complete social help desk that everyone in our company can use.

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For as long as I can remember, small business experts have advised small businesses to focus on what they do best and outsource everything else. I agree with this, to a point. However, I was reading a press release about the new features in HootSuite and realized that the tools, capabilities, methods and opportunities in social media are growing so fast that it would behoove every small business owner, especially those with even the smallest staff, to ensure they have someone tasked with social media expertise on staff.

When I say expertise, this might not be on day one even, but this means they are given all the reasonable freedom they need to learn and use new tools in furtherance of their companies efforts to GROW online.

For example HootSuite’s new features, in their press release read:

Users gain access to a wave of new apps that join the HootSuite App Directory including Digg, Trendspottr, and InboxQ. These apps are available immediately to HootSuite Basic, Pro, and Enterprise account holders worldwide.

• Digg - With the Digg app for HootSuite, HootSuite users can view current Top News stories, search stories, Digg stories, discover and share content from the web using the dashboard, and more.
• Trendspottr - The TrendSpottr app for HootSuite allows users to search for trending content by topic, keyword or phrase, select from a list of popular searches, share trending stories, videos and more via the social networks they’ve added to the HootSuite dashboard.
• InboxQ - With the InboxQ app for HootSuite, users can find questions on Twitter based on keyword and phrase searches, fine tune search results, and engage directly with those asking questions, all from within the HootSuite dashboard.

While all these apps are not necessary I do believe it’s necessary that every business have in house expertise of content marketing (or inbound marketing) this can only be sufficiently realized in know about these new tools and how best to use them.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Smallbiztechnologycom-SmbNewsAndInsight/~3/5yguD0GATe4/

Welcome to a fresh list of awards, contests and competitions for growing companies and entrepreneurs.

There are some great contests and awards in this week’s roundup.

If you’ve entered and won a contest or award listed here, let me know so we can share your news.

This list is brought to you every other week by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.

*****

2012 Small Business Strategy Award
Enter by February 10, 2012

If you have been in business at least five years, have annual revenues of less than $5 million and have realized success from a specific strategy you’ve implemented within the past two years, you are encouraged to apply for the coveted 2012 Small Business Strategy Award.

The winner will be announced at the Seventh Annual Small Business Summit in New York City on March 6, 2012.

Fulton County PA Excellence in Small Business Award
Enter by February 17, 2012

The Awards Committee of the Fulton County Chamber of Commerce Tourism is accepting nominations of local businesses for the 2011 Excellence in Small Business Award. The award will be presented at the Chamber-Tourism’s Award Celebration. The category provides public recognition for the accomplishments of small businesses, those employing ten or fewer full-time employees. This category requires demonstration of growth, overall stability, a positive community image, leadership and civic involvement. Nominees do not have to be a member of the Fulton County Chamber of Commerce and Tourism, but must be a Fulton County business.

Connecticut Innovations TechStart Fund
Apply by February 22, 2012

The TechStart Fund was created to spur technology innovation at its very earliest stage. The fund provides entrepreneurial or student teams with initial capital so they can determine whether a technology concept and business are viable and whether future funding can be obtained to launch a new business. Teams applying for TechStart funding will need to participate in a 10-week program, during which they will be provided with mentors and various professional resources offering strategic guidance in launching a new business. The initial 10-week pilot program will be held at CTech@Science Park at Yale in New Haven and will begin in March 2012.

See website for more details and entry requirements.

Office Depot’s Small Business Makeover Contest
Enter by February 27, 2012

The Small Business Makeover contest is designed to help small business owners augment or adjust their business in order to save time, grow and prosper in 2012 and beyond. The contest will award three small businesses a makeover from Office Depot, which includes a one-on-one financial coaching session with Jean Chatzky, office furniture, and supplies featuring Jean’s line of Mead financial organization products, available exclusively at Office Depot.

Small businesses can enter the contest by visiting Office Depot’s Facebook page and submitting, in 100 words or less, why their small business is in need of a makeover.

The Amazing Entrepreneur
Enter by February 29, 2012

The 2nd Annual Amazing Entrepreneur Business Plan Competition is an initiative by Gwinnett Chamber Economic Development and The University of Georgia Small Business Development Center (SBDC) to foster new business development in Gwinnett County, GA. The contest is open to individuals who own or manage a small business, which has been in operation less than 36 months, in Gwinnett County.

The Grand Prize winner will receive $2500 cash to be used solely for the business entering the contest, a trip to Sage Software’s Customer Conference in Nashville, TN (airfare, hotel stay, conference fees), one-year membership to Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, one-year participation in the Chamber’s Gwinnett Business Institute program ($180 value), a consultation with an attorney from Arnall Golden Gregory ($2500 value), and research assistance from Chamber’s economic development department

2012 Small Business Online Marketing Contest
Enter by February 29,2012

For the second year, Chicago-area small businesses are being recognized for their marketing success. Constant Contact kicked off the 2012 Small Business Online Marketing Contest today in partnership with the Chicago City Treasurer’s Office. The contest will award more than $12,000 in cash and prizes to businesses submitting winning entries in “Best Business Email Marketing” and “Best Overall Users of Social Media” categories, including “Rookie Awards.”

CoolCalifornia Small Business Award
Enter by February 29, 2012

The CoolCalifornia Small Business Awards recognize California small businesses that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, promote climate friendly practices and integrate the tools on CoolCalifornia.org into their business operations.

There are two award categories: CoolCalifornia Small Business of the Year Award, and CoolCalifornia Climate Leader Award.

Brother Small Business Grant Program
Enter by March 2, 2012

StartupNation has collaborated with Brother, a leader in small business technology, to bring you
the 2012 Brother Small Business Grant Program.

The grant program will award a total of $25,000 to five small business owners who submit the most original and creative business plan.

Verizon California Small Business Makeover Contest
Enter by March 2, 2012

Verizon wants to hear about Southern California small businesses’ technology challenges and will award a business makeover worth more than $5,000 to the company that best tells its story. Register and submit an essay, of no longer than 500 words, describing the technology challenges facing your business. Small businesses also have the opportunity to win a $500 American Express Gift Card if they view quick, informative videos about Verizon Small Business solutions on the contest website.

A panel of judges will determine the grand-prize winner and four semifinalists. The grand prize consists of $2,000 in cash; an HP Laptop; a Verizon Wireless 4G LTE LG Revolution Smart Phone; the Intuit Website Design Services Package; and Mobile Pay and Google Personal Support for Google Products. The semifinalists will each receive custom business-technology recommendations valued at $125.

Staples Give Your Small Business the Push it Needs Contest
Enter by March 14, 2012

Staples has launched its “Give Your Small Business the Push It Needs” contest, which will offer five small businesses up to $50,000 in free television advertising in their home market.
Small businesses can enter the contest by submitting a 15-second video about their company on Facebook.com/Staples by March 14. Five winners will be chosen to receive 15 seconds of advertising in a 30-second Staples television ad to run in their local market. Winners can have $50,000 in advertising or $40,000 in advertising and $10,000 in cash.

If you are putting on a small business contest, award or competition, and want to get the word out to the community, please submit it through our Events Contests Submission Form. (We do not charge a fee to be included in this listing.) Only events of interest to small business people, freelancers and entrepreneurs will be considered and included.

Please note: The descriptions provided here are for convenience only and are NOT the official rules. ALWAYS read official rules carefully at the site holding the competition, contest or award.

[photo credit: Shorts and Longs Flickr]

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Investing in workforce management technology is something that every business knows they should do.

These technologies include, solutions such as payroll, and human resources management, and time and labor management technology as an attractive investment opportunity, a spokesman for HR tech firm SaasHR.com, told me.

What you might not know is that companies are finding they are getting back nearly $8.00 for every $1 investing in workforce solutions.

“A growing number of small to mid-sized businesses are recognizing that investment in workforce management technology not only helps to manage a company’s resources, but also creates returns that are vital in the current economic climate,” explained Bill Loss, CEO at SaaShr.com. According to Nucleus Research, a leading information technology research firm, the average company gets back $7.88 for every dollar invested in workforce management applications.

SaasHR.com’s spokesperson went on to tell me that:

• Business payroll functions like customer’s payroll calculations, tax withholdings and deductions can be handled with ease.
• From job board integration to video resume posting, integrated online background screening to skills testing, and performance reviews to retirement planning, human resources management software allows managers and HR administrators to focus on more business-impacting initiatives.
• Time and labor management technology provides for fast and accurate time and attendance data capture from various web timesheet formats and virtually any data collection device.

Combining these three solutions to formulate a platform of workforce services means an integrated workforce management system that effectively and efficiently manages a company’s workforce, without the manual, time-consuming labor usually associated with these processes.

If you’re company is growing and you are not leveraging technology to manage your growing workforce, I’d bet your are LOSING money each week. Your hiring is not as efficient as it should be, you could be losing money with each check sent out and you could be hiring the wrong employees and keeping them too long.

Let technology help you.

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