Small Business Tech

By James E. Gaskin

New Year's Resolution: Collaborate or else

01/08/09

It's a new year, so let's make some resolutions. Sure, you do it every January and little happens, but this year will be different. This year, the tightening economy will force people to pay more attention, watch what their customers and competitors are doing and look for an edge. Collaboration will give you that edge.

The cost of poor customer service

12/18/08

Loyal customers can be tough to find. So why do some companies run them off with crappy customer service? Often because the employees who care have no authority to fix problems, and those with the authority don't care. Today, let's hear the story of reader Boyd, his Dell XPS420, and the data corruption problems he had when running a disk array. Then let's hear how two other small service companies do much better support.

Buy smart today to save in 2009

12/11/08

If you want to save money this year and save taxes the next, you have three weeks left in 2008. To make them count, accelerate some purchases to take advantage of year-end deals from retailers and vendors. Add on the tax savings you can get by expensing more items this year (review Economic Stimulus for Small Businesses) and you can start saving some serious coinage.

Tighten up your customer focus

12/04/08

In sports, successful athletes narrow their focus during crunch time. They may concentrate on footwork, technique or increase their margin for error. Technology providers must do the same thing during tough economic times. You must focus on your customer and nothing but your customer, whether the customer is a consumer, another business, or internal departments needing technology and support.

New version of office-in-a-box

11/20/08

If you ever needed confirmation that phones are now auditory computer devices, take a look at a modern "office-in-a-box" or "all-in-one" system for small businesses and remote offices. Phones are front and center, e-mail and Web servers come next, and, oh yes, file and print services are there, too. Such is the pattern for the EdgeBOX from Critical Links. The appliances powering typical file and print services now power the phones, Internet access, and security.

Economic stimulus for small businesses

11/13/08

Remember back in 2005 when the government provided tax incentives for businesses, known as the "write off your SUV" act? The deal applied to the purchase of all business equipment, but the special SUV writeoffs got the headlines. Many jumped into that, although record oil prices must have made some SUV buyers wish the incentives were for a Prius. Now the deal is back, but few people have noticed.

Storing your data in their cloud

11/06/08

Although it may seem like your computing life is all e-mail and browsing, computer users still create files, documents, spreadsheets, boring presentations and all manner of other stored information. Which brings me to the question: Where do you store your data? And are you ready to store your data online in a service hosted by a third party provider?

How small businesses can win in the tight economy

10/30/08

Those of you running hedge funds and getting bonus checks north of $20 million should be nervous about your jobs if you still have them. Those of us in the small business world never had the burden of huge bonuses so we're not panicking as much. On the smaller end of the business scale, money can still be borrowed, and bargains on business essentials can be found everywhere.

Get more work done with less e-mail

10/23/08

Here's a statistical downer: there will be around 40 trillion inbox-clogging spam e-mail messages delivered this year. Experts know this because there were 30 trillion spam messages last year. With this much hay in the stack, it's hard to find those message needles, and that's why some smart companies are looking beyond public e-mail.

Organized customer and employee support

10/16/08

Computers and applications stubbornly remain hard to use. Developers, from solo code jockeys to huge corporations, promise us things will be better "real soon." But if operating systems and applications aren't easier today than yesterday, at least we're seeing advances in how to support them. Take NTRSupport's new FirstHelp tool, a support portal. It combines information, drivers, tips, training, techniques, instant messaging, e-mail and even remote control software in a one-stop support shop.

The ROI of influence

10/09/08

How does one become a leading social media expert? "I decided to leave the real IT world to run off and join the circus," said Chris Brogan.

Word of mouth sales goes electronic

10/02/08

Word of mouth makes the best salesperson, according to all the sales manuals. Are you ready to take advantage of electronic word of mouth? That's what I believe social media has become, at least for smart businesses. True, most of the "blogosphere" and Twitter-verse may be electronic gossip, but some companies have made huge advances taking word of mouth to the Web.

Two new support options for SMBs

09/25/08

When the IT business gets slow at huge companies, vendors "discover" the small business market. Whether that's the reason in full or part, now seems to be a golden time for small businesses that need IT support, because the line of vendors ready to help keeps getting longer.

QuickBooks Enterprise adds Web hooks

09/18/08

Have you ever had a service or delivery person come to your home or business carrying a smart phone in place of a clipboard with pre-printed forms? You know, the ones you have to mash down hard when you write so all three copies will be completed? Outside of UPS or FedEx, I never have. But users of QuickBooks Enterprise can zoom their techs from the 1950s to 2009 with one of the add-on modules demonstrated at the QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions User conference last week.

Can your business run completely online?

09/11/08

The world's richest and most powerful 10-year-old says it can handle far more of your technology needs than you think. Google started almost exactly 10 years ago, and it is making big noise about invigorated Apps and some Googlers called to tell me about the improvements.

More power yet more green

09/04/08

Modern digital technology is catching up with the telephone system from the 1950s. How? Ma Bell used to send voltage down the phone wires to ring the bell on your phone. Today, PoE (Power over Ethernet) sends voltage down the network wires to power a variety of digital devices. That's helpful, but a coming upgrade may really make some powerful, or rather less power-hungry, news.

Explaining Geeks to Humans and the Inverse

08/28/08

It's that time of year again: summer's cooling down, school's starting, and I've set my schedule of ITEC conference appearances for the fall. If you read this column and want to come say hello, I'd love to meet you.

Outside help, inside connections

08/21/08

As companies grow, problems never disappear but they do change. Very small companies need help in many areas during a time they can least afford regular onsite help. Larger companies have onsite help, but also have users in multiple locations, adding a new class of problems. PlumChoice wants to help the first group, and WorldExtend wants to help the second group.

New twists on Wi-Fi

08/14/08

It's a wireless world, some say, conveniently overlooking the giant balls of cables behind every personal computer and every server, router and printer. But many want to expand the wireless world, so let's look at two companies doing just that.

Online project management tricks

08/07/08

The term "Project Management" usually brings pained looks to business people because they associate it with Microsoft Project. The tool may make their lives easier, but the software costs hundreds of dollars per user, and worse, the desktop-centric management application of yesterday doesn't fit well with the distributed workforce reality of today. What's more, when you take the plunge, getting up to speed on the methodology takes time before you see results.

Your technology tent pole

07/31/08

One of my favorite questions for analysts and consultants is what small businesses should learn from big businesses. Let me quote Michael Dortch, long time IT analyst now with the Aberdeen Group, from an interview I did with him last spring: "If you are not entirely dependent on IT to do business and succeed competitively now, you will be by the time I'm finished speaking."

Plugging iPhones into small businesses

07/24/08

Apple's iPhone drew criticism when first released because of tepid enterprise business support. Small businesses felt the pain of iPhone envy more sharply than their enterprise counterparts because of the high upfront cost of the first iPhone and the back-end support requirements for high-end e-mail and communication servers.

Focus on restore, not backup

07/17/08

Everyone always worries about backup, backup, backup. Guess what? None of your users, or managers for that matter, care one bit about backup. All the want is restore, and they want it immediately. So shift your focus from backup to restore.

Remembering longer passwords easily

07/10/08

One of the members of the Master Mind Security Panel during the ITEC show in Charlotte, Dan Colby, made a great point. Basically, he said "quit using passwords."

Roundup from the Charlotte ITEC show

07/03/08

I had the pleasure of providing the keynote speech for the ITEC regional IT conference in Charlotte, N.C. this week and had a great time visiting the area for the first time. Even better, I had the chance to sit down and talk to IT folks fighting the good fight in the Southeast.

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