Laurie McCabe

Happy New Year! While we often make personal New Year’s resolutions, not too many businesses make them. But you can start to change that in 2014 by resolving to make better use of technology to power your business, and create a more sustainable, competitive business. With that in mind, here are a few technology resolutions that can help you work smarter, not harder, and enjoy a happier, healthier business in 2014.

Here are SMB Group’s Top 10 SMB Technology Trends for 2014! A more detailed description of each follows below.

Dell’s journey to transform itself from a hardware company to a solutions vendor has been ongoing for a couple of years. To achieve that, the company has been acquiring, building and blending hardware, software, services, cloud and open standards to broaden its technology footprint. But, much of Dell’s progress has been buried in the drama of the fight to take the company private.

Big data is a big buzzword–and for a good reason. But the “big” in Big Data is relative. If you’re having problems finding the data you need, when you need it, you have a big data problem! Lack of vision into what’s going on in the business can lead to missed opportunities and the inability to spot problems.

In the first post in this series, I examined the underlying trends driving the buzz around big data and its relevance for SMBs. In the second, I discussed how three IBM business partners (FYI Solutions, LPA Systems, Inc. and Waypoint Consulting) are helping SMBs take a pragmatic approach to successfully apply analytics and big data solutions to solve business problems.

Taking steps to place digital security on our activities across myriad social, search, and shopping sites can seem overwhelming and futile. Guest contributor Laurie McCabe shares how AVG helps address the increasing privacy and security risks that we expose ourselves to in the digital world.

Studies show that collaboration contributes to a company's overall success. Using top social business collaboration tools can make your team more effective. Organizations that are more collaborative have a decided edge over less teamwork-oriented counterparts.

big data and analytics vendors are making enormous investments to develop and market analytics and big data solutions for SMBs. While there’s no question that analytics and big data solutions can benefit SMBs, vendors need a sharper picture of the SMB's point of view.

I’m a bit behind in getting my wrap up and thoughts on Sage Summit 2013–Sage’s annual event for business partners and customers–together. But better late than never! As you can see in the related links at the end of this post, I’ve attended these events for many years. During this time, Sage North America has gone through many significant changes to bring sharper focus to its mission and more value to its customers. At this year’s event, I saw promising signs that these efforts are beginning to pay off.

Many people associate startups with venture capital funding. But, according to a recent Kauffman study, venture capital is the exception, with only 1 percent of new businesses getting funded by VCs. In addition, many entrepreneurs don’t want to relinquish control and decision-making to investors.

Progressive SMBs need access to top-rated collaboration software and tools to innovate faster and therefore more quickly grow and expand as a company.

What factors do you need to assess in order to select a big data solution? This post examines the factors decision-makers view as make or break considerations to guide the analytics selection process for SMBs and ultimately, drive successful outcomes.

At a time when big data information is proliferating at an unprecedented rate, companies that effectively gather, create and use business intelligence can gain dramatic market advantages over those that don’t.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend Sapphire 2013, SAP’s annual user conference. As is the norm for these events, SAP opened the fire hose to reveal new directions, product and solution announcements, and partner and customer wins through a myriad of meetings and sessions. Rather than attempt to drench you with the full blast, I’ll focus this post on what I see as most relevant for SAP’s direction in the small and medium business (SMB) space.

In my previous post, Is Big Data Relevant for SMBs?, I looked at the underlying trends driving the buzz around big data, and why big data is relevant for SMBs. I also discussed why “big” is a relative term–relative to the amount of information that your organization needs to sift through to find the insights you need, when you need them, and the widening performance gap between businesses that can find the right needles in the data haystack, and those that can’t.

SMBs are taking to mobile solutions like ducks take to water, as revealed in SMB Group’s 2013 SMB Mobile Solutions Study, and as I discussed in 2013 SMB Mobile Attitudes and Challenges. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of any other technology area that has enjoyed such a meteoric rise.

SMBs are taking to mobile solutions like ducks take to water, as revealed in SMB Group’s 2013 SMB Mobile Solutions Study, and as I discussed in 2013 SMB Mobile Attitudes and Challenges. In reviewing the results, one of the things that really popped out is that even very small businesses (VSBs, with 1 to 19 employees) are adopting mobile solutions at a fast and furious clip.

The rapid rise of mobile in the consumer space is accelerating the explosive growth of mobile solutions in the business world. Businesses recognize that mobile solutions can empower employees to be more productive and responsive to customers. Likewise, they realize that providing mobile solutions to customers, partners and suppliers is vital to improving customer experiences and fueling business growth.

While IBM will almost certainly wear the social business crown in large enterprises, its ability to make significant inroads in the SMB market is questionable.

SAP’s stellar success in building its blue-chip large enterprise business has often overshadowed its considerable but quieter achievements in small and medium business (SMBs) markets. Though SAP is not a household name in the SMB community, SMBs account for the majority of SAP’s 197,000 customer base. At SAP’s first small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) summit, co-CEO Bill McDermott and other key SAP execs made it clear that SAP is intensifying its aspirations and endeavors.