Midsize Insider is a valuable repository of expert content tailored for small-to-midsized business owners and IT decision makers. Expert insights and perspectives in the Midsize Insider are gleaned from actionable business experiences and will assist readers in creating efficiencies, cutting costs and delivering results.
The supply chain is vital to operational efficiency and business growth. When optimized, it can help organizations create strategies that enhance flexibility and expand their operational capabilities beyond existing functionality. Equipped with business analytics and sophisticated modeling tools, IT is ...
E-commerce websites have hundreds of other domains as competition, so a web based business must stand out through effective business marketing. It must brand itself as a unique, trustworthy, and high-value product website to compete for customers in the Internet's ...
Client expectations are evolving on an almost daily basis, and to stay afloat, midsize businesses must continue to develop new ways to remain relevant. These businesses often have a great opportunity to take the lead in changing the way business ...
To remain viable and competitive in today's market, there are a number of things midsize businesses must do that they did not have to do even a decade ago. Ten years ago, you could still open a storefront and drive ...
IBM's Watson will soon be making its debut as a customer service agent in a limited roll-out. Called "Watson Engagement Advisor," this version of the Jeopardy contestant will engage in text-based interaction with people in advisement areas that include banking ...
An effective selling process is a necessity for any company looking to move a product or service. With business, marketing and sales cultures evolving so quickly, midsize companies are relying heavily on their IT departments to gain the edge that ...
A recent Aberdeen survey found that two-thirds of midmarket companies struggle with the size, speed, or sheer variety of data ...
Cross channel selling has great earning potential for a large commerce sites that have several thousand products. The IT manager is responsible for the coding, layout, and organizing the commerce website so that up-selling product helps increase revenue for the ...
An intuitive and user friendly buying process powers the conversion of a random traffic user into an actual customer. The website can be fast, optimized for search engines, and have a great look and feel, but the customer must feel ...
The era of the internet has made information readily available and increased the flexibility in how companies service and respond to their customers. This business environment has created the need for targeted marketing, the art of delivering a marketing message ...
Big data is forcing evolution of the midsize business arena, particularly when it comes to marketing research. No longer are businesses limited to the most surface demographic data about their customers. This newly accessible knowledge of the customer is radically ...
In the past midsize companies often conducted most of their business through low-tech brick and mortar locations. In the absence of digital connectivity it was difficult to measure key metrics to improve sales, and it also was costly and difficult ...
E-commerce is incredibly competitive, so you must optimize your buying process to maximize customer conversions and increase sales and revenue. Hosting in the cloud is one way to improve performance of an e-commerce store, but there are several other ways ...
The benefits of collaboration and data integration with trading partners are numerous, but the devil is in the details. Take ...
Many midsize enterprises are promoting business innovation to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One way they are doing that is by using agile methodologies. Agile processes come from the domain of software development, making them a natural fit for IT ...
The most important change that has come from big data is better customer insight. For the midsize business, this improved understanding translates to improved lead generation and cost-effective lead conversion. But there's more to it than just better conversions; analytics ...
Supply chains are becoming more complex and volatile, Meanwhile, the costs of supply chain inefficiency are increasing. Midmarket companies are ...
B2B marketing is typically laden with cliches and bullet points. That stuff doesn't resonate with customers any more. In this ...
Business analytics allow midsize businesses to gain a much deeper understanding of their customers. From gathering data about customer demographics, to understanding buying trends, to having the ability to predict future consumer behavior more accurately, analytics have already begun to ...
How can improved business agility help a midsize enterprise? Before looking at the many ways a midsize business can benefit from being more agile, it's helpful to understand what business agility really is.The term "agile" has made its way to ...
The term "value chain" covers any chain of activities that a company performs to deliver a valuable service or product. Although first used to describe physical processes, this term now also refers to virtual or cyber processes, since markets such ...
A good buyer experience can mean the difference between a potential customer and a conversion to a sale. Buyer experiences can make or break an e-commerce website, so these are among the most critical parts of creating a successful midsize ...
The workplace is no longer an environment where employees can expect to perform a limited number of tasks specifically related to his or her profession or area of training. More and more, employees are expected to jump outside their own ...
From operations to management, IT has had a huge impact on distribution channels in marketing. Armed with a collection of information systems, IT departments in midsize firms are gathering, storing, and transmitting data in revolutionary ways. In fact, many of ...
Successful and reliable marketing communications are a crucial component of any midmarket business. Without it, firms would not be able to target products towards consumers and key business partners. Marketing lends itself to media, and these days, media is increasingly ...
The melting away of inter-regional trade boundaries has stiffened competition by giving customers access to multiple retailers and service providers. Midsize companies now have to not only survive competition in a wide playing field but also attract and retain customers ...
Website statistics are the primary analysis components for a public facing Internet application. This application can be ecommerce, content, or a customized application that processes and creates revenue for the business. There are several tools available to monitor and report ...
Mobile payments could be a trillion dollar business in just two years. That's according to a recent IT industry panel at Apps World in San Francisco. This shift in purchasing behavior could mean various opportunities for midsize firms to capture ...
Faced with the prospect of losing a major customer or a key supplier, few midsize companies will hesitate to deploy a business-to-business (B2B) integration solution required by a critical trading partner to maintain the business relationship. Once they deploy a ...
While consumer purchasing habits may seem fickle at times, most consumers unconsciously follow a pattern when choosing products or services. Known as the consumer buying process, this pattern of behavior is broken into five distinct stages. By tracking marketing efforts ...
Enterprise agility - it may be a buzzword, but it's one with tangible benefits for a midsize business. IT administrators can help businesses prosper by keeping them agile. Here are three ways to become agile:Agile MethodologiesThe first method is to ...
There's an emerging mobile platform option that could help businesses gain customers: talking ads. The voice-recognition company Nuance may be introducing ads that can have actual conversations with smartphone users, according to an article from E-Commerce Times. With the rise ...
In today's rapidly changing economy, in which online specialty shops are taking customers away from traditional brick and mortar shops, creating customer loyalty is easier said than done. When customers now use their mobile devices to compare prices within physical ...
Midsize companies are increasingly relying on new tools and strategies to streamline their supply chain management processes and transfer the benefits to the customer. One strategy being executed more often is leveraging IT expertise to optimize the decision-making process at ...
In today's competitive marketplace it is crucial for midsize companies to ensure that their commerce teams are operating at full efficiency. Tasked with managing the complexity of online and physical channels, coordinating inventory across multiple warehouses, and predicting future trends ...
Walmart has introduced Scan & Go, a mobile self-checkout option for iPhone, to about 200 of its 4,005 (as of January 2013) Walmart locations in the US. According to Reuters, Walmart plans to gather customer feedback on the program, and ...
If your digital marketing research process will cost more this year and continue to focus on website optimization while expanding content and social network efforts, then your strategy aligns with the results of a new survey from research firm Gartner. ...
Forrester Research got headlines with its new digital marketing report, but did it get everything right? Hardly. It’s unknown if the $499 report was shared in its entirety with reporters and bloggers. I certainly haven’t received it. What I have ...
Whether you sell computer software, medical equipment, or marketing services, understanding customer behavior is vital to the success of your midsize business. After all, the better you understand their tendencies, the better you will be at catering to their needs.Analyzing ...
At the recent CeBIT trade fair in Hannover Germany, IBM introduced a prototype app that offers shoppers a way to get access an abundant supply of information about products on a shelf simply by pointing their smartphone camera at the ...
With the world creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, the roughly 40% of the world population online today (ITU) are gaining access to unheard-of amounts of information. Consumers are able to learn about virtually any product or service, ...
Customer service is changing for midsize businesses. It's customer expectations of their interactions with businesses driving the change. Providing customers with a good service is no longer simply about selling them the product they need at a price they can ...
Aberdeen Group research reveals that the most successful B2B sales organizations embrace user-generated content to collaborate, sell, and service customers. ...
Chess was mastered many years ago. Jeopardy! was overcome last year. Now in search of new challenges, the team behind IBM's Watson has taken on a task that most people would hardly associate with artificial intelligence: Whipping up a good-tasting ...
Porter Value Chain is a term many midsize firms relate to efficiency of operations. The concept is simple; it is the set of activities that enable a product or service to make its way to customers. Getting to an effective ...
Last year, the Internet was abuzz with rumors about an Apple-branded television set. However, those rumors proved to be false, and any television set plans Apple may have had seem to be shelved for now. The newest rumor to emerge ...
The word SMARTER helps analysts remember that high-quality performance variables must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bounded, and capable of being evaluated and reevaluated. Marketers have to set goals that implicitly incorporate many of these characteristics but need accurate data ...
Pragmatic marketing refers to the key activities necessary to bring a product to the market and manage it. IT professionals at midsize businesses coordinate, tweak, and oversee the technical aspects of delivering the product to the target audience. IT department ...
Companies have been trying to get consumers on the mobile payments bandwagon for a long time. Both Apple's Passbook system and Google Wallet have failed to get customers excited about the possibilities of mobile payments, according to a 2012 study ...
Now that the technology has migrated to the desktop setting, it is clear to see that virtualization has a lot to offer organizations and individual PC users alike. For midsize businesses, the key to making the most of this concept ...
Consumer behavior and marketing strategy are, in principle, intimately related concepts. Marketing strategy is all about reaching out to consumers and doing so effectively, which means understanding how consumers think and act - that is to say, their behavior.This has ...
The benefits of migrating to the web isn't typically something midsize firms have to be sold on. Even the most traditional-minded of managers recognize the huge potential to increase visibility, extend reach, and grow profits. But with so many online ...
Google edged further ahead in the search business with its search market share rising to 67 percent in January, according to the industry tracker comScore. Google has strengthened its market position with a seemingly recession-proof business model, and it could ...
With an abundance of consumer choice in today's market, directing marketing efforts to a clearly defined target makes it easier to reach those consumers most likely to purchase your organization's product or service. It can also help midsize businesses stay ...
Twitter and American Express have teamed up to offer digital purchases to consumers, allowing them to simply tweet a hashtag to buy an item. The consumer also tweets a confirmation hashtag to authorize payment on their American Express account. According ...
Most businesses feel the pressure to quickly respond to consumer behavior, but quick, effective responses are most critical for small and midsize businesses as they try to not only retain customers but also attract new ones. Allowing technology to inform ...
IBM recently announced two commercial Watson supercomputer applications, one to help manage health insurance claims, and the other to assist medical professionals in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment protocols. Watson is perhaps best known as the "Jeopardy!" playing supercomputer capable ...
The smartphone was at the center of record breaking sales numbers. A recent survey shows that sales topped more than 200 million units in the fourth quarter of last year. The numbers prove just how popular and necessary the device ...
Thanks to business intelligence (BI) development in the mobile space, midsize firms are becoming more competitive than ever. According to a new study, several large vendors are in the race to build better mobile BI solutions.Maximum ProductivityA company seeking to ...
GPS enabled cows may be making their way into the Internet of Things, bringing in a new era of technology to the cattle industry. A scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants to equip cows with GPS ...
"The customer is king." It is one of the oldest sayings in business, as true in the B2B world as it is in consumer retail. At the same time, knowing what the "royal customer" wants is one of the oldest ...
In this hyper connected world, midsize businesses understand cross channel marketing is a successful way to effectively reach their clients and increase profits. It is done by leveraging one marketing channel to support another marketing channel. Midsize firms realize that ...
The concept behind marketing automation is simple enough, right? Identify the repetitive marketing processes within your organization, use technology to automate them, kick back, and reap the rewards. If it were only that simple.For many midsize businesses, the challenges start ...
Google has seen an incredible insurgence from just being the new search engine on the block to not only being the search engine, but the company in which many of our communications and collaborations take place. The company that tries ...
If you're running a midsize business, then web analytics tools are an important asset for business growth. And if you are providing IT services to a midsize business, then gaining expertise in analytics could help you to enable that growth ...
When analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray offers predictions for upgrades to Apple technologies in 2013, there are many people listening. As a leading researcher, Munster offers insights that can help midsize businesses prepare for upcoming changes.Gene Munster is senior ...
Sales of Windows 8 laptops are slipping. At the same time, some vendors are having trouble keeping touch-screen Windows PCs in stock. Apparently they are flying off the shelves. So what is behind these seemingly contradictory signals?The personal computing market ...
Technology continues to play an important role in the U.S. job market, a new survey shows. The report, by online tech recruiting firm Dice, states that nearly two-thirds of those responsible for hiring IT staff project that they will be ...
Low cost tablets are expected to influence IT spending in 2013 and 2014, driving down overall investment in computers as higher cost PC sales languish. Companies saving money on hardware will spend it in data applications and Software as a ...
When it comes to the mobile arena, Apple iOS, Google Android, and Windows Phone aren't the only games in town -- open-source initiatives, once on the periphery, are also making their way onto the field. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, ...
Windows Phone is set to ride the growth escalator for the next five years, says analysis firm Analysys Mason. But even with that boost, it will claim only 9 percent of smartphone shipments. For the IT community at midsize firms, ...
One of the major downfalls of the BYOD movement is that employees are often careless when it comes to downloading mobile applications. These seemingly harmless tools and games can harbor key-loggers, viruses, GPS trackers, malware, and so much more. Although ...
With the Windows 8 operating system released just a couple of months ago, most experts would expect an increase in Microsoft sales. However, this does not seem to be the case; a paradigm fueled by the public's transition to mobile ...
Building and retaining customer loyalty is one of the biggest challenges that midsize firms face. Conventional wisdom, after all, has it that consumers are inherently fickle. They are hard to win over and all too easy to lose. They may ...
Retailers are finding that e-commerce customers use multiple devices when they shop for products, but trying to support a unified cross-platform experience is proving to be difficult. According to an article in the New York Times, research from IBM has ...
Google is reaching out to mobile users of its Google Apps cloud-based office suite with a new version of its Quickoffice software that will allow its paying business customers to edit Microsoft Office documents on the go.As Computerworld's Jay Alabaster ...
With the holiday season fast approaching, many shoppers are seeking to purchase an iPad either for themselves or for loved ones. Depending on the specifications selected, the cost could exceed $500. However, there are other options and iPad recycling programs ...
San Francisco based Hackbright Academy recently graduated its 16-student second class of programmers. Hackbright offers a 10-week fellowship program specifically for women and helps connect graduates with potential employers. According to a recent Huffington Post article, eight out of 12 ...
The recent boom in cloud computing has allowed small and midsize businesses to collect and harness in a manner and amount that was only recently reserved for huge enterprise outfits. This shift in data availability is the harbinger of a ...
Free and fast shipping is a new offering from Apple available solely online. Midsize businesses that have room within their end-of-year budgets can benefit from the recent announcement.The short-term promotion is for free shipping with delivery two to three days ...
Most software applications have licensing fees attached. Users buy the software and then pay license fees for each installation. If the software is accessible remotely, account holders may also have to pay for each remote user in the form of ...
A new report shines some light on the ever-changing world of smartphone pricing and has some interesting predictions about what will happen over the next few years. If these predictions prove correct, it means that midsize businesses will soon have ...
From the days of caravans and galleons to those of cargo jets and container ships, getting working materials and finished goods from source to customer has been a core element of business.The information age has not changed this reality. If ...
Adhering to standards as defined by the PCI Security Standards Council is a prerequisite for any organization that retains, processes, or transmits cardholder information. Many companies process credit/debit card payments, but few know how to assess the risk involved in ...
Three years ago nearly to the day, I had one of the least satisfying shopping experiences of my life. Ironically, it was with a luxury car dealership backed by a customer service promise that it badly broke. The salesperson treated ...
Increasingly, consumers are reaching for their smartphones to find products, solutions, and localized services. They're also using social media to share their experiences with brands and survey friends for information and reviews. The result: a highly informed social consumer base ...
Some telecommunications companies are exploring new opportunities in machine-to-machine technology, or M2M. Major carries like AT&T, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom are exploring the market on analysts' predictions that there will be 218 million connected devices by the end of 2014 ...
The electronic payments clearance system used in the US has been opaque to most of the people who use it, full of countless middle men and mysterious acronyms like ACH (Automated Clearing House). Two-year-old startup Dwolla seeks to revolutionize the ...
Apple's iPad may soon be accepted as a serious tool in the enterprise, thanks to a large purchase of the slick devices by banking giant Barclays for use by customer-facing branch personnel. The move, unprecedented by any other company in ...
There has been a lot of buzz lately about the "Internet of Things"--devices, from household appliances to power grid monitors, talking directly to each other online. The conversation would be about saving energy and money. But the CEO of Nest ...
Google's Knowledge Graph is growing fast and now translates to several languages besides English. IT professionals within midsize businesses who adjust desktop and mobile websites to appeal to the contextual database can optimize Web traffic opportunities.The Graph first launched in ...
If you're looking for the world's foremost search provider, it's Google all the way. Microsoft runs a distant second with Bing, and recent acquisitions show that Larry Page's company wants to do more than just provide results for consumers queries. ...
There could be an answer for companies that continue to struggle as a result of the economic recession - the Internet. A new study reveals that small and midsize business can improve sales in a tough economy by pushing online ...
Android has blasted past Apple to become the dominant mobile technology in terms of total devices sold. Even in the tablet segment, Android is at the point of surpassing the iPad. But when it comes to actual online activity, the ...
By Saturday, we knew from the likes of comScore, PayPal and IBM approximately how many dollars were spent on Black ...
Mobile payment systems have been getting a lot of press lately. The iPhone 5 hopped on this bandwagon early, with a "passbook" system that allows users to pay with various different services, all from one central app. Google Wallet has ...
Despite retail worker outrage about extended work hours not just on Black Friday but the long night before, sales continue to soar. Offsetting some employee woes and cashing in on lucrative markets, Cyber Monday has emerged as a powerful market ...
News that Square is processing $10 billion in payments annually has ramifications for small to medium sized businesses everywhere. Visitors ...
New insight into how investors look at technology shows that one of the most reliable investment areas of the past few years is falling by the wayside, replaced with new ideas about connectivity and collaboration. This shift in technology should ...
Not sure if the iPad Mini or any tablet is right for your business? The biggest criticism over the latest tablet device is that it is a miniature iPad--or bigger iPhone--depending on your point of view. Tablets seem irrelevant for ...
Payment Card Industry Compliance is the last thing on the priority lists of many small and midsize businesses today. That's according to a new report that says the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS isn't well understood ...
A shake-up in the top players in the smartphone market means that IT administrators for midsize businesses may look to make some changes in mobile device support for any bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or corporately owned, personally responsible (COPE) programs. The Worldwide ...
To be clear, IBM's Watson supercomputer is actually named for the company's founder, Thomas J. Watson and not the fictional detective's sidekick, but this is an easy mistake to make - especially with Watson breaking into the world of medical ...
We no longer have supersonic airliners. And we never did get scheduled moon flights or personal commuter helicopters. But computing power, from supercomputers to smartphones, is still growing by leaps and bounds. This rapid pace of improvement is often described ...
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently told start-up rideshare app companies SideCar, Tickengo, and Lyft to cease and desist, claiming that the companies are acting as "charter-party carriers" because they are transportation companies. In an Ars Technica article, SideCar ...
Google Wallet (GW) and Apple's Passbook offer huge appeal to consumers for ease of electronic transactions and purchases. Demands on IT professionals at midsize businesses increase as these specialists need to integrate the popular services into existing Websites and apps ...
Starbucks has jumped onto the Square Wallet bandwagon, announcing that customers will be able to use the mobile app payment system for in-store purchases beginning in November, even allowing tips to baristas by the summer. This announcement comes shortly after ...
The House Intelligence Committee has accused two foreign companies of posing a security threat to America and has released a report that warns American businesses about buying China-based Huawei and ZTE products. According to CNET, "U.S. network providers and systems ...
Imagine using an iPad as a remote scanner to get a 3D scans of interior spaces of all of a business' commercial locations. Now imagine that 3D scanners to capture those images don't cost $40,000 and don't take up more ...
The mobile payment model is getting a boost with a recent announcement by coffee giant Starbucks that it will begin accepting mobile payments through Square Wallet at about 7,000 shops starting in November. Mobile payments work by linking a user's ...
Apple isn't exactly shy about their own success. The company has big sales and a big ego to match and famously eschews things like focus groups and customer opinions before releasing new products. Their recent iPhone 5 release was a ...
A group of experts at a recent GigaOm event discussed the rise of machine-to-machine or M2M technology, which allows different appliances within the offices of midsize IT firms to pass data between themselves. The more generic term for this growing ...
The growing complexity and importance of technology in today's business environment has led many in the mid-market to turn to managed service providers (MSP) to assist in technology solutions. As this shift happens, tech giant IBM is refocusing its efforts ...
With responsive design complete with the ideal user experience, touch-screen mobiles, introduced since the iPhone, are changing the way business is done. According to a recent survey by Forrester Research, the number of mobiles used to make purchases online has ...
The technology underlying the retail payment industry has been evolving over the past few months with players like Google, MasterCard, and Visa partnering in an early attempt to corner the market. Despite these partnerships among established payment processing juggernauts, it ...
The first Taiwan-China data cable started transmitting last month in what seems to be an indication of further improved relations between the two countries. According to the BBC, the first data was sent over two underwater fiber-optic cables for four ...
The new Apple iPhone release is imminent, and tech pundits have already predicted huge sales. So far, Big Fruit's once-a-year upgrade plan seems to be paying off and, unless they make a serious misstep at the iPhone 5's reveal, that ...
While Google continues to implement Google+ results in its search results, Bing has taken its search engine and implemented social networking using Facebook. Microsoft recently released a new version of its algorithm that shows Facebook images and data in search ...
Wal-Mart might just reinvent the way customers pay for products. Paying from the iPhone is currently available for mobile businesses, but Wal-Mart is testing a new Scan and Go iPhone app that allows customers who shop in a brick and ...
Outsourcing IT tasks to foreign countries, such as India, has long been associated with cost-cutting measures rather than any technological superiority. Recently, however, a new trend has emerged in which cost is receiving secondary consideration to business-building benefits in the ...
Better apps, better cloud service, no more upgrade nightmares, and 4G speed are just a few reasons InfoWorld reported that many Android users may switch to the iPhone 5 in the next few months. The exact release for Apple's newest ...
The iPhone 5 is coming, and Apple's stock is heading northward as a result. Users, meanwhile, are salivating at the thought of getting their hands on a new iDevice and iOS, while other tech companies look at ways to cash ...
The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend has been at the forefront of the business industry. Its popularity has grown due to the mass production of mobile devices, the allure of flexible hours, and the perceived increase in productivity. That being said, few ...
In a world where you can get $5 logos or even logos for free, Microsoft has created a new brand logo for its company recognition. The change in logo demonstrates how important it is for businesses to create an image ...
A new study has revealed that IT administrators now consider Apple's iOS to be the most secure mobile platform, even better than the esteemed Blackberry. This news comes just days after the National Security Agency (NSA) announced that it had ...
At least one analyst believes that, with a boost from Chinese consumers, iPhone 5 sales could reach 250 million units. As with all things Apple, this news has an element of titillating hype. But behind it is an even bigger ...
Google has picked up Frommer's travel guides, strengthening its position in the travel-guide space and location, generally. For Google, travel fits in well with its broader strategy, which remains search-centric.For the IT community at midsize firms, the message is that ...
The BYOD movement has already become a prevalent workplace activity, with smartphones, tablets, and mobile hotspots taking up residence in the office. However, a recent report by Juniper Research reveals that the practice is expected to double by 2014. Currently ...
From the dawn of the personal-computing era in business, people have been predicting the advent of the paperless office. But decades passed and the clutter of paper only continued to grow. Now, however, falling printer sales suggest that businesses may ...
A couple of years ago, Steve Jobs famously declared that 7-inch tablets would be DOA (dead on arrival) in the marketplace. Now, by all reports, Apple will be releasing the iPad Mini, with a 7.85-inch screen. Was it a marketing ...
Tablets to date have been a compromise. It's hard to do serious work. You can watch movies but you still need a laptop or desktop computer to edit on. They don't run any of the heavy-duty applications like MS Office, ...
When it comes to many new technologies, consumers become attached to the new services much faster than businesses do, and when it comes to the social space, this disparity could be about to cause issues. Gartner research is now reporting ...
SAP has released a new version of its Environment, Health, and Safety application, called SAP EHS Risk Management, to help businesses proactively manage operational risks. According to CBR Online, SAP EHS component extension 2.0 mobile app has released as an ...
Biometrics systems are finding their way into offices, gyms and even day care centers as midsize businesses seek to beef up their authentication security. With ongoing concerns about the relative safety of password-based authentication, businesses are adopting new methods of ...
The BYOD movement has seen widespread use among businesses despite the security fears held by IT professionals. This trend has now evolved into a whole other beast, with employees bringing in personal applications to work too. Formally called the bring-your-own-application ...
The programming life cycle involves whiteboard sessions, brainstorming, development, testing, and deployment. The process of developing a platform from beginning to end takes months of development time. Then the process of testing can extend the time even longer. As businesses ...
In the age of multiple devices, employees own more than just a smartphone. They have a desktop for the office, a laptop for writing reports while on the move, and a tablet for hourly email checks. With so many mobile ...
With tablets gaining significant use in both the home and office, there has been an abundance of new tablets entering the competitive marketplace. Noteworthy releases have included the Nexus 7, Microsoft Surface, and Amazon Kindle. Although these devices are becoming ...
The explosive growth of smartphones and tablets over the past few years has now invariably led to the dominance of the mobile application market. New surveys and reports show that, despite how far mobile apps have already come, they will ...
Verizon has teamed up with big box retailer Best Buy to help provide SMBs with a specialized technology solution designed to give IT support to those companies who are lacking in that area. While certain aspects of the new solution ...
Free online education is changing, in part because of start-up company Coursera, which will offer more than 100 massive open online courses (MOOCs) at no cost to students. To offer these free online classes, Coursera is partnering with 16 highly ...
Most cities have sent their pay phones to the landfills, but New York City is reviving theirs. A pilot program has been launched in New York in collaboration with AT&T to use pay phones as public Wi-Fi hot spots for ...
A tip for the business owner seeking to learn what not to do to please a customer – sign up ...
As much as mobile has become a meaningful channel for many businesses, there are still misconceptions around consumer activity. We ...
In 2011, the term "gamification" got its turn on the hype machine that is the Internet; it received its 15 minutes of fame at trade and tech shows as start-ups and big players touted it as the next evolution in ...
Think back to when you were very young. One of the first lessons taught to you was likely around the ...
In 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content [Infographic] And Content Marketing Case Study there were a number of great suggestions for any midsized company to kick off a compelling content marketing program. Reusing your content in new ways, like in ...
Companies giving back was popular a decade ago, but most just gave lip service to it and only handful really did anything about it. Now days with the spotlight of social media many companies feel it is a must have ...
How many times have you called your bank or utility to ask a question and were transferred more than a ...
First the good news: Internet commerce is a level playing field in which midsize companies can compete with large corporations. Now the not-so-good news: Empowered customers have more influence than ever. Retailers need to be able to predict market ...
A very common concern for midsize businesses as they get deeper into social media and other community building programs is negative comments. What if people say: “You guys suck!” “Your product is sh*t.” #your_name_here_fail. Unhappy customers, competitors, and lurking trolls ...
Smarter commerce is starting to happen for the midsize business. Laurie McCabe does a good job describing about how this is happening and how it is evolving. Another movement we are starting to see is how cloud usage is ...
The question for most midsize businesses when developing content for marketing is what topics should they use. Now, let me suggest that content marketing is about framing the conversation by making a valid argument and using evidence. The topics must ...
Effective marketing tactics must be constantly evaluated and re-evaluated to stay ahead of your competition, but you know this, management is highly risk adverse. How do you crack this impasse? There are new programs that you strongly suspect are worth ...
Any marketer worth his or her salt will tell you that, despite the growing “online” nature of much of our ...
When surveyed 85% of companies say they are doing content marketing, but most are doing it very poorly. What are the most common problems, and what can you do to fix them? To get the answers from two well respected ...
One way is with Square, which offers merchants a free credit card reader for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Square for iPad also brings a point of sale system for businesses to accept payments and track inventory. According to Fast ...