Tag Archives: Andrea Peiro

Online Accounting: Numbers in the Cloud

Financial management is the delicate balancing act that transforms marketing success, operational results, and managerial savvy into a viable, durable business. In order for a small business to be efficient and effective in managing its finances, computerized accounting and digital financial services tools must become part of its daily kit. While such tools are traditionally desktop-based software programs, a new breed of online financial management applications has emerged in the last few years, taking advantage of the growing confidence that businesses are developing in the Web as a safe business environment. Now that entrepreneurs are indeed becoming comfortable with the “software in the cloud” model and the inherent benefits it offers, they are in growing numbers starting to look beyond e-mail or office productivity to more sophisticated and sensitive applications like financials. Web-based financial management applications are not new — think online brokerage and banking. But fully featured online packages are just now fully blooming, not only rivaling in functionality their desktop-based counterparts, but also extending their usefulness through value-added online services such as bill payments, electronic checks issuance, digital invoicing, or customer credit verification. Moreover their collaborative features, such as multi-user access and accountant view make it a natural fit for the “on the go” lifestyle of most modern small business managers. Accounting online The heavyweight of small business accounting, Intuit, has launched an online alternative to its Quickbooks software that can be finally considered a valid option. While its previous attempts were not very successful, the current version of Quickbooks Online, priced from free to $34.95/month, is a quality product that, while not as powerful as the desktop version, does a pretty good job. Peachtree, a longtime small business favorite, also has debuted a well featured online version starting at $150/year and representing a very viable alternative. Notable new online-only accounting packages for small businesses include Clarity Accounting and Less Accounting which is nicely integrated via mashups with Web favorites such as Basecamp, Shopify, and PayPal. Almost ready to re-launch is NetBooks, a product with a bit of a troubled history, but with a very interesting and complete set of features and now in final Beta release. Accounts can now be opened and used for free. A truly superb product, designed for mature small businesses is Intacct. Created from the ground up as a Web-based application, it provides very sophisticated accounting features and it natively integrates with a number of other Web-based software offerings such as Salesforce.com. For even more mature and large organizations, requiring not just accounting but a comprehensive online suite of business management applications, NetSuite is the leader in the space. Online bill payment If you think for a moment about what it is truly involved in paying your business bills using the traditional checkbook and snail mail, it is not difficult to imagine that there must be a better way to do it. Well, there is, and it is called “online bill payment.” While banks have offered similar services for quite a while as part of their online banking offerings, there are independent services that go well beyond the electronic check, and make the process of receiving, screening, tracking, and paying bills extremely efficient. Both Paytrust — owned by Intuit — and CheckFree can receive bills on your behalf, scan them, make them available to you in digital format via a secure Web interface, and allow you to pay them with a click of the mouse, issuing an electronic check or an EFT order. This approach can be adopted for all vendors and all invoices, and cuts the average time needed to process a bill by more than 50 percent — in my experience — and greatly simplifies the record keeping aspect, eliminating paperwork. Online invoicing When it comes to get paid, or at least to efficiently issue and send invoices, there are a plethora of Web services available. The most notable is Freshbooks, a pioneer of the Web 2.0 era, which allows for efficient time tracking, billing, quoting, and more. Intuit has its own offering tightly integrated with Quickbooks online called Billing Manager, while Zoho Invoices comes as part of the Zoho online productivity suite. A roster of other minor offerings fill various professional niches and differentiate on price and unique features, including: Free Agent, Simply Invoices, Invoice Place and Billing Orchard. The Web is opening the doors to scores of new software developers every day, reducing the costs to develop new products and services, creating competitive opportunities for better, less expensive products. Online financial software is just now entering the realm of full acceptance among small businesses. Expect an explosion of new, more tailored applications from large players such as Google and Microsoft as well as upstart companies. New products will surface on the horizon in the next couple of years offering true integration with banking, invoicing, billing, and all the other financial services that small businesses use every day, together with more robust ways to analyze performance, giving way to a new generation of well managed and more robust small enterprises. Andrea Peiro is the Small Business Market Expert at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Founder of the Small Business Technology Magazine, a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses, he has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Cloud Computing: Freedom to Be Productive

Technology is one of the fundamental reasons why today’s small businesses can break through with innovative products, compete head to head with large corporations, and even change the very rules of the game. The modern paradigm of entrepreneurship — fueled by inexpensive and available technology — emphasizes flexibility, responsiveness, and cost effectiveness, enabling small businesses to contend for market position in a way that was not even thinkable just a few years ago. Software provided as a service via the Web — or in the “cloud” — is the quintessence of what small businesses need for their information workers: cost effective, flexible tools that free them from physical dependency and allow for location independent operation and wide scale collaboration. The most common tasks performed by small business employees are definitely related to basic office communications and productivity. Such tasks can now be performed through and incredible array of choices that leverage the software in the cloud model and take advantage of the inherent collaborative nature of the Internet for very low cost, or even for free, offering strong alternatives to traditional desktop computing. E-mail, communications, and personal information management Web mail has been available for many years, but in the recent past has become a complete alternative to traditional e-mail clients such as Outlook, Eudora, or Thunderbird. Web 2.0 technologies have allowed in fact for such tools to offer very rich and complete user experience. Gmail is an appealing solution with its widespread adoption among consumers, more storage than you’ll ever need, full integration with traditional clients, and the unbeatable price — it’s free. Its true power though becomes evident when used in conjunction with the other Google applications, such as calendaring, contacts management, instant messaging, Google Docs and Google Sites. A premium, paid option called Google Apps integrates all these applications around your own domain name and allows for true workgroup functionality, plus extensive customer support for $50/year per user. Microsoft’s Hotmail has been around for as long as I can remember, but in the last few years it has turned into a communication platform actually usable by a small business with success. Now part of Office Live Small Business, it integrates with services such as online storage and your own website. Starts for free and you can add services for tiered fees. The best e-mail based tools though are the ones that allow you to get the best of all worlds: Web mail and client-side e-mail download and fully synchronized, together with online and offline calendars, contacts, tasks, and workgroup-level collaboration. In this domain, Yahoo!’s Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange can now be purchased as online services with absolutely no technical knowledge required for setup. They’re both fantastic tools, but outsourced MS Exchange services are definitely the most mature and available. The domestic leader in the Exchange as a service offer for small businesses is Intermedia with robust and reliable hosting, full customer support starting at about $10/month per user. Less expensive, but more consumer oriented providers include 1&1 and mail2web that include a free Web-only service with no workgroup features. Office productivity suites In the past few years a new breed of online applications that perform most of the tasks that we are accustomed to perform with Microsoft Office have reached business maturity and are getting ready for prime time. The one that I find to be the most reliable and well featured online alternative to Office is ThinkFree. It has been around for many years now and it offers both a Web-based office application and an identical companion for the desktop that requires no connectivity. The Web offerings are rounded by documents storage services, great workspace collaboration, and smartphones integration. Basic service is free; premium services and products can be added for modest fees. Google Docs is clearly becoming a strong contender. Free, well integrated with its other services, it provides extremely simple interface with native collaborative features: multiple users can concurrently work on the same documents with no chance for confusion. Don’t expect too many bells and whistles though. It’s a solid, collaborative office suite at no cost with essential features. A recent entry in the Web productivity market that has made very good inroads is Zoho. While its services go well beyond the basic productivity suite and extend into teleconferencing, project management, e-mail, and customer relationship management (CRM) and are accessible mostly for free, their products are not exactly ready for robust applications yet, but they are certainly moving in the right direction. Definitely worth take a look. A number of other Web-based applications designed to make small business more collaborative and flexible are finally reaching maturity. Some examples include file transfer (YouSendIt), intranets and collaboration (HyperOffice, Web Office), and project collaboration and management (Central Desktop and Basecamp.) With the emergence of more and more applications leveraging the low development and distribution costs afforded by the software-as-a-service model (SaaS), small businesses are going to see a growing number of offerings tailored to their needs and responding to their functional requirements much better than what is available today on desktop software. In my next column,, we will explore options for Web-based accounting and financial management. Stay tuned. Andrea Peiro is the Small Business Market Expert at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Founder of the Small Business Technology Magazine, a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses, he has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Keep Your Head in the Cloud

Throughout 2008, the concept of cloud computing has been at the edges of an incredible number of conversations, blogs, events, and reports. This coming year expect the hype to grow and the topic to be front and center across all facets of the IT industry: the change that this new approach to computing delivers will start to be truly felt not just in the space of consumer applications like social networking, chatting, or multiplayer gaming, but also across the business functions that impact your daily professional life. Cloud computing includes all those IT usage models for which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for fulfilling the computing needs of the users, without requiring their knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. These IT models include Web 2.0, software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS) — the latter of which moves software platforms from the traditional ownership model into the cloud. The upshot of cloud computing is that computing services are becoming more like utilities to a business. Instead of purchasing a new server for your company, paying to have it installed and setup, and managing this server in house, you can simply rent the computing power you need, run your business applications, and only pay for the power you use. Like your business already does for electricity or water. No upfront investments, no hardware management, no troubleshooting. This option frees your company from the overhead of maintaining a complex IT infrastructure, but still provides you with the flexibility of running your own software — such as a custom database for sales or a dedicated inventory management system that perfectly fits the needs of your business. Software as a utility That same utility model can be applied to software. Instead of owning a software application, you can just rent its functionality. That is exactly what you do when you use Google Mail, Facebook or LogMeIn. You are utilizing software provided to you as a service (SaaS), rather than having to install it on your computer. This “virtual software” is run in “virtual computers” that utilize the resources of clusters of real computers all working in perfect concert in the “Internet Cloud” and transparently and with zero overhead from the end user point of view. This approach, however, imposes limitations on how you can customize such software and integrate it with other applications, since you do not directly control it. To obviate the customization issue there currently are two distinct approaches: the mashup and the PaaS. Mashups are becoming very popular with the newest generation of Web 2.0 applications, where users can actually integrate SaaS from multiple vendors across the Internet and with little effort, such as opening a document stored in the Basecamp project management system directly with Zoho and from there sending it via e-mail using your Gmail account, with no need for multiple logins. This approach works if the SaaS products you want to integrate are developed according to rigorously established interoperability standards. The PaaS approach consists of utilizing the customization and development tools provided by the SaaS vendor to leverage an established development platform and extend the functionality of its offering. Salesforce.com is the most popular example of such an approach. You can utilize their SaaS, extend it with a large library of third party add-ons, and customize it using their development tools to meet your specific needs. The technical skills needed though are substantially higher that what is required to use mashup techniques, but the level of customization possible is much higher. No need for installation In the practical world of small businesses, the most evident manifestations of cloud computing are the hundreds of software applications that are becoming accessible via the Web with no need for any local installation and available as free or paid services. The proliferation of these applications is providing small businesses with not only inexpensive alternative to traditional, costly software, such as office suites, accounting packages and customer relationships management, but also with a whole roster of useful products that fulfill very specific niche markets needs and would not normally make sense for vendors to develop as conventional software. Some examples are Zoho for office productivity, Freshbooks.com for accounting and Basecamp for project management. Another example of cloud computing that is directly affecting small businesses can be found in all those business services that heavily rely on the Web to interface with customers, such as online banking, bill payment, hotel reservations, airlines tickets booking, and teleconferencing. These transactional services are all leveraging the Internet as a service conduit, independently from the computer the customer is utilizing to access them and make heavy use of cloud computing technologies. Examples in this category are Paytrust.com for bills payment and Paypal.com for credit card processing services. A third area of significance in cloud computing applications is e-ommerce. Services that offer simple, end-to-end e-ommerce platforms that require little or no knowledge of Web design or programming to be setup — such as Amazon WebStores or eBay Stores — are becoming more popular and more sophisticated, giving small businesses the possibility to setup a professional e-commerce site in just a few days. In the small business markets cloud computing is evolving into a truly disruptive technology, enabling low-cost computing, commoditized software, and low barriers to entry for more technology entrepreneurs to create the next generation of software services. In my next column, I will review practical ways a small business can move its computing almost entirely to the cloud lowering costs, reducing its IT overhead, and increasing its flexibility and responsiveness. I will explain how to leverage the cloud for office productivity, collaboration, data security and storage, financial management, project management, and more. Stay tuned. Andrea Peiro is the Small Business Market Expert at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Founder of the Small Business Technology Magazine, a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses, he has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

More Efficient Computing

How many times have you felt that your computers, printers, or Internet connection are actually making you lose more time than they help you save? How often do you stare at your screen and wait for something to happen, or for a webpage to load? Small businesses just cannot afford losing time: time is everybody’s most valuable asset, but for small businesses it also is the most critical element of success. What can you do to make your computing more efficient, reduce your idle time, and have more of it for what really matters? Keep you computer up to date Software programs keep becoming better, easier to use, and more capable, although they impose growing demands on your computer resources. If you use an older computer with newer software, the strain imposed may slow down your system significantly, making your software update not worth the investment. Specifically, modern operating systems and applications demand large amounts of RAM. Be generous with your RAM purchase: look for a minimum of 4GB, but preferably 6GB or more. The unused space on your hard disk drive (HDD) is actually used by the operating system to write temporary information and it is paramount that you always keep at least 20 percent of the total HDD capacity available for that, or you’ll experience a reduction in performance. If you’re running out of disk space, buy a new, larger HDD and have your vendor transfer all your data from the older disk. Additional factors such as HDD fragmentation and disk errors also can be substantial causes for slowdown. This article on Microsoft’s website can help you address the issues. If your computer is just getting too old to keep up, don’t waste time. Buy a new one – and you’re better off making it a laptop. The newest generation of powerful, energy saving, and multimedia friendly laptops are a more practical choice for business than desktops because of their wonderful flexibility of use. Speed up your Internet access Most small businesses spend a great deal of time online. Waiting for pages to load is not the best way to spend it. The latest generation of online services and software come with quite heavy data traffic demands, taxing your Internet connection. Make sure your Internet service provider (ISP) is making available the best possible connection and that your service contract is up to date, offering the most bandwidth (speed) you can afford. If you have not reviewed the terms of your ISP contract in a while you may want to do it soon, since due to the competitive nature of the market, better deals keep becoming available with more performance at lower cost. If you do not know how fast your internet connection is, here is a resource you can use to run a free speed test. Anything shy of 500 kilobits per second (Kbps) should be considered too slow. If you have more than three users concurrently sharing the connection, the minimum should be 1,000 Kbps. Optimize your local area network More and more small businesses utilize a local area network (LAN) within their office to share printers, scanners, data storage devices, back up resources, Internet access, and software applications. If your LAN connection is slow, the data traffic within your company is impaired. The current mainstream standard for wired LAN connectivity is 100 megabits per second (Mbps). You should have all your computers and network devices — such as routers, switches, and wireless access points — compliant with that standard. The presence of older devices (e.g. 10 Mbps standard) can impair the performance of the entire network. If you do not have a LAN and decide to deploy one, look for 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) standard devices, capable of transferring data ten times faster than the previous generation. If you are using a wireless LAN and feel that the performance is not as great, make sure that both your access point and your computer wireless network cards are all at least compliant with the “g” standard offering 54 Mbps of bandwidth. Older “b” standard equipment should be replaced because of its low performance and security concerns. If you’re deploying a new WLAN now, look for the “n” standard, backward compatible with all previous standards, but twice as fast as “g” and with increased range of coverage. Finally, if you utilize servers, keep them on the network via a wired connection rather than wireless: more reliable and better performing. Hibernate, plug in, and use shortcuts Instead of turning your computer off when you do not need it, enable the “hibernate” mode and it will resume much faster when you will need it again. Keep your laptop plugged into the wall outlet when possible. Many portable computers move into a slower performance mode when unplugged, to save battery charge. Learn keyboard shortcuts for your most used applications, such as Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V to paste and Ctrl+X to cut in any Microsoft Windows-based software. All software programs have keyboard shortcuts for the most common tasks, and they may save you a great deal of time. Time is your most precious resource. Don’t trade the success of your business for the few dollars needed to take action on these recommendations. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Plug in and Forget: Network Appliances

In today’s innovative small businesses, the backbone of the computing infrastructure is the local area network (LAN). The true value of modern computing is, in fact, centered on the sharing of information within the business, accessing common resources, and collaborating to improve decision making, streamline processes, reduce overhead, and allow the effective participation of employees in the everyday digital life of the business. Until recently, though, LANs were a lot less common among smaller businesses — in most cases, their value was limited to sharing files across individual desktop computers, sharing printers locally connected, and sharing broadband Internet access. To achieve most of the advantages that come with collaboration, networks had to be outfitted with often very expensive and difficult to manage servers, imposing quite a leap in terms of IT support requirements. Things have though changed quite a bit in the last few years and because of these three main thrusts, the popularity of LANs among small businesses has skyrocketed: Increased availability of business grade online, multi-user software applications provided as a service and not requiring the installation of servers or local software; Increased performance and lower cost of wireless networking hardware, allowing for the flexible deployment of wired and wireless network users at low cost and with high flexibility; Growing availability of networked appliances, providing simple to use, task-oriented functionality to multiple network users. The impact of networked appliances The third of these factors is probably the least recognized, yet it has the most impact, primarily among operations with five to 25 employees. These are, in fact, the businesses most pressed to adopt servers, but often too reluctant to increase their IT overhead. Many of the important functions that traditional servers could provide via dedicated software can today be found in individual, easy to setup, configure, and use appliances that in most cases are designed to be deployed with no or very limited use of specialized IT personnel. A simple example to illustrate the case is storage: up to a few years ago if you wanted secure, permission based access to a reliable shared data storage resource you had to deploy at the cost of a few thousand dollars a small server with multiple hard disk drives and its own operating system. Today you can buy for a few hundred dollars a network attached storage (NAS) device that plugs directly into the network, and offers the same features with very simple setup and management interface. Most of the functionalities important to small businesses that were available only through servers are now available through appliances. Common, secure file storage and sharing As mentioned, NAS devices are the simplest and most effective way to centrally store your company data in a safe, reliable, quickly accessible common resource. Look for devices that contain multiple disks and support Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID). RAID allows to you to radically increase the reliability of your storage and in many cases increase the speed at which information is written and read from and to the device, improving the overall performance. It is also very important for the device to support individual user authentication to keep data private. And if your network supports gigabit Ethernet, make sure that your appliance does as well, in orderto maximize performance. NetgearReadyNAS, EMC AX150, Iomega StorCenter, and HP StorageWorks Media Vault Pro are good examples of these type of devices. Automated backup NAS devices also represent excellent destinations for your automated backup. If this is the primary reason you are interested in a NAS device, make sure it comes with good backup software and backup client licenses. Desktop independent print sharing Your printer has just become a lot smarter. Many printers today can be connected to your network — some of them even wirelessly — and become accessible from any networked computer. If considering a networkable multifunction device, make sure that all its functions (printing, scanning, faxing) are supported across the network. Some only allow for the printing functionality to be shared and require the device to be connected locally via USB in order to provide scanning and faxing. Anti-virus, spam filtering, firewalling, etc. Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances effectively replace servers in protecting your network and computers connected to it from intrusion, malware, and spam. UTM appliances often come with software to be installed on your networked computers and provide hands-off protection. The leader in the market is SonicWALL, although there are some other interesting vendors with particularly appealing small business solutions such as TrustEli, ZyXEL, and SOHOware’s BroadScan. Virtual private networking (VPN) VPN is a technology that allows users outside the physical premises of a network to securely connect to it via the Internet and have access to all shared resources and network privileges. VPN can also be used to connect two or more physically distinct network into one. This allows businesses with mobile workforce or telecommuters to provide the full benefits f a common digital work environment. VPN functionality is often provided as an extra feature of UTM appliances or Internet routers. Examples are the Netgear FVS318orthe Linksys RV042 or HotBrick 401 VPN. Remember to verify how many concurrent VPN connection your device will allow and how many VPN client licenses are included in the price. Voice over IP (VoIP) services VoIP allows for incredible flexibility and often cost saving. You can create a sophisticated phone system within your office with a VoIP appliance and network phones, or software on your computer to emulate a phone (softphone). The system will allow your call to reach you seamlessly when travelling anywhere in the world, have your voicemail forwarded to you as e-mail attachments, and much, much more. To learn about VoIP for small businesses you can read this column I wrote for IncTechnology. Good examples of appliance-based VoIP systems are: Fonality PBxtra, Microsoft ResponsePoint, and Digium Asterisk Appliance. While it is true that modern, powerful servers can do a lot more, such as hosting e-mail services, applications sharing, database hosting, it is important to realize that the core functions mentioned above represent the bulk of what small business have been wanting to use local networks for. The concept of dedicated appliance is making incredible progress and every day new devices come to market at lower prices to fulfill more and more specialized needs: job attendance tracking, point of sales support, network search and more. Now you know that your network can become a true secure collaborative environment without piercing a hole through you finances or requiring a full time IT support person. It’s time to share. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Plug in and Forget: Network Appliances

The Untethered Future

It’s Thursday at 6 p.m. and you are driving in your car with your family to go camping for the long weekend. You’re almost there when your Bluetooth phone headset rings. It’s one of your key clients and this is the call you have been waiting for all week. The contract needs to be signed now, so that tomorrow the purchase order can be issued, and on Monday work can begin. “No problem,” you say. “Just e-mail it to me.” At the next gas station, you pull over, boot your tablet PC, insert your 3G WWAN card and hop online from the middle of nowhere. You check your e-mail, open the contract, get the stylus and sign it right there, on the screen. Save it in a PDF format and e-mail it back. You do all of this before the kids are back from the restroom. Information technology has in the past 10 years completely changed the way small businesses live and work, affording a completely different approach to pursuing and managing business possibilities, balancing the life-work challenge, and destroying barriers to entry into markets and new opportunities. When we look though at what are the root causes of these change, we can actually pinpoint that the most radical transformations in the way small businesses do business have come primarily as a result of the commoditization – and consequently the affordability – of three specific technologies: notebook computers, mobile telephony, and broadband Internet access. The inexpensive availability of these three major technologies has driven most of the change, directly or indirectly, fueling trends such as the development of Web-based software applications, mobile email, search advertising, ecommerce, and even texting, blogging or social networking. In the background of our entrepreneurial lives though, a fourth major force is quickly materializing, rapidly changing our expectations in terms of how quickly and under what circumstances we have complete access to our full business capabilities: ubiquitous wireless data access. Wireless technologies are rapidly taking over across all forms of connectivity, changing the way we interact with information and affording a level of operational flexibility never before thought possible. Five standards rule the market and cover all of today’s connectivity needs. Bluetooth – With peak data rate of up to 3 megabits per second (Mbps) and range of about 30 feet, it is used for short-range connectivity of utility devices such as cameras, printers, headsets, microphones, mice, and mobile phones. Wireless USB --With peak data rate of about 480 Mbps and range of several meters, it is used for very short range data cable replacement and provides the same connectivity to peripherals that normal USB does, sans the wires. Wi-Fi -- With peak data rate of up to 300 Mbps and range of up to 300 feet, it is used for Local Area Networking (LAN) of computers and some enabled peripherals, such as printers or shared storage appliances. 3G Mobile Broadband -- With range dependent on 3G network coverage, but generally in the order of miles, and download speed about 500 kilobits per second (Kbps), it is used for wide area Internet access for either for 3G enabled Smartphones or add-on PC cards or USB adapters. Wi-MAX -- With range in the order of miles and download speed of over 1.5 Mbps, this new technology is to provide wireless broadband access as an alternative to wired broadband, like cable and DSL, to fixed, portable, and mobile receivers. This standard is also being positioned to provide the infrastructure for the next generation of mobile telephony networks. With the Apple iPhone 3G slated for a July debut, the eyes of the mobile computing world are all pointed towards the first ultra mobile device that can provide ubiquitous Internet access comparable with the experience you can have on a computer with broadband. Expect this to become the norm. 3G technology, married with a full capability Web browser and a sizable, high quality touch screen is an open door to bring the incredible wealth of low-cost Web-based applications to the hands of millions of small businesses. This un-tethered business future comes with the demanding task of building whole new rules to strike the right life-work balance. While in fact promoting higher flexibility, ubiquitous connectivity expose the dangers of being “on the job 24/7.” Some may say that wireless technologies are the modern “ball and chain.” I believe that if you did not know you could have signed your contract on the go, you — like every small business owner on this planet — would have been waiting, and waiting in your office for that contract to come in. Instead you’re almost in Big Sur and can hear the kids asking, “Are we there yet, Dad?” Like for most things in life, knowing when and where to draw the line is the key. Loose the wires, stay in control, and find a new life. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Business Management Applications: The Power of Data

Few things can be as rewarding as the experience of owning your own business, the feeling of being an entrepreneur, the freedom of managing your professional destiny. With independence and self determination though come the profound responsibility of providing a good working environment and a reliable paycheck for yourself and your employees — in good times and bad times. Each day you have to make hundreds of decisions that could change your life and the destiny of your company. During tough times many small businesses fail because projected profits are overestimated, costs misjudged, and cash flow is out of control, while owners lose track of what works and what does not, taking chances not supported by accurate figures. A clear, analytical knowledge of your business performance is always very important to substantiate decisions, but it becomes absolutely critical in times of economic downturn, when the volume of business tends to be reduced, operational costs increase, competition steepens, and margins shrink. The accuracy of decisions that could make or break your venture depends upon how refined is your understanding of variables such as operational costs, cash flow, yield of your marketing efforts, projected sales. Would you, for example, be able to quickly and reliably list your best customers, detail what your profit margins are, or assess the value of your inventory? Analytics can help To better weather a recession, entrepreneurs should consider adding to their instinct and experience the support of data and analytical evidence. In moments of economic crises only the most efficient businesses survive and thrive. Access to internal information can be the difference between success and failure, allowing you to accurately determine what customer to focus your attention on, what areas of your business to trim first, and how far down you could reduce your prices to remain competitive while keeping your profitability at acceptable levels. Information technology has for decades enabled large corporations to acquire, gather, organize, represent, evaluate and prioritize information from all sides of their businesses. Today the same technologies are affordably available to smaller companies in what are called business management applications (BMAs). BMAs are software tools to help manage information across the entire business and assess performance in sharp, clear terms to reach more accurate decisions. Most small businesses operate using an assortment of standalone, single-purpose software products to manage business functions: accounting, point of sale, inventory, customer relationship management, and most likely various disconnected online applications for tasks such as direct marketing, e-commerce, or group conferencing. Even when integrated, individual applications can rarely address the intelligence needs of a small business, mostly because the flow of data among the software programs remains limited, and cross-referencing figures becomes a very difficult task. Tying together different business functions Only software designed from the ground up with well integrated features and natively sharing information across functions can provide the information you need to truly limit the risk associated to your decisions. BMAs tie together most aspects of your business such as: Financials and accounting Customer relationship management Purchasing and merchandising Production and manufacturing Inventory management and distribution Order processing and shipping or delivering E-commerce Human resources Ideally this type of intelligence should be available on demand, easy to access in an understandable and usable format. A new generation of BMAs is attempting to make this happen by fully leveraging the power of the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies to deliver corporate-grade functionality to small businesses with low deployment overhead, universal accessibility and pricing models with minimal initial costs. In general there are great advantages for small businesses with limited technical resources in using Web-based BMAs, versus installing and maintaining complex software on their local network. These benefits in most cases include: Very high level of collaboration among employees: your entire team can access your company’s information and work from anywhere they have access to an Internet connection; No software installation or management, no servers required; High level of data security and availability with frequent and reliable backup; Very high level of integration with ecommerce and online payment processing services. The leaders in the online BMA market, each focusing on slightly different market segments are NetBooks, Salesforce.com, SAP Business One, and Netsuite. All these products offer different plans meeting the diverse needs of small businesses, providing tailored software applications as a service, with quality customer support and very simple setup. Ultimately, following only a modest investment, the adoption and use of online BMAs will help your business adapt to the economic downturn, by helping you: Simplify your financial management, improve fiscal insight and manage risk; Decrease the lead-to-sale time, increase the reach of your marketing and open new channels; Identify inefficiencies, reduce operational costs, increase flexibility and responsiveness; Increase productivity through better communications and better access to information. Economic downturns are part of the American economic system. They are important moments to weed the strong businesses from the weak ones, and prepare for the next period of growth. This is the time to think ahead, adapt, and create new opportunities. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. You can reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Green Computing Choices

The global call for action to live our lives in a more ecologically responsible way, limiting waste and preserving our environment, has finally reached the world of computing. Office equipment has been for years a source of pollution and waste, producing tons of non-recyclable plastics, dangerous chemicals, and massive amounts of non-biodegradable components. While this source of pollution has been mostly overlooked because of the relatively limited quantities of computers and peripherals produced in the past, the skyrocketing sales trends of the last decade have made this a very urgent and relevant issue. Many computers and peripherals manufacturers are becoming more sensitive to the problems associated with disposal and recycling of computing hardware as well as energy savings, but most could do a lot better in designing products with a lesser impact on long term pollution and energy consumption. Social and ecological responsibility extends to all segments of the world population, yet the actions of some groups can have more relevant effects than others. Small businesses are quickly becoming very strong consumers of information technology hardware and as such they have the responsibility to make sustainable choices and drive their preference towards manufacturers that strive to improve the friendliness of their products towards our planet. There are many simple, yet substantial ways small businesses can manage their technology in an eco-friendly way and help reduce pollution and energy waste. Here are some impactful ideas you can act upon today. 1. Purchase equipment with low content of dangerous chemicals Computer hardware tends to contain a lot of toxic substances, and while most manufacturers are pledging to reduce or eliminate pollutants, some are doing better than others. Toxic elements that may be contained in computing equipment include lead, mercury, nickel, cadmium, arsenic, cobalt, zinc, germanium, as well as aluminum, copper, and titanium. These are mostly treated as poison by the human body and can cause a wide range of health problems. When equipment is disposed in a landfill, its toxic elements begin to seep into the ground and may percolate into waterways, spreading into the ecosystem. Take a look at this detailed report from Greenpeace.Choosing equipment built with the least amount of pollutants is one of the keys to limit this growing damage. Greenpeace rates products and manufacturers on a yearly basis in the group’s “Guide to Greener Electronics”. 2. Use rechargeable batteries Disposable batteries still have a huge amount of pollutants such as mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium, and silver. Some recycling programs are now in place to properly dispose of batteries, but the sheer quantity used makes it difficult to be effective. Use “nickel metal hydride” rechargeable batteries where possible instead. They contain almost no toxic heavy metals and can be easily disposed at the end of their life. They have become much cheaper in the last few years, recharge faster and last longer. Chargers also have become inexpensive and small. Some batteries can even plug directly into a computer USB port to recharge. 3. Use small solar panels to recharge your phone, iPod, or other small electronics. Lots of smart and small solar chargers are now available. They save you money and can charge your equipment on the road with no dependency on electric outlets. Expect more powerful models to be able to recharge laptops in the near future. For more ideas on solar energy, see this eco-friendly tech products slideshow on IncTechnology. 4. Purchase energy efficient equipment The U.S. government has established a certification program for energy efficient electronics called “Energy Star.” Equipment that meets the low energy consumption requirements of for the certification can display the “Energy Star” logo. You can find more about the program, as well as a complete list of certified computing products here. 5. Use a laptop instead of a desktop computer Laptops are much more energy efficient and use fewer materials for their production than desktops. Not to mention that they end up increasing your productivity and workday flexibility allowing you to work where you need and when you need – making telecommuting a few days per week a much more viable option, helping you save gas and commute time. 6. Enable energy management policies on your computer Modern desktop PCs use a lot of electricity, the equivalent of four to seven traditional 60W light bulbs. To reduce energy waste and make your utility bill smaller, place computers in “hibernate” mode when you leave the office. This will allow them to restart in a blink, but use no electricity while idling. You can also set your computer power policy to make it go on stand-by (or sleep mode) after a few minutes of inactivity. The computer will resume almost instantly, but while you are at lunch or in a meeting, your PC will use close to no power. Visit Climate Savers Smart Computing for complete information about power management. 7. Recycle your old equipment If you have old, but still functional equipment that you are not using, donate it to a school or to programs like Goodwill. You can get a tax deduction, extend the life of the equipment and benefit a needy organization. A comprehensive list of options can be found at TechSoup. For non-functioning equipment you can rely upon a growing number of recycling centers. You can find your local options at Earth911. It is also very important to recycle your printer cartridges, considering how often they are replaced. Most office supply stores have drop boxes for used ones and some offer refilling programs for both laser and inkjet models, allowing substantially cutting on printing costs while helping the environment. Your choices can make a difference and your purchases will guide the design and production decisions of the future. Choose wisely, it’s your planet. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. If you have ideas about green tech, please reach him at us.andreap@gmail.com.

Not All PCs Are Created Equal — Part I

As the use of computers has moved from competitive advantage to competitive requirement for any small business, the dependency upon everyday computing tools such as PCs, the Internet, the mobile phone, has grown to unprecedented levels. Think about what your business day would look like if you had no access to your computer, no access to the Internet, and no access to your mobile phone. Few small businesses would truly be able to operate under these circumstances. It is absolutely paramount for all businesses to consider investments in technology at the same level of any other structural business investment, and rely upon “business grade” products rather than making do with consumer-oriented tools. An area where the differences between consumer and business product lines are very remarkable is the PC market. Not all PCs, in fact, are equally suited for business purposes and the choice of hardware you make could mean the survival or demise of your business. In this two-part column, I will review the five essential areas of differentiation between consumer-oriented and business-oriented PCs, offering practical guidelines for your next business PC purchase. Today’s PC are, in general, affordable and powerful. Software is becoming cheaper and the choices are incredible. What is not always evident, though, is that consumer PCs are designed with emphasis on entertainment and multimedia capabilities, but not necessarily built to guarantee the consistent levels of reliability, security, manageability, and computing power that businesses need. Reliability is essential for business A business PC must be as reliable as possible. Imagine if you were ready to make that key presentation to your investors and your laptop did not turn on. The most delicate part of a PC, be it a laptop or a desktop, is still the hard disk drive (HDD). With its magnetic plates spinning sometimes at more than 10,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) and minuscule reading heads hovering at fractions of a millimeter above the disks, the likelihood of malfunction is actually quite high, making it the most common element of failure. In laptops, due to the shaking and small impacts they frequently have to absorb, HDDs are even more prone to stop working. Replacing a failed HDD can be very time consuming and often comes with substantial loss of data. Imagine reinstalling the operating system, all the software, and restoring your data from the backup — providing you do have a back up. Business-grade PCs today offer a feature called “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks” (better known as RAID) that provides great protection from HDD failures. RAID has been very common in servers for many years, and it is now affordable enough to be a must-have feature in PCs. In its most basic configuration — called mirroring — RAID allows the computer to write the same data concurrently and identically on two HDDs. If one of them fails at any time, the PC continues to operate seamlessly with only one drive. When the failed drive is replaced, the system automatically copies back the information on the new drive, restoring the original configuration. Simple, effective, inexpensive, fast. Higher levels of security built in It is a day just like any other: wake up early to get ready for the Wednesday conference call with the East Coast, brush your teeth while the familiar aroma of the brewing coffee is starting to pervade your pad. A glimpse at your desk, though, tells you that something is not how it should be: you’re quite sure you left your computer on last night, but now it’s off. Press the “ON” button and there it is, the blue screen of death and the iconic message of doom: “can’t find bootable media.” Your heart sinks, and your day is magically gone. You spend an hour trying to make sense of what has happened, calling the help desk, cancelling your appointments, only to realize that during the night a virus has entirely erased your hard disk and before doing that has sent itself to all addresses in your contact book. Double hit: lost all your data and made lots of people angry! The Seattle proposal, your contacts, the project plans, your clients information, even your kids pictures were all on your hard disk and now they are gone. Gone for good! What about the backup? Well, it never made it off the “to do list.” To limit the chances for this doomsday scenario, it is of course paramount to have up to date anti-virus and anti-spam software installed, plus a good backup routine. The last generation of PCs designed for business, like the ones based on Intel’s vPro platform, can provide a higher level of security directly built into the hardware, capable to isolate malignant software code before it reaches even the operating system. This does not replace anti-virus software, but dramatically enhances the likelihood to catch malware before it strikes. In the second part of this article, which will publish next week, I will review how PCs designed for business use offer overall more productive computer experience, better manageability. and simpler maintenance. I will also go over the newest features offered in more mobile business-oriented laptops. Andrea Peiro is a recognized authority, author, analyst and speaker on high-tech marketing and use of information technology in small and mid-sized businesses. He has been frequently interviewed and featured in such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc. He can be reached at us.andreap@gmail.com.

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