Long-time small-business advocate Heather Clancy translates the latest SMB trends -- from e-commerce technologies to cost-effective applications, hardware, collaboration tools and cloud services that improve SMB efficiency.
Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist specializing in transformative technology and innovation
There's a big contrast between the IT investments made by successful small companies versus those performing in the bottom tier of their industries — but they aren't necessarily spending more money.
Shipping services targets small U.S. retailers stymied by the expenses and complicated processes associated with delivering packages to foreign locations.
The digital payments company's Cash for Register programs will waive fees on up to $20,000 worth of transactions per month, from July 9 through January 2014.
A new deal between SinglePlatform and GrubHub makes it easier for small restaurants to be 'found' by diners seeking to order directly from Web or mobile menus.
Larger companies may be right to worry about the security and reliability of cloud services, but when a small business doesn't have a viable on-premises option, should that really be their first concern?
While skeptics continue to question its scalability and reliability, Centric Projects looks to the cloud to share and store its most important data.
New York-based startup bMobilized has converted millions of existing Web sites into mobile editions, and is offering this conversion for free through the MobilizingUSA venture.
Still managing stacks of 'analog' contacts? These smartphone applications could make life easier; some even boast direct connections to LinkedIn and Salesforce.com.
InsightSquared, which just received $8 million in Series B funding, provides small companies with detailed analysis of what sales activities are working — and which aren't.
The integration will enable small businesses to keep track of customer interactions or manage leads directly from within Outlook or the Office applications.