business

• Small Businesses Underestimate Security Threats

  Fri. Aug. 15, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  In July, McAfee released the results of a survey which showed that many of small businesses owners feel that they are unassailable when it comes to hackers. Often they think, "hey, we only have one server" or "we only have 12 computers, we're not big enough for hackers to be interested in". Big Mistake!  Basically, a hacker who installs malicious software on computers through the Internet without the owners’ knowledge is looking for any computer that can be abused for click frauds, sending spam, etc. They don’t care whom the computer belongs to.

  According to the report, there’s a gap between what small businesses perceive as security issues and the realities of cyber attacks.  The survey (which polled 500 companies with 1,000 employees or less) found that for every eight firms, only 10 employees were dedicated to managing the businesses' information-technology systems.  While most small- and medium-sized companies believe that they operate under cybercriminals' radar, the study found that one-in-five firms have been attacked. 

  Beliefs of SMB's:

  • Too small to matter: 44 percent think cybercrime is only an issue for larger organizations and believe it does not affect them
    
    
  • Not all in a name: 52 percent of businesses believe that because they are not well-known so cybercriminals will not specifically target them
    
    
  • Undervaluing can be costly: Almost half (45 percent) do not think they are a 'valuable target' for cybercriminals
    
    
  • Monetary misconceptions: 46 percent do not think they can be a source of profit for cybercriminals

  In comparison to larger organizations, attacks can be even more catastrophic as SMBs often don’t have the resources or funds to build contingency plans. If a resource goes down, a business often goes down with it. North America’s SMBs are leaving themselves open to attack due to time constraints. In order to be more proactive about security, it’s a good idea to look into products like McAfee Total Protection for Small Business. This product can benefit SMBs -- as I previously blogged about -- and protect their company from Spam, phishing, viruses, and hackers.  
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• Successful Home Business Started With Baby Steps

  Thu. Aug. 14, 2008
  by Janet Fabri-National Corporate Comm., Dell Canada

  Almost eight years ago, first-time parents Heather Campbell-Dewar and husband Gary discovered that it wasn’t easy to find a diaper bag that could hold all the extra baby gear they needed to carry.

  Finding a solution to their bag dilemma turned into a full-time job, literally. To meet the needs of active parents like them, the couple designed and manufactured a technical, multifunctional and ergonomical diaper bag backpack called Baby Sherpa.

  Based in Stony Mountain, Manitoba, this small business has a handful of employees sprinkled across North America. In order to achieve dramatic online growth, the company realized it had to boost its technology capabilities and truly become a global presence in a niche market.

  This strategy received the green light when Baby Sherpa won the Dell and RBC Small Business Excellence Award. The award gave them $20,000 in technology and $5,000 in professional services from Dell Canada.

  “The award did help us gain exposure and sales,” said Heather Campbell-Dewar, CEO of Baby Sherpa. “The new equipment has helped us with efficiency and productivity.

  “In fact, we are introducing two new products into the line-up this year -- Alpha and Urban -- designed for transporting laptops. We hope to use Dell equipment to help launch these new lines in fall 2008,” said Campbell-Dewar.

  The Baby Sherpa team spent time with Dell consultants who advised them on what suited a small business ready for the next stage of growth-- a.k.a. the kindergarten years! Some of that advice included a dual-screen desktop solution, a mobile solution (three laptops and a portable printer), digital cameras, an external hard drive and networking capabilities.

  Campbell-Dewar now doesn’t miss a moment of her family summer vacations since she can now process customer orders and arrange deliveries from her campsite. “It’s a great testament to how virtual our business has become since implementing the Dell solution,” she says.

  Up to 95 per cent of all retail and customer inquiries are online and a sound IT system now allows Baby Sherpa to respond to inquiries, track customer feedback and acquire information within minutes. This makes it possible for the company to efficiently communicate with hundreds of customers on a daily basis. With a stronger online presence, the company is starting to attract celebrity clients, including Tiger Woods and Dan Spitz.

  “We value input from parents and our retailers, and the Dell-designed solution enables us to stay connected with our valued customers, all the time,” adds Campbell-Dewar.

  Baby Sherpa is also enjoying more prominent media coverage, which can only help sales in the long run. For more details on the small business story, check out the case study on SB360.
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• How to grow your business: Takeaways from WSJ’s Small Business Panel

  Wed. Aug. 13, 2008
  by Jillian Fisher

  Solve a big un-met customer need, well, and you’ll be successful. That was the big takeaway at Monday’s “Insight Exchange: A Business Owner’s Breakfast Series,” hosted by The Wall Street Journal’s small business editor, Wendy Bounds. The event turned into a dynamic idea session where well established entrepreneurs offered start-ups tips, discussed trends and shared advice on what it takes to turn a good idea into a major business proposition.

  Panelists included…

  • ·Steve Demos, CEO NextFoods, a multi-million dollar organic food powerhouse (who is often called the Steve Jobs of small business) who helped to build well known brands such as Silk soy milk.
    His Advice: “Differentiate by design and the presentation of your product.”
    
    
  • Colin Roche, CEO of Pacific Writing Instruments, turned into a global retail sensation overnight when he beat out brands like Papermate and Bic in getting his ergonomic pen into Wal-Mart. His product can now be found everywhere from Amazon.com to OfficeMax.
    His Advice: “Knock on every door, chase every opportunity…don’t give up.”

  • Dan Brown, President, LoggerHead Tools, took the phrase 'a gripping experience' to new levels when he re-invented the basic wrench. His Bionic Wrench has received a number of awards in form and function.
    His advice: “VC funding should be your last resort.”
    

  • Anne Zehren, President, Common Sense Media, an award-winning marketer as a media executive at Current TV, Teen People, Glamour and Newsweek, is currently the President of Common Sense Media, a national, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of kids and families.
    Her advice: “SEO is one place where you’ll get instant business results.”
    
    
  • Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and founder of Alltop.com, Truemors.com; blogger; author and speaker. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.     
    His advice: “Don’t confuse fundability with viability.”

  Monday’s panel is the first of four in the series and will head to Palm Beach, Denver and Austin this fall. For more information visit: https://insightexchange.wsj.com/
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• Small Business Cost Saving Tip: Go Virtual to Reduce Expenses

  Thu. Aug. 07, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  The US Postal System, FedEx, and other major carriers do a great job delivering for small businesses.  These services can get quite expensive, particularly if you use them regularly or ship bulk materials. More and more, small businesses now have computer systems and rely heavily on web pages, email, and online banking to handle their daily transactions.  So, cutting out paperwork altogether can make filing easier, save on staff resources, and reduce postage costs, not to mention the environmental advantages.  Megan Prusynski of the Ecopreneurist wrote an article that dives into the economics of a paperless operation. This is a great read if you’re looking for some tips on how to become paperless.

  If you do plan on converting your business records and transactions to “virtual transactions”, be sure to keep duplicate records.  Sites like Yahoo and Google will store business emails online for free, and online data storage is relatively inexpensive.   Jeremiah Owyang brings up an interesting point that - in the future - data storage companies might start paying their customers to upload their records.  In addition to uploading, creating a ghost copy, tape backup, or RAID backup of the computer's hard drive locally would be imperative for saving critical data.
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• Simplifying the IT Conundrum for Small Businesses

  Tue. Aug. 05, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  Working out what IT system works best can often be bewildering for resource-stretched small businesses – especially with the current economic uncertainty. The daily pressure of keeping the business afloat usually means that the technology infrastructure is often the very last thing they worry about.

  What many small businesses don’t realize is that technology can help their business run better and grow faster. Implementing the right IT hardware and software can bring major benefits including:

  · improved customer experience

  · significant cost and time-savings

  · better asset utilization

  This ultimately frees up resources in the form of money, time and people so that the focus can then be on the core business.

  To achieve these goals, small businesses should adopt the following in their approach to IT:

  Get IT faster

  It all begins with purchasing the most suitable solution for the business. Never automatically opt for buying the cheapest, or the most expensive, system. These days more and more vendors are tailoring solutions to the small business marketplace, meaning the best-fit solutions are available for all types of businesses, whatever their size.

  Run IT better

  In terms of running the IT operation, there are two aspects to making the investment pay. Firstly, standardize and streamline the IT infrastructure and secondly, be proactive in performing system management and support – therefore spending less time on day-to-day maintenance. Some small businesses may not have the resources to do this, but there are service and support solutions that can be customized to an organization’s individual needs, time demands and budgets.

  Grow IT smarter

  With changing times, companies need to foster an IT environment that supports rapidly changing business requirements -- whether that is in relation to data, devices, or the network. It’s critical they adopt a flexible foundation on which new services can be quickly rolled out, or enhanced, to adapt to the evolving marketplace. If a company has aspirations of growth but its IT infrastructure has a ceiling in terms of the number of users supported on the system, or the levels of data that can be managed, then there will be trouble. Standardizing the IT infrastructure from the beginning ensures that the organization can implement future investments to manage company growth easily.

  The goal for any small business should be to achieve the simplest IT environment possible. This way, more time can be spent focusing on growing the core business and not chasing issues that can hamper the company’s overall performance.
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• Bye-Bye Yellow Pages?

  Fri. Aug. 01, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  When I owned a local security guard company, I relied heavily on the Yellow Pages to get the word out to everyone I was “open for business” and to drive customers to call me for services. I had a snazzy page with a picture of the company logo and one of the patrol cars, plus I listed the services I provided and my phone number. This proved to be very successful, and within just a few weeks of the new phone book going out, I had a lot of responses. The Yellow Pages were great. They listed all the local businesses and were easy to navigate. Your business could be placed in several different categories to gain more exposure and everyone with a phone had access to them.

  Now that we’ve moved into the age of the internet, it looks like the Yellow Pages and print media advertising is on its way out. Mark Robertson of ReelSEO has done some research on this subject and blogged about his findings here. The trend shows that online advertising and online video will be the Yellow Pages of the future. It seems like the data might be right. Many of the right parts are there to benefit small businesses: price, availability, and accessibility.

  Beyond the bland banner ads and SEO, online video advertising is a powerful new way to tell your customers about your business. There are plenty of resources in the internet that enable a small business to promote their business through online video advertising. Just to name a few:

  · YouTube – where you can place links in your web page that point to your video.

  · Jivox – which lets you design your own video and market your product to specific markets.

  · DirectoryM - has simplified the world of local online advertising by enabling you to reach millions of consumers through one online advertising network.

  · SuperPages.com – offers free business listings.

  While I hate to see the “good ole” Yellow Pages go by the wayside, I guess it’s time for small businesses to branch out and find out how technology can benefit advertising, even at the local level.
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• What exactly does “going wireless” really mean?

  Wed. Jul. 30, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  Wireless isn't just a single technology. It is actually a whole collection of them -- Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, wireless WAN, ultra broadband and others, which are all a part of everyday life. From a home/office wireless setup, to Global Hot Spots, do you really know what "going wireless" really entails?  In the podcast below Kirk Neibert and Alan Sicher, Dell's global wireless project managers, give a brief overview -- sort of a wireless 101-- of the technologies used around the world. 
  
  What are the differences and when do you use them?  What is the future of wireless technology in the home?  At the office? Local coffee shop?  Abroad?

  Listen Here
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• New Web Series for Start-Ups

  Tue. Jul. 29, 2008
  by J. J. Davis, Sm and Med Business Communications

  Attention Start-Ups. BusinessWeek recently launched a new series – Fresh Entrepreneurs – that profiles start-ups from across the country. We have several Dell Small Business Excellence Award finalists who are in their early stages and would be great candidates for inclusion in the series – among this year’s finalists RNs On-Call, MedApps and ServusXchange, as well as 2007 finalists Greenling.com, ParkingCarma, RealSource. We’ll be submitting their information to BusinessWeek and thought you might like to submit your start-up, too.
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• Small Business Tech Tip: Show me all my icons!

  Tue. Jul. 29, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  By default, Windows Vista automatically hides icon in the notification area that are deemed unimportant or not used in a while.  If you are like me and like to stay aware of what is running in the southeast corner of your screen, follow these easy steps:
  
  1. Right-click the taskbar, choosing "Properties".
  
  2. When the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "Notification Area" tab.
  
  3. Uncheck "Hide inactive icons".
  
  4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.
  
  Conversely, if your inactive icons are not hidden and you would Vista to do so, ensure that step 3 above is checked.
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• Small Business Tech Tip: Un-tether your wired USB printer

  Fri. Jul. 25, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

  Looking to start printing wirelessly?  You don't need to go out and buy a new wireless printer to do so.  If you use a USB printer or are looking to buy one, you can add wireless printing capabilities by simply installing a wireless network server.  These nifty devices range anywhere from approximately $30-$150 and can serve multiple printers as well as computers.  To see some of the devices that Dell has to offer, click here.
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