EG Smb Innovation

Executive’s guide to IT innovation in small businesses

Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

2

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Executive’s guide to IT innovation in small businesses
Copyright ©2013 by CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. TechRepublic and its logo are trademarks of CBS Interactive Inc. All other product names or services identified throughout this book are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. Published by TechRepublic July 2013 Disclaimer The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believe to be reliable. CBS Interactive Inc. disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of such information. CBS Interactive Inc. shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for the interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. TechRepublic 1630 Lyndon Farm Court Suite 200 Louisville, KY 40223 Online Customer Support: http://techrepublic.custhelp.com/

Credits
Editor In Chief
Jason Hiner

Head Technology Editor
Bill Detwiler

Head Blogs Editor
Toni Bowers

Senior Editors
Mark Kaelin Jody Gilbert Selena Frye Mary Weilage Sonja Thompson Teena Hammond

Graphic Designer
Kimberly Smith

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

3

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Contents
4 Introduction 5 8 10 12 14 16 19 22 26 28 29 32 IT innovation for SMBs: An overview Two forces powering the SMB tech renaissance Does your SMB have a cloud contract? Use Big Data to gain insight about small business customers 10 reasons your SMB should be considering M2M technologies SMB best practices: How to make an ERP selection Case study: Moving away from tape backup A simple framework for SMB IT risk management SMB IT risk management in action Three SMB tech trends to watch in 2013 Eight tips to improve your SMB Web site 10 purchases SMBs need to make

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

4

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Introduction
Small businesses have a special set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to technology. While they don’t have the resources or the flexibility of larger enterprises, they aren’t as weighed down by legacy systems that limit their ability to embrace the latest technologies. Because they have more of a blank slate to work with and they can rip-and-replace technologies without incurring massive costs, many small businesses have become leading-edge adopters and innovators in using technology to transform their business and leapfrog their competitors. In this guide, we look at some of the ways small businesses are embracing best practices, new technologies, and transformative opportunities to achieve unprecedented growth and success.

Sincerely, Jason Hiner Editor in Chief

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

5

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

IT innovation for SMBs: An overview
By Charles McLellan

Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are typically defined as having up to 250 employees and can be subdivided into “micro” (0-9), “small” (10-49), and “medium” (50-249) sizes. Whichever way you cut the numbers, SMBs cover a multitude of business categories. They’re qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from large publicly quoted enterprises (although departments in some large enterprises may have SMB-like features). And they’re extremely numerous. SMBs form the bedrock of the private sector in most economies, and so the effectiveness with which they implement IT becomes an important issue—not only to the SMBs themselves, but also to the many hardware, software, and services vendors seeking to exploit this potentially lucrative market. Because they’re such a heterogeneous bunch, SMBs will inevitably exhibit a diversity of approaches to IT deployment, ranging from neo-Luddism to untrammelled enthusiasm for the cutting edge. However, it’s arguable that because SMBs—particularly startups and growing businesses in the micro and small subcategories—are unlikely to be encumbered with legacy IT systems, they should have more freedom to deploy innovative solutions that deliver added business benefits.
Data source: Business Population Estimates for the UK and Regions 2012 (UK Department for Business Innovation & Skills, October 2012)

How many SMBs are there?
The most recent analysis from the UK’s Department for Business Innovation & Skills, covering the start of 2012, puts the number of private-sector businesses in the UK at 4.8 million. These companies employ some
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

6

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

23.9 million people and generate £3,131 billion in turnover. The vast majority (99.2 percent) of the UK’s private sector comprises small or micro businesses employing fewer than 50 people. Only 29,750 (0.6 percent) companies are medium-size, while larger businesses with 250 or more employees form just 0.1 percent of the total. SMBs contribute more than half the employment (59.1 percent) and just under half the turnover (48.8 percent) in the private sector. Once again, small and micro businesses (0-49 employees) account for the lion’s share of this contribution—47 percent of employment and 34.4 percent of turnover. The UK private sector encompasses a wide range of business categories. At the start of 2012 it was dominated by the construction industry with 907,480 businesses or 18.9 percent of the total. Along with professional, scientific, and technical activities (665,265/13.9 percent) and wholesale and retail trade and repair (515,805/10.7 percent), the top three categories account for 43.5 percent of the entire private sector.

Data source: Business Population Estimates for the UK and Regions 2012 (UK Department for Business Innovation & Skills, October 2012)

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

7

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

The pattern in the EU is similar, with the European Commission reporting that at the start of 2012, there were 20.8 million non-financial private-sector enterprises, the majority (92.2 percent) of which were micro businesses (0-9 employees). Small (10-49 employees) and medium-size (50-249 employees) businesses comprised just 6.5 and 1.1 percent of the total, respectively, while large businesses (250+ employees) accounted for a minuscule 0.2 percent. The EU distributions for SMB employment and finances (Gross Value Added, or GVA, in this case) also look similar to the UK’s, with SMBs accounting for 87.5 million out of 129.8 million private-sector employees and generating €3,587.5 billion out of €6,179.3 billion GVA. In the US, whose SMB population is similar in size to the EU’s, the most recent comparable figures from the U.S. Census Bureau relate to 2008. At that time, there were 29.2 million private sector enterprises, of which 94.6 percent were micro businesses (0-9 employees). Small (10-49) and medium-size businesses (50-299 employees) comprised just 3.8 percent and 1.5 percent of the total, respectively, with large businesses (300+ employees) accounting for a minuscule 0.1 percent. The U.S. distributions for SMB employment and finances (payroll in this case) also look similar to the EU’s, with SMBs accounting for 78.2 million out of 139.6 million private-sector employees and generating $2,858.0 billion out of $5,891.8 billion in payroll.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

8

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Two forces powering the SMB tech renaissance
By Patrick Gray

While technology is notoriously fast moving, I don’t find the word “renaissance” inappropriate for a convergence of technologies that have benefited small and medium businesses in particular. Not since the advent of the (relatively) low-cost personal computer that first allowed smaller businesses access to computing capability have we seen technologies that were once the domain of Fortune 500 behemoths become available to smaller companies. Not only are the technologies available, frankly smaller companies are better poised to leverage many of them than their larger brethren. Here are the two pillars of this renaissance and how your SMB can best use them.

Cloud computing
At this point, cloud computing is so buzzword-laden as to make the term nearly meaningless. For an SMB, the prime function of cloud computing is that it lets you buy enterprise-grade applications at a commodity price, complete with support, development, and engineering that would have been previously inaccessible. With a valid credit card and an afternoon’s work, even the smallest company can purchase and provision everything from email and online collaboration tools to CRM and ERP applications. Rather than being watered-down SMB versions, many of these tools are the same ones the big boys have spent years installing and configuring, and spent millions maintaining. In short, with a few mouse clicks, you can buy back-office technical parity with an average large company for a pittance. For the SMB, the major benefit of cloud computing is that it keeps you out of the IT infrastructure business. Microsoft, Google, SalesForce.com, and a slew of other companies effectively become your IT department, freeing your company to focus on its core business and customers. For even larger SMBs, getting your IT department out of the infrastructure business frees staff for higher value work. Keeping the email server up is a necessary evil at best, and if you can refocus those efforts on higher value work, you effectively double your savings by letting someone else worry about those core applications. It’s unlikely that any single person I hire will ever manage and maintain an email server as well as Microsoft or Google, and for what seems like a shockingly low price I can purchase the expertise of these companies and add or subtract capacity as needed. Even high-end application software is now available for a song, and it usually provides you with access to the latest versions and technology months before the bigger players get around to implementing them. Having “grown up” doing enterprise implementations of exactly these types of applications, I find it earth shattering that I can buy the same tools and services with an annual budget that would have been exhausted in minutes by a large-scale implementation team.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

9

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Mobile
Mobile technologies have exploded in the consumer space, and SMBs are poised to leverage them to the hilt. The action in mobile used to be in the large enterprise space, with heavyweight RIM and its BlackBerry infrastructure remaining out of reach of smaller businesses due to cost and complexity. The tables have turned, and Apple and Android are now where the action is, while huge BlackBerry installations and the associated infrastructure are looking anachronistic and unwieldy, with a dearth of applications to extend their functionality. While larger competitors consider device policies, trial deployments, and integration with their existing infrastructure, the SMB can buy an iPhone or Android device at a local retailer and have it running in minutes. The mobile space is largely limited only to your imagination, but the power of a connected computing device with access to data anywhere in the world is a powerful asset. I routinely access our Salesforce.com-based CRM tool from my iPhone and iPad before speaking with a client, and I can craft and send meeting notes from my iPad to my team in seconds. Within moments of meeting a prospect I can send them a tailored email with marketing collateral and articles I think they’ll find helpful, making my tiny company look well-organized, responsive, and technologically savvy. If your business has any field presence whatsoever, be it sales or field service, mobile access to data could be a killer advantage. Something as simple as ordering repair parts from the field used to be the domain of large companies with million-dollar service organizations but now can be accomplished by a small company with cloud software and a smartphone. While the big boys are trying to decide which security features to enable or disable, you could be wowing customers with more nimble, better-informed field personnel. Technology is never a magic elixir, and despite marketing to the contrary, throwing cloud computing or mobile devices at a bad business model will accomplish little. What’s exciting about this technological renaissance is that it makes IT more accessible and flexible for smaller companies, blurring the competitive advantage once held by your largest competitors. The nimble nature of smaller businesses serves to increase this effect. In short, while you always were lighter on your feet, now you can wield the IT tools once reserved for your competitors.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

10

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Does your SMB have a cloud contract?
By David Gitonga

A 2012 Microsoft-sponsored survey about cloud computing revealed that almost 60 percent of small businesses would make or break a cloud purchasing decision based on its private policy. The survey, which was conducted by 769 SMB decision makers, showed that SMBs are expressing interest in data protection and are using it as a way to evaluate potential cloud providers. With Microsoft and other major cloud providers pushing into the cloud big time, offerings like Office 365 and associated services has demanded the creation of resources like Microsoft Office Trust Center that clearly explain cloud privacy, security, and compliance. How, though, can SMBs protect their privacy and that of their business partners? A cloud contract is the safest bet. A cloud contract is simply a proof of compliance with various privacy standards. Such a document would include the cloud provider’s own service level agreements (SLAs). Doing a back check of the cloud provider to see if it is listed in the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security, Trust & Assurance Registry (STAR) would also be a prudent move. STAR is a free, publicly accessible registry that documents the security controls provided by various cloud computing offerings to help users assess the security of cloud providers. As an SMB, these free resources allow you to make informed business decisions without spending a dime hiring a cloud consultant. A questionnaire with more than 140 questions has been provided to help SMBs ask the right questions of a cloud provider, again at no cost. Since most SMBs don’t have their own legal department, a good practice is to read all contracts end to end and audit them for cloud providers to ensure that they are complete. Reading the fine print of each contract is crucial since this is where terms and conditions of termination and penalty clauses are buried. One thing you always want to do is have the flexibility to leave a contract. If the cloud provider does not have a contract, present your own. If it has one but you are not comfortable with the conditions, modify it. For example, what are the penalties for non-payment? Some vendors will try to charge you for the “expectancy” of the contract, say for the entire five years in a five-year contract if you want to get out after two years. Always ensure that your intellectual property rights, which include custom-built applications or data, remain yours and that the vendor can’t use or share them. An often-overlooked issue is the procedure for disagreements and arbitration. While most contracts contain these, as a small business, you want to look at the venue or location for disputes and arbitration. Make sure that the listed state is in your own home state. Travelling across states for court cases can be a costly undertaking, which you may not be in a position to afford when things go bad. In case the vendor fails to bring this up, you have the responsibility to do that.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

11

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

SLAs should also be specifically addressed by the vendor. If not, insist that they be added or present your own. They can be written into an addendum that is attached and integrated into the contract. SLA agreements should state when cloud performance should be reviewed, quarterly or bi-annually, with the opportunity to amend based upon changing business conditions and mutual agreement. Remember that cloud vendors are out to protect themselves. They will usually clearly explain the terms of entry into a service such as the price, time period, and parties to the contract, while neglecting exit strategies such as termination clauses and conditions. Always ensure that you engage your cloud vendor in a thorough discussion of the level of service and support you expect for your small business. When both parties understand the terms of a cloud contract, it becomes a pivotal point of reference and an information source for an ongoing relationship and when problems arise with project coordination and execution.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

12

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Use Big Data to gain insight about small business customers
By David Gitonga

Author Frank Moss defines Big Data as the explosion of structured and unstructured data about everyone and everything. The spectacular success of social networks like Facebook and Twitter and the growing machineto-machine connections have given birth to what is commonly referred to as the Internet of Things, where computers, GPS devices, smartphones, and embedded microprocessors and sensors are generating data every minute of the day. Every time you send a tweet, post a blog comment, use a credit card, or update your social network profile, you leave behind a footprint of digital data, which is not only accessible but can be used to determine consumer behavior. Big Data can especially be rewarding for entrepreneurs and small business owners who are looking for ways to accelerate growth based on consumer insight. This market intelligence, which has been used by large corporations for decades, is now available to small companies at a fraction of the cost of what it was just a few years ago. Big Data is big business, and learning how to leverage it will give your small business a competitive edge.

Various uses for Big Data in small business
The explosion of Internet services, from apps that monitor the amount of time you spend watching television to how hot your coffee is, has brought a proliferation of unstructured data. Unless you figure out how this data can be put to use, you are not leveraging the full potential of Big Data. One area where Big Data can prove critical to small business success is in price setting for products and services. The price of a product or a service could differ drastically depending on the product or service and when it’s sold. For example, how do you set a price for your product or service during the holiday season? Should you offer deep discounts at the start of the season to capture the deal seekers, while raising the price at the very end of the season to capture the procrastinators? Or should you set a standard price that everybody would be pretty comfortable with? These are Big Data decisions that should only be made if you have substantial data from customer behavior trends in your line of business. Big Data can also be used to identify consumer patterns and help develop strategic marketing plans. Understanding a consumer’s direct impact on your business will largely transform your ability to engage with them effectively. This information can be used to identify how people become customers at each stage in the purchasing process and ultimately help you determine which channels have the most influence on sales. Another use for Big Data is determining whether you should spend more time and resources on acquiring new customers or retaining existing ones. This simple insight can help you realign your marketing efforts and quickly increase your revenue by spending more marketing dollars on the group likely to give you more in returns.
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

13

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Two real-life examples of Big Data in action
The first example was featured in an Inc. post by Elizabeth Woyke. Revolve Clothing, an online apparel retailer, was faced with the challenge of getting repeat customers. The company’s chief marketing officer, Kobie Fuller, determined that the answer was in the retail store’s Big Data archives, which dated back to 2003. Using the services of Custora, a data analytics engine, Revolve was able to see certain customer patterns, such as that shoppers who made repeat purchases within 90 days proved to be most profitable. Revolve also noticed that 90-day email messages generated 30% more repeat purchases, so the company adjusted its marketing efforts to target this group of customers. The second example comes from Mark Troester, Global Product Marketing Manager for SAS, about a healthcare consultancy in the United States that uses medical practices data from 10,000 doctors to create a virtual clinical integration model. These independent physicians are measured against 90 care standards to determine whether they meet Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines. After analyzing the data, the consulting firm helps the physicians understand how well they meet the guidelines, whether they qualify for enhanced reimbursement, and whether they are in a position to negotiate their health plans with the FTC.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

14

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

10 reasons your SMB should be considering M2M technologies
By Jack Wallen

It’s coming. Not the singularity (though that might well arrive), but the melding of machines. I’m talking about Machine-2-Machine (M2M) technology. It’s sprouting up everywhere. Within homes, restaurants, hotels, banks, retail—you name it. No matter where you go, your mobile device can interact with other mobile (and non-mobile) devices. This means your company should probably start looking into how you can expand your business to include M2M. Here are 10 reasons why.

1: Better, easier interaction
Imagine being able to quickly and easily interact with your clients and customers. While clients sit in a waiting room, you could push information regarding your company, special deals, and even their orders to their mobile devices. They could also use their devices to check in, so you know at a glance who’s waiting. You’ll finally get rid of those paper sign-in sheets.

2: Modernize or die
Many businesses rely on the court of public opinion. Because the world at large continues to grow smaller, it’s imperative that your company present itself as being forward thinking. This means you must modernize your technology or risk watching your business wither. For example, many small restaurants are popping up to take advantage of tablet technology. Consumers can place their orders with a mobile app before they reach the establishment. Without having to wait in line, they can enter the building and as soon as the devices communicate, the order is placed. That’s M2M in action.

3: More efficient transactions
Imagine not having to manually enter data—ever. If all data is transferred via M2M, you rely on your customers/ clients to pre-enter the data for you. Clients may also keep other information (such as credit cards) on their devices. With a simple connection, that information is exchanged and approved. M2M will make transactions of nearly every kind far more efficient than previously possible.

4: Improved productivity
With M2M, your employees can work faster and more efficiently. With less data to enter manually, there will be fewer fingers on keyboards—which means fewer errors. M2M also means less time with tasks like inventory. Of course, the productivity improvements don’t end with employees. The machines that do your bidding also become more and more efficient.

5: Better automation
Automation is the key to efficiency in many industries. Imagine where the auto industry would be without automation. Small businesses can use M2M to add a level of automation, such as embedded systems that
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

15

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

track inventory. When specific inventories get low, the embedded device automatically reorders. Imagine never having to manually order inventory again!

6: Stronger, more responsive security
With M2M, you can add a layer of security you never had before. You can enhance theft prevention as well as give your employees added protection by adding an application or system to their mobile devices that automatically alerts authorities (and you) in the event of trouble. You can also take advantage of M2M to track inventory shrinkage.

7: Better data collection
M2M improves the task of data collection like no other system. With NFC, Bluetooth, and other communication protocols, you’ll be able to easily collect client/customer information on site, on the go, or remotely. With inventory tracking, you can automate the collection and analysis of sales. You’ll know precisely which products sell best and when they sell.

8: Easier fleet management
If you have vehicles, and employees who drive those vehicles, you need to know where they are at all times. Why? Because you might need to redeploy them for emergencies. With the ability to easily track your vehicle movement, you can readily redeploy an employee to another site. Not only that, but you can track the driving habits of your staff (and better calculate money spent on gas and other vehicle maintenance).

9: More efficient resource management
I can imagine a time when people will be able to schedule rooms by simply tapping their mobile to an NFC tag on the room’s doorway. This could also work for all sorts of resources. The ability to quickly manage resources across the board could make for an amazing improvement over your current process. M2M will enable you to keep tabs on hardware, rooms, vehicles… you name it.

10: Endless possibilities
The idea behind M2M is enabling machines to make your life (and your business) more productive. This idea brings about endless possibilities that will not be dictated just by the manufacturers of the products. M2M will allow you to bend and twist systems and products into doing exactly what you need. For small businesses, the limits of the sky have been replaced by the stratosphere.

The M2M advantage
M2M offers businesses (as well as consumers) a means to a productive and prosperous end. If you’re not currently considering taking advantage of this new wave of technology, hop onto the bandwagon before it’s going too fast to join.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

16

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

SMB best practices: How to make an ERP selection
By Mark Pimperton

Do you actually need ERP (or just “joined-up business software,” as I like to think of it)? If you need convincing, I suggest that you: • Take an audit of your current information systems and business processes. Do you have multiple systems? Or duplicate data entry? Do you rely on spreadsheets or databases on individual PCs? If so, the chances are that you could benefit from ERP. • Do some reading. A search on “Does a small company need ERP?” will lead you to supplier-specific articles but also general reviews and advice like this or this. As I said recently on this forum, if you asked most people at my company, the question would be “Why would you NOT want it?” But that’s easy for us to say—we’ve been using it (in various guises) for 20 years. Having made the decision to go for it, expect to spend several months on your specification and selection project. In our case, it took about 12 months from inception to signing a contract, but you might well be able to do it much faster. What matters more are the stages you go through to arrive at your choice. Here are the ones we used.

Requirements gathering
At every level, from shop floor to manager to director, we asked for input. Directors were asked to provide strategic input, highlighting specific aims or directions for the company. Other staff were simply asked for their opinions on the current system. The majority, however, were asked to think in terms of business processes. We asked them to do three things: • • • Identify the business processes that take up most of your time. Analyze the problems, inefficiencies, or opportunities for improvement in these processes. Describe the benefits of changing the process.

The end result was a lengthy User Requirements Document, broken down roughly by business area. From this we distilled a Project Benefits Document, highlighting the key areas of improvement. (Both of these are essential reference points when you’re embroiled in an implementation and can easily forget what it was you set out to achieve!)

Prequalification
Based on our existing knowledge and Internet searches, we drew up a list of 18 possible suppliers. We emailed them asking if they wanted to receive a brief questionnaire as the first stage of a selection process.
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

17

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

The questionnaire was based on our Project Benefits Document and invited the suppliers to tell us about their company, their product, and how it would help us achieve our hoped-for benefits. 15 suppliers responded.

Request for proposal
Our RFP documents were unashamedly adapted from templates we found on the Internet. The end results were: • A Word document giving a detailed description of us, our project and our current system, together with information on how the RFP process would work. • An Excel spreadsheet with tabs for supplier information, references, prices and, most important, a detailed functional specification covering every area of the system. The functional spec is critical. Break it down by business areas, such as general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, sales order processing, and stock control. Within each area, list what you need the software to do. For example, in our Stock Control section, we included the following: • • • Supports the recording of actual cost by product Supports user-defined Unit of Measures (UOM) Supports multiple inventory locations and bins per warehouse

We labeled each criterion as Essential or Desirable. The supplier then had to respond with a code indicating how far its system met the requirement (or not). We also gave suppliers a column to enter free text comments. We allowed them to send supporting documentation but were insistent that they complete our spreadsheet in detail. We resisted supplier requests to come and see us at this stage. Having received five responses to the RFP, we used a further spreadsheet to aggregate the scores and give us an overall picture. Based on the functionality score and the price, we put three of the five through to the next stage.

Demonstrations
Finally, we allowed suppliers to come see us! But this was not the standard sales presentation; we again required them to demonstrate the product against our specific requirements. We created a script based on our functional spec and expected them to follow it. For each criterion in the script, we had staff assigning scores according to whether the product fit the bill—and how easy it looked to use. The idea was again to try to make the comparison objective as far as we could. This stage eliminated one supplier, and we actually had the other two back for a second visit to look at specific areas of concern.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

18

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Selection and due diligence
In the end, it was a close-run thing between the final two. And it has to be said, we deliberately allowed subjective opinion to creep in. No matter what the scores and prices told us, there was still an element of gut reaction involved in the final choice. Nevertheless, we could say with some pride that the process was rigorous and systematic. (Apart from anything else, this is a comfort when we hit problems and somebody asks why we chose this particular system.) The very last stage was that of due diligence—checking out the preferred supplier by reviewing its accounts and visiting or speaking to existing customers. We negotiated a deal, signed a contract—and then the fun began!

Summary
Choosing an ERP supplier is about the software and about the supplier. Run a systematic selection process to find the product that best meets your needs. It won’t be perfect, but you’ll greatly increase your chances of a successful implementation and reaping the benefits for your business.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

19

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Case study: Moving away from tape backup
By Mark Pimperton

It will come as no surprise that, having managed tape backups for more than 10 years, I’ve long had an ambition to get away from them. We began with DDS-3 tapes, which had an annoying habit of getting stuck in the drives. The larger DLT and LTO tapes didn’t get stuck and were certainly faster, but still prone to the same inherent limitations. Brand new tapes were sometimes unusable; read or write errors could appear after a few weeks, also rendering them useless; even good ones had to be replaced every few months; and a few times a year we’d simply forget to insert them. (We aren’t big enough to warrant an autoloader.) Restoring files did work but was time-consuming—assuming we could find the right tape and assuming the backup data could be read OK. Bare metal restore of a whole system was possible in theory but never tried in practice, as I couldn’t risk wrecking my production servers and didn’t have spares to try it on. Having said all that, the Yosemite Server Backup software we used wasn’t bad, although Barracuda’s support left a lot to be desired. And because we ran full backups to several tape drives overnight, we knew we wouldn’t have to try to string incremental backups together from several tapes. We did, however, start to struggle with backups taking longer and longer, even to our fastest LTO-4 drive.

NAS
My first attempt at moving to disk-based backup in 2010 involved a Buffalo TeraStation NAS. I had visions of keeping day-to-day backups onsite on the NAS and just doing weekly tape backups to take offsite. Unfortunately Yosemite Server Backup wouldn’t play nicely with the device, and in any case, the backup over the LAN to the Buffalo was so diabolically slow as to be completely impractical. Later that year, I learned about managed backup services combining onsite disk-based backup with offsite online backup. I didn’t like the idea of backups being only online, as I envisaged simple restores being slower and whole system restores being extremely slow. But a system using both would eliminate the need for a separate tape backup physically transferred offsite. After getting a few quotes, I had a trial of the Barracuda Backup service. I quickly came to two conclusions: • Our Internet connection was too slow to cope with uploading even compressed, deduplicated, and incremental backups. • Barracuda’s service in the UK was less than stunning.

It was almost another year before we upgraded our broadband, giving us five times the upload bandwidth. I went back to the market, including a managed service provider (MSP) that had previously quoted me. They said they were offering a new service from Datto Backup whose price and performance were even better. After extensive commercial and technical discussions, we signed up.
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

20

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

The journey
We’ve been running for a few months now, and the system has met all my objectives: • • • • No tapes to insert, rotate, replace, or take offsite Quicker file restore Improved recovery points—we can take several snapshots during the day. Disaster recovery of a failed server within 30 minutes by booting the last backup as a virtual machine (VM) locally on the backup server. (Previously this would have been between half a day and two days.) • Business continuity in the event of a site disaster by booting backups at the online data centre as VMs accessed over VPN. (Previously to recover all servers would probably have taken us several weeks.) Yet it hasn’t been an entirely smooth journey. The first problem was that between us, the MSP (GCI) and I managed to under-specify the size of the backup server. We were in discussions over several months, and somewhere along the way we got our calculations wrong. Starting from the amount of data you want to back up (taking into account that it’s not possible to exclude folders, only entire volumes), you then have to make an educated guess as to the likely size of the compressed and deduplicated backup data. Crucially, you must then add an allowance for the additional snapshots of each machine. With tape, we could go back in time by picking the right tape (and we had about 11 tapes per server). With a disk-based system, we go back in time by setting a data retention period and storing the changes. GCI’s rule of thumb was that the backup server should have about twice the capacity of the raw backup size. In our case, that meant we should have gone for a 3TB model, not the 2TB we chose. To be fair to them, they gave us a good deal on a new contract for the bigger device, and once that was installed we had enough capacity. To start using the system, the server takes an initial backup of all protected machines. Datto provided a USB hard drive to copy that initial “seed” backup to. Once the transfer is complete, the drive gets sent to Datto’s data centre. Without this step, it would take several weeks to upload the data. Unfortunately we had some hiccups with this process as well, with failed data transfers and, in one case, an under-sized USB drive. After Datto received the data, it seemed to take a long time for it to be processed. But once it was done, Datto enabled the offsite synch from our backup server. This now has no problem keeping up with the data changes, and for each protected server we can set how often to send data changes offsite.

Oracle
The backup software and process isn’t perfect and backups do sometimes fail. Datto releases periodic firmware updates for the backup server and updates to the backup agent. The biggest technical hitches we’ve had relate to booting VMs of the images locally on the backup server. These have mostly been with Windows

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

21

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

2003 servers but occasionally with Windows 2008. Some of these have been resolved, but in a few cases, we resorted to exporting the backup image as a .VHD file and importing it into Hyper-V on another host server to prove it would boot. (The Datto backup server uses Oracle VirtualBox.)

Summary
The managed backup service has taken some getting used to, but it is providing all the business benefits we wanted. We’ve yet to test the access to remote VMs in the cloud, but other clients have used this successfully. While not perfect, the technology and the service are improving all the time, and we would definitely not want to go back to the days of tape.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

22

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

A simple framework for SMB IT risk management
By Mark Pimperton

Mention “risk assessment” to most people and they’ll think of health and safety, hazardous chemicals, working at heights, and so on; quite right too. But businesses face many different types of risk, all of which should be actively managed. They include financial, personnel, facilities—and IT risks. Ideally, your IT risks should be managed as part of a broader, organization-wide activity; there’s not much point knowing how to restore data if you’ve nowhere to work or all your staff are sick. But here, I concentrate on the approach we take to risk management with our IT systems and data. Larger organizations may have dedicated staff and different methods, but what we do has at least made us proactive and prompted us to make many changes.

Classifying IT risks
Classifying IT risks may help prevent working in a piecemeal fashion and thereby missing significant risks. Any classification will be arbitrary, but Table A shows what we adopted. There is inevitably overlap between these categories; what matters is that risks are not overlooked. Table A

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

23

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Assessing risks
We use a typical qualitative method similar to health & safety risk assessments, where a combination of likelihood and impact indicates the level of risk and the consequent need for control or mitigation. The framework is shown in Table B. The resulting risk levels are shown in Table C. Table B

Table C

Mitigating risks
Mitigation is about reducing the chances of something undesirable happening—or reducing the impact on the business if it does happen. The measures required will vary enormously, but the first thing we did was agree on an urgency rating (Table D) based on the assessed risk level. The second thing we did was set up an IT Risk Register—a document where we track past and current risk assessment & mitigation activity. (It started out as a spreadsheet but became unwieldy so was recently reborn as a simple Word document.) Part 1 of the Risk Register describes the risk categories and typical generic risk mitigation measures. For each category there is a list of specific risk assessments, with links to the detail given in Part 2. This list allows a quick overview of completed, archived, or in-progress risk management tasks, together with highlighting those

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

24

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

due for review. (The review period is also arbitrary; too long and you might be exposed to new risks without realising it because of system or organisation changes; too short and you’ll spend all your time on risk assessments marked “no change”!) Table D

Part 2 consists of detailed risk assessments and the additional risk mitigation measures used, where applicable. Table E shows the template we use. Table E

Additional Controls could include system changes, new procedures, policy changes or enforcement, or education. For example: • • • • System image backups as well as file backups Purchase of spare units Review of password policy Data leakage monitoring
Copyright ©2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

25

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

• • •

Acceptable Use Policy Improvement of system documentation Due diligence when selecting suppliers

At the time of this writing, there are about 45 risks in the Register. The most recent one, relating to remote access, got added as a result of an incident and subsequent management discussion. Right now we’re adding a new policy and procedure to help reduce the risk. Finally, we carry out an annual review of the Risk Register to check for incomplete assessments or mitigation tasks and add new risks.

Summary
IT risk management needs to be an ongoing activity, not a one-off exercise. It begins with a framework, and this is the one that works for us.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

26

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

SMB IT risk management in action
By Mark Pimperton

At the end of the previous article, I said that we review the IT Risk Register annually to check for incomplete assessments or mitigation tasks and to add new risks. Since we add a “next review due” date to all completed risk assessments, we also check for risks that are due for reassessment. In this article, I describe typical examples of the work coming from our annual review.

Reassessments
Number one on our list of security risks is “Unauthorised Network Access,” whether it’s via a Web server or any external gateway, firewall, or SSL VPN appliance. It also includes the specific risks of wireless networks— sniffing or spoofed access points, for example—as well as unauthorised or infected devices connected directly to the LAN. I last assessed this a year ago and gave it a 12-month review period because it’s so crucial, given that the impact of a breach could include theft or destruction of data, defacement of Web sites, or injection of malware onto PCs. The reassessment is still in progress so I can’t tell you what the outcome will be, but our list of Current Controls includes: • Network: Carefully configured firewall rules. Tightened Wi-Fi security by restricting to specific MAC addresses. • • Software: Password-controlled access to Web pages using HTTPS. Devices: Sophos scans for data transfers and removable devices. Spiceworks scans the network for new hardware. Visitors are not allowed to connect to the main LAN, only our DMZ. (This requirement is enforced only by our Acceptable Use Policy; we did evaluate Sophos Network Access Control but deemed it too complex and unreliable.) Finally, only authorized mobile devices can use ActiveSync to connect to Exchange. • External Scanning: External IP addresses are subject to external network vulnerability scanning as part of our PCI DSS compliance. Another risk due for review is that of loss of data held on workstations. We did quite a lot of work on this last time, including a general move away from local .PST files to most mail being held on the Exchange server. We also publicized backup options and the use of network drives. As more staff migrate to Windows 7, I’ve been annoyed that the built-in backup program doesn’t automatically remove old backups—so much so that I’m considering folder redirection to get most data off individual PCs altogether.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

27

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Incomplete risk assessments
I’ve had a long-standing task relating to our Web hosting. We have no SLA with our hosting provider and the site goes down from time to time, potentially causing us loss of customer goodwill or lost enquiries. Depending on the nature of the failure we can sometimes change the home page to redirect to a secondary site hosted elsewhere, but this isn’t always possible. We know this isn’t good enough and are due to migrate to a completely new platform. Once that migration happens, we’ll redo the risk assessment. There’s a separate but related risk assessment for our corporate FTP site, where customers download product literature. That too is pending the migration.

New risk assessments
When I looked at the “personnel” risk category I realized that although it includes the risk of losing vital knowledge when staff members leave, it doesn’t include dealing with long-term sickness. We’ll be sitting down to try to pin down the most likely weak spots in the absence of particular staff members and what we can do to try to get over them. Recently, we had to recertify our PCI DSS Self-Assessment Questionnaire and I noticed that the standard stipulates that “All traffic outbound from inside the cardholder data environment should be evaluated.” In other words, we shouldn’t really have any firewall rules that allow unfettered outgoing access from the LAN to the WAN, i.e., you can get to any address using any protocol. For historical (and convenience) reasons, there are some people who have just that. And although I suspect the risks are small, I need to review our policy and consider changing those rules. Finally, the proliferation of cloud-based storage such as Dropbox has made me realise I have to get some visibility of at least who is using what. Apart from the risk of exposing confidential data, these services can theoretically also provide a malware injection point if an account is accessed and the files corrupted. With the Application Control function of Sophos it’s possible to just block some of these services, but I’m planning to start with discovery and take it from there. It looks like the cloud services discovery feature of the latest version of Spiceworks should help me with that.

Summary
IT risk management needs to be an ongoing activity. Having established a framework, make sure that known risks are kept under review and keep a constant lookout for risks that are new or that were just missed from your original list.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

28

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Three SMB tech trends to watch in 2013
By David Gitonga

In 2012, initiatives such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the growth of communications-as-a-service (CaaS) continued to create a level playing ground for large enterprises and SMBs. Here’s what I believe SMBs can expect in the months to come.

1: Mobile wallets
2012 was a big year for mobile wallets, and I think this trend will get even hotter. Square, Passbook for iOS, and Google Wallet are making it possible for businesses of all sizes to offer mobile payment solutions to customers. The partnership between Square and Starbucks signaled a start to mainstream services in online mobile payments. Square processes all credit and debit card transactions at Starbucks stores in the United States, allowing customers to pay for their vanilla lattes by simply saying their names to get their credit cards processed.

2: YouTube as a promotion and engagement tool
YouTube’s growth has been exponential over the last three years, and the trend is not decelerating. More than 800 million people use YouTube each month, and past growth statistics show the number hitting a billion this year. Another interesting fact is that more than 20 percent of all YouTube views are from mobile devices. These impressive stats should make you assess whether your business could do more to leverage YouTube. Many businesses are using YouTube to house their video content; the ability to embed these videos on their Web sites makes the service even more appealing. Now businesses can easily share their video content on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ right within YouTube. YouTube also includes small business tools to help you measure engagement. YouTube Analytics can help you determine which videos have more engagement. It is even possible to undertake YouTube SEO and garner search results right within Google search.

3: Mobile support
The desktop and mobile are no longer separate entities and each should be given the same amount of attention, as mobile continues to heat up and is predicted to overtake desktop usage by 2014. A great customer experience on mobile devices can lead to return visitors and good referrals. Most large enterprises have responsive Web sites that respond to the size of the device from which they are being accessed. When a single design renders differently on mobile devices, it offers usability advantages for mobile users. It’s no longer a question of whether your small business will support mobile, but rather when.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

29

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Eight tips to improve your SMB Web site
By Ryan Boudreaux

Are you a small business owner or entrepreneur who likes to have control over your own Web site? Do you constantly juggle the tasks of overseeing it as it grows into an unmanageable nightmare? Is your site not generating enough income for your business? Don’t give your visitors a reason to leave your Web site. The following tips should help push your site in the right direction and move your online presence from good to great! Here are eight specific areas to focus on, along with suggestions for further reading.

1: Provide your visitors with a focus
Did you build your Web site for you or for your visitors? Does it provide a clear purpose for your customers? Are you selling a product, providing a service, or asking your customers to sign up for a newsletter? Maybe you want them to contact you with an inquiry or you want to convey a specific message through multimedia. Many times, I find the do-it-yourself (DIY) small business Web sites are lacking in a clear vision or a clear call to action for their customers. If you can’t engage your customers within the first few seconds, they will be leaving your Web site and you will continue to lose business. Focus on the area that visitors are looking for and reserve background information on the business for an About page. Make it easy to find ways to contact you. Be sure to have current email addresses, telephone numbers, and your business location address listed in easy-to-find places, such as the footer of all pages and on a Contact Us page. It could be that your customers would like to be able to make online transactions through your Web site. If so, provide an ecommerce section that allows them to purchase your products or services through your Web site.

2: Know your audience
Do you try to attract everyone under the sun to your Web site? Many small business Web sites try to be all things to all people, but it is hard to manage a shotgun approach when trying to garner a loyal customer base. What you want to do is find out your primary audience profile is and target those who are most likely to make up your customer base.

3: Take a less-is-more approach
Is your Web site cluttered, full of flashing ads, and devoid of any white space? Eliminate the flashy, cookie-cutter, busy design style and use the less-is-more approach. Maintaining a balance of content and white space between columns, headers, footers, and sidebars helps the visitor’s eye gravitate to the important things. They will be apt to visit more often.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

30

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

4: Remember that content is king
Have you updated your Web site content in the last month… or in the past year? Make sure your content is up to date and current with relevant news and events. Nothing turns off visitors more than when they go to a Web site that looks stale with outdated information, provides irrelevant data, or still has promotions for events that happened days, weeks, and months ago.

5: Take advantage of social media
Does your business have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Flickr accounts? If you are not associated with social networking sites, you might be losing valuable connections and interactions with your customers. Make sure your start with just a few of the major social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Then, as you get plugged in and have more time to devote to regular posts and updates, add on with other social networking accounts.

6: Be generous with the freebies
People love to get free things. Do you offer any opportunities for free products? If you are not offering a special or complimentary gift, you are missing an opportunity to attract new visitors to your Web site and ultimately to your business sales and income. Contests, sweepstakes, eBooks, PDF cheat sheets, and a PDF recipe book if you are a food-related business—anything that will entice people to visit your site will add business prospects.

7: Offer an online community
Does your business provide a service or product that would benefit from an online community? People like to find places to chat with others about similar interests and to ask and answer questions. Provide an online chat or forum for your visitors to communicate with peers, associates, and professionals in your business’s field of interest.

8: Optimize
Is your Web site optimized for fast loading times? Does your Web site take more than 10 seconds to fully load in the browser? No one likes to wait for a Web page to load, so make sure your Web site is optimized for quick loading in the browser. Front-end performance designed into your Web site will improve response times and give you the advantage.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

31

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

Further Reading
The resources listed below are based on several of the action points highlighted in this article: • Focus on Top Tasks (HowTo.gov, managing content section) How to keep focused on the top tasks that your customers want to perform on your Web site. • Small Business PR: Should You Hire a Publicist or Can You Do It Yourself? (The Huffington Post) A good piece on questions to ask yourself and your business team on critical PR decision points, and in particular, your target audience. • Effective design principles for Web designers: Proximity (TechRepublic Web Designer blog) Spacing and relationships, white space, and typography are all important aspects of proximity and how it can be used to better please the eye. • Quick Tip: Make content king on your Web sites (TechRepublic Web Designer blog) Tips for what to avoid and what to do to deliver relevant Web content as well as a good user experience. • Create social media interaction for small business Web sites (TechRepublic Social Media blog) Simple tips for social media sharing that will help you build relationships with customers, drive more traffic, and work on a small budget. • How to Run a Giveaway on a WordPress Blog (The Houston Chronicle, Small Business Section) A stepby-step approach for a well-planned giveaway on a blog format, which can easily be adapted to any platform. • The four stages of creating a successful social enterprise (TechRepublic Social Media blog) How to use social media-style tools to help your organization share information and collaborate more effectively. • Does your Web site need a browser diet? (TechRepublic Web Designer blog) Guidelines and resources for front-end performance design. Applying these principles will help get rid of your Web site’s browser bloat.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

32

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

10 purchases SMBs need to make
By Jack Wallen

Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are notorious for not spending. This is especially true with the smaller companies. Many SMBs try to spend money only when necessary, which can result in loss of data, work, or worse. To avoid disasters or the inability to grow and function as needed, SMBs need to bite the bullet and make some purchases. As the old saying goes, “You can’t make money if you don’t spend money.” And so, with that adage in the back of your mind, let’s take a look and see just what purchasing bullets SMBs need to bite.

1: Hardware spec’ed for at least five years out
If you’re purchasing hardware based on your current needs, you are wasting money. Never buy hardware to fit the needs of now. When it comes time to replace desktops, laptops, servers, and networking hardware, look at least five years into the future. If you purchase a machine that will fill your needs down the road, you can be sure it will serve you well. But if you’re buying machines with CPUs, RAM, HDs, etc., based on your current needs, you can bet you’ll be facing an upgrade soon enough.

2: Backup software
Many SMBs want to get by with built-in backup software. Windows Server backup does a good job, but when you need serious backup that will allow you to recover from an image, you’ll have to break down and purchase a third-party backup solution. I say this with a grain of “hoo boy!” because we all know no backup solution is perfect. But having the ability to recover from bare metal will, in the long run, save your company a lot of bottom line.

3: Suitable network pipes
It blows me away when I find out a business is attempting to run on a consumer-grade DSL line. Yes, I get that fat pipes are costly... but doing business with an insufficient data pipe will be far costlier in the end. Not only will work be slow, but work could easily come to a halt. Don’t let something as simple as a network bottleneck cause you headaches day in and day out. Drop the coin for more bandwidth than you need.

4: Firewall hardware
If you are relying on the Windows desktop or server firewall to protect you, think again. Take network security seriously and drop the notion that the Windows built-in firewall is enough. What you really need is a hardware solution, from Cisco, Fortinet, or Sonicwall. Not only are these devices far more secure, they are also more reliable and flexible. Don’t entrust the safety of your business to weak software firewalls. Period.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

33

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

5: Cloud space
Let’s face it: Cloud storage makes sense. Not only does it expand your capabilities, it allows you to easily access files from outside your network. But don’t just settle for the free version of Dropbox or UbuntuOne. Purchase extra space. This is one of the cheapest investments you’ll have and it will replay you with a flexibility and ease of use that few other investments can. It sounds overly simplistic, but cloud storage is simply a must-have for many businesses.

6: Powerful Web site with ecommerce
If you don’t already have a Web site to showcase your business, you need one. And do not do the standard, from-template site that won’t get your noticed. As well, don’t rely on a Facebook page for your business. (I actually came across this recently.) You need to take your online presence seriously. If that online presence includes ecommerce, you really need to buckle down and invest in a solid solution. Remember, your bottom line is directly affected by your presence online. If you shortchange that presence, you shortchange your business.

7: Redundancy
Things break. Period. Be it a network pipe, a switch, a modem, a router, or a server—it all eventually goes down. When something goes down on this level, you can’t do business. The cost of redundancy, in some instances, might be high, but the payoff will be worth it. Like backups, this investment will be one you hope you never have to use. But should that occasion arise, you’ll be glad it’s there to have your back.

8: Support
One way or another, you need IT support, whether it’s an in-house department, outsourced, or purchased support for software. This is a essential. If you don’t have support, and the need arises, it’s already too late. By then, you’re scrambling to grab up the first company you can find. I’ve seen a number of instances where a client has encountered a corrupted QuickBooks data file only to find they didn’t have a support contract with Intuit. The cost of getting Intuit involved at this point is far worse than purchasing a support contract. Always make sure you have support in place and at the ready.

9: Mobile solutions
Your business needs to be mobile. Tablets, smartphones, laptops—you need the solutions to enable you to work away from the office. This might also require a VPN setup. Spend that money so you are not locked to the office at all times. Besides, consumers need to know you have caught up to current technology trends. I’ve seen many small businesses turn to tablets for checkout registers. That is forward thinking and, on some levels, can help win over new customers.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

34

EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO IT INNOVATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES

10: Powerhouse business-class printers
Why would a business rely on a consumer-grade printer? Not only do they not have all the features you need, they don’t have the longevity to withstand business-level usage. You need a serious printer that can handle a serious job load. Don’t skimp here or you’ll be screaming at that HP Deskjet until you feel your hair turn gray and your sanity start to slip.

Start small
It is true: To make money, you must spend money. No matter how tight your purse strings are, you’re going to have to open them up if you have any hope of growing your company. That doesn’t mean you must run out and purchase everything on this list. Start out small and proceed from there. In the end, your company will thank you.

Copyright ©2013

CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.