Gerry Blackwell

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that manages virtually every aspect of a company’s business can deliver huge productivity benefits and other efficiencies, but it’s well out of the reach of most small businesses — mainly because it’s too expensive and a bear to implement. However, small firms can reap many of the same benefits using […]

Schlepping a laptop when you travel by air is never a lot of fun — the sore shoulders, the dead batteries, the awkwardness going through airport security. And now the privilege of carrying a computer on board could be revoked at any moment because of terrorist threats, as we saw earlier this year. Solution: if […]

A carefully designed compensation plan based on quotas, commissions and bonuses can be a powerful motivator for sales personnel. And knowing on a day-to-day basis how much they are — or are not — earning spurs sales people on in the short term. This is the premise, behind Incent from Xactly Corp., an add-on to […]

Act, the pioneering contact and customer management application from Sage Software Inc., has come a long way in the 20 years since the product first appeared. And the newly released Act 2007 (Version 9.0), continues the evolution with potentially important new Outlook integration features, productivity enhancements and beefed-up security. The product targets mainly individuals and […]

It’s a sign of growing maturity in the software as a service (SaaS) market that second-generation offerings are emerging to grab market share from pioneers such as SalesForce.com, the on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) service. Visitar, a relative newcomer with a slightly different marketing strategy, some evolved functionality and — according to one customer we […]

“Draft N” wireless network gear such as the Nfiniti products from Buffalo Technology, which are available in stores today, offer a somewhat dubious value proposition. You get faster wireless networking and wider coverage now — theoretically — but run a risk that the equipment you buy will never comply with the final 802.11n standard and […]

Add Multi-Link Inc., a company in Nicholasville, Kentucky, to the growing list of vendors peddling products that exploit the popularity of Skype, the free PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone voice-over-Internet service. Multi-Link’s TeleVoIP Stick ($100) is designed to integrate Skype with the public switched telephone network (PSTN) so you can use an existing phone for both Skype […]

Small businesses can rarely afford the luxury of having trained computer people on staff. The alternatives are muddling through on their own or outsourcing network and desktop management and maintenance to a consultant. The trouble is, consultants aren’t dedicated and often aren’t nearby. If something goes wrong, it can take time to reach them, and […]

Like most realtors, Scott Petersen lives — and dies — by the phone. It’s his most important business tool. It’s how new business comes in, it’s how he keeps in touch with clients, it’s how he manages his team. It took Petersen a few tries to get his phone system working exactly the way he […]

If you use Skype or some other computer-based phone service for your business, you’ve probably realized that two headsets are not better than one. Fortunately GN Netcom‘s GN 9350 wireless headset was designed to solve that particular problem. The problem is that nobody uses Skype exclusively. So now you need two devices: a regular phone […]

Most software companies issues yearly updates to their programs, but FileMaker, Inc, maker of the FileMaker Pro relational database system, has issued an interim upgrade, FileMaker Pro 8.5. The company positions FileMaker as a relatively easy-to-use tool for small and medium business — “the database management tool for mere mortals as opposed to database programmers.” […]