Pam Baker

Running a small to mid-sized business is hard work, and you won’t catch any breaks just because you only have two hands and 24 hours in a day. Fortunately, there is a slew of software available now to help small business owners get everything done—and stay in compliance with applicable laws while doing it. Chief […]

It’s hard to imagine a small business owner today who hasn’t heard how moving business processes to the cloud saves money and lets you access data from anywhere. And that you’d be a fool not to jump on board the cloud computing bandwagon. To hear cloud services vendors tell it, moving everything to the cloud […]

In the ultimate irony of business, counting your money is fun but accounting for it isn’t. Fortunately modern accounting software takes most of the pain out of accounting and makes a fast up-to-the minute money count for you too. The problem: how do you pick the program that’s right for you? First you need to […]

You may have heard the term “big data,” currently one of the hottest buzz words in both business and technology, but still remain a bit fuzzy on what it is—and how it could possibly apply to, much less benefit, a small business owner such as yourself. Webopedia defines big data as: “A catch-phrase, used to […]

If you’re confused over what document management really means, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It’s a very broad category that refers to converting paper files to digital form, which makes all files searchable by type and keywords. It also lets you sync files when you make changes to a document and makes it easy for […]

Getting a business loan has always been fraught with obstacles for many small business owners, but the recent recession made things even harder. Initially, traditional lenders stopped making any loans at all. Then they started lending again, but they set the qualifying bar much higher. That bar became even harder to hurdle after the recession […]

There’s a broad spectrum when it comes to small business and cloud computing. At one end you’ll find SMB owners who run their entire business in the cloud, while the folks at the other end hear “cloud” and go check the weather. If you fall anywhere other than the very bottom of that spectrum, it’s […]

The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend provides both good and bad news for small business. Allowing employees to work using their own mobile devices saves small businesses a ton of money in device and carrier plan costs. However, personal mobile devices rank among the greatest security threats your company faces. Obviously, you need to reconcile these two […]

Like most other small business owners, you have an unrelenting zeal for what you do, and the commitment to work endless hours to do it. Unfortunately, the bottom line dictates whether or not you can continue to pursue your passion. So, while you may or may not be in business “for the money,” you still […]

Just from the ads and marketing copy, you might think all Web-hosting providers are created equal and that price is the only differentiator. But that is not the case, because despite nearly identical marketing claims, hosting companies vary greatly on many fronts and sales gimmicks are the order of the day. “One gimmick to watch […]

There’s a lot of buzz these days about using the cloud, so it’s natural to wonder if cloud services might make sense for your business. But that decision requires more then the marketing pitches vendors throw your way and articles that seem a little light on hard facts. A look at what other small businesses […]

There’s no doubt that we live in a data driven economy. Without immediate and constant data availability, companies grind to a halt. Relying solely on the small business owner’s ability to mentally recall the information is a high-risk venture that few would dare to bet their profits on. Yet gamble they do, either through becoming […]