Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 has pretty big shoes to fill. As a laptop replacement, it must provide the functionality and versatility of a mobile PC. As a tablet, it needs to support grab-and-go work styles. Did Microsoft succeed? But first, a little background. On May 20, Microsoft toyed with industry expectations when it debuted the […]

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) don’t have to wait for location-based mobile marketing to trickle down from big retailers. Many business owners would love to boost their sales and reward loyal customers by delivering personalized promotions or money-saving coupons directly to their mobile phones as they peruse the aisles. But where to start? More importantly, […]

Small businesses are bullish on the Internet of Things (IoT), the biggest new trend in IT. What is IoT (we hear you cry)? Webopedia defines it as an “ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for Internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.” […]

Small businesses needn’t fear Big Data, according to Kevin North, CEO of Terapeak, an ecommerce analytics company. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplaces, large corporations have quickly realized the promise Big Data offers. Business insights that can improve profitability lay hidden within files, databases and data streams. Big Data also poses a problem. Typically, only well-heeled companies […]

In several states, online sales tax is already being collected by big etailers like Amazon. The Internet, for better or worse, is losing its status as a tax-free zone. That comes as no surprise to Jonathan Barsade, CEO of Exactor, a provider of sales tax automation services for businesses. States and local jurisdictions have been missing […]

Data loss continues to plague small and midsized businesses (SMBs), and the damage isn’t limited to profit loss. Carbonite, the cloud-based backup specialist, recently surveyed 500 IT professionals at organizations with fewer than 100 employees for its 2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs (registration required). The results reveal that many small businesses are […]

Receive invoice. Approve invoice. Pay invoice. On paper, it seems like a simple process. Yet, the demands on a small business owner’s time and competing priorities often turn the accounts payable (AP) process into a nightmare that sometimes leaves angry suppliers in its wake. Yooz, a cloud-based document management services provider, aims to help small […]

Mobile devices have quickly become small business must-haves and wearable technology, like smart watches, is the hot new device category that has the tech industry buzzing. But for small businesses no emerging tech can beat the social media power of Facebook and Twitter. Manta, a small business online directory and community, teamed with IT systems […]

Despite smartphones’ advanced capabilities, their mobile apps and their knack for enabling mobile commerce, smartphones increasingly help consumers to connect with businesses using their most basic of functions: dialing phone numbers. It’s a growing marketing opportunity that small businesses can’t afford to ignore. Smartphones Fuel Small Business Sales Leads As counterintuitive as it seems, today’s […]

Personalization can really pay off for small businesses, according to Meyar Sheik, CEO and co-founder of Certona, a marketing software company. His firm just concluded a study of 500 retailers and the effects of delivering personalized customer experiences on their operations. Certona’s cloud-based platform generates behavioral profiles on customers and employs predictive analytics to deliver […]

Most financial tools do a good job of showing small businesses where they’ve been and how well they’re faring at any given moment. The future remains elusive, however, and it’s a blind spot that can have a disastrous effect on the bottom line. “About 40 percent of small businesses have a working capital cash crisis […]

Is everything you know about email marketing wrong? When small business owners dip their toes into email advertising, they’re often met with lists of do’s and don’ts. Well-meaning experts offer guidance on such things as helping promotional emails avoid spam filters and how to spur recipients into action (hopefully not unsubscribing). This guidance often results […]