B2B Connection

They say you have to spend money to make money, but if you’re broke or skeptical, that might not be the process for you. Fortunately, I’ve got software that will let you enjoy the cost-saving benefits of workforce management without spending a penny. What is Workforce Management Software? Workforce Management software provides the tools, data, and insights to help you maximize the value of your workforce. This can be done by eliminating or streamlining costly processes, or by improving the workforce itself. The exact nature of these tools varies from package to package. They are most often dependent on the target company’s size, industry, and methods of operation. As an example, consider small businesses in the hospitality industry. Workforce management software here will focus heavily on scheduling, time and attendance, and leave management. This is all about the basics of ensuring you have the right people in the right place. An example of an extra feature in this area is sales forecasting based on POS data to schedule employees more effectively. In contrast, workforce management software for a large manufacturing company will have a different focus. It will still cover the basic scheduling and attendance functionality. However, it will focus […]

Mobile app development may seem luxurious or too complicated for inexperienced teams. IT isn’t. With modern innovation is that anyone can make an app, whether they are a legit dev wizard, aspiring dev student, or a 40-year-old newbie. You just need to find the right mobile application development software. What is Mobile App Development Software? Mobile app development is the process of creating applications for mobile devices. It’s an amazing way to increase customer engagement with smartphone users. The actual development process depends on the type of mobile app development platform you use. Some tools are built around traditional hand coding, where others have been simplified to be used for low-code or no-code development. Low-code requires some programming knowledge because there may be areas where you need to code but  won’t have to build from scratch. No-code designers offer a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows you to build the app with zero programming experience.  Many commercial app builders, which are designed for B2C use cases, are entirely no-code. When it comes to using non-commercial app builders for making internal applications for your team, you’ll find many low-code and no-code options. Several will even be open-source. You won’t find any […]

Options for sharing your small business’s passwords were once limited to unprotected emails or post-it notes scattered around the office. Luckily for both security and convenience, those days are behind us. If you’re still using the old ways, no shame, we won’t tell. That just means you have the convenience and security benefits of a password manager to look forward to. The safety of your business’s digital identity is a big thing to trust a third party with. Let’s take a look at why it’s worth doing it and a few trustworthy options to jumpstart your decision process. Why Your Small Business Needs a Password Manager Password management software stores the usernames and passwords for all your business’s various online accounts in an encrypted vault. All these passwords are protected by one master password that you set. Your master password is the only one you’ll need to remember as long as you use a password manager. Check out our “What is a Password Manager?” blog post for a quick refresher on password managers’ basic functions. In addition to these basic features, password managers have plenty to offer small businesses. Secure Password Sharing Each employee at your small business will be […]

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about UCaaS lately. With more and more companies working in offices again, video conferencing products like Zoom have been rebranding. They want to emphasize that they can do more than let you see your remote coworkers’ pets during meetings.  Let’s take a look at what exactly is included in UCaaS, and what makes it different from other types of communication software. What Does UCaaS Do? UCaaS stands for unified communications as a service. The name alone gives you a good idea of what UCaaS providers’ goal is: to meet all of a business’s communication needs through a cloud-based, software-as-a-service subscription model. Specifically, UCaaS platforms include: Voice communication/VoIP Video conferencing Messaging Collaboration All these communication capabilities are accessible over the internet. VoIP VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a technology that allows you to make phone calls over the internet. VoIP users and standard landline or cell phone users can call each other. This makes VoIP an effective replacement for a standard PBX phone system. Here’s a quick rundown of how VoIP technology sends your voice over the internet as data: VoIP supports hardphones (physical phones) and softphones (software that can function like a phone). […]

Customer Engagement Software can help you improve your customer interactions and support performance. These tools enable you to leverage customer data to boost engagement. There are many things you can do with these tools. Here’s a brief summary of the capabilities you can expect:  Optimize customer interactions and campaigns with personalized messaging Improve the customer experience with content tailored to your audience  Provide resources for current and potential customers to explore your brand Track customer journeys across all your channels  Personalized communications with customers through email, chat, or video Native or third-party CRM and data ingestion Not every customer engagement tool will have all of these features and capabilities. If a product solves some of your pain points well you can always complement it with others. In this guide, we go over some important pricing aspects for customer engagement software. We’ll also explore software with free features and Top Rated products on TrustRadius that can help you improve business outcomes.         For more information on customer engagement platforms, see our definitional piece below: Customer Engagement Pricing Overview CEP pricing can vary a lot. It will depend on platform capabilities, feature set, selected billing cycle, and the number of users or logins. […]

AI and machine learning (ML) are everywhere, whether you notice them or not. Amazon uses machine learning to recommend products. TGI Friday’s used machine learning to make a virtual bartender. Car manufacturers use machine learning in prolonged, painful attempts to teach cars how to drive themselves (made extra difficult by humans on the road). The use cases are endless. ML algorithms offer unique benefits, but they’re not simple to create, maintain, or deploy. This is why you need a machine learning operations (MLOps) process. MLOps is a tricky beast in and of itself. Blindly deploying an MLOps framework—even a good one—is a recipe for chaos. You need to plan how you’re going to set up MLOps. You need an MLOps strategy. H2 What is MLOps? If you’re new to the idea of MLOps or machine learning in general, take a moment to read our What Is MLOps? article. We explain both concepts in simple terms, demonstrating how and why businesses use them. Machine learning models need specialized development, dataset preparation, evaluation, and maintenance. Getting ML models to provide reliable business value isn’t easy. It requires continuous collaboration between data specialists, machine learning engineers, and software developers. This collaboration is new […]

With almost $900 billion in US sales, eCommerce enables businesses to market their products online. If you have an online business, eCommerce strategies can help you maximize your potential. The goal is to optimize performance for your brands and products within the very competitive eCommerce market. An effective eCommerce marketing strategy can help you boost revenue and expand your market share. Here are some of the best strategies to consider for eCommerce success in 2023.      Do Your eCommerce Research Before even getting started, you’ll need to do some in-depth market research into the niche you want to move into. After determining which products to sell, competitors should be identified and studied. Competitive Intelligence Tools can help you benchmark and track prevailing prices in the market.  Vendors like SimilarWeb and Owler are great sources of information on competitors and market trends. After calculating your fixed and variable costs, you’ll be able to estimate how much to charge for each product that’s sold in your online store. Use your findings to build a solid marketing plan that gives you a roadmap to get your business started on the right foot.   Choose the Right eCommerce Platform    eCommerce Platforms are ideal for small businesses […]

Choosing the right infrastructure for your business might just be what sets you apart from businesses that fail. Many business owners have been turning to cloud-based infrastructure, as they offer affordable, secure business infrastructure solutions. These solutions allow you to take your business to the next level with integrated cloud computing functionality. Though the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Some cloud computing solutions reduce your control over the data being processed, and come with bandwidth or redundancy issues. That’s why we picked five solutions that go above and beyond when it comes to handling data and processing speeds. Depending on how you implement a solution, you may find that some of these solutions are more redundant and faster than your current infrastructure. It’s possible to achieve all of this without heavy spending or compromise to your data handling.  IaaS Solutions for Small Businesses It’s a lot more common to find IaaS solutions for small businesses these days. The 5 IaaS solutions discussed in this article are: Linode AWS DigitalOcean Google Compute Engine Microsoft Azure What is IaaS? IaaS is a cloud-based solution that provides businesses with reliable, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructures. These infrastructure solutions can run apps, […]

An amazing way to connect to your consumer base or to your company team is through the convenience of a mobile app. Today over 70% of the consumer base shops on their phone and payments via mobile devices are expected to grow by more than 50% in 2023.  Whether at night, on the go, or at home, anyone can access important information, support, or make a purchase decision. You can remind consumers of your upcoming sales or send private documents from anywhere in the world.  All your team needs to get started is to find the right mobile development solution. Development services range from those for experienced developers to startups with zero coding experience. All you need is patience and willingness to learn new technologies, and these will be a tool for you. How Does Mobile App Development Work? When you’re ready to get started with your mobile app development project, you’ll want to make sure you consider all angles of development and distribution. This is especially important if you are a new startup or small business that doesn’t have much experience in software development. For those of you that are completely new to the concept of mobile development, see […]

eCommerce software is ideal for business owners that want to set up and manage an online store. If you have a small business with more limited resources, a free plan gives you critical tools that won’t eat away at your margins. Picking the right eCommerce platform is an essential step in any business plan for an online store. For more on these platforms, check out our definitional post below. Free plans are a great way to test eCommerce features before you commit to a premium package. Choosing the wrong tools can completely disrupt your workflow. Here are some of the best free software options for your eCommerce business heading into 2023.  Best Free eCommerce Platforms in 2022 The software providers below offer some of the best free eCommerce features to set up and manage an online business.  Key features to keep in mind when selecting the best free solution include: A website builder with templates Web hosting Custom themes Shopping cart software  SEO features Social media marketing Number of free product listings Data governance and security SSL certificate Email marketing Campaign management tools Landing page creation Mobile compatibility Payment processing Usage and transaction fees Customer support Integrations with third-party software   […]

We’ve had cell phones since the ‘80s, but smartphones are a recent phenomenon. With them comes a powerful connection with consumers: apps. The mobile app market has been accelerating since its debut in the mid-2000s and is expected to grow by 9.27% in 2026. Mobile apps are an amazing way to connect employees, reach target audiences, and grow your brand. Mobile app development software can help both experienced and inexperienced teams achieve this with powerful and fast built-in tools. What is a Mobile App? A mobile application is used on mobile devices to access software, web browsers, services, and websites. Mobile apps allow businesses to offer their end-users a convenient, mobile-responsive experience.  Oftentimes a website isn’t mobile-friendly and will show a glitchy, broken version of the web page on a smartphone screen. This is because the website isn’t mobile-friendly. It’s super important for websites to be mobile-responsive in general. Forcing people to buy or install a dedicated app isn’t an example of accessibility but is a good way to be super annoying to consumers.  The appeal of having your own app goes beyond basic responsiveness. If you’re going to distribute an app, it needs to provide more functionality, convenience, and […]

Everyone is talking about machine learning. Depending on who is speaking, machine learning (or ML) is an incredible tool that we’ve barely scratched the surface of, or it’s a new killer of unique human worth. ML-generated code is either revolutionary or unusable. ML-generated text and images are either exciting or horrifying for authors and illustrators. If you ask a ML engineer, you might get a heavy sigh or a rant about their workweek. Machine learning models are complicated. Every use case has a long list of challenges at every stage, from concept to training to deployment.  Existing DevOps strategies, which help businesses streamline software development don’t always apply. Machine learning operations, or MLOps, follows the spirit of DevOps. It helps businesses use ML efficiently and reliably. MLOps vs DevOps If you’re already familiar with the concept of DevOps, you may think that MLOps is just DevOps for machine learning. While the concept and goals are similar, the details are significantly different. If DevOps is a set of practices for building a traditional house, MLOps is the process for building a house on Mars. The builders still need to plan the basics: architecture, utilities, and labor. However, they also need critical […]

In 2021, Gartner predicted that the global expenditures on cloud infrastructure services would nearly double from $59 billion in 2020 to a staggering $106 billion by 2022. This increased spending reflects an approximated growth of 38.5% for cloud infrastructure services over the past year. But why does this matter? Every year the tech industry experiences immense growth. This sparks a greater need for new solutions, such as cloud computing. As your organization grows, so will your data and infrastructure. However, this growing infrastructure can be tedious and expensive to maintain. The solution that many businesses have been turning to resides in a cloud-based infrastructure service. With a virtualized infrastructure you can cut costs while also maintaining a reliable and scalable approach to your services and products. If you’re interested in how a managed infrastructure works, or how one of these solutions can give you better control over your infrastructure, continue reading. What is IaaS? Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud-based business solution that provides virtualized IT infrastructure components over the internet. These managed resources can include virtualizations, storage, servers, and networking. This means the user is responsible for managing all other software. This includes applications, data, runtimes, middleware, […]

You know what workforce management is. It’s when you show up and tell Jim that if he quits screwing around and Jackie ever gets off her phone, the three of you might actually get something done today. And you don’t know why you would need software to do that. But I’m here to tell you that workforce management software can be much more. It helps make sure people are there when they need to be. It ensures you aren’t spending too much or too little on your labor force and helps you gain insight into how your people work and who your best people are. If you want to see how workforce management software can help your business run like a well-oiled machine and save money, then keep reading. What does Workforce Management Software Do? Workforce management software helps to increase the overall value of a company’s labor force. It can also be known as labor management software. Workforce management is often included in Human Capital Management (HCM) suites. Examples include Oracle Cloud HCM and Workday HCM. However, even if a workforce management package is not part of an HCM, it will typically have some human resource management features. Examples […]

Whether you’re a local business or startup looking to go virtual or an established company looking for a new solution, website-building software is key. With web building comes amazing and versatile tools to manifest the online presence of your business. Anyone can learn and benefit from the incredibly simple software, but it does require effort to achieve the best result for your customer base.  How Do You Build a Website? Web building is a multifaceted process where web developers must consider all angles involving overall design, user experience (UX), usability, and more. For those of you that need your own website right now, you can take advantage of powerful web builders. Some are open-source software or through web development platforms with paid plans.  For beginner teams or startups that need a website now, we will explore the resources and rules available. Software like WordPress or managed platforms like Wix can enable small businesses to create sleek, modern web pages that attract consumers and potential clients. Web builders make web development super easy by letting you build without coding skills. If you want to customize or change functionality you will need to do a little coding. Using web builders doesn’t mean […]

Having an online presence is essential for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small business or a retail giant, eCommerce can help you expand your horizons and improve business outcomes. eCommerce Platforms are best for small businesses and medium-sized companies. The tools and resources provided by vendors in this space can help you reach a wide audience with limited technical know-how. This software can also help level the playing field, allowing your online business to compete against larger players.   What is an eCommerce Platform? eCommerce Platforms enable you to market your products on the internet, even with limited resources to start. They allow you to create a website to display the products you want to sell. Aside from your online storefront, you can also process orders, manage your inventory, and receive payments.  There are 3 types of eCommerce software that business owners can use for web hosting to sell online.  On-premise Open source SaaS cloud-based platforms To build your site on-premise, you’ll need an IT department with developers or third-party contractors to design and maintain it. This option provides greater flexibility and a more unique user experience. Due to greater technical challenges, it tends to be limited to larger […]

Did you know that 20% of businesses fail within their first year of operation, and 50% of businesses fail within the first five years? The reality is that people won’t continue to use a product or service that’s constantly struggling with downtimes or outages. With so many factors determining whether your business sinks or swims, it’s important to take action early! Find out how an AIOps solution can eliminate these issues so that your small business succeeds in today’s technical landscape! What is AIOps? Artificial intelligence for IT operations (or AIOps) uses machine learning models and big data to collect, process, and analyze data from multiple sources. AIOps tools centralize the operations management process and display everything on one dashboard. This allows DevOps and IT teams to make sense of data quicker and automate different aspects of IT operations workflow. In some cases, AIOps tools also help with IT infrastructure and performance monitoring, providing streamlined information and metrics around the clock. These monitoring tools also reduce the amount of alert volume you receive from incidents, which helps to narrow your focus to the alerts that truly matter. Check out our “What is AIOps?” blog post to learn more! How can […]

Recognizing the best software products based on their customer satisfaction, review performance, and market-size fit.

Recognizing the best software products based on their customer satisfaction, performance via reviews, and mid-sized market fit.

Recognizing the best software products based on their customer satisfaction, performance via reviews, and small business market fit.