Zoho is something of a anomaly in the cloud software space. Privately held, India-based Zoho has never raised a dime of outside money and it competes with some of the giants of the cloud, think Salesforce, Google, GoDaddy, etc. So how does Zoho break through and set itself apart? Part of the answer comes from Zoho’s embrace of the “business…
Cracking the online to offline attribution code remains a primary focus for local marketers in 2018, while booking platforms, loyalty programs, chatbots and beacons will be at the back of the line for investment this year, according to a survey of local marketers conducted by StreetFight. These findings were presented in a “State of Hyperlocal”…
The collection of companies offering digital tools to small businesses either directly or via resellers is better described as a collection of galaxies than as an interconnected ecosystem. Such is the conclusion of Lorren Elkins, an executive with the software company Camilyo who is his spare time has amassed an impressive database of companies serving…
Cloud software provider Zoho rolled out two product releases and one update today that advance its strategy of being a one-stop resource for businesses to run their operations entirely in the cloud. Today the company rolled out ZohoFlow, a drag and drop application that allows businesses to create workflows between business applications, which enables businesses to eliminate manual tasked from…
Companies selling digital solutions to small-businesses have long chased the notion that SMBs want sellers to “make it easy for them” and wrap up the media products they need into one turnkey solution. One payment and one dashboard where they can see how it’s all working. Ostensibly this is a win-win proposition. The seller gets a bigger sale…
Many companies selling tech to small businesses target larger and more established merchants. Not GoDaddy. The hosting and domain provider sees “nascent” businesses as its big opportunity. These “nascents” are the businesses that may only exist as a freelancing side hustle for a graphic designer with a day job, for example, or perhaps is just a business…
Do small businesses really want all in one solutions for their small business apps? Or is this concept more for the benefit of SMB sellers looking to boost margins and reduce churn? Will AI/machine learning be the catalysts for development of a self-service sales platform that small businesses will actually use. Are Internet service providers like Comcast going…
A new study on SMB adoption of marketing automation tools, commissioned by marketing automation firm ActiveCampaign, describes the progress from using email marketing (a requirement to participate in the survey) through CRM to marketing automation. The report of the survey’s findings asserts that marketing automation is the next area where SMBs will invest in marketing technology, based on…
In preparation for last week’s SMB Cloud Adoption Summit in San Francisco, we interviewed a handful of small-businesses owners to ask them about their use of cloud software to run their businesses. The idea was to provide an SMB voice to the event, as well as to bring to life some of the themes uncovered…
Dex Media’s June acquisition of YP to create DexYP was a disruptive event in the local search industry, combining two giant competitors who were pursuing very different strategies. While both companies were in the business of making SMBs’ phones ring, Dex was making a big bet on expanding beyond media into something more akin to…
