SMB Nation | SMB IT Professionals
The Place to Start-up and Start Over!
by Shari Parsons Miller
An open-plan office space layout has pros and cons both for a firm’s personnel and its bottom line. In an open-plan work environment, there are no distinct rooms or fully enclosed spaces. Instead, workstations are positioned together -- sometimes separated by short screens or panels -- within one exposed floor plan. The openness may improve communication and collaboration among your workers, but it also may reduce concentration and productivity.
Sales training is one of the most important investments most companies make, because it allows them to close the gap between current performance and potential performance. Nevertheless, around 80 percent of respondents to a recent study by the Rain Group Center rated their own training as being between average and poor.
Readers will recall the popular Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC) partner program last decade. Beatrice Mulzer and I did a couple books on the topic, in particular focused on passing the MCP certification exams. One of the players in that motion was Microsoft executive Francois Daumard (who worked with the SBSC program 2007-2011 and still admires the SBSC partner loyalty). This piece is about where is Francois now?!?!?
By: Gloria Kopp
If you're often finding that projects are being delivered late, rushed to be completed or just not up to the standard you're expecting, you and your team could benefit greatly from the creation of a clear, organized workflow. Your workflow defines the patterns and processes by which you bring a project from conception to completion, and helps ensure that you don't experience these setbacks that exist when there's no organization behind the production process. Follow these steps to start putting together a workflow that is tailored to your team and the projects you're working on, and watch the levels of quality and speed in your work soar.
You've heard about all the amazing benefits of content marketing. You want to jump in. But . . . how? Here's how.
Founder and CEO, AusienceBloom
By now, you've heard about all the amazing benefits of content marketing. You know that with the right strategy, you can earn more traffic, build a better reputation and see compound growth in both areas over time without greatly increasing your budget.
Ready to level up your working knowledge of business? Here’s what to read now — and next.
Business 101, with Nilofer Merchant
First, read these 2 foundational books…
1. The Change Masters
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Free Press, 1985
Five years ago this month, Microsoft announced the end of the popular Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) product family. A minor announcement made over the slow July 4th holiday weekend in 2012 was rapidly picked up by the community and everyone had an opinion. SBSers were given an 18-month runway to retire/migrate or otherwise mitigate the drop dead date of SBS (December 31, 2013).