TradeGecko Simplifies Inventory and Order Management

TradeGecko Simplifies Inventory and Order Management
Small Is Mighty: Surviving and Thriving
Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble: Clarity Via Simple CRM
A Dose of Caution Is Recommended
Outsourcing Businesses Force Changes on Chinese Factories

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 01:00 PM PST

Small business owners often have more important things to do than manage multiple different spreadsheets, repeatedly checking to make sure that data is consistent between customer accounts, inventory, and sales. However, these tasks are essential, so luckily some cloud-based solutions have popped up in recent years to help businesses simplify these tasks and avoid manually updating multiple spreadsheets over and over again.

Now, small businesses have another option to consider. TradeGecko is a cloud-based application that aims to help small businesses manage inventory and sales, along with customer accounts and data.

The application first launched to the public back in October. And now, thanks to a $650,000 seed funding round, the application is integrating with other SaaS applications for businesses, such as Xero and Shopify.

These integrations will allow TradeGecko users to connect their online storefronts, accounting software, and other applications directly to their TradeGecko account, so that relevant data is updated automatically and in real-time. The Shopify integration is currently available to TradeGecko users, and integration with Xero is coming soon.

TradeGecko was created to help small business owners with various tasks such as managing customer accounts and data, keeping track of stock levels and inventory, and keeping all sales channels synchronized and up-to-date in one central system. These new integrations simply eliminate a step in the process of keeping information up-to-date, since many of TradeGecko's users already use these types of applications and services.

The photo above shows many of the different features of the TradeGecko dashboard, from tracking the value of inventory to updating user information and even tracking sales throughout the month.

The application offers plans ranging from $49 a month to $499 a month. Plans vary based on how many orders and products need to be tracked and managed and how many user logins are needed to manage the account. A 21-day free trial is also available.

TradeGecko is based in Singapore and was founded in January by three entrepreneurs from New Zealand – Carl Thompson and Cameron and Bradley Priest. Since its launch, over 200 trial accounts have been opened in 26 different countries.

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Small Is Mighty: Surviving and Thriving

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 11:00 AM PST

Small business owners are known for their resiliency. Heading into 2013, small businesses have survived the big box invasion and weathered the most challenging economy in recent history.

While The National Federation of Independent Business' recent report on small business owners' optimism for the coming year was disheartening, recent trends and the success of Small Business Saturday should give us hope.

Small businesses remain at the heart of the U.S. economy and are poised to drive significant growth in 2013. There are approximately 23 million small businesses in America, which account for 54 percent of U.S. sales, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and that number will continue to grow.

Hiring at large organizations has remained stagnant, driving more experienced people to leave the corporate world and start their own small businesses, and in turn hiring more employees. In fact, small businesses have provided 55 percent of all jobs and 66 percent of all net new jobs since the 1970′s.

Small Business Saturday, which took place on November 24th, proved that consumers are willing to buy from local merchants. Consumers spent $5.5 billion at participating independent retailers, surpassing estimates of $5.3 billion, according to the National Federation of Independent Business and American Express. American Express reported that transactions at small business merchants increased approximately 21 percent compared to last year.

The U.S. government has recognized the value of Small Business Saturday as well, with elected officials in all 50 states as well as President Obama voicing their support. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a Small Business Saturday Resolution supporting efforts to encourage consumers to shop small, and to raise awareness of the importance of small businesses.

Additionally, U.S. small businesses are now emerging as global players. They are leveraging eCommerce technology and social media to connect with new customers around the world. And, according to a survey conducted by Interactive Media in Retail Group, global eCommerce sales are expected to surpass $1.25 trillion in 2013.

Even in an uncertain economic climate, it's reassuring to see the recent success of small businesses. If the government and consumers both in the U.S. and around the world continue the recent trend of supporting local businesses, we'll see in 2013 that small really can be mighty.

Girl self-employed in flower shop Photo via Shutterstock

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Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble: Clarity Via Simple CRM

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST

Technology and all of the features that come along with it are great. However, sometimes it’s necessary to remove the noise, confusion and technicality and get back down to basics. Tune in as Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble, a clean and simple contact management system, joins Brent Leary to discuss the benefits of removing the clutter to hone in on what really matters when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM).

* * * * *

crm Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

Jon Ferrara: Sure. Some people call me the 'Don Quixote of Relationship Management.' I have been doing CRM and SFA longer than those acronyms have existed.

I dreamed up an idea called GoldMine and that idea was that it would empower the entire company to collaborate, communicate, nurture and build business relationship to grow that company's revenue and profitability. And I am back to fix what I think got off track in CRM. Because it is not about relationships.

CRM is a transactional logging system where you force your sales people to type in what they did and who they did it with so that management can run reports. The sales people today still live in their contact tools. Those contact tools are:

Outlook
Address Book
Google Contacts

But the problem is the way they communicate is scattered in six different tabs in browsers and three different apps, and desktops.

We are here to fix that with Nimble. Nimble helps your company turn conversations into cash.

Small Business Trends: Turn conversations into cash – a good thing.

Jon Ferrara: You know 20 years ago, I trademarked “Turn Your Contacts into Gold ®,” and we did that with GoldMine. One of our secret sauces was this thing called automatic processes. I think that most business people don't need these complex systems that are out there today, these expensive CRM and marketing systems.

Most businesses between 5 and 25 people need about 10% to 20% of the functionality that all of these systems have. That's what GoldMine did so well. What Nimble does is gives you the core of things that you need to attract and retain customers. It is simple. It is:

Contact
Calendar
Communications
Social list engagement
Collaboration

There’s a little bit of sales and marketing thrown in. That's all you need in a business today.

As your needs grow, we integrate the key things that allow you to extend where you need to extend. We integrated with HubSpot to manage leads and now they are our business partner.

So the division of Nimble is that we are going to integrate the core things that businesses use as they grow the marketing platforms, support platforms, listening platforms, collaboration platforms and even the sales platforms.

Small Business Trends: What's going on with this new partnership you have with HootSuite?

Jon Ferrara: HootSuite is a great social media dashboard. If you bring up a contact in your HootSuite stream or in Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, you have no idea what you said or what your team members said. Or the history of the engagement or what is pending and who is going to do what.

By integrating to HootSuite, when you bring up a person who is talking to you, or about you, or your brand, you can see their complete history, if they are in Nimble, of every conversation on every channel that they ever had with you or your team – email, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.

If they have commented on your stuff, if they have talked about your brand or you. Then you can schedule follow-up actions, activities, forecast deals and schedule activities for your team members that enable you all to stay on one page.

The reason that is important is because if you start using Nimble in sales, marketing, customers service, products and then in the executive suite, where everybody is on one page, you need to have that history in one single location.

That gets me to social selling, because I think that is the next beachhead that is going to happen as it moves from marketing and community management into the rest of the company. I think sales people are going to benefit the most from that engagement. Because – don't sales people need to understand who their customer is?

Small Business Trends: They absolutely have to understand who their customer is, who their prospects are and the best way to build that relationship with those folks.

Jon Ferrara: That's right. So if you go into your Twitter stream or Facebook or Linkedin, you have a single identity. If you see in HootSuite somebody wanting to engage with, you can pull that person out of the Social River and put them in your Nimble database by clicking a button in HootSuite. That contact turns from a one dimensional Twitter profile into a three dimensional living and breathing person where we map out their profiles across all the networks, and show you who they are.

This allows you to look at their walls to figure out what you share in common and to begin to understand how you might best to approach them to develop the relationship required for them to open up to you about their business issues, which as a professional, you can then solve.

Mae West said:

"Out of site is out of mind. And out of mind is out of money, honey."

Small Business Trends: I don't know if I have ever had a conversation where you haven't brought in a Mae West quote.

Jon Ferrara: People don't know it, but she was a smart business woman.

Small Business Trends: If you watch those movies, she was all about business.

Jon Ferrara: Business baby.

Small Business Trends: Are there any other integrations that we should be on the lookout for?

Jon Ferrara: We're going to be announcing something every month. It is not just the big guys like Zendesk, Get Satisfaction, Yammer, SalesForce QuickBooks, but all the little guys.

Because ultimately, we need to stay focused on the core, key simple things that would empower you to attract and retain customers:

Contact calendar
Communications
Simple social list engagement
Basic sales and marketing

Small Business Trends: Where can people find out more?

Jon Ferrara: Follow me on Twitter where I teach every day. I am trying to empower people. I am @Jon_Ferrara. Find us at Nimble.com.

And for your community Brent, I would like to make this offer:

Receive a 90 day FREE Business Trial

Register at: Nimble Free Business Trial (normally 14 days)

Email: info@nimble.com

Subject line: Extended 90 Day Free Business Trial, Brent Leary Interview Offer, Small Business Trends

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

The post Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble: Clarity Via Simple CRM appeared first on Small Business Trends.

A Dose of Caution Is Recommended

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 05:00 AM PST

While writing this bit for this cartoon, I couldn’t get over the nagging feeling that maybe I’d published this cartoon here previously, so I dug into the archives.

Turns out, this cartoon hadn’t been published, but a similarly themed cartoon had.

I think maybe this woman should stay away from bar graphs.

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Outsourcing Businesses Force Changes on Chinese Factories

Posted: 04 Jan 2013 02:30 AM PST

In December, we reported that Apple had decided to manufacture some products in the U.S. However, the fact remains moving into the New Year, outsourcing will continue to be a driving force in business. This roundup looks at what outsourcing is doing to the business world and at the advantages your company can reap.

Make Changes

Outsourcing is changing China. Last year, conditions in Chinese factories that manufacture tech products for U.S. firms became the center of controversy. The issue was working conditions, worse in Chinese factories than would be permitted in the U.S. and other plants. U.S. leaders are also eager to bring more manufacturing jobs back. But manufacturing in countries like China by foreign companies is likely to continue…this time, with better conditions. The New York Times

Eight outsourcing mistakes. When looking to outsource products or services for your business, be careful you make the right choices. In this post, we hear from eight entrepreneurs; Steve Chou, Fraser Cain, Sean Platt, and others, who talk about their outsourcing experiences. Whether successes or failures, these anecdotes could help you improve your business’s effectiveness, increasing productivity while reducing costs. Rana Shahbaz

Reduce Costs

Saving on medical costs. One way to outsource services is to look into contractors and sub-contractors. These options as alternatives to hiring full-time employees will become increasingly important with new healthcare regulations on the way, writes Elaine Love in this guest post about small business employment. First, look at the pros and cons of these two kinds of outsourcing to see whether either or both might be right for your company. The Small Business Playbook

Class is in session. “Many small business owners are less interested in the logistics of running their company and more in the concept or product they are putting on the market,” says Kate Webster of ResourceNation.com. To meet this need some businesses are turning to HR outsourcing. Here is a look at what such organizations do, the benefits and drawbacks, and how to decide whether HR outsourcing is right for your business. OutsourceHow

Other Options

Outsource your SEO. Many larger companies hire an in house Search Engine Optimization specialist or perhaps a whole SEO department. However, smaller businesses sometimes do not have the budget necessary for another full salary even to fill the important roll of making sure their Website has good visibility online. Fortunately other choices exist, writes SEO specialist Nick Stamoulis. One is to study SEO and get started yourself. The other is to outsource your SEO services. Here’s how. Brick Marketing Blog

Nine more outsourcing resources. You may think the greatest challenge facing your company is money. In fact, one of the most limited resources available to you as an entrepreneur is your time. There are many options you can use when looking for ways to outsource services and products. Here is a list of some of the best from small business coach Stephanie Ward to save you time and potentially money. Firefly Coaching

What you don’t need. There is one kind of outsourcing you may want to avoid. Hiring forum posting services has inherent dangers you should consider first, writes Chris London, art and online marketing director for Pixel Productions Inc. While link-building using forum posts can be extremely effective at driving traffic to your site, this level of service is not generally provided by cheap SEO forum posting packages purchased online. Pixel Blog

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