Xero Introduces Payroll, IRS Gives Mileage Rates and More |  |
- Xero Introduces Payroll, IRS Gives Mileage Rates and More
- 17-Year-Old Heads $24 Million Business Started at Age 14
- Dell: More Than a Hardware Company
- Ray Pun of Adobe: Mobile App Users are More Loyal than Mobile Website Visitors
- Nap Time Produces an Unassuming Sales Ma-Chine
| Xero Introduces Payroll, IRS Gives Mileage Rates and More Posted: 13 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST
If you’ve missed the latest small business news, we’ve got it here. The Small Business Trends editorial team has the top stories you need to make the decisions affecting your business this week. Enjoy! Accounting & FinanceXero adds payroll to its cloud services. The New Zealand-based cloud accounting software company has added payroll to its services. Jamie Sutherland, President, Xero U.S. says the new service works seamlessly with the company’s other software. IRS releases new mileage rates. This is an important one for any small business owner deducting mileage as a business expense. There have been some changes. Here are the federal agency’s allowable numbers for 2014 from Small Business Trends CEO Anita Campbell. Work & OfficeLED carpeting for your next office. It’s a real possibility. Two Dutch companies are planning to bring the product to the market revolutionizing the office environment. Lighted carpets may show you the exits and even the way to the bathroom. Happy Hubs changes the work environment for entrepreneurs. Forget that glass office building in New York City or LA. You belong soaking up the sun and enjoying chef-prepared meals in this Costa Rican paradise. Or so these startup founders would have you believe. Hiring & EmploymentSquare has acquired Viewfinder. Or acquired the team behind the new photo sharing app at least. This deal seems more about hiring a technical team than about acquiring the technology they’ve created. Here’s what you can learn. Hiscox names new marketing executive. The international insurance provider for small businesses named former Verizon executive Brian Price recently to head the company’s U.S. marketing efforts. Here’s more on what Price’s appointment means. Customer ServiceApplebee’s introduces tableside tablets. The initial idea was to allow customers to add to or make changes to their orders. But it looks like this innovation might have many implications. And for smaller restaurants too. Technical DifficultiesHP Chromebook 11 has troubles with charger. Google and HP have issued joint statements raising concerns about the problem. And the device is being recalled from some overseas retailers. Some Yahoo Mail users experience long outage. Some Yahoo Mail users experienced long outages this week with some going at least two days without service. But what really bugged users was more than being unable to use their accounts. Social MediaFacebook mobile video now on auto-play. Videos posted on Facebook’s mobile app will run automatically without hitting play. The new feature may be a precursor to coming video mobile ads. FranchisingPrepper franchise trend is growing. If you’re worried it might be the end of the world, you’re not alone. Franchise correspondent Joel Libava looks at franchises that serve those preparing for the worst. Entrepreneurship17-year-old builds custom jewelry empire. Not every teenager can claim to have created a nationally known brand and a company worth millions. Here’s a look at Isabella Weems of Origami Owl. Dell World CoverageDell is about innovation. Small Business Trends CEO Anita Campbell is attending Dell World 2013 this week. Here’s her coverage of the first day of the event. Let’s listen in as the company takes a long-term look forward. Reading: Photo via Shutterstock The post Xero Introduces Payroll, IRS Gives Mileage Rates and More appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 17-Year-Old Heads $24 Million Business Started at Age 14 Posted: 13 Dec 2013 01:30 PM PST
If your son or daughter asks for money to buy a car, tell him or her to start a business instead. That’s what parents Chrissy and Warren Weems told their daughter Isabella, then 14. Today, at 17, Isabella Weems not only has a new white Jeep she acquired with profits from her new business. She is the founder of a custom jewelry and accessories business worth $24 million as of 2012. The company expects to make many times that amount by the end of this year. Weems’ company, Origami Owl, leverages 50,887 independent associates who buy products at discount prices and sell them at private parties held in homes or other locations.
In a recent interview with Forbes, she laid out her simple strategy for launching her business:
The company is also building a new IT platform that will allow associates to access webinars, videos and other training as well as order more products and track sales. Of course, becoming an Oragami Owl associate may not be the right business for everyone. Forbes observes that as associates use up their lists of personal contacts and local boutiques, sales can require some real chutzpah. (And, of course, the more associates that sign up, the more saturated the market becomes.) But Weems’ story is nonetheless a great example of what determination can do – even for the youngest of entrepreneurs. Images: Origami Owl The post 17-Year-Old Heads $24 Million Business Started at Age 14 appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Dell: More Than a Hardware Company Posted: 13 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST
Innovation was the theme underlying the first day of Dell World, where I am this week. Dell is a company with a renewed mission now that it has left the stock market and gone private again. Michael Dell called his company “the world’s largest startup.” Dell has over 100,000 employees and before it went private at the end of October, was a Fortune 500 company. So clearly it is no longer a startup. Michael Dell’s reference to startup has to do with the company’s commitment to getting back in touch with its entrepreneurial roots. (Michael Dell started the company from his dorm room in 1984.) It also has to do with building on the kind of innovative culture that led to 80% year-over-year growth in its early years. Dell’s growth stalled over the past year as sales of PC computers remained flat or declined. The problem hasn’t been unique to Dell. Most computer manufacturers seem to be in the same boat, as more people turn to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. PC sales are down worldwide. So Dell has had to pivot and step out in new directions. For instance, did you know that Dell now has a growing software business? It also offers storage, security and services. Dell completed a series of acquisitions last year to jump start its launch into the software side of the business, which it sees as growth territory. In fact, in its last public earnings release in August 2013, it stated that its Enterprise Solutions, Software and Services revenue was up 9% even though revenues overall were flat. Two overriding takeaway messages stood out after the first day of this event and listening to executives, including CEO Michael Dell: 1) Now that Dell has gone private, it has the freedom to be innovative, take risks, and invest in new products and services. No longer under the pressure of meeting Wall Street demands and quarterly earnings goals, the company is investing in innovation. Dell announced that it has created a $300 million Innovation Venture Fund under the wing of Dell Ventures and Jim Lussier, Managing Director of Dell Ventures. Via the fund, Dell is identifying innovative technology companies from outside, and investing in them. Dell also has the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs, which it launched last year under the direction of Ingrid Vanderveldt, who also serves as Entrepreneur in Residence at Dell. The Center provides mentoring, assistance and access to a $115 million debt financing fund, to fast growth companies. Another form of innovation is organic, through internal research and development. 2) Dell’s goal is no longer be viewed as providing computer hardware. It is positioning itself to be a “one stop shop” for all a business’s IT needs, no matter what size your company, one executive told me. In addition to its own fledgling software business, the company is a reseller of or has partnerships with a wide variety of software and solutions including Microsoft and Google — and even offers mobile solutions. Much of its software and solutions target mid-market and large corporations. Although Dell has 10 million small business customers worldwide, right now the focus seems to be larger entities on the one side, and startups that can inject innovative technologies and solutions on the other side. Dell invited me to the event and flew me down here. The vast majority of the time at Small Business Trends we turn down invitations to vendor conferences, but I’ve had a sense of some of the entrepreneurial commitment at Dell and wanted to see first hand if it was real or just talk. Some companies are good at the talk, but fail when it comes to the walk. It seems that Dell as a company, and Michael Dell himself who was very visible and approachable throughout Dell World (unlike many CEOs who disappear after the keynote), are sincerely committed to their new mission to innovate and pivot to offer more software and services – not just hardware. In other words, Dell seems to be walking as well as talking. The big question is: At what point will Dell turn more of its attention to the small business market of under 100 employees? Highlights of the keynote address are below: Image: Dell World keynote video still The post Dell: More Than a Hardware Company appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Ray Pun of Adobe: Mobile App Users are More Loyal than Mobile Website Visitors Posted: 13 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST According to Adobe's Digital Index 2013 online shopping data for Cyber Monday, online sales for the day increased by 16 percent year-over-year (YoY) to $2.29 billion. A record 18.3 percent of sales came from mobile devices, an increase of 80 percent YoY. Tablets generated the majority of mobile driven sales at 12.7 percent of total online sales. These stats back up the fact that we are living in a mobile age. And we're still in the beginning stages. But now is the time to understand the best way to build long lasting customer relationships in a mobile-first world. Ray Pun, Strategic Marketing Manager for Adobe, shares his insights from Adobe's mobile trends report, including why mobile app users are more loyal to your brand than those who visit your website from a mobile device. * * * * *
Ray Pun: I’ve been working at Adobe for the last three years, focused on our marketing cloud business. What I do is lead our go-to market strategy around mobile solutions. Mobile is a very big area across the different aspects of the cloud that we support. Previous to Adobe, I spent several years working in the telecommunications sector. Before that, I spent most of my career in the enterprise software space. Primarily in companies dealing with business intelligence and analytic solutions. Small Business Trends: I saw a quote from the CEO of Walmart that said that he believes 2013 is going to be remembered as the year that online went mobile. Do you think that he is correct in that assumption? Ray Pun: Yes, and I would expect that quote probably comes from an executive who is looking at the data from the various channels that they serve. Certainly Walmart, like many retailers, has been seeing mobile traffic heading towards the 50% mark. I think anytime you see mobile reaching the majority of the audience that is reaching your channels, certainly it causes organizations to rethink their strategy. You can have the desktop Web versus the mobile Web and also mobile applications. Small Business Trends: You put out a report not too long ago –Adobe Digital Index Mobile Apps Trends. Can you tell us about it? Ray Pun: At Adobe, specifically through our analytics solution, we collect a tremendous amount of data. Trillions of transactions from both Web and mobile channels and social channels. Basically, all the digital data that consumers are engaging with on a marketer’s site or app. The key difference with this report is that we took a very specific look at mobile app versus mobile Web. Because when people talk about mobile, sometimes it’s a very broad category. Usually, what I ask customers to do is to be more specific, in terms of, ‘Are you talking about a mobile Web experience that’s accessed via a browser, or a mobile app the consumer downloads to their smartphone or tablet?’ In this case, we actually looked at over 600 brands – Adobe customers – and looked at their aggregated data in an anonymous way, so there’s no privacy issues here. We looked at the data consumption of mobile app versus mobile Web. Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a few of the key findings that came out of the report? Ray Pun: When we looked specifically at tablets, we found the average time spent per session in a mobile app was four times longer than in a mobile website on a tablet. In the case of a smartphone, we found the time spent in apps was about two and a half times longer than mobile Web. There’s a skewing of how much time is being spent by consumers. I think that’s impacting how companies think about their strategies, in terms of the creation of Web versus app experiences. Small Business Trends: What are some of the main considerations a company should be focusing on as they build out their mobile marketing strategy? Ray Pun: When you look at these data points, especially the segmentation of data by device, we’ve seen on an hour-by-hour basis, tablets are typically used at home when someone’s relaxing in the evening hours, off on the weekends. The smartphone is used typically outside of the home. But it’s a very different usage pattern, because when someone’s on a smartphone, it’s typically during the day. They’ve got really small increments of time to check for things like news, weather, stocks, their bank accounts, etc. Versus in a tablet situation, you usually have more time to spend surfing, browsing or engaging. I think that speaks to different use cases, in terms of how people use smartphones versus tablets. Also, once you look at that from a device perspective, you’ve got to break it down into, ‘Okay, here’s the app versus Web breakdown.’ That certainly comes to play, where apps for the most part, are used to drive engagement with loyal customers. People who already know your brand and are willing to download your app because they have a relationship. If you’re a bank, a customer has a relationship with you. So they’ll download the app versus using a mobile website, because in many cases the mobile website may not provide the experience that people are looking for, in terms of something that’s really engaging and quick to respond. Small Business Trends: One of the data points that came out of this is how financial apps are used most frequently and travel apps are used the longest. Ray Pun: I think that the more sophisticated marketers are realizing that they really need to look at the complete customer journey. I think the reality is that the desktop Web was a very specific use case. It didn’t always provide the utility that mobile provides. Where, for example, with your banking app, you’re checking that throughout the day or on a recurring basis. Think about your own business. Anything that will drive repeat engagement is an opportunity to improve the relationship with a customer. Then in the contrasting case of the travel app, more time being spent, but maybe someone isn’t traveling all the time. Anything you can do to make that more efficient, searching for vacations or searching for hotels and airlines, that speaks to an optimization opportunity. Because the more time people are spending in an experience, there’s obviously a reason they’re doing that and so you want to best monetize that. The longer time spent in travel apps was interesting to me, because that actually exceeded the time spent in media applications. Media typically is monetized through advertising. So a travel business, I would say, has an opportunity to better monetize through advertising. Given that the eyeballs are actually in that experience. Small Business Trends: On average Android apps are used 40% more often, but people spend twice as much time in iOS apps per month. Why do you think that is? Ray Pun: I think some of that speaks to the two different ecosystems. With the Apple iTunes store, the controls are pretty stringent as far as the approval process to get an app even approved into the store. Obviously, anything that’s approved and then is downloaded by the consumer, typically is a pretty high quality experience. In the case of Android, it is a little bit more lax in terms of the controls. But then people might just download the app once and may not come back again. And that will shift the time spent average. So I think some of this is really the ecosystems. We recommend to our customers to look at their specific audiences and to really look at whether the android audience is a key part of what you’re planning around? Because certainly, from a device perspective, Android shipments are greater than iOS. So the sheer quantity is something you cannot ignore. But then you have to come back to your business model. What are you trying to accomplish? If you’re a media company, obviously having longer time spent drives more ad monetization. However, if you’re in another business that’s not ad-sponsored, then you really want to drive more frequent engagement, more rapid engagement. So people can quickly find stuff, get their information and then they can move on. Small Business Trends: Can you tell us where people can learn more about how Adobe is helping customers with this area? Ray Pun: We have launched a new set of services known as Adobe Mobile Services. These are available from Adobe.com. You’ll see information about what we’re doing in terms of helping marketers to better understand user engagement with apps through analytics. This interview on mobile app users is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above. The post Ray Pun of Adobe: Mobile App Users are More Loyal than Mobile Website Visitors appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Nap Time Produces an Unassuming Sales Ma-Chine Posted: 13 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST
Cartoons sometimes present themselves and you don’t really know why or how or if they’re even funny. This was one of those. It popped into my head pretty much fully formed, but it was so odd that I ran it past my wife at dinner. I performed it with heavy accenting on the “chine” part of “machine” and she laughed and liked it a lot. But, like the good cartoon editor she is, she asked, “How are you going to get that inflection across?” She was right. That little oomph at the end of “machine” helped the cartoon a lot. I tried writing “ma-CHINE,” “ma-chine” and even “ma-sheeeen” before I landed on the simpler overall italics. It’s hard to know if people will read it the way I heard it, but I think it still works. The post Nap Time Produces an Unassuming Sales Ma-Chine appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
“As a private company, we can take a longer term view of innovation,” said Michael Dell, CEO of the newly private Dell, at the opening keynote of Dell World 2013 in Austin yesterday.
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