Business Solutions Magazine Blog

If Square wasn’t making waves for you in the past, you might need to buckle up for the future. Today the POS and payments disrupter announced its new Square Stand, which is essentially a fancy mount for an iPad that includes a handsome mag-stripe reader and Square’s free Register app. According to the company’s Web [...]

Last week I attended the Ingram Micro International Solutions Partner Invitational in Hollywood, FL. During my time at the event, I had the opportunity to listen to a variety of speakers and interview most of the distributor’s top brass. Following are some of the best quotes/learnings I jotted down in my notebook: Paul Bay, senior [...]

A few weeks ago I attended the Epson partner conference in Palm Springs, CA. The keynote speaker was futurist/forecaster Daniel Burrus (www.burrus.com) who spoke a lot about technology trends shaping the future. He had three great thoughts in his presentation that are applicable to the reseller community. First, he spoke about how everyone is busy. [...]

Retailers are hot for customer intelligence, and there’s no better source for that data than from their most loyal customers. But, market demand isn’t the only reason VARs and ISVs should add loyalty programs to their solutions portfolios. Booker Software is an ISV that’s experienced wild growth by creating subscription-based software applications for a variety [...]

Retail- and hospitality-focused VARs looking to get into the “as a Service” model, take note. As you transition your business to this model, one of the first things you’re going to want to do is implement a PSA (professional services automation) tool for yourself. Many of you are probably using pieces of a PSA tool [...]

Interesting news this morning out of IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc., the video surveillance industry’s leading analyst firm. According to Niall Jenkins, Manager, Video Surveillance & Security Services Research, 45% of surveyed North American companies reported that their budgets for security-related spend had increased in 2012. In the survey of almost 200 representatives [...]

I don’t need to tell you POS folk that you’re in the middle of a huge transition. Increased competition, mind-blowing technological shifts, shrinking margins, ever cost-conscious customers, and so on all are creating both a threatening and opportunity-filled environment. For the sake of me writing the most relevant content going forward, and hopefully spurring some [...]