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Communication is crucial when it comes to operating a small to medium sized business. Whether it be about how many products are in the warehouse compared to what's on the floor, or when a budget report is due to a senior analyst, knowing the when, where and what of daily tasks is essential for all employees.

Often times, businesses will cover this information gap by holding multiple meetings a day. Although most meetings are productive when it comes to assessing progress on certain projects and assigning workloads for others, some meetings can not only be pointless but also expensive and inefficient. Forbes' March 26 article, "We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This: 7 Reasons to Cancel Your Next Meeting" outlines why companies should cut down on meetings and increase effective communications through other lines.

Forbes' greatest reasoning for limiting the amount of meetings a company conducts in a day is how expensive one can be. When hourly wages, transportation costs and catering are all taken into account, oftentimes the meeting isn't nearly worth how much it's costing the company. Further exacerbating this is that most meetings don't have a specific point and direction, they often end up with workers searching for something to meet about rather than solving a particular issue which means they are also unproductive – another reason cited as not to meet.

Rather than quickly slimming down on meetings per day, a company can increase the effectiveness and productivity of its employees and cut down on meetings through more fluid intra-company communications by seeking a custom software developer or a Filemaker consultant to develop a customized database software that will allow employees to store and access vital information. This will allow workers to increase productivity and also cut down on costly meetings by encouraging better communication throughout the organization. 

On March 22, the United States Senate passed a bill known as the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) that allows small business to acquire capital and go public with more ease than before.

As the economy starts to climb out of the recession and the technology industry experiences an unprecedented red shift in growth and innovation, this new legislation comes in support of that, hoping to generate more job growth for small businesses as it demystifies the processes of gaining private funding.

The JOBS Act, essentially, does three things.

First, through a relatively new concept called "crowdfunding", it increases the opportunity for equity investment. The small internet investments of crowdfunding used to be very limited, according to Reuters, but the JOBS Act removes those limitations – mostly involving the ability to crowdfund equity investments.

The Act also eases up on public disclosures. Before the JOBS Act – which still needs to go through the House of Representatives and get signed by President Obama – the SEC stated that companies with over 500 shareholders and $10 million in assets are required to follow public disclosure rules. Under the JOBS Act those numbers are increased to 2,000 shareholders.

Furthermore, the JOBS Act states that "emerging growth companies" – companies with less than $1 billion in revenue that wish to go public – are exempt from some of the Dodd-Frank rules and are required to file fewer financial reporting statements to acquire an IPO.

Across the board, the JOBS Act is being considered an excellent way for small to medium sized businesses to save money while also expanding and growing. The revenue saved by companies through the JOBS Act can be used to consult software developing companies to create a stellar website to enhance online presence for crowdfunding, or to create customized database software for better business practices. 

According to an August 2011 Google trends search conducted by Harvard Business Review (HBR) blogger and author, Grant McCracken, food trucks have increased dramatically in both news reference and search volume index while coffee houses have seen a slow but steady decline since 2009.

McCracken dissects the new culinary trend in his HBR blog, coming to the conclusions that food trucks are great for cultural influence and infusion – combining neighborhoods, ethnic cuisines and generating long lines of locals supporting local businesses in what are – often times – cash-only operations.

At the same time, Entrepreneur Magazine has also caught on to the food truck trend by publishing articles that outline five tips for starting a food truck. The tips and advice focus almost primarily on better business practices. Snip-its of MBA wisdom like "develop a strong brand," "budget for bad weather," and "pick a prime location" are some key examples, as well as acknowledging that "your food truck is a restaurant, not a hobby."

Treating a food truck like a restaurant rather than a hobby is a crucial aspect in ensuring a successful food truck. Staying up to date on health codes and regulations, keeping track of inventory and knowing when merchants need what ingredients by when are all crucial techniques. With the recent upswing in business productivity software on mobile phones as well as devices like tablets and laptops, it's becoming easier – and essential – for food truck owners and operators to invest in business management databases and software.

By consulting companies like FileMaker and their developers, merchants can get custom built database software tailored specifically to their business – whether it be a new food truck or otherwise – to help them create better business practices and convenience by using database software to keep track of key details. 

The Berklee College of Music admissions staff recruits musicians from all over the globe, but with more than 300 auditions everyday, they needed an efficient and reliable way to take notes and record information about each performance in order to give all prospective students a fair shot at attending the Boston school. According to Campus Technology, the college has 120 staff members that meet with, interview and audition approximately 7,000 musicians every year.

While they traditionally carried this task out with laptops, Berklee dean of admissions Damien Bracken explained to the source that they were cumbersome, slow and inefficient.

Like most organizations that store large amounts of data, the school required this information to be stored in a single database, which they could do with laptops, but it was less than ideal. As soon as FileMaker Go for the iPad was released in July 2010, the admissions team jumped on the opportunity to take advantage of the customizable applications many benefits, the media outlet reports.

The school bought 20 iPads for its recruiters, and as Bracken explained, the process became significantly simpler. He told Campus Technology that the admissions staffers are able to type out information about each meeting with aspiring students and send the notes through the cloud to a main database that can be accessed remotely by anyone with the application.

"We get a lot of comments from students and parents when we pull out our iPads during auditions or check-in," Bracken told the source. "Using this type of technology is good for our image and consistent with our long-time reputation for being ahead of the curve."

Other organizations that want to improve their processes' efficiency and reliability can talk with a FileMaker developer that will build a custom mobile application that can be used for countless solutions.

Museums are the ultimate database of the world's history, but keeping a record of all of the material requires a database of its own. So when the largest museum and research complex in the world needed a way to keep a detailed and easy accessible archive of all its images, it turned to FileMaker Pro for a solution.

The Smithsonian Institution's Office of Photographic Services generates hundreds of images each day, John Jones, the office's Chief of Image and Photographic Collections, explained for an article featured on the FileMaker website.

With FileMaker Pro, Jones said that he and his team log orders, keep track of customer information, archive images and organize their extensive film library. Continuing advances in the software's functionality and stability have made archiving incredibly easy, he said.

"Our photographers deposit their finished images in them and an AppleScript then processes the Web derivatives used for FileMaker's search display and uploads the full size images to our image archive," Jones said for the story. "During the upload process, information about each image including, file size, creation and modification dates, pixel dimensions, etc. are loaded into FileMaker via AppleScript."

In doing that, he explained, the process of archiving and updating the databases is automated. With just a single click, he can find any image in the database with the program's search feature.

Businesses that are interested in experiencing the same efficiency and organization improvements that Jones and the Smithsonian were able to benefit from should talk to a FileMaker developer. Using custom database software, these programmers can build an application for storing any information from financial figures to images that are specific to any individual business's needs.

Managing public transportation is among the more important functions of a town's leadership, but keeping track of, literally, all of the moving pieces can be very difficult. Oftentimes, problems arise from residents that displeased with the routing, stop frequency and operation schedules, but town managers can only make adjustments based on the complaints they receive and feedback from their drivers.

That's why decision-makers in one area of Ohio are coming together to clean up their public transportation systems using special database software. On Tuesday, Mike Paprocki, transportation study director for the Brooke-Hancock-Jefferson (BHJ) Metropolitan Planning Commission, and Shawn Price, senior engineering technician for BHJ, told the Regional Access Mobility Partnership that there would be a training program in place for the parties that will need to know how to use the systems so that it can be used to its full potential, according the Herald-Star, a periodical that reports on news in the Upper Ohio Valley.

With the new software, which is being financed by a federal economic stimulus funds, the collaboration between the cities and towns in BHJ is expected to improve public access between the counties and make schedule planning easier, the source reported.

Cleaning up the public transportation system in the BHJ area now is important if news reported by local NBC affiliate WTOV-9 is accurate. The media outlet said that while drivers in the Steubenville and Weirton, Ohio area were faced with 1.2 miles of congestion per lane of highway in 2003, they are predicted to experience 9.3 miles of congestion per traffic lane by 2030.

It could be reasonably hypothesized that more traffic means a larger demand for public transportation, but at the very least, the increase in travel congestion indicates that the area should be prepared to manage its own vehicles more efficiently.

Photography studios, like all other businesses, need to keep track of overhead and income financial data. David Kilpatrick, a British photographer, wrote an article for the British Journal of Photography about what management software is the best to use for businesses in his industry.

He said there are essentially just two accounting platforms to choose from: spreadsheets and database software. Based on his experiences, he explained that the better option is rather obvious.

Kilpatrick said that it's easy to accidentally delete data in spreadsheets, which can completely throw off the entire log. One of the most typical mistakes made in spreadsheets is incorrect use of the sort function, he said. The columns are not linked to each other, so if, for instance, you wanted to arrange the first column a certain way, only that column would adjust to the control and the other columns would remain in their original order. These kinds of mistakes can muddle the entire spreadsheet.

Custom databases are built with established rules so that user-created mistakes aren't nearly as common as they are in programs like Excel. What Kilpatrick likes most about databases is their ability to link to each other.

"You can, for example, have a client list held on a smartphone that you update when traveling. Your office computer then uses the updated information," Kilpatrick wrote. "In the past, systems like this mostly worked over office networks; now they work in the cloud… Your worries about a studio PC being stolen or a fire destroying records are gone, because multiple duplicate copies exist thousands of miles away, securely protected from hacking."

Specifically, Kilpatrick recommended FileMaker as the ideal account management program, primarily because of the vast network of FileMaker developers. If you think your business could benefit from database software like Kilpatrick has, talk to a FileMaker consultant who can show you how custom application development can help your specific needs.

Businesses from all walks of life can benefit from custom application development. Every operation has to keep records of valuable information from warehouse inventory or client data, but many organizations still use outdated means of storing it. Using FileMaker database software, one company was able to turn a very time consuming niche service into a thriving business.

PMD Promotion, a window poster advertising company, was able to get a nearly instant return on investment after it ditched inefficient manual data entry for a custom FileMaker-based iPod touch application.

"Our display representatives are our 'feet on the street' so to speak, installing the displays in more than 35,000 storefronts nationwide," Dean Stallone, PMD's chief executive officer said for an article on FileMaker's website. "They work to exacting standards, remove the poster displays when they are out of date and coordinate all activities with the establishment owners."

PMD creates client-specific 200-page PDF reports that include upward of 500 pictures and information about the advertising campaigns they've been hired to carry out. In the article, Stallone explained that the representatives had previously recorded and composed these reports with clipboards, paper and personal digital cameras.

"Now, on a simple mobile device, [PMD's reps] have a richer, more convenient experience – and all the information they send and receive is centralized in one database," he added.

The company's CEO estimated that they'll save $40,000 a year using the application. Reporting time was lowered by 80 percent thanks to improved speed and accuracy of data entry and a more organized way to match photos with that information.

If you believe you could streamline your business's everyday operations in a similar way, talk to a FileMaker consultant who can work with you to develop custom software with a user-friendly interface that can increase productivity and possibly even save a lot of money.

Productivity is essential for any business's success. Bosses and managers can only push their employees so far to produce quality work in as little time as possible. But, sometimes, that's not enough.

Hiring more staffers is one option, but in the end, adding more salary expenditures to the budget may not be worth increased efficiency. If expanding your workforce and continually hounding your workers aren't viable solutions to your problem, improving your business's technology may be the cost-effective answer you're looking for.

Dave Stevens, a managing director at a technical solutions firm called Brennan IT, provided several tips for businesses to increase productivity using IT in an article for SmartCompany.com.au, a news outlet for Australian entrepreneurs.

♦ Automate operations. As Stevens wrote, "…it doesn't cost much if a machine is doing [a task] for you." Computers are better at crunching numbers than humans, and database software is better at storing, organizing and recognizing patterns than spreadsheets. Automation doesn't necessarily have to mean replacing human labor with computers. Using modern, customized software rather than outdated programs can save a lot of time while improving data precision without adding or cutting employees.

♦ Get your team on the same page. Business owners and managers should be able to communicate with their employees and access figures easily and effectively. When operational information is available in real-time from one place, discrepancies that arise from miscommunication and merging data from multiple sources can be avoided.

♦ Put your business in a cloud. Stevens said that companies that are taking advantage of mobility have seen "sizeable productivity gains." With custom application development, businesses can use programs like FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Go to make their databases of information such as inventory or sales details accessible on employee iPhones and iPads from one main server.

There are still quite a few businesses that use programs like Excel to organize their information. While spreadsheets can compute complex equations and create charts and graphs, they aren’t necessarily the best option for accessing, updating and analyzing important data.

Many spreadsheet functions require intricate formula entry, which doesn’t lend itself to specialized, yet simple tasks. As a result, the features of spreadsheet programs that may make them more appealing than database software go unused, author Dan Brody wrote in a piece for Entrepreneur.com.

While spreadsheets are limited to storing numerical values, databases made with programs like FileMaker can store text, codes and images by monitoring patterns based on certain sets of rules. An IT specialist may be able to manipulate a spreadsheet optimized for specific functions, but as Brody explained, the resulting make-shift program will be masked by a sea of numbers that stretch across hundreds of rows and columns. Database software, on the other hand, can be customized by a FileMaker developer to have a user-friendly interface that allows for simple modification and review.

In addition to the aforementioned flaws of spreadsheet-based organization, Brody explained there are a few other ways to tell if your business needs to switch to database storage. In the same way a message is communicated in the game of telephone, passing spreadsheet documents on from person to person creates an enormous risk of inaccuracy. Databases can be accessed from a single source, which as Brody wrote, creates a “single version of the truth.”

The benefits go beyond internal affairs though. He said that businesses wouldn’t ask a customer to provide information by filling in a spreadsheet, but they probably would be inclined to ask clients to fill out a form online, which can be set up with a database.

If your company has all of its important data stored in spreadsheets, talk to a FileMaker consultant. Typically, spreadsheets can be easily imported to a database.