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On April 17, I presented the third webinar in the 12 Days of FileMaker 12 series titled Layout Mode Enhancements which discusses powerful new layout tools that will help you design more consistent and graphically pleasing applications. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for this free webinar series at the FM Academy web site.
Here is a link to the video. FM Academy: Layout Mode Enhancements

Logistics and operations can make or break a small business, especially as consumers start to become accustomed to the instantaneous conveniences of e-commerce. With the United States Postal Service (USPS) in a state of critical repair, it may give concern to some small businesses to up the ante on order fulfillment and shipment tracking.

Despite the USPS' obvious influence in the day-to-day life of millions of Americans and small businesses, technological advancements as well as consumer expectations have changed the game a little bit. According to a Washington Post article written by Gloria Larkin of TargetGov, many companies have already begun functioning without the historic USPS.

"My business now e-mails invoices and more than 13,000 newsletters instead of using the postal service. While I personally still send an occasional birthday or sympathy card in the mail, other communications with colleagues, friends and family take place via online social networks and e-mail," wrote Larkin.

Although the USPS is not planning to go out of business any time soon, it is proposing major cutbacks in its services. This includes either eliminating or downsizing nearly 250 processing centers as well as getting rid of Saturday mail service, which could help save billions of dollars annually for the postal service and seriously affect the way many small businesses deliver their products.

With the landscape of logistics and communication technologies changing on an almost daily basis, companies should invest in custom application development and dynamic database software to ensure they can accurately keep track of where, when and how products and business essentials are being transported. 

As technologies change more rapidly, the old theory of the diffusion of innovations starts to prove itself correct. According to the diffusion, consumers can be split into five major groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

Their consumption practices function in a bell curve. As the late majority group – who take longer to use or adopt the product or technology than most – makes up the bulk of the demographics with a 34 percent share of a new product or technology's consumption, the innovators – who are oftentimes the ones making the new product or technology – comprise only 2.5 percent as they rest on the outer edge of the bell.

But, nevertheless, as technologies change by the hour this theory continues to hold more water. According to an article by Entrepreneur Magazine, although "mobile commerce" (m-commerce) has been abuzz for quite some time now, it's starting to catch on to the early majority and – pretty soon – the late majority will be purchasing more products on their phone than before.

That being said, many businesses and retailers may want to invest in adopting m-commerce to their business model. According to the article, nearly half of American cell phone users had smartphones back in October 2011. Of those smartphone users, two out of every five used the device to purchase a product in 2011 with 62 percent of Americans open to the idea of using their mobile phone as a purchasing device.

If small businesses wish to get the most out of their new mobile commerce apps or websites, investing in a database software like FileMaker or FileMaker Go for mobile devices, can help them maintain inventory control as well as monitor mobile and brick-and-mortar purchases. Companies who want to invest in this software should see FileMaker consultants. 

Services like Google Analytics can help a company keep track of many aspects of web analytics, which can provide critical insights into the functionality and performance of a particular website. Inc. Magazine has provided a list of some of the ways Google Analytics can help companies engage in better business practices.

According to Inc., the three top things companies can do to effectively utilize what Google Analytics has to offer is to set up event tracking, track page load time and set the session length to the right amount.

By using "event tracking," business owners can gain clarity as to what a particular viewer does when they're visiting the company's website. Companies can see exactly where potential customers go and look at and will provide insight into what calls for action are useful and which aren't.

Tracking the page load time is very important as a slow loading page is a great way to lose traffic. By keeping steady and consistent track of how long each viewer waits to see a company's webpage can inform if it starts to take too long. If it does, and the website starts to see a drastic drop in traffic, business owners should seek help immediately. Fixing this is a job for an expert.

And thirdly, a session in Google Analytics is – by default – 30 minutes. This means if a particular viewer is active on a company's website for over 30 minutes, their next move will count as a separate view which can drastically distort statistics. By making sure the session is the right length, companies can see accurate statistics of their website.

But, unless companies are entering this information into a custom database that can keep track of averages and trends, this information may just be a set of numbers. Companies may want to see a FileMaker developer to create this custom database software. 

As the retail and food services industries saw record sales in March and recent employment reports show an actively increasing jobs market, many economists speculate on the role that small businesses really take in job creation. An April 17 article from New York Times contributor and former senior policy-maker for the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Bruce Bartlett, commented on the small business sector's role in job creation.

According to Bartlett's article, about 8,350 companies are eligible to be deemed as a small business under the Small Business Association's (SBA) new definitions from 2009. Of that 8,350, roughly 958 companies were previously considered as large businesses.

The article goes on to describe how Oprah Winfrey – a billionaire producer and television personality – only employs about 400 people under her production company, granting her to the right to claim herself as a  small to medium sized business (SMB) and receive the tax cuts and incentives the federal government allows for small businesses that may struggle to employ two or three employees.

The same holds true for the New York Giants, who only list about 210 employees, yet still made $1.3 billion in 2011, allowing them to reap the tax benefits of The Small Business Tax Cut Act as well as the recently passed JOBS Act.

Of course, Oprah and the New York Giants are outstanding examples. Other data shows, though, that the average size of a small business has decreased from 7.5 employees in the 1990s to 4.7 employees in 2011, further complicating the debate on what role the sector plays in the economy and job creation.

As small business' role in the American economy and job market continues to be a hot debate for years to many SMBs may want to invest in the services of software developing companies to create custom database software to help them stay up to date on their employment numbers, growth rates and the tax benefits they may experience. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, retail and foodservices sales rose 0.8 percent in March 2012 from February 2012 and 6.5 percent from March of 2011, which is good news for small to medium businesses as retail and food services makes up at least 70 percent of the economy. Furthermore, another report has shown that companies were "restocked" at a consistent clip in February, suggesting that businesses expect consumer bases to grow in the spring and summer.

According to Bloomberg, the improving job market has given households spending confidence despite rising gasoline prices and a declining housing market. Sales in major consumer product chains such as Gap and Target soared. Even the automotive industry has seen record sales for fuel efficient vehicles in March 2012.

"The industry and consumers have been very resilient in the face of higher pump prices," said Don Johnson, vice president of U.S. sales at General Motors. "The steadily improving economy is playing a role and so is pent-up demand and an improved credit market."

Furthermore, a healing job market is helping increase annual incomes. The job market has increased by 635,000 positions since December 2011 and unemployment fell from 8.5 percent to 8.2 percent. This is also compounded by data showing March of 2012 as the warmest it has been in the past 117 years.

With the weather improving and the job market slowly increasing, many experts believe that the increase in sales will continue. If companies wish to take advantage of the progressing economy they may want to invest a database software to help keep track of inventories and sales may want to consider seeking a FileMaker consultant to implement the increasingly popular business software. 

Despite a pending lawsuit from the Department of Justice on the price of ebooks, Apple – and its keystone product, the iPad – is doing remarkably well, especially in the small business market. It's almost no wonder that when FileMaker, a business database software application, released the latest edition of its software that it was downloaded over 100,000 times in its first week alone.

FileMaker announced that the combined downloads of FileMaker Go 12 for iPad, FileMaker Go 12 for iPhone and FileMaker Pro 12 have breached the 100,000 download milestone. The software assists businesses with the management of nearly every asset from payroll to inventory.

"The rapid adoption of FileMaker Go 12 strengthens FileMaker's position as a leading platform for creating custom iOS business apps," said Ryan Rosenberg, the vice president of marketing and services at FileMaker. "Businesses are using FileMaker Pro to create apps to manage everything from their inventory to contacts to salespersons' routes, and deploying these on their iPads and iPhones with FileMaker Go."

By being able to use FileMaker on both personal computers as well as mobile devices such as iPhones or iPads allows businesses to have access to important documents and information no matter where they are. Furthermore, the mobile versions are free from Apple's app store, helping businesses save on IT costs by only needing to invest in the FileMaker Pro version.

As more businesses start to see customer interactions and transactions being done online rather than in person, having a database software like FileMaker to assist with whatever workflow streamlining and management business owners may need is imperative. In order to fully reap the benefits of FileMaker Pro 12, companies should consult a FileMaker developer to assist with the integration. 

The debate of brick-and-mortar versus click-and-mortar stores continues with a new study by Local Corporation – an online local media company – that showed brick-and-mortar stores are still largely important to consumers, despite the rising use of online resources.

The study showed 90 percent of respondents claiming that a physical store is important to them as most transactions are still done in stores. Rather than purchasing items online, consumers will use those avenues as a means of research with nearly two out of three shoppers using at least one different device to research.

Furthermore, over 60 percent of shoppers will research a product or service several times in one month by using some type of mobile device, be it a personal computer, tablet or smartphone. This research may also be part of the 47 percent of consumers that use a smartphone to look up local information, including directions to the brick-and-mortar store they want to visit.

Although most consumers tend to make the purchases at the actual store, that’s not to say that mobile purchasing still hasn’t gone up. Best Buy’s fiscal year results showed that their physical store sales went down 1.5 percent while their online transactions jumped up 18 percent. Furthermore, many small businesses are conducting virtual pop-ups to help drive sales.

By printing their merchandise against physical backdrops and walls with QR codes below each “product”, consumers can use smartphones to scan these items that will bring them to a virtual cart where they can check out or shop more. Many brick-and-mortar stores are using this method as well, to help combine their online and physical presence.

Whether or not a small business is a brick-and-mortar store or a click-and-mortar merchant, using a FileMaker developer to create a custom database software to keep track of sales and transactions being conducted through pop-up sales or more conventional techniques can help a small business stay more streamlined and efficient when processing this important data.

On April 4, software developing company, FileMaker released its newest line in database software, the FileMaker 12.

This update on the already excellent database solutions system offers numerous advantages for small- to medium-sized businesses. The latest update includes 16 different "Starter Solutions" that are pre-made templates that allow business to manage tasks such as content management and invoicing.

FileMaker 12 also includes 40 "themes" that allow users to update the way their databases look and feel. These include multiple "touch" oriented themes that were designed to comply with the increasingly popular iPad and iPhone. Although the mobile themes cannot be customized, users can create their own custom database software.

"The iPad is really influencing people's view of what design should be," said Filemaker vice president Ryan Rosenberg, in an interview with InformationWeek. "People think that you should tap to an icon and this get beautiful app that's really easy to use. Those same requirements are drifting over to Windows and Mac desktops."

Users don't have to be software development and coding wizards to enjoy custom apps and databases through FileMaker 12, though. "We have this entire platform that helps create these custom iOS apps and then deploy and manage them," said Rosenberg. "It's a great alternative to programming environments."

Although FileMaker has excellent design and capabilities in desktop computers, the product's performance does not suffer when being used on more mobile oriented operating systems. The FileMaker Go applications for iPads and iPhones have actually become free with the update. Before, FileMaker 12, the iPad app cost $40 with the iPhone version around $20. This can mean big savings for small- to medium-sized businesses if employees add these apps to their mobile devices.

If business owners want to see a streamlined workflow and increased productivity, they should consider seeking FileMaker consultants to help implement and kick-start FileMaker software in their business.