Small Business Exporters

From friend Steve King, who has run this blog on small business needs for years:

Barlow Research on Small Business Exporters

Barlow Research   is one of our go-to sources on all things related to small business use of financial services.

Their article Five Truths about International Business in the Middle Market covers survey research on the exporting and importing by U.S. firms with between $10 million and $500 million in sales (midmarket companies).

As shown in the Barlow chart below (click to enlarge), the key finding is that about one-third of firms in this size category conduct business internationally. ... ' 

Zagat Looks at the Future of Dining

The Small Business Lab looks at Zagats future of dining study.  Some instructive thoughts about where this is all moving to.

"...Zagat, the restaurant review site favored by foodies, recently released a Future of Dining Study. 
The study looks at the impact of COVID-19 on the eating habits of consumers and how they may evolve post-COVID.    ... " 

And Zagat's full study.

Wal-Mart and Spotify, Why?

Was exploring this and discovered one answer in Inc.

Walmart Just Made a Surprising Announcement and It's Very Bad News for Amazon.  Watch out, Amazon: Small businesses may now have more options for reaching customers with their online stores.   By Jason Aten  @JASONATEN in Inc.

Walmart isn't the type of company that makes surprising announcements, but on Monday, its partnership with Shopify was exactly that. The two companies said they will now make it possible for companies using Shopify to access Walmart's Marketplace at Walmart.com. 

This matters for a few reasons. The first is that as online shopping has surged in the past few months with retail shops closed, big companies like Walmart (and Amazon) are betting that trend will continue. Amazon recently announced that it would offer 125,000 temporary workers hired since March full-time positions moving forward as it adjusts to the shift in how consumers are shopping. ... "

AI for Small Business: A Visual View

Matt Zdun of Siegmedia sends along a comment, and a link to a supporting visual on how AI can helps small business.   Referring to my piece commenting on the HBR article on AI and Small Business:

Hi Franz,

I appreciated an HBR article you shared on how AI could help small businesses — so interesting that bots can help businesses know how creditworthy they may be! (But I agree with you that HBR's take was too wordy.) 

Since you share a ton of great resources on emerging technologies (and because HBR's version of this was pretty verbose), I thought you’d enjoy this visual I recently helped create on 9 specific ways artificial intelligence is transforming small businesses. 

Everyone’s heard of AI, but what can it really do? We explain how this *little* thing called AI can save businesses up to $20,000 a year in recruiting costs and increase sales by 50%. Not to mention it can calm fussy customers 24/7! Check out a preview below. 

You can see the visual here:   https://www.fundera.com/blog/ai-in-the-workplace#visual

Matt Zdun
Junior Content Marketing Specialist
http://siegemedia.com  
.... "

AI for Small Business

HBR's take.   A little too wordy for my taste.   These kinds  of things would work for small business if they are well packaged,  easy to set into precise personal context,  easy to interact with (assistant style) to indicate variants on basic context.  Warnings as to risk and causes.   Alerting to indicate alternative ideas and how well its operating after setting into operation.   Includes good explanations of results.

How AI Could Help Small Businesses
By Karen Mills in HBR

On a Thursday morning at 5:30 AM, Alex sipped her latte, her elbows atop the service counter. Each day at this time, the sunlight through the front window blanketed her coffee shop and she enjoyed a few moments of peace and quiet before the morning rush began. With 30 minutes to spare before she corralled her baristas for their morning pep talk (and shot of espresso), she unlocked her iPad and pulled up her most valuable assistant: her small business dashboard. In seconds, Alex’s supply advisor scoured her accounts, sales and expense histories, local weather forecasts, event information, and past tourism data, and told her she would need five new sets of filters and 1,000 plastic cups for the coming week. She ordered them from Amazon with a single touch.

Alex also knew the shop needed a new espresso machine, but she had been putting it off for over a month. With the savings in her account, she could either order the new machine now or make a payment on the term loan she had taken out two years ago to start the business. If she continued to put off a replacement, the machine could break at any moment, and espresso was the second-best selling item on the menu (after iced coffee). On the other hand, she was almost done paying off her loan, and procrastinating another month would add interest.

Alex asked her robo-adviser for advice. “You can do both,” it reported. “Given your expected sales for the month, it looks like you’ll be able to use your savings to pay down the loan and put the espresso machine on your credit card, which has available credit of $3,500. When the credit card payment comes due in 30 days, you will have the cash to pay it off, based on current sales projections.” With one tap, Alex purchased the espresso machine. After the morning pet talk with her staff, she opened the doors for the day, confident in where her small business was headed.

At the end of the day, as Alex was closing up, her bot reminded her that it was June 1, and that quarterly taxes would soon be due. She momentarily worried that she had overlooked her tax payments when buying the new espresso machine, but then the bot said, “Don’t worry. Your estimated tax payments have already been accounted for in your cash projections for June.” Finally, with a few more taps and swipes, Friday’s payroll was set, healthcare deductions were taken from her employees’ paychecks, and taxes were ready to file.

Alex’s story is fictional, but it points toward the potential for technology and specifically artificial intelligence to assist entrepreneurs and improve the small businesses they run. Make no mistake: these technologies are already changing business, and so far they seem to be providing an advantage to large companies. The question is whether they can be designed and adopted to help small businesses, not just giant companies – and on that front I am hopeful.

As technology opens the doors to vast troves of data, opportunities are emerging to create new insights on a small business’s health and prospects. Insights from this data have the potential to resolve two defining issues that have faced lenders and borrowers in the sector: heterogeneity—the fact that all small businesses are different, making it difficult to extrapolate from one example to the next—and information opacity, the fact that it is hard to know what is really going on inside a small business.  .... " 

Amazon and Small Suppliers

I am not sure this makes much difference for most small retailers, they have already made the transition, lived with their particular context or failed.    Our own experience with a small retail within Amazon saw little support from them except basic infrastructure.

Amazon to set small suppliers adrift   by George Anderson  with further expert retail input.

For more than a decade, Amazon.com has publicly pronounced that it is not a destroyer of small businesses but a creator of growth opportunities for those that take advantage of the reach offered by its platform. Fifty-three percent of Amazon’s online sales are made by third parties, after all, and nearly three quarters of those selling directly to consumers on the site have between one and five employees. Many other small businesses sell products on a wholesale basis to Amazon. And so goes the rationalization that Amazon is small business friendly.

New reporting by Bloomberg, however, suggests Amazon may soon seem a less hospitable place for small third-party sellers as the e-tailer cozies up to larger retailers (Best Buy, Chico’s, Party City, etc.) and consumer brands such as Nike choose the path of coopetition to drive greater direct sales to consumers. Amazon is also shifting its percentage of products sourced from small suppliers to larger entities such as LEGO, Procter & Gamble and Sony as it focuses on competing directly with rivals selling popular name brand goods.  .... "

Alexa Skills for Small Business

Instructive list that I have been waiting for.  How can we get practical with voice skill assistants? Examining.

(Updated corrected URL) 23 Must-Have Alexa Skills for Your Small Business  By Rob Marvin in PCMag.

Amazon's digital assistant Alexa can help streamline your day-to-day business operations with voice-activated skills across communications, logistics, productivity, scheduling, and much more.  ... "