B2B Connection

This article will dive into the nitty-gritty of what exactly ecommerce is, the 6 main types of ecommerce businesses, different types of selling and fulfillment models, and give you a quick primer on what ecommerce software is. What is Ecommerce? Types of Ecommerce Businesses B2B B2C B2A C2B C2C A2C Different Selling & Fulfillment Models  Direct-to-consumer (DTC) Dropshipping Wholesale  Online Subscription What is Ecommerce Software? Types of Ecommerce Platforms On-premise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)  Open Source What is Ecommerce?  Whether you call it ecommerce, online transactions, e-commerce, or internet commerce—all these phrases refer to the same thing: the buying and selling of goods & services online. This naturally involves the exchange of information, usually payment and personal information, via the internet to conduct these transactions.  Ecommerce exclusively describes online transactions and doesn’t refer to other parts of a business that may be conducted via the internet. It also doesn’t apply when a consumer browses products online before making a purchase in person at a brick and mortar store.  Though it feels like ecommerce has been around forever, it’s actually still relatively new. Online buying and selling have been available to the public since the 1990s, starting with a small online book selling […]

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a cost-effective tool that delivers voice, and other forms of online communication, over an Internet Protocol or IP. VoIP allows users to manage all of their call-related communications (e.g. voice calling, instant messaging, online faxing, voicemail) within one platform via internet connection.  Choosing the right VoIP system can be a confusing and stress-inducing task. From the abundance of available products to consider, to attempting to truly differentiate between products, to trying to figure out which products are better suited for micro businesses, small businesses, midsize businesses, and/or enterprises, choosing which VoIP solution is best for your company can be overwhelming. VoIP technology is a powerful tool that small businesses should take advantage of due to its cost effective, easy to use, and customizable features. Here are TrustRadius’ top 5 VoIP products for SMBs, listed in order of the TRScore. Jive Hosted VoIP From LogMeIn, Jive Hosted VoIP is a cloud-based phone system for business operations. It supplies web-based video conferencing, call recording and analytics, fax and voicemail to email capabilities, softphone, etc. Customers can customize their phone system through Jive’s suite of over 80 hosted VoIP features, including one-step scheduling, tailored time-based call […]

The short answer to this somewhat rhetorical question is no, Splunk is not strictly an APM tool.  Rather it is a SIEM or log management tool. SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. A SIEM collates log and even data in a single location. This makes it easier for a security analyst to get a comprehensive view of security logs and events than would be possible by looking through the log files of individual security tools. Why the Confusion? Given that these tools are quite different and that the modern IT organization probably requires both, why is Splunk often erroneously thought to be an APM? The reason for this is that because Splunk is a highly flexible tool with many use cases, including providing application performance data. Another factor contributing to the confusion is the fact that Gartner included Splunk in a report on APM Innovators back in 2012.  What is the Difference? In theory, the machine data and logs that Splunk collects from the IT environment can be mined to provide insight into the availability and performance of applications. However, unlike an APM platform, Splunk is an analytics platform, not a troubleshooting tool. It has no instrumentation to […]

Ecommerce has been exploding over the past few decades. US consumers spent over $5 billon online in 2018—which was a 15% increase from the year before. With online marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, Shopify, GumRoad, Storenvy, Fiverr, etc. it’s easier than ever for anyone to start selling their own goods or services online.  The age of giant retailers and general merchandisers is fading too (think department stores like Macy’s, T.J. Maxx, Target, Walmart, Sears, etc.). But while physical storefront retail sales may be slowing down, ecommerce is heating up. A recent report from the US Department of Commerce reveals that online sales have increased 16% between Q3 2018 and Q3 2019, compared to overall retail, which has only increased by 4% over the same time period.  The increasing popularity of the ‘direct-to-consumer’ (DTC) approach to selling has helped make it easier and cheaper for solopreneurs and small businesses to start selling online. In this approach, stores sell their goods or services directly to the consumes (often online), bypassing third-party retailers or wholesalers. Costs associated with middlemen department stores, and the rent and upkeep that comes along with a physical storefront, disappear for online-only DTC businesses. And the proliferation of online marketplaces […]

While most email service providers support contact list management and group aliases, they still aren’t the best at meeting the needs of organizations that need to send out mass emails. Enter email marketing software.  Email marketing is designed to help a company manage consumer interactions⁠—you guessed it, via email. The intention of effective email marketing will create loyalty, boost brand recognition, and drive sales. Key features of email marketing software are subscriber and list management, contact segmentation, email marketing templates, a WYSIWYG interface, and spam testing.  Email marketing should not be confused with marketing automation software, which automates marketing capabilities across multiple channels such as social media, SMS, websites, and email. If your business is primarily focused on email marketing, you may not need to invest in a complex marketing automation platform. However, many marketing automation platforms can also function as email marketing solutions.  If you are just getting started in your search for an email marketing platform that is right for your team, you’ve probably identified Mailchimp as one of the most talked-about solutions. On TrustRadius, Mailchimp is one of the most frequently searched for email marketing tools. While Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing products, there are of course other providers to […]

AI is an exciting, evolving frontier in technology that most people are sick and tired of hearing about. It can feel like AI is the catch-all solution for all of life’s problems, including your professional problems. There are myriad claims about what AI can do for HR management and talent management professionals, including how it can correct bias and discrimination in the workplace. As in most cases, there is some distance between the promises being made about AI and what it can, or should, deliver to businesses. To shed some light on the upper (and lower) limits of what to expect from AI, we’ve brought together two perspectives on the topic. On one hand, we have an expert on diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the workplace, Dr. Alicia Ingersoll. She has experience building Black Diamond’s Corporate Social Responsibility program from the ground up, as well as conducting research on promoting diversity within businesses’ leadership as a professor at Utah State University. We also surveyed the TrustRadius community of talent management and HR users, and asked them about the trends in their fields they like and hated the most. Unsurprisingly, AI was among the most commonly mentioned trend, but there was […]

As one of the largest and most popular tech companies in the world, Google products, which are often offered at no cost to personal users, are also among the most popular in their various software categories. In the Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) space, Google offers two different products: Google Voice and Google Hangouts. While these two products are very similar, they provide users with different capabilities and features. These features also vary based on whether they’re being used for “personal” use or for businesses. Below, I’ll dive into the best use cases for both products and share a bit of my experience using both for personal and business use. Google Voice Google Voice provides users with “smart” voice calling across PC and mobile devices (Android and iOS). One of its key selling points is that it can assign users with a personalized phone number that they can sync with their personal devices. This phone number can be used for both incoming and outgoing calls, and receiving and sending text messages. My favorite aspect of using Google Voice is the control over your privacy that it provides. It allows you to use your personal devices for business, while protecting your actual number (and […]

Nearly a quarter of Application Performance Management users are thinking of switching products within the next 1-3 years, according to a recent TrustRadius survey. This seems like a relatively high number of unsatisfied customers. What is driving this high propensity to switch? Companies are looking to eliminate point systems Among the respondents considering switching to a new product, almost a third of them are considering switching to a tool that offers a more comprehensive set of capabilities, including support for cloud environments. For example, some are looking for system comprehensiveness or full-stack coverage: “Support for all of our languages and services, dashboards, alerting, monitoring of App plus infrastructure, including custom metrics.” “Converged view of Metrics, Logs, and Distributed Tracing” “Main and foremost criteria was to select one tool by which we can monitor everything and find the performance root cause.” “End to end monitoring from the end-user and application perspective.  Integration with other monitoring and ITSM platforms.” The pain that respondents are pointing to here is the fact that many organizations have a broad range of point tools for IT monitoring, often reflecting specific silos within the IT organization. Modern IT environments frequently use a variety of monitoring and management […]

Over the past 20 years, the digital economy has been rapidly expanding. It has grown at an average rate of 9.9% per year from 1998 – 2017. And ecommerce, a major part of the digital economy, has grown along with it. According to the Internet Retailer’s analysis of U.S. Commerce Department data, U.S. consumers spent over $5 billion in online purchases in 2018—a 15% increase from 2017. As more individuals and businesses start selling online, choosing an ecommerce solution with the right mix of out-of-the-box functionality and customization becomes increasingly important.  It’s safe to say that ecommerce isn’t going away anytime soon. Especially now that individuals can make online purchases from a range of devices—including computers, tablets, and mobile phones—the percentage of transactions that happen online is likely to continue growing.  Before you start evaluating and selecting a new ecommerce platform, one critical first step is understanding what you’re looking for. There are a handful of key differences between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) selling that, in part, dictate what your next ecommerce software should include. Key dimensions where B2B and B2C online selling differ include: buying motivations market landscape  importance of brand reputation long-term value vs. immediate cost buying […]

Our future as we know it not only should be accessible, but will be accessible. Humanity will not make gains without investing in the development and improvement of tools that provide users with disabilities to fully utilize them. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, employees with disabilities make up 6% of the American labor force. As a millennial with disabilities working in tech, I spend a lot of time thinking about how the software I use at work every day could be improved for my peers and I. I am extremely interested in adaptive and assistive technology, and how everyone, including able-bodied folks, can benefit from them. As web conferencing and video calls become more commonplace, perhaps even more so than standard phone calls, web conferencing tools must rise to the occasion of meeting the needs of users with various disabilities. Whether people are web conferencing from their desktop computers or mobile phones, accessibility is of utmost importance. In this blog post, we’ll explore the basic requirements web conferencing software should meet for basic accessibility. Accessibility features your web conferencing tool should have One of the biggest selling points of web conferencing is that it allows users to communicate online and […]

As we enter the holiday season, it’s worth pausing to consider what we’re thankful for in our professional lives. If you’re involved with, or about to be involved with, buying software for your business, take a moment to appreciate user reviews. Your peers have taken the time to share their experiences with you, the good, bad, and ugly, to help you along in your own buying journey. According to the 2020 B2B Buying Disconnect report, buyers like you use those reviews in a variety of ways, and often in multiple ways simultaneously. Check out some of the top reasons buyers told us they were grateful for reviews this holiday season. Reviews Contain Information You Trust If you don’t take a moment during the holiday season to tease your parental figures that their childhood deceptions about Santa gave you trust issues, you’re missing out on (good-natured?) ribbing opportunities. While software reviewers can’t give you back Santa, they are a crucial source of trusted information for buyers like you. According to our research, the most frequent problem reviews solve is surfacing relevant experiences from trusted sources—other users! While you probably use more than one source of information when buying software, reviews almost […]

Email is a vital force in your marketing strategy, but not your only line of communication with customers.  As your social media, SMS messages, and chat boxes become more prominent in your marketing strategy, you need the right tools to handle all the available communication channels.     That’s why we have seen the lines between email marketing and marketing automation software solutions begin to blur. A few years ago, the breakdown of marketing automation vs email marketing would have been simple:  Email marketing software is designed to send “batch and blast” emails with some segmentation, drip campaign, automation and analysis capabilities. Marketing automation software offers automated marketing capabilities across all your marketing channels — social media, SMS, websites, AND email. Multi-channel interactions with leads are all created and tracked within one platform, allowing for greater personalization and intelligent campaigns. But when we see traditional email marketing vendors like MailChimp offering all-in-one marketing platforms that unite campaigns across multiple channels, it makes you wonder:  Are these two types of software becoming one? Is there still a place for standalone email marketing software? The growing overlap between email marketing and marketing automation software solutions can make your research process more complicated.  We want […]

“Talent management” is a vague, messy set of HR processes that most enterprises can’t live without. Having the right software to manage the process can be the difference between making the most of the talent you have and leaving value untapped.  Many enterprises would likely benefit from a more comprehensive suite of HR and talent management functions that comes as a unified suite. However, you may already have an HR system that just needs an add-on talent management package. With those users in mind, we compiled this list of the top enterprise talent management solutions according to users. To be included on this list, the talent management suite must be in the talent management category on TrustRadius, its largest reviewer base must be enterprises, and it must have a trScore of 7.0 or greater and at least 10 reviews in the last year. The products that make the list are ordered by trScore, with the highest rated products first. UltiPro As a highly rated HCM, UltiPro‘s talent management features are also highly rated by reviewers. UltiPro reviewers come primarily from enterprises (403 ratings and reviews). However, it has nearly as many midsize reviewers as well (364), indicating it can be […]

Maybe you’re looking into VoIP software to use as a personal, private business number. Or maybe you’re evaluating different VoIP providers because you need a cheaper way for your sales reps to contact prospects. Even still, maybe you need a voice solution that can also provide your team with an online meeting and messaging capabilities (check out this post about VoIP and UCaaS platforms if you do).  Or maybe you already have a VoIP service, but want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of all it has to offer.  Either way, understanding all the different ways you can use your voice solution will help ensure that you’re not underutilizing the software. In a recent survey of over 200 VoIP users, we asked respondents how they’re using different products to get a better picture of what the most popular VoIP use cases are.  We also put together a table of the top rated products for the 3 main ways businesses use VoIP technology: voice calls, video calls, and instant messaging.  5 Main VoIP Use Cases The majority of businesses (64%) use VoIP technology not just for making calls, but also for either online meetings or messaging. While many vendors also […]

Application Performance Management (APM) tools help IT administrators ensure that the enterprise applications that employees use to do their jobs deliver a quality user experience and meet defined performance standards or KPIs. Not only do APM platforms indicate that there are slowdowns or other performance problems, but they can determine the root causes of these problems. APM tools have traditionally been purchased by the IT department to ensure that applications are running smoothly and efficiently. However, APM is increasingly being used by product development teams as well. Software Development and the DevOps Revolution The days of software developers throwing finished, debugged code over the wall to the operations team are over. Traditionally, it was the job of the operations team to ensure that the newly developed software runs smoothly in the data center. While this approach was common in the waterfall era, now that most software is built using much more iterative agile methodologies, the wall dividing developers and operations staff has largely crumbled. The DevOps revolution, built on the idea of continuous development and collaboration of customers, product management, developers, and QA is an extension of agile development methodologies. DevOps is an acknowledgement that clean and debugged code is […]

Today’s Community Contributor is Peter Cartier, a marketing and business strategist based out of St. Louis, MO who relies on creative problem solving and informed content to deliver the “what’s in it for me” solution his customers are looking for. He is currently the Marketing & Business Development Manager for an events agency in Downtown STL, as well as the hardest working (and only) employee of his side hustle, St. Louis Copywriters. What does minimum viable product mean and why should you care? A minimum viable product (MVP) is a solution that has just enough features to be dangerous, yet gives ample room for growth as you gather feedback from your customers that will help shape the final deliverable. It essentially helps you navigate the build/measure/learn loop more quickly and efficiently, and it’s how brands like Uber, Zappos, and Dropbox got big. When do you create a minimum viable product? The hardest part of getting started is… well, getting started. When it comes to accomplishing your next big business initiative, so many great ideas and products never make it off the starting block. Too often, we’re bogged down by the details of what level of polish is necessary to launch, […]

Human Resource Management for Small and Medium-Size Businesses (SMBs)  Are you a small business owner?  If so, you are likely an extremely good multi-tasker!  However, do you really have the time to manage the infinite and tedious personal details of your employees?  Probably not. Enter stage left: human resources (HR) software! But I know what you’re thinking: the very last thing you have time to do is research which suite is right for your business.  Enter stage right: TrustRadius! Not only have we cataloged all the different types of HR software, but we have reviews from actual users, each according to your specific industry. Considering the unique needs of small business owners (specifically how your needs may differ from larger companies), TrustRadius aims to narrow down your software choices by highlighting the top-rated HR suites for small businesses. To be included on this list, the product must have a majority of its user base be small businesses and have at least 10 reviews from small businesses.       What Do I Need? So you’re pretty sure your current methods won’t scale up well, but don’t know what to replace them with?  In case you aren’t familiar with what is available, here’s an […]

As the holiday season comes into sight, no one wants to be thinking about buying business software. It’s understandable if your thoughts are more focused on striking the right balance of Turkey and Tofurkey at the office party, managing family logistics come Christmas, and making sure things are running smoothly so you can focus on life outside of work. Before you check out for the holidays, it’s worth taking a look at what’s coming afterward: A new fiscal year, a new hiring season, and new opportunities to make your year easier! As you wrap up your year, it’s helpful to start considering what your requirements should be for you next, or your first, HR management software. Knowing what to look for in an HR management software isn’t necessarily a straightforward process, so we’ve provided some guiding questions you should ask yourself first. These 9 questions will help you determine what your requirements are for an HR management product when you’re ready to start your search in earnest. Questions to ask about Your Business 1.      How big is your company? Like most software types, certain products are scaled to certain user sizes. Some products are designed for startups instead […]

The marketers of the world deserve a round of applause because they have (on too many occasions) successfully convinced me that I absolutely need to have something.  Whether it’s the newest iPhone upgrade, hand soap at Lush that smells like vanilla shea butter heaven, or sleek new waterproof hiking gear from REI; I’m guilty of buying them without truly needing them.  All of these things, while fun to have, are ultimately unnecessary—aka I won’t die without them.  But it can be hard to convince yourself of that when you’re in the moment and about to make a purchase. In my experience, consumer marketing teams have done an excellent job persuading people that a product will make their life better.  Marketers of the tech world put just as much energy and creativity into selling their products as marketers for consumer-facing brands. And it can be hard for businesses and the people on buying committees to sift through the marketing materials and jargon to figure out if their business actually needs to purchase a new piece of technology.  This article goes over 5 tell-tale signs that your business is ready for a modern business phone system in plain (non-market-y) language. VoIP (voice […]

It’s often difficult to identify the right talent management solutions, especially for the Mid-Sized market. There is often increased complexity due to biased articles and paid-for advertising. To give a fair comparison of talent management offerings for midsize businesses, we’re providing users’ experiences into some of the premier programs. These insights directly address the features, benefits and how they can improve your workflow and process. By shedding light on some of the pitfalls, you can evaluate what the right tool is without the plug. Talent management solutions on this list, and in the category, include most or all of the core talent management functions, such as recruiting, onboarding, performance management, employee engagement, compensation management, succession planning, and learning management. We’ve sifted through users’ reviews on TrustRadius to give you a laser-sharp focus on their experiences with talent management products. These insights entail products’ boundaries, top pros and cons, and what makes each product stand out. To be included, the largest portion of these products’ reviewers must come from midsize businesses and the products should have at least 10 midsized reviewers on TrustRadius so we can provide more representative user insights. They are listed in alphabetical order in this post. ADP […]