The economy’s in the dumps, your already small business has laid off even more workers and there’s no money to buy the equipment you really need to compete.
That’s not an unusual situation for many firms in Canada these days. The recession might be technically over, but times are hardly booming for businesses that still find themselves penny pinching and scrambling to stay out of the red. Canada’s entire economy is built on small businesses and a huge majority of our nation’s workforce are employed at a business with less than 500 seats. So it’s critical that those companies do well if we want our collective financial fortunes to rise again.
But how can small businesses compete in these lean times? Especially when competing against mega-corporations that actually still have resources left in the bank?
ITBusiness.ca had two guests in to try and get some ideas about that. Morgan Smyth is president of the Toronto-based Braegen Corp., and his firm specializes in helping small businesses turn around their weaknesses and improve their value. Clarence So is senior vice-president of product strategy at San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, a cloud-based service catering to sales professionals. Both have ideas on how cloud-computing services can help small businesses, and some other tips to boot.
Correction: Morgan Smyth’s title should read “Braegen Corporation.”