The Free and Open Productivity Suite: Open Office

Lets say, you are getting almost all functionalities of Microsoft Office suite that you normally use in your computers for FREE. Yes, we are serious about this, what if you get these functionalities at absolutely no cost. And not just this, you also get to use it for as long as you want to, without any Ads, no Pop-ups. Its free in its actual essence.

And why is it free?
Open Office, as the name suggests is an open source code which was initiated as an open source project and today is being updated regularly with code being written from contributors all across the world. This gives you an advantage of having a robust code which has the uniqueness of not just a single team of coding champions, but actually people from all around the world who are coming up with new ideas to enhance the product offering.

Great, so what all can Open Office do for me?

To put it simply, Open Office is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.

Lets put it this way, you would have used MS Office till date while making documents on MS Word, Spreadsheets on MS Excel, Presentations on MS PowerPoint, now all of that comes free to you.

OpenOffice Word Editor:

OpenOffice SpreadSheet Application

OpenOffice Powerpoint Application

OpenOffice Draw Application (like paintbrush)

OpenOffice Database Application

You would surely have realized by now that OpenOffice is a powerful software suite. Office productivity is well handled by this free and powerful software suite.

Fantastic, how do I get this Software?

No need to rush and buy a CD from the nearest software store, all you need to do is click on this LINK and the download will begin. Since its a big application, the download may take time, depending upon your internet connection.

How does it help my business?

For Small and Medium Enterprises the OpenOffice suite is a boon. While it is free and being updated regularly, on the go, it is always available to businesses for free. When you start a small business or while you are an emerging business, it will obviously be difficult for you to buy licences of major software products which are essential for your business. Since this software is free, you can download it on every system that you have in your company.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Convert Your Documents Into PDF for Free

Converting documents to .pdf format is an important essential for businesses. .pdf which stands for (Portable Document Form) is an open format for document exchange. This Wiki article provides a fair definition about .pdf format. "This file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.[2] Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it."

Converting your documents to .pdf format
Since many years, the first word processing software that almost every SME must be using is Microsoft Word. MS Word has been the much evolved form of the simplest word processing software like the Windows Notepad.

A file converted to the .pdf format is platform agnostic. It can be accessed even if you do not have Microsoft Office installed in your system. .pdf is a universally acceptable format and is widely used across by businesses.

How do I convert my documents to .pdf?
PDF converter is one of the free available online softwares which Convert Microsoft Office, Open Office, Lotus, images, web pages and other formats to PDF. This free PDF converter and PDF creator is quick and reliable.

All you need to do is: go to the following URL on your browser: http://www.freepdfconvert.com/ Once there, use the "Browse" button to locate the Word file on your computer, select it and click the "Convert Your File" button. Done!

There are both free and paid versions to the software. It is also available as a download to your local machine, from where you can use it without an internet browser and convert your documents to .pdf format on the go.

What all file format are supported by the free pdf converter?

The most known file formats supported by the free pdf converter are as follows:

1. CSV Comma-separated values file
2. DCX ZSoft IBM PC multi-page Paintbrush file
3. DIB MS Windows Device Independent Bitmap
4. EMF Enhanced Metafile
5. FPX FlashPix Format
6. GIF87 CompuServe graphics interchange format ver 87
7. JP2 JPEG-2000 JP2 File Format Syntax
8. MIFF Magick image file format
9. BMP MS Windows/OS2 Bitmap image file
10. DOC Microsoft Word 1997-2003
11. DOCX Microsoft Word
12. DOT Microsoft Word Template
13. EPS EPS File
14. FAX Group 3 FAX encoding
15. GIF CompuServe graphics interchange format
16. HTM Web page
17. HTML Web page
18. ICO MS Windows/OS2 Icons
19. JNT Windows Journal Note
20. JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format
21. JPG Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format
22. LOG Log file
23. LWP Lotus Word Pro Document
24. MDI Microsoft Office Document Imaging File
25. MHT Web archive
26. MPP Microsoft Project file
27. MPT Microsoft Project file
28. ODF OpenDocument Formula
29. ODG OpenDocument Drawing
30. ODP OpenDocument Presentation
31. ODS OpenDocument Spreadsheet
32. ODT OpenDocument Text
33. PCX PC PaintBrush
34. PDF Adobe PDF
35. PNG Portable Network Graphics
36. PPS Microsoft PowerPoint Show 1997-2003
37. PPSX Microsoft PowerPoint Show
38. PPT Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation 1997-2003
39. PPTX Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation
40. PRN Print to file
41. PS Adobe PostScript
42. PSD Adobe Photoshop
43. PUB Microsoft Publisher
44. RTF Microsoft Rich Text
45. SAM Lotus Word Pro Document
46. SNP Microsoft SnapShot File
47. SXW OpenOffice 1.0 Text
48. TIF Tagged Interchange File Format
49. TIFF Tagged Interchange File Format
50. TXT ASCII Text/ANSI Text
51. VSD Visio Drawing
52. WK1 Lotus 1-2-3
53. WK3 Lotus 1-2-3
54. WK4 Lotus 1-2-3
55. WLS 602Tab document
56. WMF Windows Meta File
57. WPD 602Text document
58. WPS Microsoft Works
59. WPT Microsoft Works
60. WPT 602Text document template
61. WQ1 Corel QuattroPro
62. WRI Microsoft Windows Write
63. XLR Microsoft Works Spreadsheet
64. XLS Microsoft Excel 1997-2003
65. XLSX Microsoft Excel
66. XLT Microsoft Excel 1997-2003 Template
67. XLTX Microsoft Excel Template
68. XPS XPS document file format
69. ZIP ZIP archive

How does .pdf format helps you?

The .pdf format is a platform agnostic format which is accepted by businesses globally and hence you can be rest assured that while you send important documents like proposals, invoices, bills etc. to your business partners, vendors, clients and others, your documents will always be accessible by them and won't require a separate set-up/ software support.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Calculate Anything Anywhere With Calculator.com

What do you do when you need to calculate? Use the calculator or just do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication or division manually. What if its about your important business transactions? What if its about forex calculation, if you need to understand how currency is converted from one to the other, how do you do it on the go?

I can have an all function jing bang calculator
Yes, you can have it. But what is require to access something of this sort on the move? Like on your laptop, mobile or any other connected mobile device you may be using like: iPad etc.

Calculator.com comes to rescue!

With a whole range of calculators available on the platform, Calculator.com allows you to have all your calculation needs fulfilled at one go. The best part about the service is that it is available not just online, infact is available on mobile as well.

The Calculator Directory

Not just this. There is an entire range of calculators available which are searchable in the online calculator directory.

Example: If you need to explore various converters, click on the 'Converters' category under the directory and the following options will appear:

Each category has sub-categories to it. Example: the 'Unit' category has the following Sub-categories:

Such extensive calculation mechanisms are not available usually in your basic calculation hand held calculator, which majorly lies on the desks of almost every small and medium enterprise. 

How does this free tool help my business?

For SMEs such free tools are a boon. Calculator.com allows SMEs to powerfully handle complex calculations while being on the move at all times. It empowers the sales teams to quickly do mathematical calculations, manage margins and win new business, while on the go.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Run Your Business Smartly With Your Data Available on Demand

Consider this: The sales lead is out on a serious pitch and suddenly one realizes, he has forgotten to take along with him, the latest excel sheet with the statistics and numbers. He is almost at the clients end and now is in a major soup; what to do? Should he apologize to the client and ask for sometime? Should he ask someone at office to email him the same?

Challenges for SMEs
Small and Medium Enterprises face the challenge of keeping up with technology, while at the same time they face the challenge of being operationally smart and active, as they need to reach out the service clients in as competitive a nature as their leading competitors in the ecosystem.

For any business to be operationally competitive today, technology is one part which is crucial. Understanding of the same is essential for business leaders. SMEs though get consumed in the day to day operations and in the concern of running the show, that they are not able to really invest their time in understanding the play of technology in their business.

One of the major challenges which businesses face is being constantly updated with information and having access to critical business data while being on the move.

Access your business data online, while on the move: crack sales deals faster
EditGrid is one online solution which allows you to access your excel sheets online, while being on the move. You don't need to worry about your latest file not being on your hard drive. You have access to it, wherever you are.

EditGrid is an Online Spreadsheet Service delivering Data on Demand.

• Spreadsheet: With majority of Excel features, EditGrid allows you to start working easily.
• Online: With sharing, collaboration & publishing features, EditGrid serves a big set of use cases better than Excel.
• Data: Connected to live data sources, EditGrid delivers data on demand.

The same familiar, excel spreadsheet view

• If you've ever used Excel or OpenOffice Calc before, you'll immediately recognize the familiar spreadsheet interface in EditGrid. 
• EditGrid is easy to learn and easy to use, with the features, functions and keyboard shortcuts you've come to expect from a spreadsheet. 
• You can upload your spreadsheets now and start working !

Collaborate in Real Time

• Real-time collaboration is our most popular feature. 
• Have two or more people working on the same spreadsheet in EditGrid? Each change is reflected in real-time to all editors, meaning that everyone is always working with the latest copy of your spreadsheet. 
• We offer live chat and cell/range locking to further enhance your collaboration experience.

Share documents easily

• EditGrid gives you many ways to share, you can:
• share to public
• share with a URL and password
• share to emails
• share to other users
• you can also keep everything private.

Publish your spreadsheets directly to your website/ Blog

• You can easily embed a portion of a spreadsheet or an EditGrid widget in your site. You can also see analytics that track the visitors to each of your spreadsheets.

Get LIVE Data On- Demand

• EditGrid delivers both data and spreadsheet on demand. Live data are provided through spreadsheet functions, e.g. =ystock("AAPL","price"). The portfolio of data you can access through EditGrid will keep expanding. Check them out.

All you need to do to start using the service, is Sign up for it here.

How does it help my business grow?

With access to data LIVE, while you OR your sales team is on the go, your business becomes far more competitive and is able to quickly adapt to the dynamic nature of requirements of your customers.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Build Web Forms in Minutes Without Any Code: Its the Icebrrg!

Lets face it, not every Small and Medium enterprise has the resources to hire a dedicated team of technology enthusiasts. Not every company might really want to invest into resources for work which involve coding and other aspects of technology.

If you don't know how to code, its okay!
Innovative and simple ways to use online technology has made it easier for businesses to do things which otherwise previously required understanding of coding and much more. Start-up entrepreneurs who are boot-strapping find such tools extremely useful and handy.

A form for your website in minutes: without a single line of code!
Now this is called smartness. Many of our SMEs who wish to create online forms for generating customer queries and the rest, find it a little troublesome to understand how to make this form send an email back to me, when someone fills it.

Let Icebrrg do the trick for you in minutes!
Icebrrg is an interesting software which simply makes web forms. A few examples of what kind of forms could be created with Icebrrg are:

How do I access Icebrrg and Use it?

All you need to access Icebrrg is the following URL: http://icebrrg.com/ . Once you reach onto the home page, you need to sign-up to the service, by clicking on the 'Sign-up' button. Once you are done, you are ready to create forms.

This is a paid service and based upon your choice of the volumes of forms you need to build, you are free to choose across the following (as shown in the screen capture below):

How does Icebrrg help me quickly create forms and get results?

The above screen capture shows how Icebrrg actually helps small businesses not only create webforms quickly, but also integrate them on the website/ blog/ web pages and get results!

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Your Virtual Office On the Internet: Access Anything Anywhere

Business in one word today is: SMART. Emerging technologies and equipped workforce has enabled businesses to be operationally smarter than they ever were. What has also brought about a powerful change is the growing SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) sector. Emerging businesses are coming up with new innovations and are better positioned for taking calculated business risks which go a long way in fostering innovation.

What's SMART now: A Global Office for Your SME
Think about this. If you were able to access your office, share workspaces, manage your data, emails, contacts, meetings, documents etc. anywhere across the globe with just an internet connection? Now that's being global.

Contact Office helps you do just this and much more.
Contact office, a virtual office for the SMEs is an online application which allows the users to manage and maintain almost everything related to their business (emails, documents, groups, data) online from anywhere across the world. All you need is an internet connection and a device such as a laptop to access the same.

As shown in the screen capture above, Contact office is simple to access. All you need to do to sign up free is go to the URL: http://www.contactoffice.com/index.jsp and click on the 'Free Sign up' button at the center of the screen.

What are the various features which my business can leverage with Contact Office?

The screen capture below shows the various features which businesses can leverage with contact office:

• Messages

You can gather all your emails (work/ personal) at one place and access them through one single interface, which has all the features of the normal Email client that you use for sending/ receiving Emails.

• Calendar

Your personal ensures that you are always scheduled and that you never miss a deadline. And not just that, you also have access to a Group calendar (which you are a part of). The calendar updates you with daily SMS as well, if you wish to be updated about your schedule on your mobile.

• Contacts

While maintaining your personal contacts, you can also access the Group addressbook, which enables you to access group data. 

• Documents

Data and Document management has become simpler with Contact Office, as now you can maintain and manage your documents while sharing them with your colleagues.

• Virtual Drive

An online space where you can store your documents and this can be accessed while from your computer itself.

• Tasks

Be scheduled with your ready task list at all times. Receive/ Assign tasks with notifications being delivered online and on your mobile phone.

• Forum and Chat

The Forum and Chat tools enable collaboration and learning. Many groups can share best practices online while supporting innovation.

All the above features and tools enable SMEs to better and smartly run their businesses.

Can I customize Contact Office for my use?

Yes you can. The screen capture below shows the modes/ versions in which contact Office is available:

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Organize, Edit and Print Your Photos Online for Free: Picasa

Internet technology has changed the way businesses communicate with their target audience, which involve both the internal audience in the form of employees and the external audience in the form of existing and prospective customers. Businesses nowadays are leveraging various internet tools to communicate, connect and engage customers. One of them is through pictures as they speak a thousand words and we all know its so true.

Let pictures convey your message!
Innovation is the name of the game. Some of the best use of emerging media and modes of communication has been shown by Small and Medium Enterprises. SMEs have taken the lead while creating new examples and setting new trends in business communication.

One of the ways businesses are communicating with their target audience online is through pictures. Eg: to communicate the employee friendly-ness of your organisation to prospective employees, businesses are leveraging online picture sharing platforms to actually represent the existent culture of the organisation. This proves to be an attractive point not only for the prospective employees to join in but also for customers to usher in, as they see happy and prospering employees!

Picasa does the trick!
This Wikipedia article captures what Picasa is in its complete essence: "Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website".

Where do I get Picasa from?
Picasa can be downloaded HERE. The home screen looks like the screen capture below:

What are the various features of Picasa and how can they benefit my emerging business?

• Organization and Editing

You can now maintain and manage your pictures online by tagging them with the intended category. This allows businesses to intelligently tag pictures which if named right also get indexed by search engines and hence provide businesses a good and a smart way to reach out to their target audience through pictorial search results.

• Online slideshow view

Businesses can now promote their events and offerings through interesting pictures while enabling their customers to see full screen slide shows. Such full screen slideshows of events surely helps in attracting customers. As they need to deliver value to their sponsors and delegate(s), online branding through photographs sure goes a long way.

• Gift the printed photographs to your customers

How about surprising your delegates(s)/ employees OR business partners/ vendors by sending them a picture of them with your businesses's backdrop? With the various platforms which are integrated with Picasa, you can order prints online and get them delivered anywhere.

How do I login to Picasa?

All you need to do to login to Picasa is share your Google account details and you are done. The global Google login helps your login from your Google id itself.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

An Online Video Show to Boost Your Branding for Free!

This one is going to be one of the most innovative and exciting ways to build, establish and boost your brand, while not spending much. Marketing is a major challenge for Small and Medium enterprises. Not every SME is enabled to have dedicated marketing budgets and hence technology must be leveraged the right way to help SMEs in establishing a powerful brand positioning.

Create a powerful brand which talks to your target audience
Yes we know how difficult is it for SMEs to leverage traditional media with shoe string budgets. Also, when the focus on generating true ROI is high, traditional media lacks the punch.

Let your brand talk to your customers: create an online video show
Lets make your brand talk to its target audience online. Reach out to your customers through YouTube. YouTube is a video hosting and sharing social network. As a business you can create your own profile on YouTube and create targeted video shows to communicate with your intended target audience.

Eg: Lets say I run a food retail chain business and I need to leverage the power of marketing to increase sales and create a solid brand recall. I will showcase my food in an engaging manner as my target audience like it to be.

The following video shows how Airtel promoted the KBC show with their parody online on YouTube:

Edit your videos to create your own online show
There are many organizations and individuals who have created their own shows online. Editing the videos is pretty simple to do. All you need to do is download a simple tool like: the Windows LIVE Movie Maker. Download the same here.

All you need to do is to create an online branded image with a background sound and insert the same before your video starts. Also create an image with a powerful call to action which engages the target audience and creates a pull for them to take an action.


There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Video Interview Your Prospective Employees for Free

Small and Medium enterprises deal with an inherent challenge of maintaining their cost of operations. Especially when the cost is related to talent acquisition, SMEs are always looking for intelligent and cost effective solutions to address such issues.

Talent Acquisition: How you do it?
Most of the SMEs scouting for good talent in the market either get to the right talent through personal connects or referrals or either through designated talent scouting companies. Opting for talent acquisition agencies increases the cost of hiring for SMEs. Also, the interview process which happens, once a candidate is referred by the talent scouting company, is time consuming. The investment of time and money in the process vis-a-vis benefits is surely a challenge. This can be addressed by  technology and SMEs are looking for it.

Lets reduce your interview handling costs: right away!
Generally post the first level of screening you call candidates to your office and interview them, while investing time and resources. This adds to the cost of talent acquisition for your business.

Consider this: the prospective candidate you need to interview is available for you through video telecast LIVE and you are as much visible to him, while you both speak with each other. You both might be sitting across seven seas, in any part of the world, you will still be able to manage this interview while keeping your schedule.

Hold your next interview with Skype
All you need to do to achieve the above objective is to download Skype, supported with a broadband internet connection, a projector is optional and you are up and running. Using the video calling feature of Skype (which is free) you can hold a video interview of a prospective candidate who must also have access to Skype.

How to setup Skype for a Video Interview?
If you do not have Skype already installed on your system, you can download it for free here. Once you have the setup done. You now need to share your Skype id with your prospective candidate and add him/ her online.

Once you have the candidate added to your Skype id, double click on the name as it appears on your Skype list and the following screen will appear:

Once you have the caller window open on your screen, click on the "video call" option, as marked in the screen capture above. Once you begin the video call, a 'video call window' will appear which will send a request to the other caller to initiate a video chat.

You are now logged into the video call mode, where in you can now interview you prospective candidate just like you would if the candidate would have been sitting in front you in reality. The interview can also be recorded using supporting Skype recording tools and can later be shared across other respective departments.

But I have multiple departments taking a call on hiring!

A single Skype video call can be shared across with multiple stakeholders and hence multiple departments can login while making it a shared call. This way the candidate can be interviewed by the various stakeholder departments at the same time, while being on a single video call.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Create Online Newsletters: Communicate With Your Customers Regularly

For any business being in constant touch with its customers is essential. More-so for the Small and Medium enterprise. With internet becoming one of the strongest basis of communication globally, businesses are evolving in the manner they are leveraging internet technology to streamline communication. For SMEs its critical to both keep in constant touch with their internal customers (employees) and their external customers.

The challenge for SME's
One of the biggest challenge for SMEs is to streamline the process of communication across its stakeholders. Constantly updated information obviously makes it easier for any business to keep the stakeholders engaged in the opportunity. Large companies can afford to hire and manage sizable teams to drive internal and external communication, though with emerging companies, maintaining dedicated teams only for communications may not be feasible at all times. The cost associated with a dedicated communications team may not be the highest priority for an emerging enterprise.

If you don't keep your customers in the loop always, you are slowly creating (unknowingly) a gap in the window of engagement with your customers, both prospective and existing. In times today, customers are well informed and demand to be updated with relevant information, which must enable them to make future business decisions.

The solution: creating a scalable communication infrastructure
For any SME, creating a powerful and scalable communication infrastructure is crucial. The basis of every successful communication being content, has to be powerfully engaging for the intended customers. To start with, the simplest and a proven successful mode of communication is a Newsletter!

How do I start my own NewsLetter online?
There are multiple services available online which help you chart out your own newsletter in minutes and once you have it, you can upload it and target it to your database of the relevant target audience. One of the simplest tools you can use online to build a newsletter is: MNB (my newsletter builder).

MNB is an easy to use online software with in-built design and editing tools which enable the SME to quickly collate relevant content, package it in the right manner and leverage the power of Email marketing to take the message to the relevant intended target audience.

DIY makes it easy!
The do it yourself nature of the software makes it easy for anyone to quickly learn the art of creating effective News Letters and start communicating on an ongoing basis with the intended target audience. If you are not a designer, the platform also provides templates which you can customize according to your branding etc. and create a professional looking newsletter.

All you need to do to create your first newsletter on MNB is: Sign up for a free trial, post which you choose a template (custom brand it), add your content to the same and upload your database (to which the newsletter is to be sent to). Once done you are ready to roll your first news letter out.

How will I know how many people have read my Email?

Once done, MNB also provides you with powerful statistics, which actually enable you to know how many people have seen your Email and how many have taken an action (eg: clicked on a URL in the Email).

There are many such tools available online, which help you manage your communications easily till you are a certain size in business. For emerging SMEs an automated newsletter is a very good start. Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is happy to create such opportunities for emerging enterprises to enable them with emerging opportunities towards business success!

For more, drop us a comment and our team of experts will touch base with you!

Online Advertising: How Banner Ads Can Help Your Business Reach Out

As the internet is emerging as one of the most trusted sources of information about anything and everything, businesses are realizing the power and hence are reaching out to their prospective target audience (customers, employees) etc. online.

Advertising is important for any business!
For any business, advertising is crucial. Its a part of the overall marketing strategy and is a critical piece in the overall go to market plan for the business. Its important for any business to create an impacting influence on its target audience. Advertising plays an important role in the same.

Advertising: the challenges for an SME
For Small and Medium enterprise one of the biggest challenges in terms of advertising is to effectively reach out to the intended target audience, with the right message, which engages and generates intended result for the business. But advertising traditionally through Newspapers, Magazines is costly. Though effective, its a costly medium for a business for reaching out to its target audience.

Another challenge is the engagement these mediums cause and the reactive responses of the target audience to the advertising. For SMEs its difficult to gauge the real effectiveness of advertising through these mediums and hence it becomes difficult to drive real ROI.

Online Advertising comes to the rescue!
Online advertising has proven to be one of the most cost efficient and effective advertising mediums for not just small businesses, but all emerging businesses. Banner Ads are the most common form of advertising on the internet.

What are banner Ads and where can I see them?
Banner Ads are nothing but a form of advertising which is the most prevalent online. Banner ads provide a means of reaching thousands of potential customers with your marketing campaigns. These campaigns can be started easily and can be tracked strongly while giving powerful return on investment for a business. Banner ads are highly engaging with the type and kind of content which they can display. Eg: a banner ad could display a simple, well designed Jpeg to a highly interactive flash based game!

You can see these banner Ads on various websites which allow advertising and also as part of various web pages. The simplest form of such advertising is the ads that you see around your email box while you are accessing it. Eg: if you have a Gmail account, you will see contextually created Ads which will be relevant to the conversation you are having on Email and be positioned for you!

How do I create my first Ad?
One of the simplest ways to do it is to use the Google Adwords Ad engine. Its a free tool which needs a little education to learn and once you have a hang of it, you can easily sit and manage your online advertising yourself.

How effective are these Ads and how is the ROI calculated?
Very effective is the answer. The technology which the Ad engine works upon is basically a contextual focus engine. Every user is being studied by the Ad engine intelligently (artificial intelligence). Based upont he user patterns, the Ads are targeted to the user.

The effectiveness of these campaigns is often measured by calculating the "click-through" rate. This rate is the percentage of times an ad is clicked, based on the number of times it's viewed. If a banner ad is seen by 200 site visitors and 10 of them actually click on the ad, the banner ad has a click-though rate of 5%.

The real ROI which has to be calculated further is, once the click through rate is confirmed you need to confirm your webmaster as to how many of these clicks actually converted into queries/ sales for your business.

To ensure that your marketing budgets are being utilized properly, you must ensure that your online Ads are targeted to the right set of target audience. Eg: if you are a pain killer medicine, hosting your Ad on a discussion forum for technology may not be a great idea.

For SMEs, online advertising is one of the easiest and the simplest most forms of advertising and outreach. And not just that. Its much lighter on the pocket compared to the other traditional forms of advertising as discussed above.

To know more on how your business can leverage the power of the internet to go to the next level, drop in a comment to this post to get in touch with our team of experts at the IndiaMART Knowledge Services.

Online Tools for Enabling Purchase and Sales for B2C Businesses

With the evolution of Internet, the business environment has changed. Businesses large and small today are operationally smarter. The modes of communication have changed and so have the methodologies which many businesses apply and leverage to communicate with and engage their customers.

Purchase and Sales: critical business functions
E-commerce has literally changed the way businesses transact. As customers are increasingly checking reviews and buying online, businesses are going the extra mile to ensure that they reach out to their customers, where they are thronging.

Advantages of being online?

1. More and more customers are going online now and are increasingly making quick buy decisions online hence for businesses capturing these new age customers is easier online
2. Low Cost of customer acquisition: for Small and Medium Enterprises E-commerce is a boon.
3. Providing enhanced and better value to existing customers while reducing down transactional cost of customer service
4. Increasing customer loyalty: by reaching out and rewarding loyal customers easily
5. Ease of updated information flow to attract potential buyers
6. Market research: powerful market research to increase customer understanding

Examples of Online tools for B2C businesses:

• ebay.in

Ebay, as we know of it, is one of the largest portals globally connecting buyers and sellers. Anyone can list himself/ herself as a seller on Ebay and start selling online. Lakhs of potential buyers throng the online marketplace for fantastic deals, some of which are generally not available otherwise. Though registration on Ebay is free, but it restricts the seller in terms of the number of product categories, till you have a premium account.

• indiaplaza.in

Again an online shopping portal which has over 1 million online transacting customers globally. It provides both free and paid listings of products which buyers can go through and buy finally.

• shopping.rediff.com

One of the most trusted online shopping portals. Rediff shopping is a large online marketplace where sellers list their products freely, which are available to millions of buyers across the world. The one differentiator which Rediff shopping has is: it enables sale and purchase of majorly three services:

• products
• gifts AND
• auctions

• naaptol.com

An early entrant social shopping portal in India. Naaptol capitalizes on the concept of web 2.0 and comparison based reviews and shopping to affect the customers buying decisions. Product listing is free on this site. Naaptol is more consumer centric in its approach as it provides comparison between the various category of products which empowers the customer to take better decisions.

Such B2C online shopping networks provide lucrative options for the customer to have the same experience while shopping online as he/ she has while shopping regularly from shops and other establishments. Eg: many online shopping portals provide the facility of free delivery. Some even go to the extent of COD  (cash on delivery). Product reviews of the various listed products enable the customers to take better buying decisions.

Best deals for SMEs

Not only do these online B2C networks provide the best deals (as buyers) for SMEs, but they actually prove as fantastic platforms for small businesses to boost sales by directly reaching out to the engaged buyers. Also this creates a dialog between the seller (SME) and the buyer while the cost of acquiring new clients goes down.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Increase your Sales With B2B E-Commerce Websites

Many businesses are at cross-roads when thinking about how to leverage the internet when it comes to B2B businesses. With web going the 2.0 mode and with web 3.0 coming to the fore, communication has changed and so has the way businesses engage their intended target audience.

Internet and how businesses engage with other businesses
Internet has changed the way businesses interact and engage with other businesses. For any business reducing down the cost of operations is essential for effectively scaling up the business and increasing profitability. B2B E-commerce websites have created an online ecosystem which has the various stakeholders involved as:

1. Buyers
2. Suppliers
3. Vendors

For Small and Medium Enterprises such B2B E-commerce platforms are crucial not only in terms of helping them in reducing down cost of operations but also in helping businesses become operationally more active. 

How do SMEs benefit from B2B E-commerce market-places?

Small and Emerging businesses find multiple benefits through E-commerce. Increasing sales is one crucial resultant which many businesses have and such B2B E-commerce networks have overtime proven that businesses can not only increase outreach in domestic shores but expand to opportunities globally.

The wide range of services offered by these e-commerce platforms are free and paid both. Apart from generating business leads for emerging businesses, such B2B e-commerce platforms also help small businesses effectively market themselves to the intended target audience through in-built trade letters and other marketing tools and features. Potential buyers are free to navigate through these sites and place orders, while looking at the trust and credibility of each of the vendors.

Many small businesses are able to reduce down their sales cycle with such an approach. With reduced sales cycle, emerging businesses can focus on other aspects of the business and make themselves operationally smarter.

The best part about such E-commerce platforms is, that for many emerging businesses which don't have an online presence, free web pages are created where they can display their products and service offerings. This gives them a chance to showcase their might and hence instill credibility in the prospective customer.

How do I register my business on such platforms: example!

Lets take an example of IndiaMART.com. All that you need to be active here is to login to the site: www.indiamart.com. If you are a supplier/ seller, you can become a member for free by clicking HERE. The following registration form will appear as in the screen capture below:

Once you are logged in you will be granted access to MyZone, where you will find the navigation menu which will enable you to navigate through your profile online and benefit from the various set of services which are provided to free users by IndiaMART.

If you are a buyer, you can search for products which you are interested in, using the search function at the top of the page.

For buyers and suppliers the following set of services are available:

Which other B2B E-commerce platforms exist?

There are many such platforms existing which create an ecosystem around buyers, suppliers and vendors.

• Trademart.in

Buyers and sellers get free listings in 27 business portals. As a free member one can use search tools, contact each other directly. Buyers can post sales leads and send inquiries to suppliers free of cost. Sellers can post products to sell and contact certain buyers who accept quotations from free members.

• Alibaba.com

Global leader in B2B e-commerce with over 6.5 million members in 240 countries worldwide. By registering free a business enterprise gets a free company website and can display up to 50 products. The site gives free trade alerts and free 'trendsget', which gives the trends on the most searched products, most inquired products, categories with fewer competitors and more.

• ecplaza.net

Features are similar as Alibaba.com. In its ad-service, there is “one-a-day" option, which is a way to promote only one company, product or service to the target customers of the world for a day in all pages of EC Plaza website.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Free Business Guide and News updates on SMEs: Be updated!

The business environment today is highly dynamic. Access too all sorts of updated information on the move has affected decision making in the positive. Business leaders have to make quick decisions which requires access to high quality information, while on the move.

Information and content
Information is the key to the success for any business. Internet has changed the way businesses access information today. What has also brought about a major change is the ease of access of information which has been enabled by growing infrastructure like 3G, Wi-fi, and emerging mobile devices.

But there is such a lot of information available, how do we get the right resources?
Internet has all kind of information available, hence finding only the right resources is crucial. You must have access to the right pieces of information which will enable you to take just the right business decisions. Eg: if you are investing in stocks, you have to have access to the right information at the right time, to take instant calls.

How do you search for information online?
The simplest way to search for relevant information online is "online search". Google is the simplest way to search for any sort of information online. All you need to do is: search for the relevant topic on Google and you will have the relevant search results with all the global information on the topic you are searching for made available to you.

Focused information for SMEs

For Small and Medium Enterprises it is an imperative to have access to classified information which is from highly relevant resources and helps them take sound business decisions and look at new opportunities. there are may resources online for the same, here is a list of a few we found useful:

• SME Toolkit

This is an online resource centre to empower Indian SME's and help them become globally

competitive. It also has free downloadable software tools such as the 'Business Plan Maker' the 'Website Builder' and a large collection of 'How To Articles'.

• SME Times
• SME News

All the above listed online resources are some of the best resource centers for information on subjects related to SMEs.

Other information sources online

There are many other information sources online as blogs, news letters, networking groups like the one's on Linkedin and high quality sources like the HBR (Harvard Business Review) online.

How can such content keep reaching me automatically? Can I subscribe to it?

Yes! Content can be subscribed in the form of RSS feeds which reach your desk, refreshed everyday. You can be updated with LIVE content as it happens.

Internet sure is changing business and team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is ensuring that we help SMEs grow, while creating the supporting ecosystem with all possible information. To know more, drop in a comment to this post and our team will get in touch with you!

I Need a Website: Where Should I Start?

We are living in the times of the world wide web and internet has changed the way businesses are conducted. With new modes of communication the need of making exist infrastructure which is critical for good business operations is crucial. Though there is much action which is happening in the online space, there are many young emerging start-ups and other traditional businesses which are now either establishing themselves online OR trying to explore the online world for business growth and other objectives.

Get started: lets book a domain for you!
The next few steps will enable you to book a domain. But first, what exactly is a domain? A domain is essentially a URL (the name of your website). Eg: if your company name is IndiaMART, you may go ahead and book a domain as www.indiamart.com or as you wish.

But before you book a domain, you need to see if it is even available or not?! Yes, it is not necessary that the domain you have chosen for your business/ yourself will always be available.

To do the same, follow the following steps as listed in order:

• Go to a web hosting provider: eg: Godaddy.com (US), Hostcats.com (India)

As shown in the screen capture above, search for the link which says 'domain name registration'. The same will redirect you to the following screen (as shown in the screen capture below):

Type in the domain that you need to book, in the text box and the host will let you know whether the domain is available or not. Also what needs to be considered is, if you don't find a domain with an extension .com, you might find the same with the extension .org OR .in. While booking the same, you must first consider and consult legally as clashing with an existing brand name might not be a good idea for the future of the company, once it grows to a considerable size.

Great, I have the domain, now how to set up my website?

Hold those horses! Great you have the domain booked. Now to host a website, what you need is a space. Its the same as, if you want to build a home, you need a plot of land to construct a house. Similarly you need a plot of land (space on the world wide web) to construct your website (which is like your home online).

For the same you can go to the 'Hosting' option on the site and look at various offers and plans. Though there are different types of hosting and you might get confused. To make things simple, you may go in for a linux based hosting which provides you good bandwidth, space to host your Email, is compatible with new blogging platforms like wordpress etc.

Once done, now you have a domain with hosting, hence you have everything required legally to construct your house online.

How do I build my website now?

There are free tools which help you build a basic HTML website with basic functionality, though if you have the right budges and if your business requires you to be superbly presented on the internet you might as well want to hire a good web designer, who could understand your business and design you a good web solution.

Otherwise you can also leverage free online options like Wordpress, which can help you host a good looking website which is scalable in nature and quick to develop and host.

As emerging businesses there are many free and interesting online solutions which can help your business scale up to the next level, while creating new business opportunities for you. To know more on how you can leverage the internet for your business, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will get in touch!

Your Personal Brand Online: With About.me

In times today keeping your updated is important, also on the list of important things is keeping others updated about you. Especially to explore and build upon global opportunities professionally, you need to be actively communicating and reaching out to relevant people.

Branding and positioning for SMEs: the challenge
Its not just about branding your business, its about positioning yourself as well. For any emerging enterprise much of the business that it initially does comes through the professional relationships which its founding or the core team shares with the world outside. The professional relationships help in gathering the initial momentum which is needed to launch and position your product/ service/ offering in the market.

For SMEs the challenge is to find innovative ways of positioning themselves, as for them marketing by investing into major offline media is rarely an option during early days of business.

Personal branding: yes it works!
In many cases, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises, the initial business comes in based upon the strength, powerful positioning and solid proven experience of the core team and other team members. The core team of any emerging company must be positioned across well online. Your personal impression creates an impression of your company's/ business in the mind of your target audience.

How should I brand myself online?
Personal branding is as critically driven an exercise as is the branding for your business. There are some critical factors that you must keep in mind:

• Convey your message in short and sweet words
• While creating your profile on any networking website, try keeping your 'username' the same as the name with which you want to position yourself: eg: if I want the world to know me as ABC, I will take facebook.com/profiles/abc, Linkedin.com/in/abc, twitter.com/abc etc. This will also ensure that overtime search engines also get to know that I am ABC
• Keep all your online profiles updated at all times

Is there some platform where I can express myself once and whoever wants to connect they can!

You must have a profile on About.me! Yes that's the website. Not really a social network, About.me essentially is like an attractive looking HTML "About Me" page online. It allows you to create a creative profile of your own and share it with the world.

How is it different from other social networks?

About.me is not really a social network. Its simply a platform where you can express yourself in anyway you like the world to know about you and if it  interests people, they can connect with you on the rest of the social networks (aka: facebook, Linkedin) etc.

How do I access About.me?

Its simple. Login to About.me, it will take you about 5 minutes to be ready with your profile for the world to see. You can share links to your other social network profiles which you feel are good to be made public.

Not just that, About.me also shares with you statistics in the form of how many people visited your profile, average time spent on the profile etc.

Advantages of a powerful personal profile!

While SMEs will appreciate the advantages of a powerful personal brand, the advantages of being on an open network where people are expressing and sharing about themselves is that you can establish a relationship and connect with them while exploring various opportunities. A personal connect and a reference always works better when generating business/ exploring opportunities. And here you are connecting with people globally.

To know more about how you can create a powerful personal brand online and leverage open global networking to your personal and business advantage, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services will be happy to help!

Take Your Business Global With Online B2B E-commerce Platforms

Internet has changed the way business is conducted. There was a time when it was all about having a good website with great Google page ranks. With the inclusion of E-commerce and Social Web 2.0, businesses are now evolving and adjusting to new ways of conducting various operations. From using emerging online business tools to improve productivity to leveraging social networking to improve marketing and increasing outreach while keeping the costs low, internet has revolutionized the way businesses operate.


E-commerce helping SMEs grow: New Opportunities
Internet based technologies, especially the e-commerce, offers SMEs the opportunity to cut business transaction costs and find new customers and suppliers. Also e-commerce creates a whole new opportunity for SMEs to reach out and explore markets, both domestic and international without being present physically. This was not possible earlier.

Online B2B E-commerce websites which facilitate the business oriented networking between the vendor and the client online are gaining momentum. There are many of them existing which have successfully helped small and emerging businesses to scale upto the next level by increasing footprints globally and better establish and manage vendor relationships.

Some of the top ranked B2B E-commerce networks are:

1. www.indiamart.com
2. www.trademart.in
3. www.alibaba.com
4. www.ecplaza.net

Thought there might be difference in features of the different B2B exchanges as listed above, the broad existent purpose for all of them is creating an online space for the sellers and help them get connected with the interested buying community globally. 

How do I list my company on these B2B exchanges?

Almost all of these platforms are free for listing your company on them. While some of their services are free, there are some services which the business needs to pay for. 

All you need to do to list your business on all of these platforms is just click on their names above and reach to the concerned website and register your business there as suggested. Eg:

Post reaching the website of IndiaMART, if youa re a new user, you need to register by logging in, which you can do by clicking the relevant category of whether you are a buyer OR a supplier, as shown in the screen capture below:

If you are a supplier, the platform automatically provides you options to fasten your sign up process and better achieve your business objective.

Suppliers can: 

• Create their website for free
• Advertise free
• Subscribe to trade alerts

These features help a business to create an online presence quickly and register online to be listed in their business directory of suppliers worldwide. Once your listing is done, you can get a free website as part of the platform in a few steps.

How does it help my emerging business to have a website?

• Reducing down cost of creating your own website and hosting it online
• If you have no technical knowledge on these B2B exchanges you can quickly just enter in the information you have and create the web presence

Great, but how do I connect with buyers globally?

Its as easy as the above step of getting your website up and running on IndiaMART as an example (as one of the B2B exchange platforms).

The screen capture above shows on the right hand side of the screen a listing of buyers and sellers across the world who are updating their requirements. If you are a seller searching for buyers of your product, you must ensure that you list your business in the sellers directory on the left most side of the screen, as shown in the screen capture below:

How can SMEs leverage such B2B exchanges?

For Small and Medium enterprises such B2B exchanges are a great opportunity as not only do they provide a platform to market and position your business strongly in front of many prospective buyers globally but also provide you quick access to many trade leads.

What if right now I don't have the scale to serve larger trade leads?

B2B exchanges like IndiaMART provide a platform where you can connect with relevant service providers/ vendors. Example, if you happen to bag a major order globally and you think your production capacity is limited to only a certain extent and you don't have the time to scale up by installing new machinery, you can go online and collaborate with a quality supplier and successfully deliver your orders, which further helps you slowly scale up to the next level of growth.

Be updated about relevant events globally

Networking is one of the best ways to start business relationships and participating in global events is one of the best ways to do the same. The B2B exchanges provide updates on global events which you can attend as a business. This will help you establish a brand recall in the target market. The screen capture below shows how you can see and access relevant events globally for your business.

There are many such such B2B E-commerce platforms emerging globally which help SMEs to work towards expanding and scaling up business to the next level of growth. List your business on these exchanges and take advantage of global networking.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is always geared towards creating growth oriented opportunities for SMEs. To know more, how you can leverage the internet for your business, get in touch with our experts by dropping in a comment to this post!