Small Business News

Making the Internet of Things (IoT) accessible, affordable, and easy to deploy is a great way to bring small businesses into the fold with this technology. With its Sprint (NYSE: S) IoT Factory, the company has developed an IoT platform businesses of any size can leverage to improve their organization or provide IoT enabled services.

Sprint has formed a partnership with myDevices and The Goldie Group to deliver comprehensive IoT solutions. The ready-made boxed units are available in a wide selection of monitoring options across several industries, and with more on the way.

This new IoT approach by Sprint is going to give small business owners access to an industry slated to grow to trillions of dollars in the next 7 to 10 years. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, potential IoT economic impact could range from $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. There is no reason small businesses should miss on this this enormous opportunity.

Ivo Rook, senior vice president for IoT at Sprint, pointed out the importance of harnessing this technology for small businesses owners in a press release.

Today’s global economy offers more opportunities than ever to small businesses. But for U.S. manufacturers specifically, it also has led to more competition than ever.

Offshore manufacturers, particularly those in China, have been able to produce products at a fraction of the cost that those same products require in the U.S. In fact, about 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs were offshored between 2001 and 2011, with a third of those going to China. That shift has slowed in recent years, but U.S. manufacturers still face higher labor and operations costs and other challenges due to offshore competition.

But this doesn’t mean your manufacturing business can’t compete on a global level. Here are some tips on how to compete agaist offshore manufacturers, even as a small business.

Customers love a great deal. But the fact of the matter is that you simply can’t compete with manufacturers from China and select other countries when it comes to price. So don’t cut yourself

If you’re like a lot of small businesses and organizations, you may be using a personal email account — like Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Yahoo — to communicate with a group of email contacts.

Chances are you’ve also noticed some limitations in what you can and can’t do with a personal email account.

One of the biggest limitations of using a personal account is in the design of your emails.

If you’re not a professional designer, it’s tough to create emails that actually match your brand and make your business look professional.

Other limitations include:

Are you sure that email from FedEx is actually from FedEx?

A major problem for small businesses is recognizing phishing emails. Oftentimes, hackers trick employees into clicking malware infected zip files and malicious links in emails that redirect to fake landing pages. This type of cybercrime involving sending fraudulent emails that appear to come from a reputable company with the aim to steal financial and confidential information is known as phishing — and it’s a real threat.

According to a 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, almost half of malware (49 percent) is installed via email. This is because a large percent of people in the workplace cannot identify a phishing email. Since people cannot identify phishing emails, simple errors generate a significant percentage of data breaches, reports Verizon.

“Ignore the stereotype of sophisticated cybercriminals targeting billion-dollar businesses,” Verizon writes in its report. “Most attacks are opportunistic and target not the wealthy or famous, but the unprepared.”

If you and your employees don’t know how to identify a phishing email, your business is at risk. Everyone needs to know how to spot a phishing email and play their part i

People who hold two jobs, otherwise known as “moonlighters,” are just as engaged and productive in the workplace as their colleagues who have one job. However, moonlighters are likely to sacrifice personal time and family as a result, says a new study from Ball State University.

Bryan Webster, a management professor at Ball State University led a multi-university research group that recently published the study Is Holding Two Jobs Too Much? An Examination of Dual Job Holders (PDF) in Springer’s Journal of Business and Psychology.

The study challenges the commonly-held notion that people who “moonlight” are not as focused or dedicated as those with only one job. Before this study, little research had been done on moonlighters’ job performances and productivity, even though the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found 7.2 million Americans had two jobs in 2016.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, people with two jobs work an average of 46.8 hours, which is significantly more hours compared to the 38.6 hours per week an average A