Statistics recognize that anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are active in North America, versus tens of thousands of enterprise-class outfits. Given these numbers in the game of business, it should come as no big surprise that major PC vendors do what they can to court the SMB marketplace. There are some surprising values and some interesting offers to be explored in this market.
In this tip, we'll examine offerings from Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM, all of which cater either to small business (like Dell, which defines small businesses as those with 200 employees or less) or directly to the SMB sector by name (HP and IBM):
What all of these programs have in common is a recognition that this is a huge market sector. It's dominated by organizations that desperately need the productivity gains and competitive advantages that savvy information technology can deliver, but that don't have sufficiently large or specialized operations to staff full-fledged IT departments of their own.
Sure, all of these sites offer special financing and lease deals to SMBs, and all include special product and solution offerings -- particularly in the many different vertical markets where SMBs are traditionally active -- plus discounts and incentives of all kinds. You also find increasing emphasis on buybacks, investment or obsolescence protection, and recycling of old or used computing equipment.
But where individual programs tend to shine brightest is in the ways they choose to educate, support and service their SMB customer bases. Dell, for example, offers unlimited access to a broad and amazingly varied online education platform with more than 350 courses for a mere $149. Dell small business customers can not only learn about their PCs, servers and other Dell equipment, but they can also take courses on typical productivity applications, all kinds of database platforms, financial software and even soft skills like project management, people management and so forth. Dell also offers highly targeted solution sales assistance and consulting services for most topics, from system design, configuration and installation to on-site security audits and remediation services.
Not to be outdone, HP provides an SMB-targeted Learning Center with more than 100 free courses on everything from technology introductions (security, servers, basic information technology and more) to more focused training on applications, technology deployments and specific workplace tools. HP also offers online access to product and technology experts and provides assistance in designing and planning for technology deployments. It also has lots of useful case studies and scenarios to help SMBs better understand their requirements and how best to meet them.
IBM doesn't shine as brightly in the learning department. Unlike HP and Dell, it offers little low-cost or no-cost training for SMBs. IBM does, however, offer great values in other areas SMBs are likely to find useful. It has special consultancies that focus on business operations and processes and that can really help SMBs understand how to maximize returns on technology and IT investments. IBM also offers terrific automated tools to help unsophisticated buyers design design systems and make technology buying decisions with their product and solution finders. In addition to ready access to expert advice, IBM also offers a resource finder, which points to white papers, Redbooks and other information and materials that aren't exactly training, per se, but will help SMBs learn how to understand and use IT for better business advantages.
All in all, these vendors demonstrate that they understand the potential value of customer success for their bottom lines, and they support those customers' attempts to add to their own bottom lines. If you work in an SMB and are looking for information, opportunities to learn and a sense of what Web-enabled applications can do for customer training, support and relationship building, you can learn a lot from the Web sites mentioned at the outset of this tip.
Ed Tittel is a full-time freelance writer, trainer and consultant who specializes in matters related to information security, markup languages and networking technologies. He's a regular contributor to numerous TechTarget Web sites, technology editor for Certification Magazine and he writes an e-mail newsletter for CramSession called Must Know News.
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