Business of all sizes exert considerable effort keeping track of what they spend and what they take in.  And many have employees who travel to meet with customers and prospects in order to drum up business. Managing all of these expenses is a tedious, but important task. Though manually keeping track of it all could be costing you money too.

I recently spoke with David Alexander, Vice President of Marketing and Market Development for SAP Concur, a leading provider of cloud-based integrated travel and expense management services and solutions.  He shared how using an automated platform for managing travel and expense tasks can help small businesses not only be more productive, but also provides insight into how they’re spending money — which can help them save money in the end.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the full interview, click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Business Trends:  Maybe you can give me a little bit of your personal background.

David Alexander:  I’ve been here at SAP Concur for about a year and a half now. And my role here, I’m the Vice President of Small Business Marketing and Market Development. So I am essentially responsible for all of our pipeline and early conversations with existing customers and new business customers for all our prospects and customers under 1,000 employees.

Prior to that, as you know, where you and I met, I was at Microsoft for about 12-1/2 years and in various marketing and sales roles over at Microsoft as well.

Small Business Trends:  Maybe you can give us a little bit of a high level view of what Concur does.

David Alexander:  I think most customers out there would probably expect us to be a travel and expense company. I think that’s traditionally been where a lot of customers have gotten to know us. But we’re more than that. We’re really a travel, expenses, invoice company. We’re providing a number of different resources for our customers, specifically in the small business segment.

I like to think of them in what we deliver to customers in three big buckets. The first is the things that we help small businesses do to thrive and grow. That’s giving them automated tool sets. That’s giving them a tool to give them access to their spends, and enable them to spend more effectively. And that’s going to be the sweet spot where I would say our travel invoice and expense products fall into. And I would say that’s where a lot of customers are most in tune with what we deliver.

The second part though, would be add ons to those services, that’s helping our customers … what we say, like see the unseen, right? That’s giving them insights into data and into their business and their operational cashflow. So that’s going to help them ultimately identify risks before it finds them, which is really critical, especially for when we’re talking to customers in small business. And also help give them visibility into their end to end total spend management.

Then there’s the third piece, which is the area where we continue to grow as well, which is more of that “better together” story that we provide small businesses. So we’re trying to enable small businesses to give them a platform with SAP Concur as a solution where they can get some of the benefits of being a … similar to being a large enterprise, even though they are a small company with the collective buying power of other small businesses.

That would include products like our new Hipmunk offering, which you may be familiar with. And several of the solutions that we provide as part of our apps, and our end solution partners as well. So it’s kind of those three buckets is really where as an organization we live. It’s beyond that category of total spend management and into kind of a newer, bigger, broader category.

Small Business Trends:  How does being able to manage that through a system like yours in the cloud, what does that bring to the table?

David Alexander:  It brings a number of benefits, right? Like I said, the primary benefits are really enabling them to increase their financial viability, right? Help them … as we all know, the keys and the tools to being a successful small business is managing your spend effectively and helping to avoid some of the risk that would put you in a financially difficult situation, especially in those early years where it can be very, very difficult. And so our tools not only help you automate the processes that can become very time consuming … as we all know, as far as managing your expenses and managing your payments as a small business. We help automate that piece, which actually can help you get to your son’s baseball game or your daughter’s baseball game, right, for example.

We also enable you to start to get insights into pieces of your business that you may not have visibility into on a spend part. As we go and talk to a number of different small businesses, it’s actually fascinating when I talk to them to hear the stories of what they see as they start to dig deeper into their spend and start to find places which, number one, may be out of compliance. But number two, may also be places where they can start to identify risks for their business as well. It’s not just that negative identify compliance issues and risk issues. But it also gives you that visibility so you can go and optimize and spend in the best way possible as well.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah, I would assume that you use the term automate as part of this process. How does this data get entered in around travel and expense?

David Alexander:  Yeah, I would say the integration piece is absolutely critical. So integration with your payment systems and your ERP systems is absolutely critical. And then getting the information into the system actually starts to become very simple at that point for our customers, and we have a number of ways that you can go and access that information. For example, the mobile app, which is very, very convenient. I use this thing weekly, almost daily myself, whether it’s approving expenses or approving invoices that are coming through the system.

You can also use that to go and set up your trips and manage the trips that you may have as well if you’re part of a broader organization or traveling a lot. So, the mobile component is key to our story as well. We know specifically for small businesses, a lot of what we do every day as small businesses is be out on the road, deal with customers, and that mobile component really helps you to be productive, keep your business moving forward no matter where you are.

Small Business Trends:  Does this also help in terms of maybe allowing employees to optimize their loyalty points or loyalty program stuff? Is there a way that this actually helps employees not only do the mundane, but also optimize their opportunities to get rewards?

David Alexander:  Sure. And that’s kind of that big community component I talked about before where as being part of the SAP Concur community, you start to gain access to different partners like American Express and ADP that you may not have had access to discounts previously. Additionally you’ll find, to directly answer your question about kind of consolidation of loyalty points and those kinds of things, our Triplink app actually does a lot of those things and really helps you manage your travel and your spend and all of your various travel suppliers in a single application.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it’s an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.

The industrial world has been in the throes of digitization for well over a decade. Primarily through enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES), critical planning, scheduling, warehousing, inventory management, and logistics processes have been automated and simplified. But these gains have been restricted to technology silos, supporting separate functions of the factory rather than improving the performance of the plant — and its extended supply chain — in a broader way.

Those days may finally be in the past, as manufacturers now have a golden opportunity to take advantage of digitization’s promised outsized benefits. The advent of complex smart sensors, artificial intelligence, big data pools, and robotics, combined with the vast connections of the cloud, is heralding a new era for manufacturers, marked by totally integrated factories that can rapidly tailor products to individual customer needs and respond instantly to shifting demands and trends. This fully digital factory can be a catalyst for a kinetic growth agenda delivering gains in productivity, financial and operational performance, output, and market share as well as improved control and visibility throughout the supply chain. The factories also foster improvements in safety, environmental sustainability, and the rightsizing of global factory footprints.

Sometimes known as Industry 4.0 (the first three industrial waves were built upon steam-engine mechanization, electricity and the assembly line, and the emergence of computers), the digital factory is a broad network featuring equipment from the catalog of the Internet of Things, integrated into an end-to-end ecosystem. This ecosystem includes internal functions — for instance, sales, procurement, engineering, and R&D — and external players, including suppliers and customers.

The contours of the digital factory are still evolving as technology advances, but in today’s nascent reckoning, it looks something like Fujitsu’s plant in Augsburg, Germany. At this site, an all-encompassing information technology backbone controls a supply “supermarket” where components for Fujitsu’s computers and other hardware products are stored. As customer orders are received, parts are picked for assembly by robots, loaded onto self-driving electric vehicles — which make up what’s known as the logistics train — and carried out to production stations using just-in-time and just-in-sequence processes. The specifications of each assembled product may differ and dynamic screens show workers precisely which components belong to each order and display detailed work instructions. Changes to product features can be made on the fly throughout the assembly process by on-site design and engineering teams, whose members are also available to respond to late shifts in customer requirements. Downtime is minimized because predictive maintenance procedures, based on historical and real-time data for each piece of equipment, automatically address incipient problems before a breakdown. The entire production process is paperless, the factory leaves virtually no carbon footprint, and the daily output of 12,000 PCs, laptops, and workstations and more than 1,000 servers ranks Fujitsu’s Augsburg plant among the most productive and cost-effective in the world.

Digitization Meets Customization

Although it’s exceptional, the Fujitsu site just hints at the possibilities for digital factories. Indeed, the overall slow adoption of digital factory concepts can be seen in a recent PwC survey of 200 German manufacturers (German companies were examined as a proxy for advanced manufacturers globally because they have a well-earned reputation for production innovation). Although more than 90 percent of survey respondents said they had earmarked money for digital factories, these investments were overwhelmingly for stand-alone or only partially integrated technologies. A mere 6 percent of companies categorized their factories as being “fully digitized.”

However, perhaps the most intriguing takeaway from the PwC survey was that despite their timidity about digitization, manufacturers are beginning to recognize its strategic potential, which previously tended to be overlooked. That’s not to say that bread-and-butter tactical considerations are ever far from manufacturers’ minds; 98 percent of respondents still view digitization somewhat blandly as a path for increasing production efficiency. But at the same time, a whopping 74 percent of companies named regionalization (being able to set up or expand factories in markets where their products are sold and where opportunities exist to widen revenue streams through customized products and improved service levels) as a primary reason for digital investments.

Moreover, in a sharp departure from the recent past, the possibility of being able to immediately tailor products to match customer preferences and to offer customers the option to “build” their own products appears to be driving production decisions more strongly than slashing labor costs. Indeed, only about 20 percent of respondents now plan to relocate manufacturing facilities to low-wage countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America; nearly 80 percent are looking at Western Europe (where their largest customer bases are) for new digital factory capacity. Evidence of this trend can be found in Adidas’s new “speed factories” — one established last year in Ansbach, Germany, and another this year in Atlanta. In these facilities, automated production lines, managed by human programmers and fed by networks that oversee the sportswear company’s supply chain, are able to make a pair of expensive, customized cross-trainers from start to finish in about five hours. In Adidas’s low-cost, less digital Asian factories, this process can take several weeks. According to the company, the speed factories will more than pay for themselves in the next few years when they are scaled up. In particular, the speed factories are expected to slash the long lead time for debuting new shoe designs and allow Adidas to react quickly to about-faces in customer preferences.

Modernizing the Technology Spine

Some of the technology spine in digital factories involves relatively old-fashioned software (primarily legacy ERP/MES systems or even MS Excel) that was originally acquired to perform basic planning and address operational inefficiencies. By joining these isolated data and analytical networks, via sensors and the cloud, to a common infrastructure, it is possible for components, machines, production managers, transportation vehicles, and assembly-line workers to continually communicate with one another and the extended ecosystem in real time — greatly shortening the distance and time from raw material to finished product and facilitating proactive equipment maintenance.

Much of the impact of digital manufacturing will come from significant advances that are still evolving and that postdate the traditional ERP era — for example, robots that can learn through repetition rather than programming. This equipment can give workers the opportunity to train machines quickly to tackle multiple tasks, flexibly shifting robots from job to job as specific factory activities take precedence.

Another example is drones, which can be used for rapid transport of a missing part to an assembly station and for visual surveillance of plant and equipment performance. In a somewhat more open-ended application, Austrian automotive supplier Magna Steyr employs drones in its plant in Graz, Germany, to independently fly through the assembly line, scanning materials labels to compare against available stock in the warehouse and provide information to the network for managing factory inventory. Magna Steyr has also embraced an intriguing component of the digital factory whose potential value is just beginning to emerge: namely, the digital twin, or a virtual doppelganger of the plant, including form, functions, and chemical and physical processes. With this approach, new factories can be designed and engineered in three dimensions, and potential glitches and inefficiencies may be remedied before the plant is put into service. After the plant is on-line, real-world performance and activity data is fed back into the digital twin, which can be monitored and adjusted to continuously optimize processes and maintain equipment at peak efficiency.

Understanding the Obstacles

One of the more intractable obstacles to a successful digital factory is the makeup of the workforce itself. This type of advanced production approach represents an entirely new model of human–machine interaction, one that not many workers — or manufacturers — are prepared for. In our view, understanding the impact on the people in the company is at least as important as calculating the financial benefit of the digital factory, in part because the former will ultimately impinge on the latter. Employees who feel marginalized by the emphasis on new technologies or who are not equipped to work in that environment will compromise the factory’s chances for success.

Purely from this perspective, companies are clearly aware that they are not ready for digital factories. According to our survey, around half of manufacturers believe that their employees are not open to digital change, and an equal proportion feel that their company lacks a truly digital culture. Part of the solution is to retrain the company’s ablest workers to be more data oriented and conversant in programming factory automation equipment; another is to support government-based apprenticeship programs and recruit employees who better match the requirements of a digital factory. In other words, manufacturers cannot afford to be passive but instead must lead the charge toward reorienting the skill sets of their current and future employees.

But that alone is not enough. Top management must actively support the move toward digitization and, very publicly within the organization, build trust and acceptance for the new strategy by offering employees a convincing narrative of how they will benefit from the technologies.

Executives could stress that workers will be relieved of tasks that are highly repetitive, physically difficult, and unsafe while improving their accuracy and productivity. They may enjoy the benefits of a cleaner environment inside and outside the more ecologically sound factory. And their employment and salary prospects may actually improve. Approximately half of the companies responding to the PwC survey expect wages in digital factories to increase, and they believe that older employees will be able to stay at their jobs longer; 86 percent expect that overall, the number of hours employees work will stay the same. This suggests that companies will be sharing some of their new gains in efficiency and revenue with their workforce.

There also may be ways to monetize the data generated by the manufacturing process itself. The implications of this are profound. With a digital factory, instead of focusing solely or primarily on production, some companies may have opportunities to increase profit margins and customer share in the lucrative after-sales market as well as tap entirely new business sectors. Importantly, the digital factory ecosystem must include an integrated digital supply chain that is fully networked and transparent to all the players involved — from the suppliers of raw materials, components, and parts, to the transporters of those supplies and finished goods, and finally to the end customers.

Because successful digital factory applications are transformational, don’t expect a quick payback as might occur in a more isolated technology upgrade, such as adding a single robot to the assembly line. Although the benefits of a digital factory far outpace the gains from one-off technology improvements, it is likely that the return on investment for a digital factory could take as long as five years. But that just adds to the urgency for manufacturers to get started on the path toward transforming their plants now. Think about it: In 2023, is it even possible that industrial factories will look anything like they look today? Now consider the competitive position your company will be in if it is the last to realize that the factory of the future has arrived.

If you’re looking to sell a business this may be the time — and you may want to look for buyers under the age of 50.

The 2018 Small Business Owner & Buyer Demographics study by BizBuySell has revealed 53% of small business buyers are under the age of 50. But the largest percentage of buyers in a single age bracket are between the age of 50 and 59 years old at 32%, the survey says.

BizBuySell Q1 2018 Insight Report

According to BizBuySell, around 10,000 small businesses changed hands in 2017 across the United States, which was a 27% year-over-year increase. And increasingly, the buyers are getting younger than existing owners.

For small business owners looking to sell their business, BizBuySell is reporting this is a great time to make it happen because deals are closing faster at record high average sales prices.

In the comapny’s First Quarter 2018 Insight Report, Bob House, president of BizBuySell.com and BizQuest.com, explained:

“Both buyers and sellers are in a really good position right now. With healthy financials, owners are able to secure a great return, while buyers are taking ownership of valuable businesses. Whether you’re a business owner looking to sell or an entrepreneur searching for a new venture, the window is open to take advantage of the strong market.”

BizBuySell carried out the survey with the participation of 2,300 small business owners and buyers across the US to determine the driving factors for their decision.

Some of the Survey Results

The report revealed some further interesting trends. For example, 77% of buyers in the survey were male while 23% were female. A similar ratio was seen among sellers with 78% being men 22% being women.

Among potential buyers surveyed, 21% said they planned to purchase a business in less than 3 months while another 18% said it  would more likely be in 3 to 6 months. Another 19% indicated a business purchase might be 6 to 12 months away. More than a quarter of those surveyed or 26% said they are currently looking to buy a business.

Among the challenges they face in their efforts, more than half or 58% of potential buyers said it was finding the right business while understanding how much a business should be valued was a difficulty for 13% of respondents.

Another 12% gave coming up with a down payment as their chief concern, while 10% said the greatest challenge was getting approved for financing.

Negotiating the price with the previous owner seemed the least of buyers’ concerns with only 2% mentioning this as an obstacle.

Buying a Small Business

BizBuySell calls itself the largest business for sale marketplace on the internet, currently holding an inventory of approximately 45,000 businesses in 80 countries around the world. The company says it strives to create an acquisition experience in which both small business owners and potential buyers receive valuable insights into the state of the market at any given moment.

Whether you are buying or selling a business, having these insights may assist you in getting the best deal.

Image: BizBuySell

Consumers choose a brand for a host of different reasons, and the new survey carried out by GraphicSprings.com asked international passengers which airline they would like to fly based just on the logo.

And not surprisingly, depending on how you look at it, one of the best airlines in the world, Etihad was first. Remember this was just based on the logo of the company. This result highlights why it is significant for companies to put their best effort into all of their customer-facing products, whether it is a logo or something else.

For international small business travelers, the logo may be a nice feature, but value is more important. And as more small businesses continue to expand globally, finding the best value for their travel budget is a challenge.

The study was extensive, analyzing the survey from 24,000 people between the age of 17 and 78 in 68 countries who flew in the past 24 months. The survey was part of a larger study on corporate logos and branding penetration. The goal was to understand how marketing and other pieces of data affect travelers on the desirability of a particular airline and whether they would like to fly on it.

The Result

Brands associated with luxury, such as Etihad and Qatar airlines were in the top three, with Germany’s Lufthansa taking the third place. For these airlines, 98, 96, and 95 percent of the respondents respectively said they would like to fly them.

When it comes to the most recognized airlines, Lufthansa and British Airways took top spots, which in part affected how respondents felt about the airlines overall. Being recognized brings with it biases both good and bad.

For overall desirability, the airlines from the Gulf States, such as Emirates, Qatar, Etihad and even Turkish Airlines are all seeing their brand growing.

2018 Best and Worst International Airlines

The Top Tier Airlines

The Bottom Tier Airlines

Brand recognition plays a very important role for any company. And in this survey, companies with highly recognized brands did much better than those with little recognition.

Air Astana from Kazakhstan was last. But the bottom tier was also populated by airlines from the UK, and South Korea, which shows the airline doesn’t have to be from a country most people can’t point to on a map.

Value for the International Small Business Traveler

When a small business owner makes arrangements to travel internationally, in most cases cost will greatly determine which airline they will be hopping aboard on.

Key to finding the best deals is getting online and making the arrangements ahead of time, months if possible. This will get you the best price for the flight, hotel stay and even car rental if you need it.

Photo via Shutterstock

More in: Small Business Travel

Six months after Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) launched its gaming creator program, the company announced it is being expanded to give emerging gaming creators a place where they can be discovered. The Level Up Program will help gamers with getting started, getting discovered and eventually start making money. So the platform is actually a tool to launch your own small game development business into the market.

Getting discovered so you can grow your subscriber numbers is not easy. And for emerging gaming creators, Facebooks’ new addition can make this possible by letting you get started with its community and live stream.

If you haven’t heard about the amount of money high-end gaming streamers can make, you are in for a shock. According to CNBC, Twitch streamer Tyler “Ninja” Belvins says he makes more than $500,000 a month playing a game called Fortnite.

Belvins makes the money from Amazon Prime subscribers who are able to donate money to his Twitch account, a company Amazon purchased for $970 million in 2014. Getting to his level is not easy and it takes time, talent and the right game to come along, such as Fortnite or Minecraft.

The Growth of Gaming

Gaming is growing at double-digit rates, amassing billions of dollars every year. While the movie industry generated $40 billion in 2017, according to the Hollywood Reporter, the gaming industry almost tripled the amount. In 2017 the industry saw revenues of $108.4 billion, and it is expected to grow at double-digit rates well beyond 2020.

Of this huge amount, $82 billion was generated from free-to-play games, which provides great opportunities for small business game developers looking to make a name for themselves.

Using Facebook to Get Discovered

When it becomes available, which Facebook says is in the coming months, Level up members may be able to get early access to new features for live streaming. The company will provide tips and best practices so gamers can grow their community by making content for their audience. This includes eligibility to qualify as partnered creators and Facebook’s gaming creator program.

When it comes to earning money, creators that are accepted into the Level up program will have the opportunity to generate revenue through native monetization tools on Facebook. This feature, called Facebook Stars, allows fans to support creators by purchasing and sending virtual goods when a game is being streamed live.

Qualifying for the Facebook Level Up Program

If you’re already stream games on Facebook, you may qualify to be part of the Gaming Creator Level Up Program. Once you are part of the program, you can access customized support on Facebook, high-quality premium transcoding such as access to 1080p, 60 fps, unlock Facebook Stars to get fan support and more.

However, in order to be eligible, you have to create a “Gaming Video Creator” page, broadcast 4 hours in the last 14 days, broadcast on 2 days in the last 14 days, and have at least 100 followers on your page.

If you meet the criteria, Facebook will verify the information and invite you to join the program.

If you are a creator interested in joining the gaming creator program, you can sign up here.

Image: Facebook

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When it comes to smartphones with a stylus, there is one standard bearer, and it is the Samsung Galaxy Note. The new LG Q Stylus is a midrange smartphone equipped with premium features doesn’t try to compete directly with the Note but still delivers the features at a more affordable price point.

The Q Stylus is going to be available in three different configurations. The regular Q Stylus, the Q Stylus+ and the Q Stylus a will also see different price points, making the lower end model even more affordable.

A small segment of small business users rely greatly on the stylus but don’t want to dish out the nearly $1,000 price for a Samsung. For this group, the LG might just be the right midrange alternative.

As Ha Jeung-uk, senior vice president and head of LG Electronics’ Mobile Business Division, explains in a press release, “The LG Q Stylus adds another dimension to our series of exceptionally-priced midrange phones that deliver amazing value to consumers. This phone is another example of LG’s promise to deliver a wider selection of devices this year with premium features designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s evolving smartphone users.”

Features of the LG Q Stylus Smartphone

The Q Stylus is part of LG’s Q series midrange of smartphones. The stylus can recognize and record handwritten notes even with the display off. And beyond taking notes, it can also be used to annotate images and videos to create animated GIFs.

Here are the specs all the models share:

• Processor – 1.5GHz Octa-Core or 1.8GHz Octa-Core
• Screen – 6.2-inch 18:9 FHD+ FullVision Display (2160 x 1080 / 389ppi)
• Battery – 3,300mAh
• OS – Android 8.1.0 Oreo
• Size – 160.15 x 77.75 x 8.4mm / weight 172g
• Network – LTE / 3G / 2G
• Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n / Bluetooth 4.2 / NFC / USB Type-C 2.0 (3.0 compatible)

When it comes to the memory, storage and camera, the Q Stylus+ has the higher end specs with 4GB RAM / 64GB ROM / microSD (up to 2TB) / rear 16MP camera with PDAF /front 8MP or 5MP with super wide angle (SWA).

The Q Stylus and Q Stylus? both come with 3GB RAM / 32GB ROM / microSD (up to 2TB) but they have different camera configurations. The Q Stylus has a rear 16MP camera with PDAF and a front 8MP or 5MP with SWA, while the Q Stylus? has a rear 13MP camera with PDAF and a front 5MP with SWA.

Some of the other features the phones share include DTS:X 3D surround sound, IP68 water and dust resistance on the Q Stylus+ and Q Stylus, fingerprint scanner and more.

Price and Availability

The LG Q Stylus is going to launch on a limited basis in North America and Asia starting this month, with other regions around the world to be followed in the third quarter. The company is going to announce the price at the time of availability locally.

Photo: LG