Small Business

©iStock/ArtemSam Accounting software company Xero recently surpassed one million subscribers worldwide on its global cloud accounting platform. The company has doubled subscriber numbers in less than two years and has quickly grown to become a global accounting platform leader, adding nearly 300,000 subscribers in the last year alone.  What's the future hold for Xero?  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next wave of innovation not just for accounting, but for all aspects of running a business. In the last 12 months, Xero has processed more than $1.2 trillion of global economic activity, giving it a unique and high-value dataset to drive insights and machine learning. Xero’s machine learning system can now code invoices for small businesses, categorize expenses and recommend accounting practices to a potential client, automating the busy work of accounting, freeing advisors up to focus on providing clients with expert advice.  Xero seems to be reinventing and changin

from The Global Small Business Blog http://ift.tt/2obybsH 5 Tips to Help Your Business Go Global-Small Business

©iStock/slidezero_com The world is your oyster.  So where do you plant yourself to be in the best position to thrive?  I am based in Chicago but is that the most vibrant city for conducting global business? How can I choose a city with the right conditions that will provide ample opportunities for success? To spread your global wings, here are 13 international cities every entrepreneur should consider expanding to or even living in. (Note:  Chicago is not one of them.) from The Global Small Business Blog http://ift.tt/2nvdh5c 13 Cities Offering World Domination-Small Business

©iStock/AdrianHancu Instagram was developed in 2010, and was acquired by Facebook in 2012. It’s available in 25 languages. Mr. [James] Quarles [VP for Business at Instagram] sees the big business potential, with their 600 million active users and their more than one million advertisers monthly . eMarketer, a forecasting company, projects that Instagram is capable of generating $3.64 billion in global advertising revenues this year, which is so much higher than what Facebook can generate.  Read more here . Anything new on the horizon for Instagram?  Soon it will launch another tool that will be available to its global users. It is a booking tool that will help users set up appointments and reservations with service companies via their business profiles. from The Global Small Business Blog http://ift.tt/2nqKZIQ One Million Monthly Advertisers and Counting: Instagram-Small Business

©iStock/8vFanl What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners: Learn five takeaways from the ICC  World Trade Agenda Day. Jack Ma's bold promise —that Alibaba would help create 1 million jobs in the U.S. over five years. Souq.com — which sells health and beauty products and electronic goods — has become the highest-valued internet company in the Middle East. Why should you export ? The financial and cultural considerations to importing for small businesses. How a small table maker Vintage Industrial   takes on Alibaba's flood of fakes. from The Global Small Business Blog http://ift.tt/2mHSRZf Today in Global Small Business: Small Table Maker Vintage Industrial Takes on Alibaba's Fakes-Small Business

©2017 Laurel Delaney.  All rights reserved. " The future is female; so how do we get there? " -- Chicago Reader from The Global Small Business Blog http://ift.tt/2nPDAWb The Future is Female-Small Business

©iStock/Cofeee The head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, announced the 2017 National Small Business Week awardees for 16 different categories ranging from exporting, outreach, contracting, lending, disaster recovery to manufacturing and research and development.  Small Business Week is set as the first week in May. The National Exporter of the Year 2017 award goes to: Rose Morris, President Abram's Bed LLC Dba The Safety Sleeper Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Rose's story goes like this: I am a loving mother of three children the middle of which is Abram who is on the autism spectrum. Like many other families who have a loved one with special needs, I struggled with finding a good solution to protecting my son at night.  There was no product on the market that could support my son's sleeping issues, night wanderings, temper melt-downs and give us the freedom to be a typical family. I feared for Abram’s safety and out of that fear,