Author: dpugh007

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are spending confidently on their tech stacks. Much of this is driven by the affordability of cloud-based services. Tools such as marketing automation, CRM, and web analytics, are helping SMBs to improve productivity, increase efficiencies, and reveal new insights into their business operations. 

But with so many emerging technologies available, there are many decisions to be made. Choose the right solutions and your business is optimized for growth and expansion. Choose the wrong solutions and your investments may end up under-utilized and your business plans stalled. 

Why its difficult to find solutions that are “fit-for-purpose”

Because technology powers almost everything SMBs use, choosing the right solution starts with understanding how that product will enable your business.  

For example, SMBs often have immediate, tactical pain points that they need to address, such as time-consuming and manual workflows. But they’re also looking to maximize and coordinate their investments in a meaningful way and are turning to cloud and mobile technologies to help them do just that.  

Today, 62% of SMBs are using one or more cloud-based solutions in their business while 49% use mobile applications to manage operations. But with so many software-as-a-service (SaaS) and mobility options, how do you ensure these investments are both future-proof and work with your existing technology stack?      

The problem with today’s tech stack, particularly for SMBs, is that SaaS tools are often procured by teams or individuals with little oversight by IT. This leads to disjointed, fragmented silos that can create operational blind spots for companies, not to mention shadow IT headaches.  

Another challenge is data. Data is being captured at astonishing rates across your business – data about customers, employees, equipment, inventory, and so on. Data that could drive insights, decisions, and even compliance – if you have the power to collect, share, and learn from it. The trouble is most businesses are using manual processes to collect information – paper forms, fillable PDFs, images, etc. – making information time-consuming to collect and deriving insights from that data impossible.   

Yet, there are solutions that address each of these challenges, and they draw on the tools that SMBs are fast embracing – mobile technology and cloud services.

Optimize your tech stack and improve workforce productivity

For example, cloud-based mobile workflow platforms make it easy for SMBs to create powerful applications (no coding required) to capture, share and glean insights across all facets of the business. By replacing each of your paper forms with an application that can be filled out on a smart device and passed from one user to another for review and approvals, tedious tasks, errors, and inefficient processes are replaced with a digitized, streamlined workflow. And, because the data is stored in the cloud, it can be seamlessly pushed into existing tools like QuickBooks, Box, Google Drive, or other systems via Zapier integrations for greater utilization and insights.

By spending less time on inefficient paperwork, like completing inspections, filling in timesheets, customer surveys, retail inventory control, and more, employees can get more done and the customer experience is improved. Imagine being able to add photographs, signatures, location/time stamps and even dispatch people to jobs from a shared calendar, all from a single app.

Check the box for future-proofing your tech stack

Once a single use case or pain point is addressed, you can expand the scope to include other tasks and business processes. So, you might start with a payroll application, but then you identify a need to improve your inventory control. Adding an application for that workflow is easily done. Using pre-built templates or codeless customization you can quickly build an application to help you keep inventory and displays up to date.

There are thousands of use cases for the mobile digital capture solutions, so it is easy to expand into other workflows or tackle emerging pain points as your business positions itself for future growth – at a much lower cost than bespoke solutions. 

Reduce your IT footprint and get more from your investments

Transitioning your business to mobile technology will not only streamline transactional processes, give you more accurate information, save hundreds of hours, but it will also reduce the footprint of your tech stack and take the pressure of IT. 

As your company continues to digitally transform, look to procure solutions that seamlessly interface with existing systems and data – across your operations. No one wants 20 vendors in their tech stack, SMBs need unified, turnkey, future-proof solutions that address today’s need while easily scaling to tomorrow’s. Such solutions must be easy to implement and integrate with legacy tools so that your tech stack delivers maximum results with the least amount of impact on your investments and resources. 

James Robins, Chief Marketing Officer at GoCanvas

• We’ve also highlighted the best small business software

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 needs to pack a punch to get the series back in the limelight. There aren’t many Galaxy Note 10 leaks or rumors just yet, but we’ve put together a list of what we want from Samsung and its next flagship phablet to help propel the handset to the top of the pile.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is packed full of features and tech, yet in a lot of ways it still feels like a small upgrade to the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Update: Another Samsung Galaxy Note 10 leak has again pointed to a 6.66-inch screen, which means we’re likely to see a screen size increase over the 6.4-inch Note 9.

So as much as we love it, we’re hoping for more from the Samsung Galaxy Note 10. We want big, fundamental changes and upgrades that go further towards justifying its inevitably enormous price tag.

We’ve listed some of our specific hopes below, but before that you’ll find early rumors and educated guesses at the release date, specs and features of the Galaxy Note 10.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? The next stylus-toting flagship from Samsung
• When is it out? Probably August 2019
• What will it cost? More than most other phones

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 release date and price

It’s likely that the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 launch date will be some point in August 2019, as in recent years Samsung has announced new Galaxy Note handsets in August.

However, the exact point in the month does vary. The Galaxy Note 9 for example was announced on August 9 2018, but the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 was announced on August 23 of 2017.

And even once the Galaxy Note 10 is announced it will likely be at least a couple of weeks before you can buy it, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t hit stores until late August or September 2019.

As for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 price, the Note 9 starts at $1,000 (£899, AU$1,499) and it gets even more expensive if you want more storage and more RAM. 

Given that smartphone prices generally seem to be rising we’d expect the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will cost at least this much.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 news and rumors

So far the only real thing we’ve heard about the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 is that it will apparently have a 6.66-inch screen. And we’ve heard that not once, but twice already!

That’s up from 6.4 inches on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and while we’d take this with a pinch of salt it’s believable, given that phone screens keep getting bigger.

In more vague news, the Galaxy Note 10 is apparently codenamed ‘Da Vinci’.

Given that Leonardo da Vinci was a famous painter that could hint at upgrades to the S Pen, though exactly what those upgrades would be is unclear. Leonardo da Vinci was also very talented in lots of other ways though, so this could equally be a suggestion that the Note 10 will be a very versatile phone.

Beyond that we can take some educated guesses as to what the Note 10 might offer. For one thing, based on past form it will probably use the same chipset as the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Now, we don’t know exactly what that will use yet either, but it’s almost certainly going to have the latest high-end Snapdragon chipset (probably the Snapdragon 855) in the US and the latest Exynos one elsewhere.

The Galaxy S10 is also rumored to have an in-screen fingerprint scanner and a triple-lens rear camera, so those features might well also come to the Galaxy Note 10.

The Note 10 is also almost certainly going to have a curved Super AMOLED screen. You can probably expect water resistance too, given that all recent Samsung flagships have that.

And of course, the S Pen will make a return, though quite possibly with some new features and refinements.

What we want to see

While there’s no Samsung Galaxy Note 10 news just yet, we have a good idea of what we want from it. You’ll find our seven main suggestions below.

1. A customizable Bixby button

As much as Samsung might want us to use Bixby in favor of Google Assistant the reality is that for the most part it’s just not as good, and Google has so much of a head start that we doubt it ever will be.

That wouldn’t be an issue except that Samsung insists on putting a physical Bixby button on its Note phones, so for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 we either want this to be removed or to be customizable, so you can set it to launch something other than Bixby.

2. HDR video recording

Many high-end handsets can now record HDR video, but the Galaxy Note 9 can’t. It’s a shame, because it’s a noticeably weak point in a camera that’s otherwise great.

So we really want to see HDR recording offered by the Samsung Galaxy Note 10. And not just any HDR, but 4K HDR (which is also offered by some rivals), so it can shoot videos that look as good as its photos surely will.

3. An in-screen fingerprint scanner

The Note 9 has a fingerprint scanner on the back, which allows for slim bezels on the front (though still more of a bottom bezel than we’d have hoped to see) but arguably makes it slightly trickier to reach than a front-facing scanner.

We also noted in our review that it’s too small and too close to the camera, making it easy to accidentally hit that instead and smudge the lens.

So for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 we want the scanner on the front, but rather than being under the screen we want it built into the screen, like a few phones are now offering.

4. A completely new look

The Note 9 is a nice looking phone, but it’s also similar in design to the last few and the bezels are starting to feel a bit much compared to the likes of the iPhone X and Huawei P20 Pro.

So we’d like to see a design overhaul for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10. It can keep the water resistance and the curvy screen, but hopefully the rest of the design will change to something fresher and more modern.

5. A lower price

There’s no getting around the fact that the Note 9 is a very, very expensive phone and we’re expecting the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will be at least as pricey.

But we’re hoping it won’t be. If Samsung can shave a couple of hundred dollars/pounds off the price then it could have far wider appeal.

6. Improved facial recognition

The Galaxy Note 9 has both an iris scanner and facial recognition, but – as we note in our review – even combined these sensors are no match for Apple’s Face ID, so we’d like to see real improvements here for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.

That will probably mean packing in more and better cameras and sensors on the front so it can build up an accurate 3D picture of our face. 

That could be expensive and make removing the bezel trickier, but if it leads to a fast, secure scanner that works in almost all lighting then it might be worth it.

7. An even longer-lasting battery

For the Galaxy Note 9 Samsung upped the range’s battery size to 4,000mAh, delivering over a day of life in the process.

That’s good work, but we want to see further improvements for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, especially given that batteries wear out over time, so if you plan to hold on to the phone for two years or more you might notice significantly reduced life by the end.

On that note, if Samsung can make the battery degrade slower that would be appreciated too.

• The foldable Samsung Galaxy X could also land in 2019

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