The Business Solutions Network

We haven't covered kiosks as much as we've covered other technologies in the magazine over the years. If I had to guess, I'd say that many VARs are put off by the enclosure portion of the solution. As you might know, there's way more to doing kiosk enclosures than people would expect. In 2009, I spoke with Chris Gilder, CEO of Merdian Kiosks, a company that specializes in kiosks (if the name didn't give that away),...  Continue Reading..

A friend of mine outside the world of resellers and IT reads this blog on a daily basis just because he wants to be a supportive friend and help boost my Google Analytics ego. Since its launch, we've posted 80 articles here on various topics. Of course, certain themes have presented themselves which even my friend the outsider has caught onto. Just the other day he asked me about the POS industry and what was happening.  Continue Reading..

Some of you may recall RSPA RetailNOW a few years ago (2009) when United Bank Card (UBC), now Harbortouch, made its grand appearance at the show. Jared Isaacman, the company's CEO, received boos from some of the dealers in the crowd as he tried to make an announcement that included the concept of free POS (point of sale) hardware and software.  Continue Reading..

If you've been following this blog or reading our monthly magazine, you know that we've been writing regularly about the opportunity for our integrator audience to sell IP video solutions. At this point, we've used survey data, analyst commentary, comments from experts, anecdotes from readers who've successfully made the jump, and so on.  Continue Reading..

Since Sunday evening, I've been in Orlando, FL for Autotask Community Live! If you aren't familiar with Autotask, the company manufacturers software designed to (according to its website) organize, automate, and optimize your IT business so you can spend less time managing it and more time growing it. This is my first time attending the event and I'm pretty impressed for a number of reasons.  Continue Reading..

I'm a little slow to pick up on certain things. Over the past couple years, I've written scores of articles about the opportunity for our audience to sell IP video solutions. However, it wasn't until recently that I gained some insight that would have made my previous articles so much more valuable.  Continue Reading..

Today, something a little different. I want to let you know/remind you that the RSPA (Retail Solutions Providers Association, the POS industry's only association) is collecting data from POS dealers to create a report of key performance indicators you can use to make better business decisions.  Continue Reading..

In many cases, it's a combination of many different things that contribute to a company's success and pinpointing what's leading to success is difficult.  Continue Reading..

An occasional topic amongst editors at Jameson Publishing, the parent company of Business Solutions, is getting “too close” to a topic. More specifically, we ask — due to our perspective, number of people we interview, the successful nature of the people we interview, the amount of knowledge we have, etc. — if maybe we’re missing the mark in our articles by assuming our audience knows the same things we know.  Continue Reading..

Just yesterday I received an email from a reader who questioned an opinion article from Matt Pillar, the editor in chief of Integrated Solutions for Retailers (ISMR). While ISMR is an end-user/retailer-focused publication, Pillar has recently been talking with VARs and integrators and doing some writing for Business Solutions.  Continue Reading..