Inspired by the success of the Inc. 5000 community, Inc. brings you GROWCO: Grow Your Company Conference, a two-day event created for business leaders who want to achieve sizable growth within their organization.

In 2012, Inc.'s GROWCO Conference pulls together a dynamic program with a curriculum designed specifically for the nation's rising entrepreneurial stars, including smaller organizations that want to make an appearance on the Inc. 5000 and Inc. 5000 honorees that want to break the higher ranks of the list or repeat their success in years to come. High-profile growth experts teach seminars that will give attendees actionable information with which to develop or maintain their own growth initiative.

"At GROWCO, entrepreneurs have the chance to get together with their own kind, other highly ambitious company builders, to trade ideas, network, and learn from the bigwigs of the entrepreneurial world," says Jane Berentson, editor of Inc. "Attendees come away from Inc. conferences inspired and energized."

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A company's reputation is only as good as the customer service it provides. Please a customer, and your client base will swell with relatives and neighbors who catch wind of your top-notch representatives. But upset one, and brace yourself for disaster. "The experience that individuals have with a company and then what they hear from friends and family influence their perception of and likelihood to do business with a company," says Megan Burns, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, a Massachusetts-based research firm that specializes in customer service. It's "absolutely an essential moment of truth for companies."

Though a teetering economy may tempt executives to cut corners, improving service is your best chance for survival. "Companies of any size should understand what the customer experience is," says Andy Fromm, president of Service Management Group, a Missouri-based firm that works with retail and restaurant chains on improving customer service. Fromm stresses that companies should streamline their resources without sacrificing the essentials. "Understand what's important to customers. Speed and availability of service are universal truths."

But how do you balance satisfying demanding customers with maximizing cost-effective resources? Read on.

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What does it take to be a great boss? We've talked to a new generation of CEOs who are tossing out the old rules in favor of a more modern set of values.

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Source: INC Magazin

Source: Howard Greenstein, Inc. Magazine

At a recent event I was talking with the director of a 10 person non-profit, and she mentioned an important database she was trying to convert to a newer format. “Where is it kept?” I asked. “On my computer” she said. “Where else?” And then I got that look – the look that says “what do you mean – where else?” Ah. How much would it cost to replace that data? Perhaps a million dollars, which is her approximate annual fundraising income. So one more time, for you folks who have not done so – Back up your work. Please.
Google engineers did a scientific study (it's a PDF) of failure in consumer grade hard disks and found that over 56% of drives that failed didn’t raise any concerns using their built-in error checking hardware. What does this mean for you? Well, when your hard disk’s time is up you probably won’t know it until it happens. Which is why you should back up constantly.
Jennifer Walzer, President of BackupMyInfo.com, a New York-based service provider for small business backup, told me that a common problem is “People will set up a backup – tape, CD, extra hard drive, online - and they think it is great, only to find out that it hasn’t been running right. They are not testing to make sure it works. We do hand holding and monitor to ensure backups run every day.”
Recently, she had a customer who runs a party and event-planning business lose 10 years worth of Quickbooks data when the owner’s computer crashed. They were able to restore to another computer in the office in seconds.
“We keep multiple versions of your data and we don’t delete what you delete on your side until you specifically ask us to,” said Walzer. Small business can backup their offices for $55 to several hundred dollars a month. However, this is a higher level of service than a simple desktop backup, with 24 hour support.
For those looking for more simple solutions, SugarSync, Carbonite, and Mozy are very popular choices. Drew Garcia, VP of Product Management of Sharpcast, makers of SugarSync, told me “We have....click to continue reading