/ Articles by Adam Carpenter - Guest Contributor

Small to midsize business (SMB) leaders regularly look for ways to save time and money on their IT needs. At the same time, they need to improve their IT capabilities. This can be a challenge because they may not have the resources to hire in-house IT staff. In addition, the process of monitoring and managing security devices and systems can be time-consuming and expensive.

Given the time-tested popularity of SEO, small business leaders, chief marketing officers (CMOs), and digital marketing professionals may want to learn more about the effectiveness of backlinks for SEO. Businesses need to understand why backlinks are important and their effect on SEO to achieve higher search engine rankings.

There are few benefits as intriguing—and appealing—as sabbatical leave, but it can be difficult to grasp the resources and systems you need to make it effective. This challenge is especially acute for small-to-medium business (SMB) owners who already have tight budgets and finely-tuned staffing systems. Find out what sabbatical leave is, how it works, its benefits, and how you can leverage HR software to implement a sabbatical leave policy.

The word “agile” has been all the rage, dominating discussions among DevOps teams, project managers, and small business executives. Given its success in a range of areas, learning and development professionals often wonder how to implement agile learning principles to make their programs more efficient and effective.

When you have to invest tons of time and energy into developing and supporting products, it can be difficult to find the bandwidth to build and improve relationships with customers. Many small-to-midsize business (SMB) leaders know that public relations (PR) can be a valuable tool, yet they don’t understand which types of programs are the most effective. So, instead of trying to design a winning strategy, many companies avoid PR altogether, resulting in lost opportunities.

It’s important for small business owners and solopreneurs to explore the different types of accounting so they can understand how each can benefit their bottom line. Given the variety of accounting approaches, this is easier said than done. With tight schedules and limited resources, many small to midsize businesses (SMBs) don’t have the time to study the different types.

Are you considering outsourcing your recruiting efforts to a staffing service? In that case, you’re not alone: 44% of businesses use staffing and other service providers because they don’t have the bandwidth to handle it in-house—even if they have the internal expertise. If your company is like many others, your HR staff may find the demands associated with managing staffing overwhelming. Identifying candidates, vetting them, conducting interviews, and onboarding can easily eclipse other business-critical tasks.

As a procurement specialist at a small or midsize business, you’re naturally concerned about cost and risk when entering into a SaaS contract for the first time. No matter how effective an application may be for your business, hidden costs, barriers to exit, and security issues may give you a reason to pause.

Customer relationship managers, data managers, and marketing professionals often seek to improve their customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. When you properly collect, analyze, and leverage customer data, you better understand your buyers, which makes it easier to provide them with effective products and messaging.