E: What is BizSpark Plus? What are the key differentiators from your earlier program, Microsoft BizSpark?

K. Rajinish Menon: It is an addendum to the earlier program, which is only for startups, less than three years old and $1 million in revenues. So really for those micro startups who want to break out with IT. We give them support- software side, go to market, collaborate them with enablers of eco-systems, and encourage them to grow. Of the 60,000 odd companies we have in the fold globally and 1700 in India, Biz Spark Plus is targeted at select startups.  Selection is made by enablers- accelerators and incubators. They let us know of promising startups. There is a set of pre-validation checks we do, nothing hard and fast, but basically to understand how aspirational these startups are, how much and how long the wait is for it to grow. Once we decide, we give them tech support. We have a hip-lock with these enablers and start-ups, which takes care of go–to market strategy, coaching and mentoring by enablers, we selectively provide Windows Azure, a cloud public platform- $60,000 (Rs. 30 Lakh) worth of usage free for two years. This is in addition to what we gave earlier, Rs. 25 lakh worth of software.  Therefore, the advantages are three-fold – enhanced software support, good amount of hip-lock connectivity with enablers and tighter depth engagement. Currently the pipe for partners has three-Accel, Morpheus Ventures and Startupweekend.org But the pipe is huge, we will keep adding. We only want to have partners who have the same vision as ours. It’s a triangular approach. Once on board, the startup is now rest assured of mindshare backing of Microsoft and these enablers.

E: Why did you launch this program?

RM: The feedback from our earlier program was good and we felt we could step-it up a notch and bring more value to the eco-system. Global studies also showed how startups are evolving. Some really aspirational startups are missing out on the big picture – they don’t have a depth engagement.  Simply because there was no programmatic engine to give it that kind of support- with a basket of goodies. This is what we think Biz Spark Plus can give. We are as committed to their development as the VC would be – a focused approach to promote technology and the most promising startup.

Ludovic Ulrich: One of the things we like about BizSpark is the number- over 80,000 developers, internally, we have the mass to negotiate more benefits and also in the marketplace. We can recruit more and have some of the next Facebook and Twitter. How can we be more generous? We want to give more cloud computing to those startups, to do so we are going to rely on partners, as we are not in the business of selecting winners and losers. Founder Institute and startupweekend.org are our global partners. Today, for a fact we know startups need infrastructure and more to reach market.

E: Why has Microsoft been interested in entrepreneurship?

RM: Being the largest IT vendor in the world, we saw there was a dire need. We had a lot of feedback, requests from small developers who wanted to build on our platform. They wanted our help but we were expensive for them to sustain. So, the onus was on us to help developers have our software. It is not just to promote our software, the uber idea is that the eco-system has more innovation coming its way. Ten years back innovation was by large players, we need it at the grass root level today. We want to promote garage startup stories like Facebook and Google. From an India perspective, we have not acquired any company from the Biz Spark program based on our own methodology. But we keep having these events, B-Plan competitions et al, to ensure we have the right amount of applications enticing people like us to go and buy them out.

E: Please comment on BizSpark Plus’ methodology over the next 12 months.

RM: I really don’t want to put a figure to it. It’s a sub-set of the eco-system. If the sub-set is really good it can be 50-80 percent. Sub-set is 1700 companies in our fold and if it keeps increasing in 100s by a month, then we have to get at least 4-10 in the new program. So we will use our first catchment to narrow down and then further shortlist from there. Our tactical plans are – partner identification, and to get more of them on board as well as select high potential startups, a joint call taken by all of us mentioned. We have some interesting companies in our radar, in Bengaluru, who we are evaluating for our Biz Spark Plus program. We can’t reveal details yet. The main criteria – what is the high potential story a startup has, the impact they can make socially, the business side of things, and the innovation aspect. The extent of incubation, mentoring support will be typically under a year, depends case-by-case basis to get them to the next level of growth. We will continue to support them, post program. Once they graduate, bring them onto our breadth program (Silver or Gold partnership) or become managed partner.

E: What are the trends you are witnessing in the technology sector?

RM: A lot of startups are building in big data and analytics. Also, building for a world of 100 devices- phones, laptops, netbooks, desktops. We find people thinking on those lines and for the retail industry. For the latter – a simple insurance or warehousing applications, where stock is immediately made available. The challenges that product companies face – helping them understand business complexity is one. While the idea is good, they aren’t aware of the landscape, and that’s an area we usually advice on, or get our partners to. Second, they aren’t aware of technology they must use to build, don’t know how to use optimum platform capability of Microsoft. Crucial 40 percent of work is done by us.

E: Where does the eco-system lack for product companies?

RM: From an industry level perspective, companies like Microsoft are helping them. Is it enough? My classic example is tier 2 & 3 cities. How much you amplify them business doesn’t land. Even if you go to good educational institutes today, how many student developers (who are aspirational or want to become entrepreneurs) know there are vendors who can help them? Most of them, despite having burning ideas, go back to the usual route of corporate jobs, day-to-day education, life cycle etc. They don’t really try it out.

E: Promising startups you see for BizSpark Plus?

RM: Some in the financial and retail industry look interesting. They have been closing large deals as well. The uniqueness of solutions is something I’ve not seen in the global market too, just simple additions to existing ones which make it really different. Also b2c applications for consumers is another area. We need to educate consumers on what they want! Insurance or more specifically the BFSI space is an untapped opportunity with plenty of scope for innovation. The investment also needs to be huge.

E: How many countries has BizSpark Plus been launched in currently?

LU: About 15, including Finland, U.K., U.S.A, Germany, India among others.

E: What are the trends in entrepreneurship you are witnessing in the countries you’ve visited?

LU: It’s a global phenomenon, entrepreneurship, at least in tech and software, in some countries it’s becoming fashionable. In India, a lot of expatriates have come back to build their companies. In Bengaluru, at least, there is that tech DNA, they really know what they are talking about. There’s a lot of maturity in India. There’s big opportunity in B2B, in product space, to complement other products. In tech space, in other countries, because of cloud and technology, people who don’t have a super technical knowledge can go run a company, with good people. I saw wannabe entrepreneurs who’ve become entrepreneurs because of less barriers. Secondly, big data is a theme, we have to manage an enormous amount of data these days, then gaming in Asia is getting big, and new user interface, applications on a PC are also hot.

E: Your comments on technology activity in India as compared to the developed world.

LU: There’s a lot of passion and friendliness in people and about ideas, there is maturity in ideas, not only on knowledge of the market and opportunities but also challenges they bring. In terms of ideas, you guys have a great idea of what big players are providing.  You can define well, how to complement platforms. That’s a scenario we want to improve – companies who can complement the Microsoft platform. I’ve met a lot of angels too on my trip. I don’t see the eco-system developing as rich in other emerging countries as in India.

The Route to Application Security:
Pay to make application security someone else’s problem. Along with just knowing that you’re taking the steps to protect your business and customers, there’s another upside to moving ahead with an application security plan: shared responsibility when problems arise. In the case of a security breach, the firm you hired to host your web operation will have to own the problem just as much as you will.
When it comes to hiring a third-party host, don’t get cute. Hire as large of a well-staffed and well-funded organization as you can possibly afford. Amazon Flexible Payments Service or PayPal are excellent online checkout partners. Both are well-funded and can boast of several decades of almost-constant security updates and experience. Google and Microsoft offer excellent hosted web services and have several types of security products for small businesses. ADP, Intuit or Paychex offer secure payroll and business systems and have solid track records of providing app security for large companies.
And don’t forget your blogging and social media services—the places where you interact with customers are particularly risky. Many experts agree that Google’s Blogger and WordPress’ hosted web apps offer good, secure resources for small businesses.
“I am a big believer in outsourcing whatever you can,” says Bill Pennington, chief strategy officer for WhiteHat Security, a
Santa Clara, Calif.-based web security company that provides security risk analysis to medium and large businesses. “Large web services firms have a billion dollars invested in keeping their networks secure. It is impossible for smaller firms to replicate that, no matter what they spend.”
Just be sure that whatever outsourcing solution you use, you arrange for an active backup of company data stored where you control it. If there is ever an issue, you want to be able to take your information and run.
Take basic security precautions. Full-on custom application security might be beyond your budget or needs, but even the smallest online shop should establish a basic security plan. At the very least, make sure you have
a robust and up-to-date means of backing up your web content-since fixing most attacks
is about putting back what you had. Then make sure all your online business passwords are updated and complex. Most good web
apps now have password strength checkers. Take them seriously. Then check that all the standard commercial software running in your firm is up-to-date. Several companies make top-quality network software scanning tools that are surprisingly low-or no-cost. Here are three:

1. Clone Systems: Primarily a managed network security company—that is, it charges to watch your network for you—it also offers an entry-level scanning tool that generates a high-quality report detailing what is up-to- and out-of-date on your network.

2. Tenable Network Security: A leader in so-called active scanning—it noses around automatically to find risks on your applications—the company provides one of the more popular scanning apps on the market.

3. Qualys: The application security scanning firm is attempting to offer fully automated tools for complex application security. Automatic scanning tools are controversial in security circles since some coding vulnerabilities can only be found, believe it or not, by the human eye. But Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Qualys offers what most agree is a high-quality tool. Though its tools can run several thousand dollars a year, it has several no-cost scanning options that make a good starting point for small businesses.
“We wanted to make top-quality application security available to any business,” says chairman and CEO Philippe Courtot. “And with a
bit of knowledge, even the smallest business can run them.”
But don’t be surprised if it serves up results you simply don’t understand—or don’t know how to act on. Scanning tools are just a piece of the security puzzle. You will need to pay for a professional’s time to help run them. This, of course, puts smaller companies in a terrible bind. Should you devote resources toward security you may or may not need? Your best bet: Interview a range of application security consultants to gauge the threat to your company’s security, and decide from there whether you can handle the risk of going without.
Choose an application security consultant. Now for the hard part: Welcome to
the complex, pricey—and, frankly, annoying—world of hiring an application security professional. For the most part, application security experts mean well and, yes, try hard. But, like many high price tag consultants, they’re often hard to manage and think they work outside (or above) the system. Expect your application security consultant to clash with your software developers since your new expert will, basically, be telling your old expert what to do.
Finding the right consultant is tricky. The smart place to start is with the local chapter of a nonprofit security organization, such as the Open Web Application Security Project. Choose a security professional with a proven track record in your type of software. If you can find one doing primary research in your particular field, even better. Also, like any hire, ask for solid references. You can also ask the automated-tools experts who make applications secure; most have active referral services or relationships with local resellers.
So research your options and budget accordingly. But, just as you would with a medical doc, don’t be afraid to get a second or even third opinion on your application security.
With the web quickly becoming a virtual Wild West, you’ll need all the application security forces you can muster.

Jonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a Web-based content company specializing in technology news.

Hit or miss?
The A501 has many things we like, the first that it is 3G enabled. We certainly think that no matter the data networks, going Wi-Fi only with tablets is just daft. Good on Acer coming out with this version along with the Wi-Fi only model. We also like the interface, though we do have some navigational issues. We like the look, the specs, and we think it is enterprise worthy to an extent even as apps for business and productivity are limited compared to an iPad.
Things we don’t like include the battery life, the weight, and also the somewhat unpolished finish to Honeycomb. But what we do not like most is the high price point that it is being retailed at. By hook or more hooks, Acer must find a way to price it lower. Else it has no chance against an iPad, which in any case outslugs Android tablets on content for consumption. Why, given the cheap Chinese imports, you could probably find similar tablets under 20k soon i.e. they will do to Acer what it did to others during the netbook rush.

Match the message to the promise. If your pitch promises something your prospect or customer wants (a buyer’s guide to your product, a free e-book) make dead sure that the visitor receives precisely that—immediately.
“Message mismatch” is an all-too-common occurrence: In its study of 150 individual landing pages, Silverpop found that the most successful landing pages match the promotional copy in an e-mail’s call to action—what yielded the click in the first place. Yet 45 percent of the landing pages evaluated failed to repeat the e-mail’s promotional copy in the headline. If you sell someone on a promise, make sure that the first thing they experience doesn’t tell a whole other story.

Deliver awesome. The other day I clicked on a link that offered a guide to family-friendly Caribbean resorts, only to realize after I downloaded it that it was a sales brochure for one specific resort. I felt gamed, which is a terrible taste to leave in a prospect’s mouth. Be sure that the content you produce as a landing-page download is valuable: Will your prospects love it? Or is it lame?

Avoid TMI. My boy in the arcade is the poster child for this one. Don’t cram too much stuff onto the page.
Doing so can invoke hyperlink distraction and result in your prospect wandering down a different path entirely. Scott Brinker, president and co-founder of marketing agency ion interactive, calls the tendency to weigh down a page with lengthy text and explanations “sagging page syndrome.”
“Trying to cram as much as possible onto one page puts the burden on the respondent to sift through it,” Brinker says. “Unfortunately, most of the time they’re just not that into you yet.”

Keep your headline benefit-driven. Reiterate what’s awesome about your offer by telling customers what’s in it for them. A product-driven headline highlights what your product or service will do. A benefit-driven headline tells customers what your product or service will do for them.
In a test we did at MarketingProfs for two different landing pages, both offering access to one of our planning tools, the first read, “Join today and get access to SmartTools: Social Media Marketing.” The second read, “Create Successful Social Media Campaigns Fast with SmartTools.”
The first is product-driven, but the second imparts what a subscriber will get out of it. Not surprisingly, the second, benefit-focused landing page converted 26.06 percent better than the product-focused page.

A word about subheads and copy. A subhead beneath the headline is a good place to explain the key benefits of your offering. Lots of words versus very few words is a richly debated issue in marketing circles. I’m a fan of fewer words, preferably in easily scannable bullet form, with perhaps a video or supporting graphics. One word of caution: Don’t set video or audio to play automatically as soon as the page loads. Not only is that gratingly annoying, but the sudden volume can also scare those of us who tend to work in silence.

Use a strong call to action. Once a visitor lands on the page and opts into your offer, make sure they know what to do next. Put a call to action in an obvious place, and play around with what language works best for you. Some research suggests that landing pages with submit buttons labeled simply “submit” tend to perform worse than those that invoke more actionable wording, such as “download now” or “register.” Be sure the button stands out by adhering to the four Bs: big, bright, bold and blindingly obvious.

Keep things simple. When it comes to lead generation, solicit only the most relevant information. The idea is to eliminate friction between the visitor and the desired action—to entice, not irritate. Simple also means pruning the words and images on the page down to the essentials. The less content you have on the page, the more you’ll be able to feature “above the fold,” or in the important space that page visitors see without having to scroll down.

Use trust indicators and social proof. Establish credibility by including signals to your trustworthiness: Testimonials, press mentions, third-party trust and security verification (like TRUSTe or the Better Business Bureau), satisfaction guarantees and so on.
You might also include “social proof,” like blog comments or the number of followers you have on Facebook or Twitter. Social proof enhances your credibility by signaling that others are similarly connected to your company.

Testing, testing. Your product and services are unique, and so is your audience. When it comes to landing pages, test what works best for you—with your audience. The most straightforward way to do this is through a simple A/B test, in which you try different versions of an offer to see which performs better. Start by testing apples vs. oranges, then refine your approach. Once you determine whether an apple converts better than an orange, determine whether a Macintosh, say, converts better than a Fuji.
©Entrepreneur November 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of Marketingprofs (Marketingprofs.com) and the co-author of Content Rules.

Titbit is an app that solves the problems of the waiting process and does it with style that the iPad tends to bring with all its uses. A B2B offering, the Titbit app is preloaded on to iPads that are offered as digital menus to diners at the company’s client restaurants. Diners are then able to scope through the digital menu, choose their dishes and drinks, and place their order.
This sounds very simple and ordinary in text, but in operation (refer to pictures) it is beautiful-easy and superbly tailored to how the process of ordering, waiting tables, and cooking processes in kitchens work in tandem at a restaurant.

Dine easy
For the diner, Titbit helps overcome the problem of menus not saying much about the dish. Food has a lot to do with sight. If a dish looks good, you are
that much eager to order it, right? Titbit lets the diner see actual pictures of all dishes on the menu, something not possible with regular paper menus. In addition, Titbit also lets the diner to read a wider description of what the dish will have in terms of ingredients and make a better decision. This is something that a regular menu can’t and also, most waiters would not be helping you out with. An Indian waiter with complete knowledge of what a dish contains, and then being able to communicate it right, is a rare commodity.
One of the most common complaints diners have all over India is that the waiter is unable to remember and ensure that their special requests–less salt, more chili, no sugar etc.–are met with. With Titbit, the diner is in complete charge of these requests as he is able place these at the time of selecting a dish.
Moreover, dishes in a Titbit menu would have the most common requests attached to them. For example, if you are ordering a beef steak, the app would automatically ask you if want the steak rare, well done, or medium. As such, it takes the possibly busy or forgetful waiter out of the equation.

Tailor Made
The ordering process comes to a close when the diner chooses his beverages, and then checks his order out. At this time, Hate tells us, there comes a chink that cannot be overcome with technology, but can be smoothened over. He says that the logical way of developing Titbit would have been to send the order directly to the kitchen to make it a faster process. Or so it would seem.
“Working with the restaurants, we realized that waiters play one crucial role in the whole ordering process besides interfacing with the diner. He also queues up the food as best suited for both the diner and the kitchen,” says Hate.
For example, a diner may order a soup, a salad, a bottle of wine, and a plate of lamb chops. However, he is not asking for them all together, and the kitchen too can’t rustle them up altogether. Only the waiter is able to best handle in what order the food will be served in.
To get around this, Hate says, Titbit also puts an iPod Touch in the hands of the waiter. After the diner checks out his order, the order is sent to the waiter’s iPod Touch from where he is able to queue up, with timings, in what order the food would be needed.
The final step of the Titbit process is the billing process, where the restaurant can go two ways. The first is to have the billing done separately by the waiter and using the Titbit only as the ordering
tool. The second and more preferred option is to integrate with the restaurant’s POS process, where the billing is automated.

And then the Tidbits
Having seen Titbit in action, we can safely say that it does completely change the way one will order food at a restaurant. It makes the whole eating out process simpler and definitely easier. By automating how the diner looks at, researches, and orders food in a restaurant, Titbit is able to fix the huge service quality problem prevalent in Indian restaurants.
Hate tells us that restaurants also benefit from social integration into the menu, by the way of Facebook. By logging into Facebook on the Titbit app, a diner is able to share the dish he or she is having at a certain restaurant and rate it as well. That’s word-of-mouth marketing driven straight from the tables.
Of course, Titbit is a business and so there are costs for the restaurant. Hate says, however, that these costs are minimal in the long run. For one, Hate adds that his company has taken away the cost of buying iPads away from the restaurant by deploying iPads it has bought on its own costs. So the initial capital investment headache is no more there.
The restaurant pays Titbit on per billing transaction, approximately Rs.40 to Rs.45, which would be a flat charge. This cost though is easily recoverable by the restaurant, says Hate, which would benefit from a rise in the number of walk-ins, savings made on better table management, and a rise in the number of orders as it would save on ordering time.
Titbit already has about three restaurants as its clients, including one abroad. Hate says the intention is to spread to 60-odd restaurants in India by the end of the year. Once he has enough clients, he has revenue plans for brand placements e.g. placing Sula’s wines first in the wines menu. Also on the cards is a consumer-centric mobile and online food ordering app by the end of the year, where Hate hopes he will finally be able to intervene again in the painful process of ordering food online. Office folk rejoice!

What is 4G, exactly?
Faster mobile internet service. How much faster? It depends. And you probably won’t get a straight answer from your service provider. One problem is that the term 4G has morphed from something with a strict industry definition (100 Mbps-plus mobile service, or networks about 10 to 20 times faster than current ones, according to the International Telecommunication Union), to a marketing phrase mobile providers use to describe their upgraded networks.

What are LTE, HSPA+ and WiMax?
These are the names of the technologies used to deliver 4G service. Why should you care? It’s smart to have some sense of what the providers are betting on, as it will impact the speeds you get and the phones you have access to.

Here’s enough info to make you dangerous: WiMax data networks were the first, with Clear and Sprint offering WiMax mobile data services last year. But WiMax hasn’t taken off as expected, and those providers are considering other technologies. HSPA+ underlies networks from T-Mobile and AT&T and can reach theoretical speeds of about 21 Mbps (but more likely around 5 Mbps). The gold standard is LTE (Long Term Evolution), which Verizon launched recently. Sprint has talked about using LTE, and AT&T is rolling out its combined HSPA+ LTE network. It’s the technology most likely to deliver 1 Gbps of bandwidth.

Why does any of this matter?
Right out of the gate, it may not. You can go to almost any provider and order up 4G service and get something faster than you had last year. Most providers can deliver service roughly in the 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps range in the real world. Place your bets on LTE-based operators. Faster downloads and the most cutting-edge mobile devices? Sounds like a winning formula.

©Entrepreneur August 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

“I run ePRO almost solely out of my iPhone,” Orfitelli says. He relies on small-business-centric mobile applications to quote customers, track inventory and invoice jobs.

Orfitelli’s iPhone includes MerchantCircle’s new Merchant Mobile App, which lets users create and publish daily deals, photos and status updates, as well as respond to customer inquiries and monitor reviews. Orfitelli—a longtime MerchantCircle user who credits the site’s marketing tools for boosting ePRO’s digital visibility—encouraged the company to extend its solution to the iPhone and signed up to test the free Merchant Mobile App as soon as the beta was released.

“Given the nature of my business, it really helps me to have access to [MerchantCircle’s] different features when I’m not in front of the computer,” Orfitelli says.

His business is one of more than 1.6 million companies that have turned to Mountain View, Calif.-based MerchantCircle to attract new customers and connect with other firms in their community or vertical. In addition to its free marketing and networking services, the MerchantCircle platform features a portfolio of premium solutions, including search-engine marketing and instant website development, to help users further build and enhance their web presence.

“MerchantCircle gets merchants online, connects them with other merchants and provides them with simple, powerful tools to reach customers,” says VP of marketing and product management Darren Waddell.

MerchantCircle profiles can be created in a matter of minutes. The site directory includes about 20 million pre-built listings in all. New users type in their phone number to find their page, customizing and fleshing out the existing information as they see fit. From there, they can manage and track customer reviews and search engine visibility, publish ads across the MerchantCircle network, on Google and Yahoo, and interact with peers to talk shop, ask and answer questions. According to Waddell, 25,000 to 30,000 merchants join the site every month.
The Merchant Mobile App simplifies and streamlines the MerchantCircle user interface for smartphones, giving users like Orfitelli the flexibility to manage their digital profile. “We want to drive down the barriers blocking merchants from exploring online marketing,” Waddell says. “There are so many guys out there in trucks, living their life out and about. We want to make it simple for them to respond to online activity.”

Chicago-based writer Jason Ankeny is the executive editor of Fiercemobile content, a daily electronic newsletter dedicated to mobile media, applications and marketing.

©Entrepreneur August 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Best for accounting-savvy small-business owners
QuickBooks Online Simple Start
(Rs.588 per month)
Considering Intuit pretty much invented small-business accounting tools and has 90 percent of the market, it’s no shocker the company offers a genuinely effective online product. Aimed at the single-user market—though your accountant can peek at what you’re doing—Simple Start lays out company information in relatively easy-to-use, tab-based web pages. Most business functions, such as managing invoices and printing checks, run smoothly. And we’re impressed with sophisticated options like customized charts of accounts and complex tax tracking. But making all this capability work takes a surprising amount of accounting knowledge. Be sure to sit down with your bean counter and set up QuickBooks properly so you don’t make a royal fiscal mess.

Best for web-savvy, growing companies
FreshBooks (Rs.905 and up per month)
FreshBooks attempts to be just that: a fresh way to keep your books. Where other programs are more interested in the minutiae of accounting, FreshBooks offers a simpler layout, more web-based collaboration features such as team management and a lower level of accounting speak. By and large, it succeeds. The system presents a relatively legible account dashboard and understandable screens. Based on our tests, customer support is good. Plus, there’s direct integration with online work tools such as Basecamp. But FreshBooks is still accounting software, which means screwing up is oh so easy. The program can convert contractor invoices into expenses that make no accounting sense, expense categories are prone to errors and audit trails are flimsy.

Best for accounting-phobes
Outright (Rs.452 per month)
Outright is not for large or growing firms, or for anyone with sophisticated accounting needs. However, for very basic accounting for, say, sole proprietors, it’s hard to beat. Everything—and we mean absolutely everything—in your ledgers is boiled down to four simple web pages: Money In, Money Out, Reports and Taxes. Apart from a basic Overview page, that’s all there is. And that’s the beauty of it. Just start entering what you’re getting paid and what you’re spending, plug in your bank and credit card info, and with a bit of diligence, a surprisingly accurate picture of your business finances emerges. You’ll also be able to determine what you owe the feds in taxes, which will save you from a world of hurt come tax season. With tools like Outright around, there’s no excuse for not having bombproof business ledgers.

Jonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a web-based content company specializing in technology news.

©Entrepreneur August 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.