BUSINESS STRATEGY
Tarci | September 15, 2023
Tarci, a leading continuous intelligence platform that generates dynamic SMB data, has recently introduced the Tarci for Foodservice data suite. This cutting-edge new series of dynamic data modules is crafted to empower enterprises that cater to SMBs in the food service sector with insights to optimize their sales, marketing, risk management, and client retention strategies.
By integrating precise and up-to-date SMB profiles with industry-specific data-driven insights, Tarci provides invaluable support to food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, enabling them to proactively identify both opportunities and potential risks among their current and prospective clients.
Within the Tarci for Foodservice suite, the following data modules are presently available:
Restaurant with Emerging Needs: New and emerging SMBs engaged in preparing food for immediate consumption.
Food & Beverage Retailers: New and emerging specialty food, grocery, and convenience retailers.
Licensed Establishments: New and growing SMBs that offer alcohol for on-premise consumption.
SMBs with Refreshment Needs: Growing SMBs with 50 or more on-site employees who may be interested in enhancing workplace experiences by offering refreshment perks.
Foodservice Risk Management: Enhanced credit term decisions by augmenting existing SMB profiles with business stability, growth, or decline indicators.
Tarci's continuous intelligence engine draws from a diverse array of external data sources to craft dynamic SMB profiles, which are updated on a weekly basis. What sets Tarci apart is its proactive approach; it not only monitors these profiles for changes but also analyzes them for emerging trends.
This distinctive methodology in parsing and interpreting SMB data accurately mirrors the dynamic nature of the marketplace. With Tarci, clients can seize opportunities and respond to changes in real-time.
Tarci's Co-Founder and CEO, Leetal Gruper, commented,
With the launch of Tarci for Foodservice, we address the churn challenges in the Foodservice industry. Our real-time insights and dynamic data modules empower businesses to adapt, thrive, and build lasting client relationships with the right SMBs, offering stability and growth in an industry where change is constant.
[Source: Cision PR Newswire]
About Tarci
Tarci is a prominent, continuous intelligence platform that generates dynamic SMB data. Employing a cutting-edge continuous intelligence engine, Tarci consistently collects, analyzes, and translates an extensive array of signals sourced from diverse outlets, effectively transforming vast datasets into actionable insights. The company's impact is felt prominently across customer-facing teams within Fortune 200 corporations, spanning leading financial institutions, insurance entities, and enterprises catering to small and mid-size businesses. Tarci garners support from esteemed backers, including Sound Ventures, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and strategic investors.
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TECHNOLOGY
Business Wire | October 17, 2023
Cultivate Advisors, one of North America's largest small business advisory firms, launched a new, free online tool to assess the value, health, and exit readiness of small businesses. Business Value & Health Assessment evaluates six key areas of a company, from financials to productivity, identifying the 20 most vital value drivers that make up its current worth, while revealing opportunities and gaps that impact valuation.
"One thing we've learned advising thousands of entrepreneurs is that when you build a company with an exit in mind, you not only maximize its value, but it also becomes much easier to run," said Cultivate Advisors CEO Casey Clark.
"Most businesses don't know their current value," noted Raincatcher CEO Jason Thomas. "Cultivate’s Business Value & Health Assessment pulls back the curtain on a business's worth and, more importantly, what its potential value would be if the owner focused on a few key areas. It's changing the game on how owners can quickly identify ways to grow and build equity in their businesses."
Taking 15 minutes, owners answer questions on their enterprise's financials, sales, marketing, leadership, recruiting, and productivity. Once completed, they receive a 25-page comprehensive report on its current worth and potential value, pulled from a database of more than 77,000 recent U.S. public and private M&A transactions. Analysis includes a value multiplier per industry and a complete health assessment with value acceleration strategies. A two-hour free consultation with an advisor from Cultivate, specializing in the business's challenges, is available to review findings and create a detailed 5-year roadmap to growth, scalability, and exit-readiness.
According to the Exit Planning Institute (EPI), nearly 50% of all business exits are involuntary and forced by dramatic external factors, and 79% have no plan. "Knowing your company's value is a number all owners should have. More critical is understanding the path to a higher valuation and what makes that number grow or fall," said EPI President Scott Snider. "Cultivate's new tool lets owners easily understand where their company is today and where it could go by showcasing its strengths, risks, and value gap, allowing them to make immediate adjustments that bring higher profits short-term and increased value long-term. It's a great starting point for anyone interested in building a stronger company."
"We love that Cultivate Advisors leads with value when they work with owners," said Newity SVP of Business Services Frank Dowie. "This tool uncovers one of the biggest blind spots for any owner: What their business is currently worth and what it could be worth by simply pulling a few important levers."
ABOUT CULTIVATE ADVISORS
Cultivate Advisors, an affiliate of Cultivate Brands, the business and financial operations advising powerhouse comprised of Cultivate Advisors, Breakwater Accounting, and Performance Platform, is one of North America's largest small business skill development and coaching firms. Built with a team of entrepreneurial-minded advisors with firsthand experience running successful companies, Cultivate has helped thousands of owners in 160+ industries scale, grow, and become exit-ready, with those working with the firm 12+ months growing on average 43% in top-line revenue and 65% in bottom-line profit year-over-year. In 2023, Cultivate made the Inc. 5000 for the fifth consecutive year and Inc.’s Best Workplaces list. CEO Casey Clark was also recognized with the American Business Awards’ Gold Stevie for Best Entrepreneur.
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MANAGEMENT
Business Wire | September 27, 2023
DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., the cloud for startups and SMBs, today announced the launch of DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, a new, fully managed data streaming platform as a service offering for Apache Kafka. DigitalOcean Managed Kafka helps small and medium-sized businesses across industries, including video streaming, the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, gaming, and eCommerce, access and process data streams in real time while eliminating the complexity associated with the Kafka administration. Through this offering and other enhancements across DigitalOcean’s portfolio, startups and tech entrepreneurs can more easily grow their businesses in the cloud.
“While Kafka is the gold standard for data streaming, it frequently presents technical challenges for smaller businesses with budget and resource limitations. We are excited to introduce a solution that makes this technology more accessible and meets DigitalOcean’s standard for simplicity,” said Megan Wood, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at DigitalOcean. “By reducing the burden of implementing a new platform, companies can shift their focus away from the complexity of managing their data streaming services and get back to building apps that differentiate their business.”
As businesses receive higher amounts of data inputs, the ability to rapidly capture and process this data becomes crucial. Thousands of companies, including over 80% of Fortune 100 companies, rely on Kafka to optimize their data streams and provide leaders with insights that inform decision-making. With DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, startups and SMBs can benefit from the ability to scale up and down clusters with ease while setting up alerts for proactive maintenance. Additionally, DigitalOcean customers can expect end-to-end security via private networking and data encryption along with cost-effective, predictable pricing starting at $147 for a three-node cluster.
“DigitalOcean's Managed Kafka offering has been a game-changer for us at Datacake,” said Lukas Klein, Chief Technical Officer at Datacake. “By taking care of the operational aspects of running our Kafka cluster, we have been able to focus our attention on what really matters – building a great product. With this new service, we were able to migrate seamlessly to an event-based architecture while maintaining the highest levels of operational security.”
Alongside DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, DigitalOcean has been making investments in its product and infrastructure offerings to provide peace of mind, increased productivity, and more affordable solutions to SMBs and startups. Some of those recent updates include:
GPUs with the acquisition of Paperspace-The computing power needed for training AI models and deploying at scale
Premium CPU-Optimized Droplets-Higher outbound network speeds, higher performance, and faster disk writes than standard Droplets
Enhanced memory and storage for Basic Premium Droplets-More flexibility with a wider choice of virtual machines
Low-cost support plans for every size of business-Eight-hour response times for all issues, regardless of severity
Object Storage in the Bangalore data center-Increased performance with compute and storage in one location
In addition, over the coming quarters, DigitalOcean will unveil the following enhancements and capabilities to continue to make DigitalOcean the cloud of choice for SMBs and startups:
More flexible storage offerings -Effortlessly accommodate dynamic storage requirements with Scalable Storage for Managed Databases, a cost-effective solution that helps businesses expand their data footprints with confidence
Faster, frequent, and comprehensive Backups -Ability to create daily Droplet backups that are differential, significantly reducing the time required to create them
Better performance for a range of products -Extending the premium variant to the General Purpose line of Droplets, providing newer generation CPUs, faster NVME drives, and up to 10 Gbps of outbound data transfer speeds making them ideal for running e-commerce, consumer, and SaaS apps
About DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean simplifies cloud computing so builders and businesses can spend more time creating software that changes the world. With its mission-critical infrastructure and fully managed offerings, DigitalOcean helps developers at startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rapidly build, deploy and scale, whether creating a digital presence or building digital products. DigitalOcean combines the power of simplicity, security, community and customer support so customers can spend less time managing their infrastructure and more time building innovative applications that drive business growth.
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MANAGEMENT
Fingercheck | October 12, 2023
Fingercheck, a prominent automated payroll and HR solutions provider has recently unveiled a strategic partnership with IncredibleBank to fundamentally transform the landscape for small businesses. Through this collaborative effort, Fingercheck is poised to grant small businesses seamless access to its leading platform, offering invaluable guidance throughout their growth journey. This partnership introduces modern payroll and HR solutions for business owners, including the introduction of 'Pay On-Demand,' a product that offers earned wage access for improved financial flexibility.
As a strategic ally of IncredibleBank, Fingercheck occupies a unique position in enhancing the payroll, HR, and employee management processes for IncredibleBank's small business clientele. Leveraging its extensive experience in servicing over 5,000 businesses, Fingercheck brings to the table a wealth of knowledge as a mature fintech company, providing an intuitive user interface and robust functionality.
The Fingercheck-IncredibleBank partnership represents a significant milestone in reshaping the financial services landscape for small businesses. By pooling their expertise, these two industry leaders are charting the course for a new era marked by seamless and efficient payroll, HR, and banking solutions that are tailored to the unique demands of small and medium-sized businesses.
About Fingercheck
Fingercheck is a leading firm at the forefront of providing payroll and HR solutions, with a core mission of simplifying the lives of small business owners. The company alleviates the stress and time-consuming tasks associated with payroll and HR management, including tax compliance. Leveraging advanced AI and automation technology, Fingercheck streamlines processes, saving valuable time and resources so that small businesses can direct their energies toward growth. Furthermore, the company's team is dedicated to delivering top-tier support, taking the time to comprehend each business's unique needs and providing tailored solutions to expedite internal processes, making them both efficient and precise.
About IncredibleBank
IncredibleBank, initially established in 1967 as River Valley Bank with a single location in Rothschild, WI, has since expanded to 15 locations across Wisconsin and Michigan, with a new branch set to open in Florida in 2023. The bank has deep roots in community banking and has been recognized as one of America's Most Innovative Banks by the Independent Community Bankers of America. IncredibleBank is committed to staying at the forefront of banking technology, with the primary goal of offering the best and simplest banking experience for customers nationwide.
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