A study by IPSOS — a global market research firm — has confirmed recent trends in the personal media habits of senior executives in the US. So-called “C-suite” executives are apparently getting more deeply involved in the digital space.

While top executives are still actively reading traditional business publications, they are now supplementing their consumption of print media with Web-based information sources. A significant number of executives even listed websites as their preferred source of industry news as opposed to magazines, newspapers and television.

The study also found that many executives are tech-savvy enough to actively use emerging Web technologies such as streaming video, Blogs, podcasts and the like. More than two thirds of the C-level executives surveyed subscribed to e-mail newsletters or alerts regularly; well over half bought products and services online; almost one-third regularly read blogs (although only a tiny percentage actually contributed to blogs themselves).

Although I haven’t come across similar statistics for C-level executives in Asia, I am fairly certain that the above findings broadly apply to the senior executives set in Singapore at least. The executive ranks in Singapore are certainly no less tech-savvy than their US counterparts, after all.

The bottom line is: if senior-most executives are your targeted prospects, you need to be actively attracting their attention online.

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris
Harvard Business School Press (March, 2007)

This book makes a compelling case for enhancing a firm’s competitiveness through the systematic use of fact-based analytical decision making techniques.

The latest Asia Business Monitor (ABM) survey by UPS has revealed that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore continue to be plagued by two familiar problems – a shortage of skilled workers and rising costs.

The difficulty in attracting and retaining skilled talent is a perennial problem for small businesses the world over; it is a particularly acute problem in Singapore where the SME sector employs well over half of the total workforce. This labour crunch is only going to get worse and rising business costs are unlikely to reverse their trends anytime soon.

So what is a small business owner to do?

I believe the only viable long term solution is to take a critical look at how resources are being used and managed in your operations. Most SMEs are far from efficient in the way that they utilize their resources, be they warm bodies, equipment or facilities.

SMEs must take a leaf form the big company playbook and automate their business processes and resource management. The tools exist today to allow savvy small businesses to adopt the best-practices of larger organizations at relatively low costs. Technology also makes it possible to collaborate effectively with a range of external partners – thus enabling smart SMEs to provide sophisticated services with relatively modest internal resources.

To succeed in today’s economy, you don’t need massive offices, an army of staff or very deep pockets. You do need to effectively leverage technology to become far more efficient and customer-focused than ever before.

Salesforce.com announced its intention to build a data centre in Singapore – its first outside North America. It will also establish a Network Operations Centre here to enhance the monitoring of the company’s global data operations.

The decision to develop its facilities in Singapore reflects the robust growth of the company’s Asia Pacific business – 94% year on year growth, contributing approximately 10% of Salesforce.com’s total quarterly revenue in the period ending April 30.

It certainly looks as if the cloud computing model is gaining traction in Asia.

A recent Economist article reports that the Yellow Pages are headed for a long, slow decline. Shares in Yell (the company that owns phone directories in the UK, USA and Spain), for example, have fallen 75% over the past year.

The main reason for this decline appears to be the internet – people are apparently increasingly searching for local services online. This is an important trend for small and medium-sized businesses to take note of – they account for the bulk of the advertising that appears in the Yellow Pages.

The message is clear: it is critical for small businesses to develop effective web engagement strategies if they wish to thrive in the modern marketplace.

The unprecedented slugfest in the Democratic presidential primary campaign in the US seems to be finally drawing to a close. Most pundits are backing Senator Obama to overcome the dogged challenge of former First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Much press analysis has been focussed on the complicated permutations of the US primary system (pledged delegate counts vs. super-delegate backing vs. popular vote, etc). However, I personally feel that the really interesting story here is how the Obama campaign has successfully leveraged the power of the Internet to overcome the seemingly invincible lead that Hillary Clinton started off the campaign with.

BBC News has a good write-up on Mr. Obama’s internet strategy that is well worth a read.

As the article points out, the internet favours the outsider – a good lesson for small businesses trying to outmaneuver incumbent competition. The Obama team launched their campaign with their website fully developed and ready for action – another lesson to small businesses to not treat their web presence as an afterthought.

The Obama campaign also embraced emerging social networking tools to rapidly mobiilse an army of volunteers and amass a huge funds war-chest. In fact, Mr Obama’s was only persuaded to enter the race in the first place when an unofficial MySpace page quickly gathered 160,000 supporters.

At this stage, the Obama campaign’s momentum seems likely to carry him all the way to the White House. The US will then have not only its first black President, but also its most web-savvy President to date. It would be interesting to see how he would leverage the power of the internet while in the Oval Office.

There are probably as many definitions for cloud computing as there are internet experts. Rob Boothby posed this question to some of the better known web authorities at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Catch a video of their responses below:

What do you think cloud computing is?

It has been 15 years since the code that enables the World Wide Web was put into the public domain. Apparently there are now well over 165 million different websites around the world.

However, the man who started it all — Sir Tim Berners-Lee — feels that we are just the beginning.
Click here to read more about where Sir Tim, and other key Internet luminaries, feel that the World Wide Web is headed.