Everything is Awesome II: Business Ready to Invest for Growth

There's some really good news coming out of the National Federation for Independent Business, which is reporting a record high in optimism and plans for growth among its membership of American small businesses. And importantly, it's not just good news for the companies — it's good for workers, too! The NFIB Research Foundation has collected Small Business Economic Trends data from NFIB’s membership with quarterly surveys since 1973 and monthly surveys since 1986. The most recent was conducted in August 2018, and the report is awesome.

Some highlights:

Small Business Optimism Shatters Record Previously Set 35 Years Ago

• All-time high number of businesses saying it's a good time to expand
• 26% of businesses are creating new jobs
• 38% have job openings they can't even fill (we know about that here at xTuple!)
• Record number of companies are planning to build up inventories

NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said that at the beginning of the current expansion period, their report was “dominated by expectations: good time to expand, expected real sales, inventory satisfaction, expected credit conditions, and expected business conditions. Now the Index is dominated by real business activity that makes GDP grow: job creation plans, job openings, strong capital spending plans, record inventory investment plans, and earnings. Small business is clearly helping to drive that four percent growth in the domestic economy.”

Read the complete Small Business Economic Trends report.

What does all this mean for your business?

If you're an existing xTuple customer, you have many, many tools at your disposal to help you take advantage of the growing economy.

• Free Training Credits — Use yours to get newer members of your team up to speed on the software, or to dig into advanced topics for your more seasoned staff.
• Buy-3-Get-2 Promotion — Need to get more people using the system? Take advantage of our license deal (ending soon!), where you get two (2) additional licenses for every three (3) you buy.
• Engage Professional Services — Our team can conduct a checkup on your current operations — and identify ways for you to grow profits and productivity.

You've made the initial investment in a great software system — congratulations! Now let us help you reap the rewards of that investment.

If you're still in the evaluation stage, or maybe using the free and open source PostBooks® edition of xTuple, you REALLY should take advantage of that license promotion. Plus, every new license customer gets a FREE seat in our next xTuple ERP Boot Camp class, the week of November 5 in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. This class will definitely fill up, and our master trainer Mike Atherton keeps a hard ceiling on headcount, so he can spend quality time with each participant.

I thought I'd close by sharing with you our Mission Statement here at xTuple, as it bears directly on all of this:

To help companies of all sizes successfully implement powerful, and easy-to-use, open source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to grow their business profitably.

This is the time to take that next step for your business — to put good systems in place to power profitable growth and success. It's what we exist as a company to do, and we'd love to help you do it, too.