For freelancers and small business owners, the more work you do, the more you should earn. That requires, of course, that you get paid in a timely manner. And anyone who is self-employed knows that the only thing more excruciating than dealing with the song and dance of contracts and invoices is waiting for a delayed check to appear in the mail.

I asked dozens of freelancers and small business owners for their top tips for getting paid on time. Here are 10 of the best. Please share your own tips–and thoughts on these–in the comments section below.

Read all 10 tips on CBS Moneywatch.com (and tip 7 from Cortera)

In this installment of our coverage of SAP’s recent content partnership with Cortera, we feature an interview with SAP’s Thad Dungan, who serves as VP, Line of Business Solutions. In contrast to Oracle, Spend Matters believes SAP appears to be headed down a path where third-party (and cross-user) content and intelligence for suppliers will play a core component in their overall strategy for procurement going forward (editors note: our series profiling SAP Supplier InfoNet, a new offering, will kick off tomorrow).

Continue reading on Spend Matters.

Continue reading on Supply Chain Brain.

Unlike D&B, Cortera does not offer a specific “supplier risk score” that is distinct from the other aspects of its offering. Rather, it relies on a slightly unorthodox hybrid approach to gather both structured (e.g., credit) and unstructured (e.g., local news sources) data to arrive at one of six potential rankings for suppliers (and buyers) as well as an actual risk score. Cortera told Spend Matters that…

Continue reading on Spend Matters.

The Risk Data and Reporting solution from Cortera is now a SAP-endorsed business solution. New insights about other businesses are provided by this solution to companies of all sizes. An announcement in this regard has been made by the top information provider, Cortera, a company that compiles insights on U.S. businesses.

Continue reading on TMCnet.

Earlier today, SAP announced that the Cortera Risk Data and Reporting solution had become an “SAP-endorsed business solution.” SAP customers will now have the ability to easily integrate Cortera supplier risk content into SAP’s BusinessObject Spend Performance Management application through the SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification OnDemand solution.

Continue reading on Spend Matters.

Each month we survey the Web-traffic performance of our alums, using data from Web-analytics company Compete to review the sites they operate.

Cortera saw the highest number of unique U.S. visitors in May, with almost 2 million hits.

Read the full story on Finovate’s Blog.

Recently Cortera in North America and Creditsafe in Europe, have caused discomfort to the larger players through their aggressive pricing, PR practices that arguably allow them to punch above their weight and focus on serving the SME segments in the markets they operate in. Interestingly neither of these companies is “new” to credit information. Cortera traces its roots back to 1993 and Creditsafe to 1997. Given that they have both been around for 15-20 years, why are they suddenly seen by industry commentators and big players as disrupters or potential game changers?

Continue reading on BIIA.com.

Alix Stuart – CFO.com

Social media strategies are rapidly gaining favor in Corporate America. Platforms like Facebook, blogs, and community Websites play an increasingly important role in a variety of functions ranging from marketing to customer support.

Yet there’s a considerable gap in social media use between big companies and small. According to communications firm Burson-Marsteller’s second annual survey of social media use at the 100 largest global companies, 84% used some form of social media, up from 79% last year. (For U.S. companies, the adoption rate remained unchanged at 85%.) Those companies mainly use Twitter and Facebook, with corporate blogs about half as popular.

By contrast, only about half of companies in the small and midsize business universe use any form of social media, and only between a quarter and a third use it in any structured way, according to a recent study of 750 executives at companies with between 1 and 1,000 employees by SMB Group, a market-research firm. For smaller companies, Facebook sites and postings are by far the most used format, followed by industry-specific community groups. Fewer than 20% are using Twitter regularly, and a full 31% of small businesses and 26% of midsize ones say they have no plans to use social media in the near future (see chart below).

Why the great divide? In general, it’s not the cost of entry, which is low, but rather a lack of time and creativity, says Sanjeev Aggarwal, founder and partner of SMB Group. Starting out with social media is “very company-specific,” he says, “and companies need to engage with their customers to find out what might be right for them.”

Businesses that sell to consumers have some of the most obvious opportunities to use the platforms. One example: Johnny Cupcakes, a $4 million producer of iconic T-shirts, tweets near-daily blog posts from founder Johnny Earle to more than 48,000 followers. The posts are mainly a way of brand-building, ranging from pictures of new products or speaking engagements to Earle’s family videos.
social media use

Business-to-consumer companies can also use tools like coupon services, such as Groupon, to reach customers, a tactic that generated high levels of satisfaction from users in the SMB survey. “Coupons are easy to do and you see immediate results, whereas building a Facebook community takes time,” says Aggarwal. (Still, fewer than 10% of the businesses surveyed are using the services, indicating that smaller companies are taking their time even on the easy plays.)

But businesses selling to other small businesses can find creative ways to use the media as well. About 20% of companies buying spots on iwearyourshirt.com, which does a social media blitz for a different sponsor every day, are now B2B companies, says Jason Sadler, founder of the site. Recent examples include Scribendi, a professional proofreading service, and e-online data, a payment-processing firm.

Meanwhile, Cortera, a $10 million commercial credit monitoring service, has tried out a number of social media functions, including setting up a free online community for smaller businesses to rate their customers’ payment patterns. The approximately 25,000 online members can also set up their own subgroups to discuss customers for a particular industry, or even within a single company. (To protect itself and clients, a Cortera product manager and an attorney check the site regularly for inappropriate postings.)

“Big companies have discussed their customers like this for years, face to face, in a very official way,” says Alex Cote, vice president of marketing for Cortera. “But there was nothing out there for the smaller companies, or the office manager with no credit department.” Ultimately, the company hopes the site will help drive sales of its more robust credit reports, although it “acknowledges not everyone [who uses it] will become a paying customer.”

Continue reading on CFO.com.

Recent Facts: Cortera announced its intent to “shaking up the commercial credit information industry with a refreshing and needed approach to help business and finance professionals at organizations of every size”. Cortera says it is using an innovative approach to create low cost information and intelligence derived from user generated data (trade), public sector data and a peer to peer tool for credit professionals to share data. Its pricing model is substantially lower than of the competition (US$2.50 – US$5.00 per report).

The National Association of Wholesalers – Distributors (NAW) has entered into a partnership with Cortera and advised its members that Cortera is “the leading source for the freshest and most accurate information about NAW customers”.

Cortera raised an undisclosed amount of money from insiders and most notably additional funding from TomorrowVentures, a firm backed by Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Continue reading on the Business Information Industry Association website.