Future Technology Trends

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Critical Factors for Choosing Successful Mobile CRM solution

In the recent years, we have seen rapid advancements and a significant growth in mobile technologies and their usage worldwide. Mobile Customer Relationship Management has emerged with many benefits to the organizations, simplifying business tasks as well as saving operational cost and time. Companies are realizing the need of mobility for attaining higher value from their existing investments in CRM systems, allowing faster and precise data collection and enhanced decision-making.

Mobile CRM enables enterprises explore business through their workforce on field like sales and service teams, to access key information through mobile devices like smartphones and tablets on their move. It also helps the top level executives and senior managers to access business critical information like order details, operational stats, performance reports, etc; and to approve requests on their mobile devices round the clock.

With such significance attached to a mobile CRM system, companies need to consider the following critical factors to employ a successful mobile CRM solution:

Support Device Diversity

The usage of a diverse range of mobile devices by employees of organizations poses a challenge for the IT departments while deploying enterprise mobility solutions. An ideal mobile CRM solution should allow employees to use any mobile device like an iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, Windows based phone or tablets. It should be flexible to support any device OSs to carry out seamless transaction. However instead of offering a common layout for all devices, it’s better when they adapt to the look and feel of device that users carry.

Off-line Functionality

Access to customer data, product information and documents at the right time has become a crucial factor for every customer-centric business. Sales professionals and business managers use mobile CRM solution on their handheld devices every time they need it—meetings, events, travel, etc regardless of time and convenience of internet.

Mobile CRM should provide access to customer data or other information whenever and more importantly wherever needed. They should be designed such that users can always access to the right information at the right moment be it online or off-line. This improves the customer interactions, business decision-making and the productivity.

Open Standards Support Integration

Field professionals not only need access to customer information but also to various other support aspects like product information, sale promotions/offers, service requests and order status. Thus selecting a system which supports integration with a variety of back-end systems like ERP, intranet, legacy, database and e-mail is imperative. It is also wise to opt for the ones that support open standards and be flexible to keep-up with the ever changing device landscape.

Security is Key

Mobile CRM data is a company’s critical asset. It contains confidential information of the company’s customer relationships, partners, suppliers, sales data, product details, some legal documents and crucial data subject to government regulations. Such information is accessed by sales professionals and other workers and is to be totally secured.

With the field professionals having to travel all around and facing severe security threats, mobile CRM applications must ensure enterprise level security through validation, encryption and central, policy-based control.

User-friendliness

Mobile CRM Applications serve their purpose by being user-friendly and easy to operate while accessing data. If the application is hard to use and doesn’t respond swiftly on the handheld devices, it will be of no use during a client interaction.

Mobile CRM applications must be easy to navigate and respond promptly to any queries, with little or no training to the users. User interface of such applications make a huge impact with the users and it must comply with the organization’s unique process and workflow.

Improved User-functionality

Mobile CRM helps to increase business sales opportunities and lead generation by interacting with customers anywhere anytime with valid data at a single touch point. Applications help users even better when they are constantly updated. Employees must be able to revise their visit reports, add new findings of customers and make them up-to-date on their mobile devices.

Latest Technology Upgrades—Social & Location CRM

Social CRM is the best way to connect and engage customers in the CRM process. Instead of marketing messages to customers through email blast or mailers, it is better to update them on social media within CRM. In the current social trend, social media helps to build stronger customer relationship and acts as a medium to provide solution to customers’ needs.

Another trending aspect in mobile CRM is location-based intelligence. Social and location-specific data help professionals to gather and access more details about their customers. Integrating these advanced technologies on one unified environment provides new insight into the profile of customers and prospects on the spot, thus adding more value to CRM process.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Key Trends Shaping Next-Generation Business Intelligence

2012 has emerged to be a promising year for Business Intelligence (BI) with several notable trends, which will continue to dominate the future. With technological progress and proliferation of data, today’s BI and analytics apps are built to access the data faster and for its easier consumption by the business owners. Here is a list of some top trends, which will impact BI and its users in the coming years. Holding a deep understanding of these trends and applying them to business will update the business to stay an edge over the competition.

Top Trends That Will Impact Business Intelligence

Mobile BI and Accessibility The hype around enabling smartphones & tablets for BI is increasing rapidly as they help the business managers and decision makers to make decisions much faster, anytime anywhere. Mobile BI is identified by the industry analysts as one of the fastest growing trend which gives the business users access to their dashboards and critical business information on their handheld smartphones and tablet devices. This empowers an improvement in sales and services.

Cloud Based BI With the whole of IT world embracing cloud computing technology, Business Intelligence is no exception. Cloud based BI helps enterprises save IT costs and access data much faster that puts data analytics at ease. However, cloud based implementation of BI requires a defined and secure strategy for its success.

Big Data Big Data is growing faster as volume of data increases in the organizations and assists businesses to make critical decisions in near real-time. Most of the BI projects use Big Data as part of their data landscape for the value it delivers.

A recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive reported that small businesses are moving faster than larger competitors to leverage Big Data—28 percent identified Big Data as the massive growth in transaction data, while 24 percent said that it is the new technology that addresses volume, variety and velocity challenges of Big Data. The surging information from social media, mobile devices and machine-generated devices was cited by 18 percent as their definition of Big Data, while 19 percent characterized it as the requirement to store and archive data for regulatory compliance. The survey also indicates the awareness of SMEs on the benefits of Big Data—over 70 percent expects the ROI on Big Data within a year. 59 percent of organizations quoted that efficient business operations as primary benefit, and capable to boost sales by 54 percent, 50 percent says higher savings on IT costs, improve business agility by 48 percent, and attract and retain customers by 46 percent.

It is thus evident that companies understand the benefits Big Data can offer their businesses and realize the competitive advantage it can hold.

Self-Service BI Today, BI has grown more than a technology as companies around the world demand for relevant and faster access of data to take swift decisions. Self-service BI grants access to non-technical professionals who can create their own dashboards as per their specific needs, thus making them less dependent on the IT.

In-Memory Analytics In Business Intelligence, in-memory analytics is a methodology that helps to save time in accessing analytics. It works by increasing the speed, performance and reliability of the BI system when querying data. It thus provides its users, faster answers when compared to the disk-based system.

Open Source BI The top reason why companies often choose open source Business Intelligence is its “lower costs”. It also provides an easy access to all of the enterprise’s projects in progress. The open source BI is gaining momentum in the current trend and is being implemented by small, medium and large companies.

Social Media BI Most business houses today, have official Twitter accounts and Facebook pages where they promote their brand. With social media’s significance in businesses escalating drastically, companies collect and analyze the data of their customers and other users where BI plays a vital role by obtaining social media stats and analysis reports.

Collaborative BI With social media getting more prominent in businesses today, BI with social capabilities is yet another emerging platform where users can now share information and work more collaboratively. Social integratedBI solution helps the enterprises to provide their workforce a collaborative platform and increase their productivity.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

When cloud computing was instigated in the market there were very mixed views as to how it will help the future of the IT industry. There were proponents of the positive and negative outcomes of cloud computing in the industry. In hind sight this reaction is almost similar to when open source was introduced. Cloud Computing is rapidly rolling as a standard in business organizations. The technology is revolutionizing the way organizations manage infrastructure and business processes. As we see cloud computing is growing and admired as the solution for organizations seeking to save time and money on IT costs and leverage their business processes to increase profits. Let’s see how the cloud computing will change business and the tech industry. Easy Accessibility of Data through Cloud The accessibility of cloud computing is a major incentive for business owners, which allows its employees to access the data from anywhere at any time, instead of carrying the data on a memory card or emails or coming into the office. If entrepreneurs are on a business trip or any employee on a vacation, it provides easy access to the data through cloud computing, making many of the inconveniences void. Saving your IT Costs Most of the organizations use cloud computing as pay-as-you-go aspect. This means organizations pay only for the service and storage that are currently being used by them. This automatically cuts down the IT costs leading to an increase in the revenue. With the expansion of the company or a growth in the storage requirements storage needs can be scaled up or in the case of software, more payment can be made for increase in the usage for the same. Small companies, start-ups can break-even faster as cloud computing rapidly improves the standing of the company against the competition by bringing in more revenue quicker and scope for grabbing important market share. Boost for the Architects Massive growth is lined up in days ahead. It will be inevitable that all manual activities/services will be replaced by automation. Such a scene provides a huge scope for enterprise architects who will play major roles in IT. Skilled architects whose roles include development, implementation and enforcement of automated systems in every IT organization for uncountable services such that it makes the tasks simpler, easier to perform. Utilizing cloud computing services help organization through cloud based software in sending invoices to clients, organizing and synchronizing employee payroll, to name a few. Storage Everyone with a computer spends a lot of time acquiring data and then trying to find a way to store it. For some computer owners, finding enough storage space to hold all the data they've acquired is a real challenge. Investing in larger hard drives and other external storage devices like thumb drives or compact discs are expensive. Desperate computer users might delete entire folders worth of old files in order to make space for new information. But some are choosing to rely on a growing trend: cloud storage. Cloud storage is an area which is the latest burst. For individual computer owners it is the safest and most economical. Enterprise Storage such as Backup, Disaster Recovery in cloud are still pondered over by bigger organizations but are getting easy acceptance by small industries to use cloud for their storage purposes. Process Improvement Today even though most of the business has been digitized there still remains some documentation like hardcopy memos and handouts to employees and customers. Cloud computing has changed that as more and more businesses are giving up on documentation by utilizing emails to circulate important documents. Even we can store documents at one centralized location and grant access to employees. Through on demand solutions and shared services, which can be hosted on cloud, organizations can capitalize on the development of new skills and solutions. This leads to better business processes which in turn ensure that the organization is lean enough to adapt to market changes and even see them as new opportunities for growth.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Best Practices for Successful Migration to SharePoint 2013

Recently Microsoft has announced SharePoint 2013 beta version release, and its full version is expected to be released in early 2013. And well, you might already be considering migrating to SharePoint 2013? Here let us discuss all about SharePoint 2013 Migration.

There is so much to learn and various new features to be discovered and what certainly will be interesting is how quickly businesses migrate to the new platform. Taking those steps will gain you immediate benefits in your current environment in order to ensure you are ready to quickly take advantage of the new SharePoint 2013 features.

Migration to SharePoint 2013

Many organizations are planning to migrate, consolidate and restructure their legacy content to the next version of SharePoint. There’s more to do than just sit and wait: you can take steps today to prepare your environment for the new release.

Whether you are looking to move today or tomorrow, whether migrating your data to SharePoint on-premises or SharePoint Online, you should do it by keeping an eye on how it will impact the inevitable. You can seamlessly move your entire SharePoint environment, as well as Microsoft Exchange Public Folders, and Windows files, to on-premises versions of SharePoint, SharePoint Online, or a hybrid of the two.

Here are some of the best practices to be considered while upgrading or migration to SharePoint 2013

Best Practices for Agile Migration

Before upgrade, ensure present environment is fully functioning

Perform a trail upgrade on a test farm

Take the backup of your present database

Set original data as read-only, while migrating

Migrate all of your content to both SharePoint On-Premises and the Cloud either anyone of them to save time and money

Migrate content with simply drag and drop option, move content when you want to move it, schedule it during non-working hours with bulk migrations or phased

Consolidate the data to a single location from all of your sources to improve productivity

Migrate multiple SharePoint site lists and libraries simultaneously and save project costs and timeframe.

Assign metadata to content, which improve intelligence.

Simplify Your Project Management with schedule steps in migration and get real-time progress reports.

Migration Methodologies

Now we all know some of the best practices of migration and that migrating content is no simple task and every migration activity is different. We have two types of migration processes—Manual Process Migration and Automated Process Migration, which helps to migrate the content from one server to other.

Manual Migration

Let’s talk about manual process migration for moving the database from your SharePoint Local or Public Folders to SharePoint On-premises or SharePoint Online. This process could be used if you had a small number of Public Folders to migrate.

Manual Migration is the old traditional way of migrating the data, cutting and pasting of content to new server. This process of migration is cost effective, yet time consuming and importantly error-zone solution.

If you are migrating small or huge data from public folders to the new server, it is better to go with the automated migration as it is error-free, low cost and saves time.

Automated Migration

Automated tools make your SharePoint Migrations completely seamless and easy as 1, 2 & 3. Just select the sites you want to migrate, define your settings and click migrate. Tools will take care of the complete migration and migrate the entire site along with associated Meta Data, security and versioning.

Most of the companies rarely migrate the data from server to server with custom settings and with selected site; in this case automated migration is the best choice to migrate the data. While migrating log files are created and we can track the process and avoid losing the data during migration. Luckily, there are few companies who help you in confidently preparing for your SharePoint 2013 migration with readiness solutions; some of them are:

Quest

MetaVis

ZSL

e-Zest

Metalogix

Logimindz

Infosys

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

A Quick Guide for Successful Implementation of Desktop Virtualization Solution

Desktop virtualization

Desktop virtualization (client virtualization) holds a great promise for helping IT departments address the consumerization of IT, although some implementations can be expensive. While virtualizing the desktop, most users prefer to deploy more than one approach of desktop virtualization.

There are several storage virtualization & server virtualization solutions that can perform well and save IT expenses of your company. Desktop virtualization is one solution that can provide employees with secure access to corporate data on any device. It allows users to use virtually any application anywhere and access Windows everywhere.

In April, Gartner published a report titled “Desktop Virtualization: Building a People-Centric Infrastructure.” In this report, Gartner discusses how desktop virtualization should not be a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Devices and IT departments should support the reality that everyone has their own tastes and preferences when it comes to what applications they regularly use, where they use them, and how they customize their applications to make them more personal.

Getting started with desktop virtualization

As the current generation employees carry smartphones and tablets to the workplace, organizations are looking for solutions that can help them embrace workplace mobility. Desktop Virtualization is a unique solution which provides users to access the corporate data any time anywhere.

Desktop Virtualization requires a careful approach to implementation in order to get the most appropriate and significant benefits. Regardless of the scope of the implementation, there are three phases that are key in the overall virtualization roll out plan.

Assess

In this initial stage enterprises need to understand the employees’ needs, depending on their roles & responsibilities, involving different applications to perform the tasks. IT departments need to sort employees and applications as per their requirement and ensure that all employees are sufficiently provided with what they need. Assessing also includes determining the employees’ awareness of the Desktop Virtualization process and its benefits; thereby educating them to fix any prevailing gap.

Design

At this stage, IT departments need to plan out detailed report of employee application needs before implementation of integration of the systems. This stage involves prioritizing all tasks of desktop usage from networking to storage and applications, as well as presenting them in a detailed architectural plan.

Deploy

After complete implementation of applications, IT departments need to closer with employees for smooth flow of virtual desktop experience and its applications for long time.

Before deployment, IT departments need to test solutions in a production and to make sure those error free virtual desktops. IT department should be regularly monitoring the desktops for any network or application issues.

This helps them to proactively observe and diagnose how best to optimize their desktop virtualization adoption.

Challenges of Cloud Desktop Virtualization

While embracing Desktop virtualization, companies can expect some or all of the following challenges namely;

Choosing the right vendor to your business needs

Selecting a platform, whether hosted in-house or third-party

Check out the user experiences

Technological challenges, if data is lost when moving between environments or making physical equipment (Printers, Scanners)

Licensing prices may make or break the case for virtualization depending on the company considering it.

Some of the Top Desktop Virtualization Solution providers for your reference....

VMware

Microsoft

Netapp

HP

Citrix

Dell

Cisco

ZSL

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Successful Cloud Migration Practice You Never Want to Miss

In today's competitive IT environment, organizations are reducing development and maintenance costs and it is critical to know when to adopt new technology and when to keep current applications in place. Businesses are looking for a right path to reduce costs and improve the accessibility of legacy applications.

As the market is moving fast with business scenario, companiesglobally are facing many challenges which require them to update their applications and legacy systems with latest technologies.

Application migration moves applications quickly and efficiently to modern platforms with modernized architectures and designs by preserving its same original goals.

Migrating legacy applications to a cloud 

Following a protocol helps companies modernize infrastructure at ease for an effective business continuity.Moving legacy applications on dedicated server to virtual servers involve significant steps as provided by anInfrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud provider.

Test the performance

Before migrating, check out the features available on new virtualized environment and it is important to understand the performancecharacteristics of your application; a virtualized server has huge benefits when compared to dedicated server hardware and performs in different ways for better output. After analysis of the new virtual server, compare it with old dedicated server and also check how it can save your performance time and pricing. Make sure to check outhow your current system works can help avoid painful migration issues.

Determine target architecture

Depending on the analysis of virtual environment performance characteristics, we can determine what the target architecture will be. We can observe that a significant degree of performance interference exists when we run certain types of applications on shared hardware at the same time. In addition, examine workflow dependencies along with security to ensure a smart schedule for the migration.

Later, we can start creating server images. Few virtualization systems allows for creating virtual images depending on the physical hardware.This may be desirable, or it may be better to start fresh by creating images of base operating system installations and configuring those as required for the target application. Just as in a dedicated hardware environment, these server images should be locked down for security with patches installed and unneeded services disabled.

Testing of New Application

After the virtual environment is configured and all the server images are created, now we can test the new application, whether the features & security are up to the expected levels in new virtualized environment and also check the load and performance of the environment as these are critical for the application because we have noted that, system and application performancein a virtualized environment could be different from dedicated hardware.

Roll Over

Once everything is performing well set with targets in the new, start migrating data to virtual server and we can start using the services of the new system. Later have a look at the newly installed applicationto determine if the new environment is behaving as expected.

There are different types of migration when it comes to your infrastructure reconstruction. Keep an eye here to not miss on some valuable insights for your company on the following types of migration, which will be elaborated in the future posts

Java Migration

.Net Migration

Oracle Migration

Database Migration

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) is a richly featured business management solution that allows you to use familiar, powerful software to operate and grow your business.

  MicrosoftDynamics GP Add-Ons allows your people to do their jobs in the way they like, at outstanding levels of productivity. The solution also provides you with ways to build stronger, more productive relationships with your key stakeholders—customers and trading partners. Microsoft Dynamics partners can also help you implement and fine-tune the solution to ensure that you reap the best possible results from it.

Microsoft's community of Independent Software Vendors (ISV) has developed a number of add-ons and verticals, all generally referred to as Third Party applications, which complement or enhance the existing functionality of the application. These are also written in Dexterity, and so look and function in the same way as Dynamics GP standard modules.

Following are the top Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-Ons for 2012:

Advanced General Ledger

AGL provides the tools you need to create manage and operate a large Chart of Accounts easily and effectively.

AvaTax

AvaTax extends the power of your ERP with fully integrated end-to-end sales tax management automation. AvaTax Calc delivers instantaneous address validation and sales tax calculations on-demand. AvaTax Certs makes it possible to digitally create, store and access exemption certificates at the point of sale.

Config AD

Config AD enables administrators to manage all aspects of Microsoft Dynamics security from Active Directory. Administrators no longer need access to Microsoft Dynamics or to an administrator password to create, change or delete users. With a simple click, a Microsoft Dynamics user can easily be created in seconds

EQM

For organizations that compete on quality, Enterprise Quality Management (EQM) provides the ability to track tests throughout the lifecycle of a process and to implement and activate controls based on the test results.

eSource

eSource B2C provides real time inventory allocation from your web store and gives you an easy access to managing products sold on the website. Also, any changes in price made in Microsoft Dynamics GP will immediately be shown on your website. eSource B2C is your “one stop shop” for the way you do business online.

Experlogix

Experlogix can quickly configure custom products and services that meet your customer’s unique needs. Rules can be based on product type, geography, customer name/type, industry, deal size and more.

Mekorama MICR

Mekorama MICR reduces accounting costs by allowing businesses to use blank check stock and magnetic toner in place of pricier pre-printed stock. By effectively reducing the time required to create, print, and obtain approvals and signatures for checks, Mekorama MICR can have a dramatic effect on your bottom line.

Multi Currency Web Feeder

ZSL’s Microsoft Dynamics Multicurrency Web Feeder provides complete business solution in calculating the exchange rates of various currencies and updating it into the ERP applications — GP, NAV & AX — for the various transactions held across the organization.

Project Tracking

Project Tracking with Advanced Analytics creates a seamless connection between a company’s financial transactions and project revenue and expenses. Set up Project Tracking with Advanced Analytics in three easy steps and begin to capture project data as an extension of daily transaction entry.

RedTail EDI

The EDI Imperative Suppliers today have a choice to implement best-in-class Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), or pay the price. Without top-notch EDI, scorecards suffer, chargeback hurt profitability, and adding trading partners is a nightmare.

SalesPad Data Collection

SalesPad is a standalone front-end application developed for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Its primary function is to offer faster and more comprehensive sales and customer service tools than those available in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) is a mid-market business accounting software (ERP Software) marketed in entire globe with Microsoft and its partners.

Microsoft Dynamics GP is an ERP solution developed to help small to mid-sized companies in the distribution, manufacturing, public sector, services and retail industries. Dynamics GP helps the companies improve their business operations to remain cut-throat. It connects the many moving parts of your organization, giving you better visibility and control over your business deeds.

Microsoft Dynamics GP software delivers comprehensive out-of-the-box business management functionality, from operations management, financial management, human resource management & manufacturing with rapid, flexible deployment options to get your organization up and running quickly and affordably.

Dynamics GP enables you to make smart decisions that have a direct impact on your bottom line—increasing margins and improving your cash flow. Simple to learn and use, Microsoft Dynamics GP works with your existing technology and scales as you grow to deliver long-term value.

Microsoft Dynamics GP is business management solution helps you to run your business more efficiently by bringing your systems together. 

Microsoft Dynamics GP Vs SAP Business One

To better comprehend the factual value of Microsoft Dynamics in par with SAP Business One, here is a survey conducted by Keystone Strategy llc about the impact of Microsoft Dynamics and SAP on the enterprise.

Keystone Strategy llc contacted the users of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, SAP All-in-One, and SAP R/3 at approximately 100 companies (randomly) and were asked about their experiences with Microsoft and SAP applications across different categories of business productivity.

1) Usability measures the user’s perception of how easy the applications are to use, how “in command” of the application a user feels, how easy it is to navigate in the software, and how much the user enjoys using the software.

2) Familiarity measures the user’s perception of how intuitive the application feels, how easy it is to learn, how quickly they can become proficient with the application, and how comfortable they feel using it.

   3) Transactional Efficiency measures the user’s perception of how easy it is to execute common and repetitive tasks, the efficiency of the interface as it pertains to those common tasks, and the speed and reliability of the software.

4) Flexibility measures the user’s perception of how easy it is to execute infrequent or unusual tasks in the application, how easily the software can be adapted to meet specific new business needs and processes, and how agile the software is in handling problems that arise unexpectedly.  

5) Business Insight measures the user’s perception of how well the software enables easy and comprehensive reporting, access to real-time information, visibility into cross-departmental information, and the ability to gauge the impact of business decisions.

6) Collaboration measures the user’s perception of how the software helps them work and communicate with their colleagues; share and review work; and communicate with suppliers, partners, and customers.

Leading the results on various parameters, Microsoft Dynamics family, regardless of the survey always holds the great advantage "ready to be modelled as your business needs", a plus that the modern business needs always more.

Survey reference link

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is business management software that allows an organization to use a system of integrated applications to manage the business. ERP integrates internal and external management information across an entire organization embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, marketing, etc.

An ERP system automates this activity with an integrated software application. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

Benefits

ERP software can be used for all department in organization

ERP system has various modules like Finance/ Accounts, HR Management, Manufacturing, Marketing, Warehouse Management, CRM, Project Management, etc

Single reporting system to analyze the statistics/ numbers etc in real time

ERP system can extend to provide Business Intelligence functionalities by vendors

Common database for all applications

ERP system has drag-and-drop dashboard design

Advanced e-Commerce integration is available in ERP

Improved workflow and efficiency

Helps for better decision-making, faster response time to customer queries, etc.

ERP system makes order tracking, inventory tracking, revenue tracking and related activities easier

Improves the productivity

Faster access to data for timely decisions

High saving on products & services purchased

Bulk e-mailing

Inventory reduction

Lead time reduction

Reduces the risk

Improves financial management

Provides a consolidated picture of sale

Building the corporate image

High customer satisfaction

Pre-build reporting & custom reporting

Saves time & efforts in data entry

Oracle ERPs Vs Microsoft ERPs

Oracle & Microsoft are leading companies in the domain of ERP system who provide application software for diverse segments. Looking at Microsoft ERP system in par with that of Oracle;

Microsoft ERP

Microsoft ERPs are one of the most implemented application software & are very user-friendly. With such an established brand, companies do not see the risk of implementing a new solution. It is helpful in enhancing customer relationship management, supply chain and for making financial decisions. Microsoft ERPs are helpful in integration offering solutions for successful business management therefore making it easy for people to take rapid decisions.

Microsoft Dynamics ERPs includes the following products:

Microsoft Dynamics GP  (formerly Great Plains)

Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta)

Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision)

Microsoft Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon)

Microsoft Dynamics C5 (formerly Concorde C5)

Some of the key features for Microsoft ERP

Microsoft ERP software comes with high performance and security; and can scale with the business.

ERP is authenticated at windows level.

Some of its software allows heavy data transfer and recovery.

Real time data is accessible.

Microsoft ERP can be used for multi-location, world spread offices and intercompany transfer.

Automated processing of business and flexible modules, which can be easily customized to meet with the needs of each and every company.

There is a role based user interface and Microsoft office tools can be easily used along with this solution.

With the help of share point portals the software can be shared. 

Oracle ERP

Oracle offers ERP solutions to its customers in the area of customer relationship, database, and resource planning and supply management. Success of Oracle ERPs can be attributed to the close alignment of customers with fast implementation, higher quality, and lower cost of ownership.

Following are the Oracle ERPs

Oracle EBS ERP

Oracle CRM – Sales

Oracle Financials

Oracle HRMS

Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Applications

Oracle Order Management

Oracle Procurement

Oracle Project Portfolio Management

Oracle Quotes

Oracle Transportation Management

Oracle Warehouse Management Systems

Oracle Inventory

Oracle Enterprise Asset Management

Some of the key features for Oracle ERP

Provides access to a wider pool of effective talent.

Leverages world-wide best practices for organization.

Predictable service level to customers for better satisfaction.

Oracle Application can be designed for purposes of using it on internet.

Database in Oracle is highly secured and cannot be broken easily.

Easily customizable and adoptable as per the legal standards.

Top ERP Solution Providers

Microsoft

Oracle

Infor

SAP

Sage

Salesforce

Top ERP Implementation Providers

Icreon

iGate

Accenture

TGI Ltd

ZSL Inc

PWC

TI Infotech

Ignify

Rolta

Hexaware

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Salesforce.com CRM

Salesforce.com provides CRM solutions to businesses of various sizes and industries and is delivered as on-premise and -cloud deployment models. One of the key Customer Relationship Management cloud software, it addresses customer interface concerns starting from sales and marketing to customer service, streamlining the enterprise. The solution helps companies gain highest benefits from sales force automation, marketing automation, customer support and analysis. It helps them meet the multifaceted challenges of global customer communication by creating a holistic view of their existing and potential customers.

Salesforce.com's CRM Suite includes:

Customer Service and Support 

Marketing Automation

Customer Analytics 

Force Automation 

Document Application 

Custom Applications

Key benefits of Saleforce.com CRM:

The primary benefits of Salesforce.com solutions include the ease of deployment and user-friendliness of the solution

It offers a wide-ranging suite of applications for sales force and marketing automation, partner marketing, call centre management, and customer service and support.

It also offers sophisticated capabilities such as in-depth business reporting and analytics, flexible and reliable mobile access, and point-and-click customization

The solution places a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction

The success of CRM lies in proper planning, implementation, reinforcement, and optimization of best practices. Salesforce.com’s CRM offerings were created to provide these services in synchronization with its partners. The company currently holds over 92,000 customers worldwide and derives more than 30% of its revenue from overseas sales. 

Taking a brief glimpse at its performance in recent years, in spite of being a major player in this industry, Salesforce.com faces threat due to heavy competition from business customers who have larger resources and well-established customer relationships with even larger businesses. The escalating customer acquisition cost is an imperative factor that influences the growth of the company. Key players like Oracle, SAP AG, Google etc., in CRM space offer open-source, SaaS, and traditional software solutions. These are some of the major trends and forces observed in this industry that reflect on the diminishing margins of Salesforce.com.

In response, to survive such threats from the market, Salesforce.com CRM has launched products that are designed to improve investment in the company’s services. New offerings are added to its suite, designed to attract more customers, latest of which includes: 

Ø  Government Cloud to accelerate government’s transformation for the social era.

Ø  Salesforce Rypple & Salesforce Site.com, two new products extend the social enterprise to reach every employee and every customer. The next generation of the social enterprise leverages Salesforce.com’s social, mobile and open cloud technologies to develop social profiles of customers, create employee and customer social networks, and connect with public social networks.

Ø  Desk.com, revolutionizing customer service for a social and mobile world by offering a help desk that is social, mobile and simple to use and deploy

Some of the leading providers of Salesforce.com solution in the market include;

Top Saleforce CRM Partners

Bmcsoftware

APPIRIO

Infosys

Concur

Accenture

Blackboard

Capgemini

Symantec

ZSL Inc

Deloitte

Kenandy

CA Technologies

Bodhtree

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Sage SalesLogix

Sage SalesLogix is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software package developed by Sage. Sage SalesLogix CRM is an award winning CRM solution that provides complete account centric CRM solution designed to enable your sales, marketing and customer support.

Sales

Each business needs sales and each customer needs things or service. sales are more than profession, it is a mission to surpass the competition, gain market share and exceed the targets.

Sage SalesLogix will help to boost the competition and win in the industry.

Sage SalesLogix to increase productivity by automating key aspects of the selling cycle, maximize team selling effectiveness with advanced sales tools and resources, and make informed decisions based on accurate visibility into the sales pipeline.

Marketing

Bringing the high quality leads and managing the profitable campaigns which helps to drive more revenue to the organisation. Sage SalesLogix powers your strategic initiatives with the tools helping you to make more informed decisions about how to improve your return on investment (ROI) from your marketing activities.

Identify and target the most profitable prospects, manage and track all aspects of campaigns in one place, and analyse campaign ROI to increase marketing efficiency and get the most from your investment in your CRM solution.

Customer Service & Support

Excellent customer service & support builds trust and confidence. Customer service builds trust, when the customer has an expectation of a reliable, repeatable, pleasurable experience with a brand, loyalty increases and positive word-of-mouth.

Sage SalesLogix provides you with a complete view of all customer interactions so you can better service, support, and sell.

Following are the Top Sage SalesLogix Providers

Sage

AppEazy 

CozyRoc LLC

DataSelf Corp

Greytrix

LinkPoint Connect

SalesFUSION

SmartCatalog

Stonefield Query

TaskCentre

Team Knowledge Limited

TimeLinx Software

ZSL Inc

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Addons

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is Customer Relationship Management software package developed by Microsoft. CRM focuses on Sales, Marketing & Service sectors.

There are a number of Microsoft Dynamics CRM partners who develop CRM Add-ons which are designed to implement as part of CRM solution. These Addons can improve the basic functionality such as searching, email marketing, tracking campaign leads, sales orders, accounting operations and more.

MS Dynamics CRM add-ons & plug-ins helps CRM users to save time to keep customers satisfied, current market has a lot of CRM add-ons which will help you to build more fruitful relationships with existing customers and forge relationships with new ones.

Following are the most popular CRM Add-ons all Microsoft Dynamics CRM users

ActivitySummary – Helps to work faster

AdvisorDesk for Weather Management –Providing financial advice to America’s Wealthiest individuals

GlobalSearch – Finds the records within the account faster

Google Map Integration – Provides a complete geographical view of your customers

ImageControl – Allows to configure image in MS CRM

LinkpointVue – Access MS CRM contacts as address book.

Powertrak – Provides to speed up all customer interactions, get rid of paperwork, accept payments.

CDMOptimize – Managing educational events.

CRM QuickBook Sync – Provides a single platform to perform both customer relation management and accounting operation.

Email preview pane – Preview email contents in just one click

Bulk Email Import – Allows to import bulk emails and associate every archived emails against projects.

SmartPrise SocialCRM – Begets social media empowerment to the marketing, sales, customer support and management teams

CRM Copy Quote – Allows you to copy the existing quote and save that as new quote for repeated use

Web to Lead Capture – Capture the contact details from website directly into a CRM entity.

ADXStudio xRM Extensions

ClickDimensions – For Email Marketing & Marketing Automation

CRMAdvantage – Helps to accept the electronic payments

CWRMobility – To increase the productivity with Mobile CRM

PriceList Utilities – Helps to maintain company price list

ScribeAdapter

TenDigits

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Social CRM & Benefits

Social CRM – Customer Relationship Management goes with Social Media; social CRM helps the organizations with various social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to increase customer relationship & to promote business information.

CRM is implemented for managing company’s interactions with customers, clients, sales prospects. It organizes and manages the sales activities, marketing, customer services & technical support.  Social CRM helps the organizations to interact with customers, clients and stay connected with them on social media.

Social CRM is a back-end process, which helps to manage the customer relationships with various social media network sites. It helps to gain more online visibility for the company profile pages while also interacting with customers, promoting offers, promoting news, increasing more no. of sales with status updates, apps, offer pages, promoting events, deals and more.

Social CRM integration is available with applications like Microsoft CRM, Saleforce.com CRM, Oracle CRM, Home-grown CRM and more.

Key Benefits of Social CRM includes

Maintaining Customer Relationship

Building Clients Network

Increase in Traffic

Increase in Leads

Brand Promotion

Promoting Offers & News

Promoting Events

Custom Apps

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

The advent of CRM solutions has revolutionized the way business transactions are carried out with customers. Defining CRM, 

“Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business philosophy involving identifying, understanding and better providing for your customers while building a relationship with each customer to improve customer satisfaction and maximize profits. It's about understanding, anticipating and responding to customers' needs.”

To establish a successful customer relationship, businesses need to source the right information about their targeted customers and organize them for analysis and further action. It is also important that this information is updated over the time and made available to employees, which will serve as a key resource to business.

A CRM software tool eases this cumbersome process to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. There are many leading technology companies who provide CRM solutions to various business segments. Let us take a look at each on the most popular ones...

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Customer Relationship Management software package developed by Microsoft. CRM focuses on Sales, Marketing and Service sectors.

MS Dynamics CRM is a server-client application, which is primarily an IIS based web application. Clients can access CRM by using Internet Explorer 6 or higher version or by thick client plug-in to Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft released updated version of MS Dynamics CRM in Feb’ 2011 and named it as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, which supports 41 international languages. CRM 2011 is a blend of CRM 3 and CRM 4 versions.

Some of Key Benefits of MS CRM 2011

Helps to construct multiple sets of charts and grids.

CRM 2011supports Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2010.

Administrators can grant permissions on each field.

CRM 2011 helps to create FetchXML reports and standard SQL RS reports.

CRM 2011 supports for data importing from CSV, TXT, XML, or ZIP file types.

While sending bulk email with attachments file, only when stored database.

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 builds custom applications within minutes or days, instead of months.

CRM 2011 can be accessed via Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, and Mobile Device.

Improved business insight through real time reports and dashboards.

Manual tasks reduced by automatic processing.

Helps to manage all relationships and processes in a single interface.

Helps to gain more customer satisfaction and to drive more sales.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Business Consulting

Business Consulting

IT Consulting

Every organization gets into roadblock many a times in its rise to growth.  At such times, business consulting firms pitch in and project the status as an outsider picking out not only the obstacles but also coming up with solutions to tackle. The interventions provided by such business consulting are tremendous in looking out for obstacles. They help in identifying the way existing resources are being consumed in a company and also provide practices for improvising the future projects, thus helping the corporation’s growth and a fulfilling future. Furthermore, a business consulting firm also at times performs certain preparatory tasks in order to make sure the company is on the right track.

Consulting firms are hired by corporations so that they can maximize their potential, growth and exposure. Generally corporations when hindered by certain issues hire businesses consulting firms who help in overall operations and resolve the issues which might thwart the future growth of the company. The three main key elements on which business firms base their strategies are discovery, assessment and restructuring. Discovery helps to understand the current operations of the company. Assessment process helps to understand the organizations assets & liabilities. Restructuring helps to restructure the current process and to overcome the risk factors and maximize the revenue.

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Business Solutions

Business Solutions

How to grow your business & build relationship with your customers?

How to fulfil clients’ needs?  Read further on and find your solution to these queries...

For every business service, we at ZSL have plenty of ways to escalate your business.  ZSL’s expertise is developing IT Services & Consulting into business solutions to meet the needs and goals of clients, leveraging accumulated knowledge of subject matter experts and best practices in numerous fields. We have years of experience in IT Solutions & Services with which highly qualified professionals strive hard to meet the exact requirements of our valuable clients. ZSL has a comprehensive portfolio of proven applications to address client’s requirements, in budget and on time.

ZSL’s key factors to making a software solution work include listening to customers, research & development, product engineering, development, integration with enterprise application, migration, application upgrade, testing and maintenance. We are dedicated to providing top solutions for your business needs & help you in your business growth in many ways.

Some of our applications built to serve your business needs include;

CRM Solutions

MS Dynamics CRM & Addons

Salesforce CRM

Social CRM

Business Management Solutions

MS Dynamics NAV, AX, GP & Addons

Infor Syteline & Addons

Sage

SAP

Retail Solutions

Mobile Solutions

Enterprise Computing

Application Migration

Oracle EBS

SharePoint

SmartPrise Social Commerce

Field Service Management

[futuretechnologytrends-blog]

Systems Integrator

Role of a Systems Integrator With a huge demand for commercial software in application portfolio, IT organizations must develop and refine their skills in understanding and evaluating providers of such systems. Most of the companies have been on the evaluation of software providers. But there is yet another significant party involved other than the software vendor to ensure project success; namely the System Integration or system implementation consulting firm. This article is written on the basics of special report- Role of a System Integrator, which describes the role typically played by system integration firms in enterprise system implementation. System Integration is a common term that describes the bringing together of the component subsystems into a single platform of integrated system. It helps simplifies complicated tasks by breaking them down to be managed to one single point.   For example a store requires barcode scanning devices, wireless access points, docking station, local servers, and transaction processing system that handles interfaces to inventory control, payroll, accounting, products status, and offers, production scheduling and other systems. No single vendor or developer of each of these subsystems or system components has responsibility for the entire system and hence a third-party system integration firm is hired to oversee deployment of the entire system. The company’s IT organization could play the role of Systems Integrator who assimilates to centralize and manage the various software applications on one single platform.