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We adapt our expertise to their specific industries to help them develop digital services, manage operations and utilise information. We employ over 1,000 experts in Finland and Sweden. We are expanding our international presence together with our customers.\r\nOne of our major assets is our profound knowledge and understanding of the core processes of local organisations, and of the supporting operational systems and integrations. Our digital business services give us a bigger role in our customers' value chains. Our service model also includes consultancy, service desing, development partnerships, and life-cycle services.\r\nWe have solid industry expertise in commercial, logistics and industrial sectors, in the public sector, and in banking and insurance.\r\nIn Finland, we operate in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Oulu, Rauma, Tampere, Turku, Vaasa and Lahti. 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IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png","alias":"it-outsourcing"},"71":{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management"},"75":{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning"},"421":{"id":421,"title":"Digital Commerce Applications","description":"E-commerce is the activity of buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.\r\nModern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of online books (such as Amazon) and music purchases (music download in the form of digital distribution such as iTunes Store), and to a less extent, customized/personalized online liquor store inventory services. There are three areas of e-commerce: online retailing, electric markets, and online auctions. E-commerce is supported by electronic business.\r\nE-commerce businesses may also employ some or all of the followings:\r\n<ul><li>Online shopping for retail sales direct to consumers via Web sites and mobile apps, and conversational commerce via live chat, chatbots, and voice assistants;</li><li>Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales;</li><li>Business-to-business buying and selling;</li><li>Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media;</li><li>Business-to-business (B2B) electronic data interchange;</li><li>Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with newsletters);</li><li>Engaging in pre-retail for launching new products and services;</li><li>Online financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">5 Reasons Why E-commerce Is So Important For Your Business</span>\r\nFrom startups to small businesses right through to huge brands, there are a huge number of companies that can benefit from their own e-commerce website, where they can sell their own products or services. In today's competitive and convenience-focused society, no longer do consumers want to venture to the high street in order to buy items, instead, consumers want to shop from their own homes, making e-commerce a flexible solution for both businesses and buyers.\r\nIf you’re still on the fence about launching an e-commerce store then look no further, here are the top 5 reasons e-commerce is so important for your business and just how you can benefit from moving online this year!\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Can Broaden Your Brand</span>\r\nE-commerce is an ideal way you can take your brand from a traditional brick and mortar store to an innovative, well-loved brand. By offering great products 24 hours a day along with online customer service, blogs and social media, no longer is your business one singular store, with an online presence your business can be the home of your products and the general home of your business, allowing you to fully expand your product ranges without having to worry about moving locations or worrying about not being able to expand your business.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">It’s More Convenient</span>\r\nAn online store is available all day, every day meaning your customers can visit your store at all times, no matter what their schedule might be. These days people don’t always have the time to physically go shopping, instead more and more people are choosing to shop online to find the items they want or need and if your business can offer this for your customers there’s no you shouldn't appeal to a wider range of customers all looking for a convenient and flexible experience.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Increase Your Reach</span>\r\nDue to the internet’s accessibility, millions of people across the world can view your website at any time, meaning that for those looking to expand their businesses and reach out to a larger audience, you have many more opportunities to do so. Compare the number of people you can reach through a website to the amount you can reach through a high street store or local advertising, there’s no reason you shouldn’t look at taking your business online if you’re looking to improve your reach.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Gives You Marketing Opportunities</span>\r\nYour website is one of the best marketing tools your business has, not only can the use of SEO when building your site lead to more chances of your business getting found in search engines, but a huge number of marketing techniques can also work alongside your website, including pay per click advertising, your social media marketing, and your email marketing, all of which can include links back to your website.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalable</span>\r\nAs your business grows it’s very likely you’ll want to grow your product range and your target audience, as well as develop your business for customer requirements and consumer demand. An e-commerce site lets you scale your business accordingly, allowing you to add more lines, add more payment options and even grow when you choose to ship to, without having to worry about changing your location or moving to larger premises as you might with a brick and mortar store.\r\nE-commerce offers the business a whole range of opportunities, from marketing opportunities to increase your products ranges to generating more sales and with an optimized and well-developed website, you can not only achieve these goals but also offer your customers around the clock, convenient service, that can boost your business.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Digital_Commerce_Applications.png","alias":"digital-commerce-applications"},"601":{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png","alias":"custom-software-development"},"609":{"id":609,"title":".Net Development","description":" .NET Framework is a software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large class library named Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment (in contrast to a hardware environment) named Common Language Runtime (CLR), an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called "managed code". FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.\r\nFCL provides user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. Programmers produce software by combining their source code with .NET Framework and other libraries. The framework is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. Microsoft also produces an integrated development environment largely for .NET software called Visual Studio.\r\n.NET Framework began as proprietary software, although the firm worked to standardize the software stack almost immediately, even before its first release. Despite the standardization efforts, developers, mainly those in the free and open-source software communities, expressed their unease with the selected terms and the prospects of any free and open-source implementation, especially regarding software patents. Since then, Microsoft has changed .NET development to more closely follow a contemporary model of a community-developed software project, including issuing an update to its patent promising to address the concerns.\r\n.NET Framework led to a family of .NET platforms targeting mobile computing, embedded devices, alternative operating systems, and web browser plug-ins. A reduced version of the framework, .NET Compact Framework, is available on Windows CE platforms, including Windows Mobile devices such as smartphones. .NET Micro Framework is targeted at very resource-constrained embedded devices. Silverlight was available as a web browser plugin. Mono is available for many operating systems and is customized into popular smartphone operating systems (Android and iOS) and game engines. .NET Core targets the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and cross-platform and cloud computing workloads.","materialsDescription":"When Microsoft formally introduced its .NET strategy in mid-2000, analysts were confused about how the company would pull off such a massive platform shift. Over two years later, they're still wondering. But .NET isn't vaporware, and it's not a pipe dream. In fact, .NET is happening today.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is .NET?</span>\r\nActually, .NET is many things, but primarily it's a marketing term for a set of products and technologies that Microsoft is creating to move personal and enterprise computing beyond the PC desktop and into a distributed Internet-based environment. So .NET--which was originally called Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS)--is also a platform, one that Microsoft sees as the successor to Windows. The .NET platform is based on Web services which are, in turn, defined by a language called XML.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is XML?</span>\r\nXML--the eXtensible Markup Language--is a self-descriptive, data definition language. It's structure is similar to HTML, the language of the Web, but it's far more powerful because it's not limited to a static list of language constructs ("tags") that the language's authors supply. Instead, XML is extensible and dynamic: Programmers can define new types of data using XML and then describe that data so that others will know how to use it.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are Web services?</span>\r\nWeb services are functions exposed by server-side applications. They are programmable units that other applications (and Web services) can access over the Internet.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Does .NET require Windows?</span>\r\nTechnically, no, but realistically, yes. It's possible the .NET platform could be ported to other operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, the Macintosh, or whatever, and indeed, some work is being done now in this area. However, .NET very much requires Windows today, on both the server and the client. One might say that .NET and Windows have a symbiotic relationship going forward.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Is .NET is being ported to Linux?</span>\r\nYes. A company called Ximian is porting the standards-based parts of .NET to Linux as you read this, and the work is amazingly far along. Code-named Mono, this project seeks to bring the C# programming language, the Common Language Runtime (CLR, see below), and other .NET features to Linux.\r\nOn a related note, Microsoft has contracted Corel (makers of CorelDRAW and Word Perfect) to port .NET to FreeBSD.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Isn't .NET just another name for COM, COM+, Windows DNA, or some other previous Windows technology?</span>\r\nActually, no. Microsoft spent considerable time and effort developing and promoting a set of Windows technologies that was at various times called OLE, COM, COM+, and Windows DNA (Distributed InterNet Architecture) but .NET is not the next iteration. Windows DNA, which was the final umbrella term for this set of technologies, was based around a concept where Windows-based software components could expose their services for other local and remote Windows software components. But though this sounds passingly similar to .NET, Windows DNA is very much based on proprietary Windows technologies. By comparison, .NET is based on open standards (XML and various related technologies), so it will be much easier for other vendors to adopt the platform and write compatible software. So we can eventually expect to see .NET clients and servers on platforms other than Windows.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">So what technologies are part of .NET?</span>\r\n.NET is comprised of several related technologies, including:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Framework</span></span> - A runtime environment and set of standard services which .NET capable applications and services can utilize. Implemented as a code library, the .NET Framework includes the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the .NET run-time environment; ASP .NET, a Web applications platform; and ADO .NET, for data store access.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Compact Framework</span></span> - A subset of the .NET Framework designed for Pocket PCs, Microsoft Smart Phones, and other Windows CE .NET-based mobile devices.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">MSN consumer services</span></span> - Microsoft will use its consumer-oriented MSN online service to expose Web services to individuals. The current version, MSN 8, includes the .NET Passport's authentication services, email, address book, calendaring and tasks, and other similar services.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Enterprise Servers</span></span> - An extensive set of Microsoft server software that runs on Windows servers, including Application Server, BizTalk Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, SQL Server, and many others. Microsoft is currently shipping many such server products, but they are all based on Windows DNA currently, not .NET. Future server products--beginning with Windows .NET Server 2003, due in April 2003--will actually be based on .NET technologies for the first time.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Visual Studio .NET</span></span> - Microsoft's .NET development environment, with support for languages such as Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET, Visual C# .NET, and Visual J#, which all target the .NET Framework. Other vendors can add other language capabilities to Visual Studio .NET, and the suite can be used to target a wide range of applications and services, including .NET Web services, Windows applications, and Web applications. Note that Visual Studio .NET is not required to create .NET applications and services: Developers can download the .NET Framework for free; this download includes compilers for Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET and Visual C# .NET.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">OK, so what's the point? How does this make my life better?</span>\r\nWith apologies to Microsoft for stealing the term, .NET enables a better PC ecosystem. That is, by making life easier for everyone involved with PCs, the benefits are cross-pollinated. Here's how .NET makes life easier on various groups:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Programmers</span></span> - Because developers now have a consistent, language-neutral programming environment, they can create better applications and services more quickly. And because .NET encompasses such a wider range of functionality, those applications and services can be connected to back-end services via the Internet, offering better, and more exciting functionality.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">IT administrators</span></span> - Because .NET applications and services do away with the "DLL Hell" found in previous Windows applications, they are amazingly easy to distribute and install.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">End users</span></span> - For the reasons listed above, and many others, a new generation of .NET applications and services will provide new types of connected functionality. Access your email from anywhere. Pay for products online without typing in your credit card information. Access weather, traffic, music, and other personal information from a variety of devices, from anywhere in the world. The future is all connected, and .NET will get us there.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Net_Development.png","alias":"net-development"},"661":{"id":661,"title":"Sharepoint Development","description":" SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and usage varies substantially among organizations.\r\nSharePoint infuses AI into the mobile app experience to keep you focused and productive while on the go. AI builds an understanding of what you work on, how you work, and how your colleagues' work relates to you. When you need expertise, content, or resources when you're on the go, SharePoint is a great place to start looking.\r\nSharePoint is comprised of a multipurpose set of technologies that has tight integration with Office 365 as well as handy document management capabilities.\r\nAccording to Microsoft, SharePoint is used by 78% of Fortune 500 companies. Between 2006 and 2011, Microsoft sold over 36.5 million user licenses.\r\nSharePoint is a collection of software products and components that includes:\r\n<ul><li>a set of web applications for organizing collaboration;</li><li>functionality for creating web portals;</li><li>module for searching information in documents and information systems;</li><li>workflow management functionality and enterprise-wide content management system;</li><li>module for creating forms for entering information;</li><li>functionality for business analysis.</li></ul>\r\nMicrosoft states that SharePoint has 190 million users across 200,000 customer organizations.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is Microsoft SharePoint important?</span>\r\nSharePoint’s core functions are\r\n<ul><li>a) to store documents in a more effective format than a regular folder system, and</li><li>b) bring an organization together so that everyone receives critical information that’s relevant to them.</li></ul>\r\nHere are some benefits your organization can get from using SharePoint:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Context around documents and folders</span></span>\r\nA traditional document storage facility is usually a folder on a server somewhere. The reason why SharePoint is more effective than the traditional method is that it brings context around the folder itself by tracking versions of the document. For example, in a traditional folder setup, you can’t have a running version history for each document or see any changes to the file name. Whereas with SharePoint, there’s more information provided about the file. It’s not just some file sitting in a folder; it’s an evolving piece of information that has a history as well as context.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Enable constant communication with all staff</span></span>\r\nIn the past, you might send a group email and copy everyone. The problem with that approach is a lot of information gets ignored or even lost, so some people might not get the information they need. For example, maybe you lost a company document and you missed an important discussion. Or maybe you did read it but afterward, it was very difficult to find and reference that information. SharePoint brings collaboration to the table so that all staff can see the important information and communication accordingly.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Store all information in a central location</span></span>\r\nThis can range from things such as updates from the CEO to important meetings or events. SharePoint brings all the information to one internal place so staff can quickly find the information they need. Other use cases might be general warnings about particular customers or even incidents that everyone needs to be aware of. With SharePoint, simply post the message and everyone can access it from there. Forget email or announcement boards; simply post it on SharePoint.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Encourage collaboration</span></span>\r\nSharePoint is really designed around getting the organization into a central point where they can collaborate. This is particularly important for organizations that are not geographically connected. With some branches working in a very isolated format, SharePoint provides staff with the ability to connect with each other via a portal. Where in the past some staff might only interact with the company during a company meeting, SharePoint brings those people together so everyone can work together, all the time. Collaboration fosters innovation and builds a company culture that spawns creative ideas.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the challenges of Microsoft SharePoint?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Support for certain industry standards.</span> SharePoint's records-management capabilities give it the ability to save documents for legal or historical reasons. This can be a challenge in some industries (medical and financial) where there are complex regulatory requirements for record-keeping. In those cases, you should consult a professional about an industry-specific solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customize out of the box with third-party solutions.</span> Some organizations won’t find what they need out of the box. A third-party solution can help you build something you want. This can be easily achieved if you work with an IT service provider that has SharePoint experience. ","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sharepoint_Development.png","alias":"sharepoint-development"}},"branches":"Information Technology","companySizes":"More than 2000 Employees","companyUrl":"https://digia.com/en/","countryCodes":["DEU","FIN","NOR","SWE","USA"],"certifications":[],"isSeller":true,"isSupplier":true,"isVendor":true,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Digia","keywords":"","description":" Digia is IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.\r\nAs a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to their specific in","og:title":"Digia","og:description":" Digia is IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.\r\nAs a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to their specific in","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/digia_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","vendorPartners":[],"supplierPartners":[],"vendoredProducts":[{"id":2407,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/digia_logo.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Digia Software Development","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"digia-software-development","companyTitle":"Digia","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4677,"companyAlias":"digia","description":"Digia is a profitably growing IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.<br />As a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to their specific industries to help them develop digital services, manage operations and utilise information.\r\nWe employ nearly 1000 experts in Finland (Helsinki, Tampere, Jyväskylä, Turku, Oulu, Rauma, Vaasa and Lahti) and Sweden (Stockholm). We are expanding our international presence together with our customers.\r\nOur consulting and conceptualisation services can assist you, regardless of whether you are looking for a partner for developing a service concept or service processes, reaching new customer groups, or ensuring customer commitment by developing customer encounters. In our consulting and conceptualisation service, ideas and visions are refined into a concrete development plan and a testable prototype. We design with you the service’s goals, content, structure, user interface and visual appearance – everything starts from the users of your service and the needs of your operation.\r\n<ul><li>Development consulting</li><li>Preliminary study</li><li>Service design</li><li>Conceptualisation</li><li>Service architecture design</li></ul>\r\nAs a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. Our ability to provide solutions extends to customers’ core systems, ERP and the integration of business processes.\r\nDigia’s growth strategy for 2016–2019 aims to strengthen the company’s position, particularly in the growing markets for digital services, process digitisation and the service business.\r\nThe company wants to grow at a much faster pace than the IT market and seeks average annual growth of 15 per cent. Growth is sought both organically and inorganically.\r\nDigia seeks growth from areas that are seeing stronger growth than the traditional IT market, such as digital services and process development. We are expanding our international presence together with our customers. In addition to organic growth, Digia is proactively looking for acquisition that would support its strategy.","shortDescription":"Digia is a Finnish system integrator and software developer.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":13,"sellingCount":1,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Digia Software Development","keywords":"","description":"Digia is a profitably growing IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.<br />As a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. 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We adapt our expertise to","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/digia_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":2408,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":32,"title":"IT outsourcing","alias":"it-outsourcing","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT outsourcing</span> is the use of external service providers to effectively deliver IT-enabled business process, application service and infrastructure solutions for business outcomes.\r\nOutsourcing, which also includes utility services, software as a service and cloud-enabled outsourcing, helps clients to develop the right sourcing strategies and vision, select the right IT service providers, structure the best possible contracts, and govern deals for sustainable win-win relationships with external providers.\r\nOutsourcing can enable enterprises to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and take advantage of external expertise, assets and/or intellectual property. IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png"},{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","alias":"custom-software-development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"suppliedProducts":[{"id":2407,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/digia_logo.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Digia Software Development","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"digia-software-development","companyTitle":"Digia","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4677,"companyAlias":"digia","description":"Digia is a profitably growing IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.<br />As a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to their specific industries to help them develop digital services, manage operations and utilise information.\r\nWe employ nearly 1000 experts in Finland (Helsinki, Tampere, Jyväskylä, Turku, Oulu, Rauma, Vaasa and Lahti) and Sweden (Stockholm). We are expanding our international presence together with our customers.\r\nOur consulting and conceptualisation services can assist you, regardless of whether you are looking for a partner for developing a service concept or service processes, reaching new customer groups, or ensuring customer commitment by developing customer encounters. In our consulting and conceptualisation service, ideas and visions are refined into a concrete development plan and a testable prototype. We design with you the service’s goals, content, structure, user interface and visual appearance – everything starts from the users of your service and the needs of your operation.\r\n<ul><li>Development consulting</li><li>Preliminary study</li><li>Service design</li><li>Conceptualisation</li><li>Service architecture design</li></ul>\r\nAs a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. Our ability to provide solutions extends to customers’ core systems, ERP and the integration of business processes.\r\nDigia’s growth strategy for 2016–2019 aims to strengthen the company’s position, particularly in the growing markets for digital services, process digitisation and the service business.\r\nThe company wants to grow at a much faster pace than the IT market and seeks average annual growth of 15 per cent. Growth is sought both organically and inorganically.\r\nDigia seeks growth from areas that are seeing stronger growth than the traditional IT market, such as digital services and process development. We are expanding our international presence together with our customers. In addition to organic growth, Digia is proactively looking for acquisition that would support its strategy.","shortDescription":"Digia is a Finnish system integrator and software developer.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":13,"sellingCount":1,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Digia Software Development","keywords":"","description":"Digia is a profitably growing IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.<br />As a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to","og:title":"Digia Software Development","og:description":"Digia is a profitably growing IT service company that helps its customers harness digital opportunities.<br />As a visionary partner, Digia develops and innovates solutions that support business operations together with its customers. We adapt our expertise to","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/digia_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":2408,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":32,"title":"IT outsourcing","alias":"it-outsourcing","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT outsourcing</span> is the use of external service providers to effectively deliver IT-enabled business process, application service and infrastructure solutions for business outcomes.\r\nOutsourcing, which also includes utility services, software as a service and cloud-enabled outsourcing, helps clients to develop the right sourcing strategies and vision, select the right IT service providers, structure the best possible contracts, and govern deals for sustainable win-win relationships with external providers.\r\nOutsourcing can enable enterprises to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and take advantage of external expertise, assets and/or intellectual property. IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png"},{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","alias":"custom-software-development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"partnershipProgramme":null}},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"implementations":{"implementationsByAlias":{},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"agreements":{"agreementById":{},"ids":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"comparison":{"loading":false,"error":false,"templatesById":{},"comparisonByTemplateId":{},"products":[],"selectedTemplateId":null},"presentation":{"type":null,"company":{},"products":[],"partners":[],"formData":{},"dataLoading":false,"dataError":false,"loading":false,"error":false},"catalogsGlobal":{"subMenuItemTitle":""}}