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Started in 2006, the company's Anypoint Platform of integration products is designed to integrate software as a service (SaaS), on-premises software, legacy systems, and more.\r\nThe company originally provided middleware and messaging, and later expanded to provide an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) approach for companies through its main product, Anypoint Platform. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform includes various components such as Anypoint Design Center, which allows API developers to design and build APIs; Anypoint Exchange, a library for API providers to share APIs, templates, and assets; and Anypoint Management Center, a centralized web interface to analyze, manage, and monitor APIs and integrations. MuleSoft also offers the Mule runtime engine, a runtime solution for connecting enterprise applications on-premises and to the cloud, designed to eliminate the need for custom point-to-point integration code.\r\nRoss Mason and Dave Rosenberg founded MuleSource in 2006. The company changed the name to MuleSoft in 2009. In April 2013, the startup announced $37 million in Series E financing in a round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from new strategic investor Salesforce.com, and existing investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) and Bay Partners. 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It is sometimes referred to as &quot;on-demand software&quot;, and was formerly referred to as &quot;software plus services&quot; by Microsoft.\r\n SaaS services is typically accessed by users using a thin client, e.g. via a web browser. SaaS software solutions has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including office software, messaging software, payroll processing software, DBMS software, management software, CAD software, development software, gamification, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), Management Information Systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), talent acquisition, learning management systems, content management (CM), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of nearly all leading enterprise software companies.\r\nSaaS applications are also known as <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Web-based software</span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">on-demand software</span> and<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> hosted software</span>.\r\nThe term &quot;Software as a Service&quot; (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing, along with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS),managed software as a service (MSaaS), mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), and information technology management as a service (ITMaaS).\r\nBecause SaaS is based on cloud computing it saves organizations from installing and running applications on their own systems. That eliminates or at least reduces the associated costs of hardware purchases and maintenance and of software and support. The initial setup cost for a SaaS application is also generally lower than it for equivalent enterprise software purchased via a site license.\r\nSometimes, the use of SaaS cloud software can also reduce the long-term costs of software licensing, though that depends on the pricing model for the individual SaaS offering and the enterprise’s usage patterns. In fact, it’s possible for SaaS to cost more than traditional software licenses. This is an area IT organizations should explore carefully.<br />SaaS also provides enterprises the flexibility inherent with cloud services: they can subscribe to a SaaS offering as needed rather than having to buy software licenses and install the software on a variety of computers. The savings can be substantial in the case of applications that require new hardware purchases to support the software.<br /><br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Who uses SaaS?</span></h1>\r\nIndustry analyst Forrester Research notes that SaaS adoption has so far been concentrated mostly in human resource management (HRM), customer relationship management (CRM), collaboration software (e.g., email), and procurement solutions, but is poised to widen. Today it’s possible to have a data warehouse in the cloud that you can access with business intelligence software running as a service and connect to your cloud-based ERP like NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics.The dollar savings can run into the millions. And SaaS installations are often installed and working in a fraction of the time of on-premises deployments—some can be ready in hours. \r\nSales and marketing people are likely familiar with Salesforce.com, the leading SaaS CRM software, with millions of users across more than 100,000 customers. Sales is going SaaS too, with apps available to support sales in order management, compensation, quote production and configure, price, quoting, electronic signatures, contract management and more.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why SaaS? Benefits of software as a service</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lower cost of entry</span>. With SaaS solution, you pay for what you need, without having to buy hardware to host your new applications. Instead of provisioning internal resources to install the software, the vendor provides APIs and performs much of the work to get their software working for you. The time to a working solution can drop from months in the traditional model to weeks, days or hours with the SaaS model. In some businesses, IT wants nothing to do with installing and running a sales app. In the case of funding software and its implementation, this can be a make-or-break issue for the sales and marketing budget, so the lower cost really makes the difference.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduced time to benefit/rapid prototyping</span>. In the SaaS model, the software application is already installed and configured. Users can provision the server for the cloud and quickly have the application ready for use. This cuts the time to benefit and allows for rapid demonstrations and prototyping. With many SaaS companies offering free trials, this means a painless proof of concept and discovery phase to prove the benefit to the organization. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Pay as you go</span>. SaaS business software gives you the benefit of predictable costs both for the subscription and to some extent, the administration. Even as you scale, you can have a clear idea of what your costs will be. This allows for much more accurate budgeting, especially as compared to the costs of internal IT to manage upgrades and address issues for an owned instance.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The SaaS vendor is responsible for upgrades, uptime and security</span>. Under the SaaS model, since the software is hosted by the vendor, they take on the responsibility for maintaining the software and upgrading it, ensuring that it is reliable and meeting agreed-upon service level agreements, and keeping the application and its data secure.&nbsp; While some IT people worry about Software as a Service security outside of the enterprise walls, the likely truth is that the vendor has a much higher level of security than the enterprise itself would provide. Many will have redundant instances in very secure data centers in multiple geographies.&nbsp; Also, the data is being automatically backed up by the vendor, providing additional security and peace of mind. Because of the data center hosting, you’re getting the added benefit of at least some disaster recovery. Lastly, the vendor manages these issues as part of their core competencies—let them.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Integration and scalability.</span> Most SaaS apps are designed to support some amount of customization for the way you do business. SaaS vendors create APIs to allow connections not only to internal applications like ERPs or CRMs but also to other SaaS providers. One of the terrific aspects of integration is that orders written in the field can be automatically sent to the ERP. Now a salesperson in the field can check inventory through the catalog, write the order in front of the customer for approval, send it and receive confirmation, all in minutes. And as you scale with a SaaS vendor, there’s no need to invest in server capacity and software licenses. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Work anywhere</span>. Since the software is hosted in the cloud and accessible over the internet, users can access it via mobile devices wherever they are connected. This includes checking customer order histories prior to a sales call, as well as having access to real time data and real time order taking with the customer.</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SaaS__1_.png","alias":"saas-software-as-a-service"},"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"},"711":{"id":711,"title":"Trainings","description":" Employee training is a necessity. You need to get new hires up to speed as quickly as possible so they can become productive members of your team. And you want to update the skills of existing employees so they'll be ready for you to implement new technology, develop new processes and acquire new markets.\r\nYou may be able to do much of the training yourself - at a significant cost in time, of course. Your more experienced employees are also good sources of training, either on the job or in more formal, off-site sessions held in lunchrooms or classrooms. You can save time - but not money--if you hire third-party trainers to conduct classroom sessions. Inexpensive, easily repeated training can be found in video-based courses, computer-assisted instruction, and Web-based training.\r\nTraining is essentially a process through which the skills of the employee are enhanced and an attitude is developed towards a particular direction. This is directed towards the achievement of a specific purpose. Training is generally of two categories. There is probationary training that is given to the fresh employees to help them get an induction about the working of an organization.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the types of training?</span>\r\n<ol><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Induction or Orientation Training:</span> Introducing a new employee to the organization’s environment comprising of a day to day functioning, products, services, rules and regulations are termed as Induction or orientation training. The purpose of such training is to reduce the nervousness of a new joinee, by making him accustomed to the working environment. It is also called orientation training, which means giving a fair idea to the new employee about, what he is supposed to do in the organization.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Job Training:</span> This training is job-specific and is given to the employee who has to perform that job. Under this training, the information about the machine, the process of production, methods to be used, the safety measures to be undertaken, etc. are explained. Through this training, the employee develops the confidence and the necessary skills, that enable him to perform his job effectively and efficiently.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Safety Training:</span> The safety training is given to the employees so as to minimize the number of accidents caused due to the handling of machines or other equipment. Under this training, the employees are given the safety instructions on the usage of machinery and the other dangerous devices.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Apprenticeship Training:</span> Under this training, the worker earns while learning. This training is generally given to the technical staff, craftsmen, plumber, etc. who are required to work under the superior for a relatively long period until he gains the expertise in that particular field.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Internship Training:</span> Under this type, the educational or vocational institutes have an arrangement with the industrial institutes to provide practical knowledge to its students. Sometimes, the companies also offer the pre-placement offers to the trainees on the basis of their performance during their internship program.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Refresher Training or Retraining:</span> As the name implies, the retraining or refresher training is given to the old employees with the purpose of improving their efficiencies. They are introduced to the new methods and technologies that would result in increased productivity and reduces the monotony in their daily work.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Promotional Training:</span> This training is given to potential employees, who can be promoted to the senior position in the organization. The promotional training is given in advance so that employee gets accustomed to the new roles and responsibilities and do not get nervous at the time of promotion.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Remedial Training:</span> This training is given in order to overcome the shortcomings in the behavior and performance of old employees. Due to the invention of technology, the employees may resist accepting the change and cause a disturbance in the organization. Therefore, such training is given to make them understand the importance of change and its necessity in the operations of a business. This training is generally given by the psychological expert.</li></ol>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Trainings.png","alias":"trainings"},"713":{"id":713,"title":"IT Trainings","description":" IT Training is specific to the Information Technology (IT) industry, or to the skills necessary for performing information technology jobs. IT Training includes courses related to the application, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems.\r\nThe IT training market is segmented into six broad market segments.&nbsp; Based on TrainingIndustry.com research, these segments reflect how IT training companies focus their suite of offerings and from which areas they derive most of their revenue.\r\n<ul><li>IT Infrastructure Training focuses on building, sustaining, and managing technical infrastructure.</li><li>Programming and Database Training involves database construction and management, programming language, and similar areas.</li><li>Enterprise Business Applications Training involves software applications that manage organizations’ processes, such as ERP, CRM, call center management, automated billing systems, etc.</li><li>Desktop Applications Training focuses on how to use programs and applications for desktop users.</li><li>Certification Training includes certifications, compliance, exam preparation, or boot camp style training programs.</li><li>Cyber Security Training involves courses and training programs centered on IT network and system security.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IT Training?</span>\r\nThe organized activity aimed at imparting information and/or instructions to improve the recipient's performance or to help him or her attain a required level of knowledge or skill in the IT-sphere.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who is an information technology (IT) trainer?</span>\r\nInformation technology trainers may teach IT administrative support staff or an organization's non-technical business users how to operate, configure, and maintain new technology. Employed either in-house as part of the IT department or by a technology vendor, the information technology trainer helps a company get the most value from its investment in an IT solution.\r\nAn information technology degree helps IT professionals build a foundation for a technical training career. In addition, IT trainers must stay up to date with evolving technology. IT certification programs such as MCSE certification allow trainers to build expertise in specific vendor technologies and systems components. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, training and development specialists in all fields earned a mean annual salary of $55,310 in 2009. Software publishing was among the top-paying industries for trainers, with a salary of $71,960.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the target audience of IT Training?</span>\r\nStudents of IT training programs are predominately those who work in jobs related to computer science, network administration, information technology management, cloud computing, telecommunications, etc.\r\nGeneral business professionals and consumers who use IT applications, and computer and software products are other important audiences for IT training. IT training, more so than most other content segments of the training market, contains a substantial amount of business to consumer (B2C) training. Consumer training occurs when a student (or purchaser of a training program) completes the training on their own, without the recommendation, supervision, or support of an employer. This includes individuals aiming to improve their IT skill set or to gain certifications.\r\nThere is also a considerable amount of government spending in the IT training market, predominately in the area of cybersecurity.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_Trainings.png","alias":"it-trainings"},"717":{"id":717,"title":"Consulting","description":" Even large international companies often face difficulties in their work. This may be due to both external factors and internal problems. Most often, problems arise because of price fluctuations in the market, the appearance or departure of a competitor, but firms also have difficulties with the relations themselves between employees within the enterprise. Because of this, there is no opportunity and strength within the company to fight for their survival, therefore an excellent solution, in this case, would be to use consulting services.\r\nConsulting is a type of service, which essentially means consulting. One company or person provides services in solving certain problems to another company.\r\nThe issues that can be solved with the help of consulting are very diverse. Sometimes it can be a whole complex of tasks, and sometimes it is provided only in a narrow area. For example, accounting consulting is the involvement of a specialized company or employee to solve accounting problems. That is why, when they talk about the concept of consulting, there is no clear definition.\r\nConsulting services are the solution of organizational or managerial tasks within a firm with the help of external specialists. Professional consultants in a particular area are invited to work at a company. Experts evaluate the condition, see the cause of the problems and create a system for solving these errors.\r\nThe company turns to consulting, not only in the case when experiencing difficulties in development. Often the manager decides on the expansion, so an urgent need to increase the number of specialists. But even if hiring them to work, then it will be necessary to spend more months on training, control over the execution of tasks, and only after that set challenging tasks for them. And in a developing company there is not so much time.<br />Consulting firms are specialized companies that provide consulting services. There can work a staff of staff who simultaneously collaborate with different organizations.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the types of consulting services?</span>\r\nThere are basic types of consulting services:\r\n<link https://roi4cio.com/en/categories/category/it-Consulting/ - external-link-new-window \"Opens internal link in current window\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">IT consulting</span></link> is one of the newest and most sought-after types of consulting in Ukraine. This advice and assistance in the field of information technology. In fact, IT-consulting solves all the issues related to the Internet and information business processes.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Marketing consulting.</span> Not all companies can afford to open a marketing department or hire a professional employee who will solve these issues. And today it is necessary to engage in advertising, because this is the only way to stay on the market and be a leader. In many cases, marketing consulting services are provided along with IT consulting.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Legal consulting</span> is related to the solution of current tasks that are related to the state law. This will allow to properly evaluate the activities of the company and make the most profitable decisions. Legal advice is especially important during the expansion of the enterprise when it is necessary to open new branches or enter into agreements with intermediaries and suppliers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Financial consulting</span> - services that are associated with the effective management of funds, the distribution of the budget within the company, as well as proper external investments.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Personnel consulting</span> assumes the establishment of internal relations between employees, the selection of new professionals who will meet the requirements of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who is engaged in consulting services?</span>\r\nThe task of consultants consulting firms include:\r\n<ul><li>Search for problems within the company.</li><li>Analysis of the enterprise.</li><li>Development of strategies and programs to solve the problems found.</li><li>Advice on any issues: management, accounting, logistics, finance, etc.</li></ul>\r\nConsultants have all the necessary knowledge to help small, medium or large businesses solve problems and quickly adapt to a constantly changing market or regularly growing competition.\r\nIn particular, consultants of consulting companies have the following knowledge:\r\n<ul><li>computer science (computer skills and various software);</li><li>marketing and advertising;</li><li>finance and accounting;</li><li>sales and management;</li><li>logistics and investment.</li></ul>\r\nThey must also understand personnel issues, environmental issues, as well as computer technology, basic software and more.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">When it is advisable to resort to consulting services:</span>\r\n<ol><li>If there are disagreements between partners in the business regarding the further development of the company, production, marketing, investments, etc.</li><li>When a business is in a critical situation, for example, on the verge of bankruptcy or bankruptcy, and the manager or entrepreneur is not able to solve the problems and save the company.</li><li>With the expansion of the business and its scaling. When work is planned on other regions of the country or even entering the international market.</li><li>When you need to find fresh ideas for the rapid promotion of a new service, product or product.</li><li>When the need arises to conduct an audit of a business to understand how effective it is and what are the future prospects in the current state of affairs.</li><li>When you plan to sell a business and you need to check all the important points.</li><li>In the absence of new ideas for the promotion of business, products, services or goods. Or to develop a new product, instead of an outdated or lost consumer demand.</li></ol>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Consulting.png","alias":"consulting"},"718":{"id":718,"title":"IT Consulting","description":" In management, information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, computer consultancy, business and technology services, computing consultancy, technology consulting, and IT advisory) as a field of activity focuses on advising organizations on how best to use information technology (IT) in achieving their business objectives.\r\nThe IT consulting industry can be viewed as a Four-tier system:\r\n<ul><li>Professional services firms which maintain large professional workforces and command high bill rates.</li><li>Staffing firms, which place technologists with businesses on a temporary basis, typically in response to employee absences, temporary skill shortages and technical projects.</li><li>Independent consultants, who are self-employed or who function as employees of staffing firms (for US tax purposes, employed on Form W-2), or as independent contractors in their own right (for US tax purposes, on &quot;1099&quot;).</li><li>Information Technology security consultants</li></ul>\r\nThere are different reasons why consultants are called in:\r\n<ul><li>To gain external, objective advice and recommendations</li><li>To gain access to the consultants' specialized expertise</li><li>Temporary help during a one-time project where the hiring of a permanent employee(s) is not required or necessary</li><li>To outsource all or part of the IT services from a specific company.</li></ul>\r\nThere is a relatively unclear line between management consulting and IT consulting. There are sometimes overlaps between the two fields, but IT consultants often have degrees in computer science, electronics, technology, or management information systems while management consultants often have degrees in accounting, economics, Industrial Engineering, finance, or a generalized MBA (Masters in Business Administration).\r\nAccording to the Institute for Partner Education &amp; Development, IT consultants' revenues come predominantly from design and planning based consulting with a mixture of IT and business consulting. This is different from a systems integrator in that you do not normally take title to product. Their value comes from their ability to integrate and support technologies as well as determining product and brands. ","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Who is an information technology (IT) consultant?</span>\r\nAn information technology consultant is a third-party service provider who is qualified to advise clients on the best use of IT to meet specific business requirements. IT consultants may work with a professional IT consultancy firm or as independent contractors. They may conduct a business needs assessment and develop an information systems solution that meets the organization's objectives.\r\nSome information technology consultants emphasize technical issues while others help organizations use IT to manage business processes. Still others specialize in a specific IT area such as information security.\r\nIT consultants need a deep knowledge of both business and information technology. A bachelor's degree in management information systems, computer science, or information science is the typical path into a technical consultancy career. IT certifications supplement this foundation with specialized technical training. Information technology degree and certification programs are available online to accommodate working IT professionals.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the prerequisites and major obstacles?</span>\r\nOnce a business owner defined the needs to take a business to the next level, a decision maker will define a scope, cost and a time-frame of the project. The role of the IT consultancy company is to support and nurture the company from the very beginning of the project until the end, and deliver the project not only in the scope, time and cost but also with complete customer satisfaction.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project scoping and planning</span></span>\r\nThe usual problem is that a business owner doesn't know the detail of what the project is going to deliver until it starts the process. In many cases, the incremental effort in some projects can lead to significant financial loss.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business process and system design</span></span>\r\nThe scope of a project is linked intimately to the proposed business processes and systems that the project is going to deliver. Regardless of whether the project is to launch a new product range or discontinue unprofitable parts of the business, the change will have some impact on business processes and systems. The documentation of your business processes and system requirements are as fundamental to project scoping as an architects plans would be to the costing and scoping of the construction of a building.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project management support</span></span>\r\nThe most successful business projects are always those that are driven by an employee who has the authority, vision and influence to drive the required changes in a business. It is highly unlikely that a business owner (decision maker or similar) will realize the changes unless one has one of these people in the employment. However, the project leadership role typically requires significant experience and skills which are not usually found within a company focused on day-to-day operations. Due to this requirement within more significant business change projects/programs, outside expertise is often sought from firms which can bring this specific skill set to the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the skills of IT-consulting?</span>\r\nAn IT consultant needs to possess the following skills:\r\n<ul><li>Advisory skills</li><li>Technical skills</li><li>Business skills</li><li>Communication skills</li><li>Management skills</li><li>Advisory language skills</li><li>Business and management language skills</li><li>Technical language skills</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_Consulting.png","alias":"it-consulting"}},"branches":"Information Technology","companySizes":"More than 2000 Employees","companyUrl":"https://www.mulesoft.com/","countryCodes":["ARG","AUS","CAN","CHN","DEU","FRA","GBR","NLD","SWE","SGP","USA"],"certifications":[],"isSeller":true,"isSupplier":true,"isVendor":true,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"MuleSoft","keywords":"","description":" MuleSoft is a software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that provides integration software for connecting applications, data and devices. Started in 2006, the company's Anypoint Platform of integration products is designed to integrate soft","og:title":"MuleSoft","og:description":" MuleSoft is a software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that provides integration software for connecting applications, data and devices. Started in 2006, the company's Anypoint Platform of integration products is designed to integrate soft","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/MuleSoft_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","vendorPartners":[{"vendor":"Microsoft","partnershipLevel":"","countries":"","partnersType":""},{"vendor":"SAP","partnershipLevel":"","countries":"","partnersType":""},{"vendor":"ServiceNow","partnershipLevel":"","countries":"","partnersType":""},{"vendor":"Salesforce.com","partnershipLevel":"","countries":"","partnersType":""}],"supplierPartners":[],"vendoredProducts":[{"id":3173,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Anypoint_Platform.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"mulesoft-anypoint-platform","companyTitle":"MuleSoft","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":5091,"companyAlias":"mulesoft","description":"MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the leading enterprise platform for building APIs, integrations, and application networks. Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform is optimized for designing, developing, and managing APIs and integrations that can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Start from Anypoint Exchange</span>\r\nAnypoint Exchange is the central repository of resources for Anypoint Platform, which includes connectors, templates, examples, and APIs. Discover and reuse hundreds of assets, curate documentation and examples, manage developer access, and drive adoption and collaboration of your assets. Within Anypoint Exchange, you can also:\r\n<ul><li>Create portals to share APIs with internal, external, or select users</li><li>Test API specifications without implementation using a mocked service</li><li>Generate interactive tutorials with API Notebooks</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Design APIs &amp; integrations</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Design Center</span> provides a comprehensive set of development tools that make it easy to design, test, and implement APIs, build integrations, and create connectors for any system. Within Design Center, you can:\r\n<ul><li>Design, auto-document, mock, test, and validate RAML- and OAS-based API specifications.</li><li>Build integration flows using an easy, low-code environment by following a guided walkthrough, accepting or modifying automated data mapping recommendations, and deploying with one click.</li><li>Connect systems, integrate applications, and implement APIs graphically or with code in Anypoint Studio,&nbsp; the unified integrated development environment (IDE) for Anypoint Platform.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Run APIs and integrations on Mule</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mule</span> powers Anypoint Platform as the singular runtime engine for APIs and integrations deployed to the cloud, on-premises or hybrid. Use Mule for synchronous or asynchronous integration in real-time or batch execution. Mule’s distributed architecture with message replication and persistence ensures 0 message loss, availability, and reliability.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mule SDK</span> is a software development kit with a simple annotation-based programming model for extending Mule to create reusable connectors, routers, and modules. Mule SDK injects cross-cutting functionality like streaming, media-type handling, and reconnection into existing modules without the need to rebuild them.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deploy and manage anywhere</span>\r\nAnypoint Platform can be seamlessly deployed anywhere: public or private clouds, on-premises and hybrid. MuleSoft supports all deployment models for development, deployment and management.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CloudHubis</span> a fully MuleSoft-managed cloud solution without the need to maintain or configure hardware. It is a highly available, multi-tenant solution with 99.99% uptime, and global runtime deployment options across 12 regions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Runtime Fabric</span> is a container service that orchestrates and automates Mule runtime deployment across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and data centers. Gain the benefits of a cloud solution on-premises with automated application isolation, zero-downtime re-deployments, and horizontal scalability.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Centrally manage, monitor and analyze</span>\r\nManage all aspects of Anypoint Platform, whether on-premises or in the cloud, with Anypoint Management Center.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Access Management:</span> Provision users and groups with the right access to resources and functionality within Anypoint Platform. Leverage pre-built integration with LDAP and single sign-on solutions, like PingFederate, OpenAM and Okta.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">API Manager:</span> Manage, proxy, version control, and secure APIs. Use pre-built policies provided by MuleSoft and add or reuse custom policies.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Runtime Manager:</span> Deploy and manage APIs and integrations in the cloud or on-premises. Automate deployments by using runtime APIs and plugins for existing frameworks.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Analytics:</span> Get full visibility into the business transactions and events of your integrations, and analyze data across one or multiple APIs with customizable dashboards.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Monitoring:</span> Identify issues, map dependencies, monitor application health, and manage logs in one unified interface.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Visualizer:</span> Gain a real-time, holistic view of all running APIs and integrations and how they’re connected, and troubleshoot quickly with error rates, throughput, and response time segmentation.</li></ul>","shortDescription":"Anypoint Platform is a complete, unified, flexible integration platform that lets companies realize business transformation through API-led connectivity.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":2,"sellingCount":11,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform","keywords":"","description":"MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the leading enterprise platform for building APIs, integrations, and application networks. Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform is optimized for designing, developing, and managing APIs and integrations that ca","og:title":"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform","og:description":"MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the leading enterprise platform for building APIs, integrations, and application networks. Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform is optimized for designing, developing, and managing APIs and integrations that ca","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Anypoint_Platform.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3174,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":217,"title":"Business-to-Business Middleware","alias":"business-to-business-middleware","description":" Middleware is a very broad term that can be defined as a translation layer between different applications and encompasses a number of different technologies, such as message-oriented middleware and database middleware. B2B middleware though has a narrower definition and is concerned first and foremost with routing data from a firm’s business applications to the applications of business partners such as customer, suppliers or banks.\r\nData must be extracted from the source system, which might be an ERP system or securities trading platform or an HR system whether it is an installed system or, as is increasingly the case, a cloud-based system. Data can be extracted using an API or specialized middleware supplied by the enterprise application.\r\nOnce the data has been extracted, it must be correctly formatted so that it can be shared by a completely different system. Typical standard formats are EDI or XML. However, each of these formats has specific variants specific to particular vertical industries. When the data has been formatted, it must then be transmitted to the business partner and, once again, there are a number of different network protocols such as HTTP-baaed AS1 and AS2, or FTP to support B2B integration.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Middleware?</span>\r\nMiddleware is the software that connects network-based requests generated by a client to the back-end data the client is requesting. It is a general term for software that serves to &quot;glue together&quot; separate, often complex and already existing programs.\r\nMiddleware programs come in on-premises software and cloud services, and they can be used independently or together, depending upon the use case. While cloud providers bundle middleware into cloud services suites, such as middleware as a service (MWaaS) or integration PaaS (iPaaS), industry researchers note that many businesses still choose independent middleware products that fit their specific needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">How middleware works</span>\r\nAll network-based requests are essentially attempts to interact with back-end data. That data might be something as simple as an image to display or a video to play, or it could be as complex as a history of banking transactions.\r\nThe requested data can take on many different forms&nbsp; and may be stored in a variety of ways, such as coming from a file server, fetched from a message queue or persisted in a database. The role of middleware is to enable and ease access to those back-end resources.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Middleware categories</span>\r\nIn general, IT industry analysts -- such as Gartner Inc. and Forrester Research -- put middleware into two categories: enterprise integration middleware and platform middleware.\r\n<ul><li>Enterprise application integration middleware enables programmers to create business applications without having to custom-craft integrations for each new application. Here, middleware helps software and services components work together, providing a layer of functionality for data consistency and multi-enterprise or B2B integration. Typically, integration middleware provides messaging services, so different applications can communicate using messaging frameworks like Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), web services, Representational State Transfer (REST) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Other middleware technologies used in this category include Object Request Brokers (ORBs), data representation technologies like XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and more.</li></ul>\r\nBusinesses can purchase individual middleware products or on-premises or cloud-based application integration suites.\r\n<ul><li>Platform middleware supports software development and delivery by providing a runtime hosting environment, such as a container, for application program logic. Its primary components are in-memory and enterprise application servers, as well as web servers and content management. Middleware includes web servers, application servers, content management systems and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Generally, embedded or external communications middleware allows different communications tools to work together. These communications tools enable application and service interaction. Resource management services, such as Microsoft Azure Resource Manager, host application program logic at runtime, another key function in platform middleware. Other components include Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) and in-memory data grids (IMDGs).</li></ul>\r\nPlatform middleware products are also available as specific on-premises or cloud service tools, as well&nbsp; as multitool suites. On a cloud suite site, middleware as a service offers an integrated set of platform tools and the runtime environment.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Business-to-Business_Middleware.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"suppliedProducts":[{"id":3593,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-defender-advanced-threat-protection-atp","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)</span> is a complete security solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Agentless, cloud-powered</span>\r\nNo additional deployment or infrastructure. No delays or update compatibility issues. Always up to date.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Unparalleled optics</span>\r\nBuilt into Windows 10 for deeper insights. Exchanges signals with the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automated security</span>\r\nTake your security to a new level, by going from alert to remediation in minutes – at scale.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Synchronized defense</span>\r\nMicrosoft 365 shares detection and exploration – across devices, identities and information – to speed up response and recovery.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Announcing Threat &amp; Vulnerability Management</span>\r\nThreat and Vulnerability Management is a new capability within Microsoft Defender ATP designed to empower security teams to discover, prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Microsoft Threat Experts</span>\r\nMicrosoft Threat Experts further empowers your Security Operations Centers by providing them with deep knowledge, expert level threat monitoring, analysis, and support to identify critical threats in your unique environment.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automation: From alert to remediation in minutes - at scale</span>\r\nAutomatically investigate alerts and remediate complex threats in minutes. Applies industry best practices and intelligent decision-making algorithms to determine whether a threat - file or fileless - is active and what action to take.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Protect your business from advanced threats</span>\r\nThrough the power of the cloud, machine learning and behavior analytics, Microsoft Defender ATP provides connected pre-breach protection.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Innovative Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)</span>\r\nCyber attacks remain a serious threat. Microsoft Defender ATP detects network attacks and data breaches, and gives you the insights and tools to close incidents quickly.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a unified platform for preventative protection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":12,"sellingCount":9,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)","keywords":"","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)</span> is a complete security solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Agentless, cloud-powered</span>\r\nNo additional deployment or infrastructure. No delays or update co","og:title":"Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)</span> is a complete security solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Agentless, cloud-powered</span>\r\nNo additional deployment or infrastructure. No delays or update co","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3594,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":838,"title":"Endpoint Detection and Response","alias":"endpoint-detection-and-response","description":"Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a cybersecurity technology that addresses the need for continuous monitoring and response to advanced threats. It is a subset of endpoint security technology and a critical piece of an optimal security posture. EDR differs from other endpoint protection platforms (EPP) such as antivirus (AV) and anti-malware in that its primary focus isn't to automatically stop threats in the pre-execution phase on an endpoint. Rather, EDR is focused on providing the right endpoint visibility with the right insights to help security analysts discover, investigate and respond to very advanced threats and broader attack campaigns stretching across multiple endpoints. Many EDR tools, however, combine EDR and EPP.\r\nWhile small and mid-market organizations are increasingly turning to EDR technology for more advanced endpoint protection, many lack the resources to maximize the benefits of the technology. Utilizing advanced EDR features such as forensic analysis, behavioral monitoring and artificial intelligence (AI) is labor and resource intensive, requiring the attention of dedicated security professionals.\r\nA managed endpoint security service combines the latest technology, an around-the-clock team of certified CSOC experts and up-to-the-minute industry intelligence for a cost-effective monthly subscription. Managed services can help reduce the day-to-day burden of monitoring and responding to alerts, enhance security orchestration and automation (SOAR) and improve threat hunting and incident response.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Endpoint detection and response (EDR)?</span>\r\nEndpoint detection and response is an emerging technology that addresses the need for continuous monitoring and response to advanced threats. One could even make the argument that endpoint detection and response is a form of advanced threat protection.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the Key Aspects of EDR Security?</span>\r\nAccording to Gartner, effective EDR must include the following capabilities:\r\n<ul><li>Incident data search and investigation</li><li>Alert triage or suspicious activity validation</li><li>Suspicious activity detection</li><li>Threat hunting or data exploration</li><li>Stopping malicious activity</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What to look for in an EDR Solution?</span>\r\nUnderstanding the key aspects of EDR and why they are important will help you better discern what to look for in a solution. It’s important to find EDR software that can provide the highest level of protection while requiring the least amount of effort and investment — adding value to your security team without draining resources. Here are the six key aspects of EDR you should look for:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">1. Visibility:</span> Real-time visibility across all your endpoints allows you to view adversary activities, even as they attempt to breach your environment and stop them immediately.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">2. Threat Database:</span> Effective EDR requires massive amounts of telemetry collected from endpoints and enriched with context so it can be mined for signs of attack with a variety of analytic techniques.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">3. Behavioral Protection:</span> Relying solely on signature-based methods or indicators of compromise (IOCs) lead to the “silent failure” that allows data breaches to occur. Effective endpoint detection and response requires behavioral approaches that search for indicators of attack (IOAs), so you are alerted of suspicious activities before a compromise can occur.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">4. Insight and Intelligence:</span> An endpoint detection and response solution that integrates threat intelligence can provide context, including details on the attributed adversary that is attacking you or other information about the attack.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">5. Fast Response:</span> EDR that enables a fast and accurate response to incidents can stop an attack before it becomes a breach and allow your organization to get back to business quickly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">6. Cloud-based Solution:</span> Having a cloud-based endpoint detection and response solution is the only way to ensure zero impact on endpoints while making sure capabilities such as search, analysis and investigation can be done accurately and in real time.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/hgghghg.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":3173,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Anypoint_Platform.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"mulesoft-anypoint-platform","companyTitle":"MuleSoft","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":5091,"companyAlias":"mulesoft","description":"MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the leading enterprise platform for building APIs, integrations, and application networks. Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform is optimized for designing, developing, and managing APIs and integrations that can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Start from Anypoint Exchange</span>\r\nAnypoint Exchange is the central repository of resources for Anypoint Platform, which includes connectors, templates, examples, and APIs. Discover and reuse hundreds of assets, curate documentation and examples, manage developer access, and drive adoption and collaboration of your assets. Within Anypoint Exchange, you can also:\r\n<ul><li>Create portals to share APIs with internal, external, or select users</li><li>Test API specifications without implementation using a mocked service</li><li>Generate interactive tutorials with API Notebooks</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Design APIs &amp; integrations</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Design Center</span> provides a comprehensive set of development tools that make it easy to design, test, and implement APIs, build integrations, and create connectors for any system. Within Design Center, you can:\r\n<ul><li>Design, auto-document, mock, test, and validate RAML- and OAS-based API specifications.</li><li>Build integration flows using an easy, low-code environment by following a guided walkthrough, accepting or modifying automated data mapping recommendations, and deploying with one click.</li><li>Connect systems, integrate applications, and implement APIs graphically or with code in Anypoint Studio,&nbsp; the unified integrated development environment (IDE) for Anypoint Platform.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Run APIs and integrations on Mule</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mule</span> powers Anypoint Platform as the singular runtime engine for APIs and integrations deployed to the cloud, on-premises or hybrid. Use Mule for synchronous or asynchronous integration in real-time or batch execution. Mule’s distributed architecture with message replication and persistence ensures 0 message loss, availability, and reliability.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mule SDK</span> is a software development kit with a simple annotation-based programming model for extending Mule to create reusable connectors, routers, and modules. Mule SDK injects cross-cutting functionality like streaming, media-type handling, and reconnection into existing modules without the need to rebuild them.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deploy and manage anywhere</span>\r\nAnypoint Platform can be seamlessly deployed anywhere: public or private clouds, on-premises and hybrid. MuleSoft supports all deployment models for development, deployment and management.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CloudHubis</span> a fully MuleSoft-managed cloud solution without the need to maintain or configure hardware. It is a highly available, multi-tenant solution with 99.99% uptime, and global runtime deployment options across 12 regions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Runtime Fabric</span> is a container service that orchestrates and automates Mule runtime deployment across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and data centers. Gain the benefits of a cloud solution on-premises with automated application isolation, zero-downtime re-deployments, and horizontal scalability.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Centrally manage, monitor and analyze</span>\r\nManage all aspects of Anypoint Platform, whether on-premises or in the cloud, with Anypoint Management Center.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Access Management:</span> Provision users and groups with the right access to resources and functionality within Anypoint Platform. Leverage pre-built integration with LDAP and single sign-on solutions, like PingFederate, OpenAM and Okta.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">API Manager:</span> Manage, proxy, version control, and secure APIs. Use pre-built policies provided by MuleSoft and add or reuse custom policies.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Runtime Manager:</span> Deploy and manage APIs and integrations in the cloud or on-premises. Automate deployments by using runtime APIs and plugins for existing frameworks.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Analytics:</span> Get full visibility into the business transactions and events of your integrations, and analyze data across one or multiple APIs with customizable dashboards.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Monitoring:</span> Identify issues, map dependencies, monitor application health, and manage logs in one unified interface.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Anypoint Visualizer:</span> Gain a real-time, holistic view of all running APIs and integrations and how they’re connected, and troubleshoot quickly with error rates, throughput, and response time segmentation.</li></ul>","shortDescription":"Anypoint Platform is a complete, unified, flexible integration platform that lets companies realize business transformation through API-led connectivity.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":2,"sellingCount":11,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform","keywords":"","description":"MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the leading enterprise platform for building APIs, integrations, and application networks. 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Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform is optimized for designing, developing, and managing APIs and integrations that ca","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Anypoint_Platform.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3174,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":217,"title":"Business-to-Business Middleware","alias":"business-to-business-middleware","description":" Middleware is a very broad term that can be defined as a translation layer between different applications and encompasses a number of different technologies, such as message-oriented middleware and database middleware. B2B middleware though has a narrower definition and is concerned first and foremost with routing data from a firm’s business applications to the applications of business partners such as customer, suppliers or banks.\r\nData must be extracted from the source system, which might be an ERP system or securities trading platform or an HR system whether it is an installed system or, as is increasingly the case, a cloud-based system. Data can be extracted using an API or specialized middleware supplied by the enterprise application.\r\nOnce the data has been extracted, it must be correctly formatted so that it can be shared by a completely different system. Typical standard formats are EDI or XML. However, each of these formats has specific variants specific to particular vertical industries. When the data has been formatted, it must then be transmitted to the business partner and, once again, there are a number of different network protocols such as HTTP-baaed AS1 and AS2, or FTP to support B2B integration.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Middleware?</span>\r\nMiddleware is the software that connects network-based requests generated by a client to the back-end data the client is requesting. It is a general term for software that serves to &quot;glue together&quot; separate, often complex and already existing programs.\r\nMiddleware programs come in on-premises software and cloud services, and they can be used independently or together, depending upon the use case. While cloud providers bundle middleware into cloud services suites, such as middleware as a service (MWaaS) or integration PaaS (iPaaS), industry researchers note that many businesses still choose independent middleware products that fit their specific needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">How middleware works</span>\r\nAll network-based requests are essentially attempts to interact with back-end data. That data might be something as simple as an image to display or a video to play, or it could be as complex as a history of banking transactions.\r\nThe requested data can take on many different forms&nbsp; and may be stored in a variety of ways, such as coming from a file server, fetched from a message queue or persisted in a database. The role of middleware is to enable and ease access to those back-end resources.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Middleware categories</span>\r\nIn general, IT industry analysts -- such as Gartner Inc. and Forrester Research -- put middleware into two categories: enterprise integration middleware and platform middleware.\r\n<ul><li>Enterprise application integration middleware enables programmers to create business applications without having to custom-craft integrations for each new application. Here, middleware helps software and services components work together, providing a layer of functionality for data consistency and multi-enterprise or B2B integration. Typically, integration middleware provides messaging services, so different applications can communicate using messaging frameworks like Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), web services, Representational State Transfer (REST) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Other middleware technologies used in this category include Object Request Brokers (ORBs), data representation technologies like XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and more.</li></ul>\r\nBusinesses can purchase individual middleware products or on-premises or cloud-based application integration suites.\r\n<ul><li>Platform middleware supports software development and delivery by providing a runtime hosting environment, such as a container, for application program logic. Its primary components are in-memory and enterprise application servers, as well as web servers and content management. Middleware includes web servers, application servers, content management systems and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Generally, embedded or external communications middleware allows different communications tools to work together. These communications tools enable application and service interaction. Resource management services, such as Microsoft Azure Resource Manager, host application program logic at runtime, another key function in platform middleware. Other components include Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) and in-memory data grids (IMDGs).</li></ul>\r\nPlatform middleware products are also available as specific on-premises or cloud service tools, as well&nbsp; as multitool suites. On a cloud suite site, middleware as a service offers an integrated set of platform tools and the runtime environment.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Business-to-Business_Middleware.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":4970,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/sap-ariba.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"SAP Ariba","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":30,"alias":"sap-ariba","companyTitle":"SAP","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":167,"companyAlias":"sap","description":"SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On Ariba Network, trading partners from more than 3.6 million businesses, operating in more than 190 countries, discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions, and deepen their relationships.\r\n\r\n<ul><li>Large, midsize, and growing companies use an end-to-end, automated system that simplifies the management of everything from sourcing to payments, all in one place.&nbsp; </li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>With intelligent spend management tools and network-generated insights, customers establish sustainable, trusted connections with partners while ensuring efficient, error-free transactions.</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>Buyers can manage the entire purchasing process as they control spending, find new sources of savings on both direct and indirect goods, and build healthy, ethical supply chains</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>Suppliers can connect with profitable customers and efficiently scale existing relationships, simplifying sales cycles and improving cash control along the way.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of SAP Ariba Customers</span><br />\r\nAll companies using SAP Ariba note an increased level of interaction with contractors:\r\n<ul><li>the number of errors in the procurement documents decreased by more than 50%</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>15% or more decreased the cost of procurement</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>70% reduced operating costs for the procurement process</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>63% increased marketing efficiency</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>20% reduced purchase cycle</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li>the number of potential suppliers increased by 10%</li></ul>","shortDescription":"With SAP Ariba e-procurement and supply chain cloud solutions that are always on and easy to deploy, both large and midsize companies can realize fast time to value.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":16,"sellingCount":6,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"SAP Ariba","keywords":"","description":"SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On Ariba Network, trading partners from more than 3.6 million businesses, operating in more than 190 countries, discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions, and deepen their relationships.\r\n\r","og:title":"SAP Ariba","og:description":"SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On Ariba Network, trading partners from more than 3.6 million businesses, operating in more than 190 countries, discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions, and deepen their relationships.\r\n\r","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/sap-ariba.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":4975,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":73,"title":"SCM - Supply Chain Management","alias":"scm-supply-chain-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">SCM</span> (Supply Chain Management)&nbsp;</span> is the management of the flow of goods and services and includes all processes that transform raw materials into final products. It involves the active streamlining of a business's supply-side activities to maximize customer value and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.\r\nSCM represents an effort by suppliers to <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">develop and implement supply chains</span> that are as efficient and economical as possible. Supply chain management system covers everything from production to product development to the information systems needed to direct these undertakings.\r\nTypically, supply chain management solutions attempt to centrally control or link the production, shipment, and distribution of a product. By chain management process, companies are able to cut excess costs and deliver products to the consumer faster. This is done by keeping tighter <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">control of internal inventories, internal production, distribution, sales, and the inventories of company vendors.</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Supply chain strategy</span> is based on the idea that nearly every product that comes to market results from the efforts of various organizations that make up a supply chain. Although supply chains have existed for ages, most companies have only recently paid attention to them as a value-add to their operations.\r\nIn traditional supply chain management the supply chain manager coordinates the <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">logistics </span>of all <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">aspects of the supply chain</span> which consists of five parts: 1) <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">the plan</span> or <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">strategy</span>; 2) <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">the source</span> (of raw materials or services); 3) <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">manufacturing</span> (focused on productivity and efficiency); 4) <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">delivery</span> and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">logistics</span>; 5) <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">the return system </span>(for defective or unwanted products). \r\nImprovements in productivity and efficiency go straight to the bottom line of a company and have a real and lasting impact. Good supply chain management keeps companies out of the headlines and away from expensive recalls and lawsuits.\r\nTechnology is critical in managing today's supply chains, and every major supply chain management process has a software category dedicated to it. Most vendors of ERP suites offer digital SCM, and there are thousands of niche vendors. Besides managing specific processes, <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">supply chain management network software </span>has an important role to play in tying together the people, processes, and systems that participate in the supply chain. \r\nOther commonly used supply chain management includes:\r\n<ul><li>a transportation management system (TMS) for managing the transport and storage of goods, especially across global supply chains;</li><li>a warehouse management system (WMS) for all of the activities inside warehouses and distribution centers; and</li><li>an order management system, to handle processing of customer orders through WMS, ERP and TMS systems, at all stages of the supply chain.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> What are the different types of supply chain strategies?</h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;efficient&quot; supply chain model</span></li></ul>\r\nThe efficient supply chain strategy is best suited to industries that are characterized by intense market competition, with several competitors fighting for the same group of customers who may not perceive major differences in their value proposals. In effect, competition is virtually always based almost solely on price.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">This supply chain model is well suited for businesses with commoditized products, such as cement and steel.</span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;fast&quot; supply chain model</span></li></ul>\r\nThe fast supply chain is best for companies that produce trendy products with a short lifecycle. From the customer's perspective, the main difference among competitors' value proposals is how well they are able to update product portfolios in accordance with the latest trends. This focuses competition in the market on manufacturers' ability to continuously develop new products they can sell at an affordable price. \r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Examples of companies that benefit from this supply chain model include those that engage in catalogue sales.</span><span style=\"font-style: italic; \">It's also appropriate for retailers that sell trendy apparel and whose customers tend to visit stores monthly. </span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;continuous-flow&quot; supply chain model</span></li></ul>\r\nThe main features of the continuous-flow supply chain model are supply and demand stability, with processes scheduled in such a way as to ensure a steady cadence and continuous flow of information and products. This model typically is for a very mature supply chain with a customer demand profile that has little variation. Consequently, the production workload can match demand through a continuous-replenishment model based on a &quot;make to stock&quot; decoupling point, where production is scheduled to replenish predefined stock levels based on a specified reorder point for inventory in the production cycle. \r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">This supply chain process typically works well for businesses with short-shelf-life products, such as dairy products and bread. It is also suitable for manufacturers of intermediate products.</span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;agile&quot; supply chain model</span></li></ul>\r\nThe agile type of supply chain is useful for companies that manufacture products under unique specifications for each customer. This is typically seen in industries that are characterized by unpredictable demand. They use a &quot;make to order&quot; decoupling point, producing the item after receiving the customer's purchase order to avoid manufacturing products that have no certainty of future sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">This strategy is useful for industries where the company's value proposal is oriented toward offering products &quot;on demand&quot; and with a high service level, such as packaging, chemical specialties, and metal machining services, among others.</span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;custom-configured&quot; supply chain model</span></li></ul>\r\nThe custom-configured supply chain model is characterized by a high degree of relevance of the cost of assets to the total cost, and multiple (potentially unlimited) configurations of the finished product on a unique platform. Competitive positioning is founded on offering a unique configuration of the finished product according to the end consumer's needs. \r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">One example of where this supply chain strategy makes sense is the assembly of personalized products, such as computers and vehicles. Another example is in the paper manufacturing industry, where the decoupling point occurs after the manufacture of the big paper rolls, and the products are customized in the cutting and packaging process. </span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The &quot;flexible&quot; supply chain</span></li></ul>\r\nIt is suited for companies that must meet unexpected demand and therefore are faced with high demand peaks and long periods of low workload. This supply chain model is characterized by adaptability, which is the capability to reconfigure internal processes in order to meet a customer's specific need or solve a customer's problem. This model typically is used by service companies that focus on handling unexpected situations, perhaps even including emergencies. \r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">A typical example of this type of supply chain can be found in companies that provide metalworking and machining services for the manufacture of spare parts for industrial customers. </span>\r\n\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SCM_-_Supply_Chain_Management__1_.png"},{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"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 &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. 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 &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\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.&nbsp; </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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":4796,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft_scsm.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM)","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":2,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-system-center-service-manager-scsm","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM 2012) is a management product in the System Center 2012 suite that can help an enterprise automate and adapt its IT service management. SCSM includes built-in processes that address situations enterprises will come across, such as changing control, managing assets' lifecycles and resolving problems and incidents as they occur. The SCSM 2012 application consists of three tiers: a console, a data access module and a database.<br />Enterprises must take two important factors into consideration before deploying SCSM 2012. First, they must create and identify a domain account to use when setting up Service Manager. Second, they must create a user group in Active Directory Domain Services.<br />There a number of ways to deploy SCSM 2012, but there are three deployment options that receive the most attention: one virtual computer and one physical computer; two computers to host the management server and database; and four computers to host the management server and database.<br /><br />","shortDescription":"Microsoft System Center Service Manager is designed to improve and simplify IT support operations.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":7,"sellingCount":13,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM)","keywords":"","description":"Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM 2012) is a management product in the System Center 2012 suite that can help an enterprise automate and adapt its IT service management. SCSM includes built-in processes that address situations enterprises will","og:title":"Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM)","og:description":"Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM 2012) is a management product in the System Center 2012 suite that can help an enterprise automate and adapt its IT service management. SCSM includes built-in processes that address situations enterprises will","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft_scsm.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":4797,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":34,"title":"ITSM - IT Service Management","alias":"itsm-it-service-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT service management (ITSM)</span> is the process of designing, delivering, managing, and improving the IT services an organization provides to its end users. ITSM is focused on aligning IT processes and services with business objectives to help an organization grow.\r\nITSM positions IT services as the key means of delivering and obtaining value, where an internal or external IT service provider works with business customers, at the same time taking responsibility for the associated costs and risks. ITSM works across the whole lifecycle of a service, from the original strategy, through design, transition and into live operation.\r\nTo ensure sustainable quality of IT services, ITSM establishes a set of practices, or processes, constituting a service management system. There are industrial, national and international standards for IT service management solutions, setting up requirements and good practices for the management system. \r\nITSM system is based on a set of principles, such as focusing on value and continual improvement. It is not just a set of processes – it is a cultural mindset to ensure that the desired outcome for the business is achieved. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)</span> is a framework of best practices and recommendations for managing an organization's IT operations and services. IT service management processes, when built based on the ITIL framework, pave the way for better IT service operations management and improved business. To summarize, ITIL is a set of guidelines for effective IT service management best practices. ITIL has evolved beyond the delivery of services to providing end-to-end value delivery. The focus is now on the co-creation of value through service relationships. \r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITSM processes typically include five stages, all based on the ITIL framework:</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITSM strategy.</span> This stage forms the foundation or the framework of an organization's ITSM process building. It involves defining the services that the organization will offer, strategically planning processes, and recognizing and developing the required assets to keep processes moving. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service design.</span> This stage's main aim is planning and designing the IT services the organization offers to meet business demands. It involves creating and designing new services as well as assessing current services and making relevant improvements.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service transition.</span> Once the designs for IT services and their processes have been finalized, it's important to build them and test them out to ensure that processes flow. IT teams need to ensure that the designs don't disrupt services in any way, especially when existing IT service processes are upgraded or redesigned. This calls for change management, evaluation, and risk management. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service operation. </span>This phase involves implementing the tried and tested new or modified designs in a live environment. While in this stage, the processes have already been tested and the issues fixed, but new processes are bound to have hiccups—especially when customers start using the services. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Continual service improvement (CSI).</span> Implementing IT processes successfully shouldn't be the final stage in any organization. There's always room for improvement and new development based on issues that pop up, customer needs and demands, and user feedback.\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Benefits of efficient ITSM processes</h1>\r\nIrrespective of the size of business, every organization is involved in IT service management in some way. ITSM ensures that incidents, service requests, problems, changes, and IT assets—in addition to other aspects of IT services—are managed in a streamlined way.\r\nIT teams in your organization can employ various workflows and best practices in ITSM, as outlined in ITIL. Effective IT service management can have positive effects on an IT organization's overall function.\r\nHere are the 10 key benefits of ITSM:\r\n<ul><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lower costs for IT operations</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Higher returns on IT investments</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Minimal service outages</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ability to establish well-defined, repeatable, and manageable IT processes</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Efficient analysis of IT problems to reduce repeat incidents</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Improved efficiency of IT help desk teams</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Well-defined roles and responsibilities</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Clear expectations on service levels and service availability</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Risk-free implementation of IT changes</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Better transparency into IT processes and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">How to choose an ITSM tool?</h1>\r\nWith a competent IT service management goal in mind, it's important to invest in a service desk solution that caters to your business needs. It goes without saying, with more than 150 service desk tools to choose from, selecting the right one is easier said than done. Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing an ITSM products:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Identify key processes and their dependencies. </span>Based on business goals, decide which key ITSM processes need to be implemented and chart out the integrations that need to be established to achieve those goals. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Consult with ITSM experts.</span> Participate in business expos, webinars, demos, etc., and educate yourself about the various options that are available in the market. Reports from expert analysts such as Gartner and Forrester are particularly useful as they include reviews of almost every solution, ranked based on multiple criteria.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Choose a deployment option.</span> Every business has a different IT infrastructure model. Selecting an on-premises or software as a service (SaaS IT service management) tool depends on whether your business prefers to host its applications and data on its own servers or use a public or private cloud.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Plan ahead for the future.</span> Although it's important to consider the &quot;needs&quot; primarily, you shouldn't rule out the secondary or luxury capabilities. If the ITSM tool doesn't have the potential to adapt to your needs as your organization grows, it can pull you back from progressing. Draw a clear picture of where your business is headed and choose an service ITSM that is flexible and technology-driven.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Don't stop with the capabilities of the ITSM tool.</span> It might be tempting to assess an ITSM tool based on its capabilities and features but it's important to evaluate the vendor of the tool. A good IT support team, and a vendor that is endorsed for their customer-vendor relationship can take your IT services far. Check Gartner's magic quadrant and other analyst reports, along with product and support reviews to ensure that the said tool provides good customer support.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_ITSM.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":4842,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/orchestrator_20121.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-system-center-orchestrator","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator is a workflow automation software product that allows administrators to automate the monitoring and deployment of data center resources.<br /><br />Microsoft System Center Orchestrator was introduced as part of the Microsoft System Center 2012 suite as a rebranding of Microsoft’s previous workflow automation software, Opalis vNext. Orchestrator uses a drag and drop graphical interface to allow admins to define run books. Orchestrator translates these visual representations into .NET scripts, PowerShell or SSH commands to automate workflows. It is capable of managing multiple operating systems and can also handle VMware- and Citrix-based workflows.<br /><br />Microsoft offers add-ons for System Center Orchestrator that extend its functionality, including the Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Integration Toolkit and the Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Integration Pack.","shortDescription":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator is a workflow automation software product that allows administrators to automate the monitoring and deployment of data center resources.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":20,"sellingCount":13,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator","keywords":"","description":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator is a workflow automation software product that allows administrators to automate the monitoring and deployment of data center resources.<br /><br />Microsoft System Center Orchestrator was introduced as part of the Microsof","og:title":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator","og:description":"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator is a workflow automation software product that allows administrators to automate the monitoring and deployment of data center resources.<br /><br />Microsoft System Center Orchestrator was introduced as part of the Microsof","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/orchestrator_20121.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":4843,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":34,"title":"ITSM - IT Service Management","alias":"itsm-it-service-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT service management (ITSM)</span> is the process of designing, delivering, managing, and improving the IT services an organization provides to its end users. ITSM is focused on aligning IT processes and services with business objectives to help an organization grow.\r\nITSM positions IT services as the key means of delivering and obtaining value, where an internal or external IT service provider works with business customers, at the same time taking responsibility for the associated costs and risks. ITSM works across the whole lifecycle of a service, from the original strategy, through design, transition and into live operation.\r\nTo ensure sustainable quality of IT services, ITSM establishes a set of practices, or processes, constituting a service management system. There are industrial, national and international standards for IT service management solutions, setting up requirements and good practices for the management system. \r\nITSM system is based on a set of principles, such as focusing on value and continual improvement. It is not just a set of processes – it is a cultural mindset to ensure that the desired outcome for the business is achieved. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)</span> is a framework of best practices and recommendations for managing an organization's IT operations and services. IT service management processes, when built based on the ITIL framework, pave the way for better IT service operations management and improved business. To summarize, ITIL is a set of guidelines for effective IT service management best practices. ITIL has evolved beyond the delivery of services to providing end-to-end value delivery. The focus is now on the co-creation of value through service relationships. \r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITSM processes typically include five stages, all based on the ITIL framework:</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ITSM strategy.</span> This stage forms the foundation or the framework of an organization's ITSM process building. It involves defining the services that the organization will offer, strategically planning processes, and recognizing and developing the required assets to keep processes moving. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service design.</span> This stage's main aim is planning and designing the IT services the organization offers to meet business demands. It involves creating and designing new services as well as assessing current services and making relevant improvements.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service transition.</span> Once the designs for IT services and their processes have been finalized, it's important to build them and test them out to ensure that processes flow. IT teams need to ensure that the designs don't disrupt services in any way, especially when existing IT service processes are upgraded or redesigned. This calls for change management, evaluation, and risk management. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service operation. </span>This phase involves implementing the tried and tested new or modified designs in a live environment. While in this stage, the processes have already been tested and the issues fixed, but new processes are bound to have hiccups—especially when customers start using the services. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Continual service improvement (CSI).</span> Implementing IT processes successfully shouldn't be the final stage in any organization. There's always room for improvement and new development based on issues that pop up, customer needs and demands, and user feedback.\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Benefits of efficient ITSM processes</h1>\r\nIrrespective of the size of business, every organization is involved in IT service management in some way. ITSM ensures that incidents, service requests, problems, changes, and IT assets—in addition to other aspects of IT services—are managed in a streamlined way.\r\nIT teams in your organization can employ various workflows and best practices in ITSM, as outlined in ITIL. Effective IT service management can have positive effects on an IT organization's overall function.\r\nHere are the 10 key benefits of ITSM:\r\n<ul><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Lower costs for IT operations</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Higher returns on IT investments</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Minimal service outages</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ability to establish well-defined, repeatable, and manageable IT processes</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Efficient analysis of IT problems to reduce repeat incidents</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Improved efficiency of IT help desk teams</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Well-defined roles and responsibilities</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Clear expectations on service levels and service availability</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Risk-free implementation of IT changes</li><li>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Better transparency into IT processes and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">How to choose an ITSM tool?</h1>\r\nWith a competent IT service management goal in mind, it's important to invest in a service desk solution that caters to your business needs. It goes without saying, with more than 150 service desk tools to choose from, selecting the right one is easier said than done. Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing an ITSM products:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Identify key processes and their dependencies. </span>Based on business goals, decide which key ITSM processes need to be implemented and chart out the integrations that need to be established to achieve those goals. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Consult with ITSM experts.</span> Participate in business expos, webinars, demos, etc., and educate yourself about the various options that are available in the market. Reports from expert analysts such as Gartner and Forrester are particularly useful as they include reviews of almost every solution, ranked based on multiple criteria.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Choose a deployment option.</span> Every business has a different IT infrastructure model. Selecting an on-premises or software as a service (SaaS IT service management) tool depends on whether your business prefers to host its applications and data on its own servers or use a public or private cloud.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Plan ahead for the future.</span> Although it's important to consider the &quot;needs&quot; primarily, you shouldn't rule out the secondary or luxury capabilities. If the ITSM tool doesn't have the potential to adapt to your needs as your organization grows, it can pull you back from progressing. Draw a clear picture of where your business is headed and choose an service ITSM that is flexible and technology-driven.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Don't stop with the capabilities of the ITSM tool.</span> It might be tempting to assess an ITSM tool based on its capabilities and features but it's important to evaluate the vendor of the tool. A good IT support team, and a vendor that is endorsed for their customer-vendor relationship can take your IT services far. Check Gartner's magic quadrant and other analyst reports, along with product and support reviews to ensure that the said tool provides good customer support.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_ITSM.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":5118,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/sap_logo.jpeg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"SAP Manufacturing Execution System Software","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"0.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":30,"alias":"sap-manufacturing-execution-system-software","companyTitle":"SAP","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":167,"companyAlias":"sap","description":"Digitize manufacturing processes and integrate business systems using a cost-effective, high-quality, and resource-efficient methodology based on Industry 4.0 technology. You can improve operational visibility with near real-time information that increases reliability and product traceability using solutions based on the Internet of Things (IoT).\r\n<ul><li>Cloud and on-premise deployment</li><li>Simplified integration with SAP ERP</li><li>Flexible production of one-process modeling</li><li>Detailed production visibility</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Key Benefits:</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Improve visibility into manufacturing processes</span></span>\r\nAssess and resolve quality and productivity issues quickly, while reducing warranty and liability risk, through better, more transparent production management.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Adapt to meet individualization requirements</span></span>\r\nMeet market-of-one demand and extreme product variability, while maintaining productivity, margin, and quality levels and improving customer satisfaction.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Utilize assets effectively</span></span>\r\nImprove asset and equipment effectiveness, facilitate predictive maintenance, minimize downtime, and keep manufacturing operations running smoothly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Key Capabilities:</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Centralized operations</span></span>\r\nManage and control manufacturing and shop floor operations using a single, centralized solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Automated data collection</span></span>\r\nReduce the need for manual data entry, improve accuracy, and accelerate management processes with automated data collection.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defect tracking and resolution</span></span>\r\nEnforce process rules, provide instructions, and track defects to help ensure error-proof manufacturing.","shortDescription":"Digitally control, monitor, and automate your manufacturing operations to enable a production lot size of one.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":0,"sellingCount":18,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"SAP Manufacturing Execution System Software","keywords":"","description":"Digitize manufacturing processes and integrate business systems using a cost-effective, high-quality, and resource-efficient methodology based on Industry 4.0 technology. You can improve operational visibility with near real-time information that increases rel","og:title":"SAP Manufacturing Execution System Software","og:description":"Digitize manufacturing processes and integrate business systems using a cost-effective, high-quality, and resource-efficient methodology based on Industry 4.0 technology. You can improve operational visibility with near real-time information that increases rel","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/sap_logo.jpeg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":5119,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":289,"title":"Manufacturing","alias":"manufacturing","description":" Manufacturing is the production of products for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation, and is the essence of secondary industry. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials from primary industry are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers).\r\nModern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required in the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead.\r\nManufacturing is a very simple business; the owner buys the raw material or component parts to manufacture a finished product. To function as a business the manufacturer needs to cover costs, meet demand and make a product to supply the market.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What do &quot;manufacturing operations&quot; mean?</span>\r\nManufacturing operations concern the operation of a facility, as opposed to maintenance, supply and distribution, health, and safety, emergency response, human resources, security, information technology, and other infrastructural support organizations.\r\nPersonnel that makeup &quot;operations&quot; are\r\n<ul><li>operators</li><li>engineers</li><li>technicians</li><li>management</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Manufacturing.png"},{"id":166,"title":"MES - Manufacturing Execution System","alias":"mes-manufacturing-execution-system","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Manufacturing execution systems (MES)&nbsp;</span> are computerized systems used in manufacturing, to track and document the transformation of raw materials to finished goods. MES software provides information that helps manufacturing decision makers understand how current conditions on the plant floor can be optimized to improve production output. Manufacturing execution solutions work in real time to enable the control of multiple elements of the production process (e.g. inputs, personnel, machines and support services).\r\nThe idea of&nbsp; Execution System might be seen as an intermediate step between, on the one hand, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) or process control system on the other; although historically, exact boundaries have fluctuated. Industry groups such as MESA International— Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association were created in the early 1990s in order to address the complexity, and advise on execution, of MES Systems.\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \">Manufacturing execution software comes with a whole bunch of concepts and terms that help provide a better understanding of what they actually are. Here are some of the more common terms and concepts associated with MES:</span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system</span>— strategic business process management tools that integrate all facets of an enterprise into one comprehensive information system that can be accessed by individuals across an entire organization.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">MESA-11</span>— published in 1997, this model — created by the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA)— indicated the 11 core functions of a standard MES.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ANSI/ISA-95 standard </span>— created for global manufacturers by the International Society of Automation, this is a standard set of guidelines for developers to follow when creating software that automatically links enterprise systems—like ERP—and control systems.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)</span> — a general unit of measure that evaluates how well a machine works compared to its full potential.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) </span>— a system of software and hardware elements that allows manufacturers to maintain efficiency, process data for smarter decisions, and communicate system issues to help reduce downtime.</span></li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \">Core MES Functionality</span></span></p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Operations management.</span> Offer employees a global view of planned production orders and their production routing. <br /></span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dispatching production units.</span> Manage the bidirectional flow of production data in real time between the ERP and the workshop. This ensures production data is always accurate, consistent, and up to date.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product tracking and genealogy.</span> Group final parts or batches with all their corresponding manufacturing data—from the raw material to the component assembly. This data is especially useful for manufa</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Labor management.</span> Manages people, products, and/or operations and track any skills or authorizations they require.<br /></span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quality management.</span> Manages the quality of manufacturing process and units. This function can be integrated directly into the Manufacturing execution system software or can use external software.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Maintenance management.</span> More easily and accurately plans preventative machine maintenance to reduce downtime and production interruptions.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Data collection and acquisition.</span> Tracks and gathers essential data and easily recall that data when needed.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Process management.</span> Provides process routing and operational sequencing—including full production traceability.</span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Performance analysis.</span> Consolidates data to calculate key performance indicators (KPIs) like rework, scrap, process capability, OEE, and more. <br /></span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Document control.</span> Provides a simple way for operators to access important documents—including instructions, drawings, notes, and more—when they need them. <br /></span></li><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Resource allocation and status.</span> Defines and tracks the status of resources and how they are used in the production process.</span></li></ul>\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Is an MES right for my business?</h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are plenty of benefits—including increased productivity, improved data capture, real-time visibility into your operations, an optimized workforce, and more. MES manufacturing software provides materials traceability, which is invaluable for manufacturers that must adhere to strict regulations. Manufacturers in the food and beverage, medical device, aeronautics and aerospace, and defense industries require this traceability to ensure they are compliant with regulations.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">However, manufacturing enterprise system isn’t for everyone. Smaller manufacturers may find that their production operations aren’t large enough to justify an additional software system like an MES. Additionally, they may feel that their profit margins don’t allow for this type of investment. Like any piece of technology, you have to weigh your options and decide if an MES is worth it for your manufacturing enterprise.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">How do MES and ERP systems work together?</h1>\r\n&nbsp;ERP and MES systems play separate but complementary roles in manufacturing operations. ERP systems integrate all facets of an enterprise into one comprehensive information system. For example, employees in planning and scheduling have access to the same data as the staff in financial management. All the data is also available in real time, which enables production managers to make faster, more informed business decisions.Meanwhile, MES is the layer between your manufacturing shop floor systems—like machines and supervisory systems—and your business, planning, and logistics systems—basically, your ERP solution. \r\nMES and ERP integrate with each other to provide a single source of truth throughout your organization. ERP systems can show you that you might need to improve your production output—MES management shows you how.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What should I be careful about as I pursue my MES strategy? </h1>\r\nKnow what you need. Know your own best-practices requirements. Know your production hardware and equipment inside out so you can be sure that it can be monitored and controlled by a prospective MES vendor's products. Don't believe every claim you hear from an MES software vendor. Ask them to prove their claims by checking with clients who've installed their applications and are seeing them work every day.\r\nKnow the vendor's responsibilities to uptime, production needs, tech support, training, and every other conceivable detail before you sign a contract. Know the answer to your question before you even ask the vendor, because you already did the research and know it from every angle. Be sure your prospective vendors value your critical business processes as much as their own before you put your factories and production into their hands.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/MES_-_Manufacturing_Execution_System1.png"},{"id":285,"title":"Operations and Manufacturing Applications","alias":"operations-and-manufacturing-applications","description":" Manufacturing operations management (MOM) is a collection of systems for managing end-to-end manufacturing processes with a view to optimizing efficiency.\r\nThere are many types of MOM software, including production management, performance analysis, quality and compliance, and human-machine interface (HMI). Production management software provides real-time information about jobs and orders, labor and materials, machine status, and product shipments. Performance analysis software displays metrics at the machine, line, plant, and enterprise-level for situational or historical analysis. Quality and compliance software are used to promote compliance with standards and specifications for operational processes and procedures. HMI software is a form of manufacturing operations management (MOM) software that enables operators to manage industrial and process control machinery using a computer-based interface.\r\nAdvancements in technology and market demands are enabling new capabilities in MOM software platforms, gradually closing gaps in end-user needs.\r\n<ul><li>Collaboration Capabilities: Collaboration and workflow services support people-to-people, people-to-systems, and systems-to-systems interactions, enforcing procedures and rules while flexibly adapting to real-time situations with alternate workflows and processes.</li><li>Security Services: Future manufacturing platforms will leverage common security services that determine roles, responsibilities, authorities, and access across all systems and application functions while fitting into corporate IT security schemes.</li><li>Asset &amp; Production Model: Future manufacturing platforms will have a unified asset and production model that supports all of the interrelationships between physical production equipment, facilities, inventory/materials, and people, as well as production definitions such as the manufacturing bill of materials, productions orders, etc. This contrasts with older systems that either had subsets of these interrelationships across multiple databases or could not effectively deal with federating across multiple systems of record.</li><li>Operations Database &amp; Historians: Evolving from older systems that had separate historians and production databases that were difficult to correlate across, service-based platforms will have a unified operations database and historian. This will capture and aggregate all time-series and production event information surrounding everything involved in each product and production run with a full genealogy of components and materials, related performance information, and federation across other systems and devices of record.</li><li>Visualization and Mobility: Today, different MOM applications support different graphical user interfaces, Web interfaces, specific mobile applications, etc. The future manufacturing platform will provide common visualization and mobility for a consistent user interface experience across different form factors, supporting dedicated and mobile workers that are orchestrated by consistent workflows and procedures.</li><li>Smaller and Focused 'Apps': Today’s monolithic systems and applications have too many interdependencies of databases, operate inconsistently, and are not inherently integrated. Being able to take advantage of many of the common software platform services described above, modular apps will be significantly smaller, simpler, and focused. These apps will be much lighter weight in functionality, and, as a result, significantly easier and faster to develop.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a manufacturing operating system?</span>\r\nA Manufacturing Execution System manages manufacturing operations such as product production rules, bill of materials, recipe data (product definition), resource management, scheduling, work batching (JiT Just in Time manufacturing), production data/logs, production performance, and some analysis.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Operations_and_Manufacturing_Applications_1_.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":2041,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Pardot.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":2,"alias":"pardot-b2b-marketing-analytics","companyTitle":"Salesforce.com","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4146,"companyAlias":"salesforcecom","description":"Pardot provides a full solution that helps marketers create meaningful connections, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals.\r\n<ul><li>Generate more leads and move them quickly through the pipeline</li><li>Engage buyers on their terms with dynamic, personalized campaigns</li><li>Understand each step from click to close, capturing true marketing ROI</li></ul>\r\nB2B Marketing Automation Features:\r\n<ul><li>Increase engagement and sell faster by reaching the right customers at the right time.</li><li>Keep your pipeline fully stocked with a steady flow of high-quality leads.</li><li>Create beautiful email campaigns that deliver.</li><li>When marketing and sales are in sync, you can sell more effectively.</li><li>Finally understand what’s working — and what needs some work.</li></ul>\r\nBuild intelligent, data-driven programs that generate new leads and speed up your sales cycle - all while allowing customers to forge their own path to purchase.\r\n<ul><li>Create the exact customer experience you want within one powerful and flexible builder</li><li>Easily build dynamic, multifaceted campaigns by making simple decisions at each step</li><li>&nbsp;Turn sales data into marketing action by triggering campaign activity off of CRM data</li></ul>\r\nVisually map out and test every asset and every touch point in your program to better understand the customer experience.\r\n<ul><li>Experience your marketing workflows the way your customers will with visual testing</li><li>Find and fix gaps in your campaign logic — prior to launch</li><li>Feel confident upon launching that your campaign will perform</li></ul>\r\nSurface insights right within your canvas to better understand campaign performance and adapt quickly.\r\n<ul><li>The exact success metrics you need, layered directly on your canvas for a quick glimpse at campaign health</li><li>Spend less time jumping around between reports and more time making improvements</li><li>Drill down to learn more about individual asset performance, right in the canvas</li></ul>","shortDescription":"Pardot provides a full solution that helps marketers create meaningful connections, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":17,"sellingCount":0,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics","keywords":"","description":"Pardot provides a full solution that helps marketers create meaningful connections, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals.\r\n<ul><li>Generate more leads and move them quickly through the pipeline</li><li>Engage buyers on their terms with","og:title":"Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics","og:description":"Pardot provides a full solution that helps marketers create meaningful connections, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals.\r\n<ul><li>Generate more leads and move them quickly through the pipeline</li><li>Engage buyers on their terms with","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Pardot.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":2042,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":65,"title":"Marketing Automation"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":820,"title":"Marketing Automation","alias":"marketing-automation","description":"Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.\r\nMarketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by digital marketing software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. Originally focused on email marketing automation, marketing automation now refers to a broad range of automation and analytic tools for marketing, especially inbound marketing. Marketing Automation platforms are used as a hosted or web-based solution, and no software installation is required by the customer.\r\nThe reason for using a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.\r\nMarketing automation is a platform that marketers use to plan, coordinate, manage and measure all of their marketing campaigns, both online and offline. It is often used along with lifecycle marketing strategy to closely manage and nurture generated leads, aiming to convert leads into customers.\r\nMarketing automation is a type of software that allows companies to effectively target customers with automated marketing messages across channels including email, websites, social media and text messages to generate sales leads. The technology is a segment of customer relationship management, or CRM, and is typically used by marketing departments as a way to remove repetitive tasks from staff workflows and increase overall marketing efficiency.\r\nOften, a brand will use multiple marketing automation tools, referred to as the marketing technology or martech — stack. These automation platforms assist in lead generation via email marketing, chatbots hosted on social media or websites, and other channels such as short message service (SMS) text. Marketing automation tools extend the reach of marketing campaigns, creating inbound marketing, a term some vendors use to refer to the strategy of finding prospects for top- to mid-funnel via personalization of pitches derived through analytics tools, which segment customers into different groups for different approaches.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Marketing automation features</span></p>\r\nDigital marketing automation software manages the online element of a marketing campaign, including data analytics that can create more precise personalization of content to individual customers to drive engagement and revenue.\r\nArtificial intelligence (AI) applications such as chatbots can help automate the delivery of that information or direct potential customers to webpages, online documents or forms that help create sales or gauge a potential customer's current or future interest in purchasing a company's goods or services. Marketing manager tools can also administer customer satisfaction and product usage surveys and then collect, measure and segment the response data.\r\nThe main features of marketing automation software typically include:\r\n<ul><li>Account-based marketing</li><li>Analytics for CRM</li><li>Campaign management</li><li>Inbound marketing</li><li>Lead management</li><li>Marketing ROI</li><li>Targeting and segmentation</li><li>Social marketing</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Who should use marketing automation?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">The beauty of a marketing automation system is that it can help your business maximize on efforts that have already proven successful. Attracting new audiences through the use of effective marketing strategies is step one, but if you want to do more to nurture those people so that they become customers, marketing automation is a good bet.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">How can marketing automation benefit my business?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing software solutions removes the hassle from your marketing strategy and allows you to streamline, automate and evaluate tasks and workflows. Your business will be able to scale its efforts and improve how you target customers.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What is marketing automation software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In essence, it’s a set of solutions that automates, streamlines and analyzes marketing-related workflows and engagement to get more leads and qualify them for sales. The idea is the more qualified leads you get the higher the conversion rate and the more revenue you generate. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing software programs differ from CRM in that the purpose of marketing automation software is to get top-of-funnel leads, while the latter nurtures middle- and bottom-of-funnel leads. In short, marketing automation qualifies leads to feed into the CRM sales funnel for nurturing prospects to conversion.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing automation plugs into a company's CRM system, which, typically, has its own native marketing automation cloud service (such as Salesforce Pardot and Oracle Eloqua). Eloqua will work with other CRM platforms that compete with Oracle's, and Marketo, an independent marketing automation platform, will work with Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft and other CRM systems. HubSpot also is a popular marketing automation platform that has its own CRM backbone.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">This becomes important when a company's marketing operations rely on a survey, email, social media or chatbot app for inbound lead-generation efforts that plug into Marketo or Eloqua, which, in turn, allows those marketing processes to continue regardless of which CRM the company uses. In effect, they act as middleware connecting the thousands of niche marketing automation tools and large CRM systems, where a company's customer data resides.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What are the types of marketing automation software?<br /></span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM integrated</span>. Many CRM solutions today have multi-channel marketing tools to make lead generation a seamless experience from top-of-funnel to conversion. If not fully packaged, at least the marketing automation and CRM are modularized and have native integration.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Email marketing</span>. Marketing automation has its beginnings with email marketing software. Many mailers are established and have maintained their email marketing UI as their core functionality, but they now offer newer marketing automation features like lead scoring, landing page integration and analytics beyond the open-click metric.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing automation.</span> This is the primary category featuring the standard tools, such as: forms, landing pages, lead scoring, lead database, reporting and analytics and pre-built or integrated email marketing and CRM functions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing analytics software</span>. They can be standalone apps or modules to a bigger marketing automation system. They lend more powerful analytics to the base system and cross over to the business intelligence category.<br />Social marketing. These are marketing software solutions with focus on social media functionalities such as Twitter and LinkedIn prospecting, brand mention tracking on Facebook and triggered posts on your pages based on your rules for keywords, hashtags or mentions.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What does marketing automation software do?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Here are the main features of marketing automation technology, which you should look for when subscribing to one.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead scoring. </span>Allows you to automatically grade leads based on specific criteria you set, including demographics, prospect behaviors and historical interactions. You assign a weight to each criterion and the system aggregates them to calculate the prospect’s lead score. The lead scores can be segregated by range and automatically funneled to their respective workflows. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead database</span>. The lead database captures a qualified prospect’s details and other marketing activities like web visits, email clicks and downloads. This database funnels leads to your CRM sales pipeline and, once converted, into your main customer database. The lead database may also allow for segmentation to help you target groups.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead nurturing.</span> Generally runs workflows designed to filter or shortlist prospects, which include managing the processes in email marketing and other channels and capturing data that helps in further qualifying leads.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Email marketing.</span> Business email marketing software allows email drip campaigns and features newsletter and email templates or an editor that lets you design your layout with ease. It allows for mass emails to targeted lists with a tracking tool to view number of opens and click-throughs. It may also feature an advanced tool for triggered emails, which send the right response in real time to specific customer actions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM integration</span>. Once the leads are qualified at the top-of-funnel, they are sent to the sales team; hence, marketing automation software should have seamless CRM integration. The integration can be with a third-party solution or as an add-on to the marketing automation software.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Forms and landing pages.</span> A form is embedded on the landing page to collect lead data, where it is funneled into your database for lead scoring. The landing page can also include dynamic content, where images, texts and calls-to-action are customized to the lead based on profiling like geolocation, industry, job title, previous interactions with you, etc.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Progressive profiling.</span> This is a smart form that delivers the right fields to different leads. A web visitor is analyzed for key details (for example: IP address, source page, Y/N customer) and is led to a series of unique short forms to capture specific data. This feature may also require social credentials for deeper profiling.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reporting &amp; analytics. </span>You can calculate an individual campaign’s cost and ROI and, generally, your marketing activities, by running analytics on key metrics that are sliced and diced in different ways that include open emails, downloads, lead volume, etc. In conjunction with CRM, you can associate these values against sales metrics like conversion rate, win-loss rate and total sales.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Mobile-optimized. </span>Mobile-optimized landing pages and emails help you target users who access the Internet from their smartphones or tablets. Mobile-optimized also means you can access the system and your data on the go.<br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-marketing-automation.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1338,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ServiceNow.gif","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"ServiceNow Customer Service Management","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.40","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":1,"alias":"servicenow-customer-service-management","companyTitle":"ServiceNow","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4136,"companyAlias":"servicenow","description":"\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Capabilities</span>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>CASE MANAGEMENT</li> <li>INTELLIGENT ROUTING</li> <li>OMNI CHANNEL</li> <li>ACCOUNTS, CONTACTS, PRODUCTS, SLAS, ENTITLEMENTS</li> <li>SELF-SERVICE PORTAL, KNOWLEDGE &amp; COMMUNITIES</li> <li>FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT</li> <li>CONNECTION WITH FIELD SERVICE, OPERATIONS, FINANCE, ETC.</li> <li>ISSUE RESOLUTION</li> <li>VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER</li> <li>VISUAL WORKFLOW AND AUTOMATION</li> </ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Apps Licensed Separately</span>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>AGENT INTELLIGENCE</li> <li>PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS</li> <li>OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE</li> <li>FINANCIAL PLANNIN</li> <li>PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT</li> </ul>","shortDescription":"Connect customer service with other departments to identify and resolve issues faster, reduce costs, and increase satisfaction using Customer Service Management.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":13,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"ServiceNow Customer Service Management","keywords":"MANAGEMENT, SERVICE, FIELD, INTELLIGENCE, CUSTOMER, WORKFLOW, AUTOMATION, VISUAL","description":"\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Capabilities</span>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>CASE MANAGEMENT</li> <li>INTELLIGENT ROUTING</li> <li>OMNI CHANNEL</li> <li>ACCOUNTS, CONTACTS, PRODUCTS, SLAS, ENTITLEMENTS</li> <li>SELF-SERVICE PORTAL, KNOWLEDGE &amp; COMMUNITIES</l","og:title":"ServiceNow Customer Service Management","og:description":"\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Capabilities</span>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>CASE MANAGEMENT</li> <li>INTELLIGENT ROUTING</li> <li>OMNI CHANNEL</li> <li>ACCOUNTS, CONTACTS, PRODUCTS, SLAS, ENTITLEMENTS</li> <li>SELF-SERVICE PORTAL, KNOWLEDGE &amp; COMMUNITIES</l","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ServiceNow.gif"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1339,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"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 &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. 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 &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\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.&nbsp; </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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":3185,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/salesforce_community_cloud.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Salesforce Community Cloud","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.40","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":2,"alias":"salesforce-community-cloud","companyTitle":"Salesforce.com","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4146,"companyAlias":"salesforcecom","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Build beautiful CRM-powered experiences with Community Cloud.</span>\r\nYour brand experience is your most valuable asset. Now you can create beautiful, branded digital experiences that extend CRM data and processes to all your partners and customers with Salesforce. Built natively on the Salesforce Platform, you can create and update rich experiences faster than ever.\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quickly Launch Portals, Forums, and Sites</span></span>\r\nWith the Lightning Community Builder, anyone in your organization can build powerful portals, forums, and sites using standard or custom components. Hundreds of prebuilt Lightning-powered drag and drop components make building fast and easy. Launch in weeks - or even days, instead of months.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Start with Templates</span>\r\nAny company can set up a digital experience in no time with out-of-the-box, customizable templates that can be modified with zero codings. Each template is prebuilt with a library of page layouts and components tailored for specific use cases, such as&nbsp; Customer Service and Partner Relationship Management.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Accelerate with Partners</span>\r\nTake advantage of prebuilt components and apps created by our ecosystem of partners and get up and running fast. Quickly install apps and components for every department or industry into your Salesforce org.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Launch Faster with Lightning Bolt</span>\r\nLightning Bolts are out-of-the-box solutions built for industry-specific use cases like supplier relationship management, franchise management, and patient engagement. Built by partners, Lightning Bolts contain industry process flows, apps, and Lightning components that you can integrate seamlessly into your digital experience.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Make it Mobile</span>\r\nCustomers and partners can access Community Cloud anywhere, anytime, and from any device. The mobile experience combines an elegant, easy-to-use interface with powerful Salesforce functionality. All Lightning Communities are 100% mobile optimized.\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Easily Make It Branded and Beautiful with Clicks</span></span>\r\nStart with prebuilt themes and add your own branding. Or take it a step further and fully customize down to the pixel. Import content and settings from your existing CMS or leverage Community Builder’s lightweight CMS for centralized content management across your digital experience.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Explore a Gallery of Prebuilt Themes</span>\r\nTake advantage of the prebuilt theme library and activate with one click. You can also connect your brand’s style guides to extend your identity. With pre-built themes from Salesforce, any customer - big or small - can create a visually stunning experience for their users.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Make it Pixel-perfect with the Lightning Community Builder</span>\r\nThe theme panel allows you to efficiently apply color, fonts, and style to your experience to match your design or brand. Match your colors precisely by uploading your own logo to automatically generate a custom color scheme. Create Branding Sets to quickly change color and style for different audiences and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Build Your Own Content Asset Library</span>\r\nA lightweight CMS is built right into the Lightning Community Builder, allowing you to upload and select images for your header, logo, rich content editor, and custom components. All can be stored for easy reference and retrieval. Alternatively, if you’ve gone to all the work of setting up a third party CMS, with CMS Connect, you can leverage that effort by instantly connecting your content and settings right into the community.\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Community Cloud Solutions</span></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Self-Service</span>\r\nHelp customers find answers fast, on their own terms and time frame with self-service portals and forums.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Partner Relationship Management</span>\r\nPersonalize partner recruitment, onboarding, and sales with turnkey Partner Relationship Management.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">B2B Commerce</span>\r\nProvide an easy consumer-like commerce experience for B2B customers that includes features tailored to the complex needs of B2B transactions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Build Your Own</span>\r\nBuild custom external-facing apps and portals connected to Salesforce. Create brand loyalty, social engagement and patient digital experiences - or any other type of experience you can imagine.\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Personalize with CRM</span></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Create Tailored Experiences for Each User</span>\r\nUse Audience Targeting to control which page, theme, or component is visible to your community members and create a custom experience for groups or individuals. Use CRM data to define audiences by fields on a CRM object, user profiles, location, referring domain, and record types.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Engage Customers with Marketing Journeys</span>\r\nMarketers can target community members with personalized content and offers. Community managers can launch personalized email journeys for community members, based on their CRM profiles and community interactions.\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Connect Data, Processes, and Embed AI</span></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Instantly Extend Salesforce Apps and Processes</span>\r\nCommunity Cloud is natively connected to Sales, Service and Marketing Clouds, so you can seamlessly connect leads, opportunities, cases, and campaigns. Process flows and business data are automatically extended into the community, based on the sharing and permissions you choose.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Connect Third Party Systems and Unlock Back Office Data</span>\r\nConnect and access data from external sources with point-and-click simplicity. Incorporate data from legacy systems (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, you name it) in real time in Salesforce application objects. Dramatically reduce integration time to unlock and modernize back-office systems.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Embed AI Throughout</span>\r\nExperiences are made even smarter with Einstein Intelligence features embedded throughout each community. Enable users to discover relevant content, groups, people and files. Community Managers can get insights on user feedback to drive engagement. Provide instant answers to questions without the need to contact customer support.","shortDescription":"Community Cloud is a digital experience platform that enables companies of all sizes to build beautifully branded CRM-powered portals, forums, sites, and mobile apps faster than ever before.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":15,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Salesforce Community Cloud","keywords":"","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Build beautiful CRM-powered experiences with Community Cloud.</span>\r\nYour brand experience is your most valuable asset. Now you can create beautiful, branded digital experiences that extend CRM data and processes to all your ","og:title":"Salesforce Community Cloud","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Build beautiful CRM-powered experiences with Community Cloud.</span>\r\nYour brand experience is your most valuable asset. Now you can create beautiful, branded digital experiences that extend CRM data and processes to all your ","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/salesforce_community_cloud.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3186,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":407,"title":"Communities","alias":"communities","description":" An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a virtual community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a &quot;family of invisible friends&quot;. Those who wish to be a part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and thereby gain access to specific content or links. An online community can act as an information system where members can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate. Commonly, people communicate through social networking sites, chat rooms, forums, e-mail lists and discussion boards. People may also join online communities through video games, blogs and virtual worlds. The rise in popularity of Web 2.0 websites has allowed for easier real-time communication and ability to connect to others as well as producing new ways for information to be exchanged.\r\nThe idea of a community is not a new concept. On the telephone, in ham radio and in the online world, social interactions no longer have to be based on proximity; instead they can literally be with anyone anywhere. The study of communities has had to adapt along with the new technologies. Many researchers have used ethnography to attempt to understand what people do in online spaces, how they express themselves, what motivates them, how they govern themselves, what attracts them, and why some people prefer to observe rather than participate. Online communities can congregate around a shared interest and can be spread across multiple websites.\r\nSome signs of community are:\r\n<ul><li>Content: articles, information, and news about a topic of interest to a group of people.</li><li>Forums or newsgroups and email: so that community members can communicate in delayed fashion.</li><li>Chat and instant messaging: so that community members can communicate more immediately.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are Community Platforms?</span>\r\nCommunity Platforms manage the process of creating and maintaining a space for productive discussion among community members. Members can share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. This process is sometimes referred to as &quot;community engagement.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Key Use Cases for Community Platforms</span>\r\n<ul><li>Support community for self-help and peer or expert advice</li><li>Ideation</li><li>Private social networking</li><li>Gauge customer satisfaction</li><li>Identify customer advocates</li><li>Increase customer/employee engagement</li><li>Distribute community news and updates</li><li>Generate content with programs like community blogging</li></ul>\r\nMature communities deliver business value in a variety of ways. They increase engagement, address support issues and pain points, measure satisfaction, and build stronger relationships. Platforms may support external communities, internal communities, or both. These benefits apply to both customer and employee communities.\r\nThere are different types of community platforms, including open source options for community managers who want to develop their own platform. Some SMB-focused community platforms focus on one aspect of community, like Q&amp;A, ideation, or link sharing. Enterprise-grade community platforms are more feature-rich. They might include complex, hierarchal capabilities like multi-tiered advocacy programs with moderator permissions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Factors to Consider When Selecting a Community Platform</span>\r\nIt is important to consider whether membership will be explicit and exclusive so that the community is open to registered members only.\r\nIn order to determine how employees or customers are likely to engage with a community platform, some community managers set up a free community platform or private social network group to run a testing phase.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Community Platforms vs. Help Desk Software, CMS, and Collaboration Tools</span>\r\nCommunity management tools have some overlap with help desk software, which often includes community features like Q&amp;A for self-help. Some community platforms integrate with help desk systems.\r\nThere is also overlap with content management systems (CMS), especially in heavily moderated external communities, where posts/articles by advocates and experts might be promoted and shared elsewhere.\r\nSome community platforms, especially for internal communities, may overlap with collaboration tools as well. Collaboration tools tend to be more focused on one-on-one interactions between users, and on getting projects done (via file sharing, etc.). Community interactions are more often one-to-many and focused on help, general engagement, feedback, and ideation.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Gamification</span>\r\nGamification is a strategy in which points, rules, and competition are used to increase engagement. Some community platforms use game dynamics to incentivize and reward member participation.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Community Moderation</span>\r\nModeration is a system for controlling potential abuse of the community platform. Moderation is important because fear of defamation is one of the biggest obstacles to creating an external community. For some companies promoting the voice of the customer feels risky.\r\nThere are two approaches to moderation: curating users (like restricting membership or blocking/reporting certain members) or curating content.\r\nMost community platforms allow administrators to act as moderators. Some have more advanced hierarchical systems for moderation. These allow administrators to grant certain members moderator permissions.\r\nContent curation includes restricting content access, removing content, editing content, or responding to content. This is often a top-down reaction to member contributions. It can also involve broader community participation such as voting on, rating and reporting content.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Pricing Information</span>\r\nThere are many providers of collaboration software spanning a wide range of capabilities from very inexpensive products designed for small teams, to highly sophisticated enterprise products. Enterprise-level systems cost in the region of $100 per user per month, with price breaks for high numbers of users.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Communities.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":4097,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Bot Framework","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-bot-framework","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Azure Bot Service enables you to build intelligent, enterprise-grade bots with ownership and control of your data. Begin with a simple Q&amp;A bot or build a sophisticated virtual assistant.\r\nUse comprehensive open-source SDK and tools to easily connect your bot to popular channels and devices. Give your bot the ability to speak, listen, and understand your users with native integration to Azure Cognitive Services.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">AI and natural language</span>\r\nCreate a bot with the ability to speak, listen, understand, and learn from your users with Azure Cognitive Services.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Open &amp; Extensible</span>\r\nBenefit from open-source SDK and tools to build, test, and connect bots that interact naturally with users, wherever they are.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Enterprise-grade solutions</span>\r\nBuild secure, global, scalable solutions that integrate with your existing IT ecosystem.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Ownership and control</span>\r\nCreate an AI experience that can extend your brand and keep you in control of your own data.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Bot Framework is a comprehensive framework for building enterprise-grade conversational AI experiences.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":16,"sellingCount":17,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Bot Framework","keywords":"","description":"Azure Bot Service enables you to build intelligent, enterprise-grade bots with ownership and control of your data. Begin with a simple Q&amp;A bot or build a sophisticated virtual assistant.\r\nUse comprehensive open-source SDK and tools to easily connect your b","og:title":"Microsoft Bot Framework","og:description":"Azure Bot Service enables you to build intelligent, enterprise-grade bots with ownership and control of your data. Begin with a simple Q&amp;A bot or build a sophisticated virtual assistant.\r\nUse comprehensive open-source SDK and tools to easily connect your b","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":4098,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":103,"title":"Chatbot Development"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":842,"title":"Chatbot Development","alias":"chatbot-development","description":"A chatbot is a piece of software that conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, although as of 2019, they are far short of being able to pass the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler ones scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.\r\nThe term &quot;ChatterBot&quot; was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (creator of the first Verbot, Julia) in 1994 to describe these conversational programs. Today, most chatbots are accessed via virtual assistants such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, via messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat, or via individual organizations' apps and websites. Chatbots can be classified into usage categories such as conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat), analytics, communication, customer support, design, developer tools, education, entertainment, finance, food, games, health, HR, marketing, news, personal, productivity, shopping, social, sports, travel and utilities.\r\nBeyond chatbots, Conversational AI refers to the use of messaging apps, speech-based assistants and chatbots to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences at scale.\r\nThe process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based chatbot development platforms offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform SnatchBot and IBM Watson. These cloud platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Backend as a Service for chatbot development.\r\nSome Companies like Microsoft Azure and AARC are currently providing their Bot Engines through which chatbot Platforms or Software can be developed.","materialsDescription":"New tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers have hit the market: Chatbots or Virtual Assistants. In banking, chatbots and virtual assistants are some of the industry’s newest tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a chatbot?</span>\r\nA chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps or through the telephone.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why are chatbots important?</span>\r\nA chatbot is often described as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of interaction between humans and machines. However, from a technological point of view, a chatbot only represents the natural evolution of a Question-Answering system leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP). Formulating responses to questions in natural language is one of the most typical examples of Natural Language Processing applied in various enterprises’ end-use applications.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How does a chatbot work?</span>\r\nThere are two different tasks at the core of a chatbot:\r\n<ol><li>user request analysis</li><li>returning the response</li></ol>\r\nUser request analysis: this is the first task that a chatbot performs. It analyzes the user’s request to identify the user intent and to extract relevant entities.\r\nThe ability to identify the user’s intent and extract data and relevant entities contained in the user’s request is the first condition and the most relevant step at the core of a chatbot: If you are not able to correctly understand the user’s request, you won’t be able to provide the correct answer.\r\nReturning the response: once the user’s intent has been identified, the chatbot must provide the most appropriate response for the user’s request. The answer may be:\r\n<ul><li>a generic and predefined text;</li><li>a text retrieved from a knowledge base that contains different answers;</li><li>a contextualized piece of information based on data the user has provided;</li><li>data stored in enterprise systems;</li><li>the result of an action that the chatbot performed by interacting with one or more backend application;</li><li>a disambiguating question that helps the chatbot to correctly understand the user’s request.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">In what is the benefit of chatbots?</span>\r\nChatbot applications streamline interactions between people and services, enhancing the customer experience. At the same time, they offer companies new opportunities to improve the customer's engagement process and operational efficiency by reducing the typical cost of customer service.\r\nTo be successful, a chatbot solution should be able to effectively perform both of these tasks. Human support plays a key role here: Regardless of the kind of approach and the platform, human intervention is crucial in configuring, training and optimizing the chatbot system.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Which chatbot application is right for you?</span>\r\nThere are different approaches and tools that you can use to develop a chatbot. Depending on the use case you want to address, some chatbot technologies are more appropriate than others. In order to achieve the desired results, the combination of different AI forms such as natural language processing, machine learning, and semantic understanding may be the best option.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Chatbot_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":4105,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Luis.ai","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"luisai","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"<p>Language Understanding (LUIS) is a machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and IoT devices. Quickly create enterprise-ready, custom models that continuously improve.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits:</span></span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Add natural language to your apps</span></p>\r\n<p>Designed to identify valuable information in conversations, LUIS interprets user goals (intents) and distills valuable information from sentences (entities), for a high quality, nuanced language model. LUIS integrates seamlessly with the Azure Bot Service, making it easy to create a sophisticated bot.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Quickly build a custom language solution</span></p>\r\n<p>Powerful developer tools are combined with customizable pre-built apps and entity dictionaries, such as Calendar, Music, and Devices, so you can build and deploy a solution more quickly. Dictionaries are mined from the collective knowledge of the web and supply billions of entries, helping your model to correctly identify valuable information from user conversations.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Always learning and improving</span></p>\r\n<p>Active learning is used to continuously improve the quality of natural language models. Once the model starts processing input, LUIS begins active learning, allowing you to constantly update and improve the model.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Enterprise-ready, available worldwide</span></p>\r\n<p>The service is ready to be deployed in commercial applications and can scale with enterprise quality and performance. The service meets international compliance standards, supports 13 languages and available worldwide, making it highly accessible around the world.</p>","shortDescription":"A machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and IoT devices. Quickly create enterprise-ready, custom models that continuously improve.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":7,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Luis.ai","keywords":"","description":"<p>Language Understanding (LUIS) is a machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and IoT devices. Quickly create enterprise-ready, custom models that continuously improve.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span s","og:title":"Luis.ai","og:description":"<p>Language Understanding (LUIS) is a machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and IoT devices. Quickly create enterprise-ready, custom models that continuously improve.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span s","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":4106,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":103,"title":"Chatbot Development"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":842,"title":"Chatbot Development","alias":"chatbot-development","description":"A chatbot is a piece of software that conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, although as of 2019, they are far short of being able to pass the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler ones scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.\r\nThe term &quot;ChatterBot&quot; was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (creator of the first Verbot, Julia) in 1994 to describe these conversational programs. Today, most chatbots are accessed via virtual assistants such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, via messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat, or via individual organizations' apps and websites. Chatbots can be classified into usage categories such as conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat), analytics, communication, customer support, design, developer tools, education, entertainment, finance, food, games, health, HR, marketing, news, personal, productivity, shopping, social, sports, travel and utilities.\r\nBeyond chatbots, Conversational AI refers to the use of messaging apps, speech-based assistants and chatbots to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences at scale.\r\nThe process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based chatbot development platforms offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform SnatchBot and IBM Watson. These cloud platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Backend as a Service for chatbot development.\r\nSome Companies like Microsoft Azure and AARC are currently providing their Bot Engines through which chatbot Platforms or Software can be developed.","materialsDescription":"New tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers have hit the market: Chatbots or Virtual Assistants. In banking, chatbots and virtual assistants are some of the industry’s newest tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a chatbot?</span>\r\nA chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps or through the telephone.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why are chatbots important?</span>\r\nA chatbot is often described as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of interaction between humans and machines. However, from a technological point of view, a chatbot only represents the natural evolution of a Question-Answering system leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP). Formulating responses to questions in natural language is one of the most typical examples of Natural Language Processing applied in various enterprises’ end-use applications.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How does a chatbot work?</span>\r\nThere are two different tasks at the core of a chatbot:\r\n<ol><li>user request analysis</li><li>returning the response</li></ol>\r\nUser request analysis: this is the first task that a chatbot performs. It analyzes the user’s request to identify the user intent and to extract relevant entities.\r\nThe ability to identify the user’s intent and extract data and relevant entities contained in the user’s request is the first condition and the most relevant step at the core of a chatbot: If you are not able to correctly understand the user’s request, you won’t be able to provide the correct answer.\r\nReturning the response: once the user’s intent has been identified, the chatbot must provide the most appropriate response for the user’s request. The answer may be:\r\n<ul><li>a generic and predefined text;</li><li>a text retrieved from a knowledge base that contains different answers;</li><li>a contextualized piece of information based on data the user has provided;</li><li>data stored in enterprise systems;</li><li>the result of an action that the chatbot performed by interacting with one or more backend application;</li><li>a disambiguating question that helps the chatbot to correctly understand the user’s request.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">In what is the benefit of chatbots?</span>\r\nChatbot applications streamline interactions between people and services, enhancing the customer experience. At the same time, they offer companies new opportunities to improve the customer's engagement process and operational efficiency by reducing the typical cost of customer service.\r\nTo be successful, a chatbot solution should be able to effectively perform both of these tasks. Human support plays a key role here: Regardless of the kind of approach and the platform, human intervention is crucial in configuring, training and optimizing the chatbot system.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Which chatbot application is right for you?</span>\r\nThere are different approaches and tools that you can use to develop a chatbot. Depending on the use case you want to address, some chatbot technologies are more appropriate than others. In order to achieve the desired results, the combination of different AI forms such as natural language processing, machine learning, and semantic understanding may be the best option.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Chatbot_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":778,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Surface_Laptop.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Surface Laptop","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-surface-laptop","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Surface Laptop provides the perfect blend of texture, subtle details, and clean, elegant lines — plus the luxurious touch of our Signature Alcantara® material-covered keyboard.\r\nThe perfect balance of portability and performance.\r\nYou don’t have to choose between power and traveling light. At just 2.76 pounds, Surface Laptop gives you an ideal balance of both, plus all-day battery life.\r\nA stunning screen that responds to your touch.\r\nExperience faster, more natural navigation on the vibrant 13.5” PixelSense™ Display with immersive touchscreen. Enjoy more space for your ideas with an edge-to-edge display and ultra-thin bezel.\r\n\r\n","shortDescription":"Microsoft Surface Laptop is designed for Windows 10 S — streamlined for security and superior performance.2 Applications are delivered via the Windows Store, ensuring that they’re Microsoft verified.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":13,"sellingCount":10,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Surface Laptop","keywords":"Laptop, Surface, touch, your, plus, perfect, balance, with","description":"Surface Laptop provides the perfect blend of texture, subtle details, and clean, elegant lines — plus the luxurious touch of our Signature Alcantara® material-covered keyboard.\r\nThe perfect balance of portability and performance.\r\nYou don’t have to choose betw","og:title":"Microsoft Surface Laptop","og:description":"Surface Laptop provides the perfect blend of texture, subtle details, and clean, elegant lines — plus the luxurious touch of our Signature Alcantara® material-covered keyboard.\r\nThe perfect balance of portability and performance.\r\nYou don’t have to choose betw","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Surface_Laptop.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":779,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1034,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Coco_Framework.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Coco Framework","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-coco-framework","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Coco achieves this by designing specifically for confidential consortiums, where nodes and actors are explicitly declared and controlled. Based on these requirements, Coco presents an alternative approach to ledger construction, giving enterprises the scalability, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality they need without sacrificing the inherent security and immutability they expect.\r\nLeveraging the power of existing blockchain protocols, trusted execution environments (TEEs) such as Intel SGX and Windows Virtual Secure Mode (VSM), distributed systems and cryptography, Coco enables enterprise-ready blockchain networks that deliver:\r\n\r\n<ul><li>Throughput and latency approaching database speeds.</li><li>Richer, more flexible, business-specific confidentiality models.</li><li>Network policy management through distributed governance.</li><li>Support for non-deterministic transactions.</li></ul>\r\nBy providing these capabilities, Coco offers a trusted foundation with which existing blockchain protocols can be integrated to deliver complete, enterprise-ready ledger solutions, opening up broad, high scale scenarios across industries, and furthering blockchain's ability to digital transform business.\r\nWe have already begun exploring Coco’s potential across a variety of industries, including retail, supply chain and financial services.\r\nWhether a customer is designing an end-to-end trade finance solution, using blockchain to ensure security at the edge or leveraging Enterprise Smart Contracts to drive back office efficiencies, Coco enables them to meet their enterprise requirements. Microsoft is the only cloud provider that delivers consistency across on-premises and the public cloud at hyperscale while providing access to the rich Azure ecosystem for the wide range of applications that will be built on top of blockchain as a shared data layer.\r\nAn open approach\r\nBy design, Coco is open and compatible with any blockchain protocol. Microsoft has already begun integrating Ethereum into Coco and we’re thrilled to announce that J.P. Morgan Chase, Intel and R3 have committed to integrating enterprise ledgers, Quorum, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Corda, respectively. This is just the beginning, and we look forward to exploring integration opportunities with other ledgers in the near future.\r\n","shortDescription":"Microsoft Coco Framework is an open-source system that enables high-scale, confidential blockchain networks that meet all key enterprise requirements—providing a means to accelerate production enterprise adoption of blockchain technology.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":10,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Coco Framework","keywords":"Coco, blockchain, that, with, distributed, Microsoft, across, existing","description":"Coco achieves this by designing specifically for confidential consortiums, where nodes and actors are explicitly declared and controlled. 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Security software is a broad term that encompasses a suite of different types of software that deliver data and computer and network security in various forms. \r\nSecurity software can protect a computer from viruses, malware, unauthorized users and other security exploits originating from the Internet. Different types of security software include anti-virus software, firewall software, network security software, Internet security software, malware/spamware removal and protection software, cryptographic software, and more.\r\nIn end-user computing environments, anti-spam and anti-virus security software is the most common type of software used, whereas enterprise users add a firewall and intrusion detection system on top of it. \r\nSecurity soft may be focused on preventing attacks from reaching their target, on limiting the damage attacks can cause if they reach their target and on tracking the damage that has been caused so that it can be repaired. As the nature of malicious code evolves, security software also evolves.<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Firewall. </span>Firewall security software prevents unauthorized users from accessing a computer or network without restricting those who are authorized. Firewalls can be implemented with hardware or software. Some computer operating systems include software firewalls in the operating system itself. For example, Microsoft Windows has a built-in firewall. Routers and servers can include firewalls. There are also dedicated hardware firewalls that have no other function other than protecting a network from unauthorized access.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Antivirus.</span> Antivirus solutions work to prevent malicious code from attacking a computer by recognizing the attack before it begins. But it is also designed to stop an attack in progress that could not be prevented, and to repair damage done by the attack once the attack abates. Antivirus software is useful because it addresses security issues in cases where attacks have made it past a firewall. New computer viruses appear daily, so antivirus and security software must be continuously updated to remain effective.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Antispyware.</span> While antivirus software is designed to prevent malicious software from attacking, the goal of antispyware software is to prevent unauthorized software from stealing information that is on a computer or being processed through the computer. Since spyware does not need to attempt to damage data files or the operating system, it does not trigger antivirus software into action. However, antispyware software can recognize the particular actions spyware is taking by monitoring the communications between a computer and external message recipients. When communications occur that the user has not authorized, antispyware can notify the user and block further communications.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Home Computers.</span> Home computers and some small businesses usually implement&nbsp; security software at the desktop level - meaning on the PC itself. This category of computer security and protection, sometimes referred to as end-point security, remains resident, or continuously operating, on the desktop. Because the software is running, it uses system resources, and can slow the computer's performance. However, because it operates in real time, it can react rapidly to attacks and seek to shut them down when they occur.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Network Security.</span> When several computers are all on the same network, it's more cost-effective to implement security at the network level. Antivirus software can be installed on a server and then loaded automatically to each desktop. However firewalls are usually installed on a server or purchased as an independent device that is inserted into the network where the Internet connection comes in. All of the computers inside the network communicate unimpeded, but any data going in or out of the network over the Internet is filtered trough the firewall.<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What is IT security software?</span></h1>\r\nIT security software provides protection to businesses’ computer or network. It serves as a defense against unauthorized access and intrusion in such a system. It comes in various types, with many businesses and individuals already using some of them in one form or another.\r\nWith the emergence of more advanced technology, cybercriminals have also found more ways to get into the system of many organizations. Since more and more businesses are now relying their crucial operations on software products, the importance of security system software assurance must be taken seriously – now more than ever. Having reliable protection such as a security software programs is crucial to safeguard your computing environments and data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">It is not just the government or big corporations that become victims of cyber threats. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses have increasingly become targets of cybercrime over the past years. </p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What are the features of IT security software?</span></h1>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automatic updates. </span>This ensures you don’t miss any update and your system is the most up-to-date version to respond to the constantly emerging new cyber threats.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Real-time scanning.</span> Dynamic scanning features make it easier to detect and infiltrate malicious entities promptly. Without this feature, you’ll risk not being able to prevent damage to your system before it happens.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Auto-clean.</span> A feature that rids itself of viruses even without the user manually removing it from its quarantine zone upon detection. Unless you want the option to review the malware, there is no reason to keep the malicious software on your computer which makes this feature essential.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Multiple app protection.</span> This feature ensures all your apps and services are protected, whether they’re in email, instant messenger, and internet browsers, among others.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Application level security.</span> This enables you to control access to the application on a per-user role or per-user basis to guarantee only the right individuals can enter the appropriate applications.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Role-based menu.</span> This displays menu options showing different users according to their roles for easier assigning of access and control.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Row-level (multi-tenant) security.</span> This gives you control over data access at a row-level for a single application. This means you can allow multiple users to access the same application but you can control the data they are authorized to view.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Single sign-on.</span> A session or user authentication process that allows users to access multiple related applications as long as they are authorized in a single session by only logging in their name and password in a single place.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">User privilege parameters.</span> These are customizable features and security as per individual user or role that can be accessed in their profile throughout every application.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Application activity auditing.</span> Vital for IT departments to quickly view when a user logged in and off and which application they accessed. Developers can log end-user activity using their sign-on/signoff activities.</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Security_Software.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1546,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/data-warehouse.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Azure Data Warehouse","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"azure-data-warehouse","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"<p>Create a single center for all your data, be it structured, unstructured or streaming data.&nbsp;Provide work of such transformational decisions, as functions of business analytics, reports, the expanded analytics and analytics in real time.&nbsp;To easily get started, take advantage of the performance, flexibility, and security of Azure's fully managed services, such as SQL Azure and Azure Databricks.</p>\r\n<h2>Get rid of worries</h2>\r\n<h2><br /><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Built-in advanced security features include transparent data encryption, auditing, threat detection, integration with Azure Active Directory and virtual network endpoints.&nbsp;Azure services correspond to&nbsp;more than 50 industry and geographic&nbsp;certifications and are available worldwide in&nbsp;42 regions&nbsp;to store your data wherever your users are located.&nbsp;Finally, Microsoft offers financially secured service level agreements to spare you any hassle.</span></h2>","shortDescription":"Azure Data Warehouse - is a modern data storage from Microsoft","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":2,"sellingCount":19,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Azure Data Warehouse","keywords":"","description":"<p>Create a single center for all your data, be it structured, unstructured or streaming data.&nbsp;Provide work of such transformational decisions, as functions of business analytics, reports, the expanded analytics and analytics in real time.&nbsp;To easily ","og:title":"Azure Data Warehouse","og:description":"<p>Create a single center for all your data, be it structured, unstructured or streaming data.&nbsp;Provide work of such transformational decisions, as functions of business analytics, reports, the expanded analytics and analytics in real time.&nbsp;To easily ","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/data-warehouse.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1549,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":24,"title":"IaaS - storage"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":789,"title":"IaaS - storage","alias":"iaas-storage","description":"IaaS is an abbreviation that stands for Infrastructure as a Service (“infrastructure as a service”). This model provides for a cloud provider to provide the client with the necessary amount of computing resources - virtual servers, remote workstations, data warehouses, with or without the provision of software - and software deployment within the infrastructure remains the client's prerogative. In essence, IaaS is an alternative to renting physical servers, racks in the data center, operating systems; instead, the necessary resources are purchased with the ability to quickly scale them if necessary. In many cases, this model may be more profitable than the traditional purchase and installation of equipment, here are just a few examples:\r\n<ul><li>if the need for computing resources is not constant and can vary greatly depending on the period, and there is no desire to overpay for unused capacity;</li><li>when a company is just starting its way on the market and does not have working capital in order to buy all the necessary infrastructure - a frequent option among startups;</li><li>there is a rapid growth in business, and the network infrastructure must keep pace with it;</li><li>if you need to reduce the cost of purchasing and maintaining equipment;</li><li>when a new direction is launched, and it is necessary to test it without investing significant funds in resources.</li></ul>\r\nIaaS can be organized on the basis of a public or private cloud, as well as by combining two approaches - the so-called. “Hybrid cloud”, created using the appropriate software.","materialsDescription":" IaaS or Infrastructure as a service translated into Russian as “Infrastructure as a service”.\r\n&quot;Infrastructure&quot; in the case of IaaS, it can be virtual servers and networks, data warehouses, operating systems.\r\n“As a service” means that the cloud infrastructure components listed above are provided to you as a connected service.\r\nIaaS is a cloud infrastructure utilization model in which the computing power is provided to the client for independent management.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference from PaaS and SaaS?</span>\r\nFrequently asked questions, what distinguishes IaaS, PaaS, SaaS from each other? What is the difference? Answering all questions, you decide to leave in the area of ​​responsibility of its IT specialists. It requires only time and financial costs for your business.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who is responsible for what?</span>\r\nIn the case of using IaaS models, a company can independently use resources: install and run software, exercise control over systems, applications, and virtual storage systems.\r\nFor example, networks, servers, servers and servers. The IaaS service provider manages its own software and operating system, middleware and applications, is responsible for the infrastructure during the purchase, installation and configuration.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why do companies choose IaaS?</span>\r\nScaling capabilities. All users have access to resources, and you must use all the resources you need.\r\nCost savings. As a rule, the use of cloud services costs the company less than buying its own infrastructure.\r\nMobility. Ability to work with conventional applications.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS_storage.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1550,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Azure-Virtual-machines.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Azure Virtual Machines","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"azure-virtual-machines","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"<p>Supporting Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, SAP and other platforms, Azure virtual machines provide the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions.&nbsp;All current-generation virtual machines include load balancing and autoscaling.&nbsp; <span style=\"color: #505050; font-family: 'Segoe UI', SegoeUI, 'Segoe WP', Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;\"><br /></span>Azure Virtual Machines - is a proposal that includes various solutions, from an inexpensive B series to virtual machines with the latest GPU optimized for machine learning.&nbsp;It is designed to perform any workloads within any budget.</p>","shortDescription":"Azure Virtual Machines - is a computing service from Microsoft","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":12,"sellingCount":5,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Azure Virtual Machines","keywords":"","description":"<p>Supporting Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, SAP and other platforms, Azure virtual machines provide the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions.&nbsp;All current-generation virtual machines include load balancing","og:title":"Azure Virtual Machines","og:description":"<p>Supporting Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, SAP and other platforms, Azure virtual machines provide the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions.&nbsp;All current-generation virtual machines include load balancing","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Azure-Virtual-machines.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1551,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":26,"title":"IaaS - computing"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":786,"title":"IaaS - computing","alias":"iaas-computing","description":"Cloud computing is the on demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet. Large clouds, predominant today, often have functions distributed over multiple locations from central servers. If the connection to the user is relatively close, it may be designated an edge server.\r\nInfrastructure as a service (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nThe NIST's definition of cloud computing defines Infrastructure as a Service as:\r\n<ul><li>The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications.</li><li>The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).</li></ul>\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure — virtual machines and other resources — as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS-cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cloud Computing Basics</span>\r\nWhether you are running applications that share photos to millions of mobile users or you’re supporting the critical operations of your business, a cloud services platform provides rapid access to flexible and low cost IT resources. With cloud computing, you don’t need to make large upfront investments in hardware and spend a lot of time on the heavy lifting of managing that hardware. Instead, you can provision exactly the right type and size of computing resources you need to power your newest bright idea or operate your IT department. You can access as many resources as you need, almost instantly, and only pay for what you use.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">How Does Cloud Computing Work?</span>\r\nCloud computing provides a simple way to access servers, storage, databases and a broad set of application services over the Internet. A Cloud services platform such as Amazon Web Services owns and maintains the network-connected hardware required for these application services, while you provision and use what you need via a web application.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Six Advantages and Benefits of Cloud Computing</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Trade capital expense for variable expense</span>\r\nInstead of having to invest heavily in data centers and servers before you know how you’re going to use them, you can only pay when you consume computing resources, and only pay for how much you consume.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Benefit from massive economies of scale</span>\r\nBy using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower variable cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers are aggregated in the cloud, providers can achieve higher economies of scale which translates into lower pay as you go prices.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Stop guessing capacity</span>\r\nEliminate guessing on your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision prior to deploying an application, you often either end up sitting on expensive idle resources or dealing with limited capacity. With cloud computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes notice.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Increase speed and agility</span>\r\nIn a cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only ever a click away, which means you reduce the time it takes to make those resources available to your developers from weeks to just minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, since the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Stop spending money on running and maintaining data centers</span>\r\nFocus on projects that differentiate your business, not the infrastructure. Cloud computing lets you focus on your own customers, rather than on the heavy lifting of racking, stacking and powering servers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Go global in minutes</span>\r\nEasily deploy your application in multiple regions around the world with just a few clicks. This means you can provide a lower latency and better experience for your customers simply and at minimal cost.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Types of Cloud Computing</span>\r\nCloud computing has three main types that are commonly referred to as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Selecting the right type of cloud computing for your needs can help you strike the right balance of control and the avoidance of undifferentiated heavy lifting.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS_computing.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":3344,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Cloud_App_Security.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Cloud App Security","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-cloud-app-security","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"Microsoft Cloud App Security is a multimode Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB). It provides rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services.\r\nMicrosoft Cloud App Security natively integrates with leading Microsoft solutions. It is designed with security professionals in mind—providing simple deployment, centralized management, and innovative automation capabilities.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">FEATURES:</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Discover and control the use of Shadow IT</span>\r\nIdentify cloud apps and services used by your organization. Assess their risk levels and business readiness of &gt;16,000 apps against &gt;70 risk and start managing them to ensure security and compliance.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Protect your sensitive information anywhere in the cloud</span>\r\nUnderstand, classify and protect the exposure of sensitive information at rest, or leverage out-of-the box policies and automated processes to apply controls in real-time - across all your cloud apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Protect against cyberthreats and anomalies</span>\r\nDetect unusual behavior across cloud apps to identify ransomware, compromised users or rogue applications, analyze high-risk usage and remediate automatically to limit the risk to your organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Assess the compliance of your cloud apps</span>\r\nAssess if your cloud apps meet relevant compliance requirements including regulatory compliance and industry standards. Prevent data leaks to non-compliant apps, and limit access to regulated data.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Cloud App Security provides rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":0,"sellingCount":10,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Cloud App Security","keywords":"","description":"Microsoft Cloud App Security is a multimode Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB). It provides rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services.\r\nMicrosoft Cloud App Securit","og:title":"Microsoft Cloud App Security","og:description":"Microsoft Cloud App Security is a multimode Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB). It provides rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services.\r\nMicrosoft Cloud App Securit","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Cloud_App_Security.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3345,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":95,"title":"Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":832,"title":"CASB - Cloud Access Security Broker","alias":"casb-cloud-access-security-broker","description":"A cloud access security broker (CASB) (sometimes pronounced cas-bee) is on-premises or cloud-based software that sits between cloud service users and cloud applications, and monitors all activity and enforces security policies. A CASB can offer a variety of services, including but not limited to monitoring user activity, warning administrators about potentially hazardous actions, enforcing security policy compliance, and automatically preventing malware.\r\nA CASB may deliver security, the management or both. Broadly speaking, &quot;security&quot; is the prevention of high-risk events, whilst &quot;management&quot; is the monitoring and mitigation of high-risk events.\r\nCASBs that deliver security must be in the path of data access, between the user and the cloud. Architecturally, this might be achieved with proxy agents on each end-point device, or in agentless fashion without requiring any configuration on each device. Agentless CASB allows for rapid deployment and delivers security on all devices, company-managed or unmanaged BYOD. Agentless CASB also respects user privacy, inspecting only corporate data. Agent-based CASB is difficult to deploy and effective only on devices that are managed by the corporation. Agent-based CASB typically inspects both corporate and personal data.\r\nCASBs that deliver management may use APIs to inspect data and activity in the cloud to alert of risky events after the fact. Another management capability of a CASB is to inspect firewall or proxy logs for the usage of cloud applications.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is CASB?</span> A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a policy enforcement point that secures data &amp; apps in the cloud and on any device, anywhere.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between security and management?</span> Security is preventing risky events from happening, management is cleaning up after high-risk events.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Shadow IT?</span> Cloud applications used by business users without IT oversight, also known as unmanaged apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are managed apps?</span> Cloud Applications that are managed by IT, e.g.Office 365.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the types of CASB?</span> Three types of Cloud Access Security Broker\r\n<ul><li>a) API-only CASB offer basic management</li><li>b) multi-mode first-gen CASB offer management &amp; security</li><li>c) Next-Gen CASB deliver management, security &amp; Zero-Day protection.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a forward proxy?</span> A proxy where traffic must be forwarded by the end-point Such proxies requires agents and configuration on client devices.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a reverse proxy?</span> A proxy where traffic is automatically routed, requiring no agent or configuration on the end-point.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is AJAX-VM?</span> Acronym for &quot;Adaptive Javascript and XML- Virtual Machine.&quot; AJAX-VM virtualizes cloud apps on the fly so they can be proxied without agents. Reverse-proxy CASB are brittle without AJAX-VM and break frequently with app changes.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the types of CASB architecture?</span> There are three types of CASB architecture: API-only, forward proxy, and reverse proxy. Some CASB are API-only, others API and forward proxy. Next-Gen CASBs offer all three with AJAX-VM.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is CASB encryption?</span>&nbsp; Encryption/decryption of data prior to upload/download to a cloud application.\r\n <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is searchable encryption?</span> An encryption system that combines full encryption with a clear-text index to enable search and sort without compromising encryption strength.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is tokenization?</span> Obfuscation by encoding each input string as a unique output string.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is agentless MDM?</span> Mobile security for BYOD that does not require agents. Easy to deploy and has no access to personal data or apps, thereby preserving user privacy.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_CASB.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":3090,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Project.jpg","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Project","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":2,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-project","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"<p>Microsoft Project is a project management system and a way to optimize portfolio management, which allows you to plan and control project activities of organizations.</p>\r\n<p>Compared with other similar programs, the MS Project is considered the most common and &ldquo;easy&rdquo; to refer to the initial level of project management software with a classic standard office interface. In the single-user and small solutions market, the software product takes about 80% (about 20 million people use it).</p>\r\n<p>It is believed that as an integrated set of methods, processes and tools for planning and monitoring projects, MS Project is more often used in the implementation of relatively small project ideas. However, the existence of several paid options - basic, professional and advanced - when choosing the most complete functionality allows you to significantly expand the capabilities of the program compared to the basic version.</p>\r\n<p>Another focus of the \"detuning\" is the specialization of the product. Among such software, Primavera is popular, which is widespread in the field of engineering and construction projects as a means of calendar-network planning, which allows to take into account financial, material and labor resources in medium and large projects. Basecamp software cloud tool is considered the main competitor in the segment of ultra-light management decisions. At the same time, Microsoft has also been offering a cloud version of its product since 2013.</p>\r\n<p>In addition to the cloud application, several products are available under the Project brand:</p>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li>Project Standard allows for individual planning for small projects.</li>\r\n<li>Corporate management is carried out with the help of a special platform, including:</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Project Server,</li>\r\n<li>the corporate version of Project Professional, where collaborative tools (Project Server and SharePoint Foundation / Server) are added to the capabilities of the Standard version,</li>\r\n<li>the technology of the web interface of the reporting of executives on the progress of tasks, for viewing project portfolios and other collaboration (Project Web Access).</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https://finswin.com/projects/instrumenty/microsoft-project.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">finswin.com/projects/instrumenty/microsoft-project.html</a></p>","shortDescription":"Microsoft Project is a project management system and a way to optimize portfolio management, which allows you to plan and control project activities of organizations.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":14,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Project","keywords":"","description":"<p>Microsoft Project is a project management system and a way to optimize portfolio management, which allows you to plan and control project activities of organizations.</p>\r\n<p>Compared with other similar programs, the MS Project is considered the most common","og:title":"Microsoft Project","og:description":"<p>Microsoft Project is a project management system and a way to optimize portfolio management, which allows you to plan and control project activities of organizations.</p>\r\n<p>Compared with other similar programs, the MS Project is considered the most common","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Project.jpg"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":3091,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":81,"title":"Project and Portfolio Management"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":363,"title":"Project and Portfolio Management","alias":"project-and-portfolio-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project Portfolio Management (PPM)</span> is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The objectives of PPM are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to best achieve an organization’s operational and financial goals, while honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors. The International standard defines the framework of the Project Portfolio Management.\r\nPPM provides program and project managers in large, program/project-driven organizations with the capabilities needed to manage the time, resources, skills, and budgets necessary to accomplish all interrelated tasks. It provides a framework for issue resolution and risk mitigation, as well as the centralized visibility to help planning and scheduling teams to identify the fastest, cheapest, or most suitable approach to deliver projects and programs. Portfolio Managers define Key Performance Indicators and the strategy for their portfolio.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Pipeline Management.</span> Pipeline management involves steps to ensure that an adequate number of project proposals are not generated and not evaluated to determine whether (and how) a set of projects in the portfolio can be executed with finite development resources in a specified time. There are three major sub-components to pipeline management: ideation, work intake processes, and Phase-Gate reviews. Fundamental to pipeline management is the ability to align the decision-making process for estimating and selecting new capital investment projects with the strategic plan.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Resource Manager.</span> The focus on the efficient and effective deployment of an organization’s resources where and when they are needed. These can include financial resources, inventory, human resources, technical skills, production, and design. In addition to project-level resource allocation, users can also model ‘what-if’ resource scenarios, and extend this view across the portfolio.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Change Control.</span> The capture and prioritization of change requests that can include new requirements, features, functions, operational constraints, regulatory demands, and technical enhancements. PPM provides a central repository for these change requests and the ability to match available resources to evolving demand within the financial and operational constraints of individual projects.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Financial Management.</span> With PPM, the Office of Finance can improve their accuracy for estimating and managing the financial resources of a project or group of projects. In addition, the value of projects can be demonstrated in relation to the strategic objectives and priorities of the organization through financial controls and to assess progress through earned value and other project financial techniques.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Risk Management.</span> An analysis of the risk sensitivities residing within each project, as the basis for determining confidence levels across the portfolio. The integration of cost and schedule risk management with techniques for determining contingency and risk response plans, enable organizations to gain an objective view of project uncertainties.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s the difference between Project Management and Project Portfolio Management?</span>\r\nProject management is focused on an individual project, making sure it achieves its objectives and adheres to cost schedule baselines and performance standards. Project portfolio management, on the other hand, takes into consideration all the projects within a portfolio. The primary objective here is to select and maintain the appropriate mix of projects and to assess the costs, risks, and returns of running these projects in relation to how they match with organizational goals. Simply put, project management is about doing the project right, project portfolio management is about doing the right projects.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Problems Can Project Portfolio Management Address?</span>\r\nProject Portfolio Management helps companies avoid project overload and work on projects that are not aligned with the ultimate vision. In other words, project portfolio management helps companies to work towards their goals without getting sidetracked by too many shiny pennies (ie. projects that appear to be enticing but actually drain their resources for little return).\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How does Project Portfolio Management help with new product development?</span>\r\nProject Portfolio Management supports companies in assessing, evaluating and ranking new product ideas before they become projects, so that time, money and human resources can be spent working on projects that support strategic objectives. This becomes increasingly important and relevant for companies that receive dozens if not hundreds of project proposals.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the key elements of successful portfolio management?</span>\r\nGoals, objectives, governance, approval processes and monitoring portfolio performance.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Project_and_Portfolio_Management.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1044,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":2,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-analytics-solution","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"The Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution comes with some built-in reports with preconfigured data visualizations so you can easily get started with frequently used queries, such as:\r\n\r\n<ul><li>Distribution of failed jobs across VMM instances to easily scope down the broken instances.</li><li>Distribution of failures over time to find sudden spikes, and to help with correlating the cause and failures.</li><li>Distribution of failed jobs and errors to help with identifying the most error-prone jobs and the cause.</li><li>Distribution of the job runtime across different runs to identify the sluggish and error-prone jobs.</li></ul>\r\nThese are just a few examples of the possibilities with Virtual Machine Manager Analytics. Because the solution is open-source, we are looking forward to contributions from the community for other data visualizations.\r\nFurther, the data from System Center Virtual Machine Manager can be combined with several features in OMS for compelling use cases, including:\r\n<ul><li>Bring together the jobs data from multiple VMM instances to a single OMS workspace. With a view, now you can keep an eye on job details for all your VMM instances together.</li><li>Configure your OMS alerts with VMM jobs information to raise notifications for completion or failure of VMM jobs, and inform the appropriate teams.</li><li>Correlate VMM job data with other events in OMS log analytics for faster troubleshooting of failures. You can easily identify the possible causes of sudden failures on a VMM machine by correlating the VMM job logs with information from solutions like Change Tracking and Hyper-V management solutions.</li><li>Use Azure Automation runbooks with VMM job data to help enable automatic remediation for known or frequent issues.</li></ul>","shortDescription":"Virtual Machine Manager Analytics is an open-source solution that can be included in your OMS workspace. This solution brings in the job data of your on-premises VMM instances to the log analytics in OMS. VMM admins can then use this versatile platform to construct queries for searching the relevant data and creating data visualizations.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":7,"sellingCount":14,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution","keywords":"with, jobs, data, failures, Distribution, instances, Manager, from","description":"The Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution comes with some built-in reports with preconfigured data visualizations so you can easily get started with frequently used queries, such as:\r\n\r\n<ul><li>Distribution of failed jobs across VMM instances to easily sc","og:title":"Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution","og:description":"The Virtual Machine Manager Analytics solution comes with some built-in reports with preconfigured data visualizations so you can easily get started with frequently used queries, such as:\r\n\r\n<ul><li>Distribution of failed jobs across VMM instances to easily sc","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/microsoft.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1045,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":2,"title":"Virtual machine and cloud system software","alias":"virtual-machine-and-cloud-system-software","description":" A virtual machine (VM) is a software-based computer that exists within another computer’s operating system, often used for the purposes of testing, backing up data, or running SaaS applications. To fully grasp how VMs work, it’s important to first understand how computer software and hardware are typically integrated by an operating system.\r\n&quot;The cloud&quot; refers to servers that are accessed over the Internet, and the software and databases that run on those servers. Cloud servers are located in data centers all over the world. By using cloud computing, users and companies don't have to manage physical servers themselves or run software applications on their own machines.\r\nThe cloud enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage take place on servers in a data center, instead of locally on the user device. This is why a user can log into their Instagram account on a new phone after their old phone breaks and still find their old account in place, with all their photos, videos, and conversation history. It works the same way with cloud email providers like Gmail or Microsoft Office 365, and with cloud storage providers like Dropbox or Google Drive.\r\nFor businesses, switching to cloud computing removes some IT costs and overhead: for instance, they no longer need to update and maintain their own servers, as the cloud vendor they are using will do that. This especially makes an impact on small businesses that may not have been able to afford their own internal infrastructure but can outsource their infrastructure needs affordably via the cloud. The cloud can also make it easier for companies to operate internationally because employees and customers can access the same files and applications from any location.\r\nSeveral cloud providers offer virtual machines to their customers. These virtual machines typically live on powerful servers that can act as a host to multiple VMs and can be used for a variety of reasons that wouldn’t be practical with a locally-hosted VM. These include:\r\n<ul><li>Running SaaS applications - Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS for short, is a cloud-based method of providing software to users. SaaS users subscribe to an application rather than purchasing it once and installing it. These applications are generally served to the user over the Internet. Often, it is virtual machines in the cloud that are doing the computation for SaaS applications as well as delivering them to users. If the cloud provider has a geographically distributed network edge, then the application will run closer to the user, resulting in faster performance.</li><li>Backing up data - Cloud-based VM services are very popular for backing up data because the data can be accessed from anywhere. Plus, cloud VMs provide better redundancy, require less maintenance, and generally scale better than physical data centers. (For example, it’s generally fairly easy to buy an extra gigabyte of storage space from a cloud VM provider, but much more difficult to build a new local data server for that extra gigabyte of data.)</li><li>Hosting services like email and access management - Hosting these services on cloud VMs is generally faster and more cost-effective, and helps minimize maintenance and offload security concerns as well.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"What is an operating system?\r\nTraditional computers are built out of physical hardware, including hard disk drives, processor chips, RAM, etc. In order to utilize this hardware, computers rely on a type of software known as an operating system (OS). Some common examples of OSes are Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Android.\r\nThe OS is what manages the computer’s hardware in ways that are useful to the user. For example, if the user wants to access the Internet, the OS directs the network interface card to make the connection. If the user wants to download a file, the OS will partition space on the hard drive for that file. The OS also runs and manages other pieces of software. For example, it can run a web browser and provide the browser with enough random access memory (RAM) to operate smoothly. Typically, operating systems exist within a physical computer at a one-to-one ratio; for each machine, there is a single OS managing its physical resources.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can you have two or more operating systems on one computer?</span>\r\nSome users want to be able to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on one computer, either for testing or one of the other reasons listed in the section below. This can be achieved through a process called virtualization. In virtualization, a piece of software behaves as if it were an independent computer. This piece of software is called a virtual machine, also known as a ‘guest’ computer. (The computer on which the VM is running is called the ‘host’.) The guest has an OS as well as its own virtual hardware.\r\n‘Virtual hardware’ may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but it works by mapping to real hardware on the host computer. For example, the VM’s ‘hard drive’ is really just a file on the host computer’s hard drive. When the VM wants to save a new file, it actually has to communicate with the host OS, which will write this file to the host hard drive. Because virtual hardware must perform this added step of negotiating with the host to access hardware resources, virtual machines can’t run quite as fast as their host computers.\r\nWith virtualization, one computer can run two or more operating systems. The number of VMs that can run on one host is limited only by the host’s available resources. The user can run the OS of a VM in a window like any other program, or they can run it in fullscreen so that it looks and feels like a genuine host OS.\r\n <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are virtual machines used for?</span>\r\nSome of the most popular reasons people run virtual machines include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Testing</span> - Oftentimes software developers want to be able to test their applications in different environments. They can use virtual machines to run their applications in various OSes on one computer. This is simpler and more cost-effective than having to test on several different physical machines.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running software designed for other OSes</span> - Although certain software applications are only available for a single platform, a VM can run software designed for a different OS. For example, a Mac user who wants to run software designed for Windows can run a Windows VM on their Mac host.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running outdated software</span> - Some pieces of older software can’t be run in modern OSes. Users who want to run these applications can run an old OS on a virtual machine.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Virtual_machine_and_cloud_system_software.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":540,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SAP_CRM.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"SAP CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":30,"alias":"sap-crm","companyTitle":"SAP","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":167,"companyAlias":"sap","description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Go beyond CRM software</span></p>\r\n<p>Transform your front office and deliver real-time customer engagement</p>\r\n<p>Want to reach a new level of customer engagement? Deliver seamless and personalized customer experiences across all channels &ndash; with SAP Hybris solutions powered by SAP HANA. These solutions go beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM) software. They use in-memory and Big Data technologies to drive digital transformation and smoothly integrate marketing, commerce, sales, and customer service.</p>\r\n<p>Sales</p>\r\n<p>Get the deep customer and social insights you need to make an impact in every deal &ndash; anytime, anywhere &ndash; with our advanced sales CRM software. Engage customers, improve sales performance, streamline the order-to-cash process, and more.</p>\r\n<p>Marketing</p>\r\n<p>Make every customer feel like your only customer. Our next-gen CRM marketing suite gives you real-time insight into customers&rsquo; needs and wants &ndash; so you can deliver contextual, individualized customer experiences across all channels.</p>\r\n<p>Commerce</p>\r\n<p>Provide a personalized digital shopping experience with our solutions for mobile, social, and e-commerce. Take advantage of real-time inventory management, data-driven customization, cost-effective order fulfillment, and more.</p>\r\n<p>Service</p>\r\n<p>Give your omni-channel service reps the customer visibility and real-time problem-solving tools they need to win loyalty and cut costs. Empower field service technicians with mobile access to information, service requests, and analytics.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deployment options</span></p>\r\n<p>Choose the right CRM implementation approach for your business. SAP offers cloud and on-premise CRM &ndash; and both let you extend functionality to your mobile devices.</p>\r\n<p>Cloud CRM Deployment</p>\r\n<p>Get up and running quickly &ndash; and take advantage of affordable, subscription-based pricing &ndash; with our cloud CRM portfolio, SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. The portfolio offers three solutions that can be licensed separately: SAP Hybris Cloud for Sales, SAP Hybris Cloud for Service, and SAP Hybris Cloud for Social Engagement. The portfolio also features SAP Digital CRM (for smaller sales teams).</p>\r\n<p>On-Premise CRM Deployment</p>\r\n<p>SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) offers secure, on-premise support for your sales, marketing, service, and interaction center activities. The modular structure of SAP CRM allows you to license and pay for only the functionality and number of users that you require at any given time.</p>\r\n","shortDescription":"The SAP CRM application is an integrated CRM software manufactured by SAP SE that targets business software requirements of midsize and large organizations in all industries and sectors.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":0,"sellingCount":0,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"SAP CRM","keywords":"customer, your, Cloud, with, service, Hybris, sales, real-time","description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Go beyond CRM software</span></p>\r\n<p>Transform your front office and deliver real-time customer engagement</p>\r\n<p>Want to reach a new level of customer engagement? Deliver seamless and personalized customer experiences a","og:title":"SAP CRM","og:description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Go beyond CRM software</span></p>\r\n<p>Transform your front office and deliver real-time customer engagement</p>\r\n<p>Want to reach a new level of customer engagement? Deliver seamless and personalized customer experiences a","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SAP_CRM.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":540,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":3,"title":"CRM"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"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 &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. 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 &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\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.&nbsp; </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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1575,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Dynamics_365.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-365","companyTitle":"Microsoft","companyTypes":["vendor"],"companyId":163,"companyAlias":"microsoft","description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>Create personalized shopping experiences that unify digital, in-store, and back office operations.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Customer Service</span></p>\r\n<p>Exceed customer expectations across self and assisted support with empowered agents that deliver personalized experiences.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Field Service</span></p>\r\n<p>Serve customers better through proactive maintenance, predictive scheduling, and first-time fix.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation</span></p>\r\n<p>Deliver customer projects on-time, within budget, and become a trusted advisor.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations</span></p>\r\n<p>Modernize your business operations across finance, manufacturing, and supply chain to drive new growth.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Talent</span></p>\r\n<p>Attract the right people and seamlessly onboard, engage, and grow your talent.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Adobe Marketing Cloud</span></p>\r\n<p>Deliver personalized experiences throughout your marketing and sales engagements at scale with Dynamics 365 and Adobe.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Marketing</span></p>\r\n<p>Increase demand by automating tasks from multi-channel campaigns to events with an application built on the same platform as Dynamics 365 for Sales.</p>\r\n","shortDescription":"Microsoft Dynamics 365 is unified CRM and ERP capabilities — modern, intelligent cloud applications that help move your business forward.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":19,"sellingCount":0,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","keywords":"","description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","og:description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Microsoft_Dynamics_365.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1576,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[{"id":3,"title":"CRM"}],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"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 &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. 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 &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\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.&nbsp; </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"}],"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":""}}