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IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&amp;UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png","alias":"it-outsourcing"},"71":{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &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","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management"},"75":{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP&nbsp; planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning"},"601":{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png","alias":"custom-software-development"},"615":{"id":615,"title":"Web Development","description":" Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web-based internet applications (web apps), electronic businesses, and social network services. A more comprehensive list of tasks to which web development commonly refers, may include web engineering, web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development.\r\nAmong web professionals, &quot;web development&quot; usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building websites: writing markup and coding. Web development may use content management systems (CMS) to make content changes easier and available with basic technical skills.\r\nFor larger organizations and businesses, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people (web developers) and follow standard methods like Agile methodologies while developing websites. Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting developer, or secondary assignment to related job positions such as a graphic designer or information systems technician. Web development may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department. There are three kinds of web developer specialization: front-end developer, back-end developer, and full-stack developer. Front-end developers are responsible for behavior and visuals that run in the user browser, while back-end developers deal with the servers.\r\nSince the commercialization of the web, web development has been a growing industry. The growth of this industry is being driven by businesses wishing to use their website to advertise and sell products and services to customers.\r\nThere are many open source tools for web development such as BerkeleyDB, GlassFish, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack and Perl/Plack. This has kept the cost of learning web development to a minimum. Another contributing factor to the growth of the industry has been the rise of easy-to-use WYSIWYG web-development software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, BlueGriffon and Microsoft Visual Studio. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) or of programming languages is still required to use such software, but the basics can be learned and implemented quickly.\r\nAn ever-growing set of tools and technologies have helped developers build more dynamic and interactive websites. Further, web developers now help to deliver applications as web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk-based computer. This has allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Examples can be seen with the rise of cloud services such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox and Google Drive. These web services allow users to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.\r\nExamples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce led by web development include e-commerce. Online auction sites such as eBay have changed the way consumers find and purchase goods and services. Online retailers such as Amazon.com and Buy.com (among many others) have transformed the shopping and bargain-hunting experience for many consumers. Another example of transformative communication led by web development is the blog. Web applications such as WordPress and Movable Type have created blog-environments for individual websites. The increased usage of open-source content management systems and enterprise content management systems has extended web development's impact at online interaction and communication.\r\nWeb development has also impacted personal networking and marketing. Websites are no longer simply tools for work or for commerce, but serve more broadly for communication and social networking. Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter provide users with a platform to communicate and organizations with a more personal and interactive way to engage the public.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the Priority of a Web Developer?</span>\r\nTo answer the question “What is a web developer?”, we must first look at what a web developer does and how they do it.\r\nA web developer or programmer is someone who takes a web design – which has been created by either a client or a design team – and turns it into a website. They do this by writing lines and lines of complicated code, using a variety of languages. Web developers have quite a difficult job, because they essentially have to take a language we understand, such as English, and translate it into a language that a computer understands, such as Python or HTML.\r\nAs you can imagine, this can take a lot of time and effort and requires an intricate understanding of various programming languages and how they are used. Different types of developers specialize in different areas, which means that large web projects are usually a collaboration between several different developers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What Types Of Web Developers Are There?</span>\r\nUnfortunately, the question “What does a web developer do?” doesn’t have one simple answer. As noted above, there are some different types of web developers, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the creation of a website.\r\nTo understand what is a web developer it is crucial to know that the three main types of developers are front-end, back-end, and full-stack. Front-end developers are responsible for the parts of a website that people see and interact with, back-end developers are responsible for the behind the scenes code that controls how a website loads and runs, and full-stack developers do a bit of everything.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Front-End Developer</span>\r\nA front-end developer is someone who takes a client or design team’s website design and writes the code needed to implement it on the web. A decent front-end web developer will be fluent in at least three programming languages – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.\r\nHTML allows them to add content to a website while splitting it into headings, paragraphs, and tables. CSS lets a decent developer style the content and change things like colors, sizes, and borders. JavaScript allows the inclusion of interactive elements, such as push buttons. We will go into more detail about these languages later.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">So, what do web developers do when they work on the front end of a website?</span></span>\r\n<ul><li>What is a web developer responsible for is that they make sure that all of the content that is needed for the website is clear, visible, and found in the right place. In some cases front-end developers may also have content writing skills, allowing them to create the content for the website as they go.</li><li>They make sure that the right colors are in the right places, especially concerning text colors, background colors, and headers. Some of the best front-end developers are also very good designers, allowing them to tweak things as they go.</li><li>They make sure that all outbound links are correctly formatted, that all buttons work properly, and that the website is responsive and attractive. Mobile design is usually a big part of the job, while it is also important to make sure that a website will display correctly on all web browsers.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Back-End Developer</span>\r\nWhile it may seem like front-end developers have a difficult job making sure that a website looks great, works well, and contains the correct content, back-end developers have it much worse. While front-end developers are responsible for client-side programming, back-end developers have to deal with the server-side.\r\nThis means that they have to create the code and programs which power the website’s server, databases, and any applications that it contains. The most important thing as a back-end developer is the ability to be able to create a clean, efficient code that does what you want it to in the quickest way possible. Since website speed is a major consideration when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), it is a large factor when developing the back-end.\r\nTo fully explain what is a web developer it is essential to know that back-end developers use a wide range of different server-side languages to build complicated programs. Some of the most popular languages used include PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby. JavaScript is also becoming increasingly widespread as a back-end development language, while SQL is commonly used to manage and analyze data in website databases.\r\nSince different websites have different needs, a back-end developer must be flexible, able to create different programs, and they absolutely must have a clear, in-depth understanding of the languages that they use. This is very important to make sure that they can come up with the most efficient method of creating the required program while making sure that it is secure, scalable, and easy to maintain.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Full-Stack Developer</span>\r\nIf you are looking for a quick, simple answer to the question “What is a web developer?”, then a full-stack developer is probably the closest thing that you’re going to get. Full-stack developers understand both front and back-end strategies and processes, which means that they are perfectly positioned to oversee the entire process.\r\nIn the case of small websites that don’t have a huge development budget, a full-stack developer will often be employed to build the entire website. In this case, it is extremely important for them to have a complete, in-depth understanding of both front and back-end development and how they work.\r\nLearning full-stack development techniques has a huge range of benefits, including:\r\n<ul><li>You will end up with the knowledge to be able to create an entire website on your own. This makes you a lot more employable, increasing your job security in the future.</li><li>As a full-stack developer, you will understand the connections between the front and back-ends of a website, allowing you do build efficient and effective programs for all parts of the website.</li><li>Full-stack developers are often employed to oversee large projects for big web development companies. Positions like this are likely to be paid more than standard web development positions, making them more attractive to developers. Full-stack defines what is a web developer.</li></ul>\r\nAlthough most developers start with either front or back-end specializations, there are a lot of reasons why you should consider branching out and learning both. It will make you a lot more employable, will give you a greater understanding of the whole concept of what is web development, and will make it easier for you to create entire websites on your own.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Web_Development.png","alias":"web-development"},"629":{"id":629,"title":"PHP Development","description":"PHP is a general-purpose programming language originally designed for web development. It was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994; the PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.\r\nPHP code may be executed with a command line interface (CLI), embedded into HTML code, or used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks. PHP code is usually processed by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module in a web server or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. The web server outputs the results of the interpreted and executed PHP code, which may be any type of data, such as generated HTML code or binary image data. PHP can be used for many programming tasks outside of the web context, such as standalone graphical applications and robotic drone control.\r\nThe standard PHP interpreter, powered by the Zend Engine, is free software released under the PHP License. PHP has been widely ported and can be deployed on most web servers on almost every operating system and platform, free of charge.\r\nThe PHP language evolved without a written formal specification or standard until 2014, with the original implementation acting as the de facto standard which other implementations aimed to follow. Since 2014, work has gone on to create a formal PHP specification.\r\nAs of September 2019, over 60% of sites on the web using PHP are still on discontinued/&quot;EOLed&quot; version 5.6 or older; versions prior to 7.2 are no longer officially supported by The PHP Development Team, but security support is provided by third parties, such as Debian.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is PHP?</span>\r\nPHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is an open-source server-side scripting language that is widely used for web development. It supports many databases like MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, generic ODBC, etc.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is PEAR in PHP?</span>\r\nPEAR is a framework and repository for reusable PHP components. PEAR stands for PHP Extension and Application Repository. It contains all types of PHP code snippets and libraries. It also provides a command-line interface to install &quot;packages&quot; automatically.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Who is known as the father of PHP?</span>\r\nRasmus Lerdorf.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What was the old name of PHP?</span>\r\nThe old name of PHP was Personal Home Page.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Explain the difference b/w static and dynamic websites?</span>\r\nIn static websites, content can't be changed after running the script. You can't change anything on the site. It is predefined.\r\nIn dynamic websites, the content of a script can be changed at the run time. Its content is regenerated every time a user visits or reload. Google, yahoo and every search engine is an example of a dynamic website.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the name of the scripting engine in PHP?</span>\r\nThe scripting engine that powers PHP is called Zend Engine 2.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_PHP_Development.png","alias":"php-development"},"637":{"id":637,"title":"eCommerce development","description":" Electronic commerce is an online transaction of buying and selling products through World Wide Web-based websites and mobile applications. The examples of eCommerce business include supply chain, funds transfer, banking and electronic data interchange (EDI) and others. The electronic transactions are carried out through many eCommerce software platforms and eCommerce applications that are integrated with online websites with the help of eCommerce developers. The eCommerce applications are linked with the payment gateways for a smooth transfer of credit from one entity to another one.\r\nAn eCommerce developer is a very important role in eCommerce app development and web services to realize the power of online sales and marketing in all domains of businesses. The eCommerce developers are normally the web developers with additional exposure to the eCommerce tools and platforms commonly used in online businesses. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby on Rail and related technologies are the fundamental components of eCommerce developer skills. In addition to those skills, the knowledge of eCommerce software platforms and API integration is very important for a good eCommerce developer resume.\r\nA good eCommerce website should be highly professional looking with great features and intuitive interface for the checkout process. This is only possible with the help of professional eCommerce developers. You need to evaluate a lot of things before you decide to hire eCommerce developers such as the backend technologies of your website, type of eCommerce, a domain of business, type of database and many others. Once you have decided about all these things, you need to match the eCommerce web developer resume, which is under consideration, with those factors to find a good eCommerce developer.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is it important for business owners to create an eСommerce site?</span>\r\nToday, people have very less time to purchase items, by going to physical stores. They prefer to browse their mobile devices or PC and shop online. Having an e-commerce site for your business will help you to capture this market base and keep your customers informed about all your latest products and services.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How can I choose the best platform for my eСommerce business website?</span>\r\nBefore getting started with your eСommerce web development, consider the few fundamentals that can help to choose the best platform. Always consider the items that you are selling. Some eСommerce platforms can handle inventory tracking and multiple product options while some others will not. Consider the design options, payment gateways, the security of the site, integration with other tools, features and pricing before finalizing on the platform.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How should I promote my eСommerce site?</span>\r\nThere are various ways to do this and the first thing to do is to promote the site to all the customers. This will help to increase your customer base. Your website address should be present in every advertisement that your company invests in. Register with the search engines and optimize your website as this will affect the traffic of your site.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the important things that can turn browsers into buyers?</span>\r\nCreate your site so that it is much more oriented towards sales rather than marketing. Let your visitors see your products immediately instead of hiding them behind lots of marketing copy. Make a page that reads the terms and conditions as it will offer a professional look. Provide your contact details and explain your return policies, security, encryption methods, and payment options.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How to create an impressive website?</span>\r\nThe beauty of a site lies in the way it operates and how user-friendly it is.&nbsp; Ensure that your site is fast, easy to use, professional and attractive. Also, make sure that you are able to fulfill the orders very promptly without any delay. In case you are unable to offer the service, make sure that your customer is informed about it via email.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the security risks that are involved with eСommerce sites?</span>\r\neCommerce website owners should always keep in mind the three dimensions of security - confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Business owners should develop a good strategy that can help to make the site and transactions secured. To avoid any hackers gain access to important confidential data, include encryption methods for any data transactions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Is there any limit on the size of my product or customer database?</span>\r\nNo, as such there are no limits on the size. The biggest benefit of having an online store is that you can add unlimited products and catalogs and at the same time you can grow your customer base as you require.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_eCommerce_development.png","alias":"ecommerce-development"},"725":{"id":725,"title":"IT Audit","description":"An information technology audit, or information systems audit, is an examination of the management controls within an Information technology (IT) infrastructure. The evaluation of obtained evidence determines if the information systems are safeguarding assets, maintaining data integrity, and operating effectively to achieve the organization's goals or objectives. These reviews may be performed in conjunction with a financial statement audit, internal audit, or other form of attestation engagement.\r\nIT audits are also known as automated data processing audits (ADP audits) and computer audits. They were formerly called electronic data processing audits (EDP audits).\r\nAn IT audit is different from a financial statement audit. While a financial audit's purpose is to evaluate whether the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, an entity's financial position, results of operations, and cash flows in conformity to standard accounting practices, the purposes of an IT audit is to evaluate the system's internal control design and effectiveness. This includes, but is not limited to, efficiency and security protocols, development processes, and IT governance or oversight. Installing controls are necessary but not sufficient to provide adequate security. People responsible for security must consider if the controls are installed as intended, if they are effective, or if any breach in security has occurred and if so, what actions can be done to prevent future breaches. These inquiries must be answered by independent and unbiased observers. These observers are performing the task of information systems auditing. In an Information Systems (IS) environment, an audit is an examination of information systems, their inputs, outputs, and processing.\r\nThe primary functions of an IT audit are to evaluate the systems that are in place to guard an organization's information. Specifically, information technology audits are used to evaluate the organization's ability to protect its information assets and to properly dispense information to authorized parties. The IT audit aims to evaluate the following:\r\nWill the organization's computer systems be available for the business at all times when required? (known as availability) Will the information in the systems be disclosed only to authorized users? (known as security and confidentiality) Will the information provided by the system always be accurate, reliable, and timely? (measures the integrity) In this way, the audit hopes to assess the risk to the company's valuable asset (its information) and establish methods of minimizing those risks. ","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Is an IT Audit?</span>\r\nIn the typical software audit, your system administrators will be asked to show that software is not illegally loaded onto machines it shouldn’t be on, that the number of licenses matches up with the number of users or, if you purchased a bulk license, that you don’t exceed the bounds of that license. One thing you definitely don’t want to happen is for an auditor to find that an employee has brought a home version of a software package and installed it on his or her work computer.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Do Auditors Want?</span>\r\nIn short, software auditors want to know that companies are following the rules with regard to software licenses. How much slack they’ll give you if they find a minor violation depends on several factors. If you can show your company makes a good-faith effort to stay on top of all software license requirements, it could act in your favor.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Should We Do to Prepare for an IT Audit?</span>\r\nIf you have a strong IT asset management program in place, preparation for an audit is far less stressful. When you can easily create reports showing the number of copies installed, the number of licenses, license expiration dates, and hardware where the software is installed, you can create those reports in advance and look for potential problems. If you notice discrepancies, you can take steps to correct them before the auditors arrive.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Can We Do a Self-Audit Beforehand?</span>\r\nPerforming periodic self-audits is not just busywork, but could potentially save your company a lot of money and embarrassment. The three main steps in a self-audit are: reading the vendor’s contract, gathering purchase information, and getting an accurate count of how many licenses are deployed:\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Read the Contract</span> – Understand license types and models, including maintenance requirements. Learn if there are limitations on where the software can or cannot be used. For example, are you allowed to use it on laptops that travel outside the US?</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Gather Purchase Information</span> – Know where to get your hands on purchase data. If you purchased from a reseller, make sure that the reseller passed on your purchase information to the vendor.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Get an Accurate License Deployment Count</span> – If your company has a solid IT asset management program, this shouldn’t be a challenge. Otherwise, you’ll need to manually locate receipts and serial numbers and match them up to the machines where the software is deployed.</li></ul>\r\nThe self-audit is much easier to do when you don’t have an actual audit staring you in the face.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_Audit.png","alias":"it-audit"},"729":{"id":729,"title":"IT Project Deployment Services","description":" Companies invest in projects for the implementation of IT systems that are consistent with the organization's values, with the goal of realizing a business vision, stable support for operational activities, and gaining competitive advantages. In this regard, technological projects are becoming increasingly large-scale, affecting more departments of the organization, and pose a risk to the company if the operation of information systems is disrupted.\r\nThe introduction of new IT requires the project team to carry out at least two principal stages:\r\n<ul><li>pre-project analysis of the enterprise, when, with the help of specialists in the proposed IP and specialists of the enterprise, compliance and discrepancies between the system and its future use is revealed. As a result of the survey, ways to eliminate inconsistencies are determined based on the initial assessment of the required resources and time. The survey is conducted using questions and answers, to some extent formalized, and special software tools that allow you to describe the processes of the system and the enterprise and compare them visually. No changes take place at the enterprise unless individual employees are distracted from their direct duties, which is both a virtue and a disadvantage of this approach;</li><li>trial implementation carried out on the most characteristic site of work. Based on this test work, a general assessment of future implementation is determined and a fundamental decision is made on the use of IP.</li></ul>\r\nThere is a lot of confusion and substitution of the concept of “project team” with the idea of ​​it as a “group”, “pack”, “family”, etc. There are several understandings that there is a modern “project team/group” and “integrated project team”, however, the fundamental characteristic of the team is that it does not exist outside the project. A team with all its human strengths and weaknesses is a necessary and inseparable element of any project. It is a developing element of the technology of the project and affects the project itself.\r\nThe project itself is not “done” - it is made by people, and where people are affected by the influence of biology, instincts, gender parameters, “conscious” and “unconscious”, etc. If people are in the organizational “system” (family, flock, group, team, etc.), systemic effects arise that should be foreseen in the formation of a set of people due to the competent selection, placement and development of the team in the right direction. This is not just an ordinary organizational question, but a question of the depth of understanding of the essence of the project, its management and the skill of the leader.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is an IT project?</span>\r\nAn IT project is a project that includes work related to information technology.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is information technology?</span>\r\nInformation technology is a technology aimed at the creation, development and support of information systems.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the main ideas underlying the project team model of an IT project?</span>\r\n<ul><li>interdependent and interrelated roles in a small group;</li><li>determination of the role, special mission and area of ​​responsibility for each member of the project team;</li><li>distributed project management and responsibility;</li><li>each is focused on the success of the project and is set to work throughout the project cycle;</li><li>communication between project team members is a key success factor;</li><li>users and training staff are included in the project team;</li><li>parallel engineering - parallel work of all team members on a project.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_Project_Deployment_Services.png","alias":"it-project-deployment-services"},"733":{"id":733,"title":"Technical Support","description":" Technical support (often shortened to tech support) refers to services that entities provide to users of technology products or services. In general, technical support provide help regarding specific problems with a product or service, rather than providing training, provision or customization of product, or other support services. Most companies offer technical support for the services or products they sell, either included in the cost or for an additional fee. Technical support may be delivered over by phone, e-mail, live support software on a website, or other tool where users can log an incident. Larger organizations frequently have internal technical support available to their staff for computer-related problems. The Internet can also be a good source for freely available tech support, where experienced users help users find solutions to their problems. In addition, some fee-based service companies charge for premium technical support services.\r\nTechnical support may be delivered by different technologies depending on the situation. For example, direct questions can be addressed using telephone calls, SMS, Online chat, Support Forums, E-mail or Fax; basic software problems can be addressed over the telephone or, increasingly, by using remote access repair services; while more complicated problems with hardware may need to be dealt with in person.\r\nTechnical support is a range of services providing assistance with technology such as televisions, computers, and software, typically aiming to help the user with a specific problem.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the categories of technical support?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Call in</span></span>\r\nThis type of technical support has been very common in the services industry.[citation needed] It is also known as &quot;Time and Materials&quot; (T&amp;M) IT support.[citation needed] The customer pays for the materials (hard drive, memory, computer, digital devices, etc.) and also pays the technician based on the pre-negotiated rate when a problem occurs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Block hours</span></span>\r\nBlock hours allow the client to purchase a number of hours upfront at an agreed price. While it is commonly used to offer a reduced hourly rate, it can also simply be a standard non-reduced rate, or represent a minimum fee charged to a client before providing service. The premise behind this type of support is that the customer has purchased a fixed number of hours to use either per month or year. This allows them the flexibility to use the hours as they please without doing the paperwork and the hassle of paying multiple bills.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Managed services</span></span>\r\nManaged services means a company will receive a list of well-defined services on an ongoing basis, with well-defined &quot;response and resolution times&quot; for a fixed rate or a flat fee. This can include things like 24/7 monitoring of servers, 24/7 help desk support for daily computer issues, and on-site visits by a technician when issues cannot be resolved remotely.[citation needed] Some companies also offer additional services like project management, backup and disaster recovery, and vendor management in the monthly price. The companies that offer this type of tech support are known as managed services providers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Crowdsourced technical support</span></span>\r\nMany companies and organizations provide discussion boards for users of their products to interact; such forums allow companies to reduce their support costs without losing the benefit of customer feedback.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is outsourcing technical support?</span>\r\nWith the increasing use of technology in modern times, there is a growing requirement to provide technical support. Many organizations locate their technical support departments or call centers in countries or regions with lower costs. Dell was amongst the first companies to outsource their technical support and customer service departments to India in 2001. There has also been a growth in companies specializing in providing technical support to other organizations. These are often referred to as MSPs (Managed Service Providers).\r\nFor businesses needing to provide technical support, outsourcing allows them to maintain a high availability of service. Such need may result from peaks in call volumes during the day, periods of high activity due to introduction of new products or maintenance service packs, or the requirement to provide customers with a high level of service at a low cost to the business. For businesses needing technical support assets, outsourcing enables their core employees to focus more on their work in order to maintain productivity. It also enables them to utilize specialized personnel whose technical knowledge base and experience may exceed the scope of the business, thus providing a higher level of technical support to their employees.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Technical_Support.png","alias":"technical-support"},"735":{"id":735,"title":"Installation and configuration","description":" Installation or setup is the act of making the system or program ready for execution. Because the process varies for each program and each computer, programs (including operating systems) often come with an installer, a specialized program responsible for doing whatever is needed for their installation. The configuration is an arrangement of functional units according to their nature, number, and chief characteristics. Often, configuration pertains to the choice of hardware, software, firmware, settings, and documentation. The configuration affects system function and performance.\r\nSome computer programs can be executed by simply copying them into a folder stored on a computer and executing them. Other programs are supplied in a form unsuitable for immediate execution and therefore need an installation procedure. Once installed, the program can be executed again and again, without the need to reinstall before each execution.\r\nCommon operations performed during software installations include:\r\n<ul><li>Making sure that necessary system requirements are met</li><li>Checking for existing versions of the software</li><li>Creating or updating program files and folders</li><li>Adding configuration data such as configuration files, Windows registry entries or environment variables</li><li>Making the software accessible to the user, for instance by creating links, shortcuts or bookmarks</li><li>Configuring components that run automatically, such as daemons or Windows services</li><li>Performing product activation</li><li>Updating the software versions</li></ul>\r\nThese operations may require some charges or be free of charge. In case of payment, installation costs means the costs connected and relevant to or incurred as a result of installing the drivers or the equipment in the customers' premises. ","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What does &quot;Installation&quot; mean?</span>\r\nInstallation is the process of making hardware and/or software ready for use. Obviously, different systems require different types of installations. While certain installations are simple and straightforward and can be performed by non-professionals, others are more complex and time-consuming and may require the involvement of specialists.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What does the &quot;Configuration&quot; mean?</span>\r\nThe way a system is set up, or the assortment of components that make up the system. Configuration can refer to either hardware or software, or the combination of both. For instance, a typical configuration for a PC consists of 32MB (megabytes) main memory, a floppy drive, a hard disk, a modem, a CD-ROM drive, a VGA monitor, and the Windows operating system.\r\nMany software products require that the computer have a certain minimum configuration. For example, the software might require a graphics display monitor and a video adapter, a particular microprocessor, and a minimum amount of main memory.\r\nWhen you install a new device or program, you sometimes need to configure it, which means to set various switches and jumpers (for hardware) and to define values of parameters (for software). For example, the device or program may need to know what type of video adapter you have and what type of printer is connected to the computer. Thanks to new technologies, such as plug-and-play, much of this configuration is performed automatically.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Installation_and_configuration.png","alias":"installation-and-configuration"},"739":{"id":739,"title":"Deployment and Integration Services","description":" The number of various solutions implemented by customers today is quite large. Often, the subsystems of the seemingly unified IT landscape are either weakly connected with each other, or the interaction between them is established in the mode of transferring files and data by mail or “from hand to hand”.\r\nWestern IT vendors, following a certain trend, offer the customer complete and unified solutions. Such blocks of subsystems solve a specific task and form separate IT centers, which also require the mutual integration of infrastructures. This, oddly enough, is even more difficult, as a complete solution does not allow to penetrate deeply and get access to the required information or control subsystems.\r\nNevertheless, the integration and interconnection of information flows can significantly simplify business processes and lead to an increase in the efficiency of interaction both inside and outside the company (with customers and partners).\r\nThe integration task itself is important for business, as it provides a qualitatively new level of services. This is especially important for companies where IT is the immediate tool for achieving business goals. But it is equally important to make integration optimal in the light of minimizing not only the cost of purchasing equipment and software but also preserving previous IT investments.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The main types of implementation and integration services offered by companies:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Designing IT architecture for integration solutions in the field of analytics, automation and monitoring of business processes;</li><li>Development and integration of network infrastructure subsystems, including scalable telecommunications equipment, server equipment and workstations;</li><li>Defining a single platform and developing a solution for integrating enterprise applications, data and business processes;</li><li>Implementation and maintenance of integrated integration solutions in the field of enterprise management (ERP-systems);</li><li>Implementation and maintenance of integration solutions in the field of accounting and analysis of sales and customer relations (CRM-system);</li><li>Implementation and maintenance of integration solutions in the field of accounting and financial analysis;</li><li>Impairment, testing and development of solutions for ensuring information security of a business.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Deployment_and_Integration_Services.png","alias":"deployment-and-integration-services"}},"branches":"Information Technology","companySizes":"101 to 500 Employees","companyUrl":"https://oroinc.com/","countryCodes":["DEU","FRA","UKR","USA"],"certifications":[],"isSeller":true,"isSupplier":true,"isVendor":true,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Oro","keywords":"","description":" Oro Inc., founded in 2012 by industry leaders in open-source business application development, is the company behind OroCRM, OroCommerce, and OroPlatform.\r\nOroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM mar","og:title":"Oro","og:description":" Oro Inc., founded in 2012 by industry leaders in open-source business application development, is the company behind OroCRM, OroCommerce, and OroPlatform.\r\nOroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM mar","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Oro_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","vendorPartners":[],"supplierPartners":[],"vendoredProducts":[{"id":2577,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Oro_logo.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Oro Software Development","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"oro-software-development","companyTitle":"Oro","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4765,"companyAlias":"oro","description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business requirements, helping them achieve a true 360-degree view of their customers. OroCRM, delivered as SaaS or on-premise, offers robust customer management tools, detailed analytics and a broad spectrum of third-party software integrations for all types of businesses, from retail conglomerates to marketing and customer service organizations.\r\nOroCommerce, a pioneering eCommerce platform made for B2B businesses, redefines the benchmarks for best-in-class customer experience. By providing a diverse range of B2B features and capabilities, such as personalization, localization, intelligent marketing tools, powerful reporting, and ground breaking segmentation, OroCommerce is the only true B2B eCommerce platform made for manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and brands.\r\nOroCRM has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the flexibility to tailor our product to their specific business requirements. This helps companies get a true 360-degree view of the customer. OroCRM offers robust customer management tools, detailed analytics and a broad spectrum of third party software integrations for all types of businesses, from retail conglomerates to marketing and customer service organizations.\r\nOroPlatform is an open-source rapid application development platform (RAD) built using PHP - the popular Symfony framework. OroPlatform gives developers and businesses a jump-start for building responsive web applications that solve specific business problems.","shortDescription":"Oro, Inc. was founded in 2012 by industry leaders in open-source business applications and is the software company behind OroCommerce, OroCRM and OroPlatform.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":6,"sellingCount":13,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Oro Software Development","keywords":"","description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business req","og:title":"Oro Software Development","og:description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business req","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Oro_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":2578,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":32,"title":"IT outsourcing","alias":"it-outsourcing","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT outsourcing</span> is the use of external service providers to effectively deliver IT-enabled business process, application service and infrastructure solutions for business outcomes.\r\nOutsourcing, which also includes utility services, software as a service and cloud-enabled outsourcing, helps clients to develop the right sourcing strategies and vision, select the right IT service providers, structure the best possible contracts, and govern deals for sustainable win-win relationships with external providers.\r\nOutsourcing can enable enterprises to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and take advantage of external expertise, assets and/or intellectual property. IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&amp;UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png"},{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","alias":"custom-software-development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"suppliedProducts":[{"id":2577,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Oro_logo.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Oro Software Development","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":0,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"oro-software-development","companyTitle":"Oro","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4765,"companyAlias":"oro","description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business requirements, helping them achieve a true 360-degree view of their customers. OroCRM, delivered as SaaS or on-premise, offers robust customer management tools, detailed analytics and a broad spectrum of third-party software integrations for all types of businesses, from retail conglomerates to marketing and customer service organizations.\r\nOroCommerce, a pioneering eCommerce platform made for B2B businesses, redefines the benchmarks for best-in-class customer experience. By providing a diverse range of B2B features and capabilities, such as personalization, localization, intelligent marketing tools, powerful reporting, and ground breaking segmentation, OroCommerce is the only true B2B eCommerce platform made for manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and brands.\r\nOroCRM has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the flexibility to tailor our product to their specific business requirements. This helps companies get a true 360-degree view of the customer. OroCRM offers robust customer management tools, detailed analytics and a broad spectrum of third party software integrations for all types of businesses, from retail conglomerates to marketing and customer service organizations.\r\nOroPlatform is an open-source rapid application development platform (RAD) built using PHP - the popular Symfony framework. OroPlatform gives developers and businesses a jump-start for building responsive web applications that solve specific business problems.","shortDescription":"Oro, Inc. was founded in 2012 by industry leaders in open-source business applications and is the software company behind OroCommerce, OroCRM and OroPlatform.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":6,"sellingCount":13,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Oro Software Development","keywords":"","description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business req","og:title":"Oro Software Development","og:description":"OroCRM, which was launched in 2014, has rapidly established itself as a disruptive force in the CRM market. The platform’s open-source nature gives multi-channel businesses the inherent flexibility they need to tailor the product to their specific business req","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Oro_logo.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":2578,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":32,"title":"IT outsourcing","alias":"it-outsourcing","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">IT outsourcing</span> is the use of external service providers to effectively deliver IT-enabled business process, application service and infrastructure solutions for business outcomes.\r\nOutsourcing, which also includes utility services, software as a service and cloud-enabled outsourcing, helps clients to develop the right sourcing strategies and vision, select the right IT service providers, structure the best possible contracts, and govern deals for sustainable win-win relationships with external providers.\r\nOutsourcing can enable enterprises to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and take advantage of external expertise, assets and/or intellectual property. IT outsourcing can be implemented both ways: outsides or within the country. \r\nIT outsourcing vendors can provide either a fully managed service, meaning they take full responsibility of all IT maintenance and support, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team when needed, which is known as co-sourced IT support. A company using IT outsourcing can choose to use one provider for all their IT functions or split the work among multiple providers. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specific IT services typically outsourced include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Application development</li><li>Web hosting</li><li>Application support</li><li>Database development</li><li>Telecommunications</li><li>Networking</li><li>Disaster recovery</li><li>Security</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reasons for Outsourcing</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Reduce Cost.</span> More often than not, outsourcing means saving money. This is often due to lower labor costs, cheaper infrastructure, or an advantageous tax system in the outsourcing location.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Access Skills That Are Unavailable Locally.</span> Resources that are scarce at home can sometimes be found in abundance elsewhere, meaning you can easily reach them through outsourcing.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Better Use Internal Resources</span>. By delegating some of your business processes to a third party, you’ll give your in-house employees the opportunity to focus on more meaningful tasks.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Accelerate Business Processes.</span> When you stop wasting time on mundane, time-consuming processes, you’ll be able to move forward with your core offering a lot faster.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">To Share Risks.</span> When you delegate a part of non-focus functionality by outsourcing it to a third-party vendor, you give away the responsibility and related risks.","materialsDescription":"<h3 class=\"align-center\">What are the Types of IT Outsourcing?</h3>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Project-Based Model.</span> The client hires a team to implement the part of work that is already planned and defined. The project manager from the outsourced team carries full responsibility for the quality and performance of the project.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dedicated Team Model.</span> The client hires a team that will create a project for them, and they will work only on that project. Unlike the project-based model, a dedicated team is more engaged in your project. In this model, an outsourced team becomes your technical and product advisor. So it can offer ideas and suggest alternative solutions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Outstaff Model.</span> It's a type of outsourcing in IT when you don't need a full-fledged development team and hire separate specialists. Sometimes the project requires finding a couple of additional professionals, and you're free to hire outstaff workers to cover that scope of work.</p>\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are IT Outsourcing examples?</span></h3>\r\nThe individual or company that becomes your outsourcing partner can be located anywhere in the world — one block away from your office or on another continent.\r\nA Bay Area-based startup partnering with an app development team in Utah and a call center in the Philippines, or a UK-based digital marketing agency hiring a Magento developer from Ukraine are both examples of outsourcing.\r\n<h3 class=\"align-center\">Why You Should Use IT Outsourcing</h3>\r\nNow that you know what IT outsourcing is, its models, and types, it's time to clarify why you need to outsource and whether you really need it. Let's go over a few situations that suggest when to opt for IT outsourcing.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You are a domain expert with idea</span></li></ul>\r\nIf you're an industry expert with the idea that solves a real problem, IT outsourcing is your choice. In this case, your main goal is to enter the market and test the solution fast. An outsourced team will help you validate the idea, build an MVP to check the hypothesis, and implement changes in your product according to market needs. It saves you money, time and lets you reach the goal.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You have an early-stage startup</span></li></ul>\r\nIt's a common case that young startups spend money faster than they get a solid team and a ready-to-market product. The Failory found that financial problems are the 3rd reason why startup fails. So it makes more sense to reduce costs by hiring an outsourced team of professionals while your business lives on investor's money. You may employ a full-cycle product development studio covering all the blind spots and bringing your product to life.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">You need a technical support</span></li></ul>\r\nEven if you already have a ready solution, but it demands some technical improvements – frameworks for backend components, new language, integrations with enterprise software, UX&amp;UI design – it makes more sense to find an experienced partner. There are many functions that IT outsourcing can cover, and again it saves you the time you'd otherwise spend on looking for qualified staff.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IT_outsourcing.png"},{"id":601,"title":"Custom Software Development","alias":"custom-software-development","description":" Custom software (also known as bespoke software or tailor-made software) is software that organization for some specific organization or another user. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.\r\nSince custom software is developed for a single customer it can accommodate that customer's particular preferences and expectations. Custom software may be developed in an iterative process, allowing all nuances and possible hidden risks to be taken into account, including issues which were not mentioned in the original requirement specifications (which are, as a rule, never perfect). In particular, the first phase in the software development process may involve many departments, materchode including marketing, engineering, research and development and general management.\r\nLarge companies commonly use custom software for critical functions, including content management, inventory management, customer management, human resource management, or otherwise to fill the gaps present in the existing software packages. Often such software is legacy software, developed before COTS or free software packages offering the required functionality became available.\r\nCustom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization can even add up to the expense of developing custom software. Cost is not the only consideration, however, as the decision to opt for custom software often includes the requirement for the purchaser to own the source code, to secure the possibility of future development or modifications to the installed system.\r\nAdditionally, COTS comes with upfront license costs which vary enormously but sometimes run into the millions (in terms of dollars). Furthermore, the big software houses that release COTS products revamp their product very frequently. Thus a particular customization may need to be upgraded for compatibility every two to four years. Given the cost of customization, such upgrades also turn out to be expensive, as a dedicated product release cycle will have to be earmarked for them.\r\nThe decision to build custom software or go for a COTS implementation would usually rest on one or more of the following factors:\r\n<ul><li>Finances - both cost and benefit: The upfront license cost for COTS products mean that a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the business case needs to be done. However it is widely known that large custom software projects cannot fix all three of scope, time/cost and quality constant, so either the cost or the benefits of a custom software project will be subject to some degree of uncertainty - even disregarding the uncertainty around the business benefits of a feature that is successfully implemented.</li><li>Supplier - In the case of COTS, is the supplier likely to remain in business long, and will there be adequate support and customization available? Alternatively, will there be a realistic possibility of getting support and customization from third parties? In the case of custom software, software development may be outsourced or done in-house. If it is outsourced, the question is: is the supplier reputable, and do they have a good track record?</li><li>Time to market: COTS products usually have a quicker time to market</li><li>Size of implementation: COTS comes with standardization of business processes and reporting. For a global or national organization, these can bring in gains in cost savings, efficiency and productivity, if the branch offices are all willing and able to use the same COTS without heavy customizations (which is not always a given).</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is custom software such a large investment?</span>\r\nBuilding a custom web application is a time-consuming endeavor. It takes time to learn the processes of your business, to gather requirements, to flesh out your needs, and to build the software. Put simply, time is money.\r\nWhile it’s a large investment, by investing in custom software, you’ll own the code instead of having a long-term licensing agreement with another software company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How could my business benefit from custom software?</span>\r\nA custom business software solution increases process efficiency through process automation. When business processes are properly automated, they minimize the waste in time and resources that the original processes contained.\r\nThink of it this way: with software that already exists, you have to modify your process to meet software capabilities. With custom software, you can build a system around the existing processes you have in place. You took a lot of time to develop those processes, so why should you revamp your business?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is IP and how important is it that I own it?</span>\r\nIP stands for Intellectual Property. When you deal with anything creative, you have to think about copyright and the intellectual property on that work and that includes the creation of software code.\r\nThis gets back to the question of buying vs. building. If there is an existing solution that can suit your needs just fine, then it makes sense to buy, but the software developer owns the code and you are basically licensing the software from there. However, if you need a specialized solution that is customized to your needs and decide to go the custom development route, then the question of who owns the code is an important one.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">I’m thinking about hiring someone offshore; what should I watch out for?</span>\r\nIn short, everything. Language barriers and lack of proximity lead to breakdowns in communication and quality. Do yourself a favor and stay local.\r\nOn a related note, if you’re thinking about hiring for the position internally, think about this: it takes around three people to complete a successful custom software project. If you hire someone internally, their salary might cost what it would take to build with us, and you get a whole team when you work with us. Plus, if your software developer decides to leave, they take their knowledge with them. If one of our team members leave, our whole team shares the knowledge so you’re not left in the dark.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">If things don’t go well, am I sunk?</span>\r\nWe make communication and transparency are top priorities so this doesn’t happen. Right out of the gate we work hard to make sure that not only the project is a good fit, but the relationship with the client is as well. Through each step of the process and the build, we keep you in the loop weekly so you know what to expect and what is happening, but a good development company should have places in their process/relationship where you can cleanly exit. Make sure you know what the process is for leaving and what those different ‘leaving’ options are.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Custom_Software_Development.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"partnershipProgramme":null}},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"implementations":{"implementationsByAlias":{},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"agreements":{"agreementById":{},"ids":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"comparison":{"loading":false,"error":false,"templatesById":{},"comparisonByTemplateId":{},"products":[],"selectedTemplateId":null},"presentation":{"type":null,"company":{},"products":[],"partners":[],"formData":{},"dataLoading":false,"dataError":false,"loading":false,"error":false},"catalogsGlobal":{"subMenuItemTitle":""}}