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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"},"52":{"id":52,"title":"SaaS - software as a service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Software as a service (SaaS)</span> is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It is sometimes referred to as &quot;on-demand software&quot;, and was formerly referred to as &quot;software plus services&quot; by Microsoft.\r\n SaaS services is typically accessed by users using a thin client, e.g. via a web browser. SaaS software solutions has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including office software, messaging software, payroll processing software, DBMS software, management software, CAD software, development software, gamification, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), Management Information Systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), talent acquisition, learning management systems, content management (CM), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of nearly all leading enterprise software companies.\r\nSaaS applications are also known as <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Web-based software</span>, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">on-demand software</span> and<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> hosted software</span>.\r\nThe term &quot;Software as a Service&quot; (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing, along with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS),managed software as a service (MSaaS), mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), and information technology management as a service (ITMaaS).\r\nBecause SaaS is based on cloud computing it saves organizations from installing and running applications on their own systems. That eliminates or at least reduces the associated costs of hardware purchases and maintenance and of software and support. The initial setup cost for a SaaS application is also generally lower than it for equivalent enterprise software purchased via a site license.\r\nSometimes, the use of SaaS cloud software can also reduce the long-term costs of software licensing, though that depends on the pricing model for the individual SaaS offering and the enterprise’s usage patterns. In fact, it’s possible for SaaS to cost more than traditional software licenses. This is an area IT organizations should explore carefully.<br />SaaS also provides enterprises the flexibility inherent with cloud services: they can subscribe to a SaaS offering as needed rather than having to buy software licenses and install the software on a variety of computers. The savings can be substantial in the case of applications that require new hardware purchases to support the software.<br /><br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Who uses SaaS?</span></h1>\r\nIndustry analyst Forrester Research notes that SaaS adoption has so far been concentrated mostly in human resource management (HRM), customer relationship management (CRM), collaboration software (e.g., email), and procurement solutions, but is poised to widen. Today it’s possible to have a data warehouse in the cloud that you can access with business intelligence software running as a service and connect to your cloud-based ERP like NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics.The dollar savings can run into the millions. And SaaS installations are often installed and working in a fraction of the time of on-premises deployments—some can be ready in hours. \r\nSales and marketing people are likely familiar with Salesforce.com, the leading SaaS CRM software, with millions of users across more than 100,000 customers. Sales is going SaaS too, with apps available to support sales in order management, compensation, quote production and configure, price, quoting, electronic signatures, contract management and more.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why SaaS? Benefits of software as a service</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lower cost of entry</span>. With SaaS solution, you pay for what you need, without having to buy hardware to host your new applications. Instead of provisioning internal resources to install the software, the vendor provides APIs and performs much of the work to get their software working for you. The time to a working solution can drop from months in the traditional model to weeks, days or hours with the SaaS model. In some businesses, IT wants nothing to do with installing and running a sales app. In the case of funding software and its implementation, this can be a make-or-break issue for the sales and marketing budget, so the lower cost really makes the difference.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduced time to benefit/rapid prototyping</span>. In the SaaS model, the software application is already installed and configured. Users can provision the server for the cloud and quickly have the application ready for use. This cuts the time to benefit and allows for rapid demonstrations and prototyping. With many SaaS companies offering free trials, this means a painless proof of concept and discovery phase to prove the benefit to the organization. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Pay as you go</span>. SaaS business software gives you the benefit of predictable costs both for the subscription and to some extent, the administration. Even as you scale, you can have a clear idea of what your costs will be. This allows for much more accurate budgeting, especially as compared to the costs of internal IT to manage upgrades and address issues for an owned instance.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The SaaS vendor is responsible for upgrades, uptime and security</span>. Under the SaaS model, since the software is hosted by the vendor, they take on the responsibility for maintaining the software and upgrading it, ensuring that it is reliable and meeting agreed-upon service level agreements, and keeping the application and its data secure.&nbsp; While some IT people worry about Software as a Service security outside of the enterprise walls, the likely truth is that the vendor has a much higher level of security than the enterprise itself would provide. Many will have redundant instances in very secure data centers in multiple geographies.&nbsp; Also, the data is being automatically backed up by the vendor, providing additional security and peace of mind. Because of the data center hosting, you’re getting the added benefit of at least some disaster recovery. Lastly, the vendor manages these issues as part of their core competencies—let them.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Integration and scalability.</span> Most SaaS apps are designed to support some amount of customization for the way you do business. SaaS vendors create APIs to allow connections not only to internal applications like ERPs or CRMs but also to other SaaS providers. One of the terrific aspects of integration is that orders written in the field can be automatically sent to the ERP. Now a salesperson in the field can check inventory through the catalog, write the order in front of the customer for approval, send it and receive confirmation, all in minutes. And as you scale with a SaaS vendor, there’s no need to invest in server capacity and software licenses. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Work anywhere</span>. Since the software is hosted in the cloud and accessible over the internet, users can access it via mobile devices wherever they are connected. This includes checking customer order histories prior to a sales call, as well as having access to real time data and real time order taking with the customer.</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SaaS__1_.png","alias":"saas-software-as-a-service"},"62":{"id":62,"title":"CAE - Computer-aided engineering","description":"Computer-aided engineering (CAE) is the broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering analysis tasks. It includes finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), multibody dynamics (MBD), durability and optimization.\r\nComputer Software used to analyse CAD geometry tools that have been developed to support these activities are considered CAE tools. CAE tools are being used, for example, to analyse the robustness and performance of components and assemblies. The term encompasses simulation, validation, and optimisation of products and manufacturing tools. In the future, CAE systems will be major providers of information to help support design teams in decision making. Computer-aided engineering is used in many fields such as automotive, aviation, space, and shipbuilding industries.\r\nIn regard to information networks, CAE systems are individually considered a single node on a total information network and each node may interact with other nodes on the network.\r\nCAE systems can provide support to businesses. This is achieved by the use of reference architectures and their ability to place information views on the business process. Reference architecture is the basis from which information model, especially product and manufacturing models.\r\nThe term CAE has also been used by some in the past to describe the use of computer technology within engineering in a broader sense than just engineering analysis. It was in this context that the term was coined by Jason Lemon, founder of SDRC in the late 1970s. This definition is however better known today by the terms CAx and PLM.\r\nCAE areas covered include:\r\n<ul><li>Stress analysis on components and assemblies using Finite Element Analysis (FEA);</li><li>Thermal and fluid flow analysis Computational fluid dynamics (CFD);</li><li>Multibody dynamics (MBD) and Kinematics;</li><li>Analysis tools for process simulation for operations such as casting, molding, and die press forming.</li><li>Optimization of the product or process.</li></ul>\r\nIn general, there are three phases in any computer-aided engineering task:\r\n<ul><li>Pre-processing – defining the model and environmental factors to be applied to it. (typically a finite element model, but facet, voxel and thin sheet methods are also used)</li><li>Analysis solver (usually performed on high powered computers)</li><li>Post-processing of results (using visualization tools)</li></ul>\r\nThis cycle is iterated, often many times, either manually or with the use of commercial optimization software.\r\nEven though CAE has built a strong reputation as a verification, troubleshooting and analysis tool, there is still a perception that sufficiently accurate results come rather late in the design cycle to really drive the design. This can be expected to become a problem as modern products become ever more complex. They include smart systems, which leads to an increased need for multi-physics analysis including controls, and contain new lightweight materials, to which engineers are often less familiar. CAE software companies and manufacturers are constantly looking for tools and process improvements to change this situation. On the software side, they are constantly looking to develop more powerful solvers, better use computer resources and include engineering knowledge in pre- and post-processing. On the process side, they try to achieve a better alignment between 3D CAE, 1D System Simulation and physical testing. This should increase modeling realism and calculation speed. On top of that, they try to better integrate CAE in the overall product lifecycle management. In this way, they can connect product design with product use, which is an absolute must for smart products. Such an enhanced engineering process is also referred to as predictive engineering analytics.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What does Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) mean?</span>\r\nComputer-aided engineering (CAE) is the process of solving engineering problems through the use of sophisticated, interactive graphical software.\r\nCAE is one of the leading softwares employed by manufacturing organizations to mass produce products in a factory-based environment. It allows for more computations than is possible by hand, especially when it is coupled with optimization systems.\r\nA CAE program is a mathematical model written in a programming language using a set of algortihms that define the manufacturing processes.\r\nThe process starts by first defining the analysis of the mathematical phenomenon. Next, the equations have to be defined. Finally, a model of physical configuration is created.This model may consist of 2-D or 3-D figures/shapes/curves/surfaces. This model is than applied to an actual production mechanism to design and develop the product.\r\nComputer aided engineering is complemented by computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CAE_-_Computer-aided_engineering.png","alias":"cae-computer-aided-engineering"},"66":{"id":66,"title":"BPM - Business Process Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business process management (BPM)</span> is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. BPM focuses on improving corporate performance by managing business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business processes is BPM. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable.\r\nAs an approach, BPM sees processes as important assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and developed to announce and deliver value-added products and services to clients or customers. This approach closely resembles other total quality management or continuous improvement process methodologies. ISO 9000 promotes the process approach to managing an organization.<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Successfully employing BPM usually involves the following:</span>\r\nOrganizing around outcomes not tasks to ensure the proper focus is maintained\r\nCorrecting and improving processes before (potentially) automating them; otherwise all you’ve done is make the mess run faster\r\nEstablishing processes and assigning ownership lest the work and improvements simply drift away – and they will, as human nature takes over and the momentum peters out\r\nStandardizing processes across the enterprise so they can be more readily understood and managed, errors reduced, and risks mitigated\r\nEnabling continuous change so the improvements can be extended and propagated over time\r\nImproving existing processes, rather than building radically new or “perfect” ones, because that can take so long as to erode or negate any gains achieved\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business Process Management Software (BPMS)</span> is a process automation tool. It helps you map out your everyday processes to identify and eliminate bottlenecks, control your company’s costs, make your day-to-day processes as efficient as possible, and ensure the effectiveness of the people involved in your processes. A business process management solution to a company’s needs begins with the alignment of business goals with an eye toward creating value through process change initiatives. This alignment leads to a thorough understanding and design of representative processes typically following an industry standard framework \r\nA BPM based foundation provides for complete lifecycle management of business processes, integration across technologies, and imbeds efficiency among people, processes, and technologies.\r\nCommercial business process management tools tend to center on the automation of business processes, essentially moving them from manual pen-and-paper endeavors to effortless automated transactions. BPM software products track how business information is used and then maps the relevant business process and ensure that transactions are done accordingly. This effectively shows where data and process bottlenecks occur and highlights various deficiencies in business processes, including areas where resources are wasted, allowing managers streamline and optimize those processes.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">There are three key types of BPMS:</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Efficiency Monitors:</span>Monitors every system of the enterprise for inefficiency in the processes by following it from start to finish. BPM program accurately pinpoints weakness and bottlenecks where customers might get frustrated and discontinue transactions and processes.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Workflow Software:</span> Uses detailed maps of an existing processes and tries to streamline them by optimizing certain steps. BPM workflow software cannot suggest improvements to the process, only optimize it, so this software is only as good as the process itself.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise Application Integration Tools:</span> A mixture of efficiency monitors, process and workflow management, EAI software is used to integrate legacy systems into new systems. This software can be used to map points for integrating old and new systems, optimizing their information-gathering characteristics and increasing the efficiency of system communications.<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">What Are the Types of Business Process Management Software?</h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\">There are <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">three basic kinds</span> of BPM frameworks:</p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Horizontal frameworks.</span>They deal with design and development of business processes. They are generally focused on technology and reuse.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Vertical BPM frameworks.</span>&nbsp; This focuses on specific sets of coordinated tasks, using pre-built templates which can be easily deployed and configured.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Full-service BPM suites.</span>&nbsp; They have five basic components: Process discovery and project scoping; Process modeling and design; Business rules engine; Workflow engine; Simulation and testing.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\">There are <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">two types of BPM software</span> as it pertains to deployment:<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">On-premise</span> business process management (BPM). This has been the norm for most enterprises.</p>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Software as a Service (SaaS).</span> Advances in cloud computing have led to an increased interest in various “software-on-demand” offerings.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What are BPM Tools?</h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business Process Management (BPM) tools</span> are used for automating, measuring and optimizing business processes. BPM automation tools use workflow and collaboration to provide meaningful metrics to business leaders.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Misconceptions about BPM Tools.</span> There’s a common misconception that BPM tools do not easily demonstrate their benefit to the organization. While the benefit from using BPM tools can be hard to quantify, it can be expressed more effectively in terms of business value.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Process Management Tools.</span> Tools that allow process managers (those that are responsible for organizing the process or activity) to secure the resources needed to execute it, and measure the results of the activity, providing rewards or corrective feedback when necessary. Process manager tools also allows process managers to change and improve the process whenever possible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Process Modeling Tools.</span> Software tools that let managers or analysts create business process diagrams. Simple tools only support diagramming. Professional Process Modeling Tools store each model element in a database so that they can be reused on other diagrams or updated. Many business process improvement software supports simulation or code generation.<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/BPM_-_Business_Process_Management.png","alias":"bpm-business-process-management"},"67":{"id":67,"title":"WMS - Warehouse Management System","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">A warehouse management system (WMS)</span> is software and processes that allow organizations to control and administer warehouse operations from the time goods or materials enter a warehouse until they move out. \r\nA WMS handles the orchestration of <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">tasks </span>involved with:<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"></span>\r\n- Inbound and outbound operations\r\n- Inventory tracking\r\n- Processing orders and shipments\r\n- Inventory cycle counts\r\n- Order processing and shipping\r\nUsing a database that has been configured to support the operation of a warehouse, a warehouse system is a powerful tool to drive efficiency and accuracy across the business.The warehouse management software provides the means of warehouse control, enabling facility managers to have visibility into processes, labor resource activity, and much more.\r\nData involving operational processes flows into the warehouse system software from automated data capture methods such as barcode scanners, mobile computers and RFID enabled devices.&nbsp; The data is then used throughout the system to track inventory through the progression of warehouse processes.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Types of warehouse management systems</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">WMS come in a variety of types and implementation methods, and the type typically depends on the size and nature of the organization. They can be <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">stand-alone systems</span> or <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">modules </span>in a larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or supply chain execution suite.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">They can also <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">vary</span> widely <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">in complexity.</span> Some small organizations may use a simple series of hard copy documents or spreadsheet files, but most larger organizations - from small to medium-sized businesses to enterprise companies - use complex and smart warehouse system. Some warehouse management solutions are designed specifically for the size of the organization, and many vendors have versions of WMS products that can scale to different organizational sizes. Some organizations build their own warehouse software from scratch, but it's more common to implement a WMS from an established vendor.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">A WMS can also be designed or configured for the <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">organization's specific requirements</span>; for example, an e-commerce vendor might use a WMS that has different functions than a brick-and-mortar retailer. Additionally, an enterprise WMS may also be designed or configured specifically for the types of goods the organization sells; for example, a sporting goods retailer would have different requirements than a grocery chain.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">How does using a Warehouse Management System help a business be more competitive?</h1>\r\nToday, businesses across the supply chain use warehouses to store goods on their way to customers.&nbsp; Whether the goods are destined for consumers, retailers, manufacturers or other business entities, it is important that whatever goods are ordered, shipped and delivered are processed properly, quickly, reliably and accurately.\r\nThe speed at which operational processes are performed, whether in a fulfillment center, third party logistics warehouse or distribution center is often a critical factor.&nbsp; \r\nUsing a WMS products that is appropriate for the needs of your operation can help you optimize operational processes for greater efficiency, enhance labor productivity, provide valuable insight into your operation and enable you to compete for, win and retain clients.\r\nHere are some other reasons why using a management warehouse system gives your business a competitive edge:\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enables stringent inventory management and inventory control capabilities.</span></li></ul>\r\n Helps ensure optimal handling, storage, processing and tracking of inventory. Increased operational efficiency helps keep costs and errors down, critical in attracting and retaining clients.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Real time information visibility.</span></li></ul>\r\nThese days, data is seamlessly transmitted across the warehouse and along the supply chain.&nbsp; Using warehouse software solutions with automated data collection such as barcode scanners, mobile computers or RFID enables the capture and use of vital information for quick decision making and planning.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automated operations reduce errors, wasted time and inefficiency from manual operations and workarounds.</span></li></ul>\r\nMany warehousing management solutions are now workflow-based or workflow-driven.&nbsp; This means that the WMS can automate the execution of work, step-by-step to ensure greater accuracy.&nbsp; Not only is this important for efficiency and error reduction but also for ensuring that quality control and quality assurance processes are carried out in conjunction with established SOPs.&nbsp; This can prove especially critical when dealing with temperature-sensitive products, fragile inventory and perishable goods.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Speed, agility and reliability of warehouse operations.</span></li></ul>\r\nSpeed and agility are critical factors in warehouse operations and provide keen competitive advantage, especially if you are competing against a rival that is still using a legacy WMS or no system at all.&nbsp; A cutting-edge warehouse management software solutions make use of data to plan, execute and report on operations reliably, quickly and efficiently and can adapt to changing business conditions.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enhanced workforce productivity, essential to daily operations.</span></li></ul>\r\nUsing a WMS helps provide your business with key metrics to use to properly manage, train and engage with your workforce.&nbsp; Getting the most work done in less time with fewer errors means that there will be less work done researching and correcting errors and billing.&nbsp; This lowers the burden on customer service representatives so that they can focus on providing top quality support.<br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/WMS_-_Warehouse_Management_System.png","alias":"wms-warehouse-management-system"},"70":{"id":70,"title":"OLAP - online analytical processing","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">OLAP (online analytical processing)</span> is a computing method that enables users to easily and selectively extract and query data in order to analyze it from different points of view. OLAP business intelligence queries often aid in trends analysis, financial reporting, sales forecasting, budgeting and other planning purposes.\r\nTo facilitate this kind of analysis, data is collected from multiple data sources and stored in data warehouses then cleansed and organized into <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">data cubes.</span> Each OLAP cube contains data categorized by dimensions (such as customers, geographic sales region and time period) derived by dimensional tables in the data warehouses. Dimensions are then populated by members (such as customer names, countries and months) that are organized hierarchically.\r\nAnalysts can then perform five types of online analytical processing system operations against these multidimensional databases: \r\n<ol><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Roll-up.</span> Also known as consolidation, or drill-up, this operation summarizes the data along the dimension.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Drill-down.</span> This allows analysts to navigate deeper among the dimensions of data, for example drilling down from &quot;time period&quot; to &quot;years&quot; and &quot;months&quot; to chart sales growth for a product.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Slice. </span>This enables an analyst to take one level of information for display</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Dice. </span>This allows an analyst to select data from multiple dimensions to analyze</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Pivot.</span> Analysts can gain a new view of data by rotating the data axes of the cube.</li></ol>\r\nOLAP software then locates the intersection of dimensions, such as all products sold in the Eastern region above a certain price during a certain time period, and displays them. The result is the &quot;measure&quot;; each OLAP cube has at least one to perhaps hundreds of measures, which are derived from information stored in fact tables in the data warehouse.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Types of OLAP: &nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Relational online analytical processing (ROLAP):</span> ROLAP is an extended RDBMS along with multidimensional data mapping to perform the standard relational operation.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP):</span> MOLAP Implementes operation in multidimensional data.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Hybrid OnlineAnalytical Processing (HOLAP):</span> In HOLAP approach the aggregated totals are stored in a multidimensional database while the detailed data is stored in the relational database. This offers both data efficiency of the ROLAP model and the performance of the MOLAP model.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Desktop OLAP (DOLAP):</span> In Desktop OLAP system, a user downloads a part of the data from the database locally, or on their desktop and analyze it. DOLAP is relatively cheaper to deploy as it offers very few functionalities compares to other OLAP tools.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Web based OLAP (WOLAP):</span> Web OLAP which is OLAP system accessible via the web browser. WOLAP is a three-tiered architecture. It consists of three components: client, middleware, and a database server.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile OLAP:</span> Mobile OLAP process helps users to access and analyze OLAP data using their mobile devices</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Spatial OLAP:</span> SOLAP is created to facilitate management of both spatial and non-spatial data in a Geographic Information system (GIS) </li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Implementing an OLAP Solution</h1>\r\nImplementation of OLAP depends not only on the type of software, but also on underlying data sources and the intended business objective(s). Each industry or business area is specific and requires some degree of customized modeling to create multidimensional “cubes” for data loading and reporting building, at minimum. An OLAP program might be intended for dynamic reporting for finance professionals, with source data originating in an ERP system. Or a solution might address a medical institution’s activities as concerns patient analysis. All of which is to say that customers need to have clear objectives in mind for an intended solution, and start to consider product selection on that basis. Another factor to consider in an OLAP implementation is the delivery to end users: does the initial user base want to adopt a new front end, or is there a preference for utilizing a dashboard? Or&nbsp; perhaps users are better served by a dynamic spreadsheet “delivery” system to achieve, for example, a collaborative budgeting and forecasting solution.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Advantages and Disadvantages of OLAP</h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Advantages</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>OLAP is a platform for all type of business includes planning, budgeting, reporting, and analysis.</li><li>Information and calculations are consistent in an OLAP cube. This is a crucial benefit.</li><li>Quickly create and analyze &quot;What if&quot; scenarios</li><li>Easily search OLAP database for broad or specific terms.</li><li>OLAP provides the building blocks for business modeling tools, Data mining tools, performance reporting tools.</li><li>Allows users to do slice and dice cube data all by various dimensions, measures, and filters.</li><li>It is good for analyzing time series.</li><li>Finding some clusters and outliers is easy with OLAP.</li><li> It is a powerful visualization online analytical process system which provides faster response times</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Disadvantages</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>OLAP requires organizing data into a star or snowflake schema. These schemas are complicated to implement and administer.</li><li>You cannot have large number of dimensions in a single OLAP cube.</li><li>Transactional data cannot be accessed with OLAP system.</li><li>Any modification in an OLAP cube needs a full update of the cube. This is a time-consuming process.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/OLAP_-__online_analytical_processing.png","alias":"olap-online-analytical-processing"},"76":{"id":76,"title":"CPM - Corporate Performance Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Corporate performance management (CPM)</span> is an umbrella term that describes the methodologies, metrics, processes and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise. Applications that enable CPM translate strategically focused information to operational plans and send aggregated results. These applications are also integrated into many elements of the planning and control cycle, or they address BAM or customer relationship optimization needs.\r\nCPM must be supported by a suite of analytical applications that provide the functionality to support these processes, methodologies and metrics.\r\n&nbsp;A CPM system is software that monitors and manages an organization's performance, according to key performance indicators. These can be revenue, return on investment, or other corporate strategic goals, such as increasing operational efficiency or improving corporate strategy.\r\nCorporate performance management system supports financial budgeting, planning and forecasting, and help leaders manage strategy and track the company’s financial health against goals. Corporate performance management tools are commonly used by the finance department, but are increasingly designed to be used across the enterprise. All in all, financial corporate performance management helps CFOs and other leaders maintain a clear picture of organizational performance.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CPM Software Comparison</span></p>\r\nTo compare different CPM tools, you might want to consider evaluating options based on these factors:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Finance vs Strategy:</span> Do you care more about strategic planning or financials (such as consolidation and close, reporting, etc)? Financial corporate performance management products rarely do both of these well, so depending on which is your priority, compare tools based on both capabilities. Look at feature ratings for budgeting, planning and forecasting, versus consolidation and close and reporting.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Deployment type:</span> Corporate performance management solutions may be cloud-based, on-premise, or offer both deployment types.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Usability:</span> Ease of use is an important factor, even more so if your use of the CPM software will extend beyond the Finance team. Look for comments about usability in pros &amp; cons sections of reviews, and compare how the products rate for usability.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reporting:</span> Corporate performance management software is very centered on reporting and the ability to build custom reports. Reviewers often comment on the quality of reporting, and are asked to rate products based on reporting features.\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Why is CPM important and who is CPM important for?</h1>\r\nRecent studies have shown that strategy execution is the number one area of focus for senior executives today and CPM performance management is a way to help ensure your strategies get executed. By integrating organizational goals, metrics, and projects, your company is aligned around strategic priorities and can focus on the key drivers of the business.\r\nCPM is important for every company, but especially those looking to:\r\n<ul><li>Remodel their budget</li><li>Reduce costs</li><li>Better align KPIs</li><li>Upgrade their organizational strategy</li><li>Improve the financial planning process<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span></li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Importance of Corporate Performance Management Software</h1>\r\nIn the era of business management intelligence, it’s important that corporations embrace processes automation. Here are some of the benefits of adopting an enterprise and corporate performance management solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">1. Real-time feedback.</span> Performance management software has smart dashboards which contain every measurable metric a management team may need to use in its decision-making. However, the detail is not in the variety. It’s in the ability to read and use data as changes happen in real-time across all parts of the organization. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">2. Data consolidation for easy management.</span> The tools have the intelligence to gather, group, and combine data from multiple sources, be it departments, spreadsheets, or even companies. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">3. Provide ease of risk management.</span> One significant advantage of CPM is the integration of tools like what-if models. For instance, the model empowers managers to mitigate risks and make informed decisions based on the simulation of the best-worst case scenarios. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">4. Provide simple data feedback and access.</span> Performance management tools enable managers to have ease of access to information while still fostering accuracy and quality. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">5. Ease of collaboration.</span> CPM tools are not only locally integrated but also cloud connected to allows all users to stay in sync across all departments.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CPM_-_Corporate_Performance_Management.png","alias":"cpm-corporate-performance-management"},"152":{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png","alias":"contact-center"},"164":{"id":164,"title":"Billing","description":"Billing is a complex set of programs that allows you to calculate the number of services provided, while the calculations are carried out in a variety of units of measurement. Services are charged and as a result, the client receives a ready invoice, which additionally takes into account all promotions and discounts. The billing covers three main functions: settlement operations, provision of information, financial services.\r\nTypes of billing:\r\n<ul><li>Convergent billing is a carrier-class subsystem that provides mutual settlements with the customer of any network and an arbitrary informative application.</li><li>Automatic billing is a broad definition, including a variety of phenomena: from bank statements to making a payment with a plastic card.</li><li>Deferred billing is called billing, in which the calculation is made on the basis of the calls made.</li><li>Using hot billing reduces the delay in debiting funds, i.e. the speed of interaction with the service provider increases.</li><li>Mobile billing (SMS billing) is a method of electronic payment, in which payment for services is made using a telephone.</li></ul>\r\nCurrency calculation unit between the bank and the world payment system is called the billing currency. When the billing currency is different from the currency of the account, automatic conversion of funds occurs at the bank exchange rate.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Billing tasks:</span>\r\nThe main task of the billing is to provide a full account to the subscriber, information about which is available in this billing network. The billing system is responsible for the transfer of funds from the client’s account to the organization’s account for the services provided.\r\nBilling systems allow complete accounting of each consumer’s account.\r\n<ul><li>revenues;</li><li>costs;</li><li>used services;</li><li>personal tariff plans;</li><li>the amount of funds on the balance sheet;</li><li>discounts and promotions;</li><li>other information of an informative plan.</li></ul>\r\nEffective billing is needed to save time for both operators and consumers. With all this, the billing system should be as transparent as possible, that is, the client must know exactly what services he uses and how much he pays for it. The billing system should be as simple and understandable as possible to consumers, but it should take into account all the parameters set by the service.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer billing options:</span>\r\n<ul><li>automated calculation of the cost of services;</li><li>the ability to quickly receive services;</li><li>automatic debiting of funds (monthly fee and/or payment for services);</li><li> instant receipt of bill details;</li><li>the ability to receive timely information about new services, discounts and so on;</li><li>automatic crediting of bonuses and calculation of discounts.</li></ul>\r\nA properly functioning billing system provides an opportunity for employees of an organization using it to quickly receive information about the use of services and automatically invoice consumers. With the help of billing, it becomes easy to serve customers with bills and coupons, get a quick payment for services. The billing also produces an estimate of consumption, based on this information, the organization can draw conclusions about the demand for various types of services. Thanks to billing, providing clients with advertising information about new promotions, services, and tariffs is automated.\r\nMembers of the billing process:\r\n<ul><li>organizations that produce the necessary resources for the billing process - billing providers;</li><li>organizations that are the primary consumer of billing - cellular operators, Internet telephony operators, Internet providers, providers of digital television and so on;</li><li>ordinary users.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Billing1.png","alias":"billing"},"168":{"id":168,"title":"EAM - Enterprise Asset Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">EAM</span> (Enterprise asset management)</span> involves the management of the maintenance of physical assets of an organization throughout each asset's lifecycle. EAM management system is used to plan, optimize, execute, and track the needed maintenance activities with the associated priorities, skills, materials, tools, and information. This covers the design, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance and decommissioning or replacement of plant, equipment and facilities.\r\n&quot;Enterprise&quot; refers to the scope of the assets in an Enterprise across departments, locations, facilities and, potentially, supporting business functions eg; Finance &amp; GL, Human Resources and Payroll. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise asset management software </span>is a computer software that handles every aspect of running a public works or asset-intensive organization. Maintenance management software collects and analyzes data for physical assets during all phases of the asset lifecycle, including the acquisition, maintenance, and disposal phase.&nbsp; EAM software is used by large organizations that have outgrown basic CMMS software. These organizations have hundreds of physical assets (machinery, equipment, etc) and employees that are responsible for managing the asset lifecycle. These employees, referred to as asset managers, are also responsible for making decisions that require them to track warranties, depreciation, and downtime.\r\nIn terms of features, the lines are becoming blurred between CMMS and EAM solutions as some CMMS products allow asset managers to track these items. But true EAM program gives asset managers the ability to track every phase of an asset’s lifecycle and provide full transparency about its historical and present state to other departments. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise asset management system includes</span> elements of design perspectives centered on the idea that by creating digital models, companies can optimize how they utilize each asset that they invest money in according to its build and the greater context around its use. This helps companies better predict asset depreciation and never be surprised by unexpected asset failure.\r\nEAM asset management tools also include insurance and warranty information. They look at things like the environmental performance of an asset or piece of machinery to assist with audit trails and environmental impact reports. They also integrate with inventory and supply chain software to reduce menial data entry tasks and perform inventory management tasks. Another way to describe the key use of EAM solutions is they ensure change never affects the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an asset.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> What is EAM?</h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">EAM (Enterprise Asset Management)</span> system is the management of the assets of an enterprise across departments, facilities, business units and geographical locations. Enterprise asset management&nbsp; market integrates techniques for holistic control and optimization throughout asset life cycles, including design, commissioning, operations and replacement:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">EAM definition allows to categorize it as follows</span>:\r\n<ul><li>Physical asset and infrastructure management</li><li>IT service management</li><li>Digital asset (electronic media and content) management</li><li>Fixed asset management and accounting</li><li>Emerging asset management</li></ul>\r\nThe EAM framework optimizes and extends asset life cycles and reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while maximizing Overall Asset Productivity (OAP) and Return on Assets (ROA), which is key for manufacturing and similar industries with high-value equipment.&nbsp; EAM arose as an extension of the <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">computerized maintenance management system </span>(CMMS) which is usually defined as a system for the computerisation of the maintenance of physical assets.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Asset Management is geared toward the following results:</span> </p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"color: rgb(97, 97, 97); \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Asset lifecycle management.</span> Keep all asset data and documentation at your fingertips, so it’s there when you need it — regardless of where you are in the asset’s lifecycle.</span></li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Work order management.</span> Diagnose a problem, and quickly assign specific technicians to the job. Schedule and organize work orders for employees and contractors, and keep track of upcoming work.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">MRO materials management.</span> Control costs with full oversight into inventory procurement and management. Understand the demand for materials at your facility and manage parts accordingly.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Labor management. </span>Manage assessment, training, and certification for employees and contractors responsible for asset management in your organization.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Service contract management. </span>Control compliance and spending at every step of the contract lifecycle. Create and manage contracts and service agreements with customers, vendors, partners, and employees.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Financial management.</span> Gather data on work order costs, and integrate with finance software to manage accounting and project spending.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reporting and analytics. </span>Analyze asset performance to spot issues before they become bigger problems. Collect key performance indicators for your entire facility to make better business decisions.&nbsp; </li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Some of popular EAM software features include:</h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Downtime tracking and </span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">asset tracking system.</span> When equipment breaks down, asset managers can manually log downtime in the EAM software based on the timestamps on fault codes or work requests. Also, when equipment is marked as non-operational by technicians during repairs and PMs, downtime is automatically tracked by the software. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lockout-tagout.</span> This is a safety feature that documents and enforces the physical lockout-tagout devices that are used during maintenance on dangerous machinery. By tracking lockout-tagout and check in/out procedures in the EAM software, everyone in a facility knows when an asset is unavailable. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Maintenance reports. </span>Data that’s logged in maintenance software solutions shows the performance of assets in terms of reliability rather than production output. Seeing how reliable a machine is over time informs asset managers and procurement whether that machine model should be purchased again. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Financial audits.</span> Asset managers can connect their software to financial software to align their efforts with the organization’s financial department. This data-sync streamlines financial audits and helps organizations manage the complete asset lifecycle without requiring financial departments to learn how to navigate the EAM software.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What’s the difference between EAM and CMMS software? EAM vs CMMS comparison</h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">At first glance, the differences between EAM and CMMS software are minimal—both help organizations move from a reactive to a preventive maintenance strategy by automating maintenance activities, inventory management, and work orders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">But as the name indicates, a <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">computerized maintenance management system (CMMS)</span> is used primarily to manage maintenance during the operational part of an asset’s life—the time when it’s up and running and working as a productive part of a facility.</p>\r\nEAM asset management software, on the other hand, manages the entire lifecycle of an asset, from creation or procurement through to disposal. It is often used by organizations with a larger number of users across multiple sites and includes capabilities like lifecycle planning.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Basically, <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">EAM lets you see a much bigger picture.</span> It gives you an overview of priorities and lets you see what tools—including finances, skills, materials, and information—are at your disposal to meet those priorities.</p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/EAM_-_Enterprise_Asset_Management.png","alias":"eam-enterprise-asset-management"},"170":{"id":170,"title":"APS - Advanced Planning and Scheduling","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Advanced planning and scheduling</span> (APS, also known as advanced manufacturing) refers to a manufacturing management process by which raw materials and production capacity are optimally allocated to meet demand. \r\nAdvanced planning and scheduling system is especially well-suited to environments where simpler planning methods cannot adequately address complex trade-offs between competing priorities. Production scheduling is intrinsically very difficult due to the (approximately) factorial dependence of the size of the solution space on the number of items/products to be manufactured.\r\nAdvanced planning and scheduling software is offered as an extension of your ERP and when the two systems operate together, production is enhanced dramatically. Advanced planning system has been utilized by large production facilities since they were available. Large operations have always been in need of APS software, which has allowed for the misconception that small manufacturing operations do not necessarily need it. \r\nNot only does advanced scheduling software consider material, but it has the ability to perform bill of material explosions which net on hand inventory and net projected inventory receipts through purchase orders and manufacturing orders. Once inventory is netted, advanced production planning and scheduling software creates purchase orders and manufacturing orders to satisfy demand based on safety stock levels and lot sizing logic. When scheduling, advanced planning software dynamically allocates inventory and projected inventory receipts to production orders. If material is made constraining, the software then delays production based on the available of inventory generated by allocated orders.\r\nImplementation of an advanced scheduling system can allow your operation to be able to adequately compete against much larger size manufacturing operations through schedule optimization, market analysis, order anticipation, and many more capabilities. This is how you can separate yourself from other small manufacturing competitors and optimize your production facility quickly and efficiently.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">APS Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software’s enhanced functionality helps you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>extend the planning and scheduling horizon for as long as there is demand to drive it. Since demand includes sales orders and forecasts, the only practical limits are forecast accuracy and computer processing speeds.</li><li>quickly make accurate deliver commitments to customers. Called Capable-to-Promise (CTP), this feature often replaces the inaccurate, infinite scheduling based Available-to-Promise (ATP) features in ERP systems.</li><li>dynamically allocate and re-allocate inventory to upper level demand.</li><li>perform multi-plant planning and scheduling which answers questions such as “in which plant should this production be sited?”</li><li>plan throughout the supply chain.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Why use APS Advanced Planning System?</span></h1>\r\nFor planners, APS systems quickly analyse the implications of alternative decisions, highlight consequences and problems, and generate optimal or near-optimal plans and schedules.\r\nAPS systems provide better information (and recommendations) on which planners and managers can base their decisions. They are tools and techniques to help manage complexity. Fast-moving environments with large numbers of items, orders, machines and people are difficult to plan effectively, as are environments with complex constraints. In such industries (High tech, CPG, Third party logistics, and capacity constrained industries such as Process manufacturing) APS provides significant assistance.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Advanced Planning and Scheduling Benefits and Capabilities</h1>\r\nWith various capabilities such as multi-plant operation integration, Superplant, real-time operational visibility and overall throughput enhancement, APS is becoming a top choice for manufacturing operations and supply chains around the globe. These attributes are allowing production facilities to be able to efficiently optimize production and enhance their operation thoroughly. Various other benefits of advanced planning &amp; scheduling software include:\r\n<ul><li> Improved delivery performance</li><li>Boosts in Profit</li><li>Reduction in inventory and cost</li><li>Six-month ROI</li></ul>\r\nImplementation of an advanced planning and scheduling system (APS) will take you and your manufacturing operation toward the next step of production efficiency and allow you to separate yourself from the competition and to widely increase capacity.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/APS_-_Advanced_Planning_and_Scheduling.png","alias":"aps-advanced-planning-and-scheduling"},"176":{"id":176,"title":"E-government","description":"E-government (short for electronic government) is the use of electronic communications devices, such as computers and the Internet to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. According to Jeong, 2007 the term consists of the digital interactions between a citizen and their government (C2G), between governments and other government agencies (G2G), between government and citizens (G2C), between government and employees (G2E), and between government and businesses/commerces (G2B). E-government delivery models can be broken down into the following categories: This interaction consists of citizens communicating with all levels of government (city, state/province, national, and international), facilitating citizen involvement in governance using information and communication technology (ICT) (such as computers and websites) and business process re-engineering (BPR). Brabham and Guth (2017) interviewed the third party designers of e-government tools in North America about the ideals of user interaction that they build into their technologies, which include progressive values, ubiquitous participation, geolocation, and education of the public.\r\nOther definitions are more away from technology as an object, to see them simply as facilitators or instruments and focus on specific changes in Public Administration issues, and in the internal transformation of a Government, is the case of the definition that established the specialist technologist Mauro D. Ríos in the paper &quot;In search of a definition of Electronic Government&quot;, he says: &quot;Digital Government is a new way of organization and management of public affairs, introducing positive transformational processes in management and the structure itself of the organization chart, adding value to the procedures and services provided, all through the introduction and continued appropriation of information and communication technologies as a facilitator of these transformations.&quot;","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is e-government?</span>\r\nE-government refers to the use of information technology by government agencies (such as global networks, the Internet, and mobile computers) to transform relationships with citizens, businesses, visitors, and the government for:\r\n<ul><li>expanding the provision of public services to citizens;</li><li>improve interaction with the business community;</li><li>empowering citizens through access to information;</li><li>more effective public administration</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is open data?</span>\r\nOpen data - information about the activities of state bodies and local governments, placed on the Internet in the form of data files in a format that ensures their automatic processing for reuse without a prior change by a person (machine-readable format), and on the terms of its free (free) use.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/E-government.png","alias":"e-government"},"182":{"id":182,"title":"CMS - Content management system","description":"A content management system (CMS) manages the creation and modification of digital content. It typically supports multiple users in a collaborative environment.\r\nCMS features vary widely. Most CMSs include Web-based publishing, format management, history editing and version control, indexing, search and retrieval. By their nature, content management systems support the separation of content and presentation.\r\nContent management software solutions are typically used for enterprise content management systems (ECM) and web site content management systems (WCM). An ECM facilitates collaboration in the workplace by integrating document management, digital asset management and records retention functionalities, and providing end users with role-based access to the organization's digital assets. A WCM facilitates collaborative authoring for websites. ECM software often includes a WCM publishing functionality, but ECM webpages typically remain behind the organization's firewall.\r\nBoth enterprise content management and web content management systems have two components: a content management application (CMA) and a content delivery application (CDA). The CMA is a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows the user to control the design, creation, modification and removal of content from a website without needing to know anything about HTML. The CDA component provides the back-end services that support management and delivery of the content once it has been created in the CMA.\r\nDigital asset management systems are another type of CMS. They manage content with a clearly defined author or ownership, such as documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, and scientific data. Companies also use CMSs to store, control, revise, and publish documentation.\r\nBased on market share statistics, the most popular CMS is WordPress, used by more than 28% of all websites on the Internet, and by 59% of all websites using a known content management system, followed by Joomla and Drupal.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Content management systems typically provide the following features:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Search engine optimization</li><li>Integrated and online documentation</li><li>Modularity and extensibility</li><li>User and group functionality</li><li>Templating support for changing designs</li><li>Installation and upgrade wizards</li><li>Integrated audit logs</li><li>Compliance with various accessibility frameworks and standards, such as WAI-ARIA</li><li>Reduced need to code from scratch</li><li>Unified user experience</li><li>Version control</li><li>Edit permission management</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What is a CMS?</span></h1>\r\nAnswer: CMS is an acronym for &quot;Content Management System&quot;. You may see some variations on this term, but they all refer to the same concept. Variations include:\r\n<ul><li>Content Management System</li><li>Web CMS</li><li>Web Content Management System</li><li>CMS Platform</li><li>Content Management Platform</li><li>CMS System</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does a CMS do?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In it's simplest terms, Content Management Systems are designed to help users create and manage their websites. Content management solutions help webmasters manage the many different resources, content types and various data that make up modern web sites.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">At a minimum, modern websites make use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images (jpeg, gif, png, etc) to create web content for visitors to read. At the core of every CMS is the ability to organize these resources and generate valid content that can be read by web browsers. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">More advanced websites have interactive components (comment sections, forums, e-commerce...) that requires server software to validate and save user submitted content.<br />All of the top CMS platforms have features built-in or available for download as addons for all of these features.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the main types of CMS?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Simple CMS.</span> This system is used to create simple websites that contain several pages using simple control systems. Simple content management systems consist of several modules that are set one time. These CMSs are free and are available on the internet. Among their disadvantages are the inability to change settings, low transmission capacity, inability to create pages dynamically and the inability of ato delegateion of administrator’s credentials to others.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Template CMS.</span> It consists of modules as well, but its structure is more complex if compared to a simple CMS. Template CMS has high transmission capacity, around 50,000 inquiries. Also, it has the support of dynamic pages and the ability to delegate the administrator’s credentials. Many template systems are used to create website content because they are easy to use.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Professional CMS</span>. This type of CMS has a higher level of complexity. You may change the structure of internet resources. Additional modules can be attached to these systems. These systems are used to create information portals or massive projects. As a rule, these CMSs are a paid resource.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Universal CMS</span>. Universal systems have wide functionality and ample opportunities to develope websites of any complexity. They support the functions of changing the structure, creating dynamic pages, modification of settings and credential distribution. Universal CMS is quite expensive. These CMSs are used for work with large portals and web-projects that require high functionality and dynamics.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CMS_-_content_management_system.png","alias":"cms-content-management-system"},"188":{"id":188,"title":"EDI - Electronic Data Interchange","description":"Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the electronic interchange of business information using a standardized format; a process which allows one company to send information to another company electronically rather than with paper. Business entities conducting business electronically are called trading partners.\r\nMany business documents can be exchanged using EDI, but the two most common are purchase orders and invoices. At a minimum, EDI replaces the mail preparation and handling associated with traditional business communication. However, the real power of EDI is that it standardizes the information communicated in business documents, which makes possible a &quot;paperless&quot; exchange.\r\nThe traditional invoice illustrates what this can mean. Most companies create invoices using a computer system, print a paper copy of the invoice and mail it to the customer. Upon receipt, the customer frequently marks up the invoice and enters it into its own computer system. The entire process is nothing more than the transfer of information from the seller's computer to the customer's computer. EDI makes it possible to minimize or even eliminate the manual steps involved in this transfer.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What does Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) mean?</span>\r\nElectronic data interchange (EDI) is the electronic transmission of structured data by agreed message standards from one computer system to another without human intervention. It is a system for exchanging business documents with external entities.\r\nEDI refers to a family of standards and does not specify transmission methods, which are freely agreed upon by the trading partners.\r\nThe wide adoption of EDI in the business world facilitates efficiency and cost reduction. EDI is used in such diverse business-to-business relationships as:\r\n<ul><li>Interchanges between health care providers and insurers</li><li>Travel and hotel bookings</li><li>Education</li><li>Supply chain management</li><li>Administration</li><li>Tax reporting</li></ul>\r\nEDI is a sequence of messages between two trading partners, either of which may serve as the originator or recipient. The messages are transmitted and received without human intervention. Each message is composed according to a standardized syntax from a sequence of standardized data elements. It is this standardization that makes message assembling, disassembling and processing by the computer possible.\r\nEDI is considered to be a technical representation of a business conversation between two entities, either internal or external. The EDI standards were designed to be independent of communication and software technologies. EDI can be transmitted using any methodology agreed to by the sender and recipient. ","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/EDI__-_Electronic_Data_Interchange.png","alias":"edi-electronic-data-interchange"},"273":{"id":273,"title":"Team Collaborative Applications","description":" Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is &quot;intentional group processes plus software to support them&quot;.\r\nThe worldwide team collaborative applications market continues to accelerate as collaboration becomes a key component of the future of work in a digital enterprise. The market is growing in revenue, leveraging IT integrations to both bridge functions and the enterprise. The market continues to move to the cloud and emphasizes usage across devices.\r\nThe total worldwide team collaborative applications market grew at 24.7% year over year, up from 21.5% growth the previous year. Growth was powered by the adoption of solutions that made working together more agile and seamless and favored solutions with integrations that centralize work, assets, and communications, including messaging and chat. In short, applications that made it easier to get work done by bringing content, context, and communications in a single place.\r\nFeeling the pinch to produce more with less, organizations have turned to collaborative applications to streamline workflow and engage employees, partners and, increasingly, customers. They are discovering new paths to productivity, a better digital user experience (UX), and loyalty. Companies are developing a new way to work together and across their workforce and the sales continuum. A more technology-savvy and digitally connected workforce is empowering and accelerating this trend. Artificial intelligence (AI) is more common across collaborative solutions and almost expected by employees to automate repetitive tasks. Increasingly, machine learning (ML) and AI will generate new forms of value from conversations, meetings, and other content assets.\r\nMake no mistake, the majority of the lead vendors in this space are heavily invested in the future of work and want to be either your future workspace — where work actually is done — or an application that integrates to facilitate better and more productive results with a better-engaged workforce.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is groupware?</span>\r\nCollaborative software was originally designated as groupware and this term can be traced as far back as the late 1980s, when Richman and Slovak (1987) wrote: &quot;Like an electronic sinew that binds teams together, the new groupware aims to place the computer squarely in the middle of communications among managers, technicians, and anyone else who interacts in groups, revolutionizing the way they work.&quot;\r\nEven further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, &quot;intentional group processes plus software to support them.&quot; Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as &quot;computer-mediated culture... an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace.&quot; Groupware integrates co-evolving human and tool systems, yet is simply a single system.\r\nIn the early 1990s the first commercial groupware products were delivered, and big companies such as Boeing and IBM started using electronic meeting systems for key internal projects. Lotus Notes appeared as a major example of that product category, allowing remote group collaboration when the internet was still in its infancy. Kirkpatrick and Losee (1992) wrote then: &quot;If GROUPWARE really makes a difference in productivity long term, the very definition of an office may change. You will be able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever you have your computer. As computers become smaller and more powerful, that will mean anywhere.&quot; In 1999, Achacoso created and introduced the first wireless groupware.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the levels of groupware?</span>\r\nGroupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration:\r\n<ul><li>Communication can be thought of as unstructured interchange of information. A phone call or an IM Chat discussion are examples of this.</li><li>Conferencing (or collaboration level, as it is called in the academic papers that discuss these levels) refers to interactive work toward a shared goal. Brainstorming or voting are examples of this.</li><li>Co-ordination refers to complex interdependent work toward a shared goal. A good metaphor for understanding this is to think about a sports team; everyone has to contribute the right play at the right time as well as adjust their play to the unfolding situation - but everyone is doing something different - in order for the team to win. That is complex interdependent work toward a shared goal: collaborative management.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Team_Collaborative_Applications.png","alias":"team-collaborative-applications"},"277":{"id":277,"title":"Enterprise Social Networks","description":" Enterprise social networking focuses on the use of online social networks or social relations among people who share business interests and/or activities. Enterprise social networking is often a facility of enterprise social software (regarded as a primary component of Enterprise 2.0), which is essentially social software used in &quot;enterprise&quot; (business/commercial) contexts. It encompasses modifications to corporate intranets (referred to as social intranets) and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication, collaboration and other aspects of their intranets. Enterprise social networking is also generally thought to include the use of a standard external social networking service to generate visibility for an enterprise.\r\nSocial networking sites started to form in the 1990s; an example of these websites is Theglobe.com, which began in 1995. As other websites such as GeoCities and Tripod.com started to form online communities, they encouraged their users to interact with each other via chat rooms and other tools. They also provided easy-to-use publishing tools along with free web space. Classmates.com’s approach was to link people together via their emails, the website was like a friends search engine.\r\nBusinesses eventually realized that social networking websites could provide a fast and efficient way of marketing. Social media websites are great places for businesses to reach their customers, and the environment can provide a means for growing a business. In 2005, as social networking websites were becoming more and more popular, Myspace had more page views than Google. Myspace was followed by Facebook which started in February 2004. When Facebook began, users were limited to college students in the United States, who had to use a college email with a .edu extension to join the network. In September 2005 some high schools were allowed to join the network, but they needed an invitation to join. On September 26 of 2006, Facebook announced that anyone around the world older than 13 years old with a valid email would be able to join Facebook’s online community. In October 2007, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook. That gave them the right to place international ads on Facebook. In July 2010 it was reported that Facebook had more than 500 million active users. This means that one out of fourteen people around the world is a Facebook user. The growth of Facebook was a boom in the social networking space. Facebook became a huge corporation that had 1400 employees in 2009; their estimated revenue was US$800 million in 2009. In 2010, it was reported that there were more than 200 social networking websites on the web.\r\nMany companies are starting to implement social networks to promote collaboration amongst their employees. Vendors are now starting to use this as a way to help out the different companies. Some companies are starting to teach their employees about cloud computing and SaaS. These new technologies are being added to the enterprise social networks. These networks are being implemented to get employees collaborating and sharing tips and ideas about how to improve the workplace. Some social networks are homegrown systems that are built internally. Companies are using social networks to trade information amongst team members or other people who are part of the company. Sometimes this might also mean trading documents in real time. Based on research by Gartner (2010), 50% of enterprises will be using some sort of social network by 2012.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is an enterprise social network?</span>\r\nSocial networks are inherently open, public spaces, available to anyone who wishes to sign up. Now imagine a private social network, only accessible by members of an organization, business or club. This is essentially what an enterprise social network is, kept private to that particular organization. This can be extremely useful for businesses that require all the collaborative features and efficiency of a modern social network, without the public, potentially unsecured nature of them.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why use an enterprise social network?</span>\r\nWe’re inherently social beings, and so the modern enterprise workplace contains an abundance of varying formats of communication, both online and off. Talking to co-workers, making phone calls, sending emails – the list goes on. By compiling all of these channels of connectivity together into one interactive, easily accessible digital environment, you can reap the many rewards of enhanced, community-driven workspaces, helping to move your business forward through better connectivity, collaboration and productivity.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What form do corporate social networks take?</span>\r\nOrganizations can utilize a range of different social platforms, such as discussion forums and intranets. Whatever works for your company, team or department, can become a social network.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Enerprise_Social_Networks.png","alias":"enterprise-social-networks"},"295":{"id":295,"title":"Operating System and Subsystem","description":" Operating systems (OS) are programs that act as an interface between a computer’s hardware and its user. Subsystems are a part of larger systems such as operating systems; multiple subsystems can be loaded in the operating system. It bridges the gap between the users and the computer hardware. There are different types of operating systems based on their usage such as real-time, multi-user, distributed, embedded, single-user single-task and single-user multi-task. Operating systems are required in all electronic interactive systems such as mobile phones, washing machines, and computers. Various types of OS include Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX, Symbian, Android, and Apple Mac OS among others.\r\nTechnological advancements and rising awareness among consumers has to lead to increased demand for computer systems, consequently increasing the demand for operating systems and driving the market. However, the growth has been hampered by the rapid usage of pirated versions of operating systems. Moreover, the development of different applications in mobile phones mainly due to android OS among the youth will open the opportunities of operating system market in the upcoming years.\r\nCurrently, there are a large number of different types of operating systems that differ in application areas, hardware platforms, implementation methods, etc.\r\nA subsystem is a unit or device that is part of a larger system. For example, a disk subsystem is a part of a computer system. A bus is a part of the computer. A subsystem usually refers to hardware, but it may be used to describe software. However, &quot;module,&quot; &quot;subroutine&quot; and &quot;component&quot; are more typically used to describe parts of the software.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is an operating system (OS)?</span>\r\nAn operating system (OS) is software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on computers and manages the computer hardware and provides common services for efficient execution of various application software. For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between application programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware, but will frequently call the OS or be interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer - from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the tasks of the Operating system?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Processor Management:</span></span> The main tasks in processor management are ensuring that each process and application receives enough of the processor's time to function properly, using maximum processor cycles for real work as is possible and switch between processes in a multi-tasking environment.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Memory and Storage Management:</span></span> The tasks include allotting enough memory required for each process to execute and efficiently use the different types of memory in the system.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Device Management:</span></span> The operating system manages all hardware not on the processor through driver programs. Drivers provide a way for applications to make use of hardware subsystems without having to know every detail of the hardware's operation. The driver's function is to be the translator between the electrical signals of the hardware subsystems and the high-level programming languages of the operating system and application programs. One reason that drivers are separate from the operating system is for the upgradability of devices.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Providing Common Application Interface:</span></span> Application program interfaces (APIs) let application programmers use functions of the computer and operating system without having to directly keep track of all the details in the processor's operation. Once the programmer uses the APIs, the operating system, connected to drivers for the various hardware subsystems, deals with the changing details of the hardware.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Providing Common User Interface:</span></span> A user interface (UI) brings a formal structure to the interaction between a user and the computer.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Operating_System_and_Subsystem__1_.png","alias":"operating-system-and-subsystem"},"299":{"id":299,"title":"Application and User Session Virtualization","description":"Application virtualization is a technology that allows you to separate the software from the operating system on which it operates. Fully virtualized software is not installed in the traditional sense, although the end-user at first glance can not see it, because the virtualized software works just as normal. The software in the execution process works just as if it interacted with the operating system directly and with all its resources, but can be isolated or executed in a sandbox with different levels of restriction.\r\nModern operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Linux, can include limited software virtualization. For example, Windows 7 has Windows XP mode that allows you to run Windows XP software on Windows 7 without any changes.\r\nUser session virtualization is a newer version of desktop virtualization that works at the operating system level. While normal virtualization of the desktop allows an operating system to be run by virtualizing the hardware of the desktop, RDS and App-V allow for the virtualization of the applications. User session virtualization lies between the two.\r\nA desktop has an operating system loaded on the base hardware. This can be either physical or virtual. The user session virtualization keeps track of all changes to the operating system that a user might make by encapsulating the configuration changes and associating them to the user account. This allows the specific changes to be applied to the underlying operating system without actually changing it. This allows several users to have completely different operating system configurations applied to base operating system installation.\r\nIf you are in a distributed desktop environment and there are local file servers available at each location, you can deploy virtualized user sessions in the form of redirected folders and roaming profiles.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Understanding application virtualization</span>\r\nApplication virtualization technology isolates applications from the underlying operating system and from other applications to increase compatibility and manageability. This application virtualization technology enables applications to be streamed from a centralized location into an isolation environment on the target device where they will execute. The application files, configuration, and settings are copied to the target device and the application execution at run time is controlled by the application virtualization layer. When executed, the application run time believes that it is interfacing directly with the operating system when, in fact, it is interfacing with a virtualization environment that proxies all requests to the operating system.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Understanding session virtualization</span>\r\nSession virtualization uses application streaming to deliver applications to hosting servers in the datacenter. The Application then connects the user to the server. The application then executes entirely on the server. The user interacts with the application remotely by sending mouse-clicks and keystrokes to the server. The server then responds by sending screen updates back to the user’s device. Whereas application virtualization is limited to Windows-based operating systems, session virtualization allows any user on any operating system to access any application delivered by IT. As a result, the application enables Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android devices to run any applications using session virtualization. Furthermore, session virtualization leverages server-side processing power which liberates IT from the endless cycle of PC hardware refreshes which are typically needed to support application upgrades when using traditional application deployment methods.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Application_and_User_Session_Virtualization__1_.png","alias":"application-and-user-session-virtualization"},"327":{"id":327,"title":"Change and Configuration Management Software","description":" Software teams today face significant challenges. Companies require the production of high-quality software at unprecedented speeds. Software application requirements continue to grow more complex often with shorter and more frequent release cycles. Distributed development teams present challenges related to effective teaming, parallel development and diverse platforms - these factors and more intensify the pressures of developing quality software. Developing quality software in a repeatable and predictable fashion requires managing and tracking development artifacts and the activities of the development team. Successful development teams utilize software configuration management and software change management tools to help manage the software development lifecycle.\r\nSoftware configuration management provides version control and parallels development support to manage and control software assets.&nbsp; Software change management provides defect tracking and automation of software processes across the development lifecycle.\r\nSolutions that combine software configuration management and software change management in a single, tightly integrated solution are referred to as software change and configuration management (SCCM) solutions. SCCM solutions utilize activities to easily manage changes made to development artifacts. Unlike standalone SCM tools, SCCM solutions usually include substantial workflow capabilities which automate and effectively govern the software development processes for repeatable and predictable software development.\r\nEssentially, SCCM answers the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘why’ of software development. Who made the changes? What changes were made to the software? When were the changes made? Why were the changes made? Development teams and project leaders should be able to obtain answers to these questions to manage a project's activities, determine project status and track the actual product evolution.\r\nA fully comprehensive software change and configuration management (SCCM) solution empowers companies by accelerating software and systems delivery, making global teams more efficient, and governing the end-to-end software development processes. Solutions should be secure, flexible, and robust as well as provide the ability to support any size team, regardless of platform or location. Selecting ‘best in class’ solution, implementing proven best practices and partnering with a company that is a leader in technology reduces the risks associated with quality software development.","materialsDescription":" \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is software configuration management (SCM)?</span>\r\nSoftware configuration management (SCM) is designed to control change by identifying and tracking changed software artifacts and managing different versions of these artifacts.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is software change and configuration management (SCCM)?</span>\r\nSoftware change and configuration management (SCCM) provide the comprehensive integration with best practice guidance of software configuration management and software change management capabilities.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Change_and_Configuration_Management_Software.png","alias":"change-and-configuration-management-software"},"331":{"id":331,"title":"Network Management Software","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Network management software</span> is software that is used to provision, discover, monitor and maintain computer networks. \r\nWith the expansion of the world wide web and the Internet, computer networks have become very large and complex, making them impossible to manage manually. In response, a suite of network management software was developed to help reduce the burden of managing the growing complexity of computer networks. \r\nNetwork management software usually collects information about network devices (which are called Nodes) using protocols like SNMP, ICMP, CDP etc. This information is then presented to network administrators in an easy to understand and accessible manner to help them quickly identify and remediate problems. \r\nSome advanced network control software may rectify network problems automatically. Network management program may also help with tasks involved in provisioning new networks, such as installing and configuring new network nodes etc. Network management tools may also help with maintenance of existing networks like upgrading software on existing network devices, creating new virtual networks etc. \r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Functions</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Provisioning:</span> Enables network managers to provision new network devices in an environment. Automating this step reduces cost and eliminates chances of human error.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Mapping or Discovery:</span> Enables the software to discover the features of a target network. Some features that are usually discovered are: the nodes in a network, the connectivity between these nodes, the vendor types, the performance characteristics etc.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Monitoring:</span> Enables the network management system to monitor the network for problems and to suggest improvements. The software may poll the devices periodically or register itself to receive alerts from network devices. One mechanism for network devices to volunteer information about itself is by sending an SNMP Trap. Monitoring can reveal faults in the network such as failed or misconfigured nodes, performance bottlenecks, intrusions etc.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Configuration management:</span> Enables the software to ensure that the network configuration is as desired and there is no configuration drift.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Regulatory compliance:</span> Enables the network management system software to ensure that the network meets the regulatory standards and complies with applicable laws.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Change control:</span> Enables the software to ensure that the network changes are enacted in a controlled and coordinated manner. Change control can enable audit trails which has applications during a forensic investigation after a network intrusion.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Software Asset Management:</span>Provides software deployment and patch management.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Cybersecurity: </span>Enabled the software to use all the data gathered from the nodes to identify security risks in an IT environment.</p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">What does Network Inventory Management system mean?</h1>\r\nNetwork inventory management is the process of keeping records of all the IT or network assets that make up the network.\r\nIt enables network administrators/businesses to have a physical record of all IT and network equipment within the organization.\r\nNetwork inventory management is generally performed to through IT asset tracking software that scans, compiles and records data about each device/node over a network.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Network inventory management software may include:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>Number of routers, their make, type and place of installation, serial number</li><li>IP addresses of all devices/nodes, IP addressing scheme used</li><li>Number and type of software along with license keys and expiry dates</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">This data helps businesses with:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>Network size estimation</li><li>Network capacity planning</li><li>Network cost/ROI estimation</li><li>Physical network administration (to deal with device/equipment loss and theft)</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What is SNMP Management Software?</h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) management software</span> is an application or program used to manage and monitor many network devices – such as servers, printers, hubs, switches, and routers – that are SNMP-aware and which an SNMP agent software can poll and receive alert traps when needed.\r\nSNMP network management software is currently considered the best choice by professionals for IP (Internet Protocol) network management, and as a result, SNMP is widely supported and featured in many hardware devices and network management software packages. \r\nSNMP software is designed to be able to be deployed on a large number of network devices, to have minimal impact and transport requirements on the managed nodes and to continue working when most other network applications fail.\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Network_Management_Software.png","alias":"network-management-software"},"337":{"id":337,"title":"Sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png","alias":"sales"},"339":{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png","alias":"marketing"},"341":{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png","alias":"customer-service"},"347":{"id":347,"title":"Production Planning","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production planning</span> is the planning of production and manufacturing modules in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers.<br />Different types of production methods, such as single item manufacturing, batch production, mass production, continuous production etc. have their own type of production planning. Production planning can be combined with production control into production planning and control, or it can be combined with <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span>. \r\nProduction planning can help in efficient manufacturing or setting up of a production site by facilitating required needs.A production plan is made periodically for a specific time period, called the <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">planning horizon.</span>\r\nIn order to develop production plans, the <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">production planner</span> or <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">production planning department</span> needs to work closely together with the marketing department and sales department. They can provide sales forecasts, or a listing of customer orders.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production scheduling</span> is the process of syncing and planning the steps in the manufacturing process to ensure that production runs smoothly and customers receive what they ordered on schedule.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Areas of production scheduling</span></p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Procurement</span>: Production can't proceed if you don't have the materials necessary for manufacturing. Procurement scheduling is an art and a science that involves keeping enough on hand without carrying a bloated inventory. You can tighten procurement systems by using digital or manual spreadsheets to track inventory and by developing relationships with suppliers who can get you what you need consistently and quickly.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Personnel</span>: Planning and scheduling employee time is critical to developing a successful production work flow plan. There should be enough workers on hand to finish projects within the promised time frame but not enough to bloat your payroll or create inefficiencies by crowding your work space. It helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each staff member so you can leverage employee skills and circumvent potential difficulties.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Machinery</span>: Like your employees, your equipment has a limited number of capacity hours that should be scheduled thoughtfully. Machines should be well maintained according to a schedule that doesn't take them out of production any longer than necessary.</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Tools for Scheduling Production </span></p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Software</span>: Once the logistics of your production schedule become complex enough to bog you down, there is a range of software options available to help you manage the details. Programs help you to set priorities, coordinate processes and manage staffing.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Written documents</span>: If your production processes are relatively simple, you may be able to effectively create useful and meaningful lists so team members and managers have a clear idea of what needs to happen and in what order.&nbsp; Timelines and flow charts can help to provide useful visuals to help staff understand how processes interface.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Custom spreadsheet</span>s: You can also design your own spreadsheets to plan and communicate work flow. Custom spreadsheets offer the advantage of being tailored specifically to your company and your processes. They pose the disadvantage of potentially being less robust or nimble than a software system designed by professionals drawing on a deeper and broader database of scheduling tools and knowledge.</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What is production planning?</span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Production planning</span> – a systematic approach, which helps to calculate and estimate goals and stages of manufacturing process during the constant changes of multiple factors. Some of these factors might include an increase of product range, introduction of new manufacturing equipment, changing inventory stock and others.<br /><br />For a manufacturers it is very important to be able to make calculations and estimates of these factors as precisely, as possible. As a result they want to be able to answer all of the following questions:\r\n<ul><li>What are we planning to produce?</li><li>What do we need for that?</li><li>What do we have?</li><li>What else is needed?</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the types of&nbsp; production planning software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">The development of technology has made production-planning process very easy to perform. While there are still manufacturing companies, utilizing pen and paper, when doing their MRP estimates, most manufacturing companies using one or the other type of software solution.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Spreadsheet based software </span>– Excel, Open Office or Google Documents. For example Microsoft Excel comes with a standard Microsoft Office package already preinstalled on every Windows PC, thus baring no additional expenses for business.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In addition, Excel is a very easy tool to work with, it has a big user database worldwide, so any question that might occur will be answered.&nbsp; However, no matter how good of a tool Excel is, it has its limitations. One of these limitations is speed – the more different tables and individual files are being interlinked between each other, the slower is the performance of an Excel work file.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Custom made planning software </span>– this includes solutions done in-house. Companies that decide to go this route, most often than not have experience working with Excel or similar spreadsheet based software. By creating solution in-house manufacturer is thinking of increasing the productivity and reliability of its planning department.&nbsp; While idea of using some sort of software instead of a complex spreadsheet is a good one, creating a totally new planning software from scratch could be very challenging. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Specialized production planning software</span> – a professionally developed production planning software for small business offers the best of two worlds – it provides all the production planning features that a small business needs and unlike spreadsheet software it is fast and reliable.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What is project management software?</span></h1>\r\nProject management software is a suite of tools that helps improve production teams’ efficiency. They usually come as cloud-based, multi-user platforms that host features such project planning and scheduling, collaboration, advanced reporting, and project budgeting, among many others. They are meant to ensure that all project stakeholders are constantly in the know and that every project is delivered on time.<br /> \r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does project management software do?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Some of the best features revolve around the generation of repetitive and unique tasks and projects, team collaboration, project completion, proper tracking for the purposes of budgeting and due diligence, and effective documentation. But that’s par for the course for most applications in the market. </p>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project tracking.</span> This is the most basic function of a project management software: tracking your projects. This includes being able to track who worked on which task last, the general overview of the entire project, identifying bottlenecks, and identifying performers.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Easier collaboration.</span> It makes it easier for coworkers to check on the latest changes to a project, pick up where they left off, or pick up from where their colleagues left off.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></li></ul>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Better communication. </span>Part of the collaborative effort involves better communication, and the best project management software should make person-to-person and department-to-department communication easier and more efficient.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"></span></li></ul>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Documentation. </span>Since tracking a project involves documenting the knowledge gained throughout the entire endeavor, proper documentation is key. This means your app should be able to help you and your team simplify the process of documenting changes, technology, project updates, and new intelligence.</li></ul>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accurate dashboards for reporting. </span>This is an important purpose of productivity planner app and software. Accurate reporting is a key component of identifying your company’s KPI, and project management software should help you in generating the best reports for your business. </li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the factors to consider when getting a project management software?</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Task and project creation.</span> Most of the time, you’ll be using your project management software as a task calendar to create cyclical, templated projects. But once in a while, you’ll want to create unique tasks and projects for your company’s needs. The flexibility between creating unique tasks and projects and setting up templated ones is integral in ensuring that you are able to tackle projects of different shapes and sizes.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Simple and efficient reporting.</span> If you’re going to be working with a project management system, you’ll need accurate report creation powers. This feature is found in all of the best organiser apps in the market. And for good reason: when you’re working on a project that blew up in terms of man-hours and budget, you will want to be able to pinpoint just how much you spent on the project, and what caused the problem. A good reporting feature in a productivity calendar will go a long way in helping with this.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">File sharing options</span>. It’s always awesome whenever a project management solution offers decent storage space for all the files you’ll be sharing. But sometimes, having the option to use a third-party storage solution like Box or Dropbox can be helpful too, especially if you’re more familiar with another cloud storage provider.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Intuitive and clean UI. </span>A good user interface can make or break a good project management team. Sometimes, having an easy time using the application can be more important than what the application can do.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reliable support.</span> Who are you going to call when something breaks in your project management software? Knowing that you’re working with people who are willing and able to help you come up with a solution to your app’s issues is a treasure</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">&nbsp;</p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Production_Planning.png","alias":"production-planning"},"355":{"id":355,"title":"Payroll Accounting","description":"The accounting for payroll involves all aspects of paying compensation and benefits to employees. The outcome of this process is precise records regarding the expenses associated with all types of compensation, as well as timely payments to employees.\r\nThough some systems that incorporate more or less automatic payroll systems may not include all of these steps, the general process flow will apply to most payroll systems:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Set up new employees.</span> Have new employees fill out payroll-specific information as part of the hiring process, such as the W-4 form and medical insurance forms that may require payroll deductions. Set aside copies of this information in order to include it in the next payroll.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Collect timecard information.</span> Salaried employees require no change in wages paid for each payroll, but you must collect and summarize information about the hours worked by non-exempt employees. This may involve having employees scan a badge through a computerized time clock.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Verify timecard information.</span> Summarize the payroll information just collected and have supervisors verify that employees have correctly recorded their time.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Summarize wages due.</span> Multiply the number of hours worked by the pay rate for each employee, also factoring in any overtime or shift differentials.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Enter employee changes.</span> Employees may ask to have changes made to their paychecks, usually to the number of tax exemptions or pension withholdings. You may need to record much of this prior to calculating taxes, since it impacts the amount of wages to which taxes are applied.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Calculate taxes.</span> Use tax tables to determine the amount of taxes to be withheld from employee gross pay.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Calculate wage deductions.</span> There may be a number of additional deductions to take away from employee net income, including deductions for medical insurance, life insurance, garnishments, and union dues. You must also track the goal amounts for these deductions, so that you stop deducting once the goal totals are reached.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deduct manual payments.</span> If manual payments have already been made to employees, such as advances, then deduct these amounts from the remaining net pay.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Create a payroll register. </span>Summarize the wage and deduction information for each employee in a payroll register, which you can then summarize to also create a journal entry to record the payroll. This document is automatically created by all payroll software packages.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Print paychecks.</span> Print employee paychecks using the information in the payroll register. You normally itemize gross wages, deductions, and net pay in a remittance advice that accompanies the paycheck.\r\n <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Pay by direct deposit.</span> Notify your direct deposit processor of the amount of any direct deposit payments, and issue remittance advices to employees for these payments.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Issue paychecks.</span> Have a paymaster issue paychecks to employees, requiring employee identification if there are a large number of employees.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deposit withheld taxes.</span> Deposit all withheld payroll taxes and employer matched taxes at a bank that is authorized to handle these transactions.\r\nPayroll administration is one of the most important business processes your company performs, yet one of the most cumbersome and time-consuming daily activities. It doesn’t generate direct revenues, so keeping this process to a bare minimum in time and cost means savings and more efficiency to your business. This is why you need <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">payroll software</span>, so you can focus on income-generating strategies and daily core tasks.\r\nPayroll management software can be classified by: deployment (cloud vs. enterprise), business size (small business vs. enterprise) and target market (general vs. industry-specific). There is another way to distinctly classify payroll software, one that may impact on your workflows.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Integrated payroll management system.</span> Payroll, accounting and HRM have overlapping processes.; thus, often, payroll management is integrated as a module in accounting software, HRM or an organization-wide business system like ERP. It can be a standard feature or separately charged as an add-on. Integrated payroll management covers the core tasks like payroll processing, income tax calculations and paycheck printing.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dedicated payroll management.</span> These are standalone apps that go beyond core features of payroll and tax software with specialized functions as time-tracking &amp; attendance,&nbsp; customized reporting, benefits management and even a tax planner. A good dedicated payroll application should easily integrate with other HRM and accounting systems. This type of payroll system is popular among payroll services and small businesses.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the must have features for a payroll software?</span></h1>\r\nThe essential part of any organisation is payroll. Every worker’s salary compensation is based on the payroll system. Now the features of payroll software are used to streamline and handle the payments of the employees. From automating several tasks such as depositing the salaries, to taking care of taxes, a payroll management software is highly helpful. \r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Integrated Accounting.</span> The human resources team and the accounting department can save time for managing every payroll detail manually. Thus, payroll programs can eliminate the scope of miscalculation and placement of the critical data in a wrong file. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Recording Files and Payslips.</span> The software can generate reports including leave summary, salary benefits, and salary statements. By using the digital platform, the software can print payslip. Moreover, you can even download and print the regulatory payroll.&nbsp; Acting as the sole repository of employment record and document, this software can be handy for any business. This software includes essential features like experience letter, organisational chart, employees profile, occupational safety and tax, and offer letter.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting in Payroll Processing Software. </span>Through the software, you can customise the report criteria and follow the reporting tasks taken care of:<br /><ul><li>Timesheet reports</li><li>Balancing audit reports</li><li>Wage and liability audit-related reports</li><li>Unemployment wage reports</li></ul>Several reports and inquiry output formats which include email, XML, text file and printed report. As different teams use the reports, the software can restrict the allocation of essential resources. The features make the best out of the reporting operation. Before purchasing the software, you need to make sure that the essential reporting functions are available in your software.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Keeping Track of Earning.</span> One of the best payroll software features is that it manages the earnings of the employees. </li></ul>\r\n<br /> \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Tax Management Done Easily.</span> The features of the payroll software solutions&nbsp; execute the task of tax filing and computing. With the features the employee taxes are filed within the deadline. This way, the chances of facing penalties are avoided.&nbsp; The payroll program software stores pay calculating records every hour. It also pays attention to tax benefit purposes.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Depositing Directly to Account.</span> One of the best features of payroll soft is that the payroll is deposited to the bank account directly. The software saves huge expense on the annual supplies and processing. It can also take care of any fraudulent activities related to the employee’s salary. The funds are transferred within no time directly from the company account to the employee account.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customisation at its best.</span> Among all the key features personalisation plays an integral role. Through customising every check and form, the whole system of payroll software is managed. You can customise the tables and menus here. You can also customise the reports, screens, and fields to offer the best kind of service. The software can print logos of the organisation for attaching them to the reports and checks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">High Level of Security.</span> The primary security feature required in the software is that the database encryption. For restricting the highly valued resources like the tax files, employee personal details, and payroll information, the software has password protection. With the comprehensive audit trails, the security feature also focuses on the control access. This takes care of sensitive information to the highest degree. The addition of record level security can save the company form fraud cases at an optimal level.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Know about Streamlining.</span> The worker can get access to the records or printed pay stubs through the automatic generation of the payroll system. There is an option for getting in touch with the third-party administrator and track in-house bookkeeping.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Zero Error, High Level of Accuracy.</span> The best thing about payroll automation software is that every work is carried out by following a high level of skill. By installing the latest updates on the application, the features of payroll software remain upgraded. And the system does not have to pay the price of manual error. With the help of soft, there is less chance of human error. Also, the tax forms are pre-filled following the worker’s payroll details. The unbiased third-party app can keep the records up-to-date every hour even if you outsource the operations.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Payroll_Accounting.png","alias":"payroll-accounting"},"359":{"id":359,"title":"Order Management","description":" Order management is the administration of business processes related to orders for goods or services. Order management is the order-to-cash sales process that sits at the heart of any goods-based B2C and B2B company. Put simply, it’s the end-to-end cycle of receiving and processing a customer order through to fulfillment. \r\nOrder management is not conducted in isolation; it relies upon almost every department in a company: from a customer service team to the warehouse staff, the accounting department through to delivery partners. When mastered effectively, order management ensures a business’s workflow runs smoothly by establishing efficient processes to keep it moving forward; maintaining customer satisfaction and protecting a company’s reputation.\r\nOrder management involves a series of interconnected touchpoints and stakeholders who work collaboratively together to enable customers to order the right products, for the right price and receive them at the right time. The order fulfillment system (as it is also known) not only secures that order-to-cash (O2C) processes run smoothly, but also gives businesses the opportunity to build customer profiles and keep track of inventory volume and sales records.\r\nWhen scaling your business, it’s important to automate and streamline this process — otherwise, you’ll eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer number of orders coming in. An ordering system gives you a one-stop shop to view and manage all customer orders in one place.\r\nSome systems offer a two-way sync that makes sure order information is passed between your order management system and your ecommerce platform while providing you with visibility into the entire process. This can help automate the flow of sales order information to every piece of the supply chain. That means you can track the entire journey of a customer order, from the “Buy” button to delivery — and even returns.\r\nOrder processing is the process or work flow from order placement to delivery. This is a key element of order fulfillment, where reliability and accuracy lead to customer satisfaction. Steps in order processing include picking, sorting, tracking and shipping. Order processing can range from manual (hand written on an order log sheet) to highly technological and data driven (through online orders and order processing software) depending on the operation.\r\nIn order to establish a fast-moving, cost-effective and accurate order management cycle, both B2C and B2B companies are choosing to use an integrated and responsive order management system (OMS). The OMS integrates directly with a business’s ERP and is set up to work alongside the human workforce in order to obtain the most productive and profitable order management cycle possible.\r\nAn integrated order management system may encompass these modules:\r\n<ul><li>Product information (descriptions, attributes, locations, quantities)</li><li>Inventory available to promise (ATP) and sourcing</li><li>Vendors, purchasing, and receiving</li><li>Marketing (catalogs, promotions, pricing)</li><li>Customers and prospects</li><li>Order entry and customer service (including returns and refunds)</li><li>Financial processing (credit cards, billing, payment on account)</li><li>Order processing (selection, printing, picking, packing, shipping) </li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What is OMS software?</span></h1>\r\nAn order management system is a software system that facilitates and manages the execution of trade orders. An order management system is any tool or platform that tracks sales, orders, inventory, and fulfillment as well as enables the people, processes, and partnerships necessary for products to find their way to the customers who bought them. \r\nAn order processing system software should provide one centralized place to manage orders from all sales channels. Centralizing this in one system is critical to delivering a superior customer experience by providing order status, on-time deliveries and meeting customer expectations for buy, fulfill and return anywhere. \r\nThe right solution gives you a foundation for consistent and seamless execution across all customer, financial, inventory and supply chain touch points that drives customer satisfaction, repeat business and long-term loyalty. Additionally, order management systems can improve sales visibility and reduce delays and back orders by giving you a single view of demand, inventory and supply.\r\nAn effective order management system software lets you seamlessly orchestrate the fulfillment of products and services across virtually all your customer touch points. Without a centralized order management system, realizing a comprehensive view of demand, transactions and customers across all channels and fulfillment locations can be extremely difficult.\r\nOrder management software equips you to think beyond the inventory on hand to focus on what's available to promise to your customers. It eliminates costly and rigid inventory segmentation across channels and business units with a single, real-time, consolidated view of inventory across the enterprise, from your suppliers and manufacturing facilities to your warehouse and stores.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">How to choose the right OMS software?</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Define your system objectives and priorities of each.</span> By doing so and discussing with your internal stakeholders, you’ll clearly understand features that are “absolute requirements” vs. ones that are “nice to have.” Don’t forget to factor in scalability and future thinking.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Draft a request for proposal (RFP)</span>. This will help your team get organized and both you and the vendor(s) understand the technical requirements and limitations of the system you’re hoping to implement. Don’t forget to include order volumes, number of SKUs, current vendor landscape, existing software, hardware, and networks, a timeline for the systems acquisition process, and details on training &amp; enablement.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Research systems options</span>. It’s unlikely that you’ll find an ideal fit for your business with your first contact (but how amazing would that be), so compile a list of 4-6 vendors to evaluate and reach out to for demos or trails. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Review trade-offs.</span> It’s unlikely you’ll find a vendor that is a 100% fit and your final selection will be based on a number of trade-off criteria. Feature &amp; function alone shouldn’t be your sole selection criteria as you’ll want to take into account the entirety of the business relationship you’re getting into.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">How do your customers benefit from an online order management system?</span></h1>\r\nAn online ordering software doesn’t just benefit you, though. It also benefits your customers. The system will give them a quick, convenient, and 24/7 way to place orders without having to call or email your staff, or fill out old-fashioned Excel or Word order forms. They'll have instant, online updates on the status of their orders, and they’ll have greater confidence that their orders will arrive on-time and with the correct items. An online order management system also makes your company look more professional in the eyes of your customers.Here are three ways they benefit:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">They can place orders on their schedule.</span> Between managing employees, servicing customers, and marketing their business, most business owners are working on a very tight schedule. Taking the time to call or email your sales staff or meet with a sales rep can be challenging. Using an online product ordering system that allows customers to log on at their convenience and quickly choose the items they want to order goes a long way for customer service. If they place the same order on a regular basis, they can use a reorder feature which duplicates previous orders. The whole process takes a matter of seconds. So alleviate this challenge by implementing a system that allows your customers to place an order anytime.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">They can check their order status at any time.</span> One of the biggest challenges a business faces is managing their inventory. On one hand, they want to have enough inventory available to service their customers. On the other hand, they don’t want to have inventory piling up on their shelves. There’s a critical need to know with confidence when inventory will arrive.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li> <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">They have a higher probability of receiving the correct order in a timely manner. </span>Nothing will erode your customers' trust more than making errors on their shipments and invoices. If it happens once, that may be forgiven as a simple mistake. However, if it happens repeatedly, your customer is likely to start looking for alternative options. An online order management system with warehouse integration can send the order directly to your third party warehouse. This reduces the probability that an error will be made. The less people who handle the order information, the lower the likelihood for human error.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Order_Management.png","alias":"order-management"},"361":{"id":361,"title":"Financial Performance and Strategy Management Applications","description":" Strategic financial management means not only managing a company's finances but managing them with the intention to succeed—that is, to attain the company's goals and objectives and maximize shareholder value over time. However, before a company can manage itself strategically, it first needs to define its objectives precisely, identify and quantify its available and potential resources, and devise a specific plan to use its finances and other capital resources toward achieving its goals.\r\nStrategic financial management is about creating profit for the business and ensuring an acceptable return on investment (ROI). Financial management is accomplished through business financial plans, setting up financial controls, and financial decision making.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is financial performance management?</span>\r\nAlso known as corporate performance management, financial performance management refers to the ways that a company manages and monitors financial results across an organization. The primary purpose of financial performance management is to compare actual results to budgets and forecasts and make adjustments accordingly. The result? Companies are better equipped to meet their business goals.\r\nVentana Research describes financial performance management as a specific set of capabilities that includes &quot;defining their company's key performance indicators, formulating strategic plans and forecasts, handling performance reporting, and increasing finance operational efficiency and execution company-wide.”\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is financial performance management software?</span>\r\nFinancial performance management software, also known as corporate performance management software, streamlines financial management processes. This software connects budgeting, planning, close, consolidation, reporting, and disclosure to a single data source. It enables users to complete these tasks in one software system, as opposed to many separate systems.\r\nIn essence, financial performance management software consolidates information, formats it to meet compliance requirements, and provides automated tools that enable finance to create regulatory reports and disclosures. In addition to a central data repository and workflow tools, financial performance management software has features to create, manage, validate, and publish financial statements and reports. Best-in-class financial performance management software even has a robust suite of communication tools that foster collaboration and improve audit controls.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the benefits of corporate performance management?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Corporate performance management helps companies become more agile when faced with unexpected business events.</span> With features like KPI dashboards, real-time data, and responsive plans that change as actuals do, CFOs and finance executives can understand what’s happening and take action faster.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Corporate performance management helps companies make better decisions.</span> CPM systems often have automated features like scenario modeling, rolling forecasts, and what-if scenarios analysis. Using these in combination with a single version of automated data, executives can better analyze performance, respond to change, and make more informed decisions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Corporate performance management helps companies focus on analysis.</span> Using corporate performance software, users spend less time on manual tasks like data collection and data entry. Instead, they can focus their time on value-added activities like analyzing profitability, reducing costs, business partnering with executive decision-makers, and developing a strategy.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Corporate performance management helps companies interpret large amounts of data quickly.</span> CPM as we know it is evolving. Once CPM was purely financial management. Today, organizations are sitting on a treasure trove of information, that if adequately managed, could provide telling insights about the state of business and the direction decision-makers should take next. Modernized CPM solutions help financial users identify these underlying trends, unearth insights, and interpret large amounts of data quickly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Corporate performance management aligns the entire organization, from corporate to subsidiaries to divisions to LoBs, departments, and individual contributors all in a single solution.</span> CPM software aligns every part of the organization to a central data source, so collaborators make all decisions, create reports, and perform analysis with financial truth top of mind and with finance at the heart of every decision.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Financial_Performance_and_Strategy_Management_Applications.png","alias":"financial-performance-and-strategy-management-applications"},"369":{"id":369,"title":"File Synchronization and Sharing Software","description":" Enterprise file synchronization and sharing (also known as EFSS and enterprise file sync and share) refer to software services that enable organizations to securely synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files from multiple devices with employees, and external customers and partners. Organizations often adopt these technologies to prevent employees from using consumer-based file sharing apps to store, access and manage corporate data that is outside of the IT department’s control and visibility.\r\nEFSS applications are often characterized by having most or all of the following features and capabilities:\r\n<ul><li>Sync files stored incorporate storage to user desktops and devices</li><li>Send links to large files with support for multiple file extensions and protocols</li><li>Integration to existing business applications via APIs, plugins and mobile apps</li><li>Built-in file creation, editing and previewing</li><li>User access permissions to files and folders</li><li>Protection of files stored and transferred by encryption, antivirus scanning, and DLP (data loss prevention)</li><li>Publish links to files with the ability to set a login requirement to access data</li><li>Authentication options for Active Directory, SAML, Azure Active Directory, etc.</li><li>Schedule and automate file transfers from automated systems and repositories</li><li>Audit and report file activities and system actions</li></ul>\r\nDepending on what an EFSS provider offers, services can be deployed using cloud computing, on-premises, or hybrid. According to Forrester Research, some EFSS providers can provide the ability to lock down data in certain geographies for companies that have requirements to store content/metadata in specific jurisdictions.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is File Synchronization and Sharing Software?</span>\r\nFile synchronization and sharing software enable companies to securely synchronize and share photos, documents, videos, and files from multiple sources with their customers, partners, and employees.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the benefits of File Synchronization and Sharing Software?</span>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Better Protection.</span> Cloud-based file-sharing services are limited in their ability to protect your sensitive business documents. As high profile service providers, they are under an increased threat of attack by hackers, as seen in recent headlines regarding security concerns and data breaches.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Efficiency and Control.</span> Sending email attachments can be problematic due to file size restrictions or their vulnerability to interception during transmission.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Convenience.</span> File Synchronization and Sharing Software eliminate the need for memory sticks to transport data and the risk associated with using them. Your files can be securely accessed anywhere, anytime with a secure Internet connection and browser.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Easy Sharing.</span> Network drives can be found in nearly every office for sharing files within your department. However, it's not so convenient if you want to share files between remote office locations or when working offsite. EFSS enables you to connect and share simply and easily without boundaries.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_File_Synchronization_and_Sharing_Software.png","alias":"file-synchronization-and-sharing-software"},"401":{"id":401,"title":"Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services","description":" Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. An SOA service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies.\r\nA service has four properties according to one of many definitions of SOA:\r\n<ul><li>It logically represents a business activity with a specified outcome.</li><li>It is self-contained.</li><li>It is a black box for its consumers, meaning the consumer does not have to be aware of the service's inner workings.</li><li>It may consist of other underlying services.</li></ul>\r\nDifferent services can be used in conjunction to provide the functionality of a large software application,[4] a principle SOA shares with modular programming. Service-oriented architecture integrates distributed, separately maintained and deployed software components. It is enabled by technologies and standards that facilitate components' communication and cooperation over a network, especially over an IP network.\r\nSOA is related to the idea of an application programming interface (API), an interface or communication protocol between different parts of a computer program intended to simplify the implementation and maintenance of software. An API can be thought of as the service, and the SOA the architecture that allows the service to operate.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Service-Oriented Architecture?</span>\r\nService-oriented architecture (SOA) is a software architecture style that supports and distributes application components that incorporates discovery, data mapping, security and more. Service-oriented architecture has two main functions:\r\n<ol><li>Create an architectural model that defines goals of applications and methods that will help achieve those goals.</li><li>Define implementations specifications linked through WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) specifications.</li></ol>\r\nService-oriented architecture principles are made up of nine main elements:\r\n<ol><li>Standardized Service Contract where services are defined making it easier for client applications to understand the purpose of the service.</li><li>Loose Coupling is a way to interconnecting components within the system or network so that the components can depend on one another to the least extent acceptable. When a service functionality or setting changes there is no downtime or breakage of the application running.</li><li>Service Abstraction hides the logic behind what the application is doing. It only relays to the client application what it is doing, not how it executes the action.</li><li>Service Reusability divides the services with the intent of reusing as much as possible to avoid spending resources on building the same code and configurations.</li><li>Service Autonomy ensures the logic of a task or a request is completed within the code.</li><li>Service Statelessness whereby services do not withhold information from one state to another in the client application.</li><li>Service Discoverability allows services to be discovered via a service registry.</li><li>Service Composability breaks down larger problems into smaller elements, segmenting the service into modules, making it more manageable.</li><li>Service Interoperability governs the use of standards (e.g. XML) to ensure larger usability and compatibility.</li></ol>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Does Service-Oriented Architecture Work?</span>\r\nA service-oriented architecture (SOA) works as a components provider of application services to other components over a network. Service-oriented architecture makes it easier for software components to work with each other over multiple networks.\r\nA service-oriented architecture is implemented with web services (based on WSDL and SOAP), to be more accessible over standard internet protocols that are on independent platforms and programming languages.\r\nService-oriented architecture has 3 major objectives all of which focus on parts of the application cycle:\r\n<ol><li>Structure process and software components as services – making it easier for software developers to create applications in a consistent way.</li><li>Provide a way to publish available services (functionality and input/output requirements) – allowing developers to easily incorporate them into applications.</li><li>Control the usage of these services for security purposes – mainly around the components within the architecture, and securing the connections between those components.</li></ol>\r\nMicroservices architecture software is largely an updated implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The software components are created as services to be used via APIs ensuring security and best practices, just as in traditional service-oriented architectures.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture?</span>\r\nThe main benefits of service-oriented architecture solutions are:\r\n<ul><li>Extensibility – easily able to expand or add to it.</li><li>Reusability – opportunity to reuse multi-purpose logic.</li><li>Maintainability – the ability to keep it up to date without having to remake and build the architecture again with the same configurations.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Service_Oriented_Architecture_and_Web_Services.png","alias":"service-oriented-architecture-and-web-services"},"405":{"id":405,"title":"Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">A mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP)</span> is a development environment that provides tools and middleware to develop, test, deploy and manage corporate software running on mobile devices.\r\nEnterprise mobile application development addresses the difficulties of developing mobile software by managing the diversity of devices, networks and user groups at the time of deployment and throughout the mobile computing technology lifecycle. Unlike standalone apps, an enterprise mobile app development services a comprehensive, long-term approach to deploying mobility. Cross-platform considerations are one big driver behind using MEAPs. For example, a company can use an enterprise mobile app development to develop the mobile application once and deploy it to a variety of mobile devices (including smart phones, tablets, notebooks and ruggedized handhelds) with no changes to the underlying business logic.\r\nPlatform applications are best for companies that wish to deploy multiple applications on a single infrastructure, scaled to the size of their current mobile field force and available in an online and offline mode. Enterprise mobile app platform provides higher level languages and easy development templates to simplify and speed the mobile application development timeframe, requiring less programming knowledge for mobile business application deployment.\r\nThere are many advantages associated with enterprise mobile application development platform. First of all, it can be run on the cloud. Without maintaining separate sets of code, mobile enterprise application platforms can support multiple types of operating systems and mobile devices. This means a company can deploy a mobile application to different mobile devices with the help of mobile enterprise application platforms without having to worry about compatibility. As most enterprise mobile development platforms have a tool set for modifications, creation of custom app extensions is quite easy and convenient. Enterprise mobile application platforms can centrally manage mobile applications and can also help in integration with multiple server data sources.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">What are the benefits of enterprise mobile app platform? </h1>\r\n<ul><li>Create apps and complex forms for any type of mobile device and OS without having to maintain separate sets of code.</li><li>Create tailor-made apps for specific user groups, giving them exactly what they need; usually, a mash-up of reading/writing access to your backend systems, publicly available web services and device features such as camera, GPS, sign-on screen, etc.</li><li>Requires basic and limited coding skills e.g. HTML and CSS.</li><li>Allows a high degree of re-use of the code and interactions developed.</li><li>Provide the offline capability for mobile users in areas without WiFi or cellular coverage.</li><li>Once the platform is integrated into the important back-end systems, creating new apps and forms can be done in hours rather than weeks or months.</li><li>Enterprise mobile application development services can be run on the cloud and purchased on a subscription basis.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Pros and cons of MEAP</h1>\r\nAlong with the benefits described above, a mobile enterprise application platform extends beyond fourth-generation language (4GL) tools for app development to use a graphical environment and dedicated script language. The tool makes business apps accessible to users from any location at any time. For ease of IT management, some MEAP products can run as a cloud service.\r\nA MEAP, like any technology, comes with challenges. The initial investment is high - it's expensive to begin with, though the total cost of ownership (TCO) goes down with use over time - and it requires IT to perform additional tasks such as updating content, securing data, maintaining applications with updates and managing user authentication.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Important features</h1>\r\nIn general, a MEAP has two important features:\r\n<ul><li>A mobile application development environment and back-end web services to manage those mobile applications and link them to enterprise applications and databases.</li><li>A centralized management component that enables an administrator to control which users can access an application and what enterprise databases that application can pull data from.</li></ul>\r\nSometimes, organizations will use a mobile enterprise application platform in conjunction with enterprise mobility management (EMM) or mobile device management (MDM). MDM manages mobile devices, while MEAP products manage the enterprise applications running on those devices - although there is sometimes overlap between the functionalities of these two technologies.\r\n<br /><br /> ","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Mobile_Enterprise_Application_Platforms.png","alias":"mobile-enterprise-application-platforms"},"407":{"id":407,"title":"Communities","description":" An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a virtual community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a &quot;family of invisible friends&quot;. Those who wish to be a part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and thereby gain access to specific content or links. An online community can act as an information system where members can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate. Commonly, people communicate through social networking sites, chat rooms, forums, e-mail lists and discussion boards. People may also join online communities through video games, blogs and virtual worlds. The rise in popularity of Web 2.0 websites has allowed for easier real-time communication and ability to connect to others as well as producing new ways for information to be exchanged.\r\nThe idea of a community is not a new concept. On the telephone, in ham radio and in the online world, social interactions no longer have to be based on proximity; instead they can literally be with anyone anywhere. The study of communities has had to adapt along with the new technologies. Many researchers have used ethnography to attempt to understand what people do in online spaces, how they express themselves, what motivates them, how they govern themselves, what attracts them, and why some people prefer to observe rather than participate. Online communities can congregate around a shared interest and can be spread across multiple websites.\r\nSome signs of community are:\r\n<ul><li>Content: articles, information, and news about a topic of interest to a group of people.</li><li>Forums or newsgroups and email: so that community members can communicate in delayed fashion.</li><li>Chat and instant messaging: so that community members can communicate more immediately.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are Community Platforms?</span>\r\nCommunity Platforms manage the process of creating and maintaining a space for productive discussion among community members. Members can share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. This process is sometimes referred to as &quot;community engagement.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Key Use Cases for Community Platforms</span>\r\n<ul><li>Support community for self-help and peer or expert advice</li><li>Ideation</li><li>Private social networking</li><li>Gauge customer satisfaction</li><li>Identify customer advocates</li><li>Increase customer/employee engagement</li><li>Distribute community news and updates</li><li>Generate content with programs like community blogging</li></ul>\r\nMature communities deliver business value in a variety of ways. They increase engagement, address support issues and pain points, measure satisfaction, and build stronger relationships. Platforms may support external communities, internal communities, or both. These benefits apply to both customer and employee communities.\r\nThere are different types of community platforms, including open source options for community managers who want to develop their own platform. Some SMB-focused community platforms focus on one aspect of community, like Q&amp;A, ideation, or link sharing. Enterprise-grade community platforms are more feature-rich. They might include complex, hierarchal capabilities like multi-tiered advocacy programs with moderator permissions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Factors to Consider When Selecting a Community Platform</span>\r\nIt is important to consider whether membership will be explicit and exclusive so that the community is open to registered members only.\r\nIn order to determine how employees or customers are likely to engage with a community platform, some community managers set up a free community platform or private social network group to run a testing phase.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Community Platforms vs. Help Desk Software, CMS, and Collaboration Tools</span>\r\nCommunity management tools have some overlap with help desk software, which often includes community features like Q&amp;A for self-help. Some community platforms integrate with help desk systems.\r\nThere is also overlap with content management systems (CMS), especially in heavily moderated external communities, where posts/articles by advocates and experts might be promoted and shared elsewhere.\r\nSome community platforms, especially for internal communities, may overlap with collaboration tools as well. Collaboration tools tend to be more focused on one-on-one interactions between users, and on getting projects done (via file sharing, etc.). Community interactions are more often one-to-many and focused on help, general engagement, feedback, and ideation.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Gamification</span>\r\nGamification is a strategy in which points, rules, and competition are used to increase engagement. Some community platforms use game dynamics to incentivize and reward member participation.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Community Moderation</span>\r\nModeration is a system for controlling potential abuse of the community platform. Moderation is important because fear of defamation is one of the biggest obstacles to creating an external community. For some companies promoting the voice of the customer feels risky.\r\nThere are two approaches to moderation: curating users (like restricting membership or blocking/reporting certain members) or curating content.\r\nMost community platforms allow administrators to act as moderators. Some have more advanced hierarchical systems for moderation. These allow administrators to grant certain members moderator permissions.\r\nContent curation includes restricting content access, removing content, editing content, or responding to content. This is often a top-down reaction to member contributions. It can also involve broader community participation such as voting on, rating and reporting content.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Pricing Information</span>\r\nThere are many providers of collaboration software spanning a wide range of capabilities from very inexpensive products designed for small teams, to highly sophisticated enterprise products. Enterprise-level systems cost in the region of $100 per user per month, with price breaks for high numbers of users.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Communities.png","alias":"communities"},"409":{"id":409,"title":"Content Collaboration","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content collaboration</span> software makes it easy for your users to securely create, access, share and manage business content.\r\nThe content collaboration platform (CCP) market covers a range of products and services that enable content productivity and collaboration. CCPs are aimed at individuals and teams, inside or outside an organization. Additionally, CCPs increasingly support lightweight content management and workflow use cases. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Core user functionalities include: </span>\r\n<ul><li>Mobile access to content repositories.</li><li> File synchronization across devices and cloud repositories.</li><li>File sharing with people and applications, inside or outside an organization. </li><li>Team collaboration, with dedicated folders.</li><li>A content repository. This can be cloud based collaboration software or on-premises program, native to the CCP platform or based on other file servers or repositories.</li></ul>\r\nCommon <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">features </span>of collaboration software include messaging, audio and video conferencing, task management, document management, calendars, and time tracking.\r\nFrom employees and decision-makers to partners, vendors, regulators and customers, your users benefit from easy, secure access to valuable business content. Rather than keeping files locked up in silos, content collaboration software enables information to flow safely and freely within your organization and across your firewall to external contacts.\r\nSecuring those documents is the challenge. Unless your content collaboration software maintains the highest standards of performance, security, auditing and reliability, cross-enterprise document sharing may lead to inadvertent data leaks or malicious security breaches.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Types of collaboration software tools</h1>\r\nGenerally, collaboration software can be divided into synchronous (or real-time) and asynchronous. Using synchronous software, teammates can work together at the same time, for example with apps that allow several users to edit the same document in real time. Asynchronous software enables users to work on the same task at different times.\r\nBased on their key features, collaboration software can be classified into:\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Communication software</span></p>\r\nTo solve communication problems, communication software offers chat and audio or video collaboration platform so people can communicate within teams without having to travel. As a result, communication software saves time, helps solve problems faster, and allows remote teams to connect, which otherwise would be difficult and time-consuming.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Key features include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Chat and messaging to enable real-time text conversations using direct messages or group chats</li><li>Audio and video conferencing to let people make calls and hold meetings regardless of their location</li><li>Discussion threads to allow users to reply to one particular message in a group chat or channel without distracting other teammate</li><li>File sharing or file collaboration software to make it fast and easy to upload and send files</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Task management software</span></p>\r\nTask management is an important part of collaboration. Teams use task management software to prioritize and track tasks, which helps to keep track of deadlines. To make collaboration more transparent and effective, task management software often provides boards, timelines, and calendars.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Key features include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Boards to create and manage tasks</li><li>Task assignment to appoint people to a task</li><li>Task prioritization to move tasks and set the project schedule</li><li>Planning and scheduling to create plans and meet deadlines using timelines and calendars</li><li>File management to attach and arrange file</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Document and content management software</span></p>\r\nDocument and content management software allows users to store, share, and work together on different files. Most of these tools track history of changes that different users make. Some collaboration apps and platforms also have features like chat and video conferencing, allowing users to collaborate on a document and communicate at the same time.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Key features include:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Document and content management to store and track documents and other files</li><li>Cooperative writing to let several people write content together</li><li>Synchronous editing to let several people edit the same document at the same time and see changes in real time</li><li> Ready-made templates to create documents faster</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Content_Collaboration.png","alias":"content-collaboration"},"411":{"id":411,"title":"Enterprise Cloud Content Collaboration","description":" Cloud collaboration is a way of sharing and co-authoring computer files through the use of cloud computing, whereby documents are uploaded to a central &quot;cloud&quot; for storage, where they can then be accessed by others. Cloud collaboration technologies allow users to upload, comment and collaborate on documents and even amend the document itself, evolving the document. Businesses in the last few years have increasingly been switching to the use of cloud collaboration.\r\nCloud computing is a marketing term for technologies that provide software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. A parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, where end-users consume power without needing to understand the component devices or infrastructure required to utilize the technology.\r\nCollaboration refers to the ability of workers to work together simultaneously on a particular task. Document collaboration can be completed face to face. However, collaboration has become more complex, with the need to work with people all over the world in real-time on a variety of different types of documents, using different devices.\r\nEnterprise cloud content collaboration software works as dedicated cloud storage for documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, and other files created by a business.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Enterprise Cloud Content Collaboration?</span>\r\nCloud collaboration enables people to work simultaneously on documents that live ‘in the cloud’ – so you can access files from anywhere with an internet connection.\r\nThe start of a cloud collaboration process involves one user creating a file or document and giving access to other members of the team. Anyone who has access can make changes to the document at any time, including when other people are editing or viewing it. Any changes that you make save and sync – so every user sees the same version of the project whenever (and wherever) they view it.\r\nThis means that teams in different locations can collaborate on documents together. And there are other benefits too:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Say goodbye to email attachments</span></span>\r\nIt used to be the case that you’d have to email separate attachments to each person participating in a project if they were working remotely. This makes version control hard. People end up with several different versions of the same document which complicates things – parts of the project can get missed or people duplicate the same work.\r\nCloud collaboration tools simplify the process by keeping files in a central location. Employees can edit and review the same document without having to send an updated version to everyone in the team.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Equal Participation with other team members</span></span>\r\nSome remote employees can feel left out of the conversation. All too often they think they don’t have the same opportunities as others to share their input, which isn’t good for team morale.\r\nWith cloud collaboration tools, every employee has access to projects and can offer their viewpoint and creativity. They can also share ideas in informal online meetings.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Work as a team in real-time</span></span>\r\nWith the rise in flexible working, employees are no longer expected to stick to the traditional 9-5 Monday-Friday. Teams can work on projects at any time of the day and don’t even have to be in the same country. Edits and updates appear in real-time and everyone who has access to the document can read them.\r\nUsing the right collaboration platforms is also important. It’s particularly useful if your platforms integrate with the tools you already use. Existing cloud-based tools such as Jira and BlueJeans can be paired with platforms like Workplace, for example. This helps speed up collaboration among your teams and helps you get the very best out of the various tools your organization uses every day.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Brainstorm ideas better</span></span>\r\nWhen your teams are disparate and far-flung, it can be difficult to get everyone together to discuss ideas. The cloud can be a valuable brainstorming facility – enabling you to share thoughts and have productive interactions. The cloud is an ideal medium to develop innovative ideas and facilitate better communication between staff, project managers, and other contributors.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Access large files easily</span></span>\r\nSending and receiving large files can slow you down. Most email servers can’t handle documents bigger than a few megabytes. With a cloud-based collaboration platform, you can share audio, video and other large files with ease. Because you’re simply storing them in the cloud, there’s no need to ‘send’ them. People can go directly to the cloud storage service to find the file they need.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Enterprise_Cloud_Content_Collaboration.png","alias":"enterprise-cloud-content-collaboration"},"415":{"id":415,"title":"Mobile Enterprise Applications","description":"The term <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">enterprise mobile application</span> is used in context of mobile apps created/brought by individual organizations for their workers to carry out functions required to run the organization.\r\nAn enterprise mobile app belonging to an organization is expected to be used by only the workers of that organization. The definition of enterprise mobility apps do not include the mobile apps that an organization create for its customers or consumers of the products or services generated by the organization. \r\nProviders of mobile enterprise application solutions create and develop apps for individual organizations that can buy instead of creating the apps themselves. Reasons for Organizations buying the apps include time and cost savings, technical expertise. Today Enterprise Mobility is playing track role for enterprise transformation.\r\nCompanies are rapidly incorporating mobile applications into their larger IT strategies, allowing them to grow their mobile presence further. Big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning are all propelling this growth.\r\nNeed for enterprise mobility applications arose with mobile devices becoming essential in the day to day life and with employees using mobile devices for business purposes. This lead companies to adapt to either Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE) approach for Enterprise Mobility. BYOD is making significant progress in the business world, with employees using their own technology at work.\r\nOrganizations having their internal mobile teams develop the apps internally and deploy them. However, some organizations go for enterprise mobile app development company with wide experience in creating Mobile strategies and deploying the apps for Medium to Large Scale Enterprises. These companies provide options for Pre built and custom built turn-key suite of apps. ","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are corporate mobile apps?</span></h1>\r\nConventionally, corporate mobile applications can be divided into several groups.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The first group</span></span> is applications designed only for work. Their main goal is to reduce company costs, optimize business processes, and, as a result, increase profits. Another option is an application to increase the efficiency of the analytical department, giving its users the opportunity to improve monitoring of the market, competitors, quickly collect and process data on prices, points of sale of goods, etc.</li><li><span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The second group</span></span> is applications that integrate work and communication. These include corporate social networks, so popular recently. Created in the image and likeness of social networks familiar to everyone, they successfully combine work functionality and allow employees to communicate with each other, create personal pages, workgroups, communities, keep blogs, receive news about the company, share important files, create a common information base and use it at any time. </li><li><span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The third group</span></span> is applications for monitoring remote employees. Office workers are easy to control: most of the day they are at their workplace, and if necessary, you can organize a system of electronic passes. Remote employees are left to their own devices - it’s very difficult to check whether they arrived at the site on time and reached at all, how many points they visited in a day, and whether they used company materials and equipment to fulfill “left” orders. </li><li><span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The fourth group</span></span> is Service Desk and Help Desk, designed to automate the processing of client requests while providing technical support to users of IT departments. Most of these systems are online, because it is important for the user to solve the problem as quickly as possible. With their help, you can provide customer support directly from your mobile device. Applications provide an opportunity in the background to access the list of applications, view in detail individual applications, make changes to them, respond and work with comments.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Top 5 enterprise mobility app features you must know</h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Centrally Moderated and Strongly Secured Data Infrastructure.</span> Security must never be at bay when it comes to enterprise mobility apps. In the age of information, data is undoubtedly the most valuable commodity, losing which can result in a massive loss for business enterprises. Data sharing done via enterprise mobility apps or solutions need to be monitored. Construct a centrally moderated and highly secure (multi-level security) infrastructure for enterprise mobility solutions. This approach enhances trust and ensures that critical business data remains safe always.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automation of Processes.</span> Automation is the main factor behind the adoption of enterprise mobility in the core business processes by the organizations. Businesses aim to streamline their operations with minimal human intervention and cut back on time/cost. The number of device usage in the enterprise domain is increasing year-after-year. The growth showcases the seriousness of organizations to adopt top enterprise mobile apps for enhancing automation and processes for better efficiency. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Real-Time Analytics and Connectivity.</span> The integration of enterprise mobility applications in the existing system leverages the technology benefits for seeking better insights into the ongoing processes. Every enterprise app must have cognitive analytical capabilities to succeed. Modern organizations have to manage thousands of procedures, offerings and deal with hundreds of stakeholders at any point in time. In case of such massive data overloads, every enterprise aims to have a real-time data analysis to make better decisions for growth in the future.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Incredible User Experience.&nbsp; </span>An enterprise mobility app must deliver an intuitive user experience. Not only should it focus on making the functionality better, but also on offering the best experience to the users. This step, in turn, will boost app adoption within the enterprise, fulfilling the organization’s aim for automation. The app must contain futuristic features such as in-app notifications, multi-platform support, offline functionality, etc., to offer an incredible user experience. <br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Event-Driven Approach. </span>Event-driven approach and architecture is the main differentiator, which fuels digital business transformation. This approach mainly revolves around the delivery of solutions that fulfill organizational objectives by offering rapid response to specific events. Moreover, the event-driven approach aims to transform the task flow based on particular circumstances. Businesses would be able to leverage dynamic opportunities to the maximum potential and provide real-time solutions by choosing the event-driven approach for their enterprise mobility applications. </p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Mobile_Enterprise_Applications.jpg","alias":"mobile-enterprise-applications"},"419":{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","description":" The world economy has become service- and project-driven. Global businesses have realized the new playing field is not based solely on competing with products and price, but rather through client-driven projects that require unique consulting knowledge, skills and experience.\r\nThis project-driven service economy depends on accurately capturing knowledge-worker productivity—how much time, skill, materials, and intellectual property are required to produce favorable client outcomes? New cloud-based services resource planning (SRP) applications have emerged to manage the entire project lifecycle from requirements to quoting, time and expense capture and billing.\r\nSRP provides the systems basis for the initiation, planning, resource management, execution, close and control of projects and services. An SRP solution combines the best elements of previous standalone business applications for accounting (ERP), client relationship management (CRM) and professional services automation (PSA) to support the entire bid-to-bill lifecycle of a project- and service-driven organizations.\r\nA complete SRP solution provides all aspects of project-based finance and accounting to generate invoices based on a variety of methods (time and materials, milestone-based, fixed price, etc.), ensuring accurate invoicing, timely cash collection and revenue recognition.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Six Reasons Services Resource Planning is a Game-Changer for Services Organizations</span>\r\nIn the 1970s and ‘80s, materials requirements planning helped to transform the manufacturing industry.\r\nNow, three decades later, Services resource planning (SRP) is poised to be just as transformative for software and professional services. SRP provides a consistent and comprehensive platform for services organizations to manage the entire client lifecycle, from lead to project to cash. Simply put, services organizations can't afford to ignore the potential of Service Resource Planning. Here are six reasons why:\r\n<ol><li>Integration -- Integrating project management, resource optimization, project accounting, and client management is an idea whose time has come. It is virtually impossible to provide real-time insights to all stakeholders when dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous projects are being managed on spreadsheets, email, and stand-alone systems.</li><li>Decision making -- Until accounting, sales, human resources, project management and field professionals all speak the same languages of planning and execution, it is impossible to make coordinated decisions that lead to better client outcomes and increased efficiencies.</li><li>Globalization -- MRP brought centralized and consistent controls to every step of the manufacturing process at a time when globalization was shrinking the industrial world. American, Asian and European businesses vied with one another for the same customers with the same product lines. MRP sorted the winners from the losers by giving the winners tremendous cost and efficiency advantages. This should sound familiar. The market for professional services and other knowledge-based businesses has become global, and competitive pressures are coming from all corners of the world. SRP delivers the same edge to services businesses today that manufacturers needed in order to succeed three decades ago.</li><li>Coordination -- In the past, it was possible for many organizations to use professional services as a loss-leader to secure a larger piece of business, such as a long-term software contract. Now that the market for professional services is so competitive, this loss-leader mentality is a business-killing dead end. Becoming a profit center requires coordination, and that means SRP.</li><li>Growth -- Accounting and sales departments need to understand future revenue and profit opportunities, which is difficult to do when information about professional services projects and resource utilization is not readily available. SRP gives sales the information they need to understand resource availability when pitching new business, and provides accounting with the insight they need to produce more accurate forecasts and timely invoices.</li><li>Profitability -- The disciplines of Services Resource Planning expose the profitability of every resource and every project. That's the kind of granularity professional services organizations need in order to make competitive strategic decisions in the face of global competition.</li></ol>\r\nSoftware, consulting, advertising and accounting service organizations are already transforming their business with cloud SRP solutions. Here are some of the SRP success stories and take the first steps towards modernizing your own practice.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Services_Resource_Planning_Applications.png","alias":"services-resource-planning-applications"},"421":{"id":421,"title":"Digital Commerce Applications","description":"E-commerce is the activity of buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.\r\nModern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of online books (such as Amazon) and music purchases (music download in the form of digital distribution such as iTunes Store), and to a less extent, customized/personalized online liquor store inventory services. There are three areas of e-commerce: online retailing, electric markets, and online auctions. E-commerce is supported by electronic business.\r\nE-commerce businesses may also employ some or all of the followings:\r\n<ul><li>Online shopping for retail sales direct to consumers via Web sites and mobile apps, and conversational commerce via live chat, chatbots, and voice assistants;</li><li>Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales;</li><li>Business-to-business buying and selling;</li><li>Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media;</li><li>Business-to-business (B2B) electronic data interchange;</li><li>Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with newsletters);</li><li>Engaging in pre-retail for launching new products and services;</li><li>Online financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">5 Reasons Why E-commerce Is So Important For Your Business</span>\r\nFrom startups to small businesses right through to huge brands, there are a huge number of companies that can benefit from their own e-commerce website, where they can sell their own products or services. In today's competitive and convenience-focused society, no longer do consumers want to venture to the high street in order to buy items, instead, consumers want to shop from their own homes, making e-commerce a flexible solution for both businesses and buyers.\r\nIf you’re still on the fence about launching an e-commerce store then look no further, here are the top 5 reasons e-commerce is so important for your business and just how you can benefit from moving online this year!\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Can Broaden Your Brand</span>\r\nE-commerce is an ideal way you can take your brand from a traditional brick and mortar store to an innovative, well-loved brand. By offering great products 24 hours a day along with online customer service, blogs and social media, no longer is your business one singular store, with an online presence your business can be the home of your products and the general home of your business, allowing you to fully expand your product ranges without having to worry about moving locations or worrying about not being able to expand your business.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">It’s More Convenient</span>\r\nAn online store is available all day, every day meaning your customers can visit your store at all times, no matter what their schedule might be. These days people don’t always have the time to physically go shopping, instead more and more people are choosing to shop online to find the items they want or need and if your business can offer this for your customers there’s no you shouldn't appeal to a wider range of customers all looking for a convenient and flexible experience.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Increase Your Reach</span>\r\nDue to the internet’s accessibility, millions of people across the world can view your website at any time, meaning that for those looking to expand their businesses and reach out to a larger audience, you have many more opportunities to do so. Compare the number of people you can reach through a website to the amount you can reach through a high street store or local advertising, there’s no reason you shouldn’t look at taking your business online if you’re looking to improve your reach.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Gives You Marketing Opportunities</span>\r\nYour website is one of the best marketing tools your business has, not only can the use of SEO when building your site lead to more chances of your business getting found in search engines, but a huge number of marketing techniques can also work alongside your website, including pay per click advertising, your social media marketing, and your email marketing, all of which can include links back to your website.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalable</span>\r\nAs your business grows it’s very likely you’ll want to grow your product range and your target audience, as well as develop your business for customer requirements and consumer demand. An e-commerce site lets you scale your business accordingly, allowing you to add more lines, add more payment options and even grow when you choose to ship to, without having to worry about changing your location or moving to larger premises as you might with a brick and mortar store.\r\nE-commerce offers the business a whole range of opportunities, from marketing opportunities to increase your products ranges to generating more sales and with an optimized and well-developed website, you can not only achieve these goals but also offer your customers around the clock, convenient service, that can boost your business.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Digital_Commerce_Applications.png","alias":"digital-commerce-applications"},"491":{"id":491,"title":"Datacenter Automation","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Data center automation</span> is the process by which routine workflows and processes of a data center—scheduling, monitoring, maintenance, application delivery, and so on—are managed and executed without human administration. Data center automation and orchestration increases agility and operational efficiency. It reduces the time IT needs to perform routine tasks and enables them to deliver services on demand in a repeatable, automated manner. These services can then be rapidly consumed by end users.\r\nData center automation is primarily delivered through a composite data center automation software that provides centralized access to all or most data center resources. Typically, data center automation market solutions enable automating the servers, network and other data center management tasks.\r\nThe massive growth in data and the speed at which businesses operate today mean that manual monitoring, troubleshooting, and remediation is too slow to be effective and can put businesses at risk. Automation can make day-two operations almost autonomous. Ideally, the data center provider would have API access to the infrastructure, enabling it to inter-operate with public clouds so that customers could migrate data or workloads from cloud to cloud. \r\nTypical high availability architecture includes application servers with apps replicated multiple times. The applications in this scenario are virtualized in every application delivery controller. This architecture supports high availability and performance necessities. However, high efficiency may not be supported in this model, as the resources provisioned for each app is not efficiently reallocated to the other apps.\r\nAn automation architecture based on server virtualization requires images to be created and software to be installed in each physical server in order to support automated provisioning of applications through VM images. Additional storage in case of server virtualization or OS virtualization incurs additional costs. While server virtualization deploys applications across all usable resources, OS virtualization stores them locally. In case of OS virtualization, however, not only is the application stored, but the application server and the virtual image are also stored.\r\nIn order to reduce the impact on either of these methodologies, virtualization for data center automation in cloud computing can be used. Storage virtualization is the concept of amalgamating multiple storage networks into a single storage unit. Usually, the storage unit is managed and utilized with the help of software, making the storage software-defined. Virtualization obfuscates the storage systems used, making any kind of storage network be part of the virtualized environment. Virtualization of data center automation makes such tasks as backup, archiving, and recovery easier and faster.\r\nData center automation is immensely valuable because it frees up human computational time and: \r\n<ul><li>Delivers insight into server nodes and configurations </li><li>Automates routine procedures like patching, updating, and reporting </li><li>Produces and programs all data center scheduling and monitoring tasks </li><li>Enforces data center processes and controls in agreement with standards and policies </li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Why Data Center Automation Is Important?</span></h1>\r\nAutomation is drastically changing the IT scene. Almost 40% of technology professionals recently surveyed claim to employ automation services in some or the other capacity. This includes automating data centers. Automation of virtual data centers provide numerous benefits.<br />Unavoidable repetitive tasks are a cause for many errors in a traditional environment. This can be wiped out with the implementation of automation. Automation also frees up critical time of IT team and lets them invest time in more value adding tasks. This leads to a responsive business, thus accelerating time-to-market for IT services. Virtualized data centers reduce configuration issues by maintaining consistent systems across the data center. Like most automated processes, it minimizes risk.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What are the automation and orchestration layers?</h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Server layer.</span> There are systems now available which take almost all of the configuration pieces out of deploying a server. Administrators only need to deploy one server profile and allow new servers to pick up those settings. More data centers are trying to get into the cloud business. This means deploying high-density, fast-provisioned, servers and blades. With the on-demand nature of the cloud, being able to quickly deploy fully configured servers is a big plus for staying agile and very proactive.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Software layer.</span> Entire applications can be automated and provisioned based on usage and resource utilization. Using the latest load-balancing tools, administrators are able to set thresholds for key applications running within the environment. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Virtual layer.</span> The modern data center is now full of virtualization and virtual machines. In using solutions like Citrix’s Provisioning Server or Unidesk’s layering software technologies, administrators are able to take workload provisioning to a whole new level. Imagine being able to set a process that will kick-start the creation of a new virtual server when one starts to get over-utilized. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Cloud layer.</span> This is a new and still emerging field. Still, some very large organizations are already deploying technologies like CloudStack, OpenStack, and even OpenNebula. Furthermore, they’re tying these platforms in with big data management solutions like MapR and Hadoop. What’s happening now is true cloud-layer automation. Organizations can deploy distributed data centers and have the entire cloud layer managed by a cloud-control software platform. Engineers are able to monitor workloads, how data is being distributed, and the health of the cloud infrastructure. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Data center layer.</span> Although entire data center automation technologies aren’t quite here yet, we are seeing more robotics appear within the data center environment. Robotic arms already control massive tape libraries for Google and robotics automation is a thoroughly discussed concept among other large data center providers. <br /><br />","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Datacenter_Automation.png","alias":"datacenter-automation"},"595":{"id":595,"title":"iOS Software Development","description":"iOS is Apple’s mobile OS that runs on an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch hardware. Apple provides tools and resources for creating iOS apps and accessories for these devices. As an iOS developer, you can program in native languages such as Swift or Objective-C or build cross-platform native applications using React Native (JavaScript) or Xamarin (C# &amp; F#).<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Developer Requirements.</span> To develop iOS apps, you need a Mac computer running the latest version of Xcode. Xcode is Apple’s IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for both Mac and iOS apps. Xcode is the graphical interface you'll use to write iOS apps. Xcode includes the iOS SDK, tools, compilers, and frameworks you need specifically to design, develop, write code, and debug an app for iOS. For native mobile app development on iOS, Apple suggests using the modern Swift programming language. It is important to note that Xcode only runs on Mac OS X and the only supported way to develop iOS apps. Like desktop software, iOS development software are designed using a range of programming languages and frameworks.<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">iOS software development kit. </span>Mobile iOS app creation software requires access to software development kits (SDKs) that provide an environment through which programmers can design and test code in a simulated mobile environment. Some iOS SDK essentials are the Cocoa Touch frameworks that include the UIKit, GameKit, PushKit, Foundation Kit, and MapKit. These frameworks and others allow you manipulate the iPhone or iPad camera, add voice interaction using SiriKit, explore music with MusicKit, expand viewing and listening via AirPlay 2, and even add iMessage Business Chat to your application. iOS 11 added the power of machine learning with Core ML and augmented reality (AR) experiences with ARKit.\r\n<p id=\"Beta_Testing\" style=\" color:#232f3e; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Beta Testing.</span> <span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Once you have built and tested (using XCTest framework or iOS Unit test) your app, you can invite users to your apps and collect feedback using TestFlight prior to deploying to the App Store. This is a good time for testing Push Notifications, data storage using Core Data, and making network calls to 3rd party APIs. To get going, you simply upload a beta build of your app, and use iTunes Connect to add the name and email of testers. <br /></span></p>\r\n<p id=\"Beta_Testing\" style=\" color:#232f3e; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cloud Testing.</span><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Testing your iOS app on real devices is critically important since the performance of the real device, different operating system versions, modifications made by manufacturer and carriers firmware may lead to unexpected issues with your app. Testing on real device gives you a more accurate understanding of how your users interact with your app. On the other hand, obtaining physical devices for testing is a logistical challenge. This is where cloud testing comes into play. With cloud testing, you can test your application on real devices that are accessible on the cloud. <br /></span></p>\r\n<p id=\"Beta_Testing\" style=\" color:#232f3e; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Deployment.</span> <span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Once you have built, tested, and beta tested your iOS app, you can deploy to the App Store. At this point, you must join the Apple Developer Program. As a member, you’ll get access to beta iOS app development software, advanced app capabilities, extensive beta testing tools, and app analytics.</span></p>\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the advantages of iOS App Development?</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">iOS is easy to use interface.</span> Apple’s iPhone becomes the dream of many smartphone users, providing high customer service and become a market leader for offering unmatched devices. You can attract your Apple users easily if an application will be created on a synchronized environment Apple’s platform. These special flexible User Interface of the features of the iOS app can make your business application more desirable and boost up their sales and earn maximum benefits.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">iOS has more security.</span> iOS platform offers its users stay safe from external threats which is the best part and advantage of this platform. While developing an app for the business, providing a powerful shield against malware, virus and other internet threats for app development of a business. iOS applications are secured applications, allows effortless transaction facilities app without spending more time on testing different devices.</li><li>For <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">business</span>, there are multiple options available in the highly popular iOS app making software market, this is because important to attract new customers to increase sales and chance to empower your business in the global market. The web is not a safe place for so thanks to a well-developed iPhone app Development Company can increase their availability and protect your customer’s information. With an iOS mobile app, always been an attractive device to the public with constant acknowledgment from App Store and business can flourish on a regular basis.</li><li>iOS users are usually <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">happy users,</span> an efficiently developed iOS app helps to promote your brand or your organization to enhance productivity with profitability services to reach your targeted audience. iOS application builds a strong relationship with customers and clients, and the great audience to deliver your product and solutions to achieve their goals. Better the application is, strong would be the relationship with the superior brand in consumer electronics.</li><li>iOS applications are <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">innovation </span>and the latest technology used globally and this can help your business to expand the most secure way. With best iOS app development software is accepted globally, you may transforming traditional business processes in a modern way and find customers from every part of the world.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What is IDE?</h1>\r\nIDE is the acronym for Integrated Development Environment. This contains a set of tools, resources and programming essentials within itself. It helps software/web/ mobile app developers to create new programs. This is a comprehensive solution for creating software or mobile app independently. These resources make development, deployment and debugging processes very simple. Choosing an IDE for iPhone app development is dependent on the budget, kind of programming language you prefer, etc. There are so many functionalities in an IDE that gives you a lot of benefits for app development.\r\nThe IDE makes strategies and streamlines the development phase for your entire team. It has many tools for automation, programming, debugging, compiling and for interpretation. There are three general types of IDE available. They are cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) type and installing on the server type. IDE for iOS application development software is preferred bycompanies to reduce development time and costs. It helps in accurate testing and easy coding. Integration is also possible with these IDEs. It is as simple as a word processing program used by developers to create robust mobile applications.<br /> ","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_iOS_Software_Development.png","alias":"ios-software-development"},"597":{"id":597,"title":"Android Software Application","description":" Android software development is the process by which new applications are created for devices running the Android operating system. Google states that &quot;Android apps can be written using Kotlin, Java, and C++ languages&quot; using the Android software development kit (SDK), while using other languages is also possible. All non-JVM languages, such as Go, JavaScript, C, C++ or assembly, need the help of JVM language code, that may be supplied by tools, likely with restricted API support. Some languages/programming tools allow cross-platform app support, i.e. for both Android and iOS. Third party tools, development environments and language support have also continued to evolve and expand since the initial SDK was released in 2008. In addition, with major business entities like Walmart, Amazon, Bank of America etc. eyeing to engage and sell through mobiles, mobile application development is witnessing a transformation.\r\nAndroid was created by the Open Handset Alliance, which is led by Google. The early feedback on developing applications for the Android platform was mixed. Issues cited include bugs, lack of documentation, inadequate QA infrastructure, and no public issue-tracking system. In December 2007, MergeLab mobile startup founder Adam MacBeth stated, &quot;Functionality is not there, is poorly documented or just doesn't work... It's clearly not ready for prime time.&quot; Despite this, Android-targeted applications began to appear the week after the platform was announced. The first publicly available application was the Snake game.\r\nA preview release of the Android SDK was released on November 12, 2007. On July 15, 2008, the Android Developer Challenge Team accidentally sent an email to all entrants in the Android Developer Challenge announcing that a new release of the SDK was available in a &quot;private&quot; download area. The email was intended for winners of the first round of the Android Developer Challenge. The revelation that Google was supplying new SDK releases to some developers and not others (and keeping this arrangement private) led to widely reported frustration within the Android developer community at the time.\r\nOn August 18, 2008, the Android 0.9 SDK beta was released. This release provided an updated and extended API, improved development tools and an updated design for the home screen. Detailed instructions for upgrading are available to those already working with an earlier release. On September 23, 2008, the Android 1.0 SDK (Release 1) was released. According to the release notes, it included &quot;mainly bug fixes, although some smaller features were added.&quot; It also included several API changes from the 0.9 version. Multiple versions have been released since it was developed.\r\nOn December 5, 2008, Google announced the first Android Dev Phone, a SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device that is designed for advanced developers. It was a modified version of HTC's Dream phone. While developers can use regular consumer devices to test and use their applications, some developers may choose a dedicated unlocked or no-contract device.\r\nAs of July 2013, more than one million applications have been developed for Android, with over 25 billion downloads. A June 2011 research indicated that over 67% of mobile developers used the platform, at the time of publication. Android smartphone shipments are forecast to exceed 1.2 billion units in 2018 with an 85% market share.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Where does Android come from?</span>\r\nIt comes from Google, who actually acquired Android in 2005 (no, Google didn't invent it). The search giant performs regular updates along with an annual major update.\r\nThe operating system is based on the Linux kernel – if you have friends who work in IT, you may have heard of it. This is the GNU / Linux operating system based structure, which is a unix type system (portable operating system, multitasking and multi-user). The Linux kernel is one of the most prominent examples of free software.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why does Android look different on each phone?</span>\r\nAndroid doesn't look different on every device, but it does have a number of different versions. Android is open-source, which means that manufacturers are free to customize the software and make it their own.\r\nThe 'purest' version of Android is often referred to as 'stock Android' and it's often preferred by the Android community: it's the original software as Google intended.\r\nOther user interfaces (UI) include Samsung's TouchWiz, Sony's Xperia, and Huawei's Emotion. See what they all look like in our Android UI comparison.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the advantages of Android?</span>\r\nChoice. For example, if you want iOS, you have a choice of iPhone, iPhone or iPhone. If you go for Android there are stacks of great devices to choose from, from cheap and cheerful handsets to really impressive flagships. Those flagships are often cheaper than the equivalent Apple devices, too.\r\nAndroid’s choice isn’t just about hardware. It’s about everything else too. Android is incredibly easy to customize, both in terms of how it looks and how it works, and the various app stores aren’t as tightly controlled as its rivals’ stores, like Apple.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s with the candy names?</span>\r\nEach new version of Android gets a code name based on consecutive letters of the alphabet. The most recent version is known as Marshmallow because it is the Android M release. Previous versions have included Lollipop, KitKat, Jelly Bean and Gingerbread.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s the best thing about Android?</span>\r\nOptions, many options. With Android, you have hundreds of gadgets at your disposal, the cheapest, the most expensive and innovative market. Android is also incredibly customizable, both in their roles, as in his appearance. You can really make a unique mobile experience for yourself with this OS.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s the worst thing about Android?</span>\r\nGetting updates. In many cases, manufacturers don’t seem to care about providing software updates for devices they’ve already sold you. Even when they do provide updates they take their sweet time about it. That’s why some consider rooting: you can download the updates yourself and apply them instead of waiting for the manufacturer to get around to it.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Android_Software_Application.png","alias":"android-software-application"},"598":{"id":598,"title":"Mobile Website Development","description":" Today, virtually no company can effectively conduct its business without having its own website. A site is not just the face of the company, which should be nice to look at, not an attribute of doing business, but an urgent need. If the company has its own website, then it:\r\n<ul><li>facilitates potential customers and partners access to information about themselves;</li><li>attracts the target audience from the Internet;</li><li>significantly increases market coverage;</li><li>increases brand awareness;</li><li>facilitates communication both with partners and with the target audience;</li><li>improves customer feedback;</li><li>increases customer loyalty.</li></ul>\r\nHowever, the main advantage of owning a website, of course, is that it helps to significantly increase sales, and, consequently, profit. In general, now having a website is almost a prerequisite for successful business development.\r\nComputers, smartphones, tablets, other mobile devices, and the Internet have penetrated all spheres of our lives. A variety of mobile devices are especially popular, and that is why it is no longer possible to limit oneself to a PC version of a site. The website version for the PC is bad for mobile devices, and this, as you might guess, negatively affects sales and profits. If the site is uncomfortable to use, then the potential client will not rack their brains, but simply use the services of competitors. The vast majority will not even try to find something on the site if it is not adapted for mobile devices.\r\nA separate mobile version of the site is a site specifically designed for mobile users. As a rule, a mobile version of a site is hosted on a dedicated subdomain.\r\nThe mobile version of the site, in most cases, is simply a greatly reduced version of the site for the PC. Only those functions that, according to the developers, maybe needed by those users who access the site with a smartphone or tablets, are left on the mobile site.\r\nThe mobile version of the site is good in that it does not depend on the main one, can be easily changed and edited, loads quickly is quite convenient for users, and also has the option of switching to the main version of the site.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s a mobile website?</span>\r\nMobile devices have transformed the way we live, putting the digital world at our fingertips 24 hours a day, wherever we are.\r\nThis means establishing your mobile presence is more important now than ever as you have the opportunity to put your business in the pockets of your consumers and create more meaningful interactions with your users. Almost 80% of people use smartphones to search the internet, so if your business is lacking a mobile website or app, you are missing out on a huge market opportunity.\r\nThere are two types of mobile development – responsive mobile sites and mobile applications. We build easy to use, intuitive and responsive mobile apps and websites, designed for optimization across all devices to keep you ahead of your competitors.\r\nA mobile website is a website with a responsive, fluid design, that is user-friendly on multiple devices and web browsers. A study conducted by Google and Galaxy in June 2015 found that 74% of Australians rely on their phones at least as much as they rely on desktops when searching for information, ideas or advice. This is when responsive design plays a huge role.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why do I need a mobile website?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile traffic has taken over</span></span>\r\nAs mobile traffic has taken over desktop traffic in 2015, more and more people only browse the internet on mobile phones. This means that businesses now need to adopt a mobile-first approach to their online strategies.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Search engines are pushing for better UX</span></span>\r\nMobile users tend to have poor experiences on desktop websites. This is something that search engines such as Google have understood, and are putting initiatives in place to improve mobile web experiences. For example, Google released its mobile-friendly update in 2015 and is switching its search index to mobile-first.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Competitive advantage</span></span>\r\nWebsite owners now need to provide compelling experiences to their mobile users. This is something that is now vital in order to reach business goals and lead users to conversion. As a result, the fast adoption of a mobile strategy is a competitive advantage.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Mobile_Website_development.png","alias":"mobile-website-development"},"603":{"id":603,"title":"MacOS Development","description":" The key to great app development lies in having a solid foundation, ideally laid in having a good operating system, to begin with on which your app will stand on and initiate all its operations. For a long time, Windows was the dominating operating system of the nineties.\r\nWhy Should You Use Mac OS X in App Development? A reason for this system’s stagnation in progress is the brand’s fear in offending its corporate clients; therefore every tech change has to be introduced painfully slowly so as to be assimilated by its clients.\r\nApple, on the other hand, has slowly crept up and overtaken Windows and other operating systems primarily because they are not afraid of taking giant leaps. Their “it’s our way or the high way” approach to their operating system has enabled them to make significant improvements in their software, which other operating systems are almost incapable of attaining.\r\nMAC OS X software is essentially a two-layered system. Its impressive GUI sits on top of a UNIX core, and UNIX is notorious for its impressive security features. UNIX makes it’s nearly impossible to install a Trojan or a virus to the system unless the user gives it root access to the system by essentially typing in the admin password into the system.\r\nThe beauty of MAC OS X built-in firewall is that it operates out the box, while at the same time being highly flexible. While MAC users should ideally remain vigilant about foreign files and consequentially never allow them into the system by giving them an admin pass, they then do not need special software to block out these viruses.\r\nMAC OS interface is simple, you can pin as many apps as possible to dock at the bottom of your screen, plus they are always available to you. Besides this, you can run multiple desktops, make use of your iCloud chain to decipher your credit card information, share various files wirelessly through Airdrop, and still monitor the operating system via a set of in-built high-grade utility tools.\r\nThe system also has a rapid start-up resume time. All this is essentially made possible by MAC OS powerful stability. Even though systemic degradation is expected over time, as is the case with just about every operating system, the rate is significantly reduced on MAC products and freezing and crashing are not a common everyday occurrence as is the case with a few operating systems.\r\nMAC’s impressive reliability can be primarily attributed to the fact that the operating system was built from the ground up. Apple essentially controls the production of its software and hardware products from start to finish, and so every part of the system is designed and tested out to work cohesively together.\r\nThose who complain that Apple forces its consumers to use its proprietary software couldn’t be more misguided. MAC OS automatically recognizes and works well with other Apple products including iPads, iPhones, etc.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Mac OS X?</span>\r\nMac OS X is an operating system created by Apple for Mac computers (the first version was introduced in 2001), which replaced the then outdated Mac OS 9.\r\nThis is a POSIX-compatible system, that is, all Unix operations can be performed in it. Built on the basis of the XNU core with the Aqua graphical interface.\r\nStarting with version 10.8 it is called OS X.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the advantages of macOS?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Fewer virus attacks:</span>\r\nAs macOS is the second most used operating system and has fewer active users so it has fewer virus attacks also. The other reason for virus safety is its UNIX relationship which is more secure than Windows OS.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Good customer support:</span>\r\nMac users get a good response from their support team as compared to other operating systems. Apple has skilled engineers which help the user in fixing the issues in their hardware and software.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Similar GUI for all the products:</span>\r\nmacOS has the same graphical user interface (GUI) as found in other Apple products like iPhone and tablets. Users feel comfortable in using macOS if they shifted from other Apple products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Performance and long life:</span>\r\nAs Apple makes both hardware and software so it’s hardware communication is very efficient and it improves performance. The operating system and hardware work great. Apple computer has a longer life than other computers. The battery timing of mac laptops is also longer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Default apps:</span>\r\nIf you install Windows then it comes with pre-installed apps that slow down your computer e.g. Onedrive slows your computer. But this is not the case with macOS, it comes with powerful apps which don’t affect the performance of your system. Some of the pre-installed apps of macOS are iPhoto and iMovie.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Support NTFS and FAT:</span>\r\nmacOS support Windows file system formats including both NTFS and FAT.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Can run Windows:</span>\r\nYou can run the Windows operating system if you have macOS installed by using Bootcamp or parallels software.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the disadvantages of macOS?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Expensive:</span>\r\nThe minimum cost of a Mac PC is higher than $1000. You can get a good Windows PC at $1000 with more hardware specifications.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Fewer games and software:</span>\r\nMost game developers prefer to make games for the Windows OS because they have more percentages of users. Mac users have fewer games available. Also, mac computers have low graphics capability to run high graphics games. There is some software that is available for Windows and not available for mac users e.g. adobe premiere pro etc.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">No hardware customization:</span>\r\nIf you buy any Mac computer/laptop then you cannot change its hardware parts like processor, graphics card, etc. For some mac computers, you can change hardware and RAM but it is not for all mac computers. It is also not possible to change other hardware accessories like internal computer parts, the only choice you have is to buy a new mac computer. On every major release of your operating system you have to change your computer else 50% of your operating system features not work.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Windows cannot read the macOS file system:</span>\r\nmacOS can read NTFS and FAT Windows format but Windows cannot read the macOS file system. You need to install 3rd party software in Windows to do so. Some other software like footnotes has compatibility issues while moving files from macOS to Windows.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Less hardware used:</span>\r\nThe new version of macOS computer supports fewer USB ports and they also not shipped with CD/DVD writer.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_MacOS_Development.png","alias":"macos-development"},"605":{"id":605,"title":"Java Development","description":" Java is a general-purpose programming language that is class-based, object-oriented, and designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers write once, run anywhere (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax of Java is similar to C and C++, but it has fewer low-level facilities than either of them. As of 2019, Java was one of the most popular programming languages in use according to GitHub, particularly for client-server web applications, with a reported 9 million developers.\r\nJava was originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (which has since been acquired by Oracle) and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The original and reference implementation Java compilers, virtual machines, and class libraries were originally released by Sun under proprietary licenses. As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun had relicensed most of its Java technologies under the GNU General Public License. Meanwhile, others have developed alternative implementations of these Sun technologies, such as the GNU Compiler for Java (bytecode compiler), GNU Classpath (standard libraries), and IcedTea-Web (browser plugin for applets).\r\nThe latest versions are Java 13, released in September 2019, and Java 11, a currently supported long-term support (LTS) version, released on September 25, 2018; Oracle released for the legacy Java 8 LTS the last free public update in January 2019 for commercial use, while it will otherwise still support Java 8 with public updates for personal use up to at least December 2020. Oracle (and others) highly recommend uninstalling older versions of Java because of serious risks due to unresolved security issues. Since Java 9 (and 10 and 12) is no longer supported, Oracle advises its users to immediately transition to the latest version (currently Java 13) or an LTS release.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Java technology and what is its application?</span>\r\nJava is a programming language and computing platform that was first launched by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are many applications and websites that do not work when Java is not installed, and the number of such websites and applications is increasing every day. Java is fast, highly secure, and reliable. From laptops to data centers, from game consoles to supercomputers used for scientific research, from cell phones to the Internet - Java is everywhere!\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the performance of Java?</span>\r\nPrograms written in Java have a reputation for being slower and taking up more RAM than those written in C. Nevertheless, the speed of execution of programs written in Java has been significantly improved with the release of the so-called JIT compiler in 1997-1998. in version 1.1, in addition to other language features to support better code analysis (such as inner classes, StringBuffer class, simplified logic calculations, and so on). In addition, the Java virtual machine was optimized - since 2000, the HotSpot virtual machine has been used for this. As of February 2012, Java 7 code is approximately 1.8 times slower than C code.\r\nSome platforms offer hardware runtime support for Java. For example, microcontrollers that run Java code on hardware instead of software JVMs, as well as ARM-based processors that support Java bytecode through the Jazelle option.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the main features of Java?</span>\r\n<ul><li>Automatic memory management.</li><li>Advanced exception handling capabilities.</li><li>A rich set of I/O filtering tools.</li><li>A set of standard collections: array, list, stack, etc.</li><li>The presence of simple tools for creating network applications (including using the RMI protocol).</li><li>The presence of classes that allow you to perform HTTP requests and process responses.</li><li>Built-in language tools for creating multi-threaded applications, which were then ported to many languages ​​(for example, Python).</li><li>Unified access to databases: at the level of individual SQL queries - based on JDBC, SQLJ; at the level of the concept of objects with the ability to store in the database - based on Java Data Objects (English) and Java Persistence API.</li><li>Generalization support (since version 1.5).</li><li>Support for lambdas, closures, built-in functional programming features.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Java_Development.png","alias":"java-development"},"607":{"id":607,"title":"C/C++ Development","description":" C++ is a general-purpose object-oriented programming (OOP) language, developed by Bjarne Stroustrup, and is an extension of the C language. It is therefore possible to code C++ in a &quot;C style&quot; or &quot;object-oriented style.&quot; In certain scenarios, it can be coded in either way and is thus an effective example of a hybrid language.\r\nC++ is considered to be an intermediate-level language, as it encapsulates both high- and low-level language features. Initially, the language was called &quot;C with classes&quot; as it had all the properties of the C language with an additional concept of &quot;classes.&quot; However, it was renamed C++ in 1983.\r\nC++ is one of the most popular languages primarily utilized with system/application software, drivers, client-server applications and embedded firmware.\r\nThe main highlight of C++ is a collection of predefined classes, which are data types that can be instantiated multiple times. The language also facilitates declaration of user-defined classes. Classes can further accommodate member functions to implement specific functionality. Multiple objects of a particular class can be defined to implement the functions within the class. Objects can be defined as instances created at run time. These classes can also be inherited by other new classes which take in the public and protected functionalities by default.\r\nC++ includes several operators such as comparison, arithmetic, bit manipulation and logical operators. One of the most attractive features of C++ is that it enables the overloading of certain operators such as addition.\r\nA few of the essential concepts within the C++ programming language include polymorphism, virtual and friend functions, templates, namespaces and pointers.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \"> Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">C is better than C++ for small projects, right?</span>\r\nNot in my opinion. I never saw a project for which C was better than C++ for any reason but the lack of a good C++ compiler.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Is C a subset of C++?</span>\r\nIn the strict mathematical sense, C isn't a subset of C++. There are programs that are valid C but not valid C++ and even a few ways of writing code that has a different meaning in C and C++. However, C++ supports every programming technique supported by C. Every C program can be written in essentially the same way in C++ with the same run-time and space efficiency. It is not uncommon to be able to convert tens of thousands of lines of ANSI C to C-style C++ in a few hours. Thus, C++ is as much a superset of ANSI C as ANSI C is a superset of K&amp;R C and much as ISO C++ is a superset of C++ as it existed in 1985.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the difference between C and C++?</span>\r\nC++ is a direct descendant of C that retains almost all of C as a subset. C++ provides stronger type checking than C and directly supports a wider range of programming styles than C. C++ is &quot;a better C&quot; in the sense that it supports the styles of programming done using C with better type checking and more notational support (without loss of efficiency). In the same sense, ANSI C is a better C than K&amp;R C. In addition, C++ supports data abstraction, object-oriented programming, and generic programming (see my books).\r\nI have never seen a program that could be expressed better in C than in C++ (and I don't think such a program could exist - every construct in C has an obvious C++ equivalent). However, there still exist a few environments where the support for C++ is so weak that there is an advantage to using C instead.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Do you really think that C and C++ could be merged into a single language?</span>\r\nI think that it would be a very good thing for the C/C++ community if they were. That is, if the C/C++ incompatibilities were systematically and completely eliminated and that future evolution was organized so as to prevent new incompatibilities from emerging. Whether that's possible is another matter.\r\nMy basic point is that the current C/C++ incompatibilities are &quot;accidents of history&quot; that have no fundamental reasons behind them (though they all &quot;looked like a good idea at the time&quot; to some competent and well-meaning people). The C/C++ incompatibilities provide no benefits to the community at large, cause serious problems to a large section of the C/C++ community, and could - with great difficulty - be eliminated.\r\nFor a far more detailed presentation of my views on C/C++ compatibility, see the series of papers I wrote about this:\r\n<ul><li>B. Stroustrup: C and C++: Case Studies in Compatibility. The C/C++ Users Journal. September 2002.</li><li>B. Stroustrup: C and C++: A Case for Compatibility. The C/C++ Users Journal. August 2002.</li><li>B. Stroustrup: C and C++: Siblings. The C/C++ Users Journal. July 2002.</li><li>B. Stroustrup: Sibling rivalry: C and C++. AT&amp;T Labs - Research Technical Report. TD-54MQZY. January 2002. </li></ul>\r\nI imagine that if incompatibilities were eliminated (by making changes to both C and C++), there would still be entities called C and C++, but then C really would be defined as a subset of C++.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Why did you make C++ (almost) compatible with C?</span>\r\nI wanted C++ to be compatible with a complete language with sufficient performance and flexibility for even the most demanding systems programming.\r\nAt the time, I considered C the best systems programming language available. That was not as obvious then (1979) as it later became, but I had experts such as Dennis Ritchie, Steve Johnson, Sandy Fraser, Greg Chesson, Doug McIlroy, and Brian Kernighan down the corridor from whom I could learn and get feedback. Without their help and advice, and without C, C++ would have been stillborn.\r\nContrary to repeated rumors, I was never told that I had to use C; nor was I ever told not to use C. In fact, the first C++ manual grew from troff source of the C manual that Dennis gave me. Many new languages were designed at Bell labs; in &quot;Research&quot; at least, there were no rules enforcing language bigotry.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What do you think of C/C++?</span>\r\nNo that's not really a question I often get. In that sense, it is the only &quot;fake FAQ&quot; in this FAQ. However, it ought to be a FAQ because people use &quot;C/C++&quot; as if it meant something specific and as if they knew what it meant, leading to much confusion and misery. People should ask &quot;What is C/C++?&quot; and then on reflection stop using the term. It does harm.\r\nThere is no language called &quot;C/C++&quot;. The phrase is usually used by people who don't have a clue about programming (e.g. HR personnel and poor managers). Alternatively, it's used by people who simple do not know C++ (and often not C either). When used by programmers, it typically indicates a &quot;C++ is C with a few useful and a lot of useless complicated features added&quot; attitude. Often, that is the point of view of people who like to write their own strings and hash tables with little knowledge of the standard library beyond printf and memcpy. There are people who stick to a restricted subset of C++ for perfectly good reasons, but they (as far as I have noticed) are not the people who say &quot;C/C++&quot;.\r\nI use C/C++ only in phrases such as &quot;C/C++ compatibility&quot; and &quot;C/C++ community&quot;.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">When was C++ invented?</span>\r\nI started work on what became C++ in 1979. The initial version was called &quot;C with Classes&quot;. The first version of C++ was used internally in AT&amp;T in August 1983. The name &quot;C++&quot; was used late that year. The first commercial implementation was released October 1985 at the same time as the publication of the 1st edition of The C++ Programming Language. Templates and exception handling were included later in the 1980's and documented in The Annotated C++ Reference Manual and The C++ Programming Language (2rd Edition). The first ISO C++ standard was C++98 as described in The C++ Programming Language (3rd Edition).\r\nThe current definition of C++ The 2011 ISO C++ Standard described in The C++ Programming Language (4th Edition).\r\nYou can find a more complete timeline and more detailed explanations in The Design and Evolution of C++ and A History of C++: 1979-1991 and Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 19.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_C_C_Development.png","alias":"cc-development"},"609":{"id":609,"title":".Net Development","description":" .NET Framework is a software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large class library named Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment (in contrast to a hardware environment) named Common Language Runtime (CLR), an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called &quot;managed code&quot;. FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.\r\nFCL provides user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. Programmers produce software by combining their source code with .NET Framework and other libraries. The framework is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. Microsoft also produces an integrated development environment largely for .NET software called Visual Studio.\r\n.NET Framework began as proprietary software, although the firm worked to standardize the software stack almost immediately, even before its first release. Despite the standardization efforts, developers, mainly those in the free and open-source software communities, expressed their unease with the selected terms and the prospects of any free and open-source implementation, especially regarding software patents. Since then, Microsoft has changed .NET development to more closely follow a contemporary model of a community-developed software project, including issuing an update to its patent promising to address the concerns.\r\n.NET Framework led to a family of .NET platforms targeting mobile computing, embedded devices, alternative operating systems, and web browser plug-ins. A reduced version of the framework, .NET Compact Framework, is available on Windows CE platforms, including Windows Mobile devices such as smartphones. .NET Micro Framework is targeted at very resource-constrained embedded devices. Silverlight was available as a web browser plugin. Mono is available for many operating systems and is customized into popular smartphone operating systems (Android and iOS) and game engines. .NET Core targets the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and cross-platform and cloud computing workloads.","materialsDescription":"When Microsoft formally introduced its .NET strategy in mid-2000, analysts were confused about how the company would pull off such a massive platform shift. Over two years later, they're still wondering. But .NET isn't vaporware, and it's not a pipe dream. In fact, .NET is happening today.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is .NET?</span>\r\nActually, .NET is many things, but primarily it's a marketing term for a set of products and technologies that Microsoft is creating to move personal and enterprise computing beyond the PC desktop and into a distributed Internet-based environment. So .NET--which was originally called Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS)--is also a platform, one that Microsoft sees as the successor to Windows. The .NET platform is based on Web services which are, in turn, defined by a language called XML.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is XML?</span>\r\nXML--the eXtensible Markup Language--is a self-descriptive, data definition language. It's structure is similar to HTML, the language of the Web, but it's far more powerful because it's not limited to a static list of language constructs (&quot;tags&quot;) that the language's authors supply. Instead, XML is extensible and dynamic: Programmers can define new types of data using XML and then describe that data so that others will know how to use it.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are Web services?</span>\r\nWeb services are functions exposed by server-side applications. They are programmable units that other applications (and Web services) can access over the Internet.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Does .NET require Windows?</span>\r\nTechnically, no, but realistically, yes. It's possible the .NET platform could be ported to other operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, the Macintosh, or whatever, and indeed, some work is being done now in this area. However, .NET very much requires Windows today, on both the server and the client. One might say that .NET and Windows have a symbiotic relationship going forward.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Is .NET is being ported to Linux?</span>\r\nYes. A company called Ximian is porting the standards-based parts of .NET to Linux as you read this, and the work is amazingly far along. Code-named Mono, this project seeks to bring the C# programming language, the Common Language Runtime (CLR, see below), and other .NET features to Linux.\r\nOn a related note, Microsoft has contracted Corel (makers of CorelDRAW and Word Perfect) to port .NET to FreeBSD.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Isn't .NET just another name for COM, COM+, Windows DNA, or some other previous Windows technology?</span>\r\nActually, no. Microsoft spent considerable time and effort developing and promoting a set of Windows technologies that was at various times called OLE, COM, COM+, and Windows DNA (Distributed InterNet Architecture) but .NET is not the next iteration. Windows DNA, which was the final umbrella term for this set of technologies, was based around a concept where Windows-based software components could expose their services for other local and remote Windows software components. But though this sounds passingly similar to .NET, Windows DNA is very much based on proprietary Windows technologies. By comparison, .NET is based on open standards (XML and various related technologies), so it will be much easier for other vendors to adopt the platform and write compatible software. So we can eventually expect to see .NET clients and servers on platforms other than Windows.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">So what technologies are part of .NET?</span>\r\n.NET is comprised of several related technologies, including:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Framework</span></span> - A runtime environment and set of standard services which .NET capable applications and services can utilize. Implemented as a code library, the .NET Framework includes the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the .NET run-time environment; ASP .NET, a Web applications platform; and ADO .NET, for data store access.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Compact Framework</span></span> - A subset of the .NET Framework designed for Pocket PCs, Microsoft Smart Phones, and other Windows CE .NET-based mobile devices.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">MSN consumer services</span></span> - Microsoft will use its consumer-oriented MSN online service to expose Web services to individuals. The current version, MSN 8, includes the .NET Passport's authentication services, email, address book, calendaring and tasks, and other similar services.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">.NET Enterprise Servers</span></span> - An extensive set of Microsoft server software that runs on Windows servers, including Application Server, BizTalk Server, Exchange Server, Host Integration Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, SQL Server, and many others. Microsoft is currently shipping many such server products, but they are all based on Windows DNA currently, not .NET. Future server products--beginning with Windows .NET Server 2003, due in April 2003--will actually be based on .NET technologies for the first time.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Visual Studio .NET</span></span> - Microsoft's .NET development environment, with support for languages such as Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET, Visual C# .NET, and Visual J#, which all target the .NET Framework. Other vendors can add other language capabilities to Visual Studio .NET, and the suite can be used to target a wide range of applications and services, including .NET Web services, Windows applications, and Web applications. Note that Visual Studio .NET is not required to create .NET applications and services: Developers can download the .NET Framework for free; this download includes compilers for Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET and Visual C# .NET.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">OK, so what's the point? How does this make my life better?</span>\r\nWith apologies to Microsoft for stealing the term, .NET enables a better PC ecosystem. That is, by making life easier for everyone involved with PCs, the benefits are cross-pollinated. Here's how .NET makes life easier on various groups:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Programmers</span></span> - Because developers now have a consistent, language-neutral programming environment, they can create better applications and services more quickly. And because .NET encompasses such a wider range of functionality, those applications and services can be connected to back-end services via the Internet, offering better, and more exciting functionality.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">IT administrators</span></span> - Because .NET applications and services do away with the &quot;DLL Hell&quot; found in previous Windows applications, they are amazingly easy to distribute and install.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">End users</span></span> - For the reasons listed above, and many others, a new generation of .NET applications and services will provide new types of connected functionality. Access your email from anywhere. Pay for products online without typing in your credit card information. Access weather, traffic, music, and other personal information from a variety of devices, from anywhere in the world. The future is all connected, and .NET will get us there.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Net_Development.png","alias":"net-development"},"611":{"id":611,"title":"ObjectiveC Development","description":"Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. It was the main programming language supported by Apple for the macOS, iOS and iPadOS operating systems, and their respective application programming interfaces (APIs) Cocoa and Cocoa Touch until the introduction of Swift in 2014.\r\nThe language was originally developed in the early 1980s. It was later selected as the main language used by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system, from which macOS and iOS are derived. Portable Objective-C programs that do not use Apple libraries, or those using parts that may be ported or reimplemented for other systems, can also be compiled for any system supported by GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) or Clang.\r\nObjective-C source code 'implementation' program files usually have .m filename extensions, while Objective-C 'header/interface' files have .h extensions, the same as C header files. Objective-C++ files are denoted with a .mm file extension.\r\nObjective-C was invented in the early 1980s as a means to add Object-Oriented programming capabilities to C. The inventors, Brad Cox and Tom Love, thought that Smalltalk (an early OO language) could provide the tools needed for truly re-usable code and for creating development environments for systems developers.\r\nCox began by writing a pre-processor for C that allowed for the inclusion of Smalltalk-like code, which would then be rendered into compilable C. This turned into a fully-Object-Oriented C extension.\r\nObjective-C was eventually fully defined and described in the book Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach.\r\nNeXT licensed Objective-C in 1988 and developed several tools based on it. These tools eventually became (after several intermediate steps) the Cocoa development environment, which is used by several Apple systems: Mac OS X, iOS, Apple WatchOS.\r\nFor several years now, apps are written for one of these Apple operating systems needed to be written (or compiled to, or run on top of) Objective-C. That situation is changing now as Apple moves its platform to Swift.\r\nIn addition to Cocoa, Objective-C is also used in the GNUstep platform, which can run on Linux, Unix, BSD, and Windows environment, and which closely mirrors Cocoa.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Objective-C?</span>\r\nObjective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. This is the main programming language used by Apple for the OS X and iOS operating systems and their respective APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. This reference will take you through a simple and practical approach while learning Objective-C Programming language.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is OOP?</span>\r\nOOP means Object Oriented Programming; it is a type of programming technique that helps to manage a set of objects in a system.&nbsp; With the help of various programming languages, this method helps to develop several computer programs and applications.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Objective-C program consists of?</span>\r\nThe objective-c program basically consists of:\r\n<ul><li>Preprocessor commands</li><li>Interface</li><li>Implementation</li><li>Method</li><li>Variables</li><li>Statements &amp; Expressions</li><li>Comments</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_ObjectiveC_Development.png","alias":"objectivec-development"},"613":{"id":613,"title":"C# Development","description":" C#, (C-Sharp) is a programming language that combines object-oriented and aspect-oriented concepts. Developed in 1998–2001 by a group of engineers under the leadership of Anders Hejlsberg at Microsoft as the main language for developing applications for the Microsoft .NET platform. The compiler with C# is included in the standard installation of the .NET itself, so programs on it can be created and compiled even without tools like Visual Studio.\r\nC# refers to a family of languages ​​with a C-like syntax, of which its syntax is closest to C++ and Java. The language has strict static typing, supports polymorphism, operator overloading, pointers to member functions of classes, attributes, events, properties, exceptions, comments in XML format. Having taken a lot from their predecessors - C++, Java, Delphi, Modula and Smalltalk - C#, based on the practice of using them, excludes some models that have proven to be problematic when developing software systems: thus, C # does not support multiple class inheritance (unlike C ++).\r\nC# was developed as an application level programming language for the CLR and, as such, depends primarily on the capabilities of the CLR itself. This concerns, first of all, the C # type system, which reflects FCL. The presence or absence of certain expressive features of the language is dictated by whether a particular language feature can be translated into the corresponding CLR constructs. So, with the development of the CLR from version 1.1 to 2.0, C # itself was significantly enriched; similar interaction should be expected in the future. (However, this pattern was broken with the release of C # 3.0, which are language extensions that do not rely on .NET platform extensions.) The CLR provides C #, like all other .NET-oriented languages, many of the features that the “classical” programming languages ​​lack. For example, garbage collection is not implemented in C # itself, but the CLR is done for programs written in C # just like it is done for programs on VB.NET, J #, and others.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Why is it necessary to study the C# programming language?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reason # 1. Language program C# develops.</span>\r\nNew programming languages ​​appear annually. And the main demand is expanding and progressing. Since the C# programming language was created and accompanied by Microsoft, this technological “hippopotamus” periodically makes improvable with the addition of useful functions in C #, and you can be sure that it will perform many, many iterations ... Also, billions of lines of code are written all over the world not only under Microsoft, so the work is foreseen to everyone who wants to learn the C # programming language.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reason # 2. Your bright future with C#.</span>\r\nThis item smoothly continues the previous one. According to the ratings of the domestic DOU, it is clear that the C# programming language in Ukraine is in 3rd place in 2018 among programming languages. And in the world charts on the 4th place by PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language is a rating using Google Trends.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reason # 3. The possibility of greater profits.</span>\r\nOf course, this statement should be evaluated relatively by comparison. Today they like to say: “A programmer’s working time is more expensive than additional memory or a more powerful computer processor. It is recommended to choose more modern tools that don’t over-brain a programmer.”\r\nOn the other hand, when they talk about C#, they always mean speed and large, valuable, serious projects, even Megaprojects. For example, in C#, the Linux kernel, Unix, libraries, environment, interpreters of many modern programming languages ​​are written.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reason # 4. C# has a huge set of use cases.</span>\r\n<ul><li>The C # programming language is mainly used to create corporate software, financial projects, for example, for banks and stock exchanges, in particular, mobile applications, cloud services.</li><li>Compared to Java, C# interacts more easily with code written in other languages. And it is precisely in C# that extensions are often written for other programming languages ​​used as a layer between the C # library and the language, the possibilities of which are planned to be extended for specific purposes.</li><li>A pretty popular blockchain in C#.</li><li>C# is widely used in developing games on Unity. Have you ever heard of Unity? Unity is a popular game engine. This means that hundreds of thousands of games, including the most popular, were created using C#.</li><li>C# is good for working with iron, the so-called embedded. Asking what is embedded technology? Embedded system - a specialized computer system or computing device designed to perform a limited number of functions, from Wikipedia: traffic lights, cash registers, vending machines, set-top boxes, test equipment, etc.</li><li>The popular C# programming language is equally good for IoT. Again, what is IoT? IoT (Internet of Things) is a concept of a comprehensive Internet, Internet connection of refrigerators, air conditioners, cars and even sneakers with the aim of providing its owner with greater comfort, and on the other hand increasing their retailers' profits, calculating the amount of what, how much and when availability in warehouses, obtaining certain information about a person and his habits, about the environment.</li><li>Science and its application, for example, conducting complex experimental calculations, cryptography, pattern recognition, and the like.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reason # 5. C# is strongly typed, so it is easier for them to master beginners</span>\r\nAs for the comparison of programming languages, it should be noted that the C# programming language is multi-level. This means that it is somewhat similar to English. The C# programming language has strong static typing, supports polymorphism, operator overloading, pointers to member functions of classes, attributes, events, properties, exceptions, comments in XML format. Having adopted a lot from their predecessors - C++, Delphi, Modula, Smalltalk - in C #, relying on the practice of using them, deliberately excluded some models that proved to be problematic when developing software systems in the above-mentioned programming languages.\r\nThe syntax is quite minimalistic - with manual memory management. This is inconvenient for many, but tracking the correctness of functions, understanding the transmission of arguments is closely related to the study of the C# programming language.\r\nSince the syntax of C# is close to C, C++ and Java, then, fluent in C #, you can later learn them in one breath.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_C_Development.png","alias":"c-development"},"621":{"id":621,"title":"WordPress","description":"","materialsDescription":"","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_WordPress.png","alias":"wordpress"},"627":{"id":627,"title":"CSS Development","description":" Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language like HTML. CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.\r\nCSS is designed to enable the separation of presentation and content, including layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple web pages to share formatting by specifying the relevant CSS in a separate .css file, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content.\r\nSeparation of formatting and content also makes it feasible to present the same markup page in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (via speech-based browser or screen reader), and on Braille-based tactile devices. CSS also has rules for alternate formatting if the content is accessed on a mobile device.\r\nThe name cascading comes from the specified priority scheme to determine which style rule applies if more than one rule matches a particular element. This cascading priority scheme is predictable.\r\nThe CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Internet media type (MIME type) text/css is registered for use with CSS by RFC 2318 (March 1998). The W3C operates a free CSS validation service for CSS documents.\r\nIn addition to HTML, other markup languages support the use of CSS including XHTML, plain XML, SVG, and XUL.\r\nBefore CSS, nearly all presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup. All font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS lets authors move much of that information to another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Which is better: plain HTML or HTML with CSS?</span>\r\nMany site developers wonder why you need CSS if you can use plain HTML. Most likely, they only know the development of the site and have a number of gaps in knowledge. The bottom line is that HTML is used to structure the content of a page. And CSS allows you to format this content, make it more attractive to users.\r\nWhen the World Wide Web was created, the developers used only one language - HTML. It was used as a means of outputting structured text. The author had scant functional at his disposal. The maximum that could be done - to designate the title, select the paragraph. Tags were not enough.\r\nIn connection with the development of the Internet, the base of HTML language tags was expanded to allow the appearance of documents to be adjusted. At the same time, the structure remained unchanged.\r\nStructuring tags, for example &lt;table&gt;, began to spread. It was they who were more often chosen to design the pages instead of the structure itself. Some browsers offered their own tags, which only they could reproduce.\r\nThus, users often stumbled upon the message: &quot;To view a page, you need to use browser XXX.&quot;\r\nTo correct the situation and create a single database of tags for formatting was created CSS. He allowed refusing to bind tags to browsers.\r\nUsing HTML with CSS is more convenient than using plain HTML. CSS provides the following benefits:\r\n<ul><li>Designed to the smallest detail.</li><li>Using a single table, you can manage various documents.</li><li>You can customize the page display options for different devices: computer screen, smartphone screen, etc.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Website Promotion with CSS</span>\r\nThe emergence and development of CSS have made the development of web resources more efficient and effective. Now it’s much easier and more convenient to control the design. Also, using CSS, we managed to reduce the code of the pages, their size. This had a positive impact on the download speed, the indexing also began to pass faster. The use of an adaptive approach allowed us to make a breakthrough in the field of mobile versions of Internet resources.\r\nTo improve the website promotion, experts recommend placing the CSS style sheets in a separate document so as not to increase the amount of code. You can create one or more such files.\r\nPreviously, search engines could not read style sheets, which made it possible to use them in black SEO, for example, to create invisible texts. Now it is better to abandon the use of CSS for other purposes.\r\nCSS has several advantages and allows you to improve the site, making it more attractive to visitors. However, it is important to correctly register all the elements.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_CSS_Development.png","alias":"css-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"},"639":{"id":639,"title":"HTML Development","description":" Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.\r\nWeb browsers receive HTML documents from a web server or from local storage and render the documents into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document.\r\nHTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as &lt;img /&gt; and &lt;input /&gt; directly introduce content into the page. Other tags such as &lt;p&gt; surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to interpret the content of the page.\r\nHTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript, which affects the behavior and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), former maintainer of the HTML and current maintainer of the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is HTML5?</span>\r\nHTML5 contains powerful capabilities for Web-based applications with more powerful interaction, video support, graphics, more styling effects, and a full set of APIs. HTML5 adapts to any device, whether desktop, mobile, tablet, or television. HTML5 is an open platform developed under royalty-free licensing terms.\r\nPeople use the term HTML5 in two ways:\r\n<ul><li>to refer to a set of technologies that together form the future Open Web Platform. These technologies include HTML5 specification, CSS3, SVG, MathML, Geolocation, XmlHttpRequest, Context 2D, Web Fonts (WOFF) and others. The boundary of this set of technologies is informal and changes over time;</li><li>to refer to the HTML5 specification, which is, of course, also part of the Open Web Platform.</li></ul>\r\nAlthough it would be great if people used one term to refer to the specification and another term to refer to a set of specifications, in practice people use the term both ways.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">HTML5 has been cited by many thought leaders as the future of the Web. Why is HTML5 generating this excitement?</span>\r\nThere is huge demand for open standards that allow the creation of rich internet applications. Watching videos, finding the nearest restaurant, accessing emails while being offline are just some of the powerful new capabilities enabled by the set of specifications in development at W3C.\r\nOne aspect that interests W3C, in particular, is enabling people to combine different technologies. W3C works to ensure not just interoperable support in the software of a single specification, but compatibility among specifications.\r\nEven though HTML5 is still a draft, browser vendors are deploying features and generating a lot of excitement in the IT industry. This experience, in turn, allows W3C to revise its drafts. In this way, the final standard can transparently inform implementers where they need to pay close attention to security and privacy issues.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">When can I use HTML5?</span>\r\nPeople can already use parts of the platform that interoperate, but W3C's mission is global interoperable, to ensure that the web is available to all. Not all elements are fully implemented yet and some of them provide builtin fallback mechanisms, such as &lt;video&gt; or &lt;input&gt;. One can use HTML5 today, knowing the existing limitations and ensuring proper fallbacks.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Which Web Browsers support HTML5?</span>\r\nW3C encourages implementation and testing long before a specification becomes a standard to ensure that two people can read a specification independently and write interoperable software. Early adopters provide implementers and W3C with tremendously valuable feedback because they help identify where interoperability issues exist.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Do you think that the benefits of HTML5, such as its neutrality, rich graphics, no need plug-ins, outweigh the security risk it carries?</span>\r\nNow entering its third decade, the Web has evolved from a Web of documents into a formidable platform for networked applications that let us share information and services over the Internet. In this highly connected environment, it is important that powerful Web applications be designed with sensitivity to user privacy and security needs. The risks associated with modern Web applications are familiar to the HTML5 community.\r\nHTML5 and related specifications are being developed in W3C's open standards process. This process allows an expert review of features along with their security and privacy implications. Rich functionality that was previously available only through proprietary plugins is now documented in an open specification for all experts to review and improve. We're pleased to see the HTML5 specifications subject to rigorous public review since that helps make the Web a more secure environment.\r\nSome security issues are not confined to HTML5. W3C and IETF are working closely to specify technologies and protocol extensions to mitigate some issues (such as cross-site request forgery and cross-site scripting).\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Will there be an HTML6?</span>\r\nNo work is currently happening on HTML6 but feature requests that are not planned to be addressed in HTML5 are available at listed under HTML.next.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_HTML_Development.png","alias":"html-development"},"641":{"id":641,"title":"XML Development","description":"","materialsDescription":"","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_XML_Development.png","alias":"xml-development"},"643":{"id":643,"title":"AJAX Development","description":" Ajax (also AJAX; short for asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a set of web development techniques using many web technologies on the client side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML.\r\nAjax is not a single technology, but rather a group of technologies. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up and style information. The webpage can then be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display—and allow the user to interact with—the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object within JavaScript is commonly used to execute Ajax on webpages allowing websites to load content onto the screen without refreshing the page. Ajax is not a new technology, or different language, just existing technologies used in new ways.\r\nThe term Ajax has come to represent a broad group of Web technologies that can be used to implement a Web application that communicates with a server in the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the article that coined the term Ajax, Jesse James Garrett explained that the following technologies are incorporated:\r\n<ul><li>HTML (or XHTML) and CSS for presentation</li><li>The Document Object Model (DOM) for dynamic display of and interaction with data</li><li>JSON or XML for the interchange of data, and XSLT for its manipulation</li><li>The XMLHttpRequest object for asynchronous communication</li><li>JavaScript to bring these technologies together</li></ul>\r\nSince then, however, there have been a number of developments in the technologies used in an Ajax application, and in the definition of the term Ajax itself. XML is no longer required for data interchange and, therefore, XSLT is no longer required for the manipulation of data. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is often used as an alternative format for data interchange, although other formats such as preformatted HTML or plain text can also be used. A variety of popular JavaScript libraries, including JQuery, include abstractions to assist in executing Ajax requests.\r\nAsynchronous HTML and HTTP (AHAH) involves using XMLHTTPRequest to retrieve (X)HTML fragments, which are then inserted directly into the Web page.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Is AJAX?</span>\r\nAJAX is an acronym that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and it describes a set of development techniques used for building websites and web applications. According to web developer and Skillcrush WordPress instructor Ann Cascarano, the best way to understand AJAX is to start with identifying its specific purpose in the web development process. AJAX’s core function is to update web content asynchronously (the “A” of AJAX), meaning a user’s web browser doesn’t need to reload an entire web page when only a small portion of content on the page needs to change.\r\nOne of the most ubiquitous examples of asynchronous updating is Google’s “Google Suggest” feature. When you enter a search query into Google’s search bar and the Google website automatically begins offering auto-complete options while you type, that’s AJAX in action. The content on the page changes (in this case, the auto-complete options in the search bar) without having to manually refresh the page (something that would make Google Suggest impractical to use). Features like Google Suggest are a fundamental part of contemporary web browsing, which points to how essential AJAX is in web development. In addition to Google Suggest, Cascarano says that AJAX is commonly used to update features like status and notification bars, online forms, comments sections, and surveys and polls. But what exactly are the “J” and “X” of AJAX and how do they make asynchronous updating possible?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">JavaScript and XML</span>\r\nAs mentioned above, the “J” in AJAX stands for JavaScript. JavaScript is a type of scripting language—coding languages used to automate website processes so web developers don’t have to individually program each instance of the process that appears on a page. In JavaScript’s case, it’s used specifically to create, add, and manage dynamic website content. In other words, after markup languages like HTML and CSS are used to build and display static web features (headers, fonts, paragraphs, etc.), JavaScript is then used to control features that require real time updates while a visitor is viewing a page (think interactive maps, animated graphics, scrolling video, jukeboxes, etc). Since JavaScript is in the business of updating page content without requiring viewers to manually reload entire pages, it’s a critical component for AJAX’s asynchronous updating.\r\nThe “X” in AJAX is XML (Extensible Markup Language). As its name suggests, XML is a markup language, which means it’s in the same family as languages like HTML and CSS. Markup languages are coding languages used to annotate parts of a web document that are intended to give web browsers instructions about how to understand, process, and display a web page, versus the actual text intended to be displayed on the page. While HTML and CSS focus on instructing how page content is displayed (paragraphs, headers, fonts, colors, etc.), XML is used to transfer data stored on the page to the browsers that view it. Individual computer systems are often incompatible with one another and can’t understand or interact with data formatted by a different system. XML allows developers to bypass this obstacle by storing data in plain text format between XML tags. By doing this, XML offers a way of storing, moving, and sharing data that isn’t dependent on a particular software or hardware system (something that’s crucial for the internet, where data needs to be available and understandable across all software and hardware platforms). RSS feeds—subscription web feeds that allow users to access content from blogs and news sources as they are updated in real time—are built with XML and are an example of the language’s practical data-sharing capabilities. But how does XML combine with JavaScript to form AJAX?\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Does AJAX Work?</span>\r\nAccording to Cascarano, JavaScript and XML combine to make asynchronous updating happen through the use of something called an XMLHttpRequest object. When a user visits a web page designed to make use of AJAX and a prescribed event occurs (the user loads the page, clicks a button, fills out a form, etc.) JavaScript creates an XMLHttpRequest object, which then transfers data in an XML format between a web browser (the program being used to view the website) and a web server (the software or hardware where a website’s data is stored). The XMLHttpRequest object sends a request for updated page data to the web server, the server process the request, a response is created server-side and sent back to the browser, which then uses JavaScript to process the response and display it on the screen as updated content.\r\nTo recap: JavaScript automates the updating process, the request for updated content is formatted in XML to make it universally understandable, and JavaScript again kicks in to refresh the relevant content for the user viewing the page. Cascarano notes that the AJAX technique ignores extraneous page data and only handles requests for updated information and the updated information itself. This is really the heart of AJAX’s effectiveness, making websites and applications that use AJAX faster and more responsive for users.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_AJAX_Development.png","alias":"ajax-development"},"645":{"id":645,"title":"JavaScript development","description":" JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a high-level, just-in-time compiled, object-oriented programming language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. JavaScript has curly-bracket syntax, dynamic typing, prototype-based object-orientation, and first-class functions.\r\nAlongside HTML and CSS, JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. JavaScript enables interactive web pages and is an essential part of web applications. The vast majority of websites use it, and major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute it.\r\nAs a multi-paradigm language, JavaScript supports event-driven, functional, and imperative (including object-oriented and prototype-based) programming styles. It has APIs for working with text, arrays, dates, regular expressions, and the DOM, but the language itself does not include any I/O, such as networking, storage, or graphics facilities. It relies upon the host environment in which it is embedded to provide these features.\r\nInitially only implemented client-side in web browsers, JavaScript engines are now embedded in many other types of host software, including server-side in web servers and databases, and in non-web programs such as word processors and PDF software, and in runtime environments that make JavaScript available for writing mobile and desktop applications, including desktop widgets.\r\nThe terms Vanilla JavaScript and Vanilla JS refer to JavaScript not extended by any frameworks or additional libraries. Scripts written in Vanilla JS are plain JavaScript code.\r\nAlthough there are similarities between JavaScript and Java, including language name, syntax, and respective standard libraries, the two languages are distinct and differ greatly in design. JavaScript was influenced by programming languages such as Self and Scheme. The JSON serialization format, used to store data structures in files or transmit them across networks, is based on JavaScript.\r\n&quot;JavaScript&quot; is a trademark of Oracle Corporation in the United States. It is used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape Communications and current entities such as the Mozilla Foundation.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is JavaScript?</span>\r\nJavaScript is a client-side as well as a server-side scripting language that can be inserted into HTML pages and is understood by web browsers. JavaScript is also an Object-based Programming language.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the differences between Java and JavaScript?</span>\r\nJava is a complete programming language. In contrast, JavaScript is a coded program that can be introduced to HTML pages. These two languages are not at all inter-dependent and are designed for different intent. Java is an object-oriented programming (OOPS) or structured programming languages like C++ or C whereas JavaScript is a client-side scripting language.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Do I have to buy JavaScript?</span>\r\nNo--there is nothing to buy. The JavaScript interpreter is included in all major Internet Browsers--so as long as you have an Internet Browser, you're all set. JavaScript source files are written using an ordinary text editor, such as Notepad.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is JScript?</span>\r\nJScript is Microsoft's version of Netscape's JavaScript. Each Internet Browser vendor creates their own version of what is collectively known as JavaScript---however, the latest versions of these browsers are moving towards the ECMA Script standard.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who 'owns' JavaScript?</span>\r\nECMA governs the standard features of JavaScript---however, each vendor writes the code for their own versions of JavaScript.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the features of JavaScript?</span>\r\n<ul><li>JavaScript is a lightweight, interpreted programming language.</li><li>JavaScript is designed for creating network-centric applications.</li><li>JavaScript is complementary to and integrated with Java.</li><li>JavaScript is complementary to and integrated with HTML.</li><li>JavaScript is open and cross-platform.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_JavaScript_development.png","alias":"javascript-development"},"649":{"id":649,"title":"QA - Quality assurance","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quality Assurance (QA)</span> is defined as an activity to ensure that an organization is providing the best possible product or service to customers. QA focuses on improving the processes to deliver Quality Products to the customer. An organization has to ensure, that processes are efficient and effective as per the quality standards defined for software products. Quality Assurance is popularly known as <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">QA Testing. </span>\r\nQA establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. A quality assurance system is meant to increase customer confidence and a company's credibility, while also improving work processes and efficiency, and it enables a company to better compete with others.\r\nQuality assurance helps a company create products and services that meet the needs, expectations and requirements of customers. It yields high-quality product offerings that build trust and loyalty with customers. The standards and procedures defined by a quality assurance program help prevent product defects before they arise.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quality assurance utilizes one of three methods:</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Failure testing, </span>which continually tests a product to determine if it breaks or fails. For physical products that need to withstand stress, this could involve testing the product under heat, pressure or vibration. For software products, failure testing might involve placing the software under high usage or load conditions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Statistical process control (SPC),</span> a methodology based on objective data and analysis and developed by Walter Shewhart at Western Electric Company and Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1920's and 1930's. This methodology uses statistical methods to manage and control the production of products.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Total quality management (TQM),</span> which applies quantitative methods as the basis for continuous improvement. TQM relies on facts, data and analysis to support product planning and performance reviews.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quality assurance in software.</span> Software quality assurance&nbsp; management (SQA) systematically finds patterns and the actions needed to improve development cycles. Finding and fixing coding errors can carry unintended consequences; it is possible to fix one thing, yet break other features and functionality at the same time.\r\nSQA software has become important for developers as a means of avoiding errors before they occur, saving development time and expenses. Even with SQA processes in place, an update to software can break other features and cause defects - commonly known as bugs.\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> Differences between Software testing and SQA services</h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">SQA tools</span></li></ul>\r\n- Is about engineering process that ensures quality\r\n- Involve activities related to the implementation of processes, procedures, and standards.\r\n- Process focused \r\n- Preventive technique\r\n- Proactive measure\r\n- The scope of software quality testing tools applied to all products that will be created by the organization\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Software Testing</span></li></ul>\r\n- Software Testing is to test a product for problems before the product goes live\r\n- Involves actives concerning verification of product Example - Review Testing\r\n- Product focused\r\n - Corrective technique\r\n- Reactive measure\r\n- The scope of Software Testing applies to a particular product being tested\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">Manual QA testing services Vs Automated Quality Assurance Testing</h1>\r\nSoftware testing is a huge domain, but it can be broadly categorized into two areas: manual testing and automated testing. Both of them can be used to achieve the best results, but it is always worth knowing the difference between the two. Each testing type – manual and automated – comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. \r\nYou can choose between manual and quality assurance testing services based on a variety of factors. These include:\r\n- Project requirements\r\n- Timeline\r\n- Budget\r\n- Expertise\r\n- Suitability<br /> \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Manual Testing &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Exploratory Testing:</span> This scenario requires a tester’s expertise, creativity, knowledge, analytical and logical reasoning skills. With poorly written specifications and short execution time, human skills are a must to test in this scenario.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Ad-Hoc Testing:</span> It is an unplanned method of testing where the biggest difference maker is a tester’s insight that can work without a specific approach.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Usability Testing:</span> Here you need to check the level of user-friendliness and check the software for convenience. Human observation is a must to make the end user’s experience convenient.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Quality Assurance automation tools</span></li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Repeated Execution:</span> When you need to execute a use case repeatedly, automated testing is a better option.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Regression Testing:</span> Automated automated QA software is better here because the code changes frequently and the regressions can be run in a timely manner\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Performance:</span> You need an automated QA testing software when thousands of concurrent users are simulated at the same time. Additionally, it is a better solution for load testing.\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Quality_assurance.png","alias":"qa-quality-assurance"},"651":{"id":651,"title":"Interface Testing","description":"When an application or a software or a website is developed, then there are several components of it. Those components can be server, database etc. The connection which integrates and facilitates the communication between these components is termed as an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Interface</span>.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Interface Testing</span> is performed to evaluate whether systems or components pass data and control correctly to one another. It is to verify if all the interactions between these modules are working properly and errors are handled properly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Interface Testing - Checklist</span>\r\n<ul><li>Verify that communication between the systems are done correctly</li><li>Verify if all supported hardware/software has been tested</li><li>Verify if all linked documents be supported/opened on all platforms</li><li>Verify the security requirements or encryption while communication happens between systems</li><li>Check if a Solution can handle network failures between Web site and application server</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Phases of Interface Testing. </span>\r\nThere are 2 components involved in Interface testing: 1) web server and application server interface and 2) web server and database server interface.\r\nBasically, 3 phases are involved in the Interface testing which is mentioned below:\r\n<b>Configuration and Development. </b>After the configuration of the interface and the development initialization, the configuration is needed to be verified as per the requirement. In simple words, verification takes place.\r\n<p style=\" text-align: justify; \"><b>Validation. </b>After the configuration and development stage, validation of the interface is necessary.</p>\r\n<p style=\" text-align: justify; \"><b>Maintenance.</b> After the completion of the project, when the project reaches it’s working stage, the interface is set to be monitored for its performance.</p>\r\n<p style=\" text-align: justify; \"></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; \"><a name=\"StepsinvolvedinInterfaceTesting\"></a></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">Types of Interface Testing </h1>\r\nDuring Interface Testing various types of testing done on the interface which may include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Workflow:</span> It ensures that the interface engine handles your standard workflows as expected.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Edge cases -unexpected values:</span> This is considered when testing include date, month and day reversed.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Performance, load, and network testing:</span> A high-volume interface may require more Load Testing than a low-volume interface, depending on the interface engine and connectivity infrastructure.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Individual system interface testing:</span> This includes testing each system individually. For example, billing system and inventory management system for the retail store should be able to operate separately.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What is Graphic User Interface (GUI) Testing?</h1>\r\nGraphic User Interface Testing (GUI) testing is the process of ensuring proper functionality of the graphical user interface (GUI) for a specific application. This involves making sure it behaves in accordance with its requirements and works as expected across the range of supported platforms and devices.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">GUI Testing Approaches</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Manual Based Testing: </span>Under this approach, the screens of the application are checked manually by testers. They are being confirmed with the requirements that are stated in the business requirements. The UI is also matched with the designs that are provided during the documentation phase of the application.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Automation Based Testing:</span> Automated user interface testing approach is performed in 2 steps i.e, record and play. While doing this, the steps are captured/recorded with the help of the automation tool while performing the first round of testing. And during playback, that recorded steps script is run when the application is under test. If the position of any button or image changes that during the playback, it does not get tracked and the test fails.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What Features Should I Look for in a GUI Testing Tool?</h1>\r\nObviously the first answer is to choose a tool that can automate the specific technologies you’re testing, otherwise your automation is doomed to fail. Secondly you should choose a tool that has some of the following characteristics:\r\n<ul><li>Good interface testing software that makes it easy for your automation engineers to write tests, make changes, find issues and be able to deploy the tests on all the environments you need to test.</li><li>A tool that is well supported by the manufacturer and is keeping up to date with new web browsers, operating systems and technologies that you will need to test in the future. </li><li>An object abstraction layer so that your test analysts can write the tests in the way most natural for them and your automation engineers can create objects that point to physical items in the application that will be robust and not change every time you resort a grid or add data to the system.</li><li>Support for data-driven testing since as we have discussed, one of the big benefits of automation is the ability to run the same test thousands of times with different sets of data.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Interface_Testing.png","alias":"interface-testing"},"661":{"id":661,"title":"Sharepoint Development","description":" SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and usage varies substantially among organizations.\r\nSharePoint infuses AI into the mobile app experience to keep you focused and productive while on the go. AI builds an understanding of what you work on, how you work, and how your colleagues' work relates to you. When you need expertise, content, or resources when you're on the go, SharePoint is a great place to start looking.\r\nSharePoint is comprised of a multipurpose set of technologies that has tight integration with Office 365 as well as handy document management capabilities.\r\nAccording to Microsoft, SharePoint is used by 78% of Fortune 500 companies. Between 2006 and 2011, Microsoft sold over 36.5 million user licenses.\r\nSharePoint is a collection of software products and components that includes:\r\n<ul><li>a set of web applications for organizing collaboration;</li><li>functionality for creating web portals;</li><li>module for searching information in documents and information systems;</li><li>workflow management functionality and enterprise-wide content management system;</li><li>module for creating forms for entering information;</li><li>functionality for business analysis.</li></ul>\r\nMicrosoft states that SharePoint has 190 million users across 200,000 customer organizations.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why is Microsoft SharePoint important?</span>\r\nSharePoint’s core functions are\r\n<ul><li>a) to store documents in a more effective format than a regular folder system, and</li><li>b) bring an organization together so that everyone receives critical information that’s relevant to them.</li></ul>\r\nHere are some benefits your organization can get from using SharePoint:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Context around documents and folders</span></span>\r\nA traditional document storage facility is usually a folder on a server somewhere. The reason why SharePoint is more effective than the traditional method is that it brings context around the folder itself by tracking versions of the document. For example, in a traditional folder setup, you can’t have a running version history for each document or see any changes to the file name. Whereas with SharePoint, there’s more information provided about the file. It’s not just some file sitting in a folder; it’s an evolving piece of information that has a history as well as context.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Enable constant communication with all staff</span></span>\r\nIn the past, you might send a group email and copy everyone. The problem with that approach is a lot of information gets ignored or even lost, so some people might not get the information they need. For example, maybe you lost a company document and you missed an important discussion. Or maybe you did read it but afterward, it was very difficult to find and reference that information. SharePoint brings collaboration to the table so that all staff can see the important information and communication accordingly.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Store all information in a central location</span></span>\r\nThis can range from things such as updates from the CEO to important meetings or events. SharePoint brings all the information to one internal place so staff can quickly find the information they need. Other use cases might be general warnings about particular customers or even incidents that everyone needs to be aware of. With SharePoint, simply post the message and everyone can access it from there. Forget email or announcement boards; simply post it on SharePoint.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Encourage collaboration</span></span>\r\nSharePoint is really designed around getting the organization into a central point where they can collaborate. This is particularly important for organizations that are not geographically connected. With some branches working in a very isolated format, SharePoint provides staff with the ability to connect with each other via a portal. Where in the past some staff might only interact with the company during a company meeting, SharePoint brings those people together so everyone can work together, all the time. Collaboration fosters innovation and builds a company culture that spawns creative ideas.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the challenges of Microsoft SharePoint?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Support for certain industry standards.</span> SharePoint's records-management capabilities give it the ability to save documents for legal or historical reasons. This can be a challenge in some industries (medical and financial) where there are complex regulatory requirements for record-keeping. In those cases, you should consult a professional about an industry-specific solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customize out of the box with third-party solutions.</span> Some organizations won’t find what they need out of the box. A third-party solution can help you build something you want. This can be easily achieved if you work with an IT service provider that has SharePoint experience. ","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sharepoint_Development.png","alias":"sharepoint-development"},"665":{"id":665,"title":"User Interface Development","description":" User interface design (UI) or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals (user-centered design).\r\nGood user interface design facilitates finishing the task at hand without drawing unnecessary attention to itself. Graphic design and typography are utilized to support its usability, influencing how the user performs certain interactions and improving the aesthetic appeal of the design; design aesthetics may enhance or detract from the ability of users to use the functions of the interface. The design process must balance technical functionality and visual elements (e.g., mental model) to create a system that is not only operational but also usable and adaptable to changing user needs.\r\nInterface design is involved in a wide range of projects from computer systems, to cars, to commercial planes; all of these projects involve much of the same basic human interactions yet also require some unique skills and knowledge. As a result, designers tend to specialize in certain types of projects and have skills centered on their expertise, whether it is a software design, user research, web design, or industrial design.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Graphical User Interface?</span>\r\nThe graphical user interface, developed in the late 1970s by the Xerox Palo Alto research laboratory and deployed commercially in Apple’s Macintosh and Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, was designed as a response to the problem of inefficient usability in early, text-based command-line interfaces for the average user.\r\nGraphical user interfaces would become the standard of user-centered design in software application programming, providing users the capability to intuitively operate computers and other electronic devices through the direct manipulation of graphical icons such as buttons, scroll bars, windows, tabs, menus, cursors, and the mouse pointing device. Many modern graphical user interfaces feature touchscreen and voice-command interaction capabilities.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Does a Graphical User Interface Work?</span>\r\nGraphical user interface design principles conform to the model–view–controller software pattern, which separates internal representations of information from the manner in which information is presented to the user, resulting in a platform where users are shown which functions are possible rather than requiring the input of command codes. Users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets, which are designed to respond in accordance with the type of data they hold and support the actions necessary to complete the user’s task.\r\nThe appearance, or “skin,” of an operating system or application software may be redesigned at will due to the nature of graphical user interfaces being independent from application functions. Applications typically implement their own unique graphical user interface display elements in addition to graphical user interface elements already present on the existing operating system. A typical graphical user interface also includes standard formats for representing graphics and text, making it possible to share data between applications running under common graphical user interface design software.\r\nGraphical user interface testing refers to the systematic process of generating test cases in order to evaluate the functionality of the system and its design elements. Graphical user interface testing tools, which are either manual or automated and typically implemented by third-party operators, are available under a variety of licenses and are supported by a variety of platforms. Popular examples include: Tricentis Tosca, Squish GUI Tester, Unified Functional Testing (UFT), Maveryx, Appium, and eggPlant Functional.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Graphical User Interface Examples</span>\r\nSketchpad, believed to be the first graphical computer-aided design program, was developed in 1962 by Ivan Sutherland while he was at MIT, and consisted of a light pen that enabled users to create and manipulate objects in engineering drawings in real-time with coordinated graphics.\r\nModern operating systems and graphical user interfaces are incorporated into nearly every interactive application, such as ATMs, self-service checkouts, airline self-ticketing and check-in, video games, smartphones, and desktops. Some popular, modern graphical user interface examples include Microsoft Windows, macOS, Ubuntu Unity, and GNOME Shell for desktop environments, and Android, Apple's iOS, BlackBerry OS, Windows 10 Mobile, Palm OS-WebOS, and Firefox OS for smartphones.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Advantages of Graphical User Interfaces</span>\r\nThe advantage of a graphical user interface is a stark improvement in useability for the average person. The features of a graphical user interface leverage familiar metaphors, such as drag-and-drop for transferring files, and use familiar icons, such as a trash bin for deleted files, creating an environment in which computer operations are intuitive and easily mastered without any prior practice or knowledge of computing machinery or languages. Graphical user interface applications are self descriptive, feedback is typically immediate, and visual cues encourage and steer discoverability.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_User_Interface_Development.png","alias":"user-interface-development"},"669":{"id":669,"title":"MySQL Development","description":" MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of &quot;My&quot;, the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and &quot;SQL&quot;, the abbreviation for Structured Query Language.\r\nMySQL is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is also available under a variety of proprietary licenses. MySQL was owned and sponsored by the Swedish company MySQL AB, which was bought by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle Corporation). In 2010, when Oracle acquired Sun, Widenius forked the open-source MySQL project to create MariaDB.\r\nMySQL is a component of the LAMP web application software stack (and others), which is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python. MySQL is used by many database-driven web applications, including Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, and WordPress. MySQL is also used by many popular websites, including Facebook, Flickr, MediaWiki, Twitter, and YouTube.\r\nMySQL is written in C and C++. Its SQL parser is written in yacc, but it uses a home-brewed lexical analyzer. MySQL works on many system platforms, including AIX, BSDi, FreeBSD, HP-UX, eComStation, i5/OS, IRIX, Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, NetBSD, Novell NetWare, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris, OS/2 Warp, QNX, Oracle Solaris, Symbian, SunOS, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Sanos and Tru64. A port of MySQL to OpenVMS also exists.\r\nThe MySQL server software itself and the client libraries use dual-licensing distribution. They are offered under GPL version 2, or a proprietary license.\r\nSupport can be obtained from the official manual. Free support additionally is available in different IRC channels and forums. Oracle offers paid support via its MySQL Enterprise products. They differ in the scope of services and in price. Additionally, a number of third party organisations exist to provide support and services, including MariaDB and Percona.\r\nMySQL has received positive reviews, and reviewers noticed it &quot;performs extremely well in the average case&quot; and that the &quot;developer interfaces are there, and the documentation (not to mention feedback in the real world via Web sites and the like) is very, very good&quot;. It has also been tested to be a &quot;fast, stable and true multi-user, multi-threaded sql database server&quot;.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is MySQL?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">MySQL is a database management system.</span>\r\nA database is a structured collection of data. It may be anything from a simple shopping list or a picture gallery or the vast amounts of information in a corporate network. To add, access, and process data stored in a computer database, you need a database management system such as MySQL Server. Since computers are very good at handling large amounts of data, database management plays a central role in computing, as stand-alone utilities, or as parts of other applications.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">MySQL is a relational database management system.</span>\r\nA relational database stores data in separate tables rather than putting all the data in one big storeroom. This adds speed and flexibility. The tables are linked by defined relations making it possible to combine data from several tables on request. The SQL part of &quot;MySQL&quot; stands for &quot;Structured Query Language&quot; the most common standardised language used to access databases.\r\nMySQL, the most popular Open Source SQL database, is developed and provided by MySQL AB. The MySQL web site ( http://www.mysql.com ) provides the latest information about MySQL software and MySQL AB.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why do I need MySQL?</span>\r\nIf you have any information such as products, dates, customers, pictures, or any data that is not static, a database is an efficient way to manage that information. Sites that contain message boards, guest books, dynamic galleries, contact lists, or online product information can greatly benefit by storing their information on our fast, reliable and secure database server.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_MySQL_Development.png","alias":"mysql-development"},"673":{"id":673,"title":"MS SQL Development","description":" Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system, or RDBMS, that supports a wide variety of transaction processing, business intelligence and analytics applications in corporate IT environments. It's one of the three market-leading database technologies, along with Oracle Database and IBM's DB2.\r\nLike other RDBMS technologies, SQL Server is primarily built around a row-based table structure that connects related data elements in different tables to one another, avoiding the need to redundantly store data in multiple places within a database. The relational model also provides referential integrity and other integrity constraints to maintain data accuracy; those checks are part of a broader adherence to the principles of atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability - collectively known as the ACID properties and designed to guarantee that database transactions are processed reliably.\r\nThe advanced security features supported in all editions of Microsoft SQL Server starting with SQL Server 2016 SP1 include three technologies added to the 2016 release: Always Encrypted, which lets user update encrypted data without having to decrypt it first; row-level security, which enables data access to be controlled at the row level in database tables; and dynamic data masking, which automatically hides elements of sensitive data from users without full access privileges.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is MS SQL?</span>\r\nMS SQL is short for Microsoft SQL Server. It is a relational web hosting database that is used to store web site information like blog posts or user information. MS SQL is the most popular type of database on Windows servers. It is not free but it has many advanced features that make it suitable for businesses.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the features of MS SQL?</span>\r\nIn basic terms, an MS SQL database is capable of storing any type of data that you want. It will let you quickly store and retrieve information and multiple web site visitors can use it at one time. You will use SQL statements to accomplish all of this. In more technical terms, most versions of MS SQL have the following features:\r\n<ul><li>Buffer management</li><li>Logging and Transaction</li><li>Concurrency and locking</li><li>Replication services</li><li>Analysis services</li><li>Notification services</li><li>Integration services</li><li>Full-text search service</li><li>Stored procedures</li><li>Triggers</li><li>Views</li><li>Sub-SELECTs (i.e. nested SELECTs)</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is MS SQL used for?</span>\r\nMS SQL is the database of choice for web applications on a Windows platform (using .NET or ASP). These languages make is extremely easy to connect to the MS SQL database. It is also used for many popular content management systems and other scripts.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_MS_SQL_Development.png","alias":"ms-sql-development"},"676":{"id":676,"title":"PostgreSQL Development","description":" PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and technical standards compliance. It is designed to handle a range of workloads, from single machines to data warehouses or Web services with many concurrent users. It is the default database for macOS Server, and is also available for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows.\r\nPostgreSQL features transactions with Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID) properties, automatically updatable views, materialized views, triggers, foreign keys, and stored procedures. PostgreSQL is developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, a diverse group of many companies and individual contributors.\r\nPostgreSQL's developers pronounce PostgreSQL as /ˈpoʊstɡrɛs ˌkjuː ˈɛl/. It is abbreviated as Postgres because of ubiquitous support for the SQL standard among relational databases. Originally named POSTGRES, the name (Post Ingres) refers to the project's origins in that RDBMS that originated at University of California, Berkeley. After a review the PostgreSQL Core Team announced in 2007 that the product would continue to use the name PostgreSQL.\r\nPostgreSQL manages concurrency through multiversion concurrency control (MVCC), which gives each transaction a &quot;snapshot&quot; of the database, allowing changes to be made without affecting other transactions. This largely eliminates the need for read locks, and ensures the database maintains ACID principles. PostgreSQL offers three levels of transaction isolation: Read Committed, Repeatable Read and Serializable. Because PostgreSQL is immune to dirty reads, requesting a Read Uncommitted transaction isolation level provides read committed instead. PostgreSQL supports full serializability via the serializable snapshot isolation (SSI) method.\r\nPostgreSQL is available for the following operating systems: Linux (all recent distributions), 64-bit installers available for macOS (OS X) version 10.6 and newer – Windows (with installers available for 64-bit version; tested on latest versions and back to Windows 2012 R2, while for PostgreSQL version 10 and older a 32-bit installer is available and tested down to 32-bit Windows 2008 R1; compilable by e.g. Visual Studio, version 2013 up up to most recent 2019 version) – FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and UnixWare; and not officially tested: DragonFly BSD, BSD/OS, IRIX, OpenIndiana, OpenSolaris, OpenServer, and Tru64 UNIX. Most other Unix-like systems could also work; most modern do support.\r\nPostgreSQL works on any of the following instruction set architectures: x86 and x86-64 on Windows and other operating systems; these are supported on other than Windows: IA-64 Itanium (external support for HP-UX), PowerPC, PowerPC 64, S/390, S/390x, SPARC, SPARC 64, ARMv8-A (64-bit) and older ARM (32-bit, including older such as ARMv6 in Raspberry Pi), MIPS, MIPSel, and PA-RISC. It was also known to work, but not tested in a while, on Alpha (dropped in 9.5), M68k, M32R, NS32k, and VAX. Beyond these, it is possible to build PostgreSQL for an unsupported CPU by disabling spinlocks.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is PostgreSQL? How is it pronounced? What is Postgres?</span>\r\nPostgreSQL is pronounced Post-Gres-Q-L.\r\nPostgreSQL is an object-relational database system that has the features of traditional proprietary database systems with enhancements to be found in next-generation DBMS systems. PostgreSQL is free and the complete source code is available.\r\nPostgreSQL development is performed by a team of mostly volunteer developers spread throughout the world and communicating via the Internet. It is a community project and is not controlled by any company.\r\nPostgres is a widely-used nickname for PostgreSQL. It was the original name of the project at Berkeley and is strongly preferred over other nicknames. If you find 'PostgreSQL' hard to pronounce, call it 'Postgres' instead.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who controls PostgreSQL?</span>\r\nIf you are looking for a PostgreSQL gatekeeper, central committee, or controlling company, give up --- there isn't one. We do have a core committee and git committers, but these groups are more for administrative purposes than control. The project is directed by the community of developers and users, which anyone can join. All you need to do is subscribe to the mailing lists and participate in the discussions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who is the PostgreSQL Global Development Group?</span>\r\nThe &quot;PGDG&quot; is an international, unincorporated association of individuals and companies who have contributed to the PostgreSQL project. The PostgreSQL Core Team generally act as spokespeople for the PGDG.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who is the PostgreSQL Core Team?</span>\r\nA committee of five to seven (currently six) senior contributors to PostgreSQL who do the following for the project: (a) set release dates, (b) handle confidential matters for the project, (c) act as spokespeople for the PGDG when required, and (d) arbitrate community decisions which are not settled by consensus. The current Core Team is listed on top of the contributor's page.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What about the various PostgreSQL foundations?</span>\r\nWhile the PostgreSQL project utilizes non-profit corporations in the USA, Europe, Brazil, and Japan for fundraising and project coordination, these entities do not own the PostgreSQL code.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the license of PostgreSQL?</span>\r\nPostgreSQL is distributed under a license similar to BSD and MIT. Basically, it allows users to do anything they want with the code, including reselling binaries without the source code. The only restriction is that you not hold us legally liable for problems with the software. There is also the requirement that this copyright appears in all copies of the software.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_PostgesSQL_Development.png","alias":"postgresql-development"},"703":{"id":703,"title":"Website Administration","description":"Web administration is the practice of keeping a website running efficiently and securely. Responsibility for the website is managed by the website administrator or webmaster, whose job is to perform the many daily tasks required to maintain a website. Website administrators plan and perform website enhancements and manage website content. They build web pages, fix bugs, and perform system upgrades. Website administration also involves managing user accounts, web software, web servers, web security, log analysis, content, and more.\r\nSecurity is probably the most important part of web administration. If your web server is not secure, it can become a source for hackers to use to attack your customers directly, or bring down your site, or take even more malicious actions against your business.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Does a Website Administrator Do?</span>\r\nWebsite administrators, also known as webmasters, web developers or network and computer system administrators, are responsible for all aspects of keeping website content and design fresh, backed up, and fully functional. They typically work closely with clients to make sure they understand how they want their websites to look and function. Depending on their specific role, they may also be responsible for making sure local networks are functioning properly as well. The following chart provides an overview of the education, job outlook and average salaries in this field.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Website Administrator?</span>\r\nAlthough sometimes called upon to create websites, the main responsibility of administrators is to maintain, back up and update existing websites for organizations. A website administrator would be responsible for making sure the site's user interface is easy to understand and efficient. He would ensure that all websites are operating securely and at optimum speeds. Approval of the content and links within the website might be part of his job description, and he will be responsible for evaluating each website's analytics, such as user feedback and traffic.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Website_Administration.png","alias":"website-administration"},"705":{"id":705,"title":"SEO & SEM","description":"SEO is a key part of your digital marketing strategy and some knowledge is essential no matter what area of digital marketing you specialize in.\r\nSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process by which search engines “crawl” content to see how effective it will be to attract traffic. Search engines will assess a number of things in a website (such as keywords, tags, and link titles) and rank it for its capacity to attract organic traffic based on a variety of factors.\r\nSearch Engine Marketing (SEM) is a descriptor that incorporates various types of paid search advertising. This is the type of thing that you’ll see as Google ad and usually ends up on the top of a page list. Usually, this has a to do with keyword placement and usage and that’s one reason why doing it well can require some extra knowledge and strategy.\r\nHow are SEO and SEM Complementary?\r\nSEO and SEM both rely heavily on keywords to drive traffic to business websites and web pages. Though the marketing techniques used for each are different, they are both focused on traffic flows and how these relate to marketing activities. People will use search engines to search for something that they’re looking for, and they’ll be able to find it by the organic results (SEO) or by the paid results (SEM).\r\nMost people search online before buying anything, so having a strong presence in search is crucial and using a strategic combination of both can boost your visibility in the long term.\r\nSEO is for organic traffic – so that’s unpaid or free listings, and SEM is for targeted ads that you pay for. They can be complementary but only if the website itself is SEO-friendly first, then SEM has a greater chance of being successful.\r\nSEO is the foundation for good SEM and when you have each set up properly, you have a better chance of getting high-quality traffic and improving conversion rates. Once you have an SEO-friendly site and sponsored ads that are targeted properly using the right keywords, you have more chance of showing up at the top of paid searches. But you have to have your SEO in place in order for Google to see you as a credible website.\r\nIf your website is on the newer side, you can prioritize your PPC campaign first as it can take a while for SEO rankings to become established, but don’t ignore your SEO during this process.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is SEO?</span>\r\nSEO is essentially a component of the larger category, SEM. According to Google’s Knowledge Graph, search engine optimization is “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”\r\nThe SEO industry is continually changing due to the frequent changes made to Google’s algorithm. But, there is one aspect of SEO that stays constant: SEO is made up of On-Page and Off-Page activities.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Components Does SEO Include?</span>\r\nAs stated above, SEO is comprised of two different activities:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">On-Page SEO</span> includes incorporating selective keyword naturally into title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, alt text, etc.; blog posts and page copy that is written and optimized with quality; clean and formatting page URLS; optimized page load speed; Google authorship incorporated; social sharing integration within your content and much more.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Off-Page SEO</span> includes creating a high quality, natural backlink profile (aka having other high-quality/authoritative sites link to your site naturally); social sharing signals; social bookmarking (Stumbleupon, Reddit), and so on.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Is search Engine Marketing (SEM)?</span>\r\nAccording to Wikipedia, “Search engine marketing is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS) through optimization and advertising.” SEM includes SEO tactics, as well as several other search marketing tactics.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Components Does SEM Include?</span>\r\nOther than search engine optimization, SEM includes the use of paid search, such as pay per click (PPC) listings and advertisements. Most of the time, SEM strictly includes PPC campaigns and activities, but if you use SEO and paid search, that falls under SEM efforts.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Is the Main Difference Between SEO and SEM?</span>\r\nThe main difference between these two terms is that search engine optimization is simply a component of search engine marketing. As mentioned above, SEM includes components of paid search, such as PPC and also SMM (social media marketing).\r\nIt is important to note that you should never use the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably because although they work hand in hand, they are not the same term.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_SEO_SEM.png","alias":"seo-sem"},"707":{"id":707,"title":"Software Development Project Managements","description":" Software project management is an art and science of planning and leading software projects. It is a sub-discipline of project management in which software projects are planned, implemented, monitored and controlled.\r\nA software development process is concerned primarily with the production aspect of software development, as opposed to the technical aspect, such as software tools. These processes exist primarily for supporting the management of software development, and are generally skewed toward addressing business concerns. Many software development processes can be run in a similar way to general project management processes. Examples are:<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Interpersonal communication and conflict management and resolution.</span> Active, frequent and honest communication is the most important factor in increasing the likelihood of project success and mitigating problematic projects. The development team should seek end-user involvement and encourage user input in the development process. Not having users involved can lead to misinterpretation of requirements, insensitivity to changing customer needs, and unrealistic expectations on the part of the client. Software developers, users, project managers, customers and project sponsors need to communicate regularly and frequently. The information gained from these discussions allows the project team to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and to act on that information to benefit from opportunities and to minimize threats. Even bad news may be good if it is communicated relatively early, because problems can be mitigated if they are not discovered too late. For example, casual conversation with users, team members, and other stakeholders may often surface potential problems sooner than formal meetings. All communications need to be intellectually honest and authentic, and regular, frequent, high quality criticism of development work is necessary, as long as it is provided in a calm, respectful, constructive, non-accusatory, non-angry fashion. Frequent casual communications between developers and end-users, and between project managers and clients, are necessary to keep the project relevant, useful and effective for the end-users, and within the bounds of what can be completed. Effective interpersonal communication and conflict management and resolution are the key to software project management. No methodology or process improvement strategy can overcome serious problems in communication or mismanagement of interpersonal conflict. Moreover, outcomes associated with such methodologies and process improvement strategies are enhanced with better communication. The communication must focus on whether the team understands the project charter and whether the team is making progress towards that goal. End-users, software developers and project managers must frequently ask the elementary, simple questions that help identify problems before they fester into near-disasters. While end-user participation, effective communication and teamwork are not sufficient, they are necessary to ensure a good outcome, and their absence will almost surely lead to a bad outcome.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Risk management</span> is the process of measuring or assessing risk and then developing strategies to manage the risk. In general, the strategies employed include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk. Risk management in software project management begins with the business case for starting the project, which includes a cost-benefit analysis as well as a list of fallback options for project failure, called a contingency plan.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Requirements management</span> is the process of identifying, eliciting, documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. New or altered computer system Requirements management, which includes Requirements analysis, is an important part of the software engineering process; whereby business analysts or software developers identify the needs or requirements of a client; having identified these requirements they are then in a position to design a solution.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Change management</span> is the process of identifying, documenting, analyzing, prioritizing and agreeing on changes to scope (project management) and then controlling changes and communicating to relevant stakeholders. Change impact analysis of new or altered scope, which includes Requirements analysis at the change level, is an important part of the software engineering process; whereby business analysts or software developers identify the altered needs or requirements of a client; having identified these requirements they are then in a position to re-design or modify a solution. Theoretically, each change can impact the timeline and budget of a software project, and therefore by definition must include risk-benefit analysis before approval.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Software configuration management</span> is the process of identifying, and documenting the scope itself, which is the software product underway, including all sub-products and changes and enabling communication of these to relevant stakeholders. In general, the processes employed include version control, naming convention (programming), and software archival agreements.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Release management</span> is the process of identifying, documenting, prioritizing and agreeing on releases of software and then controlling the release schedule and communicating to relevant stakeholders. Most software projects have access to three software environments to which software can be released; Development, Test, and Production. In very large projects, where distributed teams need to integrate their work before releasing to users, there will often be more environments for testing, called unit testing, system testing, or integration testing, before release to User acceptance testing (UAT).\r\nAs a subdiscipline of project management, some regard the management of software development akin to the management of manufacturing, which can be performed by someone with management skills, but no programming skills. John C. Reynolds rebuts this view, and argues that software development is entirely design work, and compares a manager who cannot program to the managing editor of a newspaper who cannot write.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a software project?</span>\r\nA software development project is a complex undertaking by two or more persons within the boundaries of time, budget, and staff resources that produce new or enhanced computer code that adds significant business value to a new or existing business process.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What does a software development project manager do?</span>\r\nA software project manager is the most important person inside a team who takes the overall responsibilities to manage the software projects and plays an important role in the successful completion of the projects. A project manager has to face many difficult situations to accomplish these works.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Software_Development_Project_Managements.png","alias":"software-development-project-managements"},"810":{"id":810,"title":"Web analytics","description":" Web analytics is a generic term meaning the study of the impact of a website on its users. Ecommerce companies and other website publishers often use Web analytics software to measure such concrete details as how many people visited their site, how many of those visitors were unique visitors, how they came to the site (i.e., if they followed a link to get to the site or came there directly), what keywords they searched with on the site's search engine, how long they stayed on a given page or on the entire site and what links they clicked on and when they left the site.\r\nWeb analytic software can also be used to monitor whether or not a site's pages are working properly. With this information, Web site administrators can determine which areas of the site are popular and which areas of the site do not get traffic. Web analytics provides these site administrators and publishers with data that can be used to streamline a website to create a better user experience.\r\nWeb analytics is a powerful resource for any business with a website or online presence. By monitoring the way that potential customers interact with your website online, you can tailor their experiences to increase your sales, clicks, and conversions.\r\nWebsite analytics provides both quantitative and qualitative results after analyzing the KPIs of your website. It is critical for the website analytics service you pick to abide by the best practices of website analytics to provide you with the most accurate results.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Backing up reports and conclusions with enough data.</span> The website analytics service you choose should not only be able to tell you if you have met your website goals and sales target, but they should also be able to help you work on your KPIs. A website analytics team should be able to point out if your site has value-adding content that is not getting enough traffic, or how you can change the layout of the page to improve visibility and UX. It is necessary for the team to engage multiple tools like engagement analysis and user path analysis to find the correct answers to engagement or traffic flow problems your site might be facing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">There should be no superficial reports containing only data.</span> New website owners often make the mistake of believing that pageview, visits, and top source reports are enough. However, you need something more in-depth and specific to learn about the reasons for the decrease in organic traffic. A report with only numbers is definitely not what an enterprise needs to boost its organic traffic flow and conversion rates.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">The data on every report should be coupled with insights.</span> Apart from providing you with the numbers on the traffic reports and top view reports, your website analytics team should provide you with relevant data that shows which parts of your website is highly successful, which areas are losing traffic and what points require immediate attention. Without the expert insights, data remains useless irrespective of its accuracy.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Use of individual tools for assessment of different KPIs.</span> Any website analytics service you pick should know the importance of pan-session KPIs for assessing the performance of a site. For example, comparing the user-lifetime value and new visitors acquired over the last couple of months can help you understand if your site performance has improved over a previous couple of months.\r\nWorking with a website analytics service can provide you with a simpler report that compiles the KPIs from your website. It is easier to understand a single report with reduced complexities as compared to perusing tens of different reports coming from individual website analytics tools you might be using on your own.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is web analytics?</span>\r\nWeb analytics monitor the way that users interact with your website through their behaviors and activities. It is the entire process of collection, analysis, and reporting of data generated from the interaction of the users with your website.\r\nThe reports from the analytics tools allow webmasters and marketers to understand user interactions such as the length of time they were on the site, which pages they visited, and if they clicked on links or filled out forms.\r\nIn general, you’ll see these types of raw data in your web analytics reports –\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web Traffic:</span> The number of incoming and outgoing website visitors you receive within a given time-period</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Views:</span> The number of times a page has been viewed</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Clicks:</span> The number of times a link has been clicked</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Unique visitors:</span> First-time visitors to your website per day, per week or month</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Bounce rate:</span> Seen often in Google Analytics, the percentage of visitors that leave the site quickly without interacting contribute to the bounce rate</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Conversion rate:</span> The rate of visitors making purchases from your site, signing up for newsletters or subscribing to a service</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Organic traffic:</span> Visitors that arrive at your website directly from a search engine and not from social media or other blogs</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Direct traffic:</span> Visitors that come to your website by going to your address directly and not from a search engine</li></ul>\r\nWeb analytics allow webmasters or marketers to set key performance indicators (KPIs) or benchmarks to measure the level of success of the various elements of the website, including calls to action (CTA), subscription options or form sign-ups.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">How do I use website analytics tools?</span>\r\nA web analytics tool lets you see visualizations of user interactions with your website. At a base level, they report on simple website usages like visits and pages viewed. Beyond this, many of these services offer data analysis tools to better understand and interpret the information. You are able to use the tool as a data manager, where you can analyze numbers from different data sources and date ranges.\r\nYour website typically has goals, such as obtaining email addresses or converting a visitor to a purchaser. You can define key metrics (or key performance indicators) to track interactions that are important to your website. Funnels can also be used to watch a customer's path through a website and see where they may lose interest or stray from the intended course.\r\nFinally, behavior maps allow you to see a visual representation of where people view and click on individual pages. It can show you which links are successful and which areas are causing trouble or distractions for the user.\r\nOne website can have more than one KPI, and each KPI can demand a distinct tool for monitoring and reporting. Therefore, how you will use the tool will depend significantly on its purpose and suggested use. Moreover, the choice of web analytics tools might also rely on the bulk of your business data, and your market reach.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are web analytics services?</span>\r\nA web analytics service is an application or agency that performs data collection, then lets you view and analyze the information. Most services will allow the marketer or webmaster to see detailed charts, graphs, and visualizations of the data about their web users, often in real time.\r\nA majority of website analytics tools focus on consumer insights and customer behavior. However, web analytics services can also monitor other aspects of your online presence like social media discussions and posts. They can help you distinguish the traffic coming from different social media channels and give you enough information to make the right decisions.\r\nSome web analytics services provide a custom analysis of your data to assist with pages that suffer from low conversion rates and create custom visitor profiles. You can get a detailed assessment of page quality directly. It can tell you how the data on individual pages are performing and whether potential consumers are traveling down the sales funnel from those particular pages.\r\nFinally, a web analytics service can help you monitor A/B testing that you implement to improve your site performance, ensuring the changes only become permanent if they work well. Website analytics gives you insight into the changes that will work best for enhancing the performance of your website.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Do I need web analytics software for my website?</span>\r\nIf your website is for a business, it’s a good idea to use web analytics software. In fact, if you have a website that generates revenue for your business, you need website analytics.\r\nIt’s essential to understand who is visiting your website, how they use it, and what they are looking for. Analytics allows you to understand customers that you would typically not know existed. The visitors that come to your site don’t provide information and don’t interact often have an apparent reason they left your website empty-handed.\r\nJust like you would perform market research to understand why customers say no to your business in person or leave your retail store without making a purchase, you need to hear what your online customers have to say. Their feedbacks and actions can be more insightful than you can imagine. All the hints for website improvement and UX enhancement lie in their actions.\r\nWebsites that focus primarily on e-commerce or lead generation will see the most benefit from using web analytics software. Website analytics enables each website owner and webmaster to understand their consumers. It will allow them to monitor their customers, change the trouble spots on their website, and improve the conversion rate of new customers.\r\nHowever, even small business websites can benefit from seeing how their customers interact. A website is one of the initial investments of a small business. It only makes sense to want to know how your investment is performing after a couple of weeks or months after its launch. Website analytics can tell you precisely how every page, CTA, and element on your website is engaging the consumers, and which parts require immediate attention.\r\nAlso, if you do not have a form or cart on your website, you can still seek out traffic to learn about your business or act on contacting you. Actions like time spent on your site and bounce rates of organic traffic can be monitored, and their user experience can be improved using web analytics software.\r\nWebsite analytics is vital for every website, especially when Google is rolling out new updates, to ensure that you are keeping your eyes on the right metrics at the right time. Investing in website analytics can pinpoint at the factors responsible for reduced traffic and low sales. It can highlight the traffic and conversion trends for your site, and it can tell you precisely what changes your site might need to improve its performance.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-web-analytics.png","alias":"web-analytics"},"816":{"id":816,"title":"Online surveys","description":" Online (Internet) surveys are becoming an essential research tool for a variety of research fields, including marketing, social and official statistics research. According to ESOMAR online survey research accounted for 20% of global data-collection expenditure in 2006. They offer capabilities beyond those available for any other type of self-administered questionnaire. Online consumer panels are also used extensively for carrying out surveys but the quality is considered inferior because the panelists are regular contributors and tend to be fatigued. However, when estimating the measurement quality (defined as product of reliability and validity) using a multitrait-mutlimethod approach (MTMM), some studies found a quite reasonable quality and even that the quality of a series of questions in an online opt-in panel (Netquest) was very similar to the measurement quality for the same questions asked in the European Social Survey (ESS), which is a face-to-face survey.\r\nSome studies have compared the quality of face-to-face surveys and/or telephone surveys with that of online surveys, for single questions, but also for more complex concepts measured with more than one question (also called Composite Scores or Index). Focusing only on probability-based surveys (also for the online ones), they found overall that the face-to-face (using show-cards) and web surveys have quite similar levels of measurement quality, whereas the telephone surveys were performing worse. Other studies comparing paper-and-pencil questionnaires with web-based questionnaires showed that employees preferred online survey approaches to the paper-and-pencil format. There are also concerns about what has been called &quot;ballot stuffing&quot; in which employees make repeated responses to the same survey. Some employees are also concerned about privacy. Even if they do not provide their names when responding to a company survey, can they be certain that their anonymity is protected? Such fears prevent some employees from expressing an opinion.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What does Online Survey mean?</span>\r\nAn online survey is a questionnaire that the target audience can complete over the Internet. Online surveys are usually created as Web forms with a database to store the answers and statistical software to provide analytics. People are often encouraged to complete online surveys by an incentive such as being entered to win a prize.\r\nCompanies often use online surveys to gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ tastes and opinions. Like traditional surveys, online surveys can be used in two basic ways: To provide more data on customers, including everything from basic demographic information (age, education level and so on) to social data (causes, clubs or activities the customer supports) To create a survey about a specific product, service or brand in order to find out how consumers are reacting to it. In contrast to traditional surveys, online surveys offer companies a way to sample a broader audience at a lower cost.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-online-surveys.png","alias":"online-surveys"},"818":{"id":818,"title":"Content Marketing","description":" Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to:\r\n<ul><li>Attract attention and generate leads</li><li>Expand their customer base</li><li>Generate or increase online sales</li><li>Increase brand awareness or credibility</li><li>Engage an online community of users</li></ul>\r\nContent marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content. Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future. This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales. Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.\r\nUnlike other forms of online marketing, content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need. As James O'Brien of Contently wrote on Mashable, &quot;The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story.&quot; Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a content marketing strategy.\r\nWhen businesses pursue content marketing, the main focus should be the needs of the prospect or customer. Once a business has identified the customer's need, information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc. Most of these formats belong to the digital channel.\r\nDigital content marketing is a management process that uses electronic channels to identify, forecast, and satisfy the content requirements of a particular audience. It must be consistently updated and added to in order to influence the behavior of customers.","materialsDescription":" What Types of Businesses Can Content Marketing Help?\r\nSmall and large businesses in virtually every industry use content marketing to their advantage. From major consumer brands and retail stores to tech companies and service-oriented businesses, content marketing can help you reach out to your target audience.\r\nBoth business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies have developed successful content marketing strategies. The techniques and goals vary between B2B and B2C companies, but that doesn’t make content marketing any less effective.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Can Content Marketing Benefit My Business?</span>\r\nThe beauty of content marketing is that it serves multiple purposes. Depending on your goals and the type of content you create, it could boost your brand in several different ways.\r\nFirst, content marketing can increase awareness of your brand, especially if the material you produce has an educational angle. As customers get to know your brand and the value that it provides through high-quality content, you can also increase customer loyalty. As you grow your brand’s base, you can also generate website traffic and drive sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can Content Marketing Generate Leads for My Business?</span>\r\nWith the right strategy in place, you can use content marketing to generate a steady stream of new leads for your business. While most brands offer content like blog posts, articles, and videos free of charge, they also create high-level content, such as white papers, case studies, and eBooks to serve as lead magnets. Then they require readers to opt into a mailing list before gaining access to the high-level content.\r\nOnce you’ve gained permission to email interested customers, you can introduce your leads to your sales funnel. As your leads discover and engage with your other content marketing efforts, they may convert from potential to current customers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What’s the Most Common Content Marketing Mistake?</span>\r\nFor most businesses, the biggest content marketing mistake is jumping in without a coherent strategy. Like any type of marketing, you need a plan to get the results you want from content marketing. Launching a blog and producing posts regularly may never help you achieve your objectives if you don’t know what you want to accomplish or how to get there.\r\nTo develop an effective content marketing strategy, you’ll need to understand who your target audience is, what kinds of content they want, and how your brand can offer the greatest value to your audience. Many businesses opt to create buyer personas so they can get to know their target audience and design content that’s sure to resonate.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What Type of Content Should My Business Create?</span>\r\nWhile the right content balance varies from business to business, most brands consider a few essential types. Blog posts and articles tend to top out around 1,000 words and usually help readers understand how and why to use your product or service. Case studies, white papers, and eBooks are substantially longer and typically feature original research related to your industry. Infographics and videos generally explain and illustrate concepts that you simply can’t convey via text. Depending on your brand’s goals, you might include one, two, or all types of content in your strategy.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Much Content Should My Business Produce?</span>\r\nJust as content type depends on your unique brand, so does content frequency. A lifestyle brand may benefit from developing and sharing short snippets of content daily, while others may get more value out of creating long-form content once a week or twice a month.\r\nNo matter what type of frequency works best for your business, however, strive for a consistent schedule. A regular schedule will boost your reliability and ensure that your audience anticipates your content.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Is Content Marketing the Same as Social Media Marketing?</span>\r\nThese two branches of marketing aren’t the same, but many businesses integrate their content marketing and social media marketing strategies. This synthesis helps brands ensure that they’re optimizing their marketing efforts.\r\nWhile content marketing encompasses written, graphic, and video material that can live on your company’s website or any number of other places online, social media marketing takes place strictly on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Many social media marketers build their editorial calendars around sharing links to content that their brands have created, as this practice can drive views and value.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How Can You Measure the Results of Content Marketing?</span>\r\nWhen you invest in a content marketing strategy, it’s essential to track the results and determine your return on investment (ROI). As a general rule, your goals determine the metrics you’ll track as you assess results.\r\nFor example, if you want to increase brand awareness, you might track website traffic, bounce rate, or social shares. If you want to generate leads, you’ll track the number of leads, conversion rates, and an average time to close.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-content-marketing.png","alias":"content-marketing"},"820":{"id":820,"title":"Marketing Automation","description":"Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.\r\nMarketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by digital marketing software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. Originally focused on email marketing automation, marketing automation now refers to a broad range of automation and analytic tools for marketing, especially inbound marketing. Marketing Automation platforms are used as a hosted or web-based solution, and no software installation is required by the customer.\r\nThe reason for using a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.\r\nMarketing automation is a platform that marketers use to plan, coordinate, manage and measure all of their marketing campaigns, both online and offline. It is often used along with lifecycle marketing strategy to closely manage and nurture generated leads, aiming to convert leads into customers.\r\nMarketing automation is a type of software that allows companies to effectively target customers with automated marketing messages across channels including email, websites, social media and text messages to generate sales leads. The technology is a segment of customer relationship management, or CRM, and is typically used by marketing departments as a way to remove repetitive tasks from staff workflows and increase overall marketing efficiency.\r\nOften, a brand will use multiple marketing automation tools, referred to as the marketing technology or martech — stack. These automation platforms assist in lead generation via email marketing, chatbots hosted on social media or websites, and other channels such as short message service (SMS) text. Marketing automation tools extend the reach of marketing campaigns, creating inbound marketing, a term some vendors use to refer to the strategy of finding prospects for top- to mid-funnel via personalization of pitches derived through analytics tools, which segment customers into different groups for different approaches.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Marketing automation features</span></p>\r\nDigital marketing automation software manages the online element of a marketing campaign, including data analytics that can create more precise personalization of content to individual customers to drive engagement and revenue.\r\nArtificial intelligence (AI) applications such as chatbots can help automate the delivery of that information or direct potential customers to webpages, online documents or forms that help create sales or gauge a potential customer's current or future interest in purchasing a company's goods or services. Marketing manager tools can also administer customer satisfaction and product usage surveys and then collect, measure and segment the response data.\r\nThe main features of marketing automation software typically include:\r\n<ul><li>Account-based marketing</li><li>Analytics for CRM</li><li>Campaign management</li><li>Inbound marketing</li><li>Lead management</li><li>Marketing ROI</li><li>Targeting and segmentation</li><li>Social marketing</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Who should use marketing automation?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">The beauty of a marketing automation system is that it can help your business maximize on efforts that have already proven successful. Attracting new audiences through the use of effective marketing strategies is step one, but if you want to do more to nurture those people so that they become customers, marketing automation is a good bet.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">How can marketing automation benefit my business?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing software solutions removes the hassle from your marketing strategy and allows you to streamline, automate and evaluate tasks and workflows. Your business will be able to scale its efforts and improve how you target customers.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What is marketing automation software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In essence, it’s a set of solutions that automates, streamlines and analyzes marketing-related workflows and engagement to get more leads and qualify them for sales. The idea is the more qualified leads you get the higher the conversion rate and the more revenue you generate. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing software programs differ from CRM in that the purpose of marketing automation software is to get top-of-funnel leads, while the latter nurtures middle- and bottom-of-funnel leads. In short, marketing automation qualifies leads to feed into the CRM sales funnel for nurturing prospects to conversion.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Marketing automation plugs into a company's CRM system, which, typically, has its own native marketing automation cloud service (such as Salesforce Pardot and Oracle Eloqua). Eloqua will work with other CRM platforms that compete with Oracle's, and Marketo, an independent marketing automation platform, will work with Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft and other CRM systems. HubSpot also is a popular marketing automation platform that has its own CRM backbone.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">This becomes important when a company's marketing operations rely on a survey, email, social media or chatbot app for inbound lead-generation efforts that plug into Marketo or Eloqua, which, in turn, allows those marketing processes to continue regardless of which CRM the company uses. In effect, they act as middleware connecting the thousands of niche marketing automation tools and large CRM systems, where a company's customer data resides.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What are the types of marketing automation software?<br /></span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM integrated</span>. Many CRM solutions today have multi-channel marketing tools to make lead generation a seamless experience from top-of-funnel to conversion. If not fully packaged, at least the marketing automation and CRM are modularized and have native integration.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Email marketing</span>. Marketing automation has its beginnings with email marketing software. Many mailers are established and have maintained their email marketing UI as their core functionality, but they now offer newer marketing automation features like lead scoring, landing page integration and analytics beyond the open-click metric.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing automation.</span> This is the primary category featuring the standard tools, such as: forms, landing pages, lead scoring, lead database, reporting and analytics and pre-built or integrated email marketing and CRM functions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing analytics software</span>. They can be standalone apps or modules to a bigger marketing automation system. They lend more powerful analytics to the base system and cross over to the business intelligence category.<br />Social marketing. These are marketing software solutions with focus on social media functionalities such as Twitter and LinkedIn prospecting, brand mention tracking on Facebook and triggered posts on your pages based on your rules for keywords, hashtags or mentions.</p>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What does marketing automation software do?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Here are the main features of marketing automation technology, which you should look for when subscribing to one.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead scoring. </span>Allows you to automatically grade leads based on specific criteria you set, including demographics, prospect behaviors and historical interactions. You assign a weight to each criterion and the system aggregates them to calculate the prospect’s lead score. The lead scores can be segregated by range and automatically funneled to their respective workflows. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead database</span>. The lead database captures a qualified prospect’s details and other marketing activities like web visits, email clicks and downloads. This database funnels leads to your CRM sales pipeline and, once converted, into your main customer database. The lead database may also allow for segmentation to help you target groups.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Lead nurturing.</span> Generally runs workflows designed to filter or shortlist prospects, which include managing the processes in email marketing and other channels and capturing data that helps in further qualifying leads.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Email marketing.</span> Business email marketing software allows email drip campaigns and features newsletter and email templates or an editor that lets you design your layout with ease. It allows for mass emails to targeted lists with a tracking tool to view number of opens and click-throughs. It may also feature an advanced tool for triggered emails, which send the right response in real time to specific customer actions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM integration</span>. Once the leads are qualified at the top-of-funnel, they are sent to the sales team; hence, marketing automation software should have seamless CRM integration. The integration can be with a third-party solution or as an add-on to the marketing automation software.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Forms and landing pages.</span> A form is embedded on the landing page to collect lead data, where it is funneled into your database for lead scoring. The landing page can also include dynamic content, where images, texts and calls-to-action are customized to the lead based on profiling like geolocation, industry, job title, previous interactions with you, etc.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Progressive profiling.</span> This is a smart form that delivers the right fields to different leads. A web visitor is analyzed for key details (for example: IP address, source page, Y/N customer) and is led to a series of unique short forms to capture specific data. This feature may also require social credentials for deeper profiling.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Reporting &amp; analytics. </span>You can calculate an individual campaign’s cost and ROI and, generally, your marketing activities, by running analytics on key metrics that are sliced and diced in different ways that include open emails, downloads, lead volume, etc. In conjunction with CRM, you can associate these values against sales metrics like conversion rate, win-loss rate and total sales.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Mobile-optimized. </span>Mobile-optimized landing pages and emails help you target users who access the Internet from their smartphones or tablets. Mobile-optimized also means you can access the system and your data on the go.<br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-marketing-automation.png","alias":"marketing-automation"},"822":{"id":822,"title":"PR & Outreach","description":" Outreach - is building relationships with the audience outside the formal channels of communication. Contact can be both online and offline. That is, if usually, a person deals with a company at an official level - on a website, in a representative office, etc., then in outreach information is conveyed through external sources.\r\nThe main goal of the outreach project is to create valuable backlinks from sites to the client’s website. These links improve organic ranking and attract new audiences. Outreach often has secondary goals of enhancing brand awareness and building trust.\r\nClassic PR forms an idea of ​​the object. Outreach is needed at the next stage when people have gaps in information or there are difficulties in communicating with representatives of the brand.\r\nOutreach can be targeted at various target groups or their segments. For example, for fans of some brand, users of a particular service. In the broad sense of the word, outreach is propaganda, expanding the reach of a loyal audience. This term also means work with opinion leaders, educational and missionary activities.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is outreach?</span>\r\nOutreach is one of the directions in crowd marketing, which implies an agreement personally with the owner of the site, a blogger, in order to place banner ads on their resource, mentioning the promotion of a company or brand.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the main tasks of outreach?</span>\r\n<ul><li>Backlinks are still the strongest ranking indicator in the Google search sequence.</li><li>As the Google algorithm has improved its ability to detect, ignore, and punish unethical methods of link building, companies must earn links by creating and advertising high-quality content that requires complex communications and processes.</li><li>The specialist competently approaches the project, finds trust sites, forums, blogs for advertising, agrees with the owner of the donor site - this is the key to the quality of building the link mass.</li><li>The result of effective outreach work: product visibility in search engines and high site traffic.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Who needs outreach?</span>\r\nOutreach is a new direction in link building, but he has already managed to make himself known on the Internet. Who needs this promotion method:\r\n<ul><li>SEO specialists;</li><li>Web studios;</li><li>PR managers;</li><li>Marketers;</li><li>Online stores;</li><li>Media.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the outreach algorithm?</span>\r\nWork in the framework of the direction takes place in several stages:\r\n<ol><li>Search for sites that are popular and relevant to your audience.</li><li>Definition of opinion leaders on a selected topic.</li><li>Search for contacts of resource representatives.</li><li>Choosing a format: press release, interview, article, mention with a link.</li><li>Preparation of a press release with details and terms of cooperation.</li><li>Writing a welcome letter.</li><li>Communication with representatives and negotiations.</li><li>Content preparation.</li><li>Publication and control.</li></ol>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon-pr-outreach.png","alias":"pr-outreach"},"842":{"id":842,"title":"Chatbot Development","description":"A chatbot is a piece of software that conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, although as of 2019, they are far short of being able to pass the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler ones scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.\r\nThe term &quot;ChatterBot&quot; was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (creator of the first Verbot, Julia) in 1994 to describe these conversational programs. Today, most chatbots are accessed via virtual assistants such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, via messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat, or via individual organizations' apps and websites. Chatbots can be classified into usage categories such as conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat), analytics, communication, customer support, design, developer tools, education, entertainment, finance, food, games, health, HR, marketing, news, personal, productivity, shopping, social, sports, travel and utilities.\r\nBeyond chatbots, Conversational AI refers to the use of messaging apps, speech-based assistants and chatbots to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences at scale.\r\nThe process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based chatbot development platforms offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform SnatchBot and IBM Watson. These cloud platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Backend as a Service for chatbot development.\r\nSome Companies like Microsoft Azure and AARC are currently providing their Bot Engines through which chatbot Platforms or Software can be developed.","materialsDescription":"New tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers have hit the market: Chatbots or Virtual Assistants. In banking, chatbots and virtual assistants are some of the industry’s newest tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a chatbot?</span>\r\nA chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software that can simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, mobile apps or through the telephone.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why are chatbots important?</span>\r\nA chatbot is often described as one of the most advanced and promising expressions of interaction between humans and machines. However, from a technological point of view, a chatbot only represents the natural evolution of a Question-Answering system leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP). Formulating responses to questions in natural language is one of the most typical examples of Natural Language Processing applied in various enterprises’ end-use applications.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">How does a chatbot work?</span>\r\nThere are two different tasks at the core of a chatbot:\r\n<ol><li>user request analysis</li><li>returning the response</li></ol>\r\nUser request analysis: this is the first task that a chatbot performs. It analyzes the user’s request to identify the user intent and to extract relevant entities.\r\nThe ability to identify the user’s intent and extract data and relevant entities contained in the user’s request is the first condition and the most relevant step at the core of a chatbot: If you are not able to correctly understand the user’s request, you won’t be able to provide the correct answer.\r\nReturning the response: once the user’s intent has been identified, the chatbot must provide the most appropriate response for the user’s request. The answer may be:\r\n<ul><li>a generic and predefined text;</li><li>a text retrieved from a knowledge base that contains different answers;</li><li>a contextualized piece of information based on data the user has provided;</li><li>data stored in enterprise systems;</li><li>the result of an action that the chatbot performed by interacting with one or more backend application;</li><li>a disambiguating question that helps the chatbot to correctly understand the user’s request.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">In what is the benefit of chatbots?</span>\r\nChatbot applications streamline interactions between people and services, enhancing the customer experience. At the same time, they offer companies new opportunities to improve the customer's engagement process and operational efficiency by reducing the typical cost of customer service.\r\nTo be successful, a chatbot solution should be able to effectively perform both of these tasks. Human support plays a key role here: Regardless of the kind of approach and the platform, human intervention is crucial in configuring, training and optimizing the chatbot system.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Which chatbot application is right for you?</span>\r\nThere are different approaches and tools that you can use to develop a chatbot. Depending on the use case you want to address, some chatbot technologies are more appropriate than others. In order to achieve the desired results, the combination of different AI forms such as natural language processing, machine learning, and semantic understanding may be the best option.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Chatbot_Development.png","alias":"chatbot-development"},"862":{"id":862,"title":"Time Tracking Software","description":"Any business owner knows that they have to keep track of their employees. Their hours must be documented for payroll and, naturally, you would like to know where they are.\r\nTime-tracking software is a category of computer software that allows its employees to record time spent on tasks or projects. The software is used in many industries, including those who employ freelancers and hourly workers. It is also used by professionals who bill their customers by the hour. These include lawyers, freelancers and accountants. The tool could be used as a stand-alone or be integrated with other applications like project management software, customer support and accounting to name just a few. Time tracking software is the electronic version of the traditional paper timesheet. Tracking time can increase productivity, as businesses can track time spent on tasks and get a better understanding of what practices causes their employees to waste time. Time tracking software enhances accountability by documenting the time it takes to finish given tasks. The data is collected in a database and could be used for data analysis by the human resources department. Features offered by time-tracking software include:\r\n<ul><li>Automatic generation of invoices to the professional's clients or customers based on the time spent.</li><li>Tracking of cost overruns for fixed cost projects.</li><li>Workforce management packages that track attendance, employee absences, human resource issues, payroll, talent management and labor analytics.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the types of time-tracking software?</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Timesheet.</span></span> Allows users to manually enter time spent on tasks.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Time-tracking/recording.</span></span> Automatically records activities performed on a computer.\r\nTime-tracking software can be:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Standalone.</span></span> Used only to record timesheets and generate reports.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Integrated as part of:</span>\r\n<ul><li>Accounting systems, e.g. timesheet data fed directly to company accounts.</li><li>Billing systems, e.g. to generate invoices, especially for contractors, lawyers, etc.</li><li>Project management systems, e.g. timesheet data used by project management software to visualize the effort being spent on projects or tasks.</li><li>Payroll systems, e.g. to pay employees based on time worked.</li><li>Resource scheduling, e.g. bi-directional integration allows schedulers to schedule staff to tasks, which, once complete, can be confirmed and converted to timesheets.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is timesheet software?</span>\r\nTimesheet software is software used to maintain timesheets. It was popularized when computers were first introduced to the office environment with the goal of automating heavy paperwork needs for big organizations. Timesheet software allows documenting time spent performing different tasks.\r\nWhen used within companies, employees enter the time they've spent on tasks into electronic timesheets. These timesheets can then be approved or rejected by supervisors or project managers.\r\nSince 2006, timesheet software has been moving to mobile platforms (smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) enabling better tracking of employees whose work involves multiple locations.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a time-tracking/recording software?</span>\r\nTime-tracking/recording software automates the time-tracking process by recording the activities performed on a computer and the time spent on each of them. This software is intended to be an improvement over timesheet software. Its goal is to offer a general picture of computer usage. Automatic time-tracking/recording software records and shows the usage of applications, documents, games, websites, etc.\r\nWhen used within companies, this software allows monitoring the productivity of employees by recording the tasks they perform on their computers. It can be used to help fill out timesheets.\r\nWhen used by freelancers, this software helps to create reports for clients (e.g. timesheets and invoices) or to prove work was done.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What are the time-tracking methods?</span>\r\nThere are several ways companies track employee time using time tracking software.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Durational.</span> Employees enter the duration of the task but not the times when it was performed.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Chronological.</span> Employees enter start and end times for the task.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Automatic.</span> The system automatically calculates time spent on tasks or whole projects, using a connected device or a personal computer and user input using start and stop buttons. Users can retrieve logged tasks and view the duration or the start and stop times.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Exception-based.</span> The system automatically records standard working hours except for approved time off or LOA.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Clock-in clock-out.</span> Employees manually record arrival and departure times.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Monitoring.</span> The system records the active and idle time of employees. It might also record screen captures.<br /><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Location-based.</span> The system determines the working status of employees based on their location.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/time.png","alias":"time-tracking-software"},"880":{"id":880,"title":"B2B Sales Intelligence & Lead Generation Solutions","description":" Generating sales is crucial for business. Sales intelligence tools are the wave of the future in lead generation.\r\nThe global market of sales intelligent tools is worth between $100 and $150 million. Sales intelligence tools offer several advantages to businesses, and their demand is on the increase. They help take away much of the hard work in driving sales by making marketing efforts more efficient.\r\nAttracting new customers to your business is one thing, but closing a sale is something entirely different. One reason is that you may be talking to the wrong clients all along. An important factor in selling a product or service is to identify the right customers.\r\nIt’s easy to think that you’ve identified the personas, but without data and analytics, it’s difficult to tell. One way to know if you’re on track is to use sales intelligence software.\r\nSales intelligence refers to an assortment of practices, technologies, practices, and applications. They make it easy for you to collect, integrate, present, evaluate and analyze customer data.&nbsp; It’s the avenue through which you get pertinent information regarding the impact of your marketing campaigns.\r\nThe tools also help you see the prospects you’re selling to, where they’re from, and create case-specific solutions. The primary challenge with sales intelligence is the type of content from sales organizations. The data is only useful if it’ll help in actual selling.\r\nFor example, if the only data you get is a name and email address, you may be unable to do much with it. Sales intelligence is only useful if it delivers as much information as possible. The more you know about your prospect, the easier it’ll be to sell to them.\r\nThe information your SI tools gather should empower your sales reps to make more conversions. They also should be able to deepen existing relationships through cross-selling and up-selling.\r\nSales intelligence is a concept that businesses should embrace to keep them ahead of the competition. By identifying your prospective leads, you’ll narrow down on the information that can help convert into sales. Using SI the correct way will see your business enjoy the benefits of increased productivity and better lead conversions.\r\nWhen choosing a sales intelligence solution, ensure it’s compatible with your CRM. It also shouldn’t duplicate existing data and will keep information updated. For you to win against your competitors, you must get real-time data from the industry as trends change.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the factors to consider when choosing a Sales Intelligence solution?</span>\r\nThe process of acquiring a sales intelligent package is an investment you should approach with caution. Your choice should help you generate more and better leads as well as convert potential clients into long-term ones.\r\nSales intelligence technology develops your sales in a relevant and targeted way. They keep you alert on what is happening in your industry. As such, you can take the suitable actions at the right time.\r\nNot all solutions are the same, and you need to be specific in what you’re looking for. Here are specific considerations for your sales intelligence solution.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">1. How Often Will You Update Your Data?</span></span>\r\nA good portion of data present in a company is obsolete within one year. This is a good reason to ensure the technology you adopt has a regular updating system. You should aim at keeping information up-to-date to remain relevant to sales canvassing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">2. How Will You Avoid Data Duplication?</span></span>\r\nIf in your database you already have some suggested leads, you don’t want a solution that’ll duplicate the same information. Ask the vendor whether his tool can filter your database to avoid doubling-up. This should well be established before the installation of the software.\r\nYou shouldn’t have to sort data manually afterward.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">3. Is the Solution Compatible With Your CRM?</span></span>\r\nMost businesses have a CRM system they use to canvass for business.&nbsp; The sales intelligence solution you choose should be compatible with your CRM. One way to install the solution is as a stand-alone interface not connected to CRM.\r\nThe other most commonly used way of installing the solution is encapsulating it in your CRM system. This integration benefits you directly from the CRM functions through a shared interface. The approach is more practical as it integrates the data needed by the sales team.\r\nThe team doesn’t have to keep moving from one interface to another in search of the data they need. This eliminates the risk of data loss and time wastage. Having a system that provides information in real time is best in increasing efficiency.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">4. How Does it Collect Data and Information?</span></span>\r\nHow your sales intelligence tool collects information can help your sales team or pollute it with inappropriate information. Ideally, the software should gather information from various sources like social networks, crowdsourcing, and trawling the web. However, too much information can be challenging to sort and use appropriately.\r\nVaried information enriches your company by letting you know what’s happening around you. Afterward, you can evaluate the potential of the information by their context. Eventually, you can determine the list of hot leads ready to be contacted.\r\nNot all solutions you come across have this advanced technology at their disposal. Most of them use basic algorithms that search based on keywords. This leaves you with the task of sorting out the information to pick what’s relevant.\r\nRemember to check the scope of sources your software uses, and the technology it employs in data collection.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are the benefits of Sales Intelligence solutions?</span>\r\nSales intelligence solutions are designed to help the sales team perform their job better. The positive impacts of Sales intelligence are felt through:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">1. Higher Productivity</span></span>\r\nThe intelligence tools can automatically prioritize follow-ups. They can also categorize leads to qualification-based and value-based groups. This helps to lessen the amount of time they spend in manual parsing that sometimes leads to unqualified leads.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">2. Rewarding Conversations</span></span>\r\nAs a retail trader, intelligence tools help you understand your prospects better. From the perspective of a customer, it’s annoying when a salesperson doesn’t understand your needs. The conversation will revolve around the product, instead of the buyer’s preferences and goals.\r\nSales intelligence shows sales reps the areas where most customers will be most responsive. Conversations should be steered towards those areas, mining for value around those points.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">3. Smarter Sales Strategies</span></span>\r\nSales intelligence is vital to decision-makers. It distills detailed insights from databases that characterize their department. From these insights, the sales manager will be in a better position to engage prospects.\r\nThey can come up with strategies to improve lead conversion ratios and consequently increase sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Lead Generation?</span>\r\nLead Generation is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads. The methods for generating leads typically fall under the umbrella of advertising, but may also include non-paid sources such as organic search engine results or referrals from existing customers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Who are the leads?</span>\r\nA lead usually is the contact information and in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service. There are two types of leads in the lead generation market: sales leads and marketing leads.\r\nSales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score (United States), income, age, household income, psychographic, etc. These leads are resold to multiple advertisers. Sales leads are typically followed up through phone calls by the sales force. Sales leads are commonly found in the mortgage, insurance and finance industries.\r\nMarketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer. In direct contrast to sales leads, marketing leads are sold only once. Because transparency is a necessary requisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.\r\nAn investor lead is a type of a sales lead. An investor lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in participating in an investment, and represents the first stage of an investment sales process. Investor leads are considered to have some disposable income that they can use to participate in appropriate investment opportunities in exchange for return on investment in the form of interest, dividend, profit sharing or asset appreciation. Investor lead lists are normally generated through investment surveys, investor newsletter subscriptions or through companies raising capital and selling the database of people who expressed an interest in their opportunity. Investor Lead lists are commonly used by small businesses looking to fund their venture or simply needing expansion capital that was not readily available by banks and traditional lending sources.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/B2B.png","alias":"b2b-sales-intelligence-lead-generation-solutions"}},"companyUrl":"https://intelligence-soft.com","countryCodes":["USA"],"certifications":[],"isSeller":true,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":true,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Intelligence-Soft","keywords":"","description":"INTELLIGENCE-SOFT was created in 1994 and since that time it successfully operates in the international offshore software development market providing our&nbsp;customers with reasonably priced high quality software products and services. 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