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(Nasdaq: MSFT) and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) on Wednesday announced an agreement with 24 Hour Fitness, one of the nation’s largest privately owned and operated fitness chains, to deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Adobe Experience Cloud across its network of more than 420 clubs nationwide. This will enable 24 Hour Fitness to dramatically enhance its ability to offer more personalized and unified digital experiences for members throughout every touch point in their fitness journey. With technology integrations across Microsoft business applications and Adobe Experience Cloud, 24 Hour Fitness is investing in a combined cloud platform to engage its members and prospects with highly personalized experiences.</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \"><br /></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: italic; \">“We have an opportunity to establish a new bar across the industry by delivering personalized digital interactions to our members that are available 24 hours a day, at home, on the road or in the gym,” said Frank Napolitano, president, 24 Hour Fitness. “It’s not an easy feat to achieve this with nearly 4 million members. Adobe is empowering us to create mass consumer personalization that scales, all utilizing the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform. In doing so, we are better positioned to serve our members the workouts and health and fitness guidance they truly want and need.”</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \"><br /></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \">24 Hour Fitness is undertaking a journey to digitally transform its operations by combining functional departments to provide a single view of members and guests, messaging, and performance. Integrated cloud solutions from Adobe and Microsoft will help 24 Hour Fitness with scale, security and outreach along with AI and machine learnings to streamline its business and connect more deliberately to its members.</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \"><br /></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: italic; \">“Adobe and Microsoft are at the center of how we bring in relevant data, draw intelligent insights, and then how we act upon those insights across all our channels holistically,” said Tom Lapcevic, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, 24 Hour Fitness. “Our mission is to help people improve their lives every day through fitness, both inside and outside our clubs. So, whether it be email communications with a member, a mobile push notification or an SMS communication, we make sure that all our channels are in sync with what the needs of that individual are. It’s about giving every one of our members and guests a better and more personalized experience — and ultimately the results they desire.”</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \"><br /></span>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \">24 Hour Fitness already leverages Adobe Campaign for email, SMS and mobile push messaging, and Adobe Target for personalization across channels. Integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales will enable 24 Hour Fitness to leverage sales data for member and guest insights, providing a single view of the customer that can be used to personalize experiences. For example, 24 Hour Fitness can customize offers, such as personal training recommendations based on loyalty, interests and geography. In addition, the 24 Hour Fitness 24GO custom coaching platform, powered by Adobe Experience Manager for content management and delivery, combined with Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides custom workouts, at-home programming, progress and goal tracking, and class schedules — all within a single dashboard. 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More information on these joint solutions can be found here.</span></p>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \"><br /></span>","alias":"adobe-experience-cloud-microsoft-dynamics-365-for-24-hour-fitness","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Adobe Experience Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement","keywords":"Adobe Experience Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Customer Engagement, Customer, Fitness, custom workouts, at-home programming, progress, goal tracking, class schedules, mobile push notification, SMS communication","description":"<span style=\"font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); \">Microsoft Corp. 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It’s everything you need to orchestrate a great customer experience.\r\nTailored experiences for every industry:\r\n<ul><li> Financial Services</li><li> Government</li><li> High tech</li><li> Manufacturing</li><li> Media & Entertainment</li><li> Retail</li><li> Telecommunications</li><li> Travel & hospitality</li><li> Healthcare</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","shortDescription":"Adobe Experience Cloud gives you access to an integrated set of solutions to build campaigns, manage your advertising, and gain deep intelligence about your business. 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"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1568,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":52,"title":"SaaS - software as a service","alias":"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 "on-demand software", and was formerly referred to as "software plus services" 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 "Software as a Service" (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. 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. 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\"> </p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SaaS__1_.png"},{"id":146,"title":"ECM - Enterprise Content Management","alias":"ecm-enterprise-content-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise content management (ECM)</span> extends the concept of content management by adding a time line for each content item and possibly enforcing processes for the creation, approval and distribution of them. Systems that implement ECM generally provide a secure repository for managed items, be they analog or digital, that indexes them. They also include one or more methods for importing content to bring new items under management and several presentation methods to make items available for use. The key feature of ECM that distinguishes it from "simple" content management is that an ECM is at least cognizant of the processes and procedures of the enterprise it is created for, and as such is particular to it. \r\nECM as an umbrella term covers enterprise document management system, Web content management, search, collaboration, records management, digital asset management (DAM), workflow management, capture and scanning. ECM is primarily aimed at managing the life-cycle of information from initial publication or creation all the way through archival and eventual disposal. ECM enterprise content management software is delivered in four ways:\r\n- on-premises software (installed on an organization's own network)\r\n- software as a service (SaaS) (Web access to information that is stored on a software manufacturer's system)\r\n- a hybrid composed of both on-premises and SaaS components\r\n- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (which refers to online services that abstract the user from the details of infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc.)\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ECM provides</span> a centralized platform where content can be held and disseminated in a manner that meets regulatory compliance requirements and risk management guidelines. An ECM achieves the latter two benefits by eliminating ad hoc processes that can expose an enterprise to regulatory compliance risks and other potential problems. Full-function enterprise content management solutions include features such as content taxonomies, auditing capabilities, check-in/check-out and other workflow controls and security mechanisms.\r\nAn <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">effective ECM </span>can streamline access and business processes, eliminate bottlenecks by reducing storage, as well as paper and mailing needs, optimize security, maintain integrity and minimize overhead. All of these can lead to increased productivity. The first step is to document all the types of content that the organization deals with, the business processes its part of and who handles the content. \r\nECM software can be used to identify duplicate and near-duplicate content, allowing the organization to keep a few copies of a particular piece of content instead of hundreds. The best ECM software extends the reach of traditional ECM capabilities into previously isolated applications and information silos, such as ERP, CRM, SCM and HCM, to take the shape of a content services platform. Information can now flow across the enterprise to the people and processes—when, where and in whatever context it is needed.\r\nTo understand more specific ways it could help your company, consider these <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">three types of ECM</span> software solutions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web Content Management.</span> WCM puts control over the look and feel of a website in the hands of specific, key people. It’s used by organizations with relatively complex websites and strict brand guidelines, giving those key personnel the means to easily update, modify and publish content for the sites while adhering to the guidelines.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Collaborative Content Management.</span> CCM enables multiple people to access and modify a single document, such as a legal document. It’s ideal for organizations that must manage projects involving multiple stakeholders. CCM makes it easy to work together while keeping track of, and updating, the most-current version of the document.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Transactional Content Management.</span> This type of ECM document management is designed for organizations that repeatedly use varied types of content, including records, paper documents, and digital files. TCM solutions capture content from various channels, classify it, store it, create an automated workflow to ensure the right user receives the content at the right time, and even deletes documents when they’re no longer needed, all while working seamlessly with other apps and databases, ensuring all of that content is available throughout the company.<br /><br /><br />\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?</span></h1>\r\nEnterprise Content Management is the organization of structured and unstructured documents using technology and software that allows your organization to “work smarter, not harder.” As technology advanced and everything became digital, organizations needed a new way to store and access files, leading to the creation of ECM. \r\nECM document management system consists of four main points:\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Capture:</span> Capturing information from hardcopy documents or online forms and transferring it into the system</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Manage:</span> Managing the captured data in a structured format that allows quick and easy retrieval</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Storing:</span> Securely storing files in a central repository that can be accessed from multiple locations</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Delivery:</span> Implementation of business process workflows to automatically move documents from one step to the next</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Five ways ECM software can benefit your organization</span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Basic file sharing and library services.</span> At its core, enterprise document management software begins with basic file sharing and library services managed within a networked repository. Individuals and groups with predefined access rights and permissions can access the repository and then create, read, update and delete files stored within it.\r\nMany ECM applications support Content Management Interoperability Services, an industry standard that allows different vendors' products to interoperate; this is an essential capability within large enterprises that maintain content management tools from multiple vendors.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content governance, compliance and records management.</span> For many organizations, managing business documents or other content types is a critical use case for ECM. Companies subject to compliance or other industry regulations need document content management system software to capture, manage, archive and ultimately dispose of files after a predefined period.\r\nECM can ensure that only individuals with predefined permissions - determined by access controls - can update or view documents stored within a repository. An organization can thus manage document modification.\r\nIn addition, enterprise content management tools can log all actions, providing an organization with the capabilities to maintain an auditable record of all the changes to documents within the repository.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business process management.</span> Companies also use ECM to establish workflows that span departments and geographies to support extended enterprise and inter-enterprise business processes.\r\nMost ECM software provides tools to help both technical and non-technical business users define business processes. Most applications provide audit controls to track each step of the process and analytic capabilities to help identify inefficiencies and streamline business procedures.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content repositories linked to other enterprise applications.</span> Some companies use electronic content management software as a repository for documents created by other enterprise applications, including CRM, ERP, HR and financial systems. These enterprise systems can seamlessly access, view or modify content managed by the ECM.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enabling mobile and remote workforces.</span> Content management tools often include functionality to allow remote workers to access content from mobile devices. This is an increasingly important feature for many companies.\r\nMobile capabilities also enable new kinds of data capture and presentation functionalities. By combining content management capabilities with other data, for example, a political canvasser can use a tablet to enter new information about a political donor without having to start from scratch, as some of that information is already stored in a content management system. \r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ECM_-_Enterprise_Content_Management.png"},{"id":69,"title":"Business Analytics","alias":"business-analytics","description":"Business Analytics is “the study of data through statistical and operations analysis, the formation of predictive models, application of optimization techniques, and the communication of these results to customers, business partners, and college executives.” Business Analytics requires quantitative methods and evidence-based data for business modeling and decision making; as such, Business Analytics requires the use of Big Data.\r\nSAS describes Big Data as “a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.” What’s important to keep in mind about Big Data is that the amount of data is not as important to an organization as the analytics that accompany it. When companies analyze Big Data, they are using Business Analytics to get the insights required for making better business decisions and strategic moves.\r\nCompanies use Business Analytics (BA) to make data-driven decisions. The insight gained by BA enables these companies to automate and optimize their business processes. In fact, data-driven companies that utilize Business Analytics achieve a competitive advantage because they are able to use the insights to:\r\n<ul><li>Conduct data mining (explore data to find new patterns and relationships)</li><li>Complete statistical analysis and quantitative analysis to explain why certain results occur</li><li>Test previous decisions using A/B testing and multivariate testing</li><li>Make use of predictive modeling and predictive analytics to forecast future results</li></ul>\r\nBusiness Analytics also provides support for companies in the process of making proactive tactical decisions, and BA makes it possible for those companies to automate decision making in order to support real-time responses.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What does Business Analytics (BA) mean?</span>\r\nBusiness analytics (BA) refers to all the methods and techniques that are used by an organization to measure performance. Business analytics are made up of statistical methods that can be applied to a specific project, process or product. Business analytics can also be used to evaluate an entire company. Business analytics are performed in order to identify weaknesses in existing processes and highlight meaningful data that will help an organization prepare for future growth and challenges.\r\nThe need for good business analytics has spurred the creation of business analytics software and enterprise platforms that mine an organization’s data in order to automate some of these measures and pick out meaningful insights.\r\nAlthough the term has become a bit of a buzzword, business analytics are a vital part of any business. Business analytics make up a large portion of decision support systems, continuous improvement programs and many of the other techniques used to keep a business competitive. Consequently, accurate business analytics like efficiency measures and capacity utilization rates are the first step to properly implementing these techniques.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Business_Analytics.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1575,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-365","companyTypes":[],"description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>Create personalized shopping experiences that unify digital, in-store, and back office operations.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Customer Service</span></p>\r\n<p>Exceed customer expectations across self and assisted support with empowered agents that deliver personalized experiences.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Field Service</span></p>\r\n<p>Serve customers better through proactive maintenance, predictive scheduling, and first-time fix.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation</span></p>\r\n<p>Deliver customer projects on-time, within budget, and become a trusted advisor.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations</span></p>\r\n<p>Modernize your business operations across finance, manufacturing, and supply chain to drive new growth.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Talent</span></p>\r\n<p>Attract the right people and seamlessly onboard, engage, and grow your talent.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Adobe Marketing Cloud</span></p>\r\n<p>Deliver personalized experiences throughout your marketing and sales engagements at scale with Dynamics 365 and Adobe.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Marketing</span></p>\r\n<p>Increase demand by automating tasks from multi-channel campaigns to events with an application built on the same platform as Dynamics 365 for Sales.</p>\r\n","shortDescription":"Microsoft Dynamics 365 is unified CRM and ERP capabilities — modern, intelligent cloud applications that help move your business forward.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":19,"sellingCount":0,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","keywords":"","description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics 365","og:description":"\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Sales</span></p>\r\n<p>Empower sellers with insights to personalize relationships, predict customer needs, and increase sales.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Dynamics 365 for Retail</span></p>\r\n<p>"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1576,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"planned","statusLabel":"Planned","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"}]}},"categories":[{"id":52,"title":"SaaS - software as a service","alias":"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 "on-demand software", and was formerly referred to as "software plus services" 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 "Software as a Service" (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. 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. 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\"> </p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/SaaS__1_.png"},{"id":146,"title":"ECM - Enterprise Content Management","alias":"ecm-enterprise-content-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise content management (ECM)</span> extends the concept of content management by adding a time line for each content item and possibly enforcing processes for the creation, approval and distribution of them. Systems that implement ECM generally provide a secure repository for managed items, be they analog or digital, that indexes them. They also include one or more methods for importing content to bring new items under management and several presentation methods to make items available for use. The key feature of ECM that distinguishes it from "simple" content management is that an ECM is at least cognizant of the processes and procedures of the enterprise it is created for, and as such is particular to it. \r\nECM as an umbrella term covers enterprise document management system, Web content management, search, collaboration, records management, digital asset management (DAM), workflow management, capture and scanning. ECM is primarily aimed at managing the life-cycle of information from initial publication or creation all the way through archival and eventual disposal. ECM enterprise content management software is delivered in four ways:\r\n- on-premises software (installed on an organization's own network)\r\n- software as a service (SaaS) (Web access to information that is stored on a software manufacturer's system)\r\n- a hybrid composed of both on-premises and SaaS components\r\n- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (which refers to online services that abstract the user from the details of infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc.)\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ECM provides</span> a centralized platform where content can be held and disseminated in a manner that meets regulatory compliance requirements and risk management guidelines. An ECM achieves the latter two benefits by eliminating ad hoc processes that can expose an enterprise to regulatory compliance risks and other potential problems. Full-function enterprise content management solutions include features such as content taxonomies, auditing capabilities, check-in/check-out and other workflow controls and security mechanisms.\r\nAn <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">effective ECM </span>can streamline access and business processes, eliminate bottlenecks by reducing storage, as well as paper and mailing needs, optimize security, maintain integrity and minimize overhead. All of these can lead to increased productivity. The first step is to document all the types of content that the organization deals with, the business processes its part of and who handles the content. \r\nECM software can be used to identify duplicate and near-duplicate content, allowing the organization to keep a few copies of a particular piece of content instead of hundreds. The best ECM software extends the reach of traditional ECM capabilities into previously isolated applications and information silos, such as ERP, CRM, SCM and HCM, to take the shape of a content services platform. Information can now flow across the enterprise to the people and processes—when, where and in whatever context it is needed.\r\nTo understand more specific ways it could help your company, consider these <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">three types of ECM</span> software solutions.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web Content Management.</span> WCM puts control over the look and feel of a website in the hands of specific, key people. It’s used by organizations with relatively complex websites and strict brand guidelines, giving those key personnel the means to easily update, modify and publish content for the sites while adhering to the guidelines.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Collaborative Content Management.</span> CCM enables multiple people to access and modify a single document, such as a legal document. It’s ideal for organizations that must manage projects involving multiple stakeholders. CCM makes it easy to work together while keeping track of, and updating, the most-current version of the document.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Transactional Content Management.</span> This type of ECM document management is designed for organizations that repeatedly use varied types of content, including records, paper documents, and digital files. TCM solutions capture content from various channels, classify it, store it, create an automated workflow to ensure the right user receives the content at the right time, and even deletes documents when they’re no longer needed, all while working seamlessly with other apps and databases, ensuring all of that content is available throughout the company.<br /><br /><br />\r\n\r\n","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?</span></h1>\r\nEnterprise Content Management is the organization of structured and unstructured documents using technology and software that allows your organization to “work smarter, not harder.” As technology advanced and everything became digital, organizations needed a new way to store and access files, leading to the creation of ECM. \r\nECM document management system consists of four main points:\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Capture:</span> Capturing information from hardcopy documents or online forms and transferring it into the system</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Manage:</span> Managing the captured data in a structured format that allows quick and easy retrieval</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Storing:</span> Securely storing files in a central repository that can be accessed from multiple locations</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Delivery:</span> Implementation of business process workflows to automatically move documents from one step to the next</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Five ways ECM software can benefit your organization</span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Basic file sharing and library services.</span> At its core, enterprise document management software begins with basic file sharing and library services managed within a networked repository. Individuals and groups with predefined access rights and permissions can access the repository and then create, read, update and delete files stored within it.\r\nMany ECM applications support Content Management Interoperability Services, an industry standard that allows different vendors' products to interoperate; this is an essential capability within large enterprises that maintain content management tools from multiple vendors.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content governance, compliance and records management.</span> For many organizations, managing business documents or other content types is a critical use case for ECM. Companies subject to compliance or other industry regulations need document content management system software to capture, manage, archive and ultimately dispose of files after a predefined period.\r\nECM can ensure that only individuals with predefined permissions - determined by access controls - can update or view documents stored within a repository. An organization can thus manage document modification.\r\nIn addition, enterprise content management tools can log all actions, providing an organization with the capabilities to maintain an auditable record of all the changes to documents within the repository.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Business process management.</span> Companies also use ECM to establish workflows that span departments and geographies to support extended enterprise and inter-enterprise business processes.\r\nMost ECM software provides tools to help both technical and non-technical business users define business processes. Most applications provide audit controls to track each step of the process and analytic capabilities to help identify inefficiencies and streamline business procedures.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content repositories linked to other enterprise applications.</span> Some companies use electronic content management software as a repository for documents created by other enterprise applications, including CRM, ERP, HR and financial systems. These enterprise systems can seamlessly access, view or modify content managed by the ECM.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enabling mobile and remote workforces.</span> Content management tools often include functionality to allow remote workers to access content from mobile devices. This is an increasingly important feature for many companies.\r\nMobile capabilities also enable new kinds of data capture and presentation functionalities. By combining content management capabilities with other data, for example, a political canvasser can use a tablet to enter new information about a political donor without having to start from scratch, as some of that information is already stored in a content management system. \r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ECM_-_Enterprise_Content_Management.png"},{"id":69,"title":"Business Analytics","alias":"business-analytics","description":"Business Analytics is “the study of data through statistical and operations analysis, the formation of predictive models, application of optimization techniques, and the communication of these results to customers, business partners, and college executives.” Business Analytics requires quantitative methods and evidence-based data for business modeling and decision making; as such, Business Analytics requires the use of Big Data.\r\nSAS describes Big Data as “a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.” What’s important to keep in mind about Big Data is that the amount of data is not as important to an organization as the analytics that accompany it. When companies analyze Big Data, they are using Business Analytics to get the insights required for making better business decisions and strategic moves.\r\nCompanies use Business Analytics (BA) to make data-driven decisions. The insight gained by BA enables these companies to automate and optimize their business processes. In fact, data-driven companies that utilize Business Analytics achieve a competitive advantage because they are able to use the insights to:\r\n<ul><li>Conduct data mining (explore data to find new patterns and relationships)</li><li>Complete statistical analysis and quantitative analysis to explain why certain results occur</li><li>Test previous decisions using A/B testing and multivariate testing</li><li>Make use of predictive modeling and predictive analytics to forecast future results</li></ul>\r\nBusiness Analytics also provides support for companies in the process of making proactive tactical decisions, and BA makes it possible for those companies to automate decision making in order to support real-time responses.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What does Business Analytics (BA) mean?</span>\r\nBusiness analytics (BA) refers to all the methods and techniques that are used by an organization to measure performance. Business analytics are made up of statistical methods that can be applied to a specific project, process or product. Business analytics can also be used to evaluate an entire company. Business analytics are performed in order to identify weaknesses in existing processes and highlight meaningful data that will help an organization prepare for future growth and challenges.\r\nThe need for good business analytics has spurred the creation of business analytics software and enterprise platforms that mine an organization’s data in order to automate some of these measures and pick out meaningful insights.\r\nAlthough the term has become a bit of a buzzword, business analytics are a vital part of any business. Business analytics make up a large portion of decision support systems, continuous improvement programs and many of the other techniques used to keep a business competitive. Consequently, accurate business analytics like efficiency measures and capacity utilization rates are the first step to properly implementing these techniques.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Business_Analytics.png"},{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://news.adobe.com/press-release/experience-cloud/microsoft-dynamics-365-and-adobe-experience-cloud-selected-24-hour","title":"Web-site of vendor"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":432,"title":"Barracuda NGFW For Dutch Insurance Provider","description":"<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Aevitae is a leading Dutch insurance provider company that protects hundreds of thousands of individuals through corporate and direct insurance plans. With a relatively small staff, they provide best-inclass insurance to a quarter-million customers across the Netherlands and processed over six million digital claims in 2016. On top of being the Netherlands’ leading insurance provider, they are also a technology pioneer, which they leverage as a key competitive advantage.</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;\">Profile</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Leading Dutch insurance provider company</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Provides corporate and direct insurance plans</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">200 employees</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">250,000 customers</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">800,000 paper claims, and over six million digital claims processed per year.</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;\">Challenges</span>\r\n<ul><li>Aging on-premises infrastructure</li><li>Seamless data security and visibility in a hybrid environment</li><li>Heightened security due to sensitive market (Insurance)</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;\">Solution</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series and Web Application Firewall deployed on Microsoft Azure cloud platform and on-premises</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;\">Results</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">End-to-end visibility and security across a hybrid environment</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Ease of use and management</span>\r\n<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Scalable and flexible platform that suits their dynamic business</span>","alias":"barracuda-ngfw-for-dutch-insurance-provider","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Barracuda NGFW For Dutch Insurance Provider","keywords":"insurance, Dutch, claims, they, security, provider, Barracuda, platform","description":"<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Aevitae is a leading Dutch insurance provider company that protects hundreds of thousands of individuals through corporate and direct insurance plans. With a relatively smal","og:title":"Barracuda NGFW For Dutch Insurance Provider","og:description":"<span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; \">Aevitae is a leading Dutch insurance provider company that protects hundreds of thousands of individuals through corporate and direct insurance plans. With a relatively smal"},"deal_info":"","user":{"id":4192,"title":"Aevitae B.V.","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Aevitae_B.V..png","alias":"aevitae-bv","address":"","roles":[],"description":"Aevitae B.V. provides health insurance and employee benefits solutions. The Company offers outdoors, liability, residential home, accident, legal aid, and car insurance. Aevitae operates in the Netherlands. 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The Company offers outdoors, liability, residential home, accident, legal aid, and car insurance. Aevitae operates in the Netherlands. 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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""},{"id":183,"title":"Barracuda Networks","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/barracuda_logo.png","alias":"barracuda-networks","address":"","roles":[],"description":"Barracuda Networks, Inc. is the world leader in email and web security. In addition, the company develops solutions for IM security, server load balancing systems and message archiving.<br /><br />The company develops products for security, networking and storage based on network devices and cloud services. Security products include solutions to protect against spam, web surfing, hackers and threats from instant messaging services. The platform also successfully combats such threats as spam, spyware, Trojans and other malware. Barracuda solutions provide web traffic filtering, load balancing, message archiving, backup services, data protection, and more.<br /><br />Today, more than 50,000 companies and security organizations around the world use Barracuda Networks solutions. The main product list includes solutions such as Barracuda Spam Firewall, Barracuda Web Filter, Barracuda IM Firewall. ","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":11,"suppliedProductsCount":11,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":15,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":3,"b4r":1,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.barracuda.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Barracuda Networks","keywords":"products, company, Barracuda, include, protection, services, storage, security","description":"Barracuda Networks, Inc. is the world leader in email and web security. 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In addition, the company develops solutions for IM security, server load balancing systems and message archiving.<br /><br />The company develops products for security, networking and stor","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/barracuda_logo.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":792,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Azure","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.70","implementationsCount":7,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-azure","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment letting developers easily publish and manage Web sites. Websites, high density hosting of websites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python and can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event.[5] Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed to Web Apps in April 2015. WebJobs, applications that can be deployed to a Web App to implement background processing. That can be invoked on a schedule, on demand or can run continuously. The Blob, Table and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state. Mobile services Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users’ behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps Storage services Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by partition key and primary key. It's a NoSQL non-relational database. Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as blobs that can be accessed by a HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol. Data management Azure Search provides text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. DocumentDB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Redis Cache is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. SQL Database, formerly known as SQL Azure Database, works to create, scale and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology. It also integrates with Active Directory and Microsoft System Center and Hadoop. SQL Data Warehouse is a data warehousing service designed to handle computational and data intensive queries on datasets exceeding 1TB. Messaging The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Event Hubs, which provide event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as a GPS location coordinate in real time. Queues, which allow one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue, and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue only one would process a single message. Topics, which provide one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue, however each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. Relays, which provide bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay doesn't store in-flight messages in its own memory. Instead, it just passes them on to the destination application.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. \r\n","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":11,"sellingCount":16,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Azure","keywords":"Azure, Microsoft, service, using, data, cloud, Service, which","description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image","og:title":"Microsoft Azure","og:description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":793,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1399,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Barracuda NextGen Firewall (NGFW)","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"3.00","implementationsCount":4,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"barracuda-nextgen-firewall-ngfw","companyTypes":[],"description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Next-Generation Firewalls for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nIn the cloud era, network firewalls must do more than secure your network. They must also ensure you have uninterrupted network availability and robust access to cloud-hosted applications. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series is a family of hardware, virtual, and cloud-based appliances that protect and enhance your dispersed network infrastructure. They deliver advanced security by tightly integrating a comprehensive set of next-generation firewall technologies, including Layer 7 application profiling, intrusion prevention, web filtering, malware and advanced threat protection, antispam protection, and network access control. In addition, the F-Series combines highly resilient VPN technology with intelligent traffic management and WAN optimization capabilities. This lets you reduce line costs, increase overall network availability, improve site-to-site connectivity, and ensure uninterrupted access to applications hosted in the cloud. Scalable centralized management helps you reduce administrative overhead while defining and enforcing granular policies across your entire dispersed network. The F-Series cloud-ready firewalls are ideal for multi-site enterprises, managed service providers, and other organizations with complex, dispersed network infrastructures.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Security for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nSecurity paradigms are shifting—and securing your network perimeter is no longer good enough. In the cloud era, workloads happen everywhere, users are increasingly mobile, and potential attack surfaces are multiplying. Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series is purpose-built to deal with the challenges of securing widely distributed networks.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Advanced Threat Protection</span>\r\nIn today's constantly evolving threat landscape, your organization faces zero-hour malware exploits and advanced persistent threats that routinely bypass traditional, signature-based IPS and antivirus engines. Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection gives your security infrastructure the ability to identify and block new, sophisticated threats-without affecting network performance and throughput.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Secure SD-WAN..</span>\r\nBarracuda Cloud Era Firewalls include full next gen Security paired with all network optimization and management functionality today known as Secure SD-WAN. This includes true zero touch deployment (ZTD), dynamic bandwidth measurement, performance based transport selection, application specific routing and even data duplication and WAN optimization technology. VPN tunnels between sites can make use of multiple uplinks simultaneously and dynamically assign the best path for the application.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">This enables:</span>\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>Balancing of Internet traffic across multiple uplinks to minimize downtime and improve performance</li> <li>VPN across multiple broadband connections and MPLs replacement</li> <li>Up to 24 physical uplinks to create highly redundant VPN tunnels</li> <li>Replacing network backhauling central policy enforcement architectures with direct internet break outs</li> <li>Faster access to cloud applications like office365 by dynamically prioritizing them over non-critical traffic</li> <li>Guaranteed users' access to critical applications through granular policy controls</li> <li>Increased available bandwidth with built-in traffic compression and data deduplication</li> <li>Auto creation of VPN tunnels between spokes in a hub-and-spoke architecture to enhance connection quality for latency-sensitive traffic</li> </ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why Barracuda NextGen Firewall?</span> When selecting security technology, it is critical that your products are supported by people who take your data security as seriously as you do. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall is supported by our award-winning 24x7 technical support staffed by in-house security engineers with no phone trees. Help is always a phone call away. Hundreds of thousands of organizations around the globe rely on Barracuda to protect their applications, networks, and data. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall is part of a comprehensive line of data protection, network firewall, and security products and services designed for organizations seeking robust yet affordable protection from ever-increasing cyber threats.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Source: https://www.barracuda.com/products/nextgenfirewall_f</span>","shortDescription":"Barracuda's Next Generation Firewalls redefine the role of the Firewall from a perimeter security solution to a distributed network optimization solution that scales across any number of locations.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":0,"sellingCount":5,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":5,"seo":{"title":"Barracuda NextGen Firewall (NGFW)","keywords":"","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Next-Generation Firewalls for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nIn the cloud era, network firewalls must do more than secure your network. 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Other techniques might also be employed, such as TLS/SSL encrypted traffic inspection, website filtering, QoS/bandwidth management, antivirus inspection and third-party identity management integration (i.e. LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory).\r\nNGFWs include the typical functions of traditional firewalls such as packet filtering, network- and port-address translation (NAT), stateful inspection, and virtual private network (VPN) support. The goal of next-generation firewalls is to include more layers of the OSI model, improving filtering of network traffic that is dependent on the packet contents.\r\nNGFWs perform deeper inspection compared to stateful inspection performed by the first- and second-generation firewalls. NGFWs use a more thorough inspection style, checking packet payloads and matching signatures for harmful activities such as exploitable attacks and malware.\r\nImproved detection of encrypted applications and intrusion prevention service. Modern threats like web-based malware attacks, targeted attacks, application-layer attacks, and more have had a significantly negative effect on the threat landscape. In fact, more than 80% of all new malware and intrusion attempts are exploiting weaknesses in applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services.\r\nStateful firewalls with simple packet filtering capabilities were efficient blocking unwanted applications as most applications met the port-protocol expectations. Administrators could promptly prevent an unsafe application from being accessed by users by blocking the associated ports and protocols. But today, blocking a web application like Farmville that uses port 80 by closing the port would also mean complications with the entire HTTP protocol.\r\nProtection based on ports, protocols, IP addresses is no more reliable and viable. This has led to the development of identity-based security approach, which takes organizations a step ahead of conventional security appliances which bind security to IP-addresses.\r\nNGFWs offer administrators a deeper awareness of and control over individual applications, along with deeper inspection capabilities by the firewall. Administrators can create very granular "allow/deny" rules for controlling use of websites and applications in the network. ","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nAn NGFW contains all the normal defences that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other bonus security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. This is usually done by monitoring for breaches against the network policies in place as a breach is usually indicative of malicious activity.\r\nApplication control software simply sets up a hard filter for programs that are trying to send or receive data over the Internet. This can either be done by blacklist (programs in the filter are blocked) or by whitelist (programs not in the filter are blocked).","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_NGFW.png"},{"id":782,"title":"NGFW - next-generation firewall","alias":"ngfw-next-generation-firewall","description":"A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology that is implemented in either hardware or software and is capable of detecting and blocking sophisticated attacks by enforcing security policies at the application, port and protocol levels.\r\nNGFWs typically feature advanced functions including:\r\n<ul><li>application awareness;</li><li>integrated intrusion prevention systems (IPS);</li><li>identity awareness -- user and group control;</li><li>bridged and routed modes;</li><li> the ability to use external intelligence sources.</li></ul>\r\nOf these offerings, most next-generation firewalls integrate at least three basic functions: enterprise firewall capabilities, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) and application control.\r\nLike the introduction of stateful inspection in traditional firewalls, NGFWs bring additional context to the firewall's decision-making process by providing it with the ability to understand the details of the web application traffic passing through it and to take action to block traffic that might exploit vulnerabilities.\r\nThe different features of next-generation firewalls combine to create unique benefits for users. NGFWs are often able to block malware before it enters a network, something that wasn't previously possible.\r\nNGFWs are also better equipped to address advanced persistent threats (APTs) because they can be integrated with threat intelligence services. NGFWs can also offer a low-cost option for companies trying to improve basic device security through the use of application awareness, inspection services, protection systems and awareness tools.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nA NGFW contains all the normal defenses that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other additional security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection, which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. This is usually done by monitoring for breaches against the network policies in place as a breach is usually indicative of malicious activity.\r\nApplication control software simply sets up a hard filter for programs that are trying to send or receive data over the Internet. This can either be done by a blacklist (programs in the filter are blocked) or by a whitelist (programs not in the filter are blocked).","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_NGFW.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":384,"title":"Risk of attacks by hackers"},{"id":385,"title":"Risk of data loss or damage"},{"id":386,"title":"Risk of lost access to data and IT systems"}]}},"categories":[{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"},{"id":784,"title":"NGFW - next-generation firewall - Appliance","alias":"ngfw-next-generation-firewall-appliance","description":" A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology, combining a traditional firewall with other network device filtering functionalities, such as an application firewall using in-line deep packet inspection (DPI), an intrusion prevention system (IPS). Other techniques might also be employed, such as TLS/SSL encrypted traffic inspection, website filtering, QoS/bandwidth management, antivirus inspection and third-party identity management integration (i.e. LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory).\r\nNGFWs include the typical functions of traditional firewalls such as packet filtering, network- and port-address translation (NAT), stateful inspection, and virtual private network (VPN) support. The goal of next-generation firewalls is to include more layers of the OSI model, improving filtering of network traffic that is dependent on the packet contents.\r\nNGFWs perform deeper inspection compared to stateful inspection performed by the first- and second-generation firewalls. NGFWs use a more thorough inspection style, checking packet payloads and matching signatures for harmful activities such as exploitable attacks and malware.\r\nImproved detection of encrypted applications and intrusion prevention service. Modern threats like web-based malware attacks, targeted attacks, application-layer attacks, and more have had a significantly negative effect on the threat landscape. In fact, more than 80% of all new malware and intrusion attempts are exploiting weaknesses in applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services.\r\nStateful firewalls with simple packet filtering capabilities were efficient blocking unwanted applications as most applications met the port-protocol expectations. Administrators could promptly prevent an unsafe application from being accessed by users by blocking the associated ports and protocols. But today, blocking a web application like Farmville that uses port 80 by closing the port would also mean complications with the entire HTTP protocol.\r\nProtection based on ports, protocols, IP addresses is no more reliable and viable. 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Websites, high density hosting of websites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python and can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event.[5] Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed to Web Apps in April 2015. WebJobs, applications that can be deployed to a Web App to implement background processing. That can be invoked on a schedule, on demand or can run continuously. The Blob, Table and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state. Mobile services Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users’ behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps Storage services Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by partition key and primary key. It's a NoSQL non-relational database. Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as blobs that can be accessed by a HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol. Data management Azure Search provides text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. DocumentDB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Redis Cache is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. SQL Database, formerly known as SQL Azure Database, works to create, scale and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology. It also integrates with Active Directory and Microsoft System Center and Hadoop. SQL Data Warehouse is a data warehousing service designed to handle computational and data intensive queries on datasets exceeding 1TB. Messaging The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Event Hubs, which provide event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as a GPS location coordinate in real time. Queues, which allow one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue, and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue only one would process a single message. Topics, which provide one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue, however each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. Relays, which provide bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay doesn't store in-flight messages in its own memory. Instead, it just passes them on to the destination application.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. \r\n","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":11,"sellingCount":16,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Azure","keywords":"Azure, Microsoft, service, using, data, cloud, Service, which","description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image","og:title":"Microsoft Azure","og:description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":793,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":1399,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Barracuda NextGen Firewall (NGFW)","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"3.00","implementationsCount":4,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"barracuda-nextgen-firewall-ngfw","companyTypes":[],"description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Next-Generation Firewalls for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nIn the cloud era, network firewalls must do more than secure your network. They must also ensure you have uninterrupted network availability and robust access to cloud-hosted applications. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series is a family of hardware, virtual, and cloud-based appliances that protect and enhance your dispersed network infrastructure. They deliver advanced security by tightly integrating a comprehensive set of next-generation firewall technologies, including Layer 7 application profiling, intrusion prevention, web filtering, malware and advanced threat protection, antispam protection, and network access control. In addition, the F-Series combines highly resilient VPN technology with intelligent traffic management and WAN optimization capabilities. This lets you reduce line costs, increase overall network availability, improve site-to-site connectivity, and ensure uninterrupted access to applications hosted in the cloud. Scalable centralized management helps you reduce administrative overhead while defining and enforcing granular policies across your entire dispersed network. The F-Series cloud-ready firewalls are ideal for multi-site enterprises, managed service providers, and other organizations with complex, dispersed network infrastructures.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Security for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nSecurity paradigms are shifting—and securing your network perimeter is no longer good enough. In the cloud era, workloads happen everywhere, users are increasingly mobile, and potential attack surfaces are multiplying. Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series is purpose-built to deal with the challenges of securing widely distributed networks.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Advanced Threat Protection</span>\r\nIn today's constantly evolving threat landscape, your organization faces zero-hour malware exploits and advanced persistent threats that routinely bypass traditional, signature-based IPS and antivirus engines. Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection gives your security infrastructure the ability to identify and block new, sophisticated threats-without affecting network performance and throughput.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Secure SD-WAN..</span>\r\nBarracuda Cloud Era Firewalls include full next gen Security paired with all network optimization and management functionality today known as Secure SD-WAN. This includes true zero touch deployment (ZTD), dynamic bandwidth measurement, performance based transport selection, application specific routing and even data duplication and WAN optimization technology. VPN tunnels between sites can make use of multiple uplinks simultaneously and dynamically assign the best path for the application.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">This enables:</span>\r\n\r\n<ul> <li>Balancing of Internet traffic across multiple uplinks to minimize downtime and improve performance</li> <li>VPN across multiple broadband connections and MPLs replacement</li> <li>Up to 24 physical uplinks to create highly redundant VPN tunnels</li> <li>Replacing network backhauling central policy enforcement architectures with direct internet break outs</li> <li>Faster access to cloud applications like office365 by dynamically prioritizing them over non-critical traffic</li> <li>Guaranteed users' access to critical applications through granular policy controls</li> <li>Increased available bandwidth with built-in traffic compression and data deduplication</li> <li>Auto creation of VPN tunnels between spokes in a hub-and-spoke architecture to enhance connection quality for latency-sensitive traffic</li> </ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Why Barracuda NextGen Firewall?</span> When selecting security technology, it is critical that your products are supported by people who take your data security as seriously as you do. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall is supported by our award-winning 24x7 technical support staffed by in-house security engineers with no phone trees. Help is always a phone call away. Hundreds of thousands of organizations around the globe rely on Barracuda to protect their applications, networks, and data. The Barracuda NextGen Firewall is part of a comprehensive line of data protection, network firewall, and security products and services designed for organizations seeking robust yet affordable protection from ever-increasing cyber threats.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Source: https://www.barracuda.com/products/nextgenfirewall_f</span>","shortDescription":"Barracuda's Next Generation Firewalls redefine the role of the Firewall from a perimeter security solution to a distributed network optimization solution that scales across any number of locations.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":0,"sellingCount":5,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":5,"seo":{"title":"Barracuda NextGen Firewall (NGFW)","keywords":"","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Next-Generation Firewalls for the Cloud Era</span>\r\nIn the cloud era, network firewalls must do more than secure your network. 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Other techniques might also be employed, such as TLS/SSL encrypted traffic inspection, website filtering, QoS/bandwidth management, antivirus inspection and third-party identity management integration (i.e. LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory).\r\nNGFWs include the typical functions of traditional firewalls such as packet filtering, network- and port-address translation (NAT), stateful inspection, and virtual private network (VPN) support. The goal of next-generation firewalls is to include more layers of the OSI model, improving filtering of network traffic that is dependent on the packet contents.\r\nNGFWs perform deeper inspection compared to stateful inspection performed by the first- and second-generation firewalls. NGFWs use a more thorough inspection style, checking packet payloads and matching signatures for harmful activities such as exploitable attacks and malware.\r\nImproved detection of encrypted applications and intrusion prevention service. Modern threats like web-based malware attacks, targeted attacks, application-layer attacks, and more have had a significantly negative effect on the threat landscape. In fact, more than 80% of all new malware and intrusion attempts are exploiting weaknesses in applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services.\r\nStateful firewalls with simple packet filtering capabilities were efficient blocking unwanted applications as most applications met the port-protocol expectations. Administrators could promptly prevent an unsafe application from being accessed by users by blocking the associated ports and protocols. But today, blocking a web application like Farmville that uses port 80 by closing the port would also mean complications with the entire HTTP protocol.\r\nProtection based on ports, protocols, IP addresses is no more reliable and viable. This has led to the development of identity-based security approach, which takes organizations a step ahead of conventional security appliances which bind security to IP-addresses.\r\nNGFWs offer administrators a deeper awareness of and control over individual applications, along with deeper inspection capabilities by the firewall. Administrators can create very granular "allow/deny" rules for controlling use of websites and applications in the network. ","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nAn NGFW contains all the normal defences that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other bonus security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. This is usually done by monitoring for breaches against the network policies in place as a breach is usually indicative of malicious activity.\r\nApplication control software simply sets up a hard filter for programs that are trying to send or receive data over the Internet. This can either be done by blacklist (programs in the filter are blocked) or by whitelist (programs not in the filter are blocked).","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_NGFW.png"},{"id":782,"title":"NGFW - next-generation firewall","alias":"ngfw-next-generation-firewall","description":"A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology that is implemented in either hardware or software and is capable of detecting and blocking sophisticated attacks by enforcing security policies at the application, port and protocol levels.\r\nNGFWs typically feature advanced functions including:\r\n<ul><li>application awareness;</li><li>integrated intrusion prevention systems (IPS);</li><li>identity awareness -- user and group control;</li><li>bridged and routed modes;</li><li> the ability to use external intelligence sources.</li></ul>\r\nOf these offerings, most next-generation firewalls integrate at least three basic functions: enterprise firewall capabilities, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) and application control.\r\nLike the introduction of stateful inspection in traditional firewalls, NGFWs bring additional context to the firewall's decision-making process by providing it with the ability to understand the details of the web application traffic passing through it and to take action to block traffic that might exploit vulnerabilities.\r\nThe different features of next-generation firewalls combine to create unique benefits for users. NGFWs are often able to block malware before it enters a network, something that wasn't previously possible.\r\nNGFWs are also better equipped to address advanced persistent threats (APTs) because they can be integrated with threat intelligence services. NGFWs can also offer a low-cost option for companies trying to improve basic device security through the use of application awareness, inspection services, protection systems and awareness tools.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nA NGFW contains all the normal defenses that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other additional security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection, which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. This is usually done by monitoring for breaches against the network policies in place as a breach is usually indicative of malicious activity.\r\nApplication control software simply sets up a hard filter for programs that are trying to send or receive data over the Internet. This can either be done by a blacklist (programs in the filter are blocked) or by a whitelist (programs not in the filter are blocked).","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_NGFW.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":384,"title":"Risk of attacks by hackers"},{"id":385,"title":"Risk of data loss or damage"},{"id":386,"title":"Risk of lost access to data and IT systems"}]}},"categories":[{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"},{"id":784,"title":"NGFW - next-generation firewall - Appliance","alias":"ngfw-next-generation-firewall-appliance","description":" A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology, combining a traditional firewall with other network device filtering functionalities, such as an application firewall using in-line deep packet inspection (DPI), an intrusion prevention system (IPS). Other techniques might also be employed, such as TLS/SSL encrypted traffic inspection, website filtering, QoS/bandwidth management, antivirus inspection and third-party identity management integration (i.e. LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory).\r\nNGFWs include the typical functions of traditional firewalls such as packet filtering, network- and port-address translation (NAT), stateful inspection, and virtual private network (VPN) support. The goal of next-generation firewalls is to include more layers of the OSI model, improving filtering of network traffic that is dependent on the packet contents.\r\nNGFWs perform deeper inspection compared to stateful inspection performed by the first- and second-generation firewalls. NGFWs use a more thorough inspection style, checking packet payloads and matching signatures for harmful activities such as exploitable attacks and malware.\r\nImproved detection of encrypted applications and intrusion prevention service. Modern threats like web-based malware attacks, targeted attacks, application-layer attacks, and more have had a significantly negative effect on the threat landscape. In fact, more than 80% of all new malware and intrusion attempts are exploiting weaknesses in applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services.\r\nStateful firewalls with simple packet filtering capabilities were efficient blocking unwanted applications as most applications met the port-protocol expectations. Administrators could promptly prevent an unsafe application from being accessed by users by blocking the associated ports and protocols. But today, blocking a web application like Farmville that uses port 80 by closing the port would also mean complications with the entire HTTP protocol.\r\nProtection based on ports, protocols, IP addresses is no more reliable and viable. This has led to the development of identity-based security approach, which takes organizations a step ahead of conventional security appliances which bind security to IP-addresses.\r\nNGFWs offer administrators a deeper awareness of and control over individual applications, along with deeper inspection capabilities by the firewall. Administrators can create very granular "allow/deny" rules for controlling use of websites and applications in the network. ","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nAn NGFW contains all the normal defences that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other bonus security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. This is usually done by monitoring for breaches against the network policies in place as a breach is usually indicative of malicious activity.\r\nApplication control software simply sets up a hard filter for programs that are trying to send or receive data over the Internet. This can either be done by blacklist (programs in the filter are blocked) or by whitelist (programs not in the filter are blocked).","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_NGFW.png"},{"id":782,"title":"NGFW - next-generation firewall","alias":"ngfw-next-generation-firewall","description":"A next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology that is implemented in either hardware or software and is capable of detecting and blocking sophisticated attacks by enforcing security policies at the application, port and protocol levels.\r\nNGFWs typically feature advanced functions including:\r\n<ul><li>application awareness;</li><li>integrated intrusion prevention systems (IPS);</li><li>identity awareness -- user and group control;</li><li>bridged and routed modes;</li><li> the ability to use external intelligence sources.</li></ul>\r\nOf these offerings, most next-generation firewalls integrate at least three basic functions: enterprise firewall capabilities, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) and application control.\r\nLike the introduction of stateful inspection in traditional firewalls, NGFWs bring additional context to the firewall's decision-making process by providing it with the ability to understand the details of the web application traffic passing through it and to take action to block traffic that might exploit vulnerabilities.\r\nThe different features of next-generation firewalls combine to create unique benefits for users. NGFWs are often able to block malware before it enters a network, something that wasn't previously possible.\r\nNGFWs are also better equipped to address advanced persistent threats (APTs) because they can be integrated with threat intelligence services. NGFWs can also offer a low-cost option for companies trying to improve basic device security through the use of application awareness, inspection services, protection systems and awareness tools.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a next-generation firewall (NGFW)?</span>\r\nA NGFW contains all the normal defenses that a traditional firewall has as well as a type of intrusion prevention software and application control, alongside other additional security features. NGFWs are also capable of deep packet inspection, which enables more robust filters.\r\nIntrusion prevention software monitors network activity to detect and stop vulnerability exploits from occurring. 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It offers comprehensive, end-to-end data protection environment visibility in a single, unified product. \r\nREDUCE COSTS\r\nConsolidate information enterprise-wide to reduce administrative efforts, accelerate problem resolution, and forecast resource and capacity planning.\r\nPROVE PROTECTION\r\nUnderstand potential risks and data protection strategy exposures across multiple backup and recovery products so applications are recoverable and data is safe.\r\nLESSEN COMPLEXITY\r\nUse an automated, unified approach to managing the data protection environment, greatly simplifying the monitoring process and tuning the environment to maximize utilization.\r\nAUTOMATE PROCESSES\r\nRemove manual data collection, analysis, alerting, and reporting effort for key backup and recovery management to drive an efficient, risk-managed, and simplified environment.","shortDescription":"Dell EMC Data Protection Advisor: Improve recovery confidence and ensure service levels with EMC’s powerful data protection management software.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":20,"sellingCount":3,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Dell EMC Data Protection Advisor (DPA)","keywords":"data, environment, protection, recovery, backup, Advisor, Protection, Data","description":"With Data Protection Advisor, you’ll be able to unify and automate monitoring, analysis and reporting across backup and recovery environments while reducing complexity, lowering costs, and eliminating manual efforts.\r\nINCREASE VISIBILITY\r\nData Protection Advis","og:title":"Dell EMC Data Protection Advisor (DPA)","og:description":"With Data Protection Advisor, you’ll be able to unify and automate monitoring, analysis and reporting across backup and recovery environments while reducing complexity, lowering costs, and eliminating manual efforts.\r\nINCREASE VISIBILITY\r\nData Protection Advis"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":414,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":497,"title":"Backup and Recovery Reporting Software","alias":"backup-and-recovery-reporting-software","description":" Backup and recovery describes the process of creating and storing copies of data that can be used to protect organizations against data loss. 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This additional medium can be as simple as an external drive or USB stick, or something more substantial, such as a disk storage system, cloud storage container, or tape drive. The alternate medium can be in the same location as the primary data or at a remote location. The possibility of weather-related events may justify having copies of data at remote locations.\r\nFor best results, backup copies are made on a consistent, regular basis to minimize the amount data lost between backups. The more time passes between backup copies, the more potential for data loss when recovering from a backup. 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For more information about the Hyper-V module, see Hyper-V Module for Windows PowerShell.\r\nIf you use Server Manager to install the Hyper-V role, the management tools are included unless you specifically exclude them. If you use Windows PowerShell to install the Hyper-V role, the management tools are not included by default. To install the tools, use the parameter –IncludeManagementTools. For instructions about installing the Hyper-V role, see Install Hyper-V and create a virtual machine.\r\n\r\nOverview of Hyper-V\r\nApplies To: Windows Server 2008 R2\r\nHyper-V provides software infrastructure and basic management tools that you can use to create and manage a virtualized server computing environment. This virtualized environment can be used to address a variety of business goals aimed at improving efficiency and reducing costs. For example, a virtualized server environment can help you:\r\nReduce the costs of operating and maintaining physical servers by increasing your hardware utilization. You can reduce the amount of hardware needed to run your server workloads.\r\nIncrease development and test efficiency by reducing the amount of time it takes to set up hardware and software and reproduce test environments.\r\nImprove server availability without using as many physical computers as you would need in a failover configuration that uses only physical computers.\r\nSome ways Hyper-V can help you\r\nHyper-V can help you:\r\nEstablish or expand a private cloud environment. Provide more flexible, on-demand IT services by moving to or expanding your use of shared resources and adjust utilization as demand changes.\r\nUse your hardware more effectively. Consolidate servers and workloads onto fewer, more powerful physical computers to use less power and physical space.\r\nImprove business continuity. Minimize the impact of both scheduled and unscheduled downtime of your workloads.\r\nEstablish or expand a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Use a centralized desktop strategy with VDI can help you increase business agility and data security, as well as simplify regulatory compliance and manage desktop operating systems and applications. Deploy Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RD Virtualization Host) on the same server to make personal virtual desktops or virtual desktop pools available to your users.\r\nMake development and test more efficient. Reproduce different computing environments without having to buy or maintain all the hardware you'd need if you only used physical systems.\r\nHyper-V and other virtualization products\r\nHyper-V in Windows and Windows Server replaces older hardware virtualization products, such as Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Windows Virtual PC. Hyper-V offers networking, performance, storage and security features not available in these older products.\r\nHyper-V and most third-party virtualization applications that require the same processor features aren't compatible. That's because the processor features, known as hardware virtualization extensions, are designed to not be shared. For details, see Virtualization applications do not work together with Hyper-V, Device Guard, and Credential Guard.","shortDescription":"The Hyper-V role enables you to create and manage a virtualized computing environment by using virtualization technology that is built in to Windows Server. Installing the Hyper-V role installs the required components and optionally installs management tools. The required components include Windows hypervisor, Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management Service, the virtualization WMI provider, and other virtualization components such as the virtual machine bus (VMbus), virtualization service provider (VSP) and virtual infrastructure driver (VID).","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":18,"sellingCount":10,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Hyper-V","keywords":"Hyper-V, Windows, hardware, virtual, physical, your, tools, server","description":"The management tools for the Hyper-V role consist of:\r\nGUI-based management tools: Hyper-V Manager, a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, and Virtual Machine Connection, which provides access to the video output of a virtual machine so you can interact","og:title":"Microsoft Hyper-V","og:description":"The management tools for the Hyper-V role consist of:\r\nGUI-based management tools: Hyper-V Manager, a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, and Virtual Machine Connection, which provides access to the video output of a virtual machine so you can interact"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":617,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":2,"title":"Virtual machine and cloud system software","alias":"virtual-machine-and-cloud-system-software","description":" A virtual machine (VM) is a software-based computer that exists within another computer’s operating system, often used for the purposes of testing, backing up data, or running SaaS applications. To fully grasp how VMs work, it’s important to first understand how computer software and hardware are typically integrated by an operating system.\r\n"The cloud" refers to servers that are accessed over the Internet, and the software and databases that run on those servers. Cloud servers are located in data centers all over the world. By using cloud computing, users and companies don't have to manage physical servers themselves or run software applications on their own machines.\r\nThe cloud enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage take place on servers in a data center, instead of locally on the user device. This is why a user can log into their Instagram account on a new phone after their old phone breaks and still find their old account in place, with all their photos, videos, and conversation history. It works the same way with cloud email providers like Gmail or Microsoft Office 365, and with cloud storage providers like Dropbox or Google Drive.\r\nFor businesses, switching to cloud computing removes some IT costs and overhead: for instance, they no longer need to update and maintain their own servers, as the cloud vendor they are using will do that. This especially makes an impact on small businesses that may not have been able to afford their own internal infrastructure but can outsource their infrastructure needs affordably via the cloud. The cloud can also make it easier for companies to operate internationally because employees and customers can access the same files and applications from any location.\r\nSeveral cloud providers offer virtual machines to their customers. These virtual machines typically live on powerful servers that can act as a host to multiple VMs and can be used for a variety of reasons that wouldn’t be practical with a locally-hosted VM. These include:\r\n<ul><li>Running SaaS applications - Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS for short, is a cloud-based method of providing software to users. SaaS users subscribe to an application rather than purchasing it once and installing it. These applications are generally served to the user over the Internet. Often, it is virtual machines in the cloud that are doing the computation for SaaS applications as well as delivering them to users. If the cloud provider has a geographically distributed network edge, then the application will run closer to the user, resulting in faster performance.</li><li>Backing up data - Cloud-based VM services are very popular for backing up data because the data can be accessed from anywhere. Plus, cloud VMs provide better redundancy, require less maintenance, and generally scale better than physical data centers. (For example, it’s generally fairly easy to buy an extra gigabyte of storage space from a cloud VM provider, but much more difficult to build a new local data server for that extra gigabyte of data.)</li><li>Hosting services like email and access management - Hosting these services on cloud VMs is generally faster and more cost-effective, and helps minimize maintenance and offload security concerns as well.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"What is an operating system?\r\nTraditional computers are built out of physical hardware, including hard disk drives, processor chips, RAM, etc. In order to utilize this hardware, computers rely on a type of software known as an operating system (OS). Some common examples of OSes are Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Android.\r\nThe OS is what manages the computer’s hardware in ways that are useful to the user. For example, if the user wants to access the Internet, the OS directs the network interface card to make the connection. If the user wants to download a file, the OS will partition space on the hard drive for that file. The OS also runs and manages other pieces of software. For example, it can run a web browser and provide the browser with enough random access memory (RAM) to operate smoothly. Typically, operating systems exist within a physical computer at a one-to-one ratio; for each machine, there is a single OS managing its physical resources.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can you have two or more operating systems on one computer?</span>\r\nSome users want to be able to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on one computer, either for testing or one of the other reasons listed in the section below. This can be achieved through a process called virtualization. In virtualization, a piece of software behaves as if it were an independent computer. This piece of software is called a virtual machine, also known as a ‘guest’ computer. (The computer on which the VM is running is called the ‘host’.) The guest has an OS as well as its own virtual hardware.\r\n‘Virtual hardware’ may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but it works by mapping to real hardware on the host computer. For example, the VM’s ‘hard drive’ is really just a file on the host computer’s hard drive. When the VM wants to save a new file, it actually has to communicate with the host OS, which will write this file to the host hard drive. Because virtual hardware must perform this added step of negotiating with the host to access hardware resources, virtual machines can’t run quite as fast as their host computers.\r\nWith virtualization, one computer can run two or more operating systems. The number of VMs that can run on one host is limited only by the host’s available resources. The user can run the OS of a VM in a window like any other program, or they can run it in fullscreen so that it looks and feels like a genuine host OS.\r\n <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are virtual machines used for?</span>\r\nSome of the most popular reasons people run virtual machines include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Testing</span> - Oftentimes software developers want to be able to test their applications in different environments. They can use virtual machines to run their applications in various OSes on one computer. This is simpler and more cost-effective than having to test on several different physical machines.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running software designed for other OSes</span> - Although certain software applications are only available for a single platform, a VM can run software designed for a different OS. For example, a Mac user who wants to run software designed for Windows can run a Windows VM on their Mac host.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running outdated software</span> - Some pieces of older software can’t be run in modern OSes. Users who want to run these applications can run an old OS on a virtual machine.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Virtual_machine_and_cloud_system_software.png"},{"id":1,"title":"Desktop virtualization","alias":"desktop-virtualization","description":" Desktop virtualization is a virtualization technology that separates an individual's PC applications from his or her desktop. Virtualized desktops are generally hosted on a remote central server, rather than the hard drive of the personal computer. Because the client-server computing model is used in virtualizing desktops, desktop virtualization is also known as client virtualization.\r\nDesktop virtualization provides a way for users to maintain their individual desktops on a single, central server. The users may be connected to the central server through a LAN, WAN or over the Internet.\r\nDesktop virtualization has many benefits, including a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), increased security, reduced energy costs, reduced downtime and centralized management.\r\nLimitations of desktop virtualization include difficulty in maintenance and set up of printer drivers; increased downtime in case of network failures; complexity and costs involved in VDI deployment and security risks in the event of improper network management.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are types of desktop virtualization technologies?</span>\r\nHost-based forms of desktop virtualization require that users view and interact with their virtual desktops over a network by using a remote display protocol. Because processing takes place in a data center, client devices can be traditional PCs, but also thin clients, zero clients, smartphones and tablets. Examples of host-based desktop virtualization technology include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Host-based virtual machines:</span> Each user connects to an individual VM that is hosted in a data center. The user may connect to the same VM every time, allowing for personalization (known as a persistent desktop), or be given a fresh VM at each login (a nonpersistent desktop).\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Shared hosted:</span> Users connect to a shared desktop that runs on a server. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, formerly Terminal Services, takes this client-server approach. Users may also connect to individual applications running on a server; this technology is an example of application virtualization.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Host-based physical machines:</span> The operating system runs directly on another device's physical hardware.\r\nClient virtualization requires processing to occur on local hardware; the use of thin clients, zero clients and mobile devices is not possible. These types of desktop virtualization include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">OS image streaming:</span> The operating system runs on local hardware, but it boots to a remote disk image across the network. This is useful for groups of desktops that use the same disk image. OS image streaming, also known as remote desktop virtualization, requires a constant network connection in order to function.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Client-based virtual machines:</span> A VM runs on a fully functional PC, with a hypervisor in place. Client-based virtual machines can be managed by regularly syncing the disk image with a server, but a constant network connection is not necessary in order for them to function.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Desktop virtualization vs. virtual desktop infrastructure</span>\r\nThe terms <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">desktop virtualization</span> and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. While VDI is a type of desktop virtualization, not all desktop virtualization uses VDI.\r\nVDI refers to the use of host-based VMs to deliver virtual desktops, which emerged in 2006 as an alternative to Terminal Services and Citrix's client-server approach to desktop virtualization technology. Other types of desktop virtualization -- including the shared hosted model, host-based physical machines and all methods of client virtualization -- are not examples of VDI.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Desktop_virtualization.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":405,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"EMC VNX","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"emc-vnx","companyTypes":[],"description":"With the VNX Series, you’ll achieve new levels of performance, protection, compliance, and ease of management.","shortDescription":"EMC VNX - High-performing unified storage with unsurpassed simplicity and efficiency, optimised for virtual applications.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":17,"sellingCount":11,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"EMC VNX","keywords":"performance, compliance, protection, management, ease, With, Series, you’ll","description":"With the VNX Series, you’ll achieve new levels of performance, protection, compliance, and ease of management.","og:title":"EMC VNX","og:description":"With the VNX Series, you’ll achieve new levels of performance, protection, compliance, and ease of management."},"eventUrl":"","translationId":406,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":501,"title":"All-flash and Hybrid Storage","alias":"all-flash-and-hybrid-storage","description":" Costs have come down making hybrid and all-flash enterprise storage solutions the preferred choice for storing, processing and moving the massive volumes of business data generated in today’s cloud, mobile and IoT environment.\r\nll-flash storage arrays utilize solid-state drives (SSDs) to deliver high-performance and low-latency workloads using data compression and deduplication technologies. Hybrid Storage combines those same solid-state drives (SSDs) with SAS or NL-SAS drives to offer a more cost-effective storage solution that balances cost with superior performance and high storage density.\r\nBoth options lower the complexity of providing scale-out performance at ultralow latency for data-intensive loads and big data analytics.\r\nWhether you are building a new storage array or refreshing your existing storage infrastructure we will work with you to plan, source, install and configure a storage solution to meet you budgetary and business requirements.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is flash storage and what is it used for?</span>\r\nFlash storage is any storage repository that uses flash memory. Flash memory comes in many form factors, and you probably use flash storage every day. From a single Flash chip on a simple circuit board attached to your computing device via USB to circuit boards in your phone or MP3 player, to a fully integrated “Enterprise Flash Disk” where lots of chips are attached to a circuit board in a form factor that can be used in place of a spinning disk.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is flash storage SSD?</span>\r\nA “Solid State Disk” or EFD “Enterprise Flash Disk” is a fully integrated circuit board where many Flash chips are engineered to represent a single Flash disk. Primarily used to replace a traditional spinning disk, SSDs are used in MP3 players, laptops, servers and enterprise storage systems.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between flash storage and SSD?</span>\r\nFlash storage is a reference to any device that can function as a storage repository. Flash storage can be a simple USB device or a fully integrated All-Flash Storage Array. SSD, “Solid State Disk” is an integrated device designed to replace spinning media, commonly used in enterprise storage arrays.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between flash storage and traditional hard drives?</span>\r\nA traditional hard drive leveraged rotating platters and heads to read data from a magnetic device, comparable to a traditional record player; while flash storage leveraged electronic media or flash memory, to vastly improve performance. Flash eliminates rotational delay and seeks time, functions that add latency to traditional storage media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between an all-flash array and a hybrid array?</span>\r\nA Hybrid Storage Array uses a combination of spinning disk drives and Flash SSD. Along with the right software, a Hybrid Array can be configured to improve overall performance while reducing cost. An All-Flash-Array is designed to support only SSD media.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Al_flash_and_Hybrid_Storage.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":180,"title":"Russia","name":"RUS"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"}]}},"categories":[{"id":2,"title":"Virtual machine and cloud system software","alias":"virtual-machine-and-cloud-system-software","description":" A virtual machine (VM) is a software-based computer that exists within another computer’s operating system, often used for the purposes of testing, backing up data, or running SaaS applications. To fully grasp how VMs work, it’s important to first understand how computer software and hardware are typically integrated by an operating system.\r\n"The cloud" refers to servers that are accessed over the Internet, and the software and databases that run on those servers. Cloud servers are located in data centers all over the world. By using cloud computing, users and companies don't have to manage physical servers themselves or run software applications on their own machines.\r\nThe cloud enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage take place on servers in a data center, instead of locally on the user device. This is why a user can log into their Instagram account on a new phone after their old phone breaks and still find their old account in place, with all their photos, videos, and conversation history. It works the same way with cloud email providers like Gmail or Microsoft Office 365, and with cloud storage providers like Dropbox or Google Drive.\r\nFor businesses, switching to cloud computing removes some IT costs and overhead: for instance, they no longer need to update and maintain their own servers, as the cloud vendor they are using will do that. This especially makes an impact on small businesses that may not have been able to afford their own internal infrastructure but can outsource their infrastructure needs affordably via the cloud. The cloud can also make it easier for companies to operate internationally because employees and customers can access the same files and applications from any location.\r\nSeveral cloud providers offer virtual machines to their customers. These virtual machines typically live on powerful servers that can act as a host to multiple VMs and can be used for a variety of reasons that wouldn’t be practical with a locally-hosted VM. These include:\r\n<ul><li>Running SaaS applications - Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS for short, is a cloud-based method of providing software to users. SaaS users subscribe to an application rather than purchasing it once and installing it. These applications are generally served to the user over the Internet. Often, it is virtual machines in the cloud that are doing the computation for SaaS applications as well as delivering them to users. If the cloud provider has a geographically distributed network edge, then the application will run closer to the user, resulting in faster performance.</li><li>Backing up data - Cloud-based VM services are very popular for backing up data because the data can be accessed from anywhere. Plus, cloud VMs provide better redundancy, require less maintenance, and generally scale better than physical data centers. (For example, it’s generally fairly easy to buy an extra gigabyte of storage space from a cloud VM provider, but much more difficult to build a new local data server for that extra gigabyte of data.)</li><li>Hosting services like email and access management - Hosting these services on cloud VMs is generally faster and more cost-effective, and helps minimize maintenance and offload security concerns as well.</li></ul>","materialsDescription":"What is an operating system?\r\nTraditional computers are built out of physical hardware, including hard disk drives, processor chips, RAM, etc. In order to utilize this hardware, computers rely on a type of software known as an operating system (OS). Some common examples of OSes are Mac OSX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Android.\r\nThe OS is what manages the computer’s hardware in ways that are useful to the user. For example, if the user wants to access the Internet, the OS directs the network interface card to make the connection. If the user wants to download a file, the OS will partition space on the hard drive for that file. The OS also runs and manages other pieces of software. For example, it can run a web browser and provide the browser with enough random access memory (RAM) to operate smoothly. Typically, operating systems exist within a physical computer at a one-to-one ratio; for each machine, there is a single OS managing its physical resources.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can you have two or more operating systems on one computer?</span>\r\nSome users want to be able to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on one computer, either for testing or one of the other reasons listed in the section below. This can be achieved through a process called virtualization. In virtualization, a piece of software behaves as if it were an independent computer. This piece of software is called a virtual machine, also known as a ‘guest’ computer. (The computer on which the VM is running is called the ‘host’.) The guest has an OS as well as its own virtual hardware.\r\n‘Virtual hardware’ may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but it works by mapping to real hardware on the host computer. For example, the VM’s ‘hard drive’ is really just a file on the host computer’s hard drive. When the VM wants to save a new file, it actually has to communicate with the host OS, which will write this file to the host hard drive. Because virtual hardware must perform this added step of negotiating with the host to access hardware resources, virtual machines can’t run quite as fast as their host computers.\r\nWith virtualization, one computer can run two or more operating systems. The number of VMs that can run on one host is limited only by the host’s available resources. The user can run the OS of a VM in a window like any other program, or they can run it in fullscreen so that it looks and feels like a genuine host OS.\r\n <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are virtual machines used for?</span>\r\nSome of the most popular reasons people run virtual machines include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Testing</span> - Oftentimes software developers want to be able to test their applications in different environments. They can use virtual machines to run their applications in various OSes on one computer. This is simpler and more cost-effective than having to test on several different physical machines.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running software designed for other OSes</span> - Although certain software applications are only available for a single platform, a VM can run software designed for a different OS. For example, a Mac user who wants to run software designed for Windows can run a Windows VM on their Mac host.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Running outdated software</span> - Some pieces of older software can’t be run in modern OSes. Users who want to run these applications can run an old OS on a virtual machine.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Virtual_machine_and_cloud_system_software.png"},{"id":1,"title":"Desktop virtualization","alias":"desktop-virtualization","description":" Desktop virtualization is a virtualization technology that separates an individual's PC applications from his or her desktop. Virtualized desktops are generally hosted on a remote central server, rather than the hard drive of the personal computer. Because the client-server computing model is used in virtualizing desktops, desktop virtualization is also known as client virtualization.\r\nDesktop virtualization provides a way for users to maintain their individual desktops on a single, central server. The users may be connected to the central server through a LAN, WAN or over the Internet.\r\nDesktop virtualization has many benefits, including a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), increased security, reduced energy costs, reduced downtime and centralized management.\r\nLimitations of desktop virtualization include difficulty in maintenance and set up of printer drivers; increased downtime in case of network failures; complexity and costs involved in VDI deployment and security risks in the event of improper network management.<br /><br />","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are types of desktop virtualization technologies?</span>\r\nHost-based forms of desktop virtualization require that users view and interact with their virtual desktops over a network by using a remote display protocol. Because processing takes place in a data center, client devices can be traditional PCs, but also thin clients, zero clients, smartphones and tablets. Examples of host-based desktop virtualization technology include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Host-based virtual machines:</span> Each user connects to an individual VM that is hosted in a data center. The user may connect to the same VM every time, allowing for personalization (known as a persistent desktop), or be given a fresh VM at each login (a nonpersistent desktop).\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Shared hosted:</span> Users connect to a shared desktop that runs on a server. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, formerly Terminal Services, takes this client-server approach. Users may also connect to individual applications running on a server; this technology is an example of application virtualization.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Host-based physical machines:</span> The operating system runs directly on another device's physical hardware.\r\nClient virtualization requires processing to occur on local hardware; the use of thin clients, zero clients and mobile devices is not possible. These types of desktop virtualization include:\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">OS image streaming:</span> The operating system runs on local hardware, but it boots to a remote disk image across the network. This is useful for groups of desktops that use the same disk image. OS image streaming, also known as remote desktop virtualization, requires a constant network connection in order to function.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Client-based virtual machines:</span> A VM runs on a fully functional PC, with a hypervisor in place. Client-based virtual machines can be managed by regularly syncing the disk image with a server, but a constant network connection is not necessary in order for them to function.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Desktop virtualization vs. virtual desktop infrastructure</span>\r\nThe terms <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">desktop virtualization</span> and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. While VDI is a type of desktop virtualization, not all desktop virtualization uses VDI.\r\nVDI refers to the use of host-based VMs to deliver virtual desktops, which emerged in 2006 as an alternative to Terminal Services and Citrix's client-server approach to desktop virtualization technology. Other types of desktop virtualization -- including the shared hosted model, host-based physical machines and all methods of client virtualization -- are not examples of VDI.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Desktop_virtualization.png"},{"id":501,"title":"All-flash and Hybrid Storage","alias":"all-flash-and-hybrid-storage","description":" Costs have come down making hybrid and all-flash enterprise storage solutions the preferred choice for storing, processing and moving the massive volumes of business data generated in today’s cloud, mobile and IoT environment.\r\nll-flash storage arrays utilize solid-state drives (SSDs) to deliver high-performance and low-latency workloads using data compression and deduplication technologies. Hybrid Storage combines those same solid-state drives (SSDs) with SAS or NL-SAS drives to offer a more cost-effective storage solution that balances cost with superior performance and high storage density.\r\nBoth options lower the complexity of providing scale-out performance at ultralow latency for data-intensive loads and big data analytics.\r\nWhether you are building a new storage array or refreshing your existing storage infrastructure we will work with you to plan, source, install and configure a storage solution to meet you budgetary and business requirements.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is flash storage and what is it used for?</span>\r\nFlash storage is any storage repository that uses flash memory. Flash memory comes in many form factors, and you probably use flash storage every day. From a single Flash chip on a simple circuit board attached to your computing device via USB to circuit boards in your phone or MP3 player, to a fully integrated “Enterprise Flash Disk” where lots of chips are attached to a circuit board in a form factor that can be used in place of a spinning disk.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is flash storage SSD?</span>\r\nA “Solid State Disk” or EFD “Enterprise Flash Disk” is a fully integrated circuit board where many Flash chips are engineered to represent a single Flash disk. Primarily used to replace a traditional spinning disk, SSDs are used in MP3 players, laptops, servers and enterprise storage systems.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between flash storage and SSD?</span>\r\nFlash storage is a reference to any device that can function as a storage repository. Flash storage can be a simple USB device or a fully integrated All-Flash Storage Array. SSD, “Solid State Disk” is an integrated device designed to replace spinning media, commonly used in enterprise storage arrays.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between flash storage and traditional hard drives?</span>\r\nA traditional hard drive leveraged rotating platters and heads to read data from a magnetic device, comparable to a traditional record player; while flash storage leveraged electronic media or flash memory, to vastly improve performance. Flash eliminates rotational delay and seeks time, functions that add latency to traditional storage media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is the difference between an all-flash array and a hybrid array?</span>\r\nA Hybrid Storage Array uses a combination of spinning disk drives and Flash SSD. Along with the right software, a Hybrid Array can be configured to improve overall performance while reducing cost. An All-Flash-Array is designed to support only SSD media.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Al_flash_and_Hybrid_Storage.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"https://www.technoserv.com/about/success-stories/detail.php?id=6104","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":1106,"title":"fieldengineer","description":"<p><span style=\"color: #767676; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.6px;\">A field solution architecture is one of the essential parts of organizational success. The field solution architect (FSA) is responsible for working together with internal and external sales department to plan, organize, and sales strategies.visit us @ </span><a style=\"border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; color: #1e73be; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.6px;\" href=\"https://www.fieldengineer.com/skills/field-solutions-architect\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://www.fieldengineer.com/skills/field-solutions-architect</a></p>","alias":"fieldengineer","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"fieldengineer","keywords":"","description":"<p><span style=\"color: #767676; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.6px;\">A field solution architecture is one of the essential parts of organizational success. 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Some services also provide access to a web conference via a browser using flash, java or a special plug-in.\r\nServices for web conferencing can include features and tools such as screen sharing (screen sharing or individual applications), whiteboard (interactive whiteboard), the ability to show web presentations, co-browsing (the ability to synchronously browse web pages), tools for annotations, monitoring the presence of participants, text chat, integrated VoIP communication, video communication, the ability to change the leader, the ability to give control over the mouse and keyboard, meeting moderation tools, feedback collection tools (on example, polls), tools for scheduling and inviting participants, the ability to record the progress of a web conference.\r\nOften, web conferencing is used with Internet services for audio and video calls (for example, Skype) or they provide conference calling via a regular telephone.","materialsDescription":" What is the first thing that strikes you when we look at businessmen who are trying to establish communication with each other online? All of them require: “Give more opportunities for web conferencing!”. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the WebRTC technology is gaining the favor of an increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses.\r\nA recent study conducted by Software Advice showed that more than half of employees in small businesses prefer web conferences, noting their efficiency and usability. The advantages are especially noticeable in comparison with communications via telephone or the use of special applications. However, the benefits of web conferencing do not end there - according to the study, they not only increase the speed and quality of online meetings, but also provide a lot of opportunities for collaboration. In addition, and this is obvious, they reduce travel costs.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Speed and quality come first.</span>\r\nIt is worth noting that now small and medium businesses are almost gone from the use of communication hardware and use desktop computers and mobile devices. Despite the fact that audio and video conferences are still very popular (they are used by 45% and 50% of users, respectively), web conferences are actively replacing them. Judge for yourself - according to statistics, every third user selects them as a means of communication after the first experience of use.\r\nThe main reason for such a rapid growth in popularity is the speed and quality that web conferencing users provide. According to respondents, the main advantage of web conferences is the ability to organize a meeting much faster than before. Now there is no need to spend time on installing special applications like Skype or similar - any communication systems using any third-party programs are a thing of the past. Also worth noting is the ability to connect to the web conference literally in one click.\r\nMore than 40% of the people surveyed showed dissatisfaction with the tedious procedure of entering authorization data, noting the simplicity and convenience of connecting to the WebRTC web conference. All you need is access to the Internet!\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">We work in a team</span>\r\nIt is no secret that the use of web conferencing significantly reduces the company's travel expenses. After all, booking tickets, searching for hotels and meeting places can result in a decent amount, which will seriously hurt the company's income. Using web conferences, you get the opportunity to arrange business meetings, even with overseas partners, without leaving your office. But that's not all! 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Some services also provide access to a web conference via a browser using flash, java or a special plug-in.\r\nServices for web conferencing can include features and tools such as screen sharing (screen sharing or individual applications), whiteboard (interactive whiteboard), the ability to show web presentations, co-browsing (the ability to synchronously browse web pages), tools for annotations, monitoring the presence of participants, text chat, integrated VoIP communication, video communication, the ability to change the leader, the ability to give control over the mouse and keyboard, meeting moderation tools, feedback collection tools (on example, polls), tools for scheduling and inviting participants, the ability to record the progress of a web conference.\r\nOften, web conferencing is used with Internet services for audio and video calls (for example, Skype) or they provide conference calling via a regular telephone.","materialsDescription":" What is the first thing that strikes you when we look at businessmen who are trying to establish communication with each other online? All of them require: “Give more opportunities for web conferencing!”. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the WebRTC technology is gaining the favor of an increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses.\r\nA recent study conducted by Software Advice showed that more than half of employees in small businesses prefer web conferences, noting their efficiency and usability. The advantages are especially noticeable in comparison with communications via telephone or the use of special applications. However, the benefits of web conferencing do not end there - according to the study, they not only increase the speed and quality of online meetings, but also provide a lot of opportunities for collaboration. In addition, and this is obvious, they reduce travel costs.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Speed and quality come first.</span>\r\nIt is worth noting that now small and medium businesses are almost gone from the use of communication hardware and use desktop computers and mobile devices. Despite the fact that audio and video conferences are still very popular (they are used by 45% and 50% of users, respectively), web conferences are actively replacing them. Judge for yourself - according to statistics, every third user selects them as a means of communication after the first experience of use.\r\nThe main reason for such a rapid growth in popularity is the speed and quality that web conferencing users provide. According to respondents, the main advantage of web conferences is the ability to organize a meeting much faster than before. Now there is no need to spend time on installing special applications like Skype or similar - any communication systems using any third-party programs are a thing of the past. Also worth noting is the ability to connect to the web conference literally in one click.\r\nMore than 40% of the people surveyed showed dissatisfaction with the tedious procedure of entering authorization data, noting the simplicity and convenience of connecting to the WebRTC web conference. All you need is access to the Internet!\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">We work in a team</span>\r\nIt is no secret that the use of web conferencing significantly reduces the company's travel expenses. After all, booking tickets, searching for hotels and meeting places can result in a decent amount, which will seriously hurt the company's income. Using web conferences, you get the opportunity to arrange business meetings, even with overseas partners, without leaving your office. But that's not all! 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Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":64,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft 365","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"4.00","implementationsCount":8,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-365","companyTypes":[],"description":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Microsoft 365</span> is the productivity cloud that brings together best-in-class Office apps with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Be more productive wherever you are</span></p>\r\n<p>Connect employees to the people, information, and content they need to do their best work, from any device.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Comes with Office apps</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Stay up to date with the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email and calendaring</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Connect with customers and coworkers using Outlook and Exchange.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Chat, call, and meet</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Keep your team on the same page with group chat, online meetings, and calling in Microsoft Teams.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Cloud storage</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Manage your files from anywhere with 1 TB of OneDrive storage.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Don’t drown in paperwork</span></p>\r\n<p>Transform the way you manage your business and simplify the way work gets done with modern tools that streamline business processes.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Manage customer appointments</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Simplify how customers schedule and manage appointments with Bookings.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Capture employee and customer insights</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Create surveys, polls, and questionnaires to gather data and insights with Microsoft Forms.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Make repetitive tasks easy</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Automate everyday business processes with Power Automate.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Works with what you have</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Sign in once to access all your tools. Microsoft 365 integrates with hundreds of third-party cloud apps.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Protect what matters most</span></p>\r\n<p>Help protect your employees, data, and customer information with enterprise-grade security you can trust.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defend against cyberthreats</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Protect against phishing attempts, ransomware, spam, malware, viruses, malicious links, and other threats.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Keep customer data safe</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Protect sensitive business information from cybercriminals, unauthorized access, and accidental deletion.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Secure your devices</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Help keep your data safe, even when accessed on employees’ personal devices.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Simplify IT management</span></span></p>\r\n<p>Easily setup and manage your users, devices, and data, giving you time back to focus on running your business.</p>","shortDescription":"Microsoft 365 combines premium Office apps with Outlook, cloud storage and more, to help you make more of your time.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":13,"sellingCount":14,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft 365","keywords":"Office, Microsoft, software, services, storage, Server, Skype, service","description":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Microsoft 365</span> is the productivity cloud that brings together best-in-class Office apps with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Be","og:title":"Microsoft 365","og:description":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Microsoft 365</span> is the productivity cloud that brings together best-in-class Office apps with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Be"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":99,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":267,"title":"Collaborative Applications","alias":"collaborative-applications","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Collaborative applications, </span>collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve their goals. One of the earliest definitions of collaborative software is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".\r\nIn terms of the level of interaction it allows, collaborative software may be divided into: real-time collaborative editing (RTCE) platforms that allow multiple users to engage in live, simultaneous and reversible editing of a single file, like document collaboration app, and version control (also known as revision control and source control) platforms, which allow separate users to make parallel edits to a file, while preserving every saved edit by every user as multiple files (that are variants of the original file). The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment (CWE). \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">There are three main categories</span> of collaboration software based on their functional capabilities. Knowing how does collaboration software work can be gleaned from the tools employed.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Communication.</span> Helps in the exchange of communication between groups. The most common communication tools that are used are systems and applications for email hosting, file sharing, project management and a website or online collaboration applications platform that can be readily accessed. Research findings have shown that file sharing is the most common and needed feature in collaboration software. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> email, voicemail, instant messaging, VoIP or video calls.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Conferencing.</span> Allows real-time collaboration among members. Groupware software tools make possible real-time discussions among project members through a virtual meeting room with a moderator who oversees the sharing of information. These web based collaboration applications meetings are helpful when there are important matters to be decided on by project members who are in various locations. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> video conferencing, IM conferencing, online forums, social media group chats, community boards, application sharing.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Coordination.</span> Assists in group activities, schedule and deliverables. Coordination software solutions are used for complex interdependent tasks to realize a common goal. Typical business collaboration app suits for time management, project management and online proofing so that team members are aware of deadlines, are properly coordinated, and can monitor the status of projects. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> calendars, time trackers, spreadsheets, client portals, alerts and status updates<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">What does collaboration software do?</h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Internal Communication System.</span> Teams need an efficient communication system to be able to stay on task and not miss crucial aspects of ongoing projects. With many tools built into web based collaboration apps that allow all forms of communication – email, IM, voice, video – as well as mechanisms to review and retrieve conversations and discussions, team members are assured of uninterrupted coordination and kept in sync.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">File Sharing.</span> Like communication, the ability to share files, documents, data and all other forms of media is one of the most important features of collaboration software. Many groupware now carry robust document management systems, providing you and your team members a convenient means to share, access, view and retrieve files</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content Creation.</span> Several all-in-one collaboration platforms offer content creation functionality that allows producing and publishing content both for internal and external audiences. This is useful for inbound marketing activities like creating blogs and informative content to attract new audience and enhance your business’ online presence.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Powerful Search.</span> Finding old files, previous conversation or past blog post are facilitated by the robust search feature of web based collaboration software. What was previously a time-consuming process, now you can use tags and search filters to find what you’re looking for in quickly and efficiently.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Personal and Group Calendars.</span> Keeping track of numerous meetings, events and other important matters that need your attention is a sure headache-inducer. Personal as well as group calendars are integral features in most collaborative platforms and mobile collaboration apps to help you and your team members stay attuned, involved and present at all times, wherever they may be.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What are the benefits of collaboration software? </h1>\r\nThere are a number of benefits of collaboration software that can result in more efficient and effective completion of tasks and goals. Understanding what does a collaboration software do will help you justify its implementation in your organization and bolster its adoption with your employees. The successful execution of good collaboration software will afford you many advantages. Why use collaboration software? Here are four good reasons why.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Save time</span> – Time is gold, and in a business that is tantamount to money. The more you save time, the more you save on unwanted expenses, and the better it is for your organization. Collaboration among employees makes possible the quicker completion of end goals that wouldn’t otherwise be achievable in other ways. Embracing collaboration methods cuts disparate, uncoordinated work on a particular project from different contributing members and saves not only time but also resources and efforts. If you are looking to cut costs on projects, collaboration software can help in that respect.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enhance project management</span> – Keeping a handle on a project, a team and its members and their progress are never easy to work. Coordination and communication are of paramount importance if you want a project completed. Collaboration is one of the most optimal means to guarantee that you get the most out of your team. It opens lines of communication and makes sure everything is on track in order to avoid mistakes and confusion that can delay projects.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Strengthen team relationships</span> – One sure-fire way to build effective working relationships among employees is to have them work together to complete tasks and projects. Collaboration programs are designed to do that, making it easy for teams to work almost like a concerted unit with a singular purpose. This makes teams comfortable and confident in working with one another when it comes to completing common objectives.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Improve organization</span> – The process of keeping things and tasks in order has always been a problem for businesses. It is typical to lose track of what has been done and what needs to be done in project workflows simply because everything is a mess. Collaborative programs assist in maintaining order and managing the stages in workflows through open communication and coordination among concerned individuals and team.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Collaborative_Applications.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":392,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Exchange","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.00","implementationsCount":11,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-exchange","companyTypes":[],"description":"Work smarter, anywhere Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web. Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes Experience better collaboration with document sharing Add enhanced archiving, security, and compliance features <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Exchange Online</span> Exchange is available as a standalone hosted service from Microsoft. You can also get Exchange as part of an Office 365 plan that includes Office apps, SharePoint, and Skype for Business. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Exchange Server 2016</span> Increase productivity and keep your business information safe, while maintaining the control you need. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Other Exchange products</span> Exchange Online Archiving Exchange Online Protection Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection Exchange Online Kiosk Exchange for government agencies","shortDescription":"Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":20,"sellingCount":2,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Exchange","keywords":"Exchange, Online, Microsoft, Office, with, Protection, email, more","description":"Work smarter, anywhere Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web. Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes Experience better collaborati","og:title":"Microsoft Exchange","og:description":"Work smarter, anywhere Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web. Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes Experience better collaborati"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":393,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":271,"title":"Messaging Applications","alias":"messaging-applications","description":" Messaging apps (a.k.a. "Social messaging" or "chat applications") are apps and platforms that enable messaging, many of which started around social networking platforms, but many of which have now developed into broad platforms enabling status updates, chatbots, payments and conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat).\r\nSome examples of popular messaging apps include WhatsApp, China's WeChat and QQ Messenger, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Korea's KakaoTalk, Google Hangouts, Blackberry Messenger, Telegram, and Vietnam's Zalo. Slack focuses on messaging and file sharing for work teams. Some social networking services offer messaging services as a component of their overall platform, such as Facebook's Facebook Messenger, along with Instagram and Twitter's direct messaging functions.\r\nMessaging apps are the most widely used smartphone apps with in 2018 over 1.3 billion monthly users of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, 980 million monthly active users of WeChat and 843 million monthly active users of QQ Mobile.\r\nOnline chatting apps differ from the previous generation of instant messaging platforms like the defunct AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger, in that they are primarily used via mobile apps on smartphones as opposed to personal computers, although some messaging apps offer web-based versions or software for PC operating systems.\r\nAs people upgraded in the 2010s from feature phones to smartphones, they moved from traditional calling and SMS (which are paid services) to messaging apps which are free or only incur small data charges.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"> </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Messaging apps each have some of the following features:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>Chat</li></ul>\r\n<ol><li>One-on-one chat</li><li>Group chat</li><li> Broadcast lists</li><li>Chatbots (including "bot in group chats")</li><li>"Smart replies" (suggested replies to incoming messages provided by Google's Reply platform )</li></ol>\r\n<ul><li>Calls</li></ul>\r\n<ol><li>Voice calls</li><li> Video calls</li></ol>\r\n<ul><li>Audio alerts (on Line)</li><li>File sharing</li><li>Games</li><li>"Mini Programs" (e.g. WeChat Mini Program)</li><li>News discovery (e.g. Snapchat Discover)</li><li>Payments or mobile wallet, e.g. WeChat Pay which processes much of the Chinese mobile payment volume of US$5 trillion (2016)</li><li>Personal (cloud) storage</li><li>Push notifications</li><li>Status updates (WhatsApp Status, WeChat Moments)</li><li>Stickers</li><li>Virtual assistant, e.g. Google Assistant in Google Allo</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Unlike chat rooms with many users engaging in multiple and overlapping conversations, instant messaging application sessions usually take place between two users in a private, back-and-forth style of communication.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">One of the core features of different messaging apps is the ability to see whether a friend or co-worker is online and connected through the selected service -- a capability known as presence. As the technology has evolved, many online messaging apps have added support for exchanging more than just text-based messages, allowing actions like file transfers and image sharing within the instant messaging session.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Instant messaging also differs from email in the immediacy of the message exchange. It also tends to be session-based, having a start and an end. Because application message is intended to mimic in-person conversations, individual messages are often brief. Email, on the other hand, usually reflects a longer-form, letter-writing style.<br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What is instant messaging software?</span></h1>\r\nCompanies use instant messaging software to facilitate communication between their staff members who may be located in different places and countries. Popular websites such as Facebook offer instant chat services for free. Good quality messenger application solutions provide useful features such as video calling, web conferencing, and VoIP. Advanced platforms offer IP radio, IPTV, and desktop sharing tools. Large enterprises have greater communication needs and therefore they typically invest in installing an internal IM server to serve their thousands of employees.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Why people use Messaging Apps?</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li>Real-time text transmission</li><li>Conveniency</li><li>Records of a chat history</li><li>Easy for multitasking</li><li>Operating anytime anywhere using the WiFi or Mobile Network operators</li><li>Stickers</li></ul>\r\nCommunication is an essential component of any business: interaction with external or internal customers, end users, employees. A good communication platform is vital to stay connected with the employees and broadcast information fast and efficiently. Thousands of people support the escalation from IM to other ways of communication, such as group chat, voice calls or video conferencing.<br />Depending on the purpose of use we can separate popular messenger nto those with business needs or for corporate use, such as Slack, Hangouts, Flock, Stride and those for everyday communications like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, and others.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">How messaging apps can benefit your business?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p>\r\nHeads bowed, shoulders hunched over glowing screens—we all might be a little guilty of smartphone addiction, and mobile usage is only increasing. We’re in constant communication with one another, and over the past few years messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WeChat have become commonplace. Of the 10 most globally used apps, messaging apps account for 6.\r\nWith consumer messaging apps on the rise, businesses have begun to connect with customers on yet another channel. According to Gartner, “By 2019, requests for customer support through consumer mobile messaging apps will exceed requests for customer support through traditional social media.”\r\nServing up customer support through customer messaging software can deepen your brand’s relationship with customers. On the customer side, messaging apps provide an immediate way to connect with your business and get a response.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Here are three ways your business can benefit from connecting with customers over consumer messaging apps:</span></p>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Unrestricted communication.</span> No matter where they are in the world, messaging apps offer your customers unrestricted communication options. Unlike SMS, which often incurs charges, your customers can still reach out privately via messaging apps and receive a timely response without worrying about cost. That means happier customers, and happy customers mean a happy bottom line for your business.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Move customer queries from public to private. </span>Giving your customers an easy option to reach your business privately not only decreases their likelihood of publicly tweeting a complaint, it also offers a space to exchange sensitive information, like delivery details. With a more private outlet for customer interactions, your business can thoroughly help customers while simultaneously saving brand face.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Increase first contact resolution with chatbot integrations.</span> According to Gartner, artificial intelligence is a top trend for 2017. With the help of chatbots, your business can better manage workflows and automatically respond to customer requests via messaging. Chatbots can help point customers to the right information, helping them self-serve and ultimately allowing your support agents to focus on the issues that require a human touch. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Messaging_Applications.png"},{"id":273,"title":"Team Collaborative Applications","alias":"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 "intentional group processes plus software to support them".\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: "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."\r\nEven further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, "intentional group processes plus software to support them." Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as "computer-mediated culture... an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace." 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: "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." 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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]},{"id":792,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Azure","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.70","implementationsCount":7,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-azure","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment letting developers easily publish and manage Web sites. Websites, high density hosting of websites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python and can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event.[5] Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed to Web Apps in April 2015. WebJobs, applications that can be deployed to a Web App to implement background processing. That can be invoked on a schedule, on demand or can run continuously. The Blob, Table and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state. Mobile services Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users’ behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps Storage services Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by partition key and primary key. It's a NoSQL non-relational database. Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as blobs that can be accessed by a HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol. Data management Azure Search provides text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. DocumentDB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Redis Cache is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. SQL Database, formerly known as SQL Azure Database, works to create, scale and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology. It also integrates with Active Directory and Microsoft System Center and Hadoop. SQL Data Warehouse is a data warehousing service designed to handle computational and data intensive queries on datasets exceeding 1TB. Messaging The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Event Hubs, which provide event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as a GPS location coordinate in real time. Queues, which allow one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue, and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue only one would process a single message. Topics, which provide one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue, however each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. Relays, which provide bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay doesn't store in-flight messages in its own memory. Instead, it just passes them on to the destination application.","shortDescription":"Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. \r\n","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":11,"sellingCount":16,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Azure","keywords":"Azure, Microsoft, service, using, data, cloud, Service, which","description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image","og:title":"Microsoft Azure","og:description":"Microsoft lists over 600 Azure services, of which some are covered below: Compute Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine image"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":793,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":217,"title":"Ukraine","name":"UKR"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":342,"title":"Total high cost of ownership of IT infrastructure (TCO)"},{"id":370,"title":"No automated business processes"},{"id":375,"title":"No support for mobile and remote users"},{"id":393,"title":"Complex and non-transparent business processes"},{"id":398,"title":"Poor communication and coordination among staff"}]}},"categories":[{"id":267,"title":"Collaborative Applications","alias":"collaborative-applications","description":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Collaborative applications, </span>collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve their goals. One of the earliest definitions of collaborative software is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".\r\nIn terms of the level of interaction it allows, collaborative software may be divided into: real-time collaborative editing (RTCE) platforms that allow multiple users to engage in live, simultaneous and reversible editing of a single file, like document collaboration app, and version control (also known as revision control and source control) platforms, which allow separate users to make parallel edits to a file, while preserving every saved edit by every user as multiple files (that are variants of the original file). The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment (CWE). \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">There are three main categories</span> of collaboration software based on their functional capabilities. Knowing how does collaboration software work can be gleaned from the tools employed.<br /><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Communication.</span> Helps in the exchange of communication between groups. The most common communication tools that are used are systems and applications for email hosting, file sharing, project management and a website or online collaboration applications platform that can be readily accessed. Research findings have shown that file sharing is the most common and needed feature in collaboration software. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> email, voicemail, instant messaging, VoIP or video calls.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Conferencing.</span> Allows real-time collaboration among members. Groupware software tools make possible real-time discussions among project members through a virtual meeting room with a moderator who oversees the sharing of information. These web based collaboration applications meetings are helpful when there are important matters to be decided on by project members who are in various locations. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> video conferencing, IM conferencing, online forums, social media group chats, community boards, application sharing.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Coordination.</span> Assists in group activities, schedule and deliverables. Coordination software solutions are used for complex interdependent tasks to realize a common goal. Typical business collaboration app suits for time management, project management and online proofing so that team members are aware of deadlines, are properly coordinated, and can monitor the status of projects. <span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Example tools:</span> calendars, time trackers, spreadsheets, client portals, alerts and status updates<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\">What does collaboration software do?</h1>\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Internal Communication System.</span> Teams need an efficient communication system to be able to stay on task and not miss crucial aspects of ongoing projects. With many tools built into web based collaboration apps that allow all forms of communication – email, IM, voice, video – as well as mechanisms to review and retrieve conversations and discussions, team members are assured of uninterrupted coordination and kept in sync.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">File Sharing.</span> Like communication, the ability to share files, documents, data and all other forms of media is one of the most important features of collaboration software. Many groupware now carry robust document management systems, providing you and your team members a convenient means to share, access, view and retrieve files</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Content Creation.</span> Several all-in-one collaboration platforms offer content creation functionality that allows producing and publishing content both for internal and external audiences. This is useful for inbound marketing activities like creating blogs and informative content to attract new audience and enhance your business’ online presence.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Powerful Search.</span> Finding old files, previous conversation or past blog post are facilitated by the robust search feature of web based collaboration software. What was previously a time-consuming process, now you can use tags and search filters to find what you’re looking for in quickly and efficiently.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Personal and Group Calendars.</span> Keeping track of numerous meetings, events and other important matters that need your attention is a sure headache-inducer. Personal as well as group calendars are integral features in most collaborative platforms and mobile collaboration apps to help you and your team members stay attuned, involved and present at all times, wherever they may be.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">What are the benefits of collaboration software? </h1>\r\nThere are a number of benefits of collaboration software that can result in more efficient and effective completion of tasks and goals. Understanding what does a collaboration software do will help you justify its implementation in your organization and bolster its adoption with your employees. The successful execution of good collaboration software will afford you many advantages. Why use collaboration software? Here are four good reasons why.\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Save time</span> – Time is gold, and in a business that is tantamount to money. The more you save time, the more you save on unwanted expenses, and the better it is for your organization. Collaboration among employees makes possible the quicker completion of end goals that wouldn’t otherwise be achievable in other ways. Embracing collaboration methods cuts disparate, uncoordinated work on a particular project from different contributing members and saves not only time but also resources and efforts. If you are looking to cut costs on projects, collaboration software can help in that respect.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enhance project management</span> – Keeping a handle on a project, a team and its members and their progress are never easy to work. Coordination and communication are of paramount importance if you want a project completed. Collaboration is one of the most optimal means to guarantee that you get the most out of your team. It opens lines of communication and makes sure everything is on track in order to avoid mistakes and confusion that can delay projects.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Strengthen team relationships</span> – One sure-fire way to build effective working relationships among employees is to have them work together to complete tasks and projects. Collaboration programs are designed to do that, making it easy for teams to work almost like a concerted unit with a singular purpose. This makes teams comfortable and confident in working with one another when it comes to completing common objectives.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Improve organization</span> – The process of keeping things and tasks in order has always been a problem for businesses. It is typical to lose track of what has been done and what needs to be done in project workflows simply because everything is a mess. Collaborative programs assist in maintaining order and managing the stages in workflows through open communication and coordination among concerned individuals and team.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Collaborative_Applications.png"},{"id":271,"title":"Messaging Applications","alias":"messaging-applications","description":" Messaging apps (a.k.a. "Social messaging" or "chat applications") are apps and platforms that enable messaging, many of which started around social networking platforms, but many of which have now developed into broad platforms enabling status updates, chatbots, payments and conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat).\r\nSome examples of popular messaging apps include WhatsApp, China's WeChat and QQ Messenger, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Korea's KakaoTalk, Google Hangouts, Blackberry Messenger, Telegram, and Vietnam's Zalo. Slack focuses on messaging and file sharing for work teams. Some social networking services offer messaging services as a component of their overall platform, such as Facebook's Facebook Messenger, along with Instagram and Twitter's direct messaging functions.\r\nMessaging apps are the most widely used smartphone apps with in 2018 over 1.3 billion monthly users of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, 980 million monthly active users of WeChat and 843 million monthly active users of QQ Mobile.\r\nOnline chatting apps differ from the previous generation of instant messaging platforms like the defunct AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger, in that they are primarily used via mobile apps on smartphones as opposed to personal computers, although some messaging apps offer web-based versions or software for PC operating systems.\r\nAs people upgraded in the 2010s from feature phones to smartphones, they moved from traditional calling and SMS (which are paid services) to messaging apps which are free or only incur small data charges.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"> </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Messaging apps each have some of the following features:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>Chat</li></ul>\r\n<ol><li>One-on-one chat</li><li>Group chat</li><li> Broadcast lists</li><li>Chatbots (including "bot in group chats")</li><li>"Smart replies" (suggested replies to incoming messages provided by Google's Reply platform )</li></ol>\r\n<ul><li>Calls</li></ul>\r\n<ol><li>Voice calls</li><li> Video calls</li></ol>\r\n<ul><li>Audio alerts (on Line)</li><li>File sharing</li><li>Games</li><li>"Mini Programs" (e.g. WeChat Mini Program)</li><li>News discovery (e.g. Snapchat Discover)</li><li>Payments or mobile wallet, e.g. WeChat Pay which processes much of the Chinese mobile payment volume of US$5 trillion (2016)</li><li>Personal (cloud) storage</li><li>Push notifications</li><li>Status updates (WhatsApp Status, WeChat Moments)</li><li>Stickers</li><li>Virtual assistant, e.g. Google Assistant in Google Allo</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Unlike chat rooms with many users engaging in multiple and overlapping conversations, instant messaging application sessions usually take place between two users in a private, back-and-forth style of communication.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">One of the core features of different messaging apps is the ability to see whether a friend or co-worker is online and connected through the selected service -- a capability known as presence. As the technology has evolved, many online messaging apps have added support for exchanging more than just text-based messages, allowing actions like file transfers and image sharing within the instant messaging session.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Instant messaging also differs from email in the immediacy of the message exchange. It also tends to be session-based, having a start and an end. Because application message is intended to mimic in-person conversations, individual messages are often brief. Email, on the other hand, usually reflects a longer-form, letter-writing style.<br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">What is instant messaging software?</span></h1>\r\nCompanies use instant messaging software to facilitate communication between their staff members who may be located in different places and countries. Popular websites such as Facebook offer instant chat services for free. Good quality messenger application solutions provide useful features such as video calling, web conferencing, and VoIP. Advanced platforms offer IP radio, IPTV, and desktop sharing tools. Large enterprises have greater communication needs and therefore they typically invest in installing an internal IM server to serve their thousands of employees.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal; \">Why people use Messaging Apps?</span></h1>\r\n<ul><li>Real-time text transmission</li><li>Conveniency</li><li>Records of a chat history</li><li>Easy for multitasking</li><li>Operating anytime anywhere using the WiFi or Mobile Network operators</li><li>Stickers</li></ul>\r\nCommunication is an essential component of any business: interaction with external or internal customers, end users, employees. A good communication platform is vital to stay connected with the employees and broadcast information fast and efficiently. Thousands of people support the escalation from IM to other ways of communication, such as group chat, voice calls or video conferencing.<br />Depending on the purpose of use we can separate popular messenger nto those with business needs or for corporate use, such as Slack, Hangouts, Flock, Stride and those for everyday communications like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, and others.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">How messaging apps can benefit your business?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p>\r\nHeads bowed, shoulders hunched over glowing screens—we all might be a little guilty of smartphone addiction, and mobile usage is only increasing. We’re in constant communication with one another, and over the past few years messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WeChat have become commonplace. Of the 10 most globally used apps, messaging apps account for 6.\r\nWith consumer messaging apps on the rise, businesses have begun to connect with customers on yet another channel. According to Gartner, “By 2019, requests for customer support through consumer mobile messaging apps will exceed requests for customer support through traditional social media.”\r\nServing up customer support through customer messaging software can deepen your brand’s relationship with customers. On the customer side, messaging apps provide an immediate way to connect with your business and get a response.\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Here are three ways your business can benefit from connecting with customers over consumer messaging apps:</span></p>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Unrestricted communication.</span> No matter where they are in the world, messaging apps offer your customers unrestricted communication options. Unlike SMS, which often incurs charges, your customers can still reach out privately via messaging apps and receive a timely response without worrying about cost. That means happier customers, and happy customers mean a happy bottom line for your business.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Move customer queries from public to private. </span>Giving your customers an easy option to reach your business privately not only decreases their likelihood of publicly tweeting a complaint, it also offers a space to exchange sensitive information, like delivery details. With a more private outlet for customer interactions, your business can thoroughly help customers while simultaneously saving brand face.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Increase first contact resolution with chatbot integrations.</span> According to Gartner, artificial intelligence is a top trend for 2017. With the help of chatbots, your business can better manage workflows and automatically respond to customer requests via messaging. Chatbots can help point customers to the right information, helping them self-serve and ultimately allowing your support agents to focus on the issues that require a human touch. </li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Messaging_Applications.png"},{"id":273,"title":"Team Collaborative Applications","alias":"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 "intentional group processes plus software to support them".\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: "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."\r\nEven further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, "intentional group processes plus software to support them." Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as "computer-mediated culture... an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace." 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: "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." 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"},{"id":39,"title":"IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service","alias":"iaas-infrastructure-as-a-service","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Infrastructure as a service</span> (IaaS) are online services that provide high-level APIs used to dereference various low-level details of underlying network infrastructure like physical computing resources, location, data partitioning, scaling, security, backup etc. A hypervisor, such as Xen, Oracle VirtualBox, Oracle VM, KVM, VMware ESX/ESXi, or Hyper-V, LXD, runs the virtual machines as guests. Pools of hypervisors within the cloud operational system can support large numbers of virtual machines and the ability to scale services up and down according to customers' varying requirements.\r\nTypically IaaS solutions involve the use of a cloud orchestration technology like Open Stack, Apache Cloudstack or Open Nebula. This manages the creation of a virtual machine and decides on which hypervisor (i.e. physical host) to start it, enables VM migration features between hosts, allocates storage volumes and attaches them to VMs, usage information for billing and lots more.\r\nAn alternative to hypervisors are Linux containers, which run in isolated partitions of a single Linux kernel running directly on the physical hardware. Linux cgroups and namespaces are the underlying Linux kernel technologies used to isolate, secure and manage the containers. Containerisation offers higher performance than virtualization, because there is no hypervisor overhead. Also, container capacity auto-scales dynamically with computing load, which eliminates the problem of over-provisioning and enables usage-based billing.\r\nIaaS clouds often offer additional resources such as a virtual-machine disk-image library, raw block storage, file or object storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks (VLANs), and software bundles.\r\nAccording to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the most basic cloud-service model is that of providers offering IT infrastructure – virtual machines and other resources – as a service to subscribers.\r\nIaaS cloud providers supply these resources on-demand from their large pools of equipment installed in data centers. For wide-area connectivity, customers can use either the Internet or carrier clouds (dedicated virtual private networks). To deploy their applications, cloud users install operating-system images and their application software on the cloud infrastructure. In this model, the cloud user patches and maintains the operating systems and the application software. Cloud infrastructure providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis: cost reflects the amount of resources allocated and consumed.","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Infrastructure as a Service Benefits </span></h1>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Cost savings:</span> An obvious benefit of moving to the managed IaaS model is lower infrastructure costs. No longer do organizations have the responsibility of ensuring uptime, maintaining hardware and networking equipment, or replacing old equipment. IaaS technology also saves enterprises from having to buy more capacity to deal with sudden business spikes. Organizations with a smaller IT infrastructure generally require a smaller IT staff as well. The pay-as-you-go model also provides significant cost savings. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Scalability and flexibility:</span> One of the greatest benefits of IaaS is the ability to scale up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements. Infrastructure as a Service providers generally have the latest, most powerful storage, servers and networking technology to accommodate the needs of their customers. This on-demand scalability provides added flexibility and greater agility to respond to changing opportunities and requirements. \r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Faster time to market:</span> Competition is strong in every sector, and time to market is one of the best ways to beat the competition. Because IaaS vendors elasticity and scalability, organizations can ramp up and get the job done (and the product or service to market) more rapidly.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Support for DR, BC and high availability:</span> While every enterprise has some type of disaster recovery plan, the technology behind those plans is often expensive and unwieldy. Organizations with several disparate locations often have different disaster recovery and business continuity plans and technologies, making management virtually impossible.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Focus on business growth:</span> Time, money and energy spent making technology decisions and hiring staff to manage and maintain the technology infrastructure is time not spent on growing the business. By moving infrastructure to a global infrastructure services, organizations can focus their time and resources where they belong, on developing innovations in applications and solutions.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\">IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: What’s the Difference?</h1>\r\nPlatform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step up from IaaS products, where the provider also supplies the operating environment including the operating system, application services, middleware and other ‘runtimes’ for cloud users. It’s used for development environments where the business can focus on creating an app but wants someone else to maintain the deployment platform. It means you have much simpler workloads but you can’t necessarily be as flexible as you want.\r\nAt the highest level of orchestration is Software as a Service. In SaaS infrastructure applications are accessed on demand. Here you just open your browser and go, consuming software rather than installing and running it. A user simply logs on to access the provider’s application. Users can decide how the app will work but pretty much everything else is the responsibility of the software provider.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_IaaS.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"-1","functionallyTaskAssignment":"-1","projectWasPut":"-1","price":0,"source":{"url":"https://ko.com.ua/ami_sozdala_dlya_realty_estate_group_otkazoustojchivuyu_oblachnuyu_infrastrukturu_103790","title":"Media"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":455,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for group of manufacturing companies","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-ax-for-group-of-manufacturing-companies","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for group of manufacturing companies","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for group of manufacturing companies","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{},"supplier":{"id":2050,"title":"Columbus","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Columbus.gif","alias":"columbus","address":"","roles":[],"description":"Columbus is an international consultancy serving customers worldwide. We are experts in the retail, food and manufacturing, and distribution industries, knowing about these industries’ processes, needs and wants in-depth, and our success is solely based on our ability to convert our knowledge into value for our customers. We’ve proved this through 20 years of experience with more than 6,000 successful business cases. We help manufacturers, distributors, retailers and food and beverage manufacturers accelerate their business success through Enterprise Resource Planning.\r\n\r\nGlobal delivery\r\nWe have offices and partners all around the world. This means, that we provide our services to customers globally. Furthermore we are able to ensure that our consultants are local and speak the language of our customers.\r\n\r\nBest Practice Software\r\nWe develop our own best practice software which is tailored to companies within the food, retail and distribution and manufacturing industries. Our software ensures increased operational efficiency through enhanced automation. The gain for our customers is a less expensive business solution implementation, a shorter time to value and an improved ROI. Our software is based on Microsoft’s proven Business Solutions. 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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. 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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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"in_process","statusLabel":"In Process","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":254,"title":"Centralize management"},{"id":260,"title":"Generate Business Reports"},{"id":261,"title":"Support Financial Management"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":180,"title":"Inability to forecast execution timelines"},{"id":356,"title":"High costs of routine operations"},{"id":370,"title":"No automated business processes"},{"id":376,"title":"Unstructured data"},{"id":394,"title":"Shortage of information for decision making"}]}},"categories":[{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","alias":"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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"https://www.crn.ru/news/detail.php?ID=125537","title":"Media"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":201,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for retail","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-ax-for-retail","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for retail","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX for retail","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{},"supplier":{},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":580,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":4,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-ax","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relations contact and maintenance (customers, vendors, and leads)\r\nAccounts Receivable – order entry, shipping, and invoicing\r\nAccounts Payable – purchase orders, goods received into inventory\r\nInventory Management – inventory management and valuation[9]\r\nMaster Planning (resources) – purchase and production planning\r\nProduction – bills of materials, manufacturing tracking\r\nProduct Builder – product mode creation and maintenance\r\nHuman Resources – employee information\r\nProject Accounting – projects creation and tracking (primarily from an accounting perspective)\r\nBasic – data configuration\r\nAdministration Module – system configuration\r\nProcurement and Sourcing\r\nSales and Marketing","shortDescription":"Microsoft Dynamics AX is one of Microsoft's enterprise resource planning software products. It is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":12,"sellingCount":17,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","keywords":"Management, Accounts, maintenance, Microsoft, configuration, creation, tracking, inventory","description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relatio","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relatio"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":581,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","alias":"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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":180,"title":"Russia","name":"RUS"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":9,"title":"Support Decision Making"},{"id":10,"title":"Ensure Compliance"},{"id":260,"title":"Generate Business Reports"},{"id":261,"title":"Support Financial Management"},{"id":306,"title":"Manage Risks"},{"id":307,"title":"Enhance Competitive Ability"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"},{"id":179,"title":"Shortage of inhouse software developers"}]}},"categories":[{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","alias":"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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://korusconsulting.ru/press-center/news/avtomatizacia-ucheta-rashodov-na-arendu.html","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":158,"title":"MICROSOFT DYNAMICS AX for trading and manufacturing company","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-ax-for-trading-and-manufacturing-company","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"MICROSOFT DYNAMICS AX for trading and manufacturing company","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"MICROSOFT DYNAMICS AX for trading and manufacturing company","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{},"supplier":{},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":580,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":4,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-ax","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relations contact and maintenance (customers, vendors, and leads)\r\nAccounts Receivable – order entry, shipping, and invoicing\r\nAccounts Payable – purchase orders, goods received into inventory\r\nInventory Management – inventory management and valuation[9]\r\nMaster Planning (resources) – purchase and production planning\r\nProduction – bills of materials, manufacturing tracking\r\nProduct Builder – product mode creation and maintenance\r\nHuman Resources – employee information\r\nProject Accounting – projects creation and tracking (primarily from an accounting perspective)\r\nBasic – data configuration\r\nAdministration Module – system configuration\r\nProcurement and Sourcing\r\nSales and Marketing","shortDescription":"Microsoft Dynamics AX is one of Microsoft's enterprise resource planning software products. It is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":12,"sellingCount":17,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","keywords":"Management, Accounts, maintenance, Microsoft, configuration, creation, tracking, inventory","description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relatio","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics AX","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules:\r\n\r\nTraditional core (since Axapta 2.5)\r\nGeneral Ledger – ledger, sales tax, currency, and fixed assets features\r\nBank Management – receives and pays cash\r\nCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) – business relatio"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":581,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","alias":"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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":180,"title":"Russia","name":"RUS"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":307,"title":"Enhance Competitive Ability"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"}]}},"categories":[{"id":419,"title":"Services Resource Planning Applications","alias":"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"},{"id":75,"title":"ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning","alias":"erp-enterprise-resource-planning","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Enterprise resource planning (ERP)</span> is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.\r\nEnterprise resource planning system is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from these many business activities.\r\nERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. \r\nEnterprise resource planning solutions track business resources— cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. \r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its own system optimized for that division's particular tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its own system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">ERP applications also allows the different departments to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different divisions, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ERP systems typically include the following characteristics:</span></p>\r\n<ul><li>An integrated system</li><li>Operates in (or near) real time</li><li>A common database that supports all the applications</li><li>A consistent look and feel across modules</li><li>Installation of the system with elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department, provided the implementation is not done in small steps</li><li>Deployment options include: on-premises, cloud hosted, or SaaS</li></ul>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Enterprise resource planning programs have traditionally been used by the big players in the market that have thousands of employees spread out over the world. However, software developers are now marketing business ERP solutions to small- and medium-sized companies. </p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">There are different types of ERP software ranging from industry-specific ERP solutions to web-based, or cloud ERP software; to small business ERP.<br />The type of ERP system that will work best for your business depends on the size of your organization and the functions of the ERP solution that can best support your business requirements.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Industry Specific ERP.</span> ERP systems for large corporations are often built from the ground up to suit the organization's specific and unique needs. For a small business like yours, an off-the-shelf model will work fine. Most are grouped into three categories to service manufacturing, finance or logistics based companies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Web-Based ERP system.</span> ERP software services tend to be complex, requiring high-end computers to run them. However, instead of purchasing the software to run on your computer in your office, many suppliers offer Software as a Service, or SaaS. In this case, you pay a subscription to access the software and your data over the internet. Because the program is running on a remote server, you are free to access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">ERP software for small business.</span> Although ERP systems can cover everything from supply chain management to accounting solutions as well as customer relations management, your business may not need to automate all these functions. Therefore, software developers offer scaled-down models at a lower, more cost-effective price. For instance, your operation may work fine with a system that offers sales and order management, but leaves out the module for warehouse management.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"> <span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What does an ERP do?</span></h1>\r\nThe purpose of an ERP management system is to improve efficiency (and thereby profitability) through improving how company resources are spent, whether those resources be time, money, staff or something else.<br />If you can reduce how many resources are being used, without sacrificing quality/performance, then you can grow your business more efficiently and appropriately.\r\nERP software combines a number of different reports and metrics across various departments into the same environment. This makes it easier to get a full view of what’s going on and how resources are being spent.<br />From this vantage point of the business, you can discover key insights into how processes might be improved or resources better spent to generate higher growth. \r\nWithout an ERP system and proper planning of how resources should be spent to maximize growth and the bottom line, it is much easier to invest resources in tactics that underperform.\r\nConversely, a great ERP software platform allows a business to allocate resources away from underperforming tactics and into those that are generating good returns.\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">An ERP system also makes it faster to find the information or report you’re after because everything is in the same place. You don’t have to search through spreadsheets or look through different business applications to find that kernel of data you need; it’s all available and accessible right from the ERP interface.</p>\r\n<header><h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the different features of ERP software?</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-center\"></p></header>\r\nERP software can differ depending on the package you purchase and the provider. That being said, there are some key features that you should look for when researching ERP software providers. Your software should, at the bare minimum, offer the following modules:\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Accounting:</span> Manage all of your financial reports in the same interface, such as purchase orders, expenses, sales reports, payroll, etc. This makes it easier to monitor your cash flow and revenue and determines how money might be better spent or how you can reduce your burn rate.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Inventory and warehousing</span>: If your business has inventory or warehouse processes, your ERP business software needs to be able to integrate those operations to better track and manage goods. This makes it easier to see how much inventory is available, what inventory is going out for delivery, what inventory is coming in from which vendors and more. Carefully monitoring and tracking these processes helps protect a business from running out of stock, mismanaging a delivery and other potential issues.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">eCommerce and web</span>: It’s essential for a business to be able to see the eCommerce side of their business separate from physical, retail sales. After all, the tactics you leverage to encourage online sales are different than the ones you use for your physical stores. An excellent ERP system will enhance your existing web offerings to include better purchase options for customers to choose from.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Human resources</span>: As much as a business strives to keep customers happy and retained, it is equally important that your employees remain happy as well. The HR module of your ERP system contains all of the employee management processes, including payroll expenses, recruitment, performance evaluations, attendance, scheduling and more. It’s a one-stop module for all employee management and communication efforts.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM and marketing</span>: Your brand-customer relationships are ultimately going to drive repeat business. It’s important to know how effectively your marketing tactics are working at engaging and re-engaging customers, whether those tactics are email marketing campaigns, social media offers, surveys, follow-up phone calls and others. The CRM module will better express what’s working and what isn’t and how marketing is translating into added revenue.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Project management:</span> The last should-have feature of your ERP software product is a project management tool, which allows you to communicate productively across your organization to plan and execute projects internally. This helps ensure company cohesion by getting every involved stakeholder or employee on the same page and in-the-know as to the most current business objectives and goals.</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Benefits of ERP software and why to build it</span></h1>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">In today’s business environments, it’s hard to move on without an ERP system. Among the main benefits of ERP implementation is automatization of manual tasks staff spends hours on and thus improves the overall business performance. So the staff can focus on more important initiatives. At the same time, you can collect real-time data for improving performance management and making data-driven decisions.<br />ERP planning software comes handy in lots of areas due to its in-built modules and flexibility. Here are a few advantages of ERP software tools:</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\"><br />1. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reduce operating cost</span>. The company starts gaining profit as soon as the ERP system is implemented. Prepare to face the reduction of marketing expenses, inventory maintenance, production cost and so on. Also, if you’re aimed at combining all business processes within a unified system, ERP is the right choice. By using the software, it’s easy to improve cross-department cooperation and increase staff’s efficiency.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">2.<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Instant data access.</span> With ERP systems, employees soon forget about hours spent on collecting necessary details. Instead, they can be accessed in just a few minutes. Works great for busy executives and department managers that need to access data quickly.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">3. <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Defined planning process.</span> It’s easy to understand the business objectives, targets and aims when you have a full list of business needs, outcomes, and assets all in one place.</p>\r\n<p class=\"align-left\">Sure, ERP systems also have some disadvantages. The most common issue is the price. It’s almost impossible for small companies to develop an ERP suite for their own needs, only middle and large-sized corporations can afford it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/ERP_-_Enterprise_Resource_Planning.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://www.navicongroup.ru/press-room/news/4234/","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":994,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for construction equipment supplier in Ukraine","description":"<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Description is not ready yet</span>","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-for-construction-equipment-supplier-in-ukraine","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for construction equipment supplier in Ukraine","keywords":"","description":"<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Description is not ready yet</span>","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for construction equipment supplier in Ukraine","og:description":"<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Description is not ready yet</span>"},"deal_info":"","user":{"id":4272,"title":"Zeppelin","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Zeppelin.png","alias":"zeppelin","address":"","roles":[],"description":"Group-wide collaboration within Zeppelin Group revolves around a management holding company and six strategic business units. This structure makes it possible to centralize operations and gear the business models toward different markets and customers. The Group's management holding company is Zeppelin GmbH. The company is legally domiciled in Friedrichshafen, with its headquarters located in Garching near Munich.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":0,"suppliedProductsCount":0,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":1,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":0,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"https://www.zeppelin-systems.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Zeppelin","keywords":"Zeppelin, company, Group, management, holding, business, markets, customers","description":"Group-wide collaboration within Zeppelin Group revolves around a management holding company and six strategic business units. This structure makes it possible to centralize operations and gear the business models toward different markets and customers. The Gro","og:title":"Zeppelin","og:description":"Group-wide collaboration within Zeppelin Group revolves around a management holding company and six strategic business units. This structure makes it possible to centralize operations and gear the business models toward different markets and customers. The Gro","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Zeppelin.png"},"eventUrl":""},"supplier":{"id":6275,"title":"BMS Consulting","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/bms_consulting.png","alias":"bms-consulting","address":"","roles":[],"description":"<b>BMS Consulting</b> was founded on 7 July 1997. BMS Consulting is one of the leaders of Ukrainian market of information technologies in sphere of system integration. <b>BMS Consulting</b> is the only IT company in Ukraine which concentrated its business on the corporate market only. <b></b>\r\n<b>BMS Consulting</b> is engaged in the development and implementation of complex projects of creating integral information systems for companies operating in different segments of industry. The company is confident that what the client needs is not the computers and networks per se but the functional solutions which the system must ensure. Based on the many years of practical experience and knowledge of the latest technologies, <b>BMS Consulting</b> is offering unique solutions capable of satisfying completely the needs of its clients while using the available resources in the most rational way. It is constantly on the top of the world trends and use in its work the latest achievements in sphere of information technologies. \r\nSource: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bms-consulting/about/","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":0,"suppliedProductsCount":104,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":4,"vendorImplementationsCount":0,"vendorPartnersCount":5,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"http://www.bms-consulting.com/ru/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"BMS Consulting","keywords":"","description":"<b>BMS Consulting</b> was founded on 7 July 1997. BMS Consulting is one of the leaders of Ukrainian market of information technologies in sphere of system integration. <b>BMS Consulting</b> is the only IT company in Ukraine which concentrated its business on t","og:title":"BMS Consulting","og:description":"<b>BMS Consulting</b> was founded on 7 July 1997. BMS Consulting is one of the leaders of Ukrainian market of information technologies in sphere of system integration. <b>BMS Consulting</b> is the only IT company in Ukraine which concentrated its business on t","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/bms_consulting.png"},"eventUrl":""},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":629,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":5,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.\r\nThe CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.\r\nAs of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.\r\nMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM Online</span>\r\nCRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM On-Premise</span>\r\nCRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.\r\nFrom the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.\r\n\r\nSource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microsoft_crm/microsoft_crm_overview.htm","shortDescription":"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":7,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","keywords":"Microsoft, Dynamics, Online, your, offering, databases, version, will","description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1016,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":217,"title":"Ukraine","name":"UKR"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":260,"title":"Generate Business Reports"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":180,"title":"Inability to forecast execution timelines"},{"id":334,"title":"Poor timing of management decision making"},{"id":346,"title":"Shortage of inhouse IT resources"},{"id":396,"title":"Low speed of report generation"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://www.bms-consulting.com/ru/projects/portfel-proektov-po-razrabotke-otchetov-dlya-crm-sistemy-tseppelin/","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":194,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for bank","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm-for-bank","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for bank","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for bank","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{"id":477,"title":"Credit Agricole","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/credit_agricole.png","alias":"credit-agricole","address":"ул. Пушкинская, 42/4 01004 г. Киев","roles":[],"description":"<p>Credit Agricole — крупнейший банк и одна из крупнейших компаний Франции. Разветвлённая филиальная сеть и величина активов позволяет считать банковскую группу крупнейшей во Франции и одной из крупнейших в мире (46 место в Fortune Global 500 в 2009 году).</p>","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":0,"suppliedProductsCount":0,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":2,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":0,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"https://credit-agricole.ua/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Credit Agricole","keywords":"Agricole, Crédit, mutual, banks, cooperative, network, comprising, Regional","description":"<p>Credit Agricole — крупнейший банк и одна из крупнейших компаний Франции. Разветвлённая филиальная сеть и величина активов позволяет считать банковскую группу крупнейшей во Франции и одной из крупнейших в мире (46 место в Fortune Global 500 в 2009 году","og:title":"Credit Agricole","og:description":"<p>Credit Agricole — крупнейший банк и одна из крупнейших компаний Франции. Разветвлённая филиальная сеть и величина активов позволяет считать банковскую группу крупнейшей во Франции и одной из крупнейших в мире (46 место в Fortune Global 500 в 2009 году","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/credit_agricole.png"},"eventUrl":""},"supplier":{"id":2053,"title":"SMART business","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/SMART_business.png","alias":"smart-business","address":"","roles":[],"description":"SMART business is a recognized leader on the Ukrainian market of consulting services in providing innovative solutions for effective business management with Microsoft Dynamics (AX, NAV, CRM) platforms.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":2,"suppliedProductsCount":41,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":3,"vendorImplementationsCount":1,"vendorPartnersCount":1,"supplierPartnersCount":1,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"http://www.smart-it.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"SMART business","keywords":"business, SMART, management, solutions, effective, with, Dynamics, platforms","description":"SMART business is a recognized leader on the Ukrainian market of consulting services in providing innovative solutions for effective business management with Microsoft Dynamics (AX, NAV, CRM) platforms.","og:title":"SMART business","og:description":"SMART business is a recognized leader on the Ukrainian market of consulting services in providing innovative solutions for effective business management with Microsoft Dynamics (AX, NAV, CRM) platforms.","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/SMART_business.png"},"eventUrl":""},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":629,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":5,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.\r\nThe CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.\r\nAs of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.\r\nMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM Online</span>\r\nCRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM On-Premise</span>\r\nCRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.\r\nFrom the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.\r\n\r\nSource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microsoft_crm/microsoft_crm_overview.htm","shortDescription":"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":7,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","keywords":"Microsoft, Dynamics, Online, your, offering, databases, version, will","description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1016,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":217,"title":"Ukraine","name":"UKR"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"},{"id":8,"title":"Reduce Production Timelines"},{"id":9,"title":"Support Decision Making"},{"id":10,"title":"Ensure Compliance"},{"id":252,"title":"Increase Customer Base"},{"id":260,"title":"Generate Business Reports"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"},{"id":340,"title":"Low quality of customer service"},{"id":388,"title":"Failure to attract new customers"},{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://www.smart-it.com/ru/customers/stories/credit-agricole/","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":237,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for operator of multiservice communication services","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm-for-operator-of-multiservice-communication-services","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for operator of multiservice communication services","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for operator of multiservice communication services","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{},"supplier":{},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":629,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":5,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.\r\nThe CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.\r\nAs of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.\r\nMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM Online</span>\r\nCRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM On-Premise</span>\r\nCRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.\r\nFrom the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.\r\n\r\nSource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microsoft_crm/microsoft_crm_overview.htm","shortDescription":"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":7,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","keywords":"Microsoft, Dynamics, Online, your, offering, databases, version, will","description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1016,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":180,"title":"Russia","name":"RUS"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"2017-03-20","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"},{"id":10,"title":"Ensure Compliance"},{"id":252,"title":"Increase Customer Base"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"},{"id":340,"title":"Low quality of customer service"},{"id":388,"title":"Failure to attract new customers"},{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://maykor.com/press/news/mttpereshelnaomnikanalnuyucrm/","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":186,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM for transport and logistics company","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm-for-transport-and-logistics-company","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM for transport and logistics company","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM for transport and logistics company","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{},"supplier":{},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":629,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":5,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.\r\nThe CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.\r\nAs of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.\r\nMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM Online</span>\r\nCRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM On-Premise</span>\r\nCRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.\r\nFrom the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.\r\n\r\nSource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microsoft_crm/microsoft_crm_overview.htm","shortDescription":"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":7,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","keywords":"Microsoft, Dynamics, Online, your, offering, databases, version, will","description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1016,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[{"id":180,"title":"Russia","name":"RUS"}],"startDate":"0000-00-00","endDate":"0000-00-00","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":6,"title":"Ensure Security and Business Continuity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"},{"id":262,"title":"Support Customers"},{"id":307,"title":"Enhance Competitive Ability"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":179,"title":"Shortage of inhouse software developers"},{"id":340,"title":"Low quality of customer service"},{"id":370,"title":"No automated business processes"},{"id":388,"title":"Failure to attract new customers"},{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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 "is typically practiced with unsought goods." 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 "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations."\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&D (Research & 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&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"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"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 "gold". 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, "old-timers." 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 "muffled" 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"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"http://korusconsulting.ru/press-center/news/avtomatizazia-prodaj-v-logistike.html","title":"Supplier's web site"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0},{"id":891,"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Winner Automotive","description":"Description is not ready yet","alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm-for-winner-automotive","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Winner Automotive","keywords":"","description":"Description is not ready yet","og:title":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Winner Automotive","og:description":"Description is not ready yet"},"deal_info":"","user":{"id":368,"title":"Winner Automotive","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/winner.png","alias":"winner-automotive","address":"Киев, пр-т Московский, 24-д","roles":[],"description":"Company «Winner Automotive» is the official dealer of car brands Land Rover, Volvo, Ford and under Jaguar. 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","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/winner.png"},"eventUrl":""},"supplier":{"id":1392,"title":"S&T Ukraine","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/S_T_Ukraine.png","alias":"ehs-ehnd-ti-ukraina","address":"","roles":[],"description":"S&T Ukraine was established in 1993 and today we are in TOP3 of Ukrainian systems integrators. We hold leading positions in the field of design and implementation of corporate integrated information systems, complex network and telecom solutions as well as provision of IT services in Ukraine.<br />There are more than 130 employees working at S&T Ukraine now. We pay utmost attention to growing skills of our team. Not only we employ best experts around but also invest seriously into their further training and education.<br />S&T Ukraine closely co-operates with a number of global IT vendors ans holds top partner statuses with them. Cisco, EMC, IBM, HPЕ, Microsoft, Oracle and many more are among them.<br />S&T has subsidiaries in more than 18 countries of Central and Eastern Europe.<br /><br />","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":0,"suppliedProductsCount":182,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":15,"vendorImplementationsCount":0,"vendorPartnersCount":7,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"http://www.snt.ua/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"S&T Ukraine","keywords":"Ukraine, more, with, than, them, systems, also, around","description":"S&T Ukraine was established in 1993 and today we are in TOP3 of Ukrainian systems integrators. We hold leading positions in the field of design and implementation of corporate integrated information systems, complex network and telecom solutions as well as","og:title":"S&T Ukraine","og:description":"S&T Ukraine was established in 1993 and today we are in TOP3 of Ukrainian systems integrators. We hold leading positions in the field of design and implementation of corporate integrated information systems, complex network and telecom solutions as well as","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/S_T_Ukraine.png"},"eventUrl":""},"vendors":[{"id":163,"title":"Microsoft","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png","alias":"microsoft","address":"Microsoft","roles":[],"description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":39,"suppliedProductsCount":39,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":0,"vendorImplementationsCount":66,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":272,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"www.microsoft.com","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Microsoft","keywords":"Microsoft, software, world, products, hardware, Xbox, video, game","description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:title":"Microsoft","og:description":"Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/ms_dshchpshch.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":629,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"2.80","implementationsCount":5,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"microsoft-dynamics-crm","companyTypes":[],"description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary (.NET based) framework to customize it. In recent years, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.\r\nThe CRM Solution can be used to drive the sales productivity and marketing effectiveness for an organization, handle the complete customer support chain, and provide social insights, business intelligence, and a lot of other out-of-the-box functionalities and features. As a product, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also offers full mobile support for using CRM apps on mobiles and tablets.\r\nAs of writing this tutorial, the latest version of CRM is CRM 2016. However, in this tutorial we will be using CRM 2015 Online version as it is the latest stable version as well as frequently used in many organizations. Nevertheless, even if you are using any other versions of CRM, all the concepts in the tutorial will still hold true.\r\nMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is offered in two categories −\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM Online</span>\r\nCRM Online is a cloud-based offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM where all the backend processes (such as application servers, setups, deployments, databases, licensing, etc.) are managed on Microsoft servers. CRM Online is a subscription-based offering which is preferred for organizations who may not want to manage all the technicalities involved in a CRM implementation. You can get started with setting up your system in a few days (not weeks, months or years) and access it on web via your browser.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">CRM On-Premise</span>\r\nCRM on-premise is a more customized and robust offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the CRM application and databases will be deployed on your servers. This offering allows you to control all your databases, customizations, deployments, backups, licensing and other network and hardware setups. Generally, organizations who want to go for a customized CRM solution prefer on-premise deployment as it offers better integration and customization capabilities.\r\nFrom the functional standpoint, both the offerings offer similar functionalities; however, they differ significantly in terms of implementation. The differences are summarized in the following table.\r\n\r\nSource: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/microsoft_crm/microsoft_crm_overview.htm","shortDescription":"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. CRM can help reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes that nurture customer satisfaction and loyalty.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":14,"sellingCount":7,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","keywords":"Microsoft, Dynamics, Online, your, offering, databases, version, will","description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto","og:title":"Microsoft DYNAMICS CRM","og:description":"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft focused on enhancing the customer relationship for any organization. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service secto"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1016,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called "at home customer services" or "at home customer support."\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed. </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"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 "contact center" (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"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"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 "coin" 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, "worth the price". 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 "art". 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"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"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 "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". 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 "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", 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 "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". 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 "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".\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 "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate state of mind" or as an "organization[al] culture". 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, f