You use a system that supports company management. However, you can see that the solution is not what you expected? It’s not modern? Would you like it to efficiently handle Polish tax obligations? So that the solution is simple, intuitive to use and reliable? Better support for company management is possible!
If you answered YES to any of the questions, it is high time to think about changing the system. Talk to an IT Vision specialist and find out what solutions can better support the company’s daily work.
Support for company management with IT Vision
We offer modern solutions that are constantly developed and improved. Our systems integrate seamlessly with the Office 365. In addition, they also integrate with the Microsoft Teams application – so much needed and often used in the era of remote work. Importantly, you can use the system on any device (computer, laptop, tablet, or phone), just turn on the browser.
Expert support
We offer modern solutions and support for company management
With IT Vision, you will not only gain access to an efficient system that will meet your requirements. We will provide you with a solution that supports Polish tax functionality – JPK, split payment and postponed VAT. We can assure you that these solutions will improve your work – we have prepared these functionalities ourselves. The implementations of our solutions are carried out by experts who have several years of experience in the implementation of management systems.
IT Vision is a team of professionals who will be at your
disposal all the time. We also offer a helpdesk, where our consultants can help
with any doubts regarding the use of our solutions.
We care about our customers. That is why we provide the necessary updates and adjustments to changes in regulations. We offer several solutions, so we can match the system that best suits your company’s requirements. By working with us, you will receive support for company management at every stage.
We are after Microsoft Directions 4 Partners conference. The purpose of this meeting is to share knowledge, development guidelines and best practices. It also focuses on supporting new solutions, cooperation or finding new partners to achieve goals and implement projects. This year’s Microsoft Directions conference is also about announcing new solutions in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central. The company carries out investments in 5 main areas.
New solutions in Microsoft Dynamics – investments areas
Deliver seamless service and performance
Microsoft continues to invest in a world-class cloud service
that is easy to adopt, delivers high performance, and meets business, partners,
and customers goals.
Design for compliance and security
Microsoft runs on trust and is committed to continuous
improvements in mobility, security, data privacy, accessibility, and meeting
compliance standards.
Develop ISVs and globalization
Microsoft will help its customers and partners to move to
the cloud with confidence, knowing their unique needs will be met through
geo-availability and AppSource simplifying integration, extensions, and
application development.
Delight customers by exceeding expectations
Microsoft’s investments I user experience and rich
capabilities ensure they go beyond meeting customer expectations to deliver
unexpected results.
Drive better together Microsoft experiences
Microsoft ensures its customers can benefit from using
Office 365, Teams, Power Platform, and Business Central together to improve
collaboration, productivity, workflow, insights, and results.
Better
availability of Business Central localizations
Microsoft is also launching new localizations in Europe.
Among others, in Romania, Greece and Turkey.
Companies
choose Business Central system based on the cloud
Business Central is used by companies from various
industries and sizes. From small companies with a few users to large ones, with
even several thousand users. Some of them are new customers, some users have
switched from old Microsoft solutions to the latest cloud solution.
New solutions in Microsoft Dynamics – new security functionalities
This year Microsoft added new functionalities that support
security. The changes help to protect, for example, bank account numbers or
customer data such as e-mail. Thanks to additional notifications, it allows you
to avoid accidental changes of customer data.
More
advanced managing of e-mail accounts
New capability
E-mail Accounts helps to manage e-mail accounts. It allows you to give
access to e-mail account to several people. In this solution it is easy to set
up a mailbox. Including if its individual one shared one. Thanks to this it is
easier to maintain contact with customers and run e-mail systems and massages
sending. The capability also allows to create mailing scenarios. For every
address you can create different scenario.
Better
user experience
As part of the new wave of solutions, Microsoft is also
simplifying system printouts and reporting.
Microsoft pays great attention to the development of Teams.
One of the changes is easier exchange of data from Business Central using the
Teams platform. The content of the link from Business Central shows in Teams.
Thanks to this, there is no need to open the link and enter the system to check
what our interlocutor sent us. This solution makes it much easier to talk about
orders or inventory.
Do you want to
know better Business Central system?
How to carry out digital transformation effectively? There are some tips for CEO and managers which will help you to end your digital transformation with success.
The market is changing
The market is changing with or without you. Regardless of whether your company is part of this change or not. If you want to fit to the changes, trends, and customer expectations you should bring your company into the digital era and bring changes to your company.
Essential points for successful digital transformation
During this year Microsoft Directions conference Guus Krabbenborg CEO of Dynamics and More presented the five most important lessons about digital transformation that every CEO needs to learn. Guss pointed out the most important points that are necessary to successfully complete the digital transformation of the company.
The transformation affects all employees
When conducting digital transformation, it should be remembered that it will affect all employees. Both the lowest and the highest level. Therefore, it is important for everyone to know why the company is changing. Everyone must understand them. If employees know the answer to the question “why”, it will be easier for them to actively participate in the transformation and be positive towards it.
Select a responsible person
It’s worth to select one responsible person to supervise the transformation. Thanks to this one person is responsible for the project – its success or failure. This arrangement makes success more likely.
It is a customer market
The market has changed and it’s customer market. He has the power and rules. This is because the markets are transparent, company data and offers are easily accessible and it is the customer who decides what to do. And with whom to make a deal. Plus, in a digital, shrunken world, it’s easy for customers to switch partners. That’s why you need to put the customer and his satisfaction first. You also need to offer added value to your customers. This is very important.
Streamline your processes and change the way you think
When carrying out a transformation, it is worth paying attention to the processes in the company. They are often confusing and complicated. They need to be streamlined and more agile. Often employees do not think about changing processes because they are used to them. However, if we want to implement a new system, we need to create new habits and processes. Importantly, first you need to improve the processes and then change the system. Don’t forget to start change with yourself!
Changes aren’t simple but are important
Changes aren’t simple but are important. The whole transformation is really relevant. You should know if the project will bring value to the company, employees and customers. Value is more important than system functionalities or customization.
How to carry out digital transformation?
Here are the top 5 lessons every CEO should remember when doing digitization:
Digital transformation is not an IT project
Explain the „why” behind the project
Everything revolves around the customer
Change the company and mindset
Show that you are a leader.
Now you know the key to successfully completing a key transformation. All that’s left for you to do is choose the right system and start the transformation!
From the beginning of the year, the working environment has changed beyond recognition. The new work organization, hybrid model or remote meetings will probably become a permanent feature of the work culture. Microsoft tries to understand all the trends that are changing the future of work. The company is trying to meet the current and future changes. New solutions introduced in Microsoft 365 and Teams, among others, are to reduce risk, support the productivity of companies and ensure a good feeling of employees. Jared Spataro, CVP of Modern Work, showed the latest research and framework for the success of every IT specialist and business leader. Jared showcased the latest innovations on Microsoft 365 and Teams.
CEO of Fortune 50 company emphasizes how important employees
are in changing the style of work
„What keeps me up at night isn’t supply chain Logistics
or sales. It’s well-being of my workforce – because I know our company lives
and dies by them”
The company’s value is created by employees
Jared also emphasizes that the value of enterprises is
created by employees. Therefore, it is very important to take care of their
well-being. Not just their results. For this reason, new technologies should
support employees in their well-being more than ever before, instead of
focusing solely on increasing productivity.
7 keys to success
Microsoft shows 7 keys to success for companies and IT
leaders to support employees in a new way of working.
Reimagine teamwork, culture, and social capital
– digitally.
Prioritize individual wellbeing to help people
focus and be their best.
Help people learn, reinvent, and grow with the pace
of change.
Unlock the data, knowledge, and expertise of the
entire organization.
Automate process and workflow to increase
discontinuous innovation.
Include everyone in digital transformation.
Ensure a trusted, secure, modern experience for
every employee.
Microsoft Graph
During his presentation, Jared focused on teamwork and the well-being of employees. At the heart of these assumptions is a technology that Microsoft believes is critical to the future of work. This is Microsoft Graph that highlights everything that is created in Microsoft 365.
Capturing and reading
In today’s digitized world, capturing and reading signals is
very important. They help to support employees, be innovative and create value.
Microsoft Graph allows for the easy exchange of values and signals between
individual employees and the entire company.
Capture and process data
Graph captures and processes data. The more you work with
the solution, the more data it collects, processes and becomes more
intelligent. Thanks to this, it can support employees individually better and
better. Analyzes data, presents insights and suggests actions. With the help of
artificial intelligence (AI), Graph supports the individual capabilities of
employees (not substitutes them). In combination with data from entire
departments, e.g. HR, finance, sales, customer support, you can support the
performance of all employees by finding the best solutions. Ultimately, Graph
helps create added value for the entire company.
Integrated suite of applications and environments
Microsoft 365 is an integrated suite of applications and
Graph environments connected with productivity. Teams, Outlook, Office.
Microsoft’s tools help you be productive anywhere, anytime, every day.
Solutions supported by Azure cloud
All Microsoft solutions are supported by the Azure cloud. Using Microsoft Graph, they not only connect seamlessly with each other, but also support the transfer, collection and analysis of data. Importantly, the solutions are built on a safe and trusted basis that takes care of privacy and compliance in the project. In terms of data security and protection, they are also adapted to the GDPR Act. Importantly, at Microsoft, you have control over your data and you can decide how to use it.
Microsoft 365 and Teams
Microsoft 365 and Teams app help you reimagine teamwork. As
we work more and more remotly, it is important to create and strengthen a sense
of community and bonding between people. Working together is not only about
videoconferencing. It is also everything that happens before and after the
meeting. Microsoft Teams is the perfect collaboration platform. It’s a platform
that supports all types of remote collaboration. It combines meetings, chats,
conversations, joint work on content and automation of business processes. It’s
a unified platform supporting the entire range of remote collaboration. From
meetings to the telephone system.
Better quality of on-line meetings
Importantly, Teams facilitates not only meetings between company employees. It allows employees to connect with customers in a number of different ways. It can be, for example, a video conference, webinar, remote sale or any other meeting scenario.
Together mode
During the Ignite conference, Microsoft presented a new
online meeting environment. Additionally, the solution treats each meeting
participant as a “first class citizen”. To make this possible and to
make the meeting experience more personal, Microsoft introduced Together Mode.
Thanks to this, all participants of online meetings can meet (digitally) in one
place. As a conference participant, we can see other people in the office or
other environment.
Surface Hub
In addition, the Surface Hub device, designed for meeting
management, significantly facilitates on-line conversations. You don’t even
have to touch the device to start a conference or connect with anyone using
Microsoft Teams.
Live chat transcription
What is more, the conversation transcription has been
launched in Teams. It happens “live”. Thanks to this, you will not
lose anything that was said in the meeting. The recording of the conversation
is available during and after the meeting. Now you can also easily set a view
of what is most important in the application. Both when it comes to the
presented content and people. To facilitate communication, you do not need to
leave the videoconference window now to see what is happening in parallel in
the written conversation.
Microsoft 365 & Teams support for hybrid meetings
Microsoft also supports hybrid work. Thanks to the
solutions, you can easily connect online conferences with people who are
physically in the room. This is largely facilitated by Microsoft Teams Room and
Surface Hub. Solutions designed to manage meetings significantly facilitate
on-line conversations. You don’t even have to touch the device to start a
conference or connect with anyone using Microsoft Teams. In addition, Surface
Hub allows you to share the board with other conference users to jointly note,
change or create projects.
Microsoft solutions ensure the well-being of your
employees
Re-creating the work environment must not only focus on
continuously improving employee efficiency. This barriers to rapid burnout of
your people. Microsoft tries to create solutions that focus on supporting the
creativity of employees. This is important because only people can be innovators.
Computers or artificial intelligence cannot do it for us. That’s why Microsoft
puts users’ well-being at first. Because of that the Headspace meditation app
has been integrated with Teams.
Integrated Microsoft Insights application
Another Teams extension is the added and integrated Microsoft Insights app. It supports the well-being of employees and their productivity at every level. For Insights, it doesn’t matter if they are managers, directors or sellers. It facilitates the management of tasks, time and allows you to turn off after work. At the end of the day, you can mark your tasks as done, in progress, or postponed. Employees can also mark how they feel during the day.
Are your employees satisfied?
This solution allows you to see if people are satisfied with their work. Managers will be able to control overall job satisfaction, the status of project implementation and the time spent on work. These solutions will allow you to better manage the team and check whether employees need support or rest.
Thanks to the integrated Insights application, after
finishing work, users have a moment to calm down, focus on themselves and
return to their tasks only the next day.
During the Ignite conference, Microsoft showed new solutions and product innovations in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service. They support customer service actions and management. Solutions enable businesses to provide seamless, end-to-end technical support. Moreover, they allow you to discover the benefits of a streamlined organization of services. This is possible thanks to the installation on one platform.
Customer experience
Customer experience is the sum of all interactions between the customer and the supplier over the lifetime of their relationship. It’s very important to remember this. If we want to provide high-quality customer service, we need to care for the customer’s experience from the first contact to maintaining the after-sales actions.
Customer approach. How to get it right?
Select the appropriate channels
Offer proactive services
Work with the customer according to the
principle “get to know me, serve me”
Provide transparency in the process and build
trust
Microsoft provides a range of solutions to enable you to
provide world-class customer service. Among the supporting tools are:
Customer Service
Customer Voice
Field Service
Customer Service Insights
Remote Assist
Virtual Agents
With Microsoft, you can ensure end-to-end customer
engagement. The solutions support two main areas of activity.
Customer Service
Self-service. This is hassle-free, large-scale
customer service across multiple channels. It is based on the Natural Language
Understanding (NLA) that customers use.
Omnichannel engagement. This gives you a
connected and personalized customer view across all channels and interactions.
Agent productivity. The system allows for a
standardized service and agent assistance in many channels.
Field Service
Proactive service. It allows you to identify
potential problems, as well as diagnose and solve them remotely. The system also communicates the service results.
Resource Planning. You can easily plan
requirements, single or multiple resources. The system also helps to optimize
resources and conduct self-service activities
Technician success. Advanced mobile solutions,
mixed reality and intelligent operation help technicians and field workers to
best serve their customers
Dynamics 365 enables the crossing of the above channels,
ensuring the best quality of service.
Microsoft has, supports, and integrates a number of
applications that improve contact with the customer. These are among others:
This year, Microsoft also introduced a new Voice Channel.
Native Voice in Dynamics 365 is primarily a comprehensive
(all-in-one) solution for customer service. It is entirely made by Microsoft
and based on the cloud. Provides hassle-free customer support in every channel.
In addition, it provides real omnichannel analyzes and insights.
Facilitated contact with the customer is also possible
thanks to the function that allows you to make calls directly from the browser.
What’s more, it saves live conversation transcripts. It shows live suggestions
for answers, analyzes customer needs live and proposes the best solutions.
Dynamics 365 analyzes data from all contact channels, including
voice. Among other, thanks to this, it increasingly improves the virtual agent.
All-in-one customer service
Microsoft Customer Service is a comprehensive support for
your company. But what does that actually mean? The solution is primarily:
Easy setup and configuration and management
Unmatched
security and compliance
Seamless customer journey
Real
omnichannel results
Dynamics 365
Remote Assist
Remote Assist supports your company’s employees in their
field tasks. It allows you to capture resources and automate processes using
the Power Platform. The solution stores mixed reality photos and videos, and
then integrates the data with business processes using Power Automate.
Additionally, it offers a calls dashboards. Dashboards allow you to use data
about your company for remote support and improvement of operations. Remote
Assist also offers a one-time call solution that allows an employee in the
field to get assistance with one click.
Dynamics 365
Field Service
Field Service supports your company in three areas.
Proactive service delivery. It allows you
to create a hierarchy of resources, functional locations and properties. The
solution also offers productivity improvements for complex units such as work
orders. Moreover, it allows for extended integration with Dynamics Supply Chain
Management.
Resource Planning. Microsoft offers an
optimizer built into the next-generation schedule board. Your technicians can
predict travel times based on traffic patterns. You also get upgrades for
matching skills, out-of-hours travel, and working hours calendar as required.
Technicians success. Microsoft is
releasing new mobile app enhancements (based on Power Apps). It also offers
access to a technician locator “where’s my technician” for end
customers. Moreover, you get the opportunity to conduct on-site inspections.
All these areas are supported by Microsoft Insights and artificial intelligence.
Microsoft is constantly developing
Microsoft is constantly developing tools to support customer service. Nowadays, it is particularly important that your company can contact the customer using multiple channels. Also, the non-contact ones. Microsoft and its solutions facilitate such interactions.
This year Microsoft presented the Dynamics 365 Commerce 2020
wave 2 investments. Brendan Sullivan, Principal Product Manager for Dynamics
365 Commerce showed where Microsoft is going and presented some of the new
features and capabilities that they’re releasing as part of this wave.
Brendan briefly showed the most important improvements, capabilities
and features in Commerce. They are:
omnichannel improvements,
modern store in frontline workers improvements,
new additions to intelligence, insights, and
analytics,
new digital commerce capabilities.
Commerce and products in Dynamics 365
Microsoft offers a core system which provides a headless commerce engine capable of interacting with either the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations or working with third party ERP through a connector. The system can serve them through a headquarters solution that gives you the ability that interact with your products, prices, promotions, discounts, and customers to be served that headless commerce engine across a range of different retail channels.
Serve your customers
You can serve your customers in number of channels. E.g.
in-store retail channels, point of sale, and mobile point of sale solutions.
Call center solution gives you the ability
to work with our call center operator over the phone.
Digital commerce solution, gives you the
ability to have rich and immersive websites and be able to expose your
products, get people to discover and learn about them and purchase them.
Marketplaces, as well as social platform
channels allow you to not only broadcast your products. They allow to broadcast
your information, so that you can drive market share and get customers to come to
your products, as well as purchase those products on those social platforms.
Conversational enables you to work in
real-time with a customer, to have AI chatbots, and to work with the customer.
All those solutions give customers the possibility to find the product they
want. And they enable you help them discover products and learn about it.
Microsoft gives you chance to work in many channels by different, individual roles:
store clerk in the retail stores,
consumer and shopper who works with the
e-commerce systems that are driven by marketers and merchandisers,
customer service reps who man the call centers,
bots and virtual agents which power call center
capabilities as well as conversational capabilities.
Microsoft also offers emerging business to business solution
that allows you to bring up B2B solution connected into our headless commerce
engine and be able to power purchasing scenarios.
If you look at all solutions together you will see that
Microsoft actually powers a large number of traditional and emerging channels.
Microsoft also supports a number of customers and business facing customers
across all these different retail channels.
What gives you the headless commerce engine?
First of all you can manage your products and master them in
one centralized place. You also gain the ability to serve customers across
different retail channels. You can use different prices, promotions or
discounts.
Secondly, it gives you the ability to capture all that customer
information, whether it be orders, customer information, account information, addresses,
and clickstream data or other. It gives you the ability to have one golden
customer record across all of your different retail channels.
It also gives you the ability to holistically view your retail
solution across all your different retail channels. You can see what products are
selling best in a given channel. What is more, with Microsoft Commerce you will
know:
how best to strategically place your products for
shipping and for sales based on information.
What types of customers are interacting with a
given channel, and how best to sell to those customers in those given channels.
Commerce
– new features released in 2020 wave 2
Digital commerce capabilities
Visual page builder was changed. Microsoft integrated drag and
drop page design. Now you can easily drag modules onto the canvas. Also making
changes in the canvas is much easier.
Microsoft also gives you the ability to do color and style
modifications on your page. Without CSS extensions for that. Now you can also
do preview by device types, see what is your page is going to look like in
reference to a particular responsive breakpoint.
Microsoft also simplifies the list management. Whether it’s
a manual generated list, an algorithmic list or an AI powered personalized
list, you can modify and control that list more easily within the interface.
Lastly, you are able to introduce page item variations. It
gives you the ability to quickly and easily build variations for simple tasks
like localization and marketization. You also gain the ability to have those
variations for A/B testing and server-side experimentation, as well as setting
the stage for the ability to do that later with targeting and personalization.
Intelligent content experimentation
What is more, Microsoft is going to release in this wave intelligent content experimentation. They have a range of server-side experimentation capabilities that has partnered closely with Optimizely to be able to deliver. These capabilities will give you the ability to do true server-side AB testing. (Optimizely is a market leader in both server side and client-side AB testing.)
All of these are giving you the ability to exploit those
variations as experiment control A and B variance and being able to split your traffic
across them. Pages, slots, modules, lists, content items, and images. You can
select any of those items and change them out with an experiment as a
variation.
You can really control any granular part of the page or the
entire page to be able to run an experiment and see what resonates with your
customer. Once you understand what resonates, you can easily promote that page so
that all customers will see that content.
New e-commerce modules
You’re geting the ability to purchase gift cards. You can purchase
those with customer amounts, support for kits, support for pop-up cart. You can
easily present a new pop-up cart to the customer, instead of using the traditional
cart flow, if you so choose. You also gain the ability to have a color picker
in the PDP, so you could use visual identifiers versus textual identifier.
Microsoft is also improving module extensibility and simplifying the overall component architecture and extensions and extensibility. You will be able to extend data actions, and define new extensions within those data actions. Thanks to this you can work more intelligently across modules as well as be able to work with third party data services.
New module abilities
With new modules you will gain the ability to pass contexts to
modules within slots, so you can actually pass data between modules. The
ability to pass module configs to components, so you can easily control the
content flowing to components in terms of configuration settings.
Microsoft is also announcing preview of the social commerce
capabilities. They will give you the ability to syndicate content out to a
range of different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, WeChat.
You will also have the ability to both sell content through as well as sell
content in the social commerce
Intelligence, insights and analytics capabilities
Microsoft provides intelligence and insights to your
products. With recommendations from AI
and machine learning you gain the ability to create store of the future.
Omni-channel capabilities.
First of all, you gain the ability to sell across modern payment methods that don’t have been ranges associated with them. It gives you the ability to capture, cancel, and refund orders through the system, and being able to support these payment methods across all the different retail channels.
Microsoft is going to provide a PayPal connector out of the
box. It’ll be very similar to add-in connector. You’ll be able to use the connector
for free and maintain it in perpetuity. But will also give you the ability to
simply enter into your account details and start transacting. It’ll also bubble
up in store starter kit, so that you can easily integrate PayPal into your e-commerce
site. It facilitates start taking transactions online.
The ability to influence relevance and rankings.
You can make sure that the right products are appeared to
the customer. You also gain the ability to personalize for a customer. You also
can drive just what product results are shown to any given customer based on a
range of factors such as products that they purchased, looked at in the past,
or external factors. Thanks to this you can present the right type of products
to a customer given their particular situation. It’s also gives you the ability
to do sponsored products if you want to do advertising your products on your
system. As well as the ability to do insights and analytics based on searches.
Customer service solutions
Integration with the Dynamics 365 Customer Service solution gives you the ability to drive customer service chats and virtual agents using the Microsoft Virtual Agent Architecture. You be can present those directly within an e-commerce site so that customers can easily ask questions, can interact with the virtual agent to be able to get support, make modifications to their orders, and work directly with any of the information that’s in the headless commerce engine. You are also able to surface this information within the call center so that customers can easily interact with their orders in details.
Marketing
Microsoft gives you the ability to opt in and out of marketing. So if you have a direct marketing solution, you can enable this at the customer level to say whether or not they want to receive e-mail. So that when you’re at the point of sale system or when you’re in e-commerce, and you can sign up or sign out of getting marketing e-mails.
Customers behavior
You are also able to look at the duration since the customer
signed up, so you can actually see how long a customer has been with your
solution, as well as the ability to capture additional addresses and being able
to have multiple addresses and select those for shipping. The Store System
Health Check gives you the ability to view all the different systems running within
your retail store.
As you can see Microsoft put a lot of effort to improve its commerce solution. We believe you and your company can gain a lot from these changes.
Cloud migration is getting more and more popular. Almost everywhere you can hear about pros of cloud solutions. Paweł Prymakowski, CEO of IT Vision was a speaker at the meeting 1ClickToExpand: 10 creative ways to overcome the obstacles of system upgrade to Dynamics 365 Business Central. Paweł and other panelists were looking for the best way to overcome the limitations of upgrades.
As main obstacles of migration to the cloud speakers listed users’
attitude, competences, technical limitations (data size, warehouse) and
business issues (mainly financial issues).
Two ways of cloud migration
Paweł emphasized that as an implementation partner, we offer
our customers two ways of implementation. The standard SaaS (software as a
service) cloud implementation is an excellent choice for smaller customers. It’s
a cheaper solution that offers standard Business Central functions. The second
solution that we propose to our customers is hybrid implementation (on Azure).
This type of deployment is an appropriate path for larger customers. The hybrid
approach allows to run individual functions, transfer large amounts of data or
effectively integrate Business Central with other (external) customer systems.
Database
For large companies using Dynamics NAV or Business Central
solutions, the database limit can be a big obstacle in moving to the cloud in
the SaaS model (software as a service). The solution is to use the
PowerPlatform technology to store some data (e.g. scans) outside the ERP system
itself
The participants of the meeting also noted the problem with
localization, the need to learn new solutions, competency shortages or the
reluctance of users to migrate to the cloud.
How to improve cloud migration
However, the panellists did not stop at listing the
limitations. They proposed their own ideas that can improve migration to the
cloud.
A clear set of procedures on how the partner can
maintain control of the BC SaaS installation.
Clear list of differences / benefits, moving to
the cloud.
Finding 5% of partners as pioneers and
supporting them on their way.
Migration of customers at every noticed
opportunity (even if they are small projects or it’s just a clean start) to
Dynamics 365 SaaS now to gain additional visibility from the market and
Microsoft.
Review the solutions and consider whether the
company can run smoothly with the standard features of Business Central.
Using a different technology to store
information outside the Dynamics 365 Business Central warehouse
Microsoft should introduce a different data
storage configuration according to the standard functionality
CEE market partners should be proactive and
suggest / vote for the functionality they need in Microsoft
Training is needed in building the competencies
of solution architects
We believe that the move to the cloud is the future. Therefore, we encourage all companies that want to be pioneers and be the first to use cloud solutions that bring competitive advantages to full migration. However, we do not leave other customers without a solution. We are happy to offer them a hybrid migration to the Azure cloud.
The Microsoft Ignite conference is behind us. During this year’s meeting, we dicovered a lot of news from the world of Microsoft. Alysa Taylor (Corporate Vice President, Business Applications & Global Industry) and Muhammad Alam (Corporate Vice President, Dynamics 365 at Microsoft) during the Ignite conference focused on a new approach to work and preparing Microsoft users for the challenges that the future may bring.
The Microsoft ecosystem is a range of different applications for all types of business.
Each application or solution can be adapted to the individual needs of the company. Thanks to that Microsoft products are a good choice to support the daily work of enterprises. They can be easily scaled or extended with new functionalities.
Microsoft offers solutions that support building the
resilience of enterprises at every business level and help meet today’s
challenges. What’s more, they allow you to proactively stay ahead of future
opportunities – to reimagine the future. At the Microsoft Ignite conference,
new Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 features were announced to help
make this vision a reality.
News from Ignite – Microsoft Power Platform:
Low code updates for professional developers with an integrated Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, and Microsoft Azure API Management experience to scale solutions through Power Apps with low-code and distribute through Microsoft Teams.
Power Platform SDLC (software development lifecycle) workflows and templates with GitHub Actions.
Power Virtual Agents and Microsoft Azure Bot Framework integration to build bots with no code, plus a simpler, one-click publishing experience on Teams.
Deeper Power Apps and Teams integration, including Power Apps authoring app within Teams, Project Oakdale for a free low code data platform, and Teams visual style support.
The preview of the Microsoft Power BI app for Teams which provides a central, personalized home for data in Teams will help customers scale insights across the organization by ensuring that insights are just a click away from where conversations are happening and where decisions are made.
Power BI is now natively integrated with Excel and is easier than ever to discover and work with trusted Power BI datasets that are refreshed, governed, and secured directly in Excel.
Two new Power BI offerings: Power BI Premium Per User as an entry point to Premium and a new on-demand capacity scale option for Premium customers.
The preview of Microsoft Power Automate Desktop, bringing robotic process automation (RPA) to every desktop.
News from Ignite – Microsoft Dynamics 365
A new first-party voice channel for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, built on Microsoft Azure Communication Services.
New add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: Cloud and Edge Scale Unit and Inventory Visibility.
General availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations.
Easy application development
This year’s Microsoft Ignite conference also focused on accelerated application development. To meet the growing trend of “fusion”, low-code or code first projects, Microsoft has made many improvements and investments. Thanks to them, it can ensure trouble-free cooperation between Power Platform, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Visual Studio.
Power Platform
Power Platform is becoming more and more important product. The platform is constantly evolving to shape and scale the work with low code applications and new features. Changes in the Power Platform are intended to help professional developers quickly transform their business from scratch. All this using tools and languages that developers are already familiar with.
Apps from Power group
Microsoft has also made changes to Power Apps, Power
Automate, Power Virtual Agents and Azure API Management. Thanks to the changes,
all of these applications will now work together seamlessly. They will allow
developers to scale low-code solutions with Power Apps and distribute via
Microsoft Teams. Moreover, developers can create custom connectors and
seamlessly upload them to dedicated Power Platform environments for easy
discovery in Power Apps. In addition, Microsoft Azure Functions and Azure API
Management can be used to enable individual developers to distribute Power Apps
in Teams.
GitHub
improves programming
To improve programming, Microsoft announced the introduction of the Power Platform to the platform where development teams collaborate on projects – GitHub. Professional developers can create their own SDLC workflows in the marketplace (software lifecycle) using GitHub Actions for Power Platform. They can also use preconfigured SDLC workflow templates.
Power Virtual Agents & Azure Bot Framework
In addition, Power Virtual Agents and Azure Bot Framework
will now run seamlessly, allowing developers to build bots without code. Power
Virtual Agents has also been improved to make it even easier for developers and
users to publish to Teams with a single click.
Collaborative work extended with team insight into data. Allow
everyone to make better decisions.
Microsoft Teams is a platform that has become an integral part of our lives. Both professional and private. It is also used for remote learning. Interactions in Teams are not only between people, but also between data. Now, Power BI in Teams is evolving to help everyone find and work on insights.
Power BI app for teams
Microsoft has introduced a new Power BI app for teams
that provides a more streamlined experience for accessing Power BI reports in
Teams, making it easier to collaborate with data and combine action insight
with sample reports, automation, and easy sharing.
A preview of the new Power BI app for teams has been announced on Ignite. The app will enable users to quickly find, search and discuss data without leaving Teams. It’s a central, personalized storage in Teams, ensuring that information is always one click away from where conversations are taking place and decisions are being made.
For example, PayPal moved to Teams and added a tab for
Power BI visualizations to Teams meetings, providing an easy way to easily
share a project’s current status and goals as people join.
Power BI Premium
In addition to upgrading the Power BI service, Microsoft also provides broader analytics choices and scalability with two new Power BI offerings: User Power BI Premium as the entry point to Premium, and a new on-demand capacity scaling option for Premium customers. All this to enable flexible scaling of Premium nodes.
Automation for
everyone
Microsoft constantly invests in robotic process automation
(RPA). The acquisition of Softomotive opened doors to pare Power Automate with
WinAutomation, enabling anyone to automate manual business processes across
both legacy and modern applications.
Microsoft has introduced a preview of Power Automate
Desktop. The service enables the automation of local processes and tasks, from
simple data transfers between systems or image search to more complex business
processes and workflows. Everything is available from the computer.
Faster results at Toyota thanks to Microsoft
These updates show what Microsoft solutions can do when
everyone (from professional developers to non-technical users) across the
company has access to code-less or low-code tools.
Microsoft showed three ways Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) enables everyone in the enterprise to troubleshoot problems using the Power Platform.
Power BI, Teams & Microsoft Azure Synapse
For example, the team is using Power BI, Teams, and
Microsoft Azure Synapse to monitor their network and analyze the immense
amounts of data that is created as part of that process, including surveys
performed by their field travelers that are responsible for different regions.
Toyota harnessed the full suite of Power Platform features plus Microsoft Azure
Cognitive Services to rapidly build and deploy a Vehicle Delivery Quality app
that improved accuracy and efficiency for field travelers collecting
information. Plus, it gave them 100 percent coverage across their dealers
enabling Toyota to better understand what dealers are doing right and improve
the quality and safety of vehicles delivered to their customers.
Dynamics 365 updates. Company resistant to change
It goes without saying that every business must prioritize
meeting customer expectations, even in times of change and uncertainty, in
order to remain resilient and relevant to the marketplace. It now also needs to
protect itself from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. To make it
possible, Microsoft introduced new additions and updates to Dynamics 365
focused on the most critical customer satisfaction centers. The most important
business areas today: services and supply chain, are specifically addressed in
the appendices. These enhanced solutions are ready to use, yet quickly scale
and adapt to create unique digital functions.
The first
omnichannel solution, including native voice
Customer service is not just about building loyalty and customer retention. This is an essential way to understand how to better serve customers who rely on the company’s products and services. Nowadays, it is especially important to offer multiple ways of continuous communication. Dynamics 365 provides optimal customer service solutions for everyone in the company – from frontline employees and customer service management to solution implementers and administrators.
First-party voice channel
At Ignite, Microsoft announced the addition of a new
first-party voice channel for Dynamics 365 Customer Service based on Azure
Communication Services (available in preview). By integrating voice with
existing multi-channel capabilities, the voice channel provides smooth,
end-to-end customer service in a single cloud-based solution. The solution
enables teams to deliver consistent, connected help across all channels.
Features based on artificial intelligence help you solve problems faster,
including offering real-time suggestions for employees and carrying out a
sentiment analysis that starts working immediately (out-of-the-box feature).
Moreover, with the Common Data Model, voice channel data natively integrates
with pre-existing datasets – without data manipulation or reformatting.
Supply chain
risk management and maintaining continuity of supply
This year, companies have had to deal with rapidly changing customer demand and severe disruptions in their supply chains. Most of them found it difficult to change quickly. In order to meet new requirements, companies are trying to increase flexibility and resilience in the way they operate by digitizing the entire supply chain.
New additions to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Therefore, during the Ignite conference, Microsoft announced
two new additions to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management that will improve
visibility and enable users to react quickly to changing demand and supply. They are: Cloud and Edge Scale Unit and
Inventory Visibility.
Companies often struggle with latency and connectivity when running operations in remote facilities. Parallel, resource-intensive processes can lead to network latency and reduced productivity. New Cloud and Edge Scale Unit add-ons for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management bring the power of the intelligent cloud to the edge. Add-ins allow companies to run critical storage and production workloads at the edge using Azure devices. As a result, they increase resilience and ensure 24/7 operation, even in the event of a temporary disconnection from the cloud.
Inventory Visibility
The new Inventory Visibility add-in for Dynamics 365 Supply
Chain Management enables high-volume retailers and manufacturers to easily handle
millions of transactions every minute. It also allows for accurate,
real-time multi-channel inventory determination. Enterprises can scale
easily to fulfill orders from multiple channels on time and reduce shortages
and excess inventory. The new feature is hyper-scalable and can also work with
third-party systems.
Transform
project-based services
The solutions Microsoft announced at Ignite share a common theme: they enable enterprises the speed and flexibility to adapt to change, build resilience in any industry, and exceed customer expectations. If your business has a project-based organization structure, it’s especially important to be able to adapt to the types of changes we’ve seen over the past few months.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings together and gives
teams (Sales, Resource, Project Management, and Accounting) the
visibility they need to deliver services to customers on time and on budget.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations integrates with other enterprise systems.
Thanks to this, it helps to drive business development in sales and delivery
processes, without the need to integrate and replace existing systems. You can
also easily scale Dynamics 365 Project Operations with Power Platform and other
Dynamics 365 applications such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, Microsoft
Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Soon Microsoft will announce more news and solutions to better support companies in their daily challenges!
However, the year 2020 also brought a lot of positive changes and news. Among them are undoubtedly New RamBase features and solutions. An ERP system perfectly suited to production and distribution companies.
Discover new RamBase features and solutions
A modernized interface of the mobile application
Access to invoices approval from the mobile app.
Thanks to this, you can manage invoices on the go, all you need is access to
the phone.
New cost method in the finance section. The FIFO
method gives more management options to international companies
Open supplier and customer portal. Any company
using RamBase can offer access to the supplier and customer portal. By giving
them access to the basic self-service options of the RamBase system. The portal
facilitates the support of suppliers and customers, and also allows them to
help themselves.
Single sign-on feature. The solution simplifies
access to all system functionalities. It requires only one username and
password, thanks to which you have access to all solutions.
Users appreciate the RamBase system!
During this year’s conference, we also got to know the new
story of the RamBase customer. Seagarden used multiple distributed management
systems. The company wanted to change this by looking for an ERP system from
other suppliers, but they were not able to meet the company’s requirements and
expectations. Only the implementation of the RamBase system allowed Seagarden
to improve the functioning of the company. And the organization obtained a
solution perfectly suited to their needs.
In Poland, companies also appreciate the system. IT Vision
implements RamBase at a new customer. More information coming soon!
Continuous development and improvement of the system
The RamBase system is developing and better and better adapted to the expectations of customers. We also make sure that the system is friendly to the Polish user. Seeing the new changes and directions set by RamBase, we are glad that we can offer a solution on the Polish market.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager – productivity from any device, anywhere
Brad Anderson (Corporate Vice President of the Commercial Management Experiences) at Microsoft Inspire talked about the importance of Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Microsoft 365, the move to the cloud and the importance of cloud solutions
Anderson began by recalling what the pandemic has taught us
as entrepreneurs.
You have to be in the cloud for agility and
access.
The importance of conditional access and zero
trust.
Keep your remote users just as productive,
secure and efficient (or more).
Changed spending priorities
Undoubtedly, the new situation has changed the priorities of spending. COVID-19 will have a major impact on the finances devoted to IT. 33% of companies predict that total IT spending in the coming years will be lower than forecast. By contrast, 41% believe they will stay the same.
Greater importance of safety and mobility
Brad Anderson predicts that due to the current situation, companies will increase and strengthen areas such as cybersecurity, remote work, infrastructure services, mobile end devices and company management mobility. All these areas can be built and extended around Microsoft 365. Productivity, management, identity, but also security can be built around Microsoft’s platforms(including Microsoft Endpoint Manager). Importantly, the solutions are appreciated by IT and users. They are also distinguished by high trust among everyone.
Anderson encourages you to move your work and solutions to
the cloud. It is important to modernize solutions also among your customers.
Moving to the cloud and becoming more and more digital companies is an
opportunity for success in the current situation. The trend of migration to the
cloud is already visible. Companies that fail to do so in time will have less
chance of doing well in an age where more and more activities are carried out
online.
Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Endpoint Manager undoubtedly increases work efficiency and user satisfaction.
In support of this thesis, Anderson cites some data on the use of Microsoft 365:
85%
reduction in boot time
Instant
resume
2x
battery life
85%
reduction in crashes
Importantly, the improvements are noticed by users.
Microsoft 365
also affects employes:
38% more likely to feel that their PC experience
helps them best serve customers/stakeholders
75-point increase in net promoter score.
121% more likely to feel valued by their
company.
If you are not convinced yet, is it worth implementing Microsoft solutions? Click on the link and find out more:
Dynamics 365 and Power platforms are intelligent business
cloud tools. This year working in the cloud has become even more desirable. That
is why many companies have decided to migrate their solutions to the cloud.
The best developing companies around the world are using cloud solutions. 97% of Fortune 500 companies use the Power Platform, and 57% of Dynamics 365. These results show not only the huge role of mobile solutions. They are also a proof of great trust in Microsoft products.
Alysa Taylor, corporate vice president for the Cloud Marketing Business Applications and Global in Microsoft emphasizes that customers want to see the value of implemented solutions as soon as possible. Not in years or months, but in a week or even days. Microsoft makes sure that this need can be met.
What are the advantages of Microsoft’s business
applications:
Fast time to get value.
Intelligent
solutions.
Data
driven business outcomes.
Integrated
and extensible solution.
Intelligent
business cloud and Power Platform
Intelligent business cloud from Microsoft is a series of applications that improve the work of the entire business. It supports areas such as sales and marketing, services, finance and operations, and trade.
On the other hand, the Power Platform solutions include:
Customers are looking for devices, insights and actions to help them meet their most pressing challenges. Azure IoT makes it possible.
Microsoft’s solutions help simplify the development of safe and reliable IoT solutions. It’s all thanks to managed apps and a flexible app platform that enable the complete IoT ecosystem to achieve business goals faster. Achieving goals is possible through connectivity, constant invitation, trust, and scaling.
IoT, or the Internet of Things, drives transformation everywhere. Moreover, the use of IoT opens the way to return to the workplace. It can be concluded that IoT is an endless list of advantages.
Azure IoT is everything
The Vice President of Microsoft’s Worldwide Internet of
Things and Mixed Reality Sales said, “IoT is everything.” Especially
in the context of returning to the workplace. But what does that actually mean?
Prevent – Deploy technologies to monitor and
detect unsafe condition and activities.
Respond – Collaborate with medical communities
and providers to support health directives.
Recover – Confidently reopen with technologies
and workflows to protect workers and the public.
Rebuild – Invest in transformative solutions
that increase efficiencies and maximize capabilities.
Data security, also in the field of IoT, is crucial both for
application users and their customers. As many as 97% of people have security
concerns when implementing IoT.
Rodney Clark, however, dispels concerns about Microsoft’s
IoT security. Azure Security Center
for IoT is unified security management and enables end-to-end threat detection
and analytics.
Azure Security Center for IoT simplifies hybrid protection
with unified visibility and control, adaptive threat prevention, and
intelligent threat detection and response across edge, on-premises, Azure and
other cloud workloads.
Azure Security Center is:
Unified visibility and control.
Adaptive Threat Prevention.
Importantly, Rodney Clark points out that 85% of IoT decision makers believe IoT solutions are critical to the continued success of their business.
Microsoft Inspire is 3 days of conferences devoted to Microsoft solutions. This year’s conference was unlike any other. First, it was entirely organized online. Of course, virtual meetings will never replace impressions from real meetings. However, thanks to the new formula, this year’s conference attracted more participants than any previous edition.
For years, Microsoft has been developing solutions
supporting remote work and migration of systems and applications to the cloud.
In a difficult year, in which we all work remotely, much more than ever before,
the speakers naturally focused on remote work and work mobility.
Nick Parker, CVP in Microsoft, has summarized the most
important numbers.
The year 2020 is among others:
4,1 billion Teams meeting minutes per day.
75 million of daily active Teams users
1 billion Windows monthly active devices
134 million of enterprise mobility installed
seats
30% server products and cloud services revenue
growth
All of this data shows that we are becoming more and more mobile. We are investing more to be able to work remotely – from any place, at any time.
Microsoft Teams
It is also worth to emphasize the great importance of Teams
in remote work. Without this tool, it is difficult to imagine on-line meetings
and mobile work. Microsoft Teams offers many opportunities for work, meetings,
document sharing or presentations.
Some companies may need additional Teams solutions. During
Inspire, Microsoft announced that it will meet such needs. Microsoft announced
the release of a new solution, which is Microsoft Dataflex. The platform allows
anyone to easily create and implement applications and intelligent chatbots.
Everything in Teams using Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Virtual
Agent.
Microsoft Inspire also puts a lot of weight on cloud
solutions. Microsoft’s systems and applications are based on three main clouds
– Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365. All to offer intelligent solutions.
The speakers did not forget about Dynamics 365, Microsoft
365, IoT, Power Platform and Power Apps solutions.
Microsoft cares about its customers in these difficult
times. It offers them solutions that help them meet the challenges of 2020 and
develop their companies despite changes.
“The new normal is now our normal.” Microsoft is
doing everything possible to make it digital, cloud-based and customer-oriented
and his customer-oriented.
Microsoft Dataflex is an embedded platform with lowe code
for Teams. It delivers a built-in, low-code data platform for Teams. It
provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise grade governance.
In addition, it offers quick implementation of solutions with one click.
Microsoft Dataflex enables anyone to easily build and deploy
applications and intelligent chatbots. Everything in Teams using Microsoft
Power Apps and Microsoft Power Virtual Agent.
Microsoft Dataflex is based on the Common Data Service.
Common Data Service has added over 1,000 new features. It also introduced
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. From now on it functions under a new
name – Microsoft Dataflex Pro.
Microsoft Teams and Power Platform allow users to easily
create apps and bots right in Teams. Thanks to this, it is possible to quickly
respond to changing business needs and create custom solutions. With the
addition of Microsoft Dataflex, Teams users now have key business data at their
fingertips to build new apps that address real business problems—all without
ever leaving Teams.
The powerful combination of the Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dataflex enables:
An
integrated experience for your custom apps inside Teams
Quickly
build and deploy apps and bots inside Teams
Easily
share and administer custom solutions through Teams
The role of image detection and recognition is constantly increasing. The use of computer vision improves the functioning of enterprises and helps them increase profits. With this technology, retailers can better manage their physical spaces, gaining a better understanding of customer behavior.
Example
Retailers can better manage store space by gaining a better understanding of customer behavior. Most salespeople do not have the right data to track the real behavior and actions of customers. This leads to a loss of cost management options and increased revenues. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store fills this gap. It uses computer vision, and IoT (Internet of Things) sensors to better understand space. Thanks to this, it optimizes business operations and helps meet customer expectations thanks to real-time observation data.
Image recognition features
Image recognition features unlock the ability to better understand and manage e.g. store space. Microsoft is trying to simplify the process of customizing solutions for each unique space so as to optimize the company’s results. It also cares about the security and control of its own data. There is no need to share information with Microsoft or other providers.
To improve the quality of computer vision analysis, Microsoft took over Orions Systems. It is a pioneer in the development of large-scale, hybrid, intelligent vision systems. The systems are focused on machine learning “in the loop” in conjunction with services that can be adapted to the operation of one device or to scale to support large-scale network topology.
Orions Systems has a good reputation and leading technology for companies that want to collect and analyze high-value data, especially in video content and images. The acquisition brings additional technologies to Microsoft solutions. Technologies will allow solutions such as Dynamics 365 Connected Store and Microsoft Power Platform to offer retailers and other entrepreneurs a new way to build and train their own artificial intelligence models to customize and optimize the way they learn from their physical space.
This additional set of tools will work well in scenarios that go beyond what is currently offered as standard in the system. It can adapt to the truly unique dimensions and needs of their physical spaces.
NetSuite is a company management system entirely created and based on the cloud. It has been winning the rankings of the best cloud ERP solutions for years. Among others, it was awarded the Gartner Peer Insights 2020 customer award in the field of service-oriented ERP.
Choosing the right ERP solution is not an easy task. That’s why we created the NetSuite product page. Thanks to this, potential users can learn about the functionality of this system as well as its advantages and adoption in individual industries.
By creating the website we wanted to show the possibilities of NetSuite as widely as possible. That is why, we have extensively described the functions and modules of the system focusing not only on general functions, but also on the smallest details and the most detailed system capabilities.
While preparing the system description, we tried to ensure that representatives of each enterprise area and various industries will find functional descriptions relevant to them.
When visiting the website, you can not only learn about the functionalities of the system. You can also find out how NetSuite supports individual industries, learn the latest information about the solution and broaden your knowledge of enterprise operations.
The ranking of the best ERP systems takes into account the level of user satisfaction with the entire system and its individual functional areas. Importantly, the review shows the level of satisfaction of real users from the use of systems. Thanks to this approach to the ranking, we can see which solutions work best in enterprises.
Once again, we are pleased with the high results of ERP systems that we offer to our costomers. Among the leaders of the “magic quadrant” there were also Microsoft Dynamics solutions or the NetSuite system.
Microsoft solution collects major awards in almost all categories. Importantly, he also did not collect any negative feedback. The overall level of satisfaction is very high.
As many as 84% of users of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations recommend their ERP system. It is also worth noting that in the ranking another solution offered by IT Vision – Oracle NetSuite is well placed.
Overall summary
In the overall summary of resource management systems, Microsoft Dynamics 365 ranks 1st. Also on the top is the solution from Oracle, NetSuite, in 4th place. This category takes into account the result of satisfaction, which consists of: Net Emotional Footprint, supplier capabilities, product features and probability of recommendation. The net emotional footprint measures the user’s emotional response ratings (e.g., reliable, respectful, honest).
Capabilities
In terms of capabilities of the Microsoft Dynamics system provider, it also ranks first. The table below shows the level of satisfaction of system users from various areas of system functionality. Importantly, the NetSuite system is also high on the list.
What is more…
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a leader in most rated categories. It is best rated in terms of the quality of required and standard system functions. It is also appreciated when it comes to:
creating business value,
range and quality of functions,
product strategy and pace of improvement,
usability and intuitiveness of use,
ease
of customization,
ease
of implementation.
Oracle’s NetSuite system also scores very well in these categories.
RamBase is a Norwegian company management system. However, it is gaining popularity in other European countries. In Poland, it is offered by IT Vision. As a Polish partner, we undertook the task of preparing the Whitelist functionality for this ERP system. Thanks to the work of our programmers, the system is adapted to Polish law.
Thanks to the Whitelist solution in ERP, you don’t have to switch between the system and the list of taxpayers. The system will automatically check all required data.
RamBase provides assistance in checking whether a business
partner is registered as an active VAT taxpayer on the day of the transaction.
It also allows you to verify which bank accounts are assigned to it and whether
its address details and name have been correctly completed on the invoice.
In addition, the Whitelist module in RamBase archives search and result data along with the necessary information.
Key
benefits
Facilitate control of your business partner data
Gain more control over your payments and tax
responsibilities
Increase control with payables and receivables
automatically matched to open invoices
Save time with integrated checking
Reduce risk of errors due to manual entry of
business partner data
Reduce the risk of financial penalties liability
Key
capabilities
Integrated payment checking in Whitelist for
transactions over PLN 15,000
The ability to check any transaction or
counterparty from the system level
The certainty of transferring payments to
appropriate bank accounts
Log of whitelist searches by users with results
Operations are made in Microsoft Azure (North Europe Region), managed by IT Vision Sp. z o.o.
Gartner presented Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises. Among the solution leaders were two ERP systems offered by IT Vision – Microsoft Dynamics 365 as well as Oracle NetSuite Cloud and ERP. The RamBase system we offer has also been appreciated
Gartner about Microsoft Dynamics 365
In the case of Microsoft solutions,
the company primarily assessed the finance and supply chain management module.
Microsoft is a visionary in this chart due to the wide ERP functionality, native integration with the Azure platform and many available technologies. It is available in many countries in many languages.
As the main advantages of the system Gartner indicates a high level of customer satisfaction with the Azure platform. The platform uses innovative analytical methods, built-in Power BI and multidimensional analytical functions. It’s all in real time. In addition, the platform offers a PowerApps solution that allows users to create applications and integrate them with the system. What is more, customers highly rated the system’s operational capabilities. An important aspect of the solution is also the possibility of its extension and development. Platform users also appreciate the FastTrack implementation path as a useful element at the system implementation stage.
NetSuite can boast of many successes in providing cloud solutions, good administration and operational functionality. Everything is available in one cloud package that is open and can be easily extended. The system has operational capabilities perfectly suited to the needs of medium-sized enterprises of low and medium complexity, as well as for retail companies and wholesale distributors. NetSuite has a growing partner ecosystem to support many global regions.
NetSuite applies a strong geographical strategy, using Oracle’s international reach and marketing to increase its own capabilities. Importantly, NetSuite also increased product locations to support product-oriented enterprises with multiple locations. Thanks to this, it also supports moderately complex enterprises with one ERP package.
The solution has also won high user reviews. Users especially appreciated contract negotiations and the added value created by the solution. They also pointed its integration and ease of implementation as an advantages of the system. This is due to the SuiteSucess methodology, which allows quick configuration and implementation.
The conference was focusing on 3 Microsoft clouds and project management:
Microsoft Azure. The
role of advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence. The path also
focused on technology-based tools and how they support companies in their
day-to-day operations.
Microsoft Dynamics 365. Sessions concerned
customer relationship management in times of social distance. Issues related to
efficient digitization of management processes and quick response to changes
were also raised. There were also discussed solutions based on the no-code /
low-code platform – that is the environment for creating IT solutions that does
not require specialized programming knowledge.
Microsoft 365. In this block, Microsoft
speakers focused on remote work, changes in enterprises and building business
scenarios. All based on the
Microsoft Teams solution.
Projects. The fourth thematic path
focused on projects and project portfolio management.
The speakers emphasized that in recent years Central and Eastern Europe has become a direction in which Microsoft invests more and more physical resources and knowledge. A great example is the largest technological investment in the history of Poland. Microsoft is investing billions of dollars in creating the Digital Poland Valley
One of the main speakers at the conference was Jean Philippe
Courtois, Executive Vice President and President of Microsoft Global Sales,
Marketing and Operations.
„Poland is a remarkable country, with an opportunity to become the digital heart of Europe. The amount of IT talent, its thriving start-up community and the rapid transformation of established business are key indicators that the Polish Digital Valley is becoming a reality” emphasizes J.P. Courtois
5 patterns for success
J.P. Courtois showed 5 patterns, which are crucial for the future of business. They are:
Remote everywhere
Digital everything
Empowering first line workforce
Accelerated digital transformation
National digital empowerment plan
Adaptation to the new reality in the age of the COVID-19
epidemic is necessary to maintain an efficient company. However, it is
necessary to make the essential changes to meet the challenges that have been
set before us.
Remote work and digitization
One of the results of current situation is large increase of people working remotely. A great tool to support this kind of work is Microsoft Teams application. J. P. Courtois reports that even 74% of CFOs currently plan to have their employees maintain remote work opportunities even after a pandemic.
Remote work and process digitalization are crucial when it comes to enterprises development. As excellent examples of transformation and remote work, Courtois gave Żabka, who created an application supported by artificial intelligence (AI). As a result, the company can provide customers with better and more personalized access to services. The application also supports the enterprise by improving the planning and management of localized product offers. Courtois also mentioned the Telemedico company, which thanks to the digitization of processes and services tripled the number of online medical consultations reaching 100,000.
Process automation
J. P. Courtois also emphasized the essence of the Power Platform solution. Thanks to the platform, front-line employees can automate processes or workflows without knowing the code or coding rules. The result of their work can be easily transferred to company backends and improve the work of the entire company.
During his presentation, Courtois also pointed out that the “winners” of the current situation will be people and companies that will accelerate their digital transformation. National support programs are very important to meet this challenge. In Poland, thanks to the involvement of Microsoft, the Digital Valley was created, which is an excellent support for enterprises in their digitization.
If you know that you would like your company to take the next step towards digitization, please contact us
Do you want to learn about products that improve business operations? Discover our solutions:
A few years ago, we started cooperation with VISIONAPARTMENTS. As part of cooperation, we implemented the Microsoft Dynamics system in the company.
VISIONAPARTMENTS deals with the rental of high class, furnished apartments. Established in 1999, the company quickly developed from a startup into a leader on the Swiss market, with a strong international position. Currently, VISIONAPARTMENTS offers apartments tailored to the needs of clients in over 850 cities around the world.
The project we’ve been worked on was very complex and innovative. The implementation was carried out taking into account the specifics of the industry, the company and its international character.
Microsoft Dynamics has been implemented along with additional modules to improve the company’s work. However, taking into account the dynamic development of the company, the VISIONAPARTMENTS ERP system is constantly modernized.
We encourage you to read the entire case study – the customer story!
“We have a clear vision. We are going to be the obvious choice for clients who are working with both production and distribution when they choose their ERP-system,” . Says Karl Inge Stensland, COO of RamBase.
RamBase is investing in an international market, continuing Hatteland’s long history of operating internationally.
“We see that RamBase clearly has international potential. Now we are distinctly focusing on Sweden, Poland and the UK as natural markets for us to enter,” says Karl Inge. Inge explains that the strategy is to build a partner channel. Channel that will both sell the system and help customers put it to good use.
What started as a small group with a total of five people, who in the early 90s laid the foundation for what would become RamBase. Today company consists of 70 employees. As they now focus on building upon RamBase’s history of operating internationally. And focus once again on taking the product out into the world, the need for new, ambitious employees arises.
“I think that employees at RamBase feel like their work contributes to a pretty unique story; we still have owners close to us who represent a journey and an entrepreneurial spirit,” says Karl Inge.
Building on the mindset established in the 90s
Hatteland sits on a story that dates back to the 70s when Jakob Hatteland, out of genuine interest, began selling electronic components. He was selling to friends and acquaintances from his father’s grocery store in Nedre Vats. As he eventually became acquainted with Ingvar Hognaland, a like-minded electronics and computer enthusiast. They began to build and develop things together.
“This is the early seed that grew to become Hatteland – and by extension, RamBase as well,” emphasizes Karl Inge.
When RamBase was started in the early 90s, it was a self-developed product; Hatteland as a business had grown so large that it needed a new computer system to cope with such rapid growth.
RamBase – A solution tailored to your needs
“When they saw that there were no solutions in the market that were good enough, they decided to build the system themselves,” says Karl Inge.
With Hognaland in the lead, a small group of developers teamed up to develop what is today’s RamBase. Technological decisions led them down a new path. And among other things, the first version of RamBase was developed with a completely separate database platform based on hardware.
“This was a very unconventional choice at the time, but it provided great competitive advantages that led Hatteland as a group to grow rapidly in a demanding international market,” Karl Inge points out.
He further explains that RamBase was developed as a system to keep track of Hatteland’s entire store, from sales and purchases to warehousing and finance: everything one needed for electronics sales. And although the thinking behind the original ERP solution is still at the heart of what is RamBase today, the system has undergone major developments since then; Today, it is a broad business system that contains both traditional ERP and manufacturing, and many other modules.
Searching for the best programmers
Karl Inge goes on to say that in order to get the growth they envision ahead. They now need to increase the staff by ten to twenty people annually.
“We are looking for the best programming heads; those who know the field well and who love to program; who genuinely think that this is fun,” says Karl Inge.
He also states that they’re recruiting people in all departments: system developers who will help program the system; consultants who will introduce it to the customers and to train our partners. They will also put in place aggressive marketing and salesforce. He emphasizes that nevertheless the most important thing is to bring in people who want to help lift the product up and out into the world.
“We are definitely looking for people who want to join such a journey towards internationalization and growth. This is about creating good solutions for our customers. And we are still developing a lot of our own technology ourselves, because it gives us a lot of advantages.It allows us to develop things quickly, and of very high quality,” says Karl Inge.
When technology meets tradition
He goes on to say that one of the characteristics of the Hatteland group and the RamBase team is that they’re always on the hunt for those who want to go the slightly unusual ways. They want to create solutions that are good so that customers will simply love using the system.
“The most important thing is to have meaningful task. And I think most of us at RamBase will say that we do. We are working on something quite special. And as a company, we depend on every individual to help pull the load,” says Karl Inge.
Most importantly, as part of the RamBase team, you get to take part in an exciting journey. From developing a product and then bringing it out into the world. In addition, you become part of a company that still has an entrepreneurial spirit. Spirit that extends all the way back to Hatteland’s start.
“We go our own ways, we do things that are a bit crazy, and we develop something that we ourselves think is very cool. It also creates stimulating professional tasks for everyone involved,” says Karl Inge. “We are looking for those who really want to put their soul into this.”
New in Power Bi is above all a new visual personalization
feature to allow your end-users to explore and personalize visuals all within
the consumption view of a report! The changes introduced in Power Bi also apply
to fast refresh scenarios. The mentioned functions will be very useful: change
detection for page refresh and support for relative time filters in minutes and
hours. In addition, several other functions have been made available, including
rectangular lasso select across visuals, conditional formatting for totals and
subtotals, Direct Query support for AI visuals: decomposition tree and key
influencers, several updates to Q&A, and more! What is more, some functions
have been updated.
An additional month to
update
In light of the COVID-19 crisis, we have decided to give
more flexibility by providing an additional month to move over to the modern
filter experience before we automatically migrate all reports in Power BI
Desktop and Power BI Service. So, if you have not upgraded any of your reports,
you have one more month to update your reports so you can tweak or customize
any of the filter pane formatting before your reports get auto-upgraded in May.
Discover the
latest solutions and updates
Reporting
Personalize visuals
The
introduced changes allow end users to view and personalize the visualizations
in the report consumption view. Users can, among others:
Change the visualization type
Swap out a measure or dimension
Add or remove a legend
Compare two or more different measures
Change aggregations, etc.
Power BI
Change detection for page refresh
The page refresh will be based on detecting changes, not on specific refresh intervals. In this version we provide a new option Change detection. It allows you to specify how we should check changes in your source of direct queries, in particular which measure we should evaluate and how often we should check changes in this regard.
Relative time filter
With
emerging fast refresh scenarios, the need to filter to a smaller window of time
becomes more and more requested. So, this month, we’re very excited to announce
a new type of filter: relative time filter. When the filter is applied to the
page/report level, all visuals under that level are synchronized to the same
time range.
Rectangular lasso select across visuals
Lasso makes it easy to select
and select visual elements. Power BI allows selection by clicking and dragging
on the work area. Thanks to this, all visual elements completely enclosed in
the lasso will be selected.
Conditional formatting for totals and subtotals in table and matrix
The solution allows applying
conditional formatting rules to subtotals and subtotals in table and matrix visuals.
This function will work to set the background color, font color, icons and URL.
Customize theme dialog is now generally available
If you customize a theme in the theme dialog, an icon will represent that
custom theme in a separate section in the theme dialog. This icon will update
whenever you customize your theme. If
you hover over the icon, a tooltip will show up that explains that the theme is
a custom theme. You can also upgrade your base theme right in the report themes
dialog to activate these text styling options.
Improved discoverability for conditional formatting
After making the changes, to access the dialog box, just click
the fx button to the right of the object you would like to format.
Analytics
Direct Query support for AI visuals
Decomposition tree
Key influencers
Decomposition tree now supports
tooltips
A simple but useful update to
the decomposition tree is that it now supports tooltips. You can add additional
measures to the Tooltips option in the field well and have them appear when
users hover on the data bars in the tree.
Q&A updates
Suggest questions
Now you can define your own questions to show up in the
Q&A visual. In the new Suggest questions section in Q&A setup, you can
create a list of questions to be shown in the Q&A visual. The questions
will show up in Q&A in the same order as they have been created in.
Teach Q&A now supports measure conditions
Using the Teach Q&A option, you can add definitions to
streamline the work of questions and answers with the data model. In the first
version of Teach Q&A you could only create definitions in columns. Support
for measurement conditions has been added this month.
Q&A is now supported on Power BI datasets
You can now use Q&A when connected to a Power BI
dataset. When you are working on a PBIX file connected to a Power BI dataset,
you can use add a Q&A visual to the canvas and ask questions.
Visualizations
Radar/Polar
chart by xViz
It
is an ideal for visualizing multivariate data similar to parallel coordinates
chart. Radar charts are suited for
showing outliers and commonality by comparing one or more categories across
different variables. For example, comparing product performance across various
metrics like the ease of use, aesthetics, and durability.
Comicgen by Gramener
Comicgen
by Gramener adds comic characters whose emotion, pose, and angle can be
controlled by data. Users can show two or less KPI’s at a time. Each KPI can be
visualized as emotion and pose. You can choose to keep the visual emotion or
pose or both static to your choice by selecting appropriate emotion and pose
from the visual settings. Users can choose different comics.
Pareto by sio2Graphs
Pareto
charts are used to visualize the results or outcomes for any process in order
to identify the specific factors driving or impeding an effective conclusion.
Growth Rate Combo Chart by Djeeni
The Growth Rate Combo Chart by Djeeni is a powerful visual that displays
the percentage difference between the consecutive category values, with the
base for comparison being the category on the left. In enables showing percentage
change between two or more categories or change between periods.
Smart Filter Pro by OKViz
Smart
Filter Pro by OKViz is the premium version of Smart Filter. It provides a
compact slicer that applies filters in many different ways, including
autocomplete and incremental search in a dropdown list.
New Visualization icons
Template Apps
Power Platform Center
of Excellence (CoE) StartKit
The tool provides a holistic view of the resource usage in your tenant, including environments, Power Apps apps, Power Automate flows, connectors, connection references, makers and audit logs.
Power BI
Azure Cognitive Search: analyze logs and metrics
Azure Cognitive Search is a
cloud search service with built-in AI capabilities that enrich all types of
information to easily identify and explore relevant content at scale. Azure
Cognitive Search allows you to store operation logs and service metrics from
your search service into an Azure Storage account. This Power BI template app
specifically enables you to analyze those operation logs and metrics so that
you can obtain better insights about your search service. The Power BI app
provides detailed metrics about queries, indexing requests, operations, and
more
COVID-19 Apps
We’re living in unprecedented
times as the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic. As healthcare providers and
local governments work to slow the spread of the virus and ultimately save
lives, it’s critical that these organizations are equipped with accurate
information in a timely manner. To help these organizations and individuals
stay informed, several of our Power BI partners created template apps track of
COVID-19 pandemic.
Data preparation
Enhancements to Query Diagnostics
Newly run
query diagnostics options allow you to configure diagnostics and performance
results for queries. A new one has also appeared in the functionality to
configure query diagnostics.
Data connectivity
CDM Folder view for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Into the beta version was implemented the CDM Folder view for the Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 connector. This will allow you to select if you want to view content in your data lake as CDM entities.
The plan combines long-term investments. It assumes skills
upgrading, strong local partnerships, support for digital transformation and
the latest cloud technologies. All this to help realize the vision of the “Polish
Digital Valley” and accelerate digitization and innovation for
companies, government and citizens. Implementation of the plan will also be
possible thanks to establishing a partnership with the Polish National Cloud,
established by PKO BP and PFR.
Higher class of services
By creating a new Microsoft data center region in Poland as
part of a global cloud for the ecosystem of startups, entrepreneurs,
enterprises and the government will gain access to secure enterprise-class
cloud services.
The basis is a good plan
The plan is based on Microsoft’s almost 30 years of
experience in successful cooperation with Polish organizations and enterprises
as well as with a network of over 6,000 local partners. The initiative lasts
for another seven years. It combines extensive knowledge of digital
transformation with a strong emphasis on improving the skills of local talent
with the latest competences in the cloud to enable local organizations to drive
and accelerate their digital transformation, increase competitiveness and
promote employment opportunities in the market.
Polish Digital Valley
“I am proud to announce our $1 billion dollar investment in
Poland’s continued digital transformation and the development of the ‘Polish
Digital Valley.’ Today’s announcement builds on our nearly 30-year presence in
the country. Microsoft’s global-scale cloud in Poland will allow an
ever-wider use, faster implementation and more benefits to those public
institutions and businesses in critical sectors along with Poland’s thriving
start-up community. This investment will also provide strong support for the continued
success of Poland’s developer talent pool and beyond, creating critical
skilling and learning opportunities for an estimated 150,000 employees,
partners and students. Our mission is to empower the people and
organizations of Poland to achieve more,” said Jean-Phillippe Courtois,
executive vice president and president, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and
Operations.
Skills development program
The skills development program will include training,
e-learning programs, workshops and hackathons (programming marathons). Training
includes cloud computing as well as development using artificial
intelligence. They also apply to machine learning technology, big data and
Internet of Things (IoT). As part of these activities, accessibility for
people with disabilities is important to Microsoft. The implementation is to
provide people with disabilities with access to technologies and tools that
allow them to learn, inform and increase employment opportunities.
Trusted global cloud from Microsoft
The announced plan will help companies, startups and
institutions use the potential of cloud computing. Moreover, the highest
standards of cyber security, data residence and compliance will be maintained.
In particular, those that have specific requirements for data storage and
processing
Access to the full set of services
The new cloud datacenter region joins Microsoft’s global
footprint of cloud regions, now totaling 59 regions announced, with Microsoft
Azure available in over 140 countries, and will provide companies local access
to Microsoft’s full set of cloud services, all built on a foundation of trust:
Microsoft Azure
An ever-expanding set of cloud services that offers
computing, networking, databases, analytics, AI and IoT services.
Microsoft 365
The world’s productivity cloud that delivers best-of-breed
productivity apps integrated through cloud services and delivered as part of an
open platform for business processes.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
The next generation of intelligent business applications
that enable organizations to grow, evolve and transform to meet the needs of
customers and capture new opportunities.
Compliance, security and privacy
Microsoft offers more than 90 certifications and spends $1
billion every year on cybersecurity to address security at every layer of the
cloud. Microsoft’s Poland datacenter region will help companies comply with the
European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will also help
customers store data at rest in Poland.
The creation of
the “Polish Digital Valley” by Microsoft is a milestone in the
technological development of Poland and the region.
Launching ERP system in several hours? In Poland it is possible thanks to IT Vision. Long-term partnership between our company and QBS group and Microsoft have made us prepare a methodology for rapid implementation of Business Central in Poland.
ERP w kilkanaście godzin
Our company not only adapted the LIAD model to Polish
requirements. As IT Vision, we conduct training for other Polish QBS
partners. Thanks to the knowledge we provide, they will also have
appropriate skills to implement the system in this model.
We can assure you that our team will continue to adapt
methodologies and tools to changes in regulations and new versions of Business
Central in the future.
ERP system in several hours is fast time of launching Business Central system and low service costs. All because of LIAD method.
Do you want to learn more about LIAD and meet all advantages of launching ERP in several hours?
At the beginning of the year, I worked on an article entitled ‘Why ERP will change but remain sexy in this decade also’. When the article was published on the RamBase website on 12 March, without a single mention of Corona crisis, Italy was already closing down. Two days later, Denmark, where I live, Norway and Poland had closed schools and their international borders and imposed a series of restrictions aimed at ensuring social distancing. Since then, the world around us has been turned upside down and continues to present us with new scenarios through which we have no experience navigating.
However, as an
entrepreneur and business owner, you have no choice. You must face the brutal
facts and take action. How do you keep your company alive during the crisis and
survive the recession and how do you prepare for what’s on the other side?
The Corona crisis and the recession
No crisis lasts forever. May that give you some hope and peace of mind.
There is a
world on the other side, and it will offer new opportunities if you read it
right. However, before reaching the other side you have to survive the passage.
And “reading it right” requires that you have time to think, prepare and test.
How long will the Corona crisis restrictions last?
I’m no
epidemiologist, but according to the experts, most countries are beyond the
point where you can contain the virus and make it go away. The strategy we are
pursuing in Northern Europe is aimed at having us follow the blue curve. Most
of us will get the virus, but not all of us will get ill at the same time and,
hopefully, we can spare most of those for whom the consequences may be fatal.
Pursuing the
blue strategy, the spread of Covid-19 will be controllable 4-6 weeks after you
have effectively shut down society. The longer you wait and the softer you do
it, the longer it takes to recover and the higher the price you pay in terms of
casualties and short falls in the economy.
Based on my research for this article I expect most of Northern Europe to follow the same paths while the UK, Sweden and the USA will see different developments.
Great Britain, Sweden and the USA
Northern Europe (except the UK and Sweden) will re-start again by the
end of April. By then there will still be restrictions, but the economy will
gradually open up. However, nothing will return to normal for a while. People
will still be restrained from gathering in large crowds, congestions throughout
rush-hours must be avoided, remote working and virtual meetings will continue
and the elderly and people with pre-conditions have to stay at home.
I am uncertain
about the UK, Sweden and the USA, where governments took much longer to react.
They may not be back to normal before the autumn.
How deep will the recession be?
I am an
economist, but predicting the impact of Covid-19 on the economy is not a simple
mathematical exercise. We are way beyond the borders of what any macro-economic
model can simulate. As the global economy was well balanced before Covid-19
took us down, my gut feeling says that we will take a draconian dive, but that
it will only be temporary.
The dive comes from hitting supply and demand hard at the same time.
Nevertheless, the depth of the recession will vary substantially across industries. While government and much of the logistics and FMCG-industries are unaffected and e-commerce is booming, other parts of retail, the travel and experience industry (entertainment, tourism and hospitality) have come to a complete halt. Across the board we might experience a thirty per cent contraction of the economy from March to August. On a full-year basis, the contraction may reach ten per cent.
However, these are not numbers any of us can use for anything.
The situation of each individual company varies greatly and maybe your customer base is deviating from the average?
Some companies
have to lay off people and stop all expenses and investments. Some will only
survive if they are bailed out by our governments. Some will not survive.
But other companies are busier due to the Corona crisis. They are well consolidated and liquid or fit the rescue packages offered by the governments. They can afford to pay their bills, keep their key employees and use the time to do some housekeeping (such as consider better business models and processes). You will have to check on your customers and the prospects in the pipeline to find out how much it will affect you. Despite the grave situation, there will still be work to do in many companies.
How long will the recession last?
Apart from
industry variations, we will be out of the recession by late autumn.
The Corona-recession is not caused by systemic unbalances in the global economy, which is why I am fairly optimistic that we will recover fast. The swift recovery comes from the gigantic rescue packages currently offered by our governments and from consumers and companies going out of their way to help each other.
How the world looks like
What your world looks like right now and until the situation normalises depends entirely on your solidity and your customers. Before Covid-19, there was a shortage of skilled ERP resources and that will also be the case afterwards. Hold on to your people and urge your customers to do the same. Be flexible with payments if you can. Keep the projects running.
I am convinced
that many have already switched to working remotely and running virtual
meetings and workshops. Refine these working and collaboration skills because
they will become hot assets when the storm is over.
The post-Covid-19 world
It will be a different world on the other side of the Corona crisis. Not everything will change, but economically and politically we will see things from a different perspective.
The Corona crisis has once more demonstrated and highlighted how interdependent the world has become. A bat meets a pangolin and a virus jumps in China. Soon the European auto industry comes to a halt that causes layoffs in other countries. The impact of government restrictions ripples through the world economy at lightning speed.
Saving the economy
All nations
will have paid an extremely high price for saving as many lives as possible and
for relieving the pressure on their healthcare systems, avoiding the impact of
collateral damage (maintaining the ability to also help people in urgent need
due to non-corona related issues). Governments will have invested gigantic
amounts of money in keeping their economy afloat. As we return to normality,
they will open their fiscal policy toolboxes and invest further in accelerating
the surge out of the recession.
These activities will happen at the same time all over the world and will pull the economy out of recession faster than we have ever seen before. By the beginning of 2021, we will all be busy again and the Corona crisis will become a vanishing memory. However, I am convinced that we will have changed our values, priorities and some behaviours, too.
Voices have spoken about the need for more autarky, but that will not happen.
The global division of labour, the opening of international markets and the improvement in global logistics have been the main contributors to economic growth and wealth for all of us. In addition, the solution to challenges (climate, poverty and wars) the world is facing must be of a global nature. If anything, the Corona crisis will stimulate further global collaboration, growth and competition.
Not the
opposite.
The gig economy
The Corona crisis has forced most of us to work remotely and to run virtual meetings and workshops. I can only recommend refining these working and collaboration habits because they will become valuable assets when the storm is over.
In a post-Covid-19 world, the demand for skilled and experienced manpower will increase. Not only do we have to catch up with the backlog from the recession, we will also have to face the pressure for faster digital transformation.
If the business software industry saw a shortage of people with technical skills, vertical industry experience and business acumen before, then post-Covid-19 will make it even more obvious. We want to utilise such resources effectively and cut out all non-productive activities. Physical face-to-face meetings and workshops will not go away, but we will rely much more on virtual interactions. They are often more effective and cost much less.
Remote work
Giving more people the chance to work remotely will stimulate the gig and freelance economy. This trend has been going on for a while and will now accelerate among professionals in high demand. Especially in Europe, where our social contract provides free education, healthcare and a social security safety-net, more and more professionals prefer a project-driven lifestyle, where they have flexibility in where and when they work and where they get their social stimuli outside of the job context.
The market for business software is very well suited for the gig economy.
It is project-driven and pays well for the right skill mix. Both sides of the market will have to learn how to work with the gig-people and those that master the discipline can have long-lasting relationships with some of the best people in the industry. While people quit their jobs for numerous reasons, few drop their clients as long as they pay well and on time.
Resilience
becomes king
Having learned how fast a crisis can hit us, we will all pay attention to our solidity and cash positions. We want a buffer, just in case, and we want a business model where we can make money while we sleep. How will this affect the behaviour of the suppliers and customers in the ERP market?
The supply-side
The ERP industry (the suppliers) will have learned that recurring revenue is much more attractive than selling hours on time & material. Selling hours can be profitable, but such revenue is exposed in times of trouble. It may go away from one day to the next, and an hour you do not sell today cannot be sold tomorrow. Selling hours is a very vulnerable business.
Post corona crisis world
In a post-corona world, VARs and SIs will want to become ISVs. Because ISVs make money while they sleep. Making such a transition requires re-engineering the business models. All nine building blocks will have to be revisited and refined. The change from VAR and SI to ISV changes the DNA of your value proposition fundamentally. You go from being customer-centric to becoming product-centric and your go-to-market approach must allow for winning and managing many more customers.
From VAR and SI to ISV
The move from VAR and SI to ISV means developing add-ons to the platforms (such as RamBase) with which you are already familiar. It requires investments in R&D and adding product management and product marketing to your key resources and activities. However, moving to a value proposition where your split between software and services becomes fifty-fifty will match perfectly with what I expect post-Corona customers will look for. And if the base of recurring revenue from software subscriptions can cover the OPEX (software companies have little CAPEX), then your chances of riding through another storm improves dramatically.
The demand side
In the
post-Covid-19 world your customers will return to investing in the future.
Expansion of production and distribution capacity across borders will pick up
again, and digital transformation will become more urgent than ever. Business
executives will now recognise the possibility of a contagious and deadly virus
as part of the potential business model environment in which they have to
operate. They will consider how they can build more resilient business models
and how they can improve the business cases for investments in terms of faster
and higher RoI as well as reduced risk.
There are only
two ways you can reduce the cost of an ERP project:
Choose
a software solution that is as close to your requirements as possible;
Adjust
your business processes to the software.
It is fortunate
that what the customers want matches elegantly with what suppliers want, too.
Customers want more software and to pay for fewer hours.
Reducing the
risk requires reducing customisation, shortening the implementation time and
moving cost items from the CAPEX to the OPEX-budget. That speaks in favour of
best-of-breed cloud-based solutions. The transition to such platforms was
already well underway before Covid-19. After Covid-19 it will transition even
faster.
The hunt for
a virtual business model
As the Corona crisis started chewing off big chunks of the global economy, Amazon announced the need to hire an additional 100,000 people to keep up with demand. Although many of the new-hires will be working in warehouses fulfilling customer orders, it does illustrate the advantage of a business model where the customer relationship is completely virtual.
Other side of the Corona-recession
On the other side of the Corona-recession, the executive boards in all sizes of companies will have the virtual business opportunity at the top of the agenda. The frequently asked question will be how to virtualise elements of the supply chain as well as the customer relationship. The exercise will be combined with the crusade against CAPEX. Consider for a second how AirBnB was hit by the Corona-recession and then compare with Hilton Hotels & Resorts. Vertically integrated and CAPEX-heavy businesses are very vulnerable during recessions.
More software
The good news for us in the business software industry is that both the hunt for virtualisation and the crusade against CAPEX requires more software. The more you split the activities across independent operators the more software you need to bring down the transaction cost and maintain control. Although the final consumption may be physical (a vacation or a new car) the customer experience in the purchasing, as well as the consumption phase, is highly affected by digital elements.
Summary
Although the
times may seem tough just now (and I know they are for most of us), the
post-Covid-19 world will soon be here, and it will offer more opportunities
than ever before. If you have some idle-time you may want to invest some of it
talking to your customers about what they would like to do differently on the
other side. The sooner you start such conversations, the better prepared you
will be when we start meeting again.
Often, Power BI is used when creating reports and making decisions, but our experience shows that this is not always the most convenient solution – and we know how to make your daily routine more productive.
Data access
Do
you often find yourself in a situation where you need data from several sources
to visualize the big picture of events? Almost every company uses CRM or even
several, and often separate data is stored in Excel files, therefore linking
all the data together often becomes a real challenge.
In
addition, you are probably not the only individual who needs to access this
data and who makes decisions based on it. Making sure everyone in the
organization has access to the same numbers sometimes also becomes a huge
problem.
There is one advantageous solution for all these issues – Jet Analytics
First,
when using Jet Analytics in conjunction with Power BI, you get consolidated
data from different sources pulled into one location. This in itself is a
“timesaver” for each individual employee who no longer has to collate
the data, saving massive amounts of time across the organization. Data retrieval
becomes much easier when everything is collected in one place.
In addition, everyone in the organization sees the same data, which reduces the likelihood of error to almost zero and allows everyone to make data-driven decisions, confident that the data is correct. Though, at the same time, Jet Analytics guarantees the security of your data, giving users access only to the data they need.
What will you gain from Jet Analytics?
As
a result, you get beautiful Power BI visualizations combined with the
functionality, security, and reliability that Jet Analytics ensure. Our
customers who are currently using this solution say:
“Now I have everything in one place and don’t waste my time checking numbers and looking for the data I need. I only regret that I didn’t have it earlier.”
“All my data is managed and controlled, and I have a visualization tool I like to create stunning reports.”
It’s as simple as that, wait no longer – and empower your Power BI with Jet Analytics.
Extended analytics, reporting and Business Intelligence at the highest level? Fast and easy data access? It is possible thanks to cooperation between IT Vision and Data Courage from the Jet Global group.
Thanks to the established partnership, we can offer additional solutions for Microsoft clients developed by Data Courage. Reporting, data visualization, analytics, budgeting are just some of the areas that you can improve.
Reporting
Thanks to a specially prepared reporting module, you will not only gain access to all necessary data. Data Courage solution allows you to visualize data in any way you choose. The module is also adapted to advanced business reports. With Data Courage you can forget about the “copy-paste” function.
Reporting from Data Courage automatically retrieves data
from Excel and immediately allows you to design reports and use them. What’s
more, the installation takes only one day!
Data visualization is based on Power BI from Microsoft. The interface is easy to install and allows users to plan and perform tasks faster. The solution extends the capabilities of Microsoft systems. Installation is fast so that companies immediately have access to their business data and can quickly run their own KPIs. This allows you to increase your strategic advantage.
The Data Courage analytics module allows you to collect all data in one place. Thanks to this, all employees have access to data and receive the opportunity to perform advanced analyzes from anywhere, without the need for technical knowledge.
The
analytics module is available through a web browser and offers quick and
flexible desktops and reports in Excel. It allows you to quickly transform data
into useful information.
The Data Courage module gives you greater control over the budgeting process and streamlines it. It is a flexible and easy-to-use financial planning solution.
The
module allows you to adapt the structures to the budgeting methodology and
saves time and resources.
Free Microsoft Teams offer is dedicated to the new customers without Office 365 services or to active customers of Office 356 Business not having Teams applications.
The application can work in your company for free, for 6
months since the date of launch. Just contact your system provider and enable
the service.
Microsoft Teams versions
After the TRIAL, you can buy Teams application in two
versions:
Office 365 Business Essentials – €4.20 za user/month
Office 365 Business Premium – €10.50 za user/month
Don’t wait, launch TRIAL Teams version and use its
facilities while working remotely.
IT Vision has become a partner of Netronic. It gives access to highest quality tool for graphic work planning thanks to Gantt charts.
Sofware offered by Netronic is well-fitted to enterprise resource planning programs from Microsoft (both Dynamics NAV and Business Central). It facilitates production, work or service planning.
Netronic creates software for planning data visualization
which are time and recourse oriented. Creating software for handling Gantt
charts is a basic competence of the company. Netronic delivers software which
enables us to offer to our customers efficient and flexible managing and
planning tool wit Gantt charts using.
Gantt charts provided by Netronic makes it easy to manage all tasks in the company. It shows the distribution of tasks over time, their duration or the number of tasks performed parallel. In addition, using Gantt charts solution allows for better controll over performed and planned tasks and for optimization of the duration of processes.
Thanks to establishing a partnership, we can offer our customers a wider range of enterprise management solutions. The established cooperation expands the portfolio of our tools, allowing us to meet the needs of our customers at the very best level.
