How your organization should draw the benefits of remote work
At a glance: How modern cloud-based business productivity solutions are revolutionizing the way of working remotely How technology is enabling organizations to manage staff online and reduce office overload. Helping business improve their enterprise productivity by maintaining effective communication between team members as well as clients. Providing great flexibility and improved employee experience by addressing the needs of remote workers Hybrid work became a norm during the pandemic as companies tried to cope with the lockdowns and travel restrictions. Employees not being able to come to the office or go meet the clients were initially seen as a crippling situation, but it quickly became an advantage with a leap in modern workplace technology. Modern organizations now have access to the kind of infrastructure needed to adopt hybrid work, thanks to the availability of modern work management and business productivity solutions like cloud applications. In fact, data suggests that the number of patents filed for technologies that support remote-work capabilities has doubled since 2020. This has remarkably improved the applications and software products that aid in online collaborations, digital data, and document management. The biggest example is the marked enhancement in features and capabilities of Microsoft Teams since its launch in 2017: The meeting recording features became refined Meeting transcription quality improved and became a default feature Earlier, there were restrictions on the number of participants. Now we can host up to 100-200 participants easily Meeting duration cap was removed. We can have long meetings on Teams now Overall network latency reduced, which allows for better screen sharing and collaboration The video and audio calling quality was improved Background noise cancellation ensures that you can effectively participate in calls, even from noisy environments Auto-join, auto-recording, and attendance report functionalities reduce the moderation efforts Now, even external participants can join easily without needing to have a Teams login. Browser capabilities have improved remarkably Overall processing requirements to run these applications are better optimized According to projections, SMEs will spend more than US$100 billion over the next few years on collaboration platforms, cybersecurity solutions, and cloud-based apps. This technology is a part of our daily lives now. Modern tech is used to run schools, hospitals, offices, and colleges. You can now work anywhere you want, collaborate seamlessly, offer enhanced customer service, and learn new skills online. How remote work has evolved Remote work was possible with the basic tools available before. There were always email and chat applications. Things like Dropbox and Google Drive were allowing data and document sharing. However, they were not integrated into a comprehensive suite of applications. Things had to be managed on separate disconnected platforms. For that reason, it was thought to be cumbersome and inefficient. It was fine to hire a part-time freelancer for remote work, but we were not used to seeing “remote” full-time positions at companies. Now, we have broken that barrier. Technology has made it possible to do the same job, no matter where we live. It has allowed us to always stay in touch with clients and coworkers. Reduce your office overhead According to a Gallup survey, 43% of employed Americans said they have spent at least some time remotely.” This means companies have already understood the benefit of remote work. They can more economically manage staff online than hire people for a particular location. Maintaining full-time office spaces is expensive. Think of the electricity bills you will save. HR can save relocation bonuses, transportation and conveyance allowances, and many such expenses. Improve productivity You’d agree that most of the time spent by employees in the office goes into doing unproductive work like gossip, unnecessary discussions, and just idling. It’s because the actual time to do things that are necessary is much less than the working hours. Having a remote workforce can help your team members get on to the priority tasks with to-the-point communication. They can also track their performance with productivity tools like planners and task managers. Enterprise productivity solutions can be used by organizations to maintain effective communication between team members. Greater flexibility and improved employee experience Companies are projecting themselves to be modern and progressive by adopting hybrid work culture and sophisticated workplace productivity solutions to address the needs of remote workers. Employees working remotely, whether they are in coworking spaces, at home, or elsewhere, can benefit from videoconferencing, file-sharing platforms, and project management tools. Want information about our business productivity solutions? Click here. In times of global crises like pandemics and geo-political turmoil, many see the option of working from home as a safe and considerate way of working. Companies willing to be flexible about working hours, location, and time zones are more lucrative as employers. Are you looking for a business productivity services partner? Advaiya provides digital transformation solutions for enterprise-level organizations. Our team includes certified professionals who can customize and implement the latest business productivity solutions according to your business needs. Saurav Pranay Saurav is a Microsoft certified member for Dynamic and Project Online and has over fifteen years of experience in Project and Process management and has been involved in many Dynamics and Project Online implementations and have addressed solutions to challenging business needs by clients.
Six steps to a successful ERP implementation
An enterprise resource planning or ERP implementation solution offers significant benefits, especially in today’s mobile-savvy marketplace & complex business processes. If your corporation needs a software suite to manage its financial, human resources, supply chain, and other business operations, a centralized and integrated comprehensive business management system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central may be the useful and advantageous choice to go to. Dynamics 365 ERP enables your organization to access a shared database on any device reliably and offers easy customization, reduced technical costs, and improved productivity. However, there are a few key phrases in the ERP adoption process, each with its own objectives. These phases could be distinct or overlap, depending on the specific requirements of the company. Successful ERP implementation & upgradation of new business processes Phases of an ERP implementation plan – A typical ERP implementation life cycle includes six stages starting from discovery and planning, design, development, testing, and deployment to support and updates. Phase 1: Discovery and planning ERP offers comprehensive solutions to a wide range of business problems. It’s important to determine the true reason for putting ERP into place for your company, though. Your ERP implementation partner assesses your existing systems and procedures to identify the requirements, project scope, milestones, and modifications required. Once your vision and requirements are identified, the implementation partner will prepare the project plan. Want information about our ERP solutions? Consult with our experts As per the study by Panorama, 61.1% of ERP implementations take longer than expected and 74.1% of ERP projects exceed the budget. Although the primary cause of delay and overbudgeting is unclear definitions of ERP implementation. The ERP features must be evaluated in accordance with the barometer of synchronization within the needs of the company. The ERP demand list should be created in accordance with the budget and fundamental requirements to ensure a seamless and obstacle-free ERP deployment. Phase 2: Design phase ERP deployment includes several goals, including improving financial control, supporting organic growth, mergers, and acquisitions, as well as other typical procedures. The team will work on the specific criteria here in order to create the precise design of the new ERP system that your business needs. This entails creating a new, more effective business procedure and workflow. Since they have the most detailed knowledge of the current business process, users must be involved in the design of the new workflow. Additionally, it will also ensure that they will accept and use the new ERP solution. Phase 3: Development The development teams put up the standard solution using agreed-upon configurations and customizations of the ERP solution to support the newly specified process after they had clear design requirements. ERP software is designed after a significant amount of research and according to the needs of the specific industry. In some cases, there may be no need for customization. Additionally, the development phase also entails creating integrations with other work management and business productivity tools that ERP systems won’t be able to replace. Phase 4: Testing Testing is an important phase of the implementation process, which takes care of system and user acceptance testing. In many cases, testing and development can occur concurrently. For instance, the team may test-specific modules and features while implementing fixes and adjustments based on test results or may test one module while the other is in development. Sometimes this phase also includes beta testing, where some employees test the system for their day-to-day activities. This process ensures the ERP solution meets the requirements and is ready for deployment. During the pilot testing, management must evaluate the realization of the value of the system against the desired value of the company. After the successful testing and ensuring the ERP readiness for deployment, data migration activity should be performed before go-live. Under this process, the data from the old system is mapped to the new ERP. To ensure a smooth transition and future use of the software, only the most essential data should be transferred, and great care should be taken to ensure the data will be retrieved from the software whenever required. Training is also the most important aspect of the ERP software implementation process. It ensures there are fewer issues and more success, especially when ERP is implemented for the first time in the company or when the platform is changed from one ERP solution to another. Phase 5: Deployment This is the phase you’ve been striving toward: the go-live date! This is the day when you can officially get started with your new ERP software. Be ready for problems because, despite your best attempts to prepare for them, there may be many moving pieces and confused staff. Your ERP implementation partner will give your staff the necessary instructions and directions to comprehend the system, and they’ll be on hand to respond to inquiries and try to resolve any problems. The majority of data will be moved in the development and test phase. However, other information such as current open transactions should be transferred immediately before it goes live. Phase 6: Support and updates As you become more accustomed to the software, you might need help to create a plan to scale up your ERP solution along with your business. After deployment, your ERP partner will help to keep you satisfied and ensure your business achieves the desired benefits. During this phase, your implementation team may still be in charge of the ERP solutions, but they will now be more concerned with gathering feedback and making necessary adjustments to the system. Some organizations aim to focus on specific high-priority modules or processes and add others later, thus, some additional development and configuration will be integrated into the system later whenever needed. Implementing an ERP solution is a big investment decision by the company involving a large number of resources, therefore, management must continuously maintain tabs on the ERP software and maintenance schedule. Bottom line – Successful implementation of ERP software requires a significant amount of time and effort. The
Microsoft Power Apps solutions to energize your business
In today’s digital era, running a business has become quite simple. With ever-expanding digital connectivity, businesses of all industries have gained advantages in streamlining their business operations with business processes automation tools like Microsoft Power Apps. Microsoft Power Apps offers a plethora of benefits. In today’s blog, we’ll learn about Microsoft Power Platform, one of the business process automation solutions, and know how these solutions help organizations transform their day-to-day business processes and operations. What is Microsoft Power Platform? Microsoft power platform is a suite of business applications that combines the power of Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents to help organizations transform their business operations. This suite allows business managers to analyze data, deliver personalization, develop better applications and automate various processes regardless of technical expertise. The Core Components of Microsoft Power Platform – Microsoft Power Platform is composed of four primary business applications, that are – Microsoft Power BI: Power BI is a business analytics service that offers interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with a simple interface, enabling users to highly-personalized and informative reports on the dashboard. It allows organizations to make smarter, informed business decisions by putting real-time data-driven insights into everyone’s hands. Microsoft Power Automate: Microsoft Power Automate is a workflow automation service that you can use to automate repetitive tasks to bring efficiencies to your organization. It offers low-code, drag-and-drop tools and hundreds of pre-built connectors and templates to automate repetitive, mundane tasks with ease. Expand your automation capabilities across desktop, web, and mobile with Power Automate apps. With Power Automate, you can create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, approve requests, and more with a no-code approach. With the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capability of Power Automate, you can easily turn manual tasks into automated workflows with legacy systems that don’t support API-based automation as well. Microsoft Power Virtual Agents: Power Virtual Agents is an intuitive and graphical chatbot development platform that allows you to create powerful AI-driven intelligent chatbots that can answer questions posed by your customers, other employees, or visitors to your website or service. This is a no to low code business application platform that comes with hundreds of pre-built connectors which enable quick integration. with products and services without the need for data science expertise and development. Microsoft Power Apps: Microsoft Power Apps is a no-code business app development platform that allows you to build easy-to-use, mobile-friendly enterprise applications. It is a suite of apps, services, connectors, and data platforms that provides a low-code/no-code development environment in the form of Platform as a Service (PaaS) to build custom apps for your business needs. These are the four primary components of the Microsoft Power Platform. In this blog, we’ll be introducing you to Microsoft Power Apps and its benefits. Microsoft Power Apps – Low code/no-code automation tool for business It’s no secret that every modern profitable business relies upon information technology to achieve success. With Microsoft Power Apps, empower your teams to easily and rapidly build low-code custom apps that automate processes, and make your company more agile. Let’s explore, how the Power Apps solution is advantageous for you – Fundamental Benefits of Microsoft Power Apps – Get started building a professional app quickly Power Apps is a powerful tool that empowers organizations to create their own apps and solutions. Power apps allow organizations to create apps and APIs, which provide a user-friendly method for performing their daily tasks. Integrate with your existing Microsoft services: One of the most significant advantages of investing in a Microsoft Power Apps solution is, that you can connect Power Apps across the entire Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Teams, Dynamics 365, Azure, and hundreds of other apps that allow you to use make strategic use of the data provided by other Microsoft services. No need to learn to code: One of the unique benefits of this platform is no-code business app development. This custom web app development platform doesn’t require the knowledge and skills of deep programming, which means business managers can build an app even without technical experience. Power Apps solutions are composed of pre-built “components” that are templates of automated workplace processes. By using these components, they can build custom applications that meet the individual needs of their businesses. Business process automation: As part of the Microsoft Power Platform, Power Apps can access Microsoft Power Automate, which enables organizations to add automation to several activities like – notifications, approvals, documents or record routing, etc. in their business apps. Optimize customer engagement and interactions: Customers are the lifeline of every business’s profits. If you can’t attract and maintain customer engagement, they won’t offer you long-term profits. A custom Power Apps solution can be of significant value. The technology optimizes your company’s IT solutions and offers more usable mobile apps for consumers, serving the need of your consumers just as much as the needs of your employees. Resulting in customers enjoying their experience of interacting with your business. Boost your brand reputation: When your customers do engage with your new custom power app, they will likely recommend your business to their friends and family members. Thus, investing in successful Power Apps solutions may improve your brand’s overall reputation. Wrapping Up – Now you know how Microsoft Power Apps solutions could benefit your business. You can recognize the need for custom mobile apps to streamline your business operations. Although it’s important to note that there’s actually quite a learning curve for the non-tech organizations who want to build their own apps, thus, it’s a good choice to work with Microsoft Partner to design and build your Power Apps solutions. Connect with our industry experts and ensure your organization develops the custom app it actually needs. Differentiate your Power Apps practice with an advanced specialization in Low Code Application Development. Kamal Kant Paliwal Kamal is a Principal at Advaiya, where he has worked with clients in an array of industries in areas such as complex systems delivery, infrastructure services, security, architecture, and IT strategy. Earlier in his career at Advaiya, he has played key roles as Technical Consultant, Architect,
Need for digital transformation in the services business
Digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword; it has become a core concept for most business models. Going much beyond the data centers, now organizations are investing more in digitizing their operations to achieve business resilience. And service-focused businesses are not behind. As the world’s economy has modernized, it’s now dominated by service-centric enterprises; thus, the need for digital solutions for services businesses to achieve technological integration in their current business model has also become a necessity. The key characteristic of service-based businesses is that their offerings and their products are direct results of people working on specific tasks, often directly attributable to a customer ask. This poses specific challenges for services businesses—from managing work that its employees do to ensuring that the myriad interactions with customers. Thus there are specific digital interventions that are quite relevant for such services businesses. What kind of digital solutions for services businesses can make them more efficient, productive, and profitable? Following are a few digital solutions that different kinds of services businesses need – For example, a construction or project services-based industry will benefit greatly from implementing project and portfolio management applications; and all industries would need analytics for better decision making and customer engagement solutions such as CRM and ERP for delivering a better experience and enhancing productivity. As a service organization, to embark on the digital transformation journey, you need at least one of these solutions – 1. Project and portfolio management for work productivity: With the rapid transformation seen in the service industries, clients’ expectations have also been raised to seek high-quality service at a lower price. Project portfolio management helps organizations prioritize and streamline their projects, which improves productivity, and allows employees to utilize their skills and company resources more efficiently, leading to high-quality service at low prices. Read more: Project and portfolio management solution to improve work productivity 2. Analytics for better insights into the critical operations: Data and analytics are revolutionizing the way of making business-related decisions. Numerous studies have shown that data-driven organizations not just make better business decisions but also allow them to achieve high operational efficiency, improved customer satisfaction, and robust revenue. According to a study from McKinsey Global Institute, data-driven companies are 23x more likely to acquire customers, 6x more likely to retain customers, and 19 times more profitable. Still, many managers often rely on rules of thumb or fundamental data analysis to make decisions that typically involve complex tradeoffs. However, today’s leaders believe in applying advanced analytics techniques to make better-informed decisions for more optimized results. Read more: Business analytics for better insights into critical operations 3. Customer relationship management for multiplying the sales: Nowadays, the majority of customers are linked and empowered by digital tools. They are connected with the digital world everywhere, from the workplace to home. As a result, they expect businesses to be more flexible to cater to their needs and wants with just one click. Customer relationship management solutions deliver high-value and better customer engagement by leveraging technology to understand customer insights effectively and engage more with them, resulting in improved customer service, more customer satisfaction, and increased customer retention, which leads to enhanced overall sales. Final thoughts: Technology will continue to evolve, causing many changes in business operations, so organizations need to step forward with the technology; they need to accept these changes and utilize them. And using the above digital transformation solutions offers a plethora of benefits, not just for service-centric industries but for every small to enterprise-level business. We’ll elaborate on the above topics in our upcoming series of blogs. So to get detailed information about how PPM, business analytics, and CRM are changing the way of doing business, stay tuned with us! Ruchika Godha Ruchika is Advaiya’s Chief Operating Officer, responsible for managing the company’s business operations, executing business strategy, and ensuring operational excellence company-wide. Ruchika is also responsible for overall brand development and marketing initiatives. In addition to that, she leads the employee effectiveness team at Advaiya working across the company to establish and execute strategies for talent acquisition, performance management, and compensation schemes. Prior to becoming COO in April 2015, Ruchika was Executive Director of Advaiya’s human resource department, a position she held since 2006. In this role, she was instrumental in driving operational excellence through employee efficiency and effectiveness. Earlier in her career, she acquired over 16 years of experience working across aviation, textiles, engineering, and technology companies. Ruchika attended the International Institute of Professional Studies, where she received her Master’s in Management Science with HRD as the subject of specialization, and received her diploma in HRD from the Academy of Human Resource Department.
Accessing Angular jQuery method in VBA
To perform custom operations with any Office365 technology, we make use of jQuery/JavaScript. In one of our client’s functionalities, we came across a need to call the jQuery method using VBA (Visual basic for applications) macro. VBA is a programming language that helps us in custom operations for various Microsoft Office tools. We have implemented it for project professional. A SharePoint online page was loaded in project professional VBA form using a web browser control. On this SharePoint page, we have used Angular JS + jQuery to perform our custom operation. For displaying some data on the page, we need to fetch some data from project professionals onto our custom page. To do so, we need to call a jQuery method using VBA. As we have used Angular JS, we have to call the method of the controller class after that. I will share with you how we carry out this operation. In order to call a jQuery method, we have to keep in mind that the web browser controller should be loaded completely else; while calling the method from VBA, it will not find the method and will throw an exception. Let’s look at the code snippets to carry out the operations: In VBA, we have to use the below code: Sub CallJqueryMethod Dim currentWindow As Object Dim selectedValues As String Set currentWindow = frm1.WebBrowser1.Document.parentWindow selectedValues = frm1. ID currentWindow.execScript Code:=”ShowFilterData(‘” + selectedValues + “‘)” End Sub Here, we have to get the parent window object of the web browser control using code line frm1.WebBrowser1.Document.parentWindow. We call “ShowFilterData” a parametric function, a jQuery method on our custom page using code line currentWindow.execScript Code:=”ShowFilterData(‘” + selectedValues + “‘)” As we have used Angular js so will be calling a method of our controller using the below code snippet from the method, which will be called from VBA //On Html page under Script tag <script type=”text/javascript”> function ShowFilterData (data) { angular. element(document.getElementById(‘ContId’)).scope().GetData(data); } </script> //On Angular controller js the GetData method is defined as $scope. GetData = function (data) { //Custom logic } On the html page under the script tag, we have defined the method ShowFilterData that will be called from VBA. An id should be assigned to the div where we have attached our controller using the ng-controller directive. So, here we have given the id: ContId as below GetData is a function that is defined under the controller.js. So, we have seen how we can easily call an angular js method using VBA. I hope you find it helpful! Supriya Khamesra Supriya is currently working as a Senior Consultant with Advaiya, and has more than 10 years of experience in applications development, and responsible for Enterprise Project Server and Project Online and BI solutions. Microsoft Certified Professional in EPM, Supriya has been working on multiple technologies/platforms like Azure, .Net,Office365,Project Server,Project Online,SSRS,CSOM,JSOM,Kendo UI,JavaScript, SQL Server among others.
Moving to Microsoft Dynamics 365 in 2021
As organizations will undoubtedly be looking for ways to increase efficiencies, lower costs, and improve productivity for 2021, one of those initiatives to consider should be Microsoft Dynamics 365. Over the years, many businesses have purchased CRM and/or ERP systems to manage their business operations, while others are still relying on spreadsheets and word documents. With Dynamics 365, businesses can manage, drive, simplify, optimize and streamline their business processes much more efficiently, while enabling a true vision for digital transformation to come alive. Dynamics 365 also allows a company to break down silos, connect disparate systems, integrate stand-alone apps and consolidate them as one unified, intelligent suite. Ask yourself the following questions: Did your business face productivity challenges either before or during the lockdown? Are you spending too much time and too many resources collecting data from all of your various systems to try to get a clear picture of your business? Are you using multiple applications to manage your different business processes? Are some in the cloud while others remain on site? Do you spend a lot of time collecting and organizing customer and sales data? Does your company have spreadsheets and other documents that are used to track and manage tasks and activities? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions you could be an ideal candidate for Dynamics 365. People who use documents, spreadsheets and multiple versions of business productivity software to manage their business have a big challenge on their hands. For example, let’s consider a company that uses a CRM and a ERP system to oversee its business. With CRM, you could create a customized a view of all your related information such as marketing, sales, customers and service offerings. And with your ERP you could monitor HR, commerce, projects, inventory, accounting, finance, and supply chain. Okay, these traditional methods sound good so far. Ask yourself the following questions: First, these are isolated systems that operate with disconnected business code and logic. Second, these platforms are complex, slow, cumbersome, and very expensive to deploy and integrate — especially if they are not cloud based. Third, they are also difficult and costly to operate, maintain and update. The good news is that Dynamics 365 accounts for all these challenges as it eliminates complexities and unifies disparate systems. It eliminates the need to operate and maintain all of these local systems individually and it removes the challenge of trying to get a holistic view of all your business data. Instead of living in a world that is spread out throughout your business in various documents, calendars, different contact lists, schedules, emails, forecasts, inventory, and so much more, why not take advantage of enterprise-grade-level, cloud technology? If price is your concern, these world-class technologies are quite affordable nowadays. Dynamics 365 can bring together and unify your CRM and ERP systems and their respective capabilities. This will enable you to streamline your business, break down silos, connect intelligent services, join business apps, establish a digital transformation roadmap and reduce costs for deployment, upgrades and maintenance. You’ll achieve a 360-degree view of your operations as all of your business data flows seamlessly within one platform and across your enterprise – it uses a common database so that all entities and data are tightly connected. Next, let’s consider the cloud. With Dynamics 365, you can take advantage of one central cloud-based, intelligent business app that is all-in-one. The SaaS model (Software as a Service), is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses to take advantage of an enterprise-grade technology that has traditionally been cost prohibitive to them and enjoyed exclusively by larger-sized organizations. With SAAS, strategies, people, processes, systems, apps and data are tied together. And you pay for only what you use with the “pay-as-you-go” model. In summary, this becomes your business management solution to run your entire ecosystem and with the cloud, you could provide approved users access at any time from any location. Another advantage of Dynamics 365 is that it provides extensibility with Microsoft Power Platform to extend its capabilities and functionality even further; specifically: Microsoft Power Apps is a low code app that helps you modernize your processes. You can integrate third-party apps right inside Dynamics 365. Microsoft Power Automate provides digitization and robotic process automation of workflow to eliminate repetitive and manual tasks. Microsoft Power BI enables you to receive real-time analytics, easy-to-understand visualizations, infographics, dashboards and reports that can be shared with all business levels to make informed decisions. Microsoft Power Virtual Agents allows you to utilize plug and play virtual chat bots so that you can address internal and external customer needs. One of the issues that companies often ask about is security. What’s great about Dynamics 365 is that it’s all unified so that an administrator only needs a single sign on to access. It has a full security model that restricts non access once inside. For example, someone from shipping viewing delivery information would not have access to HR records. Dynamics 365 also has multi-level approvals that can be defined within the system to enable approval at every appropriate stage – this is also supported by email notification. Another advantage of Dynamics 365 is that you can start small and grow as desired. For instance, you could start by utilizing the technology to only manage your field service operations, your projects, or your marketing effort. With the new year upon us, this could be the right time to consider this powerful business management solution. With the flexibility to start small and scale, and with the advantages as outlined such as lower costs, unification, and ease of use, why not? Also Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations for project or service-oriented businesses How to create Quick Email Campaigns with Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Kirti Sethiya Kirti Sethiya is a Microsoft-certified business applications consultant at Advaiya. Kirti has been involved in a wide array of tailored digital transformation projects over the years. Contact us by filling the form below for Microsoft Dynamics 365
Top signs that its time to upgrade your organization’s ERP system
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning software typically brings together the key facets of a business. Thus, it covers sales, finance, accounting, HR, manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, and other services in a single system.