Tag: cloud computing

Advantages of Holistic Business Management

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A business is a complex system of parts  working together for the benefit of growth and productivity. Traditionally, these parts were separated into different departments, each with a manager and a name on the office door. With the advent of digital integration the traditional model is changing. 

Technology and digital media has revolutionized our lifestyles and the way we think and act, so it’s surprising how many businesses still operate under old assumptions. Their enterprise may still function, and at a profit, but that doesn’t mean they could be more successful with a more integrated and holistic approach. Below are some of the ways businesses are changing. 

CLOUD COMPUTING 

Do you have an integrated computing network for your business? If not, it’s worth remembering that your competitors probably do. The trend today is towards a managed service provider (MSP) which offers a more integrated and holistic approach to network management. 

Instead of having an in-house team of IT experts to solve individual issues or failures to the network, there is a global team to lend support. An MSP provides everything imaginable for a holistic network management approach. 

DIGITAL LOGISTICS 

Most businesses require a distribution network of some kind and depending on the business there are new digital approaches to distribution that save time and cut costs. Whether you’re delivering ecommerce products or operating in the manufacturing sector there are new digital options at your disposal. 

A complete solution, such as https://ramler.com/, will distribute your goods worldwide and to remote locations using experienced project management and freight personnel, warehousing, and integrated freight management. Streamline your global supply chain with Ramler. 

WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY 

To run a global business successfully in 2021 and beyond there is a need for workforce productivity that goes beyond the traditional view of office based nine to five job roles. Analysts now think it better to offer flexible solutions. 

While there are some advantages to a traditional office based workforce it doesn’t suit everyone. Differences in personality and lifestyle means that flexible working hours and situations opens up possibilities for a more productive workforce. 

TRAINING SOLUTIONS 

A workforce will only be effective over the long term if it advances it’s knowledge, skills and capabilities within the sector. Providing adequate training solutions for staff not only equips them better for the industry it motivates them to advance their careers. 

If a distribution network is the arms of your business then a training solution is the brain. This will give your workforce the opportunities need to stay motivated and laid within the business and motivated for the future. 

DIGITAL MARKETING 

Traditional marketing practices such as TV ads and publishing may still have some bit part to play for certain sectors, but the vast majority of businesses today will utilise digital marketing practices to manage the promotional wings of the business. 
Digital marketing includes online SEO marketing, digital advertising, and social media advertising. These practices offer powerful possibilities for reaching markets and engaging with existing markets in New ways.

4 Ways You Can Reduce Costs and Increase Your Business’s Profits

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Every business has a goal to turn in a profit, but several factors such as running costs affect this. Even with more affordable marketing tools and technology, business costs are always on the rise. To expand your business’s profit margin, some practices require change and involve cutting down on expenditures. You can reduce outgoing expenses and increase profitability in the following ways.

1. Cut on advertising costs

Traditional methods of advertising, such as radio, television, and ads are expensive and time-bound. Due to their time limits, you cannot reach a large audience while spending a lot of money. To cut on advertising costs, switch to more affordable and long-term methods. Some of these involve making everyone, including your employees, a marketer, and a salesperson through word of mouth.

Also, you can result in increasing your rankings on Google by creating optimized content on your website. Make your presence known through social media where there is increased use by potential customers and other low-cost methods such as emailing, requesting referrals, and cold calling.

2. Come up with different operating procedures

Some of your business procedures could be costing you money that you can save. For example, you could be having several employees to carry out different activities such as record keeping and updating data when you can automate your business to scale-down your workforce and get more work down.

Also, you can make use of different cloud computing methods to save data. To cut expenses on some administrative functions, consider outsourcing tasks. You can outsource to professionals globally and use affordable means to send money to Nepal.

3. Look for bartering opportunities

Bartering is among the earliest methods of trade through the exchange of goods and services. If you have excess supplies, carry out barter trade businesses offering products and services that you need. You can access opportunities in your local area or online, but for it to work, both parties have to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Bartering can be problematic when it comes to service-to-service exchange, so it is essential to know who you’re contracting with. Bartering saves you money on these products and services, especially during slow periods.

4. Reduce costs on office space

Location is an essential factor in terms of marketing and reaching your target audience. However, you can cut on office space costs by moving from expensive quarters to more affordable ones or negotiate better terms with your landlord. If having an office space isn’t necessary and you can work from home or become a mobile freelancer depending on your type of business.

Apart from saving on office space costs, you will eliminate particular business taxes, utilities, and insurance fees. However, check the laws in your area before starting a home-based business as there could be zoning.

Bottom Line

Running a business can incur many costs, but you can reduce most of these and increase your profit margin. To grow your small business, consider cutting advertising and office space costs, save on money by bartering with other businesses, and change different procedures. These include scaling-down the workforce through business automation, outsourcing, and using technology like cloud computing.

Professions with Pride

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Some professions come with an inherent sense of pride. The idea that you are operating on the very edge of technology and being at the peak of your field is intoxicating in the most positive way. The standard ‘what do you do?’ At the next social occasion, it is no longer just a question you try to avoid, on the contrary, you are more than happy to oblige and tell people what it is that you do. So what are these professions nowadays? Maybe there is still time to adjust your career slightly! Here are three areas where professionals are operating at the very edge of their fields.

If you are into computing and programming doesn’t fill you with horror, you might want to consider going into cloud computing business. Cloud engineers are currently one of the most sought after IT professionals. These people build, maintain, and link cloud services, providing the infrastructure of pretty much anything on the internet. This means your email, the videos you watch, the social media you visit, and much more. 

Most Cloud engineers have a mix of technical skills, combined with commercial acumen and experience with one of these major cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft’s Azure platform or the Google Cloud Platform. Cloud engineers command one of the highest salaries nowadays as exceptional professionals are in high demand and with tech giants engaged in a bidding war for the best out there.

Another industry on the very peak is in chemistry. Obviously, chemistry has been around for many decades, but the last few years the industry has become more specialistic and crucial than ever before. Think of the very rare metals in everyone’s smartphone, the introduction of nearly indestructible glass and the protection of devices from water and dust. The microscopic coating on devices, especially when they are critical to the operation of these devices, has become increasingly more important. 

Companies such as PCT (https://pctconformalcoating.com/) specialize themselves in offering these type of coating processes for pretty much any application possible. With all the technology we surround ourselves, and the increased robustness we will demand of these devices, the coating is becoming increasingly important.

If both cloud computing and chemistry is too technical for you, you might want to consider becoming a content creator. The internet has given us the possibility to find any niche (and mass) audience from the comfort of your own home (or studio). Now is the best time to be an artist/creator as with minimal investment upfront you can find your audience and build up a following. 

This could lead to getting some steady income to continue to be able to devote time to your craft. The world of creators has been flooded with plenty of individuals trying to get to the upper echelons of the industry, most will fail. So it will be a lot of effort, persistence and some luck to make it into a paid career. The best creators are creative, flexible, and have a good grasp of the zeitgeist. They are able to engage, move, and make their viewers think. Not a bad place to be for those inclined to the creative side of things.

Your Office, Anywhere

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You’ve decided to take the plunge. You’ve left your corporate structured, nine-to-five job with its regular income and its stability. There was scope for progression there, but somehow it might feel that ploughing your heart and soul into somebody else dreams is not for you. For you, the joy of business is planting the seed yourself; then watching your dreams grow large as you nurture them.

So, you’ve got your idea. You’ve even managed to pull some savings together to get you off the ground. You have reordered your lifestyle to accommodate the personal risk you’re taking and you’re off. You are in business! Now comes the real challenge, the hard work and, if you play it right, the freedom to live as you want while your business flourishes.

The type of business you are operating will largely dictate the type of physical space you need to operate in. Obviously, if you need a space where your customers need to come to you, like a restaurant or store, then real estate is pivotal in your planning. But for so many types of businesses these days, such as web design, copywriting, and so many service-based industries, it is less about the physical office. With the growth of cloud computing, a lot of your work can be done from anywhere in the world. It might sound cliche to say that you want your office to be a sun bed on the beach of some idyllic Greek island, but with a laptop, internet connection and good online business support, you can connect with your customers or provide your services remotely.

This kind of freedom does sound amazing though. There’s no boardroom, no need for a tie. If you want to set a business with partners in other cities, or even on the other side of the world; there are so many online collaboration tools out there. You could have face to face conferencing, brainstorming sessions, have PowerPoint presentations, set agendas and deadline reminders for your team.

You might be supplying a product which you never need to handle, manage warehouse facilities for or ship yourself. By outsourcing fulfillment, you are free to be where life suits you. There’s no need to pay rent on a building that frankly depresses you. There’s no worry about hiring or firing teams to handle your stock. It almost feels like virtual reality.

The returns in terms of quality of life from making this kind of switch can be immense. You would have the flexibility to live your life how you need to; if you have a young child, you can be around as they grow up instead of stuck in a building away from them for most of your waking life. But, there are some things to consider. With the conventional nine-to-five, it’s much easier to leave your work at home. It is very important to set yourself rules, work during set times, and be sure and always find the time to enjoy life as much as possible.

New Trend: Citizen Developers

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One of the latest trends we are seeing in the technology industry is citizen developers. Citizen developers are users who create new business applications by others to use and benefit from, using corporate IT-sanctioned runtime environments and developments.

This emerging trend means that end users are able to develop a host of enterprise application by using model-driven platforms and cloud computing services, such as https://www.simplyclouds.com/. This is beneficial because users are able to avoid learning programming languages, using platforms that leverage away from code, making building and development of the possible for a larger number of people.

While these model-driven platforms are mostly visually based workflows, it is still necessary to have an understanding of the principles behind application design and development in order to be a successful citizen developer.

Why Citizen Developers Are The Next Big Thing

Citizen developers are enhancing the world of IT, and there are a few reasons why this trend seems to be so up and coming in technology news.

  •    No and Low Code Solutions are Easier and Cheaper to Maintain – it is no secret that custom developed applications can be quite costly, and ongoing support is often grossly underfunded, with the development team moving on to develop new applications, leaving the old ones to lack updates and support. Also, new applications are introduced to the market at a faster rate than older ones are retired, which can present a problem. The advantage of citizen-developed apps is that they are mostly low or zero code configuration, and are oftentimes deployed on SaaS or PaaS platforms. Because of this, these applications should require less maintenance and are easily enhanced if deemed business-critical.
  •    New Applications are Developed and Deployed More Quickly – Because citizen developers are using a more simplified approach to app development they are able to get more applications created in a smaller window of time, improving our business tools greatly, as the main focus of citizen developers is to create internal applications that allow people to work better, smarter, and faster. With up to 80% of code eliminated by using drag and drop development options the need for in-depth development skills is negated.
  •    A More Efficient Use Of Existing Resources – When internal IT staff adopt a citizen developer role they are able to use the organization’s existing resources to create very business-specific applications that improve operations. When processes are streamlined, it is easier to keep up on the workload, and IT staff can then focus their attention on more important tasks and bigger projects. Head to https://tallyfy.com/streamline-improve-business-process/ for more details. It is also considerably more cost-effective than paying an outside developer to develop your applications, putting less of a strain on financial resources.

In a nutshell, citizen developers appear to be such an emerging trend because of the need for business users to have a better, more efficient way to build applications. Advances in technology have provided this opportunity, and citizen developers are taking it and running with.

Optimize Startup Performance For More Efficiency

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Funding And Cloud Optimization

Obviously one of the best ways to increase your startup’s performance is going to involve using funding solutions from crowdfunding sources and other similarly-aligned options. But you can’t predict what kind of funding is going to come in from such options.

So you can’t depend on it. While crowdfunding is a great way to help ensure your startup can go where it is designed to go, it’s not 100% reliable. More reliable options involve streamlining existing operations so that they can be handled with the littlest loss of expense.

Another way to optimize operations is through time sheets. If there’s one thing that holds true for almost all businesses, it’s the fact that they need a way to track how much time their employees are spending on work. Traditionally, Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to option that many businesses prefer for time tracking.

If you’ve ever used Excel, you know that it can be convenient, and it can also be ridiculously complicated for no discernable reason. Solutions which outsource the complication through cloud-based application innovation save time and money while expanding mobility. Time can be tracked accurately remotely, and without the same hassle traditionally associated with Microsoft Excel.

Advantages Of Modern Tech

Such solutions reduce operational expense. Instead of having to hire someone to keep track of payroll, or spending hours doing it yourself, with a few clicks of the mouse, the job is done.

You’re likely not going to have resources for the necessary employee support your startup needs. You’re going to have to do a lot of the “busy work” yourself, until you build up requisite momentum. Using things like cloud-based applications to optimize your business will save time, money, and keep emotional strain from guiding you into poor decisions.

Application Monitoring

Something else that’s considerable in the modern business environment is the creation and monitoring of applications which have been put together for your business. These applications could be designed for sales, for information, or just for client convenience—a real estate agency with a mortgage calculator and a property finder app on its website can be quite valuable to your target market.

But if you’ve got such an application, you will have to deal with errors. Error-monitoring features come built-in to certain logging frameworks.

When you can continuously monitor your applications, the moment an error crops up it can be rectified. Older methods of monitoring require physical observation. That takes time, and won’t be as effective—sometimes errors can persist for a long time without being detected. Automatic detection solutions catch them regardless.

A lot of the technology covered in this writing so far is facilitated via cloud computing solutions and using such cloud innovations to your advantage. This is a great way to gain competitive edge as a startup. You’re going to have the ability to compete with larger businesses with the cloud. It can provide you the same or similar utility an on-site server can for a fraction of the cost.

Everything Together

Cloud computing can allow you to use Big Data to identify and apply trends as they develop and transform. Additionally, cloud computing can help you to institute and utilize IoT (Internet of Things) solutions which help you see where costs can be curtailed and services optimized.

Have you heard of edge computing? This is like a personal cloud for your business that uses IoT devices instead of servers. Substitute IoT devices for servers, and you understand edge computing. This kind of data transferal and processing is going to increase in size and applicability with time—getting in with such cutting-edge trends now is a wise move for your startup.

Lastly, you do not want to bite off more than you can chew. You want a contingency plan, you want to take steps that are going to make you money, and you do not want to get involved keeping up with the “Joneses” of other operations similar to your own.

Focus on optimizing what you have as best you can, and you’ll likely see profitable results over time. The best thing you can do as a startup is to provide good products and services cost-effectively, and in an organizationally optimized, cutting-edge way.