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2012 is the year of Cloud Computing

February 15, 2012 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Cloud Computing

According to James Caan of Dragons Den fame, 2012 will be the year of the Cloud with Cloud Computing and Cloud based technology driving economic and financial recovery. According to Cann and other business Growth experts, Cloud Computing will connect vision with capability, allowing entrepreneurs to launch business ideas quickly and profitably from day one.

The Cloud is not just for start ups, enterprises are discovering the flexibility and agility that a Cloud based business solution can offer. A typical saving can be made in investment in infrastructure. Why spend 100s of thousands on networking, server equipement and building infrastructure to house it all when the Cloud offers this as part of the software rental? SaaS or Software as a service is the common term for cloud based software rented as you use it. This added with all the costs of technical staff to man and maintain legacy systems means significant savings can be appreciated with no loss of s ervice (or in most cases better services).

With workforces changing the way they work, having locked systems anchored to a building does not fit the mobile worker model. Yes of course there is a miriade of connectivity technologies to link to these systems, but they will never offer the fluidity and flexibility of Cloud Based business services.

With major trusted IT providers like IBM, Google and Amazon offering Cloud based services, you know this is not just a flash in the pan, but a service you can trust today and moving forward.

At Pulse Business Software, we don’t suggest you just dump everything you have and switch overnight. This simply is not the way to implement any system. Most of our clients “test the water” first with a pilot project to solve an issue in one part of their business – usually the service or helpdesk – then as the ROI starts to be shown (usually very quickly!) and confidence in the overall system grows, migrating over legacy systems to Cloud Based applications for the rest of the business like sales, financial, stock control and project management.

With more and more mobile technologies becoming available to workers like smart phones, ipad type devices, tablets etc and with internet hotspots just about everywhere, why not capitalise on the Cloud as a means of driving your business. Contact Pulse Business Software now to discuss how cloud based business applications can change the way you work forever.

Filed Under: Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to avoid Data Migration Failure

November 30, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Data Migration for Cloud Based Systems

Moving from a legacy system to a new cloud based system poses many challenges, but the most important one is moving the data over from the old to the new system.

This can be viewed as an opportunity to clean up and rationalise your data, simplifying it and cleaning it, as well as consolidating various disparate systems into one, making the data more useable.

It can also be viewed as a complete disaster which will bring the very business to its knees if not done correctly and with a high degree of intelligence. Let me say that any data migration is full of risks and problems and invariably some data will be lost or corrupted unless all steps are taken to minimise the risks involved from the start.

It is also fair to say that most projects dealing with data migration experience cost and timeframe overruns, causing a delay in deployment, usually due to over optimistic and unrealistic deadlines or constraints’ being agreed before proper analysis has been carried out of the current state of the data.

At Pulse Business Software, we are engaged in doing very large, complex data migrations and it is through bitter experience we have mastered how to migrate data correctly and minimise risks to our clients in the process.

Here are a few of our top tips to help you migrate your data:

Understand what the business is trying to achieve – is it consolidation of data, deploying new systems, merging data etc. What are the measures of success and how will you inform people of the progress made and by when.

Define the project scope – Who is doing what, by when and how. Define what tasks need to be performed, the tools you are going to use and the outcomes. Outlining the migration methodology you will use in the migration process is vital, with most it will be ETL (Exact, transform and load) but it could be hand coding and replication etc.

Define the skills required – whilst you know your data well, do you have the team and skills to do this internally? Data manipulation is skilled and time consuming work so employing external specialists may be the best option. Don’t forget you still have your day job to perform as well.

Understand your current data structure – What state is your current data in? How many systems are you consolidating and which is the most correct one (you would be amazed at the data inaccuracy). If you do not spend sufficient time in data profiling, your data migration will not be successful. Data quality is the most important part of the whole project so it must carry the biggest proportion of your effort.

Outline and define your process – make sure everybody know what and how you are going to do the migration. Are you going for a big bang approach or will it be a gradual migration of key systems first. Will you be running the old system in parallel to ensure data integrity and user confidence? When will there be downtime?

Management of data – Making sure you data is managed properly moving forward is also vital. A data migration is an ideal opportunity to get all legacy data correct and to ensure future data is improved.

Define policies for your data – Again, a new broom sweeps clean so make sure you define your policies and procedures for any data. How will you add , amend and delete records, who can or cannot do this, define data retention policies and storage for redundant data etc. These policies must be visible and enforceable.

Define testing and acceptance criteria – There are 3 important and vital steps to take here: Test, Test and Test again! Define the test criteria and acceptance criteria (ie when it is fine to go live etc). If you do not test at every stage, your migration will fail. Confidence in the data must be your prime objective as it is so vital to the business and success of the project.

Define the end of the project – have all objectives been met, it there a clear audit trail for compliance etc.

Project Closure – As things start to draw to a close, it is important that you step back and look at what has happened over the project, the good the bad and the ugly. It is important to gain feedback from the staff working on the project, the users and management. A lessons Learnt log is invaluable as doubtless this will not be your last data migration project!

With businesses having to deploy systems which increase productivity and reduce costs, staying with your old systems may not be an option for much longer and eventually you will have to change systems, so why not go with the experts in providing Cloud Based Business Solutions – Pulse Business Software.

Contact us now to see how we can help you through your data migration problem.

Filed Under: Business Software, Cloud Computing, Data Migration, Software Solutions, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Have you got and Effective Helpdesk?

November 14, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

In any service industry, your helpdesk will make or break you. If you are providing a timed response type service (most IT Companies offer this as a contract service), it is vital you meet deadlines, preferably exceeding them, otherwise you may suffer more than a few financial penalties – you may lose that valuable contract. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Software, Cloud Computing, Help Desk Software, Software as a Service, Software Solutions, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , ,

Its never too late to change your help desk software

September 22, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

One of the most common problems we see is that companies think that when they have been using the same systems for so long, it is impossible to change. This is definitely not the case.

Most companies have legacy service desk software systems, which have either been an off the shelf package which has been modified over the years by “Old Fred”  and has worked OK, but lacks expansion and flexibility to cope with new working practices, so a work around is created to cope, or they ignore and put up with the inadequacies of the system and usually have created sub systems which are totally unrelated and require huge amounts of effort to work.

It does not have to be this way.

OK,  so the thought of changing systems and moving all the legacy data and training and effort to do this seems too big to cope with – a bit like going to the dentist really – you know that a new service desk software package would help the business in the long-term, but you kind of live with the toothache…we have all been there!

We often go into this situation. “Old Fred” will defend his position and say that the system is flexible to cope…the Service Desk manager does not want the disruption to the service he is delivering…but at the end of the day, is the business delivering the value to the clients or are the costs to deliver a service too high in terms of staffing and personnel?

One question to ask is “Are we constantly fighting to keep delivering a service and are we jeopardising our client base by not providing what they need?” I would suggest the answer is going to be “yes”.

At Pulse Business Software, we make it easy to deal with these problems. We have a team of experts who face this situation on a daily basis. Manipulating data and working out how to migrate legacy systems onto a new web based service desk platform is tough, but our approach minimises the pain and makes sure disruption is kept to a minimum.

Our delivery practices have evolved and developed over the years, moving our clients from old legacy systems to hosted SaaS systems, thus delivering great capability and reduced costs, and giving visibility to both management and the client – a vital component in service desk applications today.

So rather than keep fighting to keep your head above water with a system that fails to deliver today, speak to Pulse Business Software or Contact Us Now to see what can be done for your business.

By the way, “Old Fred” is seen as a vital player in most scenarios and his knowledge of working practices and data structures really helps in delivering a new system – every company has one!

 

Filed Under: Business Intelligence, Business Process Automation, Business Software, Help Desk Software, Project Management Software, SaaS, Software as a Service, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , , ,

Should security risks stop you deploying Cloud Applications?

September 8, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

With more and more organisations looking to either pilot or deploy Cloud Based Applications or Software as a Service SaaS in their business, is security really an issue or is this being used as a red herring by some IT departments to hold up or stop potential deployments?

One of the most asked questions we come across is “Is the cloud less secure than my internal systems?”

The answer is simple; Pulse Business Software is designed to exceed user expectations, and so is significantly more secure than the systems the client already has currently deployed. We are constantly amazed at this question, especially when we ask one back like “So describe your current arrangements so we can compare for you”. This is often embarrassing as most companies have little or no security in place.

With Pulse Business Software, access is tightly controlled by module, routine, department and user – a sophisticated matrix allows infinite control over who can see or do what – the basic concept is everything is excluded, so you have to allow rather than deny access. The Pulse security matrix is simple to set up but very powerful, so administrators can easily make the required changes to access and accessibility as required.

All transmissions using Pulse Business Software are encrypted, so again the physical data is protected from intrusion and is held safely and securely at the provider. As a further security measure, periodic automatic user password forced changes can be implemented to make sure all users must change passwords regularly adding further levels of security.

One incidental side effect is of deploying Cloud Based applications within an organisation is that it forces users to abandon current practices like using USB data sticks to carry data around and by removing company data off desktops and laptop applications, moving it to a secure location via the Cloud Application. This is its self will create improved security by removing a potential source of data from many places to one place. As all cloud applications use browser based technology, no data is stored on any local machine – always a problem in the past, especially when the machine gets lost or stolen.

The bottom line is that working practices are demanding more flexibility and access than ever before, so regardless of whether you are deploying a Cloud Application or are allowing connectivity to legacy systems, security will always be a potential issue. The real thing to bear in mind is that a cloud provider’s business relies on the fact that they are providing a secure application so security is paramount to being able to deliver this.

One other thought is one of budgets. A service provider will spend a large proportion of its budget on security, highly trained personnel and technology to prevent their reputation as a provider from being breached, so they are very likely to be ahead of the game in comparison to most organisations.

So, if you are thinking of deploying or using cloud Based Applications like Pulse Business Systems, now is the perfect time to review your security systems. For a free consultation on how Pulse can change your business, contact us now.

 

Filed Under: Business Automation, Business Continuity, Business Software, Cloud Computing, SaaS, Software as a Service, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , ,

BAM Your Business now

July 22, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Business Activity Monitoring

Keeping an eye on your business is essential to know where you are going. Most businesses have some method of doing this, but most are out of date, require input of some description to keep them updated and often reflect fairly simple measurements, but at least it is a start.

At Pulse Business Software, we believe as your business information is there, it can be measured and displayed to show business activity, performance and most importantly compare this to goals and objectives in real time.

This is essentially called BAM or Business Activity Monitoring.

So what does this all mean? A definition of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is the aggregation, analysis, and presentation of real time information about activities inside organizations and involving customers and partners, especially with regards to acceptable tolerances or goals for the company.

Pulse Business Software’s BAM dashboard systems are driven by business events, fed directly from Pulse Business Software’s logs in real time, so you know exactly what is happening. Our BAM systems are real time where data displayed is not dependent upon a user refreshing a query or a query scheduler.

BAM systems are process oriented so the goals of Business Activity Monitoring are to provide real time information about the status and results of various operations, processes, and transactions so business decisions can be informed, quickly address problem areas, and re-position organisations to take full advantage of emerging opportunities.

An example of a typical use of Pulse Business Software’s BAM dashboard is to provide real time visibility into how business events such as orders, process queues, network failures, database overloads, etc affect the progress of business transactions, permitting real-time business decisions in response to system events, providing statistics on business process performance.

BAMs can be customised to meet the needs of the business, departments, teams and individuals and are particularly useful in Service environments and Sales environments where transactions are involving critical timed contract SLA’s, call centre activities or financial goals.

BAM’s have been proven to effect businesses in other ways such as:

  • Cutting response times to deal with issues
  • Increased customer satisfaction
  • Highlight priority issues
  • Increased productivity
  • Increased employee performance levels
  • Improved visibility of high perfomers
  • Increase moral in workforce

Whatever your business, implementing Pulse Business Software can improve your performance and profitability, but implementing Business Activity Monitoring will keep your business on track. For more information on Business Activity Monitoring and how it can improve your visibility and performance, contact Pulse Business Software now.

 

Filed Under: BAM, Business Activity Monitoring, Business Automation, Business Process Automation, Business Software, Software as a Service, Software Solutions, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , , , ,

New Management Appointment at Pulse Business Software

June 8, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Not a month goes by at Pulse Business Software without some exciting developments. We are delighted to announce the appointment of our new Operations Manager, Keith Norris.

Keith has been with Pulse Business Software since 2001, and has cut his teeth in all areas of the business, from customer service, through programming, and most recently by implementing our release cycle business process.

Keith has extensive experience in other businesses too, both in the UK and in South Africa, and brings a fresh way of running the Pulse engine room.

So, what will Keith be responsible for?

Keith is responsible for our current customers and existing software. In other words, the buck stops with him for quality and functionality of the software you are currently using. He doesn’t have to worry about new business, or major new developments, which means he is totally committed to making sure Pulse serves your business needs.

Other new changes to the Pulse Structure

Vaughn Cleminson, our Technical Director is applying his innovative talents to extending Pulse in ways that go beyond current functionality. Vaughn is working on Pulse’s new Azure-based cloud-computing technology to create a new platform with extended functionality.

Another project is Pulse Community, which allows Pulse users to share information on their shared customers and much more. Tighter Microsoft Outlook Integration is also the subject of his attention, and so the list goes on…basically any new innovations will go through Vaughn.

How does it affect Pulse Business Software Clients?

The only affects are that you will get better customer service, new products and services faster, and be able to access leading edge technology to benefit your business. If you are not a client already, well contact us now to see how Pulse Business Software can change your business and the way you work forever.

 

 

Filed Under: Help Desk Software, Hosted CRM/ERP, SaaS, Software as a Service, Uncategorized, Windows Azure Tagged With: , , ,

Moving from legacy systems to SaaS

May 20, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Cloud Computing and SaaS

Most businesses face a common problem – legacy systems. The installed systems have probably helped the business move to where it is today – So why is this problem?

One of the greatest issues is the advancement of technology and new, more agile business practices that must be employed (like SaaS) to ensure the future and competitiveness of the business.

Fundamentally, most legacy systems are difficult to integrate into other applications so secondary go-between apps need to be utilised to get this working, for example data mining and reporting tools are purchased to extract the reports required. Whilst these tools may provide a good level of data management, they also add significant cost and complexity to a system, as well as a support overhead to manage and check outputs.

Things that must be considered in any systems is the long term benefits against the costs to maintain, customise and deploy. This has to be compared to the benefits and increase in productivity or output the new system will give. Before even this stage, you must consider how a new system will be used, what will be the outcome required and will it scale to suit your business model now and into the future.

This is where a Cloud Computing application like Pulse Business Software comes into its own. With our approach to gentle migration and seamless integration, our software allows you move at your own speed and deploy what is needed, when it is needed.

For example, Service is one of the common problem areas. How do you manage your support requests or schedule your service engineers? Generally we find disparate systems generally fighting against one another, duplicate entry of data and reliance on one person to manage it all. This leads to inefficiency and failure to deliver, costing you time money and possibly your reputation.

Pulse Business Software’s Service module is a simple to implement, cloud based solution which will radically transform the service arm of you business. It can be implemented alongside other current systems solving the problems faced within this department. Once the benefits are realised, other areas of the business can be easily added to create a single powerful cloud computing solution, like Project Management, Sales (CRM) and Accounts.

Process automation and event driven alerting and reporting will simplify your processes, yielding significant and measurable savings to the business.

Whether you chose Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) or self hosted as the right solution for you, Pulse Business Software has the answer. To us, it’s more about having software that drives your business and returns cost savings and productivity benefits rather than any one form of technology. However, most organisations are looking to Cloud Computing solutions for the flexibility and agility it offers for ever changing working practices.

As with all systems, the prime consideration has to be “Will this software make more money for my business?”. It is a common question but our consultants can help answer this for you, so why not contact Pulse Business Software now to find out.

 

Filed Under: Business Software, Cloud Computing, Help Desk Software, Project Management Software, SaaS, Software as a Service, Web Based Software Tagged With: , , , ,

What is Windows Azure?

May 11, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Here is a short video that describes Windows Azure technology in very simple terms. Keeping things simple is often the best way to get your point over and this nice simple drawing based video really makes the point very well – take a look:

 

So why will this be important moving forward?

At Pulse Business Software are already experimenting with Microsoft corporation’s Windows Azure, looking to develop a new breed of scalability, performance and reliability into applications which will be developed and released over the coming months and years, cementing our position as a quality provider of Cloud Applications to our clients – and to those who are not clients at the moment!

Watch this space for some pretty exciting things to come out of the Pulse Business Software Labs shortly.

If you want to now more about Windows Azure for Business Software, Contact Pulse Business Software now.

*All Rights acknowledged – logo by Microsoft Corporation*

Filed Under: Business Software, Cloud Computing, Hosted CRM/ERP, SaaS, Web Based Software, Windows Azure

Benefits of Cloud based Applications for your IT Help Desk

April 29, 2011 By GrahamChapple Leave a Comment

Pulse Business Software is ideally suited to the IT industry, particularly in the IT Helpdesk arena. Here are a few of the benefits our clients get by using cloud based applications like Pulse.

  • Ease of Use – One of the most common benefits is the simplicity of the software and its ease of use. Using common familiar browsers and not bespoke software makes the system easy to deploy and simple for the operators to use, saving on installation and training. Pulse allows the user to configure their own view to see what is important to them – most liken it to the “iGoogle” type view. As access can be from any browser based device, you can use iPads, smart phones giving it a ubiquitous feel.
  • Out of the Box best practices – Pulse Service module for help desk is pre-configured to work as a best practice application, created over years of experience of creating help desk applications but can easily be re-configured to fit your business practices if you have a current methodology which works for you.
  • Availability – Always on, available from any browser device provides 100% uptime available – perfect for 24×7 operations and “follow the clock” help desk functions.
  • Process Management – configuring standard working practices means you can enforce correct and acceptable working practices across the board.
  • Self Service – Allowing access by your clients to manage and view calls, add new calls and close calls increases efficiency and trust. Built in knowledge base allows many calls to be solved by the client without intervention.
  • Scalability – SaaS models allow for very quick expansion and flexibility, providing a one size fits all solution which you will never outgrow, thus protecting your ongoing investments
  • Constant upgrades – As new capabilities become available, you will get them automatically rolled out to you, meaning no more cumbersome and expensive software upgrades to client and server software – all users will be on the same version instantly.
  • Pay as you go model – You only pay for what us use, so scaling up or down and by each module allows you to budget more effectively. No more buying software licences per machine in case you need it – it’s priced by user by month.
  • Security – Hosting is provided by massive purpose built data centres who’s reputation and business model is all based around security, access prevention and data security – far more than if you held the data yourself. Data is encrypted and secure at all times/
  • Disaster recovery – All data is backed up constantly, so in the event of a disaster, your business can be up and running immediately on any machine with a browser, wherever internet access is provided.

There are more benefits and cost savings associated with each implementation that Pulse Business Software provides, but these are the most common across the board.

Whilst IT clients are a large part of our business, we have many differing applications from low tech to high tech – thus is the flexibility and robustness of the software and cloud based applications produced by Pulse.

Pulse Business Software will meet the needs of your business today and well into the future, providing the flexibility and power you need for the challenging business you run.

For more information  and to discuss how Pulse Business Software can change your business, contact us now.

Filed Under: Business Process Automation, Business Software, Cloud Computing, Disaster recovery, Help Desk Software, SaaS, Software as a Service, Software Solutions, Web Based Software
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