Big Data May Be The Key To A Good Night’s Sleep
Machine learning and Big Data have worked their way into almost every corner of the technology world and industries well beyond it. Media coverage has explored the myriad ways that the latest innovations are changing the way we live. Now machine learning and Big Data technology are poised to change the way we sleep at night.
An intractable problem
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, nearly 70 million Americans suffer from some form of sleep disorder. It’s a massive health crisis that’s associated with a wide range of negative health effects, from increased risk of diabetes and cancer to death from secondary events like automobile accidents and the like. Helping people get enough quality nightly rest has the potential to increase public health as well as save billions of dollars in healthcare costs.
The Big Data approach
As with many other areas of scientific study, the key to advancement is information. In the case of sleep studies, that means having access to sleep tracking data. That’s where the technology firm Fullpower comes in. Its AI-powered sleep-tracking technology is at the heart of several commercially available sleep tracking products, including the Jawbone UP and the Nike Fuel wearable devices. Devices using Fullpower technologies send telemetry and user data back to the company, which has created a database comprising information on more than 250 million nights of sleep.
Informed designs
Sleep pattern data isn’t limited to academic studies. It also informs the latest mattress designs, many of which feature sleep-tracking technologies built right in. By collecting specific user sleep pattern data and comparing it to the conclusions drawn from the existing databases, companies like ReST have started offering mattresses that can react in real time to user movements, temperatures, and sleep cycles – changing firmness and other properties to create the perfect sleep environment.
A valuable market
There are obvious societal benefits to the improvements that Big Data and machine learning make to our collective sleep patterns, but there’s also a huge financial windfall at stake. The global mattress market alone is expected to be worth $ 43.43 billion annually by 2024, and the global sleep aid market is expected to reach $ 79.85 billion annually by 2022. Companies that can leverage these nascent Big Data and machine learning technologies to develop products that support a good night’s sleep might come to dominate both of those markets.
Changing lives
While scientists have just begun to work their way through sleep data, they are optimistic that it will yield a breakthrough in the near term, which would have been impossible without the latest in machine learning and Big Data technologies. You might soon wake up after a full night of restful sleep, and have a computer to thank for it.
To learn more about other sectors being shaped by machine learning and Big Data, read Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Translation Industry. But Will It Work?
Understanding CRM Solutions For Microsoft Dynamics 365
In this blog, we will highlight a few key points of a solution including a solution overview for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online and on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2016, and Dynamics CRM Online. We’ll also cover how solutions operate (managed and unmanaged), and how to create a solution.
Solutions are a group of components that can be exported and imported into any CRM environment. It may work best for developers to create a solution and make changes within a Sandbox or non-live environment prior to exporting it to a Production instance.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 out of the box functionalities come with pre-configured entities, such as – Leads, Contact, Accounts, and Email, etc. As for the solution component, there are many items that are customizable.
After the Solution is created you may create different Entities with customized components. Some of the existing Entities would then come with Forms, Views, Fields, and Dashboards, etc. The purpose of a solution component is to keep track of what is customized using what are called managed or unmanaged solutions.
Exporting a solution provides you with two different options. Exporting a managed or unmanaged solution is different. An unmanaged solution essentially allows you or the new user to make changes to the solution after you have already imported the new solution. With a managed solution, this essentially locks in those certain changes you have made. Every time these are imported, those changes cannot be changed and allows you to lock those in.
Let’s walk through how to create a solution:
Creating a solution:
1. Open the necessary environment you have and navigate to the URL.
Ex: https://yourorganization.com.dynamics.com
2. Within the navigation bar, click on Settings.
3. Lastly, click Solutions underneath the Customizations heading.
4. After clicking on the New button, a solution form will be displayed. The following is an example of what the solution form should look like.
5. Now you may create the display name and enter in the Version Number dependent on your organizations need.
Finally, you should know some things before using Dynamics 365 CRM solutions. If you have a managed solution within a Sandbox environment and that was removed, you will run into the issue of not being able to make original changes. So, if there is any doubt, please remember to export both a managed and unmanaged solution.
Looking for more Dynamics 365 tips and tricks? Be sure to subscribe to our blog!
Happy Dynamics 365’ing!
ETL Integration: Best Practices in 30 Seconds
The efficiency of ETL integration can make or break the rest of your data management workflow. Want to get the most from your ETL processes? Keep reading for high-performance ETL integration best practices.
Minimize data input
The less data that you have going into ETL process, the faster and cleaner your results are likely to be. That’s why you want to strip out any unnecessary data as early in the ETL process as possible.
If you have redundant entries in a database, for example, clean those up before the ETL process starts, rather than spending time transforming that data only to cull it later.
Use incremental data updates
In addition to eliminating unnecessary data input from the ETL integration process, you can speed ETL integration by using incremental data updates. That means that when your data sets are updated, you add only the new data into your ETL pipeline, rather than replacing all of the existing data and starting again from scratch. Incremental data updates can be tricky to implement as part of an ETL integration solution, but the time it takes is worth it.
Maximize data quality
The old saying “crap in, crap out” applies to ETL integration. If you want fast, predictable ETL results, make sure that the data that you feed into your ETL processes is as clean as possible. Automated data quality tools can help with this task by finding things like missing and inconsistent data within your data sets.
Achieving the highest-quality data requires not just cleaning up data sets prior to ETL integration, but performing data quality maintenance on an ongoing, continuous basis.
Automate, automate, automate
It almost goes without saying that automating your ETL integration processes is key to making them fast and efficient. But since we live in an age when achieving full automation can be tough, especially for teams dealing with legacy infrastructure, tools, and processes, it’s worth reminding ourselves how important automation is.
In practice, ETL integration automation means minimizing the role of human operators and relying on tools alone to clean up data, move it through the ETL pipeline and verify the results.
Use parallel processing
Automation not only saves your staff a lot of headaches, but also makes it possible to do ETL integrations in parallel — or, in other words, doing multiple integrations at once.
No efficient ETL processes should be serial in nature. Instead, time-to-value is minimized by doing as many ETL integrations at the same time as your infrastructure allows.
Keep databases (and tables) small
The larger your databases and database tables, the longer ETL processes tend to take. You can often achieve an ETL integration performance boost by breaking large databases into smaller ones.
Cache data
Data caching, which means keeping recently used data in memory or on disks where it can be accessed again quickly, is a handy and easy-to-implement way to speed ETL integration.
Establish and track metrics
How effective are your ETL integration processes, and how are they improving over time? The only way to answer those questions is to establish, collect and analyze metrics that provide visibility into ETL processes.
Make sure to download our eBook, “The New Rules for Your Data Landscape“, and take a look at the rules that are transforming the relationship between business and IT.
Square's Cash App Supports Bitcoin in All US States
Square on Monday announced that Cash App users could buy and sell bitcoin in all 50 U.S. states.
Red, white, and bitcoin. Now you can use Cash App to buy bitcoin in all 50 states. pic.twitter.com/D4fhVRz7WL
— Cash App (@CashApp) August 13, 2018
Square’s share prices jumped Tuesday to an all-time high of US$ 75.15 on the news that Cash App downloads had exceeded those of PayPal’s rival Venmo service. Total Cash App downloads stood at 33.5 million compared to Venmo’s 32.9 million.
Cash App this year will contribute $ 30-40 million, or about 2-3 percent of Square’s adjusted net revenue, according to Nomura analyst Dan Doley.
Cash App’s History With Bitcoin
Square began testing Cash App’s bitcoin purchasing option last fall and officially launched the option early this year.
However, it was not available in four states — New York, Georgia, Hawaii and Wyoming — because of their more restrictive regulation of bitcoin transactions.
Square later extended the option to Wyoming after it removed a requirement that companies dealing with virtual currencies must maintain cash reserves equal to any cryptocurrency funds held for their customers.
Square then became the sixth firm to be awarded a virtual currency license, better known as a “BitLicense,” by the NYC Department of Financial Services.
Cryptocurrencies Flailing
Cryptocurrencies recently have been taking a beating.
Bitcoin’s price fell below $ 6,000, considered a critical mark, before recovering Tuesday morning. That is a far cry from last year’s high water mark of nearly $ 20,000.
“Bitcoins have no intrinsic value,” noted Michael Jude, program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.
“Anything that is backed by nothing tangible has a floor value of zero. So, making it easier to buy in just makes it easier to lose in the long run,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“The bubble for bitcoin is over,” remarked Edgar Radjabli, managing partner at
Apis Capital Management.
Bitcoin “may end up starting another bull run or keep going down,” he told the E-Commerce Times, but it currently “does not look like it’s going away. There’s still over $ 200 billion in crypto market cap out there.”
Bitcoin “may certainly fall further but the cryptocurrency market does not appear to be collapsing,” Radjabli added.
Seen in that light, Square’s announce makes sense, he said.
Square’s Bitcoin Rationale
Square CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed the view that the Internet eventually will have a single currency, and that it will be bitcoin.
“I do believe that cryptocurrencies will become the medium of exchange for the Internet because they’re so much easier,” Radjabli said. “Traditional banking has too many middlemen, too much friction, slow transfer times, and unnecessary overregulation.”
However, bitcoin will not be the cryptocurrency of choice, in his view.
Making Money on Bitcoin
Square generated more than $ 70 million in bitcoin-related activity in the first half of 2018 and earned less than $ 500,000 in trading fees, meaning its bitcoin-related expenses were very high.
That raises the question of whether it has been getting an acceptable ROI on its bitcoin activities.
Cryptocurrency is not a major monetization engine for the firm, Square CFO Sarah Friar reportedly has said. Rather, the goal is to continue to drive utility in the Cash App.
However, Dorsey seems to view the move into bitcoin as a learning experience.
Square “may be only counting their transaction fees here,” Radjabli suggested.
“They are likely also making the spread between the price they are charging the client and what they’re getting on the market,” he pointed out.
“I think [bitcoin] can be a monetization engine because Square can make more than 1 percent — their current average profit margin on merchant processing — on bitcoin transactions because of the spread,” Radjabli suggested.
Vegas Revisited
“Using bitcoin as a learning experience is interesting, but for every winner there are lots of users,” Frost’s Jude pointed out. “Bitcoin has turned into a way for high rollers to take money from inexperienced investors.”
So long as the current economic expansion lasts, cryptocurrencies will do well, he said. “Once people are pressed by an economic downturn, the cryptocurrency market will explode.”
Cryptocurrency “is the hot topic right now, and the get-rich-quick crowd has latched onto it,” Jude observed, “but most people don’t understand it, and many have lost money in the market.”
Regulators have been taking an interest in cryptocurrency, Jude noted, and “that’s not a good sign. Once they figure out this is just an unregulated gambling concern and not a true market, they will move to either regulate it or shut it down.”
Some countries “have basically regulated cryptocurrency out of existence,” he said. “Expect many others to follow suit.”
There is too much uncertainty around the cryptocurrency market, Radjabli said. “Regulators need to create a clear framework that serves to protect consumers but is efficient and not overly burdensome.”
Cryptocurrency has been gaining ground among merchants, but its acceptance has been limited because of volatility, Radjabli said.
Still, “the future of crypto is not speculative,” he maintained. “It’s technology that allows quick, inexpensive, efficient payments globally.”
Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.
Sales Process and CRM Success
Your CEO wants to grow your company and realizes that a full service, integrated CRM like Microsoft Dynamics 365 will be an important part of your strategy.
Your sales team is a bit hesitant. They don’t want to be micro-managed by an inflexible, automated sales process.
Implementing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can transform a company. However, if it is not adopted by users, it can be a costly failure. The key to CRM success starts with your sales process.
Here are some points to consider when you are considering CRM for Sales:
Sales is a process
The success of your sales team does not depend entirely on good people skills and closing techniques. As valuable as those are, there is a whole process that goes along with sales success. When your business was small, you may have been able to get by with a fairly informal sales process – maybe even as informal as word-of-mouth. But if you want to grow and scale, you need to transform your sales processes from informal to formal.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives you the tools your team needs to formalize your sales process.
Sales Processes are not like other business processes
Thinking of sales processes like your other business processes can result in over-engineered and overly-rigid sales processes that don’t allow for the individuality of your sales reps, your product, your customers, or the complexity of various selling scenarios.
Also, this approach sends reps the message that management believes that anyone can do the sales job just by following the process. This results in disengaged and unhappy reps that are even less effective at closing new business than they would be with no process at all.
Some business processes can be standardized, but sales processes require a lot of flexibility to account for ever-changing human factors. However, they also require a rigid core that allows them to be repeatable, measurable, improvable, and scalable. Sales processes are a combination of personality and procedure.
The sales process comes before the CRM
Successful sales managers were using sales processes long before modern CRM solutions became available. Microsoft Excel remains one of the most popular sales process applications, and intranet tools like enable Excel-based sales processes to be tracked across a team.
In fact, our research has found that when sales leaders develop, test, and refine a sales process before rolling out a CRM solution, their CRM solution rollout tends to be much more successful.
Your sales process may not be built into your CRM
If that CRM demo left you with the impression that you could just purchase the solution and you would have a sales process that you could start using, you might have been misled. Looking at built-in functionality for lead and opportunity management and pipeline reporting can be a siren song luring the sales leader or system administrator to believe this functionality should be leveraged right away.
The reality is that sales processes differ widely from company-to-company, even within the same industry. Each company needs to configure and refine a sales process that is unique to their products, culture, and customers.
Buying CRM software is the easy part, but it must be configured to deliver the right process for your sales team. This is where a CRM partner who understands your processes and your goals can be invaluable.
if you’d like to learn more about a proven method for defining and refining sales processes.
Successful CRM projects focus first on bringing efficiency and visibility to existing processes. Forcing the team to not only learn new software, but also a new process, almost inevitably results in a failure to fully adopt the CRM solution. For many organizations CRM success might mean starting with better contact management or call reporting, and only adding sales processes once the other functionality has been fully adopted.
Our experts at C5 Insight will help you avoid CRM failure and reach your technology goals.
By C5 Insight,
Accelerating Digital Transformation In The Wholesale Distribution Industry
In May of this year, Daniel Newman and Fred McClimans, analysts from Futurum Technology Insights, published a white paper in collaboration with SAP. The findings cited in the paper provide distributors with insight into opportunities to overcome barriers and challenges to innovation and to leverage those innovations to improve core operations and to reimagine their businesses.
Distributors should select, implement, and leverage technologies that work together to enable innovations that help them embrace new and alternative business models and processes. Below are some of the key points for wholesale distributors to consider:
State of the industry
Distributors are focusing on becoming more agile, nimble, and efficient. They are also becoming more customer-centric, working to provide a more personalized experience across an omnichannel environment. They are also leveraging the power of data to provide insights into internal operations, as well as into customer requirements and segmentation. They are also extending sensor-based inventory management, their e-commerce channel, and renewable service offerings.
Industry challenges
Distributors are challenged to improve profitability due to encroaching competitors, to improve their ability to offer personalized services and outcome-based customer experiences. They need new technologies to create and expand a digital ecosystem. They need a common digital core for sales, purchasing, supply chain planning and execution, and finance to coexist in a single system of record. They also need agility to connect all aspects of the partner ecosystem, including suppliers and customers.
The value of innovation
The traditional approach to success and profitability in the wholesale distribution industry centered on operational efficiency and supply chain management. But that approach now needs to extend through to customer engagement and services innovation. It now also involves predictive models that leverage machine learning to anticipate shifts in demand and allow for more informed decisions that can be based on real-time data and insights from both suppliers and customers. A true digital core can allow for increased market awareness, agility, and decision making around product and delivery strategies.
Taking the next steps
- Work to improve your core business to better differentiate your company
- Work to remove human bias and errors and leverage data drive smarter business decisions
- Work to truly understand the current and emerging behaviors of customers to generate new business models and processes
I found the Accelerating Digital Transformation in the Wholesale Distribution Industry white paper valuable and informative. It helps educate distributors on how game-changing technology is evolving at an incredible pace, and on how the decisions they make can have a profound impact on the company’s future. For more detailed information, download the paper here.
Constellation Research Recognizes NetSuite as a Leader in Enterprise Cloud Finance
Constellation Research Recognizes NetSuite as a Leader in Enterprise Cloud Finance
Posted by Barney Beal, Content Director
Industry analyst firm Constellation Research this week named Oracle NetSuite to its Q3 2018 Enterprise Cloud Finance Shortlist.
NetSuite was one of seven vendors named to the list, which is compiled through conversations with early adopter clients, independent analysis, and briefings with vendors and partners.
R “Ray” Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation and author of the report, writes:
Enterprise cloud finance applications provide the backbone of accounting, finance, and treasury for organizations. These applications automate processes such as financial close cycles, regulatory requirements and cash management. The software supports the financial operations and delivers the core foundation for ERP and back‐office systems. The move to the Cloud enables financial apps to access unlimited compute power, improve integration across multiple data sources, and consume faster cycles of innovation and regulatory updates.
Criteria in the report include: fixed asset accounting; special purpose ledgers; profitability analysis; cost center accounting and more.
NetSuite has been in the cloud computing business for 20 years and is trusted by more than 40,000 organizations and subsidiaries in 199 countries and territories. We provide a full suite of applications for customers that span fast-growing start-ups to global enterprises. The Constellation Research report is further proof of NetSuite’s ability to serve large enterprises with complex financial requirements.
For more on analyst validation of NetSuite’s functionality and vision, learn why IDC named NetSuite a Leader in Point of Sale Software, why Gartner named NetSuite a Leader in Core Financial Management Software for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises and why Forrester Consulting says NetSuite Can Deliver ROI of 380 percent.
by NetSuite filed under
Little Goat Loves Attention
Kid play.
“We found a cute kid….”
Image courtesy of https://imgur.com/gallery/3Z8RSZt.
Schedule Board Enhancements in Dynamics 365 for Field Service
Within Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service, the Schedule Board is a great tool that allows you the visual insight to see where your technicians are as well as the status of what they are working on. This is a very beneficial feature, but the ability to see additional information from the board would be helpful too.
By double clicking on the Initial Public View (or any other schedule boards you may have in your environment) you have the ability to add a little bit of HTML code to show additional details on the bookings that have been created on the Schedule Board.
Below is the snippet of code we are using to modify what is being displayed on the Schedule Board:
You’ll notice the text highlighted in yellow is just static text that is being displayed on the board, whereas the text highlighted in green will allow you to dynamically reference an attribute to be displayed on the board.
Now we can see the output from that little snippet of code, which now displays the Job, Service Account, Customer Asset, the Job Type, as well as the Billing Type. This will populate as long as that attribute contains data (otherwise nothing will display).
Once we hit apply, these changes will be reflected on the Schedule Board once it’s refreshed, allowing our Dispatchers additional insight to what is going on for all Jobs on the board!
Pretty cool, right?
Subscribe to our blog for more Dynamics 365 tips and trucks!
Happy Dynamics 365’ing!
Get to Know Blockchain at TIBCO NOW 2018
TIBCO NOW 2018 is our flagship conference where peers gather to talk about how businesses can continuously compete with innovation and operate at the cutting edge. Together, we’ll explore how to implement all the hottest technologies including cloud, blockchain, AI, and the latest in integration and analytics to optimize operations and create unforgettable customer experiences.
Blockchain became famous as the underlying technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency platforms. But now, blockchain’s distributed ledger system combined with – embedded business logic known as “smart contracts” are proving useful for more than just currency. At TIBCO, we are invested in helping our customers get the most out of all the latest blockchain applications.
That’s why at TIBCO NOW 2018, we’ll dive into how blockchain can potentially address fragmented, brittle, and disjointed business interactions and data exchanges across many industries. We’ve got breakout sessions, customer stories, demos, and more. Below, see some of the highlights happening at this year’s TIBCO NOW.
Attend Blockchain in the Enterprise, happening on Wednesday, September 5th at 2 pm, where we’ll look at blockchain’s ability to deliver information via a shared, trusted distributed network and how it presents many potential benefits for a number of industries, especially when combined with techniques from the IoT and AI communities. You’ll learn how to determine the value of a blockchain for your enterprise, along with things to consider (including myths) for a successful blockchain enterprise implementation. You won’t want to miss this one as it is being hosted by Nelson Petracek, Blockchain expert and TIBCO CTO, along with our guest Forrester’s Principal Analyst and renown blockchain thought-leader Martha Bennett!
In another exciting session happening on Thursday, September 6th at 10 am, Blockchain: Make Smart Contracts Smarter, we’ll discuss how smart contracts have the potential to change the way applications are built. From their ability to securely execute business logic to the automation of business transactions across a blockchain network, smart contracts represent a huge opportunity for organizations who venture into this technology. Join this session to learn more about smart contracts, their use within an enterprise/permission blockchain deployment, and how to greatly simplify smart contract development.
We’re pumped for our blockchain panel happening on Tuesday, September 4th, where TIBCO customers will get together with TIBCO blockchain experts to look at the strides made in healthcare to implement blockchain. Industry research finds that 16% of surveyed healthcare executives had solid plans to implement a commercial blockchain solution this year, while 56% expected to by 2020. Are you going to be one of them? We hope so.
TIBCO NOW 2018 can help you get the most out of this exploding technology. We will teach you the foundation of blockchain and how TIBCO can support enterprise level, “industrial” implementation.