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Building Your Marketing Automation Team: Roles, Collaboration, and Expectations (Hint: You don’t need to hire a technician)

December 9, 2018 CRM News and Info

Marketing Automation Team Feature Building Your Marketing Automation Team: Roles, Collaboration, and Expectations (Hint: You don’t need to hire a technician)

Us marketers who are up to speed with current trends know that marketing automation can do wonders when it comes to helping us do our job much more effectively and efficiently. And not only that, it can lead to better marketing/sales alignment, resulting in more conversions and a higher ROI. In fact, stats show that marketing automation leads to a 14.5% sales productivity increase. And who doesn’t want that?

But if you’re new to to marketing automation, or considering implementing it at your organization, you might be struggling to figure out what you need to have in place to make your new platform work for you. At the end of the day, your nurture programs and marketing efforts are not going to run themselves.

And, aside from adapting your current marketing efforts to your new platform, you might want to consider adding a thing or two to your marketing strategy. And with that, you’ll also need somebody to execute these efforts, which may end up being a larger investment than you had previously thought.

But, I’m here to tell you that building your marketing automation team can be much simpler and cost-effective than you think. After all, marketing automation is supposed to reduce your marketing overhead by 12.2%. And chances are that you already have many of these roles in place within your organization. The trick is to get these your team to start thinking about how to use their skills and collaborate as you roll out your marketing automation program.

So are you ready to build your marketing automation team and start seeing results? These roles and responsibilities are essential to ensuring your program’s success:

Ensure Someone is Managing Demand Generation

A business can’t run, and you’re not doing your job as a marketer, if you don’t generate interest and have leads coming in through the sales funnel. Luckily, marketing automation takes out much of the hassle of implementing campaigns and programs to help you do that.

But whether it’s building landing pages, running paid social media campaigns or promoting webinars, you need to have a point person to manage all or some of those initiatives. However, if you have multiple people managing aspects of your demand gen, we recommend having a cohesive strategy so all your efforts complement each other.

Get a Good Content Creator

Did you know that content marketing results in 6x more conversions than other methods? And 47% of B2B buyers look at 3-5 pieces of content before deciding to touch base with sales. So, whether your focus is inbound or outbound marketing, hopefully both, engaging content is essential to attracting and reeling in your audience. And, the great thing about marketing automation is that it ensures that content gets seen in the first place, resulting in a greater ROI.

So, if you don’t already, you should consider having a person on your team dedicated to creating content and guiding your content strategy. Don’t think of this role as simply serving as a content writer. You’ll want to have a variety of content for each stage of the sales funnel. Try writing blog posts to drive traffic to your website, creating videos that you can promote on social, and eBooks that you can use as gated content for your demand generation programs.

To ensure your content is effective, make sure your content people collaborate with demand gen, so everybody at your organization has an understanding of your audience.

Make Sure to Involve Sales

At the end of the day, your job as a marketer is to get your leads to convert into customers. And stats show that having strong marketing/sales alignment results in a 38% higher sales win rate. Therefore, it’s a no-brainer for your sales team to play a role in implementation and success of your marketing automation program.

A great way to keep your sales managers in the loop and activate them when the time comes to seal the deal is by integrating your marketing automation platform with your CRM. This will provide your sales team with the insights they need to schedule a phone call or demo, and convert your lead.

Have Somebody Track and Measure Your Progress

A key part of running a successful marketing automation program is checking in from time to time to see how your efforts are performing and whether you’re seeing the results you want. Luckily, having the right data and analytics tools will take out some of the guesswork. And, with the right marketing automation tool, you’ll be able to compile insights easily and seamlessly.

Of course, you need somebody on your team that can help you compile this information, analyze it and make recommendations for changes and new initiatives based on the results. If you don’t have the budget or need to have a single individual dedicated to this role, you can assign it to various member of your team. Just make sure they all consolidate their findings, and gather from time to time to ensure that any new initiatives align.

We hope these tips help you build your marketing automation team and put you on the path toward marketing success! Of course, there is an array of things you can do as a marketer with marketing automation that you haven’t done before. And, as your marketing automation platform allows you to get better results and grow your team, you may want to consider adding a few more roles to your team. But these essential roles should help your team get started.

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Act-On Blog

Power BI solution templates moving to open source

December 9, 2018 Self-Service BI

January 1, we will be moving Power BI solution templates to open source.

This has the following implications:

The github repository will remain open and anyone can build solutions on the Power BI solution template code base.
The existing appsource entries for solution templates will be retired and links to appsource from Power BI will be removed.

One of the solution templates, Power BI Usage Metrics, is being hosted by its author, Neal Analytics, and will be available from appsource.

If you’ve implemented a Power BI solution template, this change has no impact on you.

Installed solution templates are unaffected. This only impacts you if you plan on implementing a new solution template in the future. If you want to do so, please do so this year.

We will continue to support solution templates until the end of the year. Beyond Jan 1, we’ll continue to respond to your questions .

If you’re interested in contributing to Power BI solution templates or have any questions about this change, please contact us at powerbisolutiontempaltes@microsoft.com

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Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

How Does Data Drive a Formula One World Champion?

December 9, 2018 TIBCO Spotfire

It’s no secret that Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport is one of the most successful Formula One teams in history. They are five-time World Champions, so the team has to constantly push themselves to stay ahead of the competition. How do they do that? By leveraging data.

In Formula One racing, every millisecond counts. So much so that the difference between first and second place can be as little as 0.001 seconds. The team needs to be able to expect the unexpected — anything from the weather to the track conditions can have a significant impact on the car’s performance. The car itself has 300 sensors that capture 10,000 different data points, which translates into gigabytes worth of data. Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport by no means lacks data, but they need to know how to understand and utilize it to establish a data-driven lead on their competition at all stages of the car’s life cycle, be it design, set-up, or during a race.

The first area where the team is using data is with the W09 EQ Power+ race car, new to the track for the 2018 season. The car is the product of an advanced digital development ecosystem. Sitting at its core is TIBCO’s augmented intelligence solutions. These advanced analytics solutions help Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport make sense of the gigabytes of complex live data the W09 produces as it speeds around the track. The team collects information such as tire pressure, tire temperature, engine status, and more that can affect the performance of the car.

Not only does the team use data for the car, but Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport uses data for race strategy. Data empowers the team to establish the best theoretical configuration and race strategy. Data becomes the common language for collaboration, allowing engineers to communicate data results to the drivers during the race weekend. TIBCO delivers real-time data in a more practical way so Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport can make decisions faster.

With TIBCO, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport can easily access, process and visualize live data along with existing historical data to generate real-time insights into the car’s performance. TIBCO makes it possible to visualize extremely complex data, easing the job of both analysts and strategists at the race and at the factory simultaneously.

These insights empower the team’s analysts and strategists to make informed decisions to optimize their strategy – both during the race and back at the factory. The team can glean insights from TIBCO’s visualizations, or collaborate with TIBCO data scientists on advanced analytics. The cross-collaboration around data at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport gives the team unprecedented visibility into their race strategy and car operations to maximize their chances of winning.

To learn more about how Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport uses data to enhance their championship credentials, check out our interactive brochure.

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The TIBCO Blog

Eye don’t see what’s so funny here

December 9, 2018 Humor

Posted by Krisgo

Eye don’t see what’s so funny here

via

About Krisgo

I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon

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Deep Fried Bits

Dynamics CRM Portal Shopping Cart Configuration Wizard

December 9, 2018 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Dynamics CRM Portal Shopping Cart Configuration Wizard

Configuring Dynamics CRM to display list of products or services on CRM Portal requires complex set of records and JavaScript in CRM. Shopping Card Wizard does all the work for you.

Shopping Cart Configuration Wizard is FREE solution – no strings attached. Click here to download the solution

Step 1: Preparing Product / Service entity in CRM

Create new CRM Entity or use an existing entity that represents the products or services to be listed on CRM portal. We link the following attributes of the entity, when displaying the list on portal:

Name- product name or product number. The Name is used as link to another web page that provides more information and details regarding the product and related products. The page is a Form of the entity.

Description – short description of the listed product.

Price – price per unit

Product image URL – each product can have different image. Users can configure these three images: product image, an image of basket, and the image for the delete function. The last 2 images are one image for all products.

Portal Form and Portal View – It’s highly recommended to create a separate portal form from other in-house CRM forms, to present relevant data to portal users. The form includes extra information regarding the product / service provided, and can include sub-grids from related entities to the product entity. An example for sub-grids are list of supporting documents, brochures, and images, or related / complementary products to the item displayed on portal.

Portal view filters which products / services to be listed, such as all active records or records that belong to a specified group.

Step 2: Configuration Wizard

Once the CRM entity configuration is completed, entering details to the Wizard is a simple selection that links between the fields, form, and view to the corresponding fields form and view in the configurator. For ease of testing the solution we provide temporary images stored on Dropbox. We recommend these URLs will be replaced with permanent and personalised locations.

To clear cache and reload new data log on to portal as Portal Administrator using this URL:
https://PortalName.microsoftcrmportals.com/_services/about

Upon completion of online purchase the following records are updated in CRM:

Basket & Basket items – the items selected to be purchased

Basket History

Payment – if Credit Card Payment Gateway is installed, the confirmation reference / details, received from the credit card provider, are stored in this record.

Step 3: Credit Card Payment Gateway

The Wizard is free to use solution. The solution also includes Credit Card Payment Gateway sold at per portal at one off payment at very competitive price. Credit Card Payment Gateway can be added or removed using Configuration Wizard.

The solution is using the below settings in Sandbox mode:

API Login ID: 7W7sGz2L
Transaction Key: 2W4t8r3a22qU2wPC

And can be tested with these sandbox accepted credit card numbers

370000000000002    American Express
6011000000000012   Discover
5424000000000015   MasterCard
4007000000027      Visa1
4012888818888      Visa2

Need support? Email us Sales @DynamicsObjects.com

How items are listed on Portal

More Info Page (CRM form with sub-grid)

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

AI Weekly: 8 takeaways from NeurIPS 2018

December 9, 2018 Big Data

After a weeklong whirlwind of talks, demonstrations, spotlight sessions, and posters, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) — one of the largest artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning conferences of the year — is coming to a close, and it was a smashing success by any measure.

There were an estimated 8,300 registered attendees at the Palais des Congres de Montréal, where much of this week’s action took place. This year’s program featured 42 workshops and nine tutorials, and approximately 4,854 papers were submitted for consideration, 1,010 of which were accepted.

That’s all despite a bit of a preconference kerfuffle that led to the NeurIPS board changing the conference’s acronym from “NIPS,” which some attendees and sponsors had protested for its potentially offensive connotations.

So what were this year’s highlights? Well, Intel open-sourced a useful tool — HE-Transformer — that allows AI systems to operate on encrypted data. IBM detailed two breakthrough AI training techniques — a digital method that’s up to 4 times faster than the previous state of the art and an analog chip with phase-change memory — that both retain 8-bit precision. And Nvidia described a generative model that can create three-dimensional environments using real-world videos from sources like YouTube.

Those only scratched the surface. Xprize, a nonprofit organization aiming to spark projects that “solve societal grand challenges,” this week revealed health care startup Aifred Health, automated search engine developers Choosit, and internet of things for beekeeping startup Nectar Technologies as the winners of three IBM Watson AI Xprize bonus milestone awards. And DeepMind, the British AI division owned by Google parent company Alphabet, announced that its work on AlphaZero — a system capable of defeating human world champion chess, shogi, and Go players — has been accepted in the journal Science, where it made the front page.

On the exposition front, Google Brain researcher Pallavi Baljekar gave an update on the Mountain View company’s Inclusive Images Competition, a crowdsourced effort to combat the problem of bias in image classification systems. And Alibaba revealed that its speech recognition technology can achieve accuracy of between 94 and 95 percent in noisy environments like subway tunnels (even with heavily accented speakers) and that its AI-driven customer service chatbot currently serves almost 3.5 million users a day.

NeurIPS 2018’s invited presenters, meanwhile, touched on hot topics in the AI community and broader tech industry.

David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at Cambridge University, said that AI systems should make “trustworthy claims” and users should expect explanations of those systems from developers, along with forecasts about what their impacts might be. And Edward W. Felten, former chief technologist at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, underlined the importance of engaging with policymakers on the most pertinent AI concerns.

“Everything we’re striving for in changing the world [with AI] could be at risk,” Felten said, speaking to conference attendees this week. “We need to be in the room when decisions are made.”

This year’s conference was jam-packed, needless to say. For the rest of our coverage, check out stories tagged “NeurIPS 2018” in VentureBeat’s AI Channel, and stay tuned for more to come.

For AI coverage, send news tips to Kyle Wiggers and Khari Johnson — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel.

Kyle Wiggers
AI Staff Writer

P.S. Please enjoy this video of Nvidia AI that can generate virtual worlds from videos.

[embedded content]

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FAIR turns five: What we’ve accomplished and where we’re headed

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Big Data – VentureBeat

How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

December 9, 2018 BI News and Info

The series so far:

As you jump into Part 3, you’ll begin to realize how involved your education will be with Linux, and how it is taking over the world. The previous articles just scratched the surface with your new Docker container with Linux and SQL Server. You have embraced how users are created in a Linux system and what a group is. You’ve begun to understand the power of the Linux kernel and the pure simplicity of it. This takes you to the next step in your education: ownership and permissions.

Unlike Windows, there’s no registry layer when working with Linux. As an operating system, Linux expects that if you’ve been granted rights to perform a task, you should have the knowledge and skills to be trusted to perform the task. Every object in Linux is treated as a file, and permissions are at the core of this. Understanding how permissions work is essential, and this is the next step in your Linux journey.

In the following section, you’ll create:

A Unix user
A home directory
A lesson directory
And empty files to work with ownership and permission assignments.

As you proceed into the next sections of the article, you may need to check users on your Linux host and what groups exist. You can do this by typing in the following command after you open a bash shell to your container:

>cat /etc/passwd

To view groups, you can do this by cat’ing the group file:

>cat /etc/group

The following commands will take you through these steps. The first step will be to create a user for the test, with a home directory, using the adduser command:

>adduser jsmith2

Fill in the password, etc., for jsmith2 and retain the password for future logins.

word image 16 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

SU, (switch user) to jsmith2.

>su jsmith2

word image 17 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Check your current location and verify that you’re in the /home/jsmith2 directory:

If you find yourself at the root directory, (/) perform the following:

Now check with the pwd command again to verify that you’re in the /home/smith2 home directory.

word image 18 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Create a new directory in jsmith2’s home directory and set permissions

>mkdir part3

>chmod 744 part3

I’ll explain more about the chmod command and numeric value later in the article. Switch over to the new directory:

>cd part3

Create a new file:

>touch test.txt

>ls -la

You should see the following in your new directory:

word image 19 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Identity Crisis

There are two main commands that are connected to permissions:

Change Owner chown Changes the owner of a file(s)

Change Modify chmod Modifies permissions of a file(s)

Each file will have three designations of ownership. One will be the owner; the second will be the group assignment, (which can also be assigned to the owner) and lastly, all others. The third designation isn’t an assignment, but the first two, owner and group, are.

When creating a file, ownership and group are defaulted to the user that created it. To reassign permissions, you must first have the rights to do so. Secondly, the user and group must exist. If you are the owner of the file, you can do both, but if the file is owned by another and you don’t have permissions, you will have to use “super user” (su) to perform the task. To perform an ownership change, you would run the following:

>sudo chown <new owner>:<new group> <filename/folder>

As root, (domain owner) you would be able to change the owner of any file or switch permissions. You can also do this as the user if they have SUDO, (Switch User to Domain Owner). As you’re currently logged in as jsmith2, exit out of the current shell from user jsmith2 back to root.

The second choice, if you want to run everything with the SUDO command, is to grant SUDO to jsmith2 as ROOT. To do either, you must exit out of the current shell back to ROOT.

word image 20 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Note that the prompt returns to displaying the root login at the very left. If you want to grant SUDO, it can be done with the following command. Recognize that jsmith2 now has root privileges on the host and, although his sudo executions can be audited, this user will now have these privileges.

>usermod -a -G sudo jsmith2

You can now change the owner and group of the files in the existing directory. The example displayed below demonstrates what would be required if you weren’t root and using the SUDO command as jsmith2, but if you are logged in as root, the SUDO is left off the command. In this example, you’ll change the owner to jdoe1 and the group to sqlinstall. Note that the account and group were created in the last article.

>cd /home/jsmith2/part3

>sudo chown jdoe1:sqlinstall test.txt

Or as ROOT, then you’d simply leave the SUDO off the command:

>chown jdoe1:sqlinstall test.txt

word image 21 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

If the SUDO command returns an error about not being available, you will have to install it:

>apt-get install sudo

This is all there is to changing the ownership on a file, as well as the group in one command.

Permissions and Modes

As a DBA, you put in significant time into understanding database level security and permissions. It’s as important to understand how OS level permissions impact the security of your database residing on the host. On Linux, you change permissions to files and folders by using the change modify, (chmod) command. There are different categories of user ownership and escalation of privileges to each file in Linux. The categories of user ownership are:

User/Owner=u
Group=g
Other/all users=o
ALL=A

Similar to Microsoft Windows, there are three main categories of ownership that can be assigned singularly or in combination to create the correct allocation of ownership to any file. There’s also a global grant to “ALL” that encompasses all categories as one.

From here, permissions are granted to perform tasks. As with a database, the least required privilege(s) to perform the action should be considered. Although three simple grants are all that are available, in combination, they create the complexity required to secure the users internal to the OS.

Read
Write
Execute

There are multiple modes to allocate permissions to files and directories. I’ll discuss the two main ones- numeric and alpha mode.

Numeric Mode

In this mode, there is a numerical value that is assigned to each permission to simplify grants. Where this might sound confusing at first, when you see the values clearly displayed by grant, it begins to make sense.

Read,(r)= 4

Write,(w)= 2

Execute, (x)=1

For the first run through the permissions, log back in as a jsmith2 user and switch to the user’s home directory if you are not already there:

>su jsmith2

>cd

>cd part3

The numerical values for permissions are used in conjunction with the chmod command to assign privileges to the owner, group and other for an individual or group of files. Using the example file, test.txt, you can request that permissions be set for the following to meet requirements:

Owner has read, write and execute
Group has read and execute
Other has no privileges to the file.

The command would be:

>chmod 750 test.txt

If you typed this command in, you should receive the following error, but why?

chmod: changing permissions of ‘test.txt’: Operation not permitted

Check the ownership and group permissions on the file:

>ls -la

word image 22 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

The file is no longer owned or even part of a group that jsmith2 is part of. You could switch back the ownership of the file, but for this exercise, you’ll understand the importance of ownership and create a new file to work with, this time calling it test.sh and changing the permissions on this new file.

>touch test.sh

>chmod 740 test.sh

>ls -la

word image 23 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

This command comes from the numerical values per grant in the list above, calculated for each category- owner, group and other and results in the following:

owner has 4+2+1=7
group has 4+0+0=4
other has 0+0+0=0

Unlike a standard ls, (list) command, a ls -la, (list all) command will display the permissions for the files contained in any directory broken down by owner, group, other and by individual grants.

jsmith2@cd6a623ef493:~/part3$ ls -la

total 8

drwxr–r– 2 jsmith2 jsmith2 4096 Oct 30 17:29 .

drwxr-xr-x 4 jsmith2 jsmith2 4096 Oct 30 17:38 ..

-rwxr—– 1 jsmith2 jsmith2 0 Oct 30 18:27 test.sh

-rwxr—– 1 jdoe1 sqlinstall 0 Oct 30 17:29 test.txt

A “d” in the beginning columns signifies that this is a directory, vs. a file. Notice that there are ten fields that are populated by the output- one for type and nine for permissions to the three categories, owner/user, group and other.

In the example above, you’ll note the directories without a name, just marked with “.”. These are directory identifiers. The first “.” is to identify the current directory and the privileges granted to it. To translate this to a numeric mode command, it would look like the following:

>chmod 744 .

The directory identified with “..” is the directory above the current one and Linux is displaying that it has more privileges to the groups and other categories, both read and execute. If you translated this to numeric mode, it would result in the following:

>chmod 755 ..

You can view how changes to permissions via numeric mode occur by again, changing the permissions on the shell script:

>chmod 764 test.sh

>ls -la test.sh

word image 24 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

The owner has read, write and execute on the file, the group has read and write to the file and all others are only allowed read access. Understanding these privileges is essential to a DBA so you can manage the privileges to system and data files, subsequently securing your database server at the OS level.

Now that you know how to change the owner and grant privileges on a file, it may be helpful to have a reminder on a few ways to create a file. Below are the most common ways users create a file, most often for write at the time or later.

Create an empty file touch <filename>

Create empty file and open for edit vi(m) <filename>

Common editor to create files nano <filename>

You may choose any of these methods, vi(m) being an older method, and nano, emacs and other editors being newer ones. Touch is most often used to verify write privileges to a location, as it efficiently creates an empty file in the directory and will fail if privileges are missing.

Alpha Mode

The secondary mode for granting privileges is Alpha mode, which uses letters to identify the category of user and privilege.

You will again work with your jsmith2 user and part3 directory from the home/jsmith2/part3 location.

The difference when working with alpha mode, is that the permissions are a bit more complicated in their execution. Unlike numeric mode that simply rewrites over existing permissions, alpha requires a + or a -, along with the initial of the permissions to grant:

r(Read)
w(Write)
x(Execute)

This method can be used to remove permissions as easily as grant them, simply executing the chmod command, a “-“, the alpha mode permission and the file or directory name to remove privileges to the owner. To assist in why you would want to remove privileges from yourself, a use case is a file or directory you want to protect yourself from an accidental write or execution of, you can change the permissions to help ensure this.

This command ends with the name of the file, and when no user/group/category is added, it only addresses permissions for the user executing the chmod command.

>chmod -wx test.sh

You would then be required to change the permissions and add read and write on the file for the owner before you’d be able to perform either or if you have SUDO, then this would suffice. Always remember, SUDO, (Switch User Domain Owner is GOD.)

The next command adds execute to the owner, group and other category for file ownership. This would result in everyone being able to execute the shell script.

Example:

>chmod +x test.sh

At this point in the process, exit back out and become root to perform the next commands.

The root user should be at the left of your prompt if you’re using the Docker image to work along with this article.

>cd /home/jsmith2/part3

>chmod -w test.sh

This would remove jsmith2’s write privileges to the test.sh file. This might seem counter intuitive. Why would you wish to remove write privileges from your own file? Removing write or execute could protect from mistakes in processing or remind the user which script is the active one, while retaining historical code.

To perform permissions changes using alpha mode for a group, or other, then you use the initial format and add the category before the permissions change:

Example:

>chmod g+x test.sh

>chmod g-w test.sh

The above commands have added execute to the test.sh file for the group assigned, but then removed write from the test.sh file. You can do the same for o, (others) by changing its permissions to read and no write or execute on the file:

>chmod o+r test.sh

>chmod o-wx test.sh

You can combine the privilege change for owner, group and other at once. Just as:

>chmod 777 test.sh

This would result in the owner, group and other having read, write and execute on a file, the same would be in alpha mode:

>chmod ugo+rwx test.sh

This also could be done with the a(All) category:

>chmod a=rwx test.sh

At the end of this exercise, all users- owner, group and other have permissions to read, write and execute the shell script test.sh:

word image 25 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Group Shift

Beyond chmod, is chgrp, (Change Group) which unlike chown, (change owner) that allows for a group allocation at the time of the command, can change the group with a separate command.

>chgrp sqlinstall ./test.sh

>chgrp sqlinstall ../part3

word image 26 How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Notice that you can change the group on a file or a directory, (remember, everything is treated as a file in Linux) as easily as I can change owner, permissions, and groups for a single file. You are able to do all of this from the current directory, using the “.” and “..” to tell Linux that you want to work in the current directory or the directory one up from where you are.

Wildcards are permissible for all these commands as well. If you wish to change the owner of all the files in a directory:

>chown jsmith2:sqlinstall *

You can change the permissions on all files with the .sql extension in a directory:

>chmod 744 *.sql

You can also grant ownership to all files and subfolders with the -R, (recursive) argument.

If you go up one folder:

>cd ..

>chmod 774 .

>chown -R jsmith2:sqlinstall .

The above command just granted read, write and execute to the owner and the group, and read to others. The second command changed ownership of everything in the current folder, (.) and files in subfolders to jsmith2.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s a lot more to permissions than meets the eye. Learning how to change permissions, either by alpha or numeric mode is enough, but make sure you understand the permissions and how they translate in whichever mode you’re going to use. A secure database system is essential down to the operating system level, so as a DBA your understanding of how Linux does this allow you to secure your Linux host for SQL Server and help everyone sleep at night.

The next article will start working with navigation and processes in Linux. There’s a lot to come and, hopefully, you’re able to work through these scenarios on your Docker image.

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Nucleus Research Finds Partners Grow an Average of 30% with NetSuite

December 8, 2018 NetSuite

Posted by John Goode, Senior Director Channel Marketing

A quick search for jobs with “NetSuite” in the title on the popular IT job search website Dice.com quickly reveals what many NetSuite partners already know: there is intense competition for talent in the marketplace right now.

In fact, finding people to meet the NetSuite demand is their chief challenge, partners interviewed told Nucleus Research. The Boston-based research consultancy, taking stock of the NetSuite partner program, recently released its “Guidebook for the Oracle NetSuite Partner Program,” based on conversations with several NetSuite partners.

“Our problem hasn’t been getting new customers, but rather getting people to deliver the projects we have,” one of the partners interviewed for the guidebook said.

NetSuite partners are growing their businesses, with annual revenue increasing an average of 30 percent, according to Nucleus. Results like that are forcing providers that have built practices around legacy vendors, and business models based on billable hours associated with implementation and ongoing maintenance, to reexamine their strategies. Should they stay with legacy vendors, continuing to collect on customizations and perpetual licensing fees while concurrently implementing legacy solutions re-written for the cloud? Or join (or increase their commitment to) a partner ecosystem rich with potential because the product they built their businesses on was born-in-the-cloud, and innovate for their customers, not simply ensure stability?

NetSuite partners offered insight into the benefits of the latter approach, as they shared with Nucleus Research what they’ve experienced by being part of the NetSuite partner program.

NetSuite Enables a Shift to a Full-service Consulting Business

When stability and extensibility are table stakes in the software selection processes, the relationship must be driven by value-add engagements, not simply ongoing support. NetSuite partners on average derive more than half of their revenue from professional services. Because of the stability of the NetSuite product, partners require fewer support staff. According to the Nucleus report, organizations averaged between 10 and 15 percent fewer support personnel relative to other products.

“We do a lot of aftermarket optimization services. Because the platform is so robust, there is a longtail to the implementation and additional opportunities for our clients as a value-add,” one NetSuite partner interviewed said.

NetSuite has a Mature Partner Program, and Strong Partner Incentives

Because the cloud shifts revenue streams from annual maintenance fees to annual subscriptions, the rates of revenue sharing are a significant driver of a partner’s bottom line, according to the Nucleus report. NetSuite structures revenue sharing in tiers, based on the amount of selling a partner completes; the higher the tier a partner achieves, the greater share of revenue they win. NetSuite Partners can earn margins between 30 and 50 percent on new licenses and 10 to 30 percent on renewals. These incentives, in part, help motivate partners, to lead with NetSuite over other solutions they sell, securing new customers and maintaining those customers on the platform long term. Nucleus found that NetSuite partners find their own prospects and manage the sales cycle from beginning to end, establishing themselves as the trusted go-to for customers.

What’s more, the NetSuite Partner Program itself is mature and structured in a way that partners can work collaboratively with each other, and aren’t pitted against NetSuite direct sales, partners interviewed said. Partners can even swap deals without NetSuite interfering.

“NetSuite doesn’t pit partners against each other to drop the price. They want to ensure that the deal is good business for the partner,” a NetSuite partner interviewed said.

NetSuite’s Continual Enhancement of the Product Serves as Springboard for Growth

One partner told Nucleus they plan to grow about 120 percent annually for the next four to five years. This strong growth potential can be attributed to three things. The NetSuite platform is highly scalable, and a small customer can adopt functionality as it grows. In turn, NetSuite is being sold more and more up market, for larger deals and larger initial revenue. And its industry-specific strategy lends partners the ability to develop their own add-ons and intellectual property (IP) that is deeply relevant and attractive to their potential and existing customers.

“One upside of being a NetSuite partner is that the clients are bigger and can grow on the system. We can close a deal that is small initially but then becomes hundreds of hours of work for our consultants as the customer grows,” a partner said.

Because the NetSuite product portfolio is stable and scalable, partners spend less time on implementing and maintaining the product, and more time on optimizing their customers’ business processes. Partners have the time and trust to engage with their customers to find new ways to deliver value, creating an ongoing relationship in which the partner truly lives up to that title.

Read the full report on the advantages of partnering with NetSuite.

Posted on Thu, December 6, 2018
by NetSuite filed under

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What Is Your Company's Story?

December 8, 2018 CRM News and Info

This story was originally published on the E-Commerce Times on Aug. 22, 2018, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series.

Telling an engaging and effective story is vitally important for the success of a business. A good story draws people in, fosters loyalty, and brings your brand alive.

“It’s important for brands to tell their story because the story is what actually resonates with humans,” said Nathan Young, storytelling communication instructor at
Storytelling Consultant.

“We’re hardwired to remember stories. We have an emotional response to stories that we don’t get from the facts and features of a brand or product,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

We respond to stories in particular because they provide a path to understanding.

“Stories are how we make sense of the world and give it meaning,” said David Intrator, president of
Smarter Storytelling.

“They tell us who we are, why we’re here and how we should act,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “Moreover, they tell us where we’ve been, where we are right now, and where we’re going. They give coherence, direction and purpose to our lives.”

Good storytelling takes practice, but for effective brand building, it’s worth it. If you’re wondering how to get started, here are some tips.

1. Develop Interesting Characters

Engaging, interesting characters are vital to a good story. Characters are what pull us through the twists and turns and keep us engaged. We follow stories because of the people involved and the empathy we feel for them.

Who are the characters associated with a business? They can include the founder, the current leaders, the employees, the customers, and even fictional characters that represent some aspect of the brand.

To start identifying key characters, business leaders can “establish a selection of representative characters who will be part of their story,” noted storytelling consultant
Jordan Bower.

“A few years ago, Apple did this beautifully with the ‘I’m a Mac, I’m a PC’ campaign,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “A sales team may use specific characters to represent customers or case studies. The CEO or other internal leaders might be ‘characterized’ to create a compelling, influential position on social media.”

Whatever characters you choose, it’s important that people be able to identify with them — and therefore with the brand itself.

“When stories are about someone relatable, they are far more engaging,” said Bower.

2. Describe Difficult Challenges and Choices

Challenges and choices are a key part of storytelling, since characters develop through the difficulties they face and how they respond to them.

If you’re telling the story of the founding of a company, for instance, you might want to focus on the obstacles encountered in the early days — and what choices were made to overcome them. If you’re telling customer stories, you might look at how your product assisted in working through challenges they faced.

“It’s choices that make stories compelling,” noted Bower. “Stories are about the process of choosing — the emotional ups and downs that mark the journey to result.”

Consider, for example, an employee’s story of improving a company’s sales process, as Bower related it:

“When I was hired, sales were growing at only 5 percent. For my first six months on the job, I spent a long time listening to customers and co-workers, and I learned that a process implemented by the CEO was actually demotivating the sales team. I was faced with this challenging choice: Do I tell the CEO that he had done something wrong? Or do I keep my mouth shut? I had two weeks of sleepless nights before I finally decided to tell the CEO the truth. To my surprise, the CEO responded humbly and willingly changed the process. Three years later, sales were growing at 15 percent.”

A story like this draws in the reader and describes a journey, which is key to effective brand storytelling. Think about the journey you want to describe, and use the story to bring people along on that journey.

3. Look for the Underlying Meaning

To tell an effective story, you should know why you’re telling it — that is, you should have a clear understanding of its meaning or purpose.

“When constructing a story, leaders should think about the moral or lesson they want to communicate,” said Bower.

“Ultimately, those morals and lessons come down to what is called in storytelling language a ‘dilemma.’ Dilemmas, of course, are difficult choices between two mutually exclusive options. The more meaningful the dilemma, the higher the audience engagement,” he pointed out.

“For example, a story about going into a Starbucks and choosing between a latte and a cappuccino does not contain a particularly meaningful dilemma,” Bower said. “A story about choosing between a low-paying dream job and a high-paying corporate job carries an obvious dilemma. So does deciding whether to sell a morally ambiguous product. So does deciding whether to support one political candidate over another.”

4. Use Many Channels

There are many different ways you can tell your company’s stories — including through blog articles, videos and social media posts. The interactions you have with people can help to further your company’s story, inviting them to come along on your journey.

“The new communications channels create new, more intimate relationships between businesses and stakeholders,” noted Bower. “Twenty years ago, a company would create one or two ad campaigns that would play repeatedly on TV or the radio. If those campaigns were good, we’d talk about them, but the campaigns themselves rarely changed. Remember Budweiser’s Wasssup? When a campaign was successful, it would be updated and re-launched, but at most a handful of times in a year.”

Things are different now, however — with many more opportunities for daily storytelling.

“Today, a business can talk to its stakeholders every single day,” said Bower. “It can provide personalized content based on buying habits, Web browsing patterns, etc. It can engage in an ongoing customer journey through all stages of the buying cycle.”

5. Pay Attention to Internal Audiences

People within your company benefit from good storytelling as well, so make sure to aim some of your stories at them. Stories can help to clarify your company’s mission and to inspire employees to do their best work.

“Telling an emotionally compelling story about a brand’s ambition for the future and the journey of change a business needs to take to get there will create an all-important context for the many components of a business’ journey: the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what and the ‘how,'” said Alison Esse, director of
The Storytellers.

A story geared toward employees can help to give them a sense of purpose.

“It provides a framework which shows how each element links to one another, with a clear call to action, which can help people connect and relate to it in a much easier and more personal way,” Esse told the E-Commerce Times. “If they can see themselves as a ‘hero’ of that journey, and understand the part they can play, they will feel involved and valued.”

Vivian%20Wagner What Is Your Company's Story?
Vivian Wagner has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. Her main areas of focus are technology, business, CRM, e-commerce, privacy, security, arts, culture and diversity. She has extensive experience reporting on business and technology for a variety
of outlets, including The Atlantic, The Establishment and O, The Oprah Magazine. She holds a PhD in English with a specialty in modern American literature and culture. She received a first-place feature reporting award from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.
Email Vivian.

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Webinar 12/11: Introduction to the Power BI Home & Global Search Experience with Nikhil Gaekwad

December 8, 2018 Self-Service BI

December 11th, Program Manager Nikhil Gaekwad hosts a live webinar demoing and answer your Power BI Home and Search questions. The improved Power BI home navigation experience makes it easy to monitor and analyze your key business metrics. The Power BI Home landing page and our new Global Search feature in the Power BI service provide a one-stop shop for all your Power BI content and a quicker way to dive into your insights. One of the best parts is the new Power BI Home automatically surface your most important content and let you search for it in a single page!

When: 12/11/2018 10AM PST

Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79-gMM8Pir0

About Nikhil Gaekwad

Nikhil Gaekwad is a Product Manager on the Power BI service team at Microsoft. His journey at the company started off in 2015 on the Windows Wireless team, where he spent two years envisioning, building, and shipping features in the Wi-Fi and IoT space to millions of customers around the world. He has always had a strong passion for working with data and transforming it into actionable business insights. With an aspiration to be influential in the Business Intelligence community, Nikhil joined Power BI in 2017. Most of you will already recognize him from the recent blogs, videos, and presentations from many conferences.

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Building Your Marketing Automation Team: Roles, Collaboration, and Expectations (Hint: You don’t need to hire a technician)

Ensure Someone is Managing Demand Generation

Get a Good Content Creator

Make Sure to Involve Sales

Have Somebody Track and Measure Your Progress

Power BI solution templates moving to open source

How Does Data Drive a Formula One World Champion?

Eye don’t see what’s so funny here

About Krisgo

Dynamics CRM Portal Shopping Cart Configuration Wizard

How items are listed on Portal

More Info Page (CRM form with sub-grid)

AI Weekly: 8 takeaways from NeurIPS 2018

From VB

Beyond VB

How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 3

Identity Crisis

Permissions and Modes

Numeric Mode

Alpha Mode

Group Shift

Conclusion

Nucleus Research Finds Partners Grow an Average of 30% with NetSuite

What Is Your Company's Story?

1. Develop Interesting Characters

2. Describe Difficult Challenges and Choices

3. Look for the Underlying Meaning

4. Use Many Channels

5. Pay Attention to Internal Audiences

Webinar 12/11: Introduction to the Power BI Home & Global Search Experience with Nikhil Gaekwad

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Ensure Someone is Managing Demand Generation

Get a Good Content Creator

Make Sure to Involve Sales

Have Somebody Track and Measure Your Progress

Like this:

About Krisgo

How items are listed on Portal

More Info Page (CRM form with sub-grid)

From VB

Beyond VB

Identity Crisis

Permissions and Modes

Numeric Mode

Alpha Mode

Group Shift

Conclusion

1. Develop Interesting Characters

2. Describe Difficult Challenges and Choices

3. Look for the Underlying Meaning

4. Use Many Channels

5. Pay Attention to Internal Audiences

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives