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Key Takeaways: Adobe Sign for Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Benefits, Configuration and Pricing
Adding e-signature capabilities to your document workflows in Microsoft Dynamics 365 can eliminate manual, inefficient tasks and deliver a 100% digital signing experience to your customers and partners.
In this post I will give you a basic understanding of Adobe Sign for Dynamics 365 and an overview of how to:
- integrate Adobe Sign with Dynamics 365
- create data mapping for Adobe Sign
- create predefined template for Adobe Sign
- send document for signing
What are the pain points of the manual signing process?
- Communication gap among legal and sales team of both the parties.
- Broken work-flows.
- Approval delays.
- Endless time going into the physical flow of agreements for stamping, signing and storage.
- Unstructured physical storage resulting in a delay in access.
What business problem does Adobe Sign solve?
Eighty percent of businesses still struggle with paper-based processes that are slow, error-prone, and fragmented. Workers spend countless hours hunting down approvals and ink signatures—and then print, scan, fax, or mail documents to get the job done. These delays are frustrating to customers, business partners and employees, and ultimately reflect poorly on the company’s brand.
Adobe Sign helps business transform paper processes, making 100% digital workflows a reality with trusted and legal e-signatures.
With Adobe Sign, workers and organizations can:
- Get signatures in minutes, not days – Workers can easily request signatures from others, sign documents, and track and manage the entire process electronically.
- Work anywhere, on any device – Signers click a link to sign documents from any location, at any time of day, using a browser or mobile device. No account signups or downloads are required.
- Add to your systems and processes – Integrate Adobe Sign into the systems and applications you’re already using today. Nothing changes except the speed of your workflows, and ease of gathering signatures.
- Ensure legal and security compliance – Adobe Sign delivers the highest levels of security, availability, and legal compliance. We are the world’s trusted leader in secure digital documents and standout digital experiences.
Adobe Sign for Microsoft Dynamics 365
Adobe Sign is part of the Adobe Document Cloud suite of services. In addition to the integration with Dynamics 365 Sales, Adobe Sign now supports the Field Service and Customer Service modules so you can add Adobe Sign e-signature capabilities to even more of your document workflows.
Key Features of Adobe Sign
- Send contracts and agreements for e-signature.
- Recipients can sign and return contracts from any device.
- Merge data from Dynamics 365 into contracts and push data from signers back into Dynamics 365.
- Completely automate your signature and contract processing by embedding Adobe Sign into Dynamics workflows.
- Keep track of the document throughout the signing process with status updates and reminders.
- Automatically attach signed documents and audit trails to the relevant customer record.
Configuring Adobe Sign for Dynamics 365
Prerequisites
To use Adobe Sign for Microsoft Dynamics 365 there are a few requirements. You must:
- Have Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM 8.2 or later.
- A licensed enterprise-level Adobe Sign account or an enterprise-level trial account
- Verify that the email address of the Adobe Sign account-level admin is the same as the installing Dynamics CRM admin.
- Provide all the owned domains that your users could be using in their email addresses (Do not include public use domains like gmail.com, yahoo.com etc.).
- Obtain a list of all users in the Adobe Sign system using your owned domains.
Installation
The online version of the package is installed from Microsoft’s AppSource store:
- Log in to Dynamics as a Dynamics Administrator at https://home.dynamics.com/
- Click the “Get More Apps” button
- Search for Adobe Sign
- Click “Get It Now”
Post Install Configuration (Required)
Install the Integration Key
New installations require an integration key to be generated in Adobe Sign and then entered into Dynamics. This key is the access token that authenticates the Adobe Sign and Dynamics environments to trust each other and share content.
- To generate an Integration Key in Adobe Sign:
- Log in to your administrative user for your Adobe Sign account
- Navigate to Account > Adobe Sign API > API Information
- Click the Integration Key link in the middle of the page
Verify Legacy Form Rendering is Disabled
Enabling Activity Feeds on Adobe Agreement entity
Deploy Adobe Sign to Users by Assigning Security Role
Every Dynamics 365 user that is expected to use the Adobe Sign application needs to have their security role configured in the Dynamics environment.
The security roles are:
- Adobe Sign Reader –Allows the user read-only access to Agreement records.
- Adobe Sign User - Allows the user to work with Agreements and other application entities. This role permits the user to see only their own records
- Adobe Sign Administrator – This role includes additional privileges in addition to the Adobe Sign User role such as adjusting Global Settings, Data Migration and allowing visibility over all Agreements throughout the applicatio
Licensing Adobe Sign for Microsoft Dynamics 365
There are several license types to choose from depending on your needs. You can choose from single user or multi-user packages with prices ranging from $ 9.99 to $ 29.99 per month*. Speak with your Microsoft Dynamic 365 Partner to discuss your options.
*Note: Check current licensing plans for up-to-date pricing.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 from Crowe
Adobe Sign is Microsoft’s preferred e-signature solution. Add Adobe Sign to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and get your documents signed faster than ever. You can send, sign, track and file documents and contracts with legally-binding, globally compliant e-signatures—all without leaving Dynamics 365.
The can help your organization do powerful things with Dynamics 365. While completing more than 100 successful CRM implementations around the world, the Crowe CRM team has gained the experience and developed the methodology needed to design, deliver, and implement effective solutions to our clients’ real-life business challenges.
Visit for more information about Crowe CRM solutions and services for Microsoft Dynamics 365 software.
at crminfo@crowe.com or 877-600-2253.
By Salinee Sachan, Crowe, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gold Partner
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10 Benefits of Integrating Outlook with Dynamics 365 for an SMB
is one of the foremost customer relationship management tools owing to its flexible, scalable, and comprehensive features. One of the best traits of Dynamics 365 is its ability to integrate with several other applications. Now as an SMB if you are using Outlook already, integrating it with Dynamics 365 will help you make your tasks easier and boost productivity.
The effortlessness of integration of Dynamics CRM with Outlook takes care of all aspects of the business cycle and acts as a single repository that unites processes, campaign planning, marketing, and donor, client support activities.
The collaboration between Dynamics 365 and Outlook offers a familiar user experience and allows data to be collected directly from Outlook within the CRM system. A solid integration between CRM and Outlook ensures that your teams can handle emails, schedule appointments, capture customer discussions, and much more within a common interface.
So, what are the few integral benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM with Outlook, and how does it help a run smoothly.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration with Outlook comprises a long-standing approach that includes improving productivity. Combining it will help users to update CRM and will increase organizational efficiency and in turn improving ROI as well as reducing costs.
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One platform access:
All kinds of data be it emails, contacts, prospects/leads’ information, and sales activities from both CRM and Outlook can be seen from one location.
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Managing contacts:
The integration automatically brings Outlook and Dynamics contacts together. Therefore, there is no manual data entry. The arrangement of the synchronization features prevents contact data loss and duplication of records.
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Integrating third-party email clients:
Microsoft Dynamics 365along with Outlook allows users to integrate Gmail and other messaging applications with Dynamics CRM effortlessly.
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Synchronizing calendars:
Synchronizing the calendar with Dynamics 365 CRM for Outlook allows a flawless activity organization. Your sales team will be able to view, create, and edit all the CRM data in Outlook and vice versa keeping a proper check on all appointments. The creation of meeting alerts, follow-up reminders, notifications helps your team to work more efficiently.
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Email registration:
Saving emails with one click to be added in to Dynamics 365 or automatically save Outlook emails in D365 helps consolidate the client’s communications history. With the automatic saving of outgoing emails, users can even set the preference of emails to be added to the CRM.
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Dashboard customization:
The Outlook dashboard can be customized by the users as per their convenience, preference, and view all the activities related to the specific role(s). Each section of the panel can be changed.
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Offline mode:
All the data can be saved on local servers and is accessible in offline mode. So, if an email association in Outlook is made, it will appear in CRM once you login next.
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Enhanced productivity:
Dynamics 365 with Outlook helps in increasing productivity by merging the most germane CRM data with your e-mails, tasks, and calendar events. It can also provide insights into the potential clients, beneficiaries with better communications. The matching input from CRM to Microsoft Outlook client emails can give your team members more contextual information and enable them to harbor a personalized bond with them in the future.
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Augmented efficiency:
With the integration of Dynamics CRM with Outlook you can witness a surge of optimized performance and efficiency in the organization. As the integration works in an offline mode as well, the progress is visible beyond the network connectivity as well. The filtration of the data feature enables access to the information needed by the users based on their requirements. It can relate to sales figures, meeting updates, all through a common and a standard interface.
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Teamwork boost:
Sharing a common platform to exchange data, interact can have a positive impact on your teams. The lines differentiating departments become blurry and it promotes transparent communication across. Vying for the client’s loyalty irrespective of different departments becomes a common goal and you can thank the integration feature for it.
It can’t be stressed enough as to how beneficial the integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Outlook can help you streamline certain or all processes that are custom-made to your organizational goals and mission. If you are a small and midsize business, you need a place to store data and access it on various devices, or handle various lead/prospect interactions, conversation history and focus on refining customer satisfaction, you will require this integration.
and learn more about the integration faculties of Dynamics 365 for SMBs to make your tasks easier, seamless, and effortless.
The Benefits of Dynamics 365 Online Versus On-Premise
Today, almost everything is in the cloud. And if your organization isn’t yet, you may be missing out on enhanced security, cost savings and new features. Specifically, I’m talking about Dynamics 365 Online vs On-Premise. As you may know, Microsoft has long had an on-premise version of Dynamics 365 which definitely has had its benefits, from giving clients the freedom to choose their hosting platform to giving them more development flexibility, within the constraints of the application. And back when Microsoft introduced an online version for Dynamics 365 (previously called CRM), on-premise seemed to have the most benefits. However, a lot has changed since then and now, being on-premise vs online can be costly for an organization, not to mention you will miss out on a lot of cool stuff.
Top Benefits of Migrating to Dynamics 365 Online
- Enhanced security and reliability
- Your sensitive data is protected and stored in Microsoft owned state-of-the-art data centers
- Did you know? Microsoft also provides compliance for the United States public sector, for government entities that qualify
- Microsoft provides a 99.9 percent uptime service-level agreement (SLA)
- Your sensitive data is protected and stored in Microsoft owned state-of-the-art data centers
- Scalability and flexibility
- Easily add new users with integration to Azure Active Directory
- Easily add more storage with a few clicks
- Free up your IT resources
- Microsoft will manage the software and maintenance tasks for you, including deploying patches to fix bugs
- No need for your IT team to maintain server updates, application updates, operating system updates, IIS updates, and the list goes on
- Microsoft will automatically push upgraded versions, which include new features (many of which are NOT available on-premise)
- Microsoft manages server backups, but an admin can easily create a backup of your data and customizations with just a few clicks
- Microsoft will manage the software and maintenance tasks for you, including deploying patches to fix bugs
- Easier to connect both your CRM and ERP data together
- Access to pre-built apps in Microsoft’s AppSource
- Alternatively, your Microsoft partner can build a unique app using the Microsoft Power Platform and tailor it just for your business needs
- Empower your organization with tools such as which allows you to transform data to something more meaningful, including predictive analytics
- A wider arrange of support options
- With your online subscription, you have unlimited support to Microsoft resources
- A growing community of other resources as more organizations turn to Dynamics 365 online
This isn’t at all an exhaustive list, but are some of the top benefits that we think of when using Dynamics 365 Online vs On-Premise. Already on a Dynamics 365 On-premise environment? We have a long history of helping our various sized clients transition from on-premise to online. While there is a variable cost upfront to do this (for large organizations, we recommend a phased approach), the long term benefits will pay off in the end. Additionally, as Microsoft invests more in Dynamics 365 Online vs On-Premise, we predict that someday they may sunset On-Premise.
If you have questions about migrating from Microsoft Dynamics 365 On-Premise to Online, give us a call.
Beringer Technology Group, a leading Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in and also provides expert , , ,, , and
Win-Win: Everyone Benefits from Adding Data Virtualization to Your Data Integration Toolbox
Reading Time: 2 minutes
As a die-hard University of Texas alumnus, there is nothing better than spending a Saturday afternoon cheering my Longhorns on to victory. And those victories are especially sweet when they are at the expense of archrival University of Oklahoma. Sports are like that. Someone wins. Someone loses.
But in the business world, win-win is often a far more desirable outcome than win-lose. That’s what I like about data virtualization. By adding data virtualization to your data integration toolbox, everyone can win across your organization—from data consumers to data engineers.
We’ve already discussed why data virtualization needs to be a part of your data integration toolbox. But beyond having the right tools to perform their work, how do users across the organizations benefit from data virtualization?
A Win for Data Consumers
With data virtualization, data consumers benefit in several ways including:
● Business-friendly data: Deliver data in a business-relevant way instead of how it is stored in IT schemas. Maintain consistency with business definitions so everyone is on the same page.
● Faster time-to-data: Take advantage of the latest data from across distributed data sources. Provision new data requests quickly and react rapidly as requirements change.
● Self-service data access: Users can focus on how to apply data to a range of analytics and applications while technical teams focus on how to provision and manage it.
A Win for Data Engineers
Data engineering teams also benefit from adding data virtualization via:
● Reduced IT costs: Data virtualization requires a fraction of physical warehousing and ETL time and cost without the rigidity. Lower data engineering demand and fewer data copies mean significant savings.
● Stronger governance and security: Enforce access controls across all your data. Comply with regulations including those that require encryption and masking.
● Enterprise scale: Support diverse demands driven by multiple lines of business, hundreds of projects, and thousands of users while meeting your most demanding SLAs.
And when data consumers and data engineers are winning, your organization can move faster and smarter and win more of the market. Win-win-win!
By adding data virtualization to your data integration toolbox, everyone can win across your organization—from data consumers to data engineers. Click To Tweet
So, ready to see everyone win? Team up with TIBCO® Data Virtualization, an enterprise solution that orchestrates access to all your data sources and provides sophisticated data management for better decision making.
And, for more on how to win with data virtualization, read this whitepaper on five next-generation data virtualization innovations that are driving greater business value for organizations.
Top 5 Benefits of Integrating QuickBooks and Dynamics 365 CRM with InoLink
Most of you would be well acquainted with our popular integration app – – which is also a . To know what made InoLink so popular, let’s delve deep and see why our Dynamics 365 CRM friends prefer it over others.
So, why InoLink?
InoLink, a cloud-based productivity app for Dynamics 365 CRM provides seamless integration between Dynamics 365 CRM and Intuit QuickBooks. Being a bi-directional integration app, by using InoLink you will get the following benefits:
Sync QuickBooks and Dynamics 365 CRM data
You can easily link the existing Accounts/Contacts/Products/Prices in Dynamics 365 CRM and QuickBooks by using InoLink. With this two-way sync of Accounts, Contacts, Products and Prices, you will experience a better and secure flow of information between Dynamics 365 CRM and QuickBooks.
Sync single instance of Dynamics 365 CRM with multiple QuickBooks Companies
InoLink will enable you to sync one or more QuickBooks Company with a single instance of Dynamics 365 CRM. This will in return help you to maintain and manage accounting data with ease since there is no necessity to create a new instance of Dynamics 365 CRM for every new QuickBooks Company.
Process data Real-time
Using InoLink, you can now easily process data in real-time from Dynamics 365 CRM to QuickBooks. Any changes or updates made by you in Dynamics 365 CRM will be automatically reflected in QuickBooks. You will now no longer have to make manual entries and improving the efficiency of the processes or tasks assigned to you.
Hosted on Azure platform
With InoLink being a cloud-based solution, you can easily sync services hosted on the Azure platform with Dynamics 365 CRM in a more effective and diverse manner. It will also help to reduce the cost required to manage and maintain the IT system and there will be no more dependency on Windows application. All in all, it is a viable and profitable option for any business organization.
Data Integrity
By linking existing Accounts/Contacts/Products in Dynamics 365 CRM and QuickBooks, you can easily avoid duplication of data. With its real-time processing of data, InoLink ensures that the data fed in Dynamics 365 CRM is replicated in QuickBooks. This will help you to maintain the integrity of data and avoid double entry.
So as you can see, all these amazing features have made InoLink quite popular and user friendly among our Dynamics 365 CRM friends.
If you are curious to know more about this wonderful integration app, then wait no more!
Just go to our or and download this exclusive app for a trial period of 15 days.
For any more information or a personal demo, reach us at crm@inogic.com
Until then – Stay Safe, Stay Healthy!
Project Manager Benefits – 5 Things
Save Thousands of Dollars by Bringing on a Project Manager
Some may say paying to have a Project Manager is too costly, but I will be discussing 5 benefits of having a Project Manager to help manage your further project and how the benefits outweigh the cost.
5 Advantages of a Project Manager
Know What You Are Paying For and Save Thousands
Down below are some benefits that Project manager brings to a project:
1) Scheduling: our project managers have access to their entire teams’ schedules and can coordinate and schedule meetings as needed. By having this to coordinate with multiple parties it saves lots of time. When trying to coordinate with multiple parties, days or weeks can go by before a time is locked in. For you having to be the scheduler for meetings, the project manager can split that time in half.
2) Budget: amongst many of project managers main jobs is to monitor and hold the project team to stay within the budget for that specific project. With having to deal with project architects and developers, as much as they try to stay under budget, more often than not they go over budget because it’s not their main job to worry about the budget but to do their jobs. Having a Project Manager to help monitor that budget will help your team prioritize and maximize their time so they don’t waste time. On projects without a project manager, teams often find going over budget as they don’t monitor the hours because of times spent on tasks.
3) Scope: one of many other key aspects to a project managers job is to monitor and manage the scope of the project. While working on projects it can be super easy to fall into a process where developers and other leads allow scope creep and modifications to the project that are outside of the scope. This leads to an additional budget that was not expected, and timelines that are longer than anticipated. The project manager can help make sure that scope creep will not affect major deadlines and priorities.
4) Risks & Issues: a major reason many like to have a project manager on their projects is to help deal with any potential risks and or issues that could come up. Having someone or something that can assess those risks, what they may do or cost to the project and help identify the best way to assess those risks is a key factor to project success. A project manager helps manage those risks so they don’t affect your deadlines. Many times these risks postpone deadlines because there isn’t one resource dedicated to tackling these obstacles.
5) Efficiency & Direction: project managers directly work with the project team to assess tasks, and ensure that those tasks are taking the project down the right road. Most times without a project manager, tasks are identified too early or aren’t relevant for the immediate needs of the project. With project managers this efficiency can be avoided.
As you can see all 5 of these key points are beneficial to having a project manager. More often than not the time project manager cost is added into a quote and contract so you know what you are paying for. Although having to pay for a project manager is another cost for a project, you will save thousands of dollars by bringing on a project manager to help use your time and budget efficiently.
As a Microsoft US Partner of the Year and Inc. Magazine’s Best Places to Work winner, JourneyTEAM helps your organization with the right guidance and technologies for you.
Article by: Dave Bollard – Head of Marketing | 801-436-6636
JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more.
The Benefits of Doing Machine Learning and Analytics in the Cloud
Reading Time: 4 mins 30 sec.
Analytics with data science has been one of the last enterprise systems to move to the cloud, but the situation has changed fundamentally in just the last year or two.
Suddenly, there is a proliferation of cloud-based databases and open-source machine learning development frameworks like SageMaker and TensorFlow—all of them now being heavily promoted by the major cloud vendors (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and more).
The cloud is quickly becoming everyone’s preferred way of doing machine learning and analytics. If you know your way around all the available components, it can be easy to build even the most sophisticated machine learning models for everything from image recognition to fraud detection in the cloud.
What to use—when and how
There’s a ton of rich functionality available in the cloud that you can spin up right now. Over the last few years, there’s been a real shift from heavyweight on-premises installations of data science and predictive analytics to the more lightweight approach that the cloud offers.
The breadth of capabilities that the cloud providers have created combined with the ease of use of a data science platform like TIBCO’s, organizations can spin up environments very quickly without a great deal of IT overhead. This combination of scalability and flexibility is the central value of the cloud when it comes to doing analytics. In fact, with TIBCO® Data Science, you can create solutions across all of these various cloud environments without needing to learn the nuances of each.
Here’s a helpful chart of the technologies available for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the cloud:
Proof it’s as easy as it sounds
It really is that easy. The proof is in our customers’ success stories. Below are a couple of case studies that show how easy it can be to build applications based on sophisticated AI and machine learning, using the cloud.
- Tipping Point Community fights poverty with data:
As a non-profit organization looking to better understand the drivers behind poverty, Tipping Point started a project to explore correlations between parking citations, late fees, and low-income individuals. Using TIBCO Data Science’s collaborative interface for business users and deploying machine learning models in the cloud to discover insights, Tipping Point found a disproportionate impact on low-income drivers. We’re proud to say these data-driven recommendations that Tipping Point made to the San Francisco Office of Financial Justice led to a change in policy to make the system fairer.
- Leidos unlocks big data potential for healthcare analytics:
Leidos partnered with TIBCO Data Science, an enterprise-class cloud platform that leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS), to allow users to create machine learning workflows. By using the cloud, Leidos opened up collaboration across teams and was able to perform quicker analyses. It was able to analyze healthcare data to determine the cause of disease outbreaks like HIV and Zika, consolidate data around emerging healthcare policies, and explore human factors affecting space exploration for NASA.
Across these and many other examples, performing analytics and machine learning in the cloud gives organizations the ability to uncover hidden patterns, anticipate outcomes, and react quickly to real-world events. Data science teams can spin up new systems in the cloud in a matter of hours, performing advanced analytics in a low-code, visual data science environment like TIBCO’s to find the answers to their toughest problems, fast.
Connect teams & scale algorithms with cloud-enabled tech
The TIBCO Data Science platform provides an interactive interface for teams to collaborate on projects in the cloud. Teams scattered around the globe, across different departments, in different roles, can connect through the web-based interface to solve difficult data science problems together. Furthermore, the algorithms TIBCO provides through a simple drag and drop interface are not only easy to use, without requiring a lot of code, but they’re also readily scalable and immensely powerful. But if coding is your thing, you can also use the embedded Jupyter Notebooks that are built into the platform.
Watch this webinar for more on available cloud technologies and the many benefits of doing machine learning and analytics in the cloud.
Get started right now. Go to the AWS marketplace and sign up for a preview of the TIBCO Data Science platform, connect to open sources of data, and start building machine learning models today.
TESCO Bank and PostNL Discuss Their Journey to the Cloud: The Pitfalls, Challenges, and Benefits
At TIBCO NOW London, TIBCO’s Darren Crowder, Head of Solution Consulting in UKI & Netherlands, interviewed Ian Skelly, Head of Software Engineering at TESCO Bank, and Jasper ten Hove, the Logistical e-commerce IT Manager of PostNL, to learn first-hand how they embarked on their cloud transformation journey. He wanted to see how they optimize technology and resources to drive innovation in their respective industries, and how they deployed mission-critical business applications and services in the cloud.
What was the compelling event that made your organization move to the cloud?
Ian Skelly (TESCO): Our main motivation was to address currency risk attached to our aging on-premises data center and the need to fix this. This drove us into the fast lane to address our challenges and a clear strategic path to the cloud. Moving to the cloud has decreased the number of handoffs between people, thus increasing security, and it’s allowed us to change customer offerings. We are at a point today where all of our customer-facing channels are in the cloud.
Jasper ten Hove (PostNL): The reason we looked at cloud infrastructure is that there was an interesting dynamic in the organization. The letter side of the business needed to save costs while the parcel side of the business needed to grow and have more capacity. Quite early on we thought cloud could be the answer for both. We started moving to the cloud to be faster in delivering changes and to also be more cost effective. As a result, we’ve decreased infrastructure costs by 40% and we get things to market much faster now.
Is operating in the cloud really cheaper than operating in the data center?
Ian: You don’t see the cost savings right away. But it gives you the ability to cost optimize in the future. Operating in the cloud space, you are closer to what things cost and their ROI. For certain products, it’s easier to measure that investment and decide what’s worth it or not and you can just shut it down if it isn’t working because you haven’t put in that upfront investment.
Jasper: For us, total spend stayed the same but we now have less money going into data centers and more money going into product development.
What are some of the pitfalls you experienced in your journey into the cloud? What would you try to avoid as you go forward or if you had a second chance?
Ian: Spend your money on consultancy, but don’t get them to do things for you – get them to coach and mentor you and teach you how to do things yourself. In the cloud, operations people, management, and maybe infrastructure need to go on a journey with you. That’s a really big part of your success. You maybe need to engage training partners to help and make sure everyone is trained in the capabilities of the cloud.
Jasper: You need to be clear and understand why you are going to the cloud. Going to the cloud is not a goal in itself. In the beginning, we had some apps we were going to lift and shift, but we realized that that doesn’t really make sense. You lose most of the benefits of the cloud if you don’t rethink an application and really step into the benefits.
In terms of using TIBCO tech in the cloud, what things have been major benefits for you?
Ian: It makes resilience easier. You can deal with practical things in the cloud-like public events. For instance, when we advertised TESCO’s new credit card rate, we got 200,000 hits and we could deal with that in the cloud because you can scale and meet those demands wherein traditional ways, we would have had problems.
Jasper: We mostly use TIBCO BusinessWorks™ 5 and we are now in the process of moving to TIBCO BusinessWorks™ Container Edition. TIBCO is the first product to actually deliver 100% uptime on our systems and that’s why we are sticking with it.
To get help on your journey to the cloud, download this whitepaper, TIBCO Cloud Path: Smart and Complete Cloud Migration Assessment, Preparation, and Execution, watch our webinar series Choose Your Path > Journey to Cloud or contact us for help.
What Are the Benefits of Marketing Automation?
The Benefits of Marketing Automation
In a nutshell, marketing automation helps marketers conserve resources while also launching more campaigns more effectively. But the delight is in the details, so let’s take a closer look at how marketers can reap all the benefits of a powerful, practical marketing automation solution.
More Efficient and Effective Marketing Campaigns
In the modern marketing world, successful campaigns rely on highly targeted marketing, which basically boils down to the old adage of delivering the right message to the right person or business at the right time. Prior to marketing automation, there was a lot of guesswork involved, as marketers were forced to take a trial-and-error approach to their campaigns. This resulted in constant random acts of marketing with no way of knowing what was effective and what was not.
With marketing automation, however, marketers can now more easily identify their web visitors, allowing them to turn unknown prospects into known leads. And once they know who they’re marketing to, they can segment these leads by behaviors, demographics, and other characteristics to create customized and automated lead nurturing campaigns. This way, marketers can stay top-of-mind with their consumers as they guide them along the customer journey with highly personalized messaging (more on this below).
The best part is that, as your potential customers interact with your brand online, you can track all of their engagements and pass that information along to your sales team through a CRM system integration. This allows for better sales and marketing alignment and collaboration, more streamlined lead scoring and handoffs, and excellent insight into the customer journey from start to finish.
Conserve Resources and Be More Creative
In broad terms, marketing automation software helps users save time, money, and headcount. And in doing so, marketers are able to focus their efforts where they matter most, which is developing more creative and compelling content and campaigns. When your whole day isn’t spent on busy work just to keep the lights on, innovative marketers are able to use their imagination to go beyond traditional methods and stale concepts.
Whereas marketers used to have to develop new campaigns from scratch, which is neither efficient nor effective, they can now leverage marketing automation to replicate and refine processes, templates, branding initiatives — you name it, really. So, as long as your target audiences are locked down and you know exactly how you want to message your prospects and customers, you can use your existing assets to deliver consistent marketing assets and campaigns while using personalized messages for each audience segment.
Further, since marketing automation allows for streamlined and repeatable processes and assets, marketing departments spend less time constantly re-building materials and less personnel to develop their campaigns. The result is less money spent on resources, freeing up budget for focused initiatives that make a bigger splash, have a greater reach, and generate an awesome return on investment. Marketing automation is so efficient and effective, in fact, that those surveyed experienced a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead (1).
Benefits Of CPaaS: Take The Complication Out Of Communication
Revenues from Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) are projected to grow to $ 5.2 billion in 2023, and 67% of enterprises expect CPaaS to have an impact on their organization within the next three to five years. But what exactly is CPaaS? And what are the benefits of CPaaS for your business?
What is CPaaS?
The term CPaaS refers to a cloud-based platform that makes it easier for developers to add API-driven communications and microservices to their apps without having to build the back-end infrastructure themselves. These capabilities can cover every channel – voice, SMS, email, and social – as well as automated communication mechanisms like chatbots.
A CPaaS offering will provide developers with APIs, sample code, and software tools, as well as support to help them through the process of implementation. These tools can be configured by the developer to meet the needs of a particular app or service.
What are the benefits of CPaaS?
CPaaS makes it much simpler and feasible to integrate communications features into your app or service, connecting directly to end users and consumers. Providers that can deliver multiple communications services – from enterprise messaging to social media and Rich Communication Services (RCS) – through a single API can enable enterprises to reach a new level of agility by adding the channels they need, when they need them, without extensive development work and investment. It also handles other important considerations, like authentication, securely identifying that you are speaking to the right user, regardless whether you’re reaching out to them via SMS or they’re contacting you over WhatsApp.
Leading CPaaS platforms also offer intelligent messaging APIs that use failover rules, user preferences and response patterns, and data connectivity to escalate and route messages automatically among push, SMS, social, and other channels. This is vital in the modern experience economy, where connected customers expect to communicate with businesses in a contextual way that suits their needs.
How is CPaaS being used?
When Emmi Group, the largest dairy producer in Switzerland, began its digital transformation, the No. 1 priority was creating a personalized customer experience in order to get closer to customers. By utilizing an API from a CPaaS provider, Emmi easily integrated email services into its existing digital marketing platform to help drive a 31% increase in customer traffic and a three-fold increase in conversion rate.
Meanwhile, Swedish mobile network operator Netmore Group AB used APIs to simplify access to a global digital communications network and integrated interconnectivity services for its customer base of developers. In less than one day, secure and reliable engagement services were easily integrated into app projects, and the average development cycles of new apps were reduced by more than four weeks using sample use cases and code, interactive documentation, and analytics tools.
As the growth of CPaaS continues, we anticipate an ever-increasing variety of use cases as developers continue to take advantage of the vastly simplified communications tools it puts at their fingertips.
Learn more about how CPaaS providers and APIs are helping developers successfully launch new digital engagement services and improve experiences:
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This article originally appeared on SAP News Center.