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Top 5 IIoT Implementations in Manufacturing

November 6, 2020 BI News and Info

The widespread implementation of the Internet of Things in industry, along with concurrent advances in machine learning and cloud storage, is thought to represent a fourth Industrial Revolution.

Manufacturers who can integrate digital, analog, physical, and human components into their production systems will generate unparalleled efficiency and value, while manufacturers who lag behind on implementation will struggle to compete.

Here’s what you should understand about the industrial Internet of Things and how it’s already being leveraged to create smarter, safer, and more productive plants.

What is the Industrial IoT?

The industrial Internet of Things, often abbreviated as industrial IoT or simply IIoT, refers to the network of machinery, instruments, and other physical devices that have been embedded with digital sensors for the purpose of monitoring, collecting, and sharing data over private internet connections.

The industrial IoT effectively takes the same wireless technology that drives the consumer Internet of Things (think fitness trackers, home security systems, and smart thermostats) and applies it towards industrial purposes, including core manufacturing operations.

Some aspects of the industrial IoT may not seem particularly new or novel. Manufacturers have, after all, collected and analyzed machinery data for decades.

What’s changed, though, is the emergence of small, low-cost sensors along with expansive, high-bandwidth wireless networks. By combining connected sensors with machine learning software that can analyze the data they’re collecting in real-time, it becomes possible to quickly and autonomously address inefficiencies while optimizing and synchronizing any number of processes.

Top 5 Industrial IoT Implementations in Manufacturing

Industrial IoT technology is already transforming manufacturing operations across the globe through several common implementations. Let’s look at some examples.

1. Asset Monitoring

It’s 3 a.m. Do you know if your next big shipment from Shanghai is on time? If your equipment in Canton has been serviced recently? If power outages across Central Europe will impact your operations in Hungary?

IoT-enabled sensors are helping manufacturers, especially remote manufacturers, track production processes in real-time—across locations—and keep key personnel updated on status changes. This means production problems at remote sites can be solved from a centralized location based on the exact same data that site operators are seeing.

Industrial IoT provides not only increased connectivity with specific devices and facilities, but more comprehensive intelligence about entire production systems. This data can be combined with other sources of information, including weather conditions and historical enterprise figures, to help augment logistics, sustain inventory, and avoid quality control problems.

For example, if you have shipments coming from multiple factories in China that are running late, and you know this in advance, you can draw up new shipping plans to save you money.

2. Predictive Maintenance

Across the globe, countless millions of dollars are spent each year on machine operational and maintenance costs.

Factories have historically either adopted a reactive (meaning run-to-failure) or preventive (meaning periodic examinations) model for keeping their equipment up-and-running. No matter the approach, the objective is always the same: avoid downtimes and expensive pauses on production.

Today, though, IoT sensors are driving a transition to a predictive maintenance model. That’s because the data these sensors are continuously collecting can be fed into machine learning models, which will compare new numbers with older data to actually predict when failure is likely to occur. What’s more, combining IoT with cloud computing lets you leverage information from multiple machines, making your predictions even more reliable.

This predictive approach translates to fewer instances of mechanical error, increased machine lifetimes, and huge cost savings. In fact, a recent McKinsey study notes that “predictive maintenance typically reduces machine downtime by 30-50% and increases machine life by 20-40%”.

3. Optimizing Legacy Machines

The high-tech benefits described above might seem unattainable for older manufacturing plants. After all, legacy equipment represents the backboard of manufacturing in the United States, as most facilities continue to depend on decades-old production equipment. Replacing these older machines can cost anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Thankfully, industrial IoT upgrades are not prohibitively expensive.

Smaller IoT-enabled sensors that detect factors like vibration or temperature can be attached to legacy machinery to provide connected feedback and data at a fraction of the cost of replacement. And even simple sensors like these can provide great benefit by identifying normal operating parameters and then sending out warnings when data indicates the machine is beginning to malfunction.

This is a key consideration for older pieces of equipment, which typically have higher maintenance costs and greater risk of failure. Upgrading existing machines with sensors can reduce such costs while saving time and labor.

4. Operational Intelligence

Operational intelligence is something of an umbrella term that reflects asset monitoring, predictive maintenance, and other industrial IoT benefits.

But it’s more than that, too.

Operational intelligence can be thought of as a real-time analysis of operational visibility—i.e., the monitoring of your system’s operations, performance, and readiness. Industrial IoT facilitates end-to-end operational visibility, including data from remote assets and systems. By collecting and analyzing operational visibility data and comparing it with historical information, organizations can generate actionable insights.

What’s more, the sort of data-driven, prescriptive advice generated by OI not only informs decision-making, it also reduces the time necessary to operationalize those decisions by automating key actions (especially time-sensitive ones).

The benefits to this approach are clear. Imagine, for instance, how operational intelligence could help you not only detect potential machine failures at overseas facilities before they occur, but also automatically order replacement parts and take other steps necessary to reduce disruptions via prescriptive analytics.

Operational intelligence for manufacturing is the most common industrial IoT application according to PTC, and it’s easy to understand why.

5. Safer Workplaces

Maintaining a safe work environment is critical for numerous reasons, not least of all protecting workers and avoiding production interruptions. Industrial IoT can help improve safety by providing facility managers with real-time understanding of worker activity, safety shutdown causes, machinery compliance, and other relevant trends.

The potential safety applications are quite numerous. For example, wearable smart devices can track workers’ biometrics (including body temperatures) and alert supervisors when there are health concerns. And the increased visibility provided by sensors can provide insights into safety-system performance and even help identify the root causes of shutdowns. Safety-system diagnostics can also be used to identify leading indicators and address machine issues before they lead to machine accidents.

In short, connected systems present greater opportunities to monitor performance, assess risk, and proactively improve safety.

Why it matters

Manufacturing has been transformed over the past decade by the convergence of several related technological advances. When working together, these complementary technologies can help you create automated plants that produce large volumes at maximum cost efficiency, or even smart plants that produce highly customized products.

But coordination is the key, as harnessing the most value from Industrial IoT-enabled sensors, cameras, and other devices requires sophisticated machine learning software to analyze the data.

As a leading data science platform, RapidMiner provides a blueprint to make your operation successful. We help manufacturers across the globe deliver business impact with machine learning and AI.

If you’d like to see how we can help your business, sign up for a free, no-obligation AI Assessment, and see what kind of impact machine learning can have on your organization.

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RapidMiner

5 Reasons Why Marketing Automation Software Implementations Fail

January 30, 2019 CRM News and Info

Marketing automation is an absolute necessity for businesses and marketers dedicated to driving conversions and improving ROI. Today’s platforms enable marketers to deliver their messaging to the right audience at the right time while saving time and money and increasing sales. In fact, marketing automation can help businesses increase sales productivity by an average of 14.5% while reducing marketing costs. If you’re looking to produce similar results, implementing powerful, sophisticated marketing automation is the way to go.

However, a powerful platform can’t do much without the right pieces in place to set you up for success, which is why a marketing automation vendor’s job should transcend merely providing you with an effective automation solution. Your vendor should be willing, eager, and able to provide the strategic guidance and expertise you need to use your new marketing automation software to its fullest potential.

At Act-On, we’ve worked with thousands of customers, big and small, to help them uncover solutions to their biggest challenges and help deliver real results. Here are 5 common obstacles to successful marketing automation implementation we commonly see and how to overcome them.

1. Ineffective or Absent Marketing Automation Strategies

A marketing automation tool is not meant to replace your marketing strategy. Instead, your marketing automation platform should help you deploy your plan. In other words, don’t expect your new marketing automation software to generate the results you want if you don’t have a complete and thoughtful plan for how you should be using it.

Before your team pours money into a new platform, you should articulate which goals and objectives you want to tackle with this new solution. As product experts, the marketing automation software company you’re considering partnering with should be able to offer you advice and tips to help you maximize results. They should also provide you with personalized support throughout the implementation period so you can overcome pain points related to your inbound, outbound, sales, and loyalty marketing efforts.

2. Limited Resources to Deploy Your New Software

I’m sure this is something many of us have seen over the years at various organizations. Your business invests in a supposedly life-changing solution only to find themselves investing countless hours simply trying to figure out how to use it.

When choosing a platform, consider what kinds of onboarding services are provided. Research how involved your vendor will be in helping you implement your new marketing automation platform and whether they’ll provide ongoing support and training to help you maximize your use.

3. A Breakdown in Sales and Marketing Alignment

Despite research indicating that marketing/sales alignment can lead to an increase of 38% in sales win rates, the lack of collaboration and communication between these two departments continues to be a problem for many organizations. For businesses that choose marketing automation, this lack of alignment can be detrimental to their overall success.

It’s not enough for your marketing automation platform to integrate with your CRM. Alignment with sales starts strategically by having the same vision around goals, metrics of measurement, and the process that you’ll use to get there. For example, do marketing and sales have the same definition for a marketing qualified lead? If not, that’s one thing to consider as you implement your new marketing automation solution.

4. Lacking a Clear Understanding of Your Customer Personas

Automating your emails can only take you so far if you don’t truly know your customers and understand how to motivate them to take action. If an email doesn’t resonate with your audience, you’re unlikely to see the conversion rates you’re hoping for.

In order to launch new campaigns in your marketing automation platform successfully, you need a clear understanding of your buyers, and your sales funnel should be optimized to fit their needs. Over 70% of companies with documented buyer personas exceed both their lead and revenue goals.

Marketers and sales professionals need to speak their buyer’s language on their terms. Do your buyers appreciate more formal or casual language? Do they respond better to hard facts and numbers or customer stories and anecdotes? If you don’t know the answers to these types of questions, your marketing automation vendor should be working with you to develop inbound and outbound marketing strategies that drive engagement. Think of ways you can tailor your efforts to collect data that will enable you to better understand your customers and create a plan of action for engaging them throughout their customer journey.

5. Using the Wrong Analytics to Measure Success

Whichever marketing automation platform you choose will be equipped to summarize results, but you need to understand which metrics and KPIs to track and analyze to improve your overall marketing efforts. Before you implement your platform and begin to launch your marketing automation initiatives, you should consider what kind of data you want to measure and the types of results you’d like to achieve. Then, set up your campaign in a way that helps you measure what truly matters to the success of your business and marketing efforts.

Personalize Your Marketing Efforts with an Effective, Efficient Automation Platform

If your goal is to provide your customers and leads with more personalized marketing, you need a more personalized approach to your marketing automation implementation. As you embark on the search for the right platform to help you realize and transcend your objectives, search for a partner that can offer you a complete end-to-end solution with platform, strategy, and support to provide the resources required to exceed your business goals. It’s in your marketing automation provider’s best interest to set you up for success, and as experts in their product, they should be able to help you implement your new software in a way that works best for you.

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Act-On Blog

The Right Questions to Ask a System Integrator in Technology Implementations

June 12, 2018 NetSuite

Posted by Tom Schoen, CEO, BTM Global, Guest Blogger

schoen The Right Questions to Ask a System Integrator in Technology Implementations Purchasing or upgrading a retail application or system requires a web of logistics, to put it mildly. You may be working with several different vendors, and all require tight coordination to ensure your project proceeds steadily onward.

Technology providers – the vendor who sells you a merchandising system, ecommerce software, etc. – may provide their own system integration services or work with partners called system integrators (SIs).

A system integrator is a vetted and trusted partner of your technology provider. For example, NetSuite has several SIs they work with and from which you can choose which one best fits the skillsets you need and the cultural compatibility you want. Determining which SI best fits your organization’s needs can be critical to the success of the project.

What an SI delivers

An SI serves in both advisory and delivery roles. Depending on your organization’s size, in-house expertise and other needs, an SI can advise you on strategic technology planning, perform custom application development, implementation services, and deliver system integration and/or support. Retailers choose to partner with SIs on projects large and small; a good SI will tailor its services around the size and needs of your organization.

Take the example of a SuiteCommerce implementation. A system integrator will provide the implementation and integration services and, if needed, custom development. Implementations may require several vendors and partners, and an SI can facilitate the coordination of all of the third-party actors, increasing the efficiency of the project and freeing up your team to work on mission-critical tasks rather than coordinating work efforts and tracking timelines.

Beyond skills, an SI’s perspective is especially valuable in the current retail environment. With regulations changing, technology constantly evolving, and customer demands driving a fast rate of change, you cannot be (nor should you have to be) an expert on every detail of your IT systems. That’s where your SI comes in; they can be the experts on best practices, regulatory compliance, and ensuring that you are set up for long-term success (not just short-term gain).

Asking the Right Questions

It’s tempting to think of an SI as providing a commodity in a sense; that any one has the same expertise and delivers its services in the same way.

Not so.

There are stark differences in processes, expertise and the service of the teams you consider. Some key questions to ask:

Do they think strategically about your project and ask a lot of questions? Having a proactive approach will help them catch potential challenges or obstacles early on – maybe before you even realize them – and solve them faster.
Do the SI team and your team have a mutual respect and collaborative approach? Don’t overlook the importance of a culture fit.
Does the SI look at your business holistically and understand how the project will impact other areas, even beyond the stated scope? Or does the team have an “order taker” culture that gives you the sense they work from a template, no matter your circumstances?
Does the team only have tech backgrounds, or do they come from diverse areas like product development, performance engineering, or even merchandising and store operations? Expertise in the technology and application stacks you are using is essential. But expertise doesn’t just come from doing the same type of project over and over; it’s about the team’s diversity and creativity. Diverse experiences will give them a deeper understanding of your entire business, its needs and objectives.
How has the SI handled challenges and surprises? If an SI team has experience with many types of technologies, they’re more likely to deliver out-of-the-box thinking and creative problem-solving possibilities.
Is the team is made up of employees or primarily contractors? Employees will provide long-term stability over the life-cycle of your partnership with the SI. Contractors will come and go throughout the project, and any knowledge they have about you walks out the door when they do.

Finding the right partner

You put a huge effort into choosing the right technology for your organization and an equal effort is required to find the right integration partner to bring it to fruition. With an understanding of what an SI does and by asking the right questions, you can uncover the differences among your potential partners and chose the one that best fits your goals and culture.

Learn about the SIs that partner with NetSuite.

Posted on Mon, June 11, 2018
by NetSuite filed under

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3 lessons your company can draw from AI implementations outside the tech sector

April 24, 2018 Big Data

It’s clear: Artificial intelligence has transformed the way we live. According to PwC, 55 percent of consumers would prefer to receive new media recommendations from AI — a development that illuminates how much we’ve integrated the technology into our lives.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are just a few of the obvious innovators embracing bot-powered business functions, but others are also taking notice. Artificial intelligence’s ability to synthesize and analyze data can easily improve business operations for many industries, including hospitality, restaurants, and travel. Such markets experience success when they revise their customer experience or marketing strategies with machine learning and chatbots.

Smaller companies can also adopt AI with the right strategy by looking to larger enterprises for insights into understanding business AI. Rather than mimicking the latest trends, however, your smaller organization should consider taking small steps to success. The following showcases how three large “non-tech” companies are embracing AI — and how to follow their lead.

1. Lemonade Insurance: Chatbots simplify business processes

New York-based startup Lemonade Insurance claims to disrupt the insurance industry with its flat-fee home, renters, and life insurance policies. Unlike its industry peers, Lemonade turns to machine learning and chatbots to deliver services, handle insurance claims, and reduce paperwork when generating quotes. Its customers benefit from shorter claims processes and supportive customer experiences that help them understand how insurance works.

Lemonade acknowledges that AI is ready to change the insurance industry. Its CEO and cofounder Daniel Schreiber recently shared how Lemonade uses chatbots to prevent the loss of useful data in the application process. He said that insurance companies have already taken note of how AI technology “transforms the user experience, appeals to younger consumers, and removes costs” and that the industry will take those innovations even further in the coming years.

Try it: Lemonade employs chatbots to simplify complex business processes (such as applying for an insurance quote) and clarify esoteric information. Consider building or outsourcing a chatbot platform to collect and communicate data to or from your customers.

2. United Airlines: Virtual assistants provide support

The third-largest U.S.-based airline became the first of its kind to integrate with Amazon Alexa in 2017. The United skill application enables customers to interact with Alexa and get answers to common questions about United’s domestic flights: Just say, “Alexa, ask United [your query here].” Encouraged by its success, United Airlines later announced integrations with Google’s Home Assistant, allowing customers to access updates from their smartphones.

Smart devices and virtual assistant platforms affect how customers connect with notable brands. The virtual assistance trend has penetrated 56 percent of U.S. households, and United Airlines capitalized on the technology’s ubiquity. Any company willing to adapt to the ever-changing pace of customer behavior can meet evolving customer expectations.

Try it: Avoid reinventing the wheel. Take advantage of Amazon and Google’s AI infrastructure with tools like Alexa Skills and Actions on Google. Amazon and Google even offer professional support teams to guide companies through the integration process to make it as simple as possible.

3. Marriott Hotels: Branded apps improve data collection

The hospitality and event planning industries have started using intuitive, branded digital experiences to improve customer interactions. Artificial intelligence allows leaders like Marriott to oversee event management with digital applications. When event planners book at a Marriott hotel, the luxury chain presents them with the Marriott Meeting Services App to assist with planning, launching, and monitoring their event. Planners receive real-time updates on their event locations, catering, and hotel services. Event attendees can also interface with Marriott’s in-app chatbot for critical information, such as parking availability and itineraries.

Artificial intelligence implementations like this can build positive branded experiences. When customers trust their favorite brands to create enjoyable interactions, businesses benefit from the helpful data generated by better customer engagement. The data you gather can help you further improve the customer experience and your targeted marketing campaigns.

Try it: Marriott uses branded event apps to track and analyze digital engagement. Outfitting your own digital or mobile application with machine learning or a chatbot function can improve data collection while offering insights into your brand reputation.

Artificial intelligence revolutionizes how the world’s leading companies conduct business. Smaller brands can join industry leaders by adopting popular AI technology such as chatbots and voice assistants. When done strategically, your business can use AI to simplify complex functions, collect more data, and discover key insights into your digital brand.

Darina Murashev is a digital journalist who contributes to Benzinga, Scoop.It, and Business Woman Media.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

The days of expensive, complex CRM implementations are coming to an end

May 6, 2017 CRM News and Info

I have been helping businesses implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for almost 20 years. I began in the days where “Sales Force Automation (SFA)” was the buzz-term and market leaders were GoldMine & Act. While a lot has changed in the CRM space over the years history repeats itself and that is happenning in the CRM space.

The market went from SFA applications that were relatively inexpensive and packed full of features to CRM systems that were expensive, complex and in a lot of cases lacked depth of functionality. Unfortunately this prohibited many typically smaller businesses from tapping the power of CRM which is unfortunate.

This is all changing… We are experts on Microsoft Dynamics CRM/365 so I will center my analysis on that platform. In the last few years Microsoft has poured innovation and investment into their Dynamics 365/CRM product. They brought a hosted Software as a Service version of Dynamics CRM to market (2013), they completely redesigned the user interface, added marketing, customer service, field service and project service automation components. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and just this week announced the initial integration between LinkedIn and Dynamics 365. Last November Microsoft launched Dynamics 365, a platform that includes functionality across communication/collaboration, sales, marketing, customer service (CRM) and financials. They have enhanced the CRM platform by making things that were previously only achievable with custom programming available right in the admin tool (like calculated fields, rollup fields etc).

What does all this mean for an SMB company who wants to tap the power of Dynamics 365? It means their cost will be lower, the ROI will be greater, the time to value will be shorter. The cost will be lower because the more functionality and increased configurability added to the product reduces or even eliminates the need for customization and custom development which are costly components of an implementation. It also reduces the total cost of ownership as customizations and custom development need to be maintained over time through system upgrades and changes to the business.

At Strava we recognize this shift in the market and fully embrace the “configured CRM” approach to implementing the solution. For every client requirement we examine all the potential solutions and recommend the best approach including the cost/benefit ratio.

Strava offers two implementation models leveraging this above noted market shift -

Pay per user / month INCLUDING professional services. This allows a business to treat the entire project as opex, spreading out the investment over 3-5 years enabling the business to see real results and value without having to spend a large sum upfront.
Fixed/low cost configured implementations – Leveraging the significant enhancements to the Dynamics 365 platform we are able to offer full implementations for a fraction of the cost even a year ago.

If you felt CRM was out of your reach we would love to revisit the topic with you. Also if you have not seen Dynamics 365/CRM very recently we would love to show it to you on a live demonstration. More information at www.stravatechgroup.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Overcoming Technical Challenges in Large Mainframe to Hadoop Implementations

January 21, 2017 Big Data

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen tremendous growth in demand for Syncsort DMX-h from large enterprises looking to leverage their Mainframe data on Hadoop. Syncsort DMX-h is currently the recognized leader in bringing Mainframe data into Big Data platforms as part of Hadoop implementation.

A large percentage of these customers have come to us after a recommendation from one of the Hadoop vendors or from a Systems Integrator, the hands-on people who really get the technical challenges of this type of integration. Some people might wonder why the leaders in this industry recommend Syncsort, rather than some of the giants in Data Integration. What kind of problems trip those giants up, and what does Syncsort have under the hood that makes the hands-on Hadoop professionals recommend it?

To get an idea of the challenges that Syncsort takes on, let’s look at some Hadoop implementation examples and what technical problems they faced.

Use Case 1: How Mainframe Data Can Go Native on Hadoop

A large enterprise was masking sensitive data on the Mainframe to use in mainframe application testing. This used a lot of expensive CPU time. They were looking to save the cost of MIPS by doing the masking on Hadoop, then bringing the masked data back to the Mainframe.

DMX-h has a unique capability to move Mainframe data to be processed in Hadoop without doing any conversion. By preserving the original Mainframe EBCDIC encoding and data formats such as Packed-Decimal, DMX-h could process the files in Hadoop without any loss of precision or changes in data structure. The original COBOL copybook was used by DMX-h to understand the data, including Occurs Depending On and Redefines definitions. After masking sensitive parts on Hadoop, that same copybook still matched the data when it was moved back to the Mainframe.

dmxh slide 1 Overcoming Technical Challenges in Large Mainframe to Hadoop Implementations

Keeping the data in its original Mainframe format also helped with governance, compliance and auditing. There is no need to justify data changes when the data is simply moved to another processing system, not altered.

Use Case 2: Efficiently Combining Complex Mainframe Data with Diverse Data Sources for Big Data Analytics on Hadoop

Another common use case Syncsort DMX-h does routinely is to move Mainframe data to Hadoop so it can be combined with other data sources, and be part of analytics run in MapReduce or Spark. We’ve seen plenty of situations when a customer has tried different solutions to ingest Mainframe data but has hit roadblocks that stalled its Hadoop implementation, where DMX-h easily handles the situation.

In one example, a customer had nested Occurs Depending On clauses in their COBOL copybooks. Their existing solution was expanding each of the records to the maximum occurrence length. This was causing the size of data to blow up hugely on Hadoop, and the ingestion was painfully slow. With DMX-h, the records were kept at their intended size and the ingestion proceeded at a much faster rate. The ingestion completed in under 10 minutes, as opposed to 4 hours with the existing solution.

In another example, the customer had VSAM data with many segments. Their existing solution was reading the VSAM file once for each segment, which was taking a lot of time and using up expensive processing on the Mainframe. If a VSAM file had for instance, 5 segments, the other solution had to read that same file 5 times over. DMX-h reads VSAM only once, partitioning the data by segment ID using a field on the copybook and then splits the data into separate segments, allowing each segment to be mapped by a different copybook, for further processing.

Use Case 3: Simplifying Mainframe Data Access

We have helped users who discovered that accessing Mainframe data isn’t as easy as other data formats. For example, they might have found that their tool doesn’t handle Packed-Decimal or LOW-VALUES in COBOL, or cannot transfer data securely from the Mainframe using Connect:Direct or FTPS.

Another big challenge during Hadoop implementation is getting the COBOL copybook to match the Mainframe data. The original COBOL developers may be long gone, and there is no one around who can fix the copybook. Our Professional Services team sees that all the time, and helps enterprises correct copybook problems so the value of the data can be fully realized.

In these and other practical situations, customers have told us they chose DMX-h as the faster, easier to use, and more cost-effective solution. Mainframe sources can be accessed and processed with DMX-h with just a few mouse clicks. The simplicity makes hard problems look easy.

We’ve spent a lot of time listening to our customer’s pains and aspirations for their Mainframe data. Our 40+ years of Mainframe and Data Integration expertise combined with active involvement in the Apache Hadoop community resulted in DMX-h’s strong Mainframe Access and Integration functionality. Another thing that sets us apart is our mature set of features related to security. Our ease of integration with Kerberos, and easy handling of encrypted or compressed data make a huge difference in production implementations.

For some more specifics, read where Arnie Farrelly, VP of Global Support and Services, has recounted some of what his team has experienced when working with large enterprises trying to leverage their Mainframe data in Hadoop.

And here is a short video demonstrating how to use DMX-h to access Mainframe data and integrate it with Hadoop.

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Project Management Tip: Our Secret to Running Successful Dynamics CRM Implementations

August 7, 2016 CRM News and Info

secret 300x204 Project Management Tip: Our Secret to Running Successful Dynamics CRM Implementations I believe it was Socrates who said, “Employ your time in improving yourself.”

Truthfully, we should look for ways to improve not only ourselves but also our processes.

At our company this means looking for ways to improve the way we deliver Microsoft Dynamics CRM projects to our clients.

Every project is managed using our own Project Management for Dynamics CRM tool. And every project starts with a template. The master template includes our best practices for every project. Once it is selected for a new project, it is customized with details of that individual client.

Every quarter we have a business review of our master Dynamics CRM project template to find ways to improve operational efficiency.

Our master template is our secret to successful project management.

For example, a while back we had a situation where a client’s IT infrastructure did not meet the minimum requirements for Dynamics CRM. But nobody realized this until we were down the road with the project. It was embarrassing for us to go back to the customer and say, “Well, you are going to need to buy all of the software and resources to upgrade your IT infrastructure before we can even start.”

We wanted to make sure this step was never missed again. So we included this as a task within our checklist in our CRM project template.

The project task is “Validate the customer’s IT infrastructure”. Then the checklist includes:

Verify version of the operating system client is using.
Verify who is installing the SQL server database
Confirm a system audit has been performed.
Confirm current database size

The person in charge of that project can go down through the checklist and mark each item as complete. Additional information is captured in the Notes section. Once everything is complete that task is done and we can move on to the next task.

Then a report can be run that shows all the projects steps and includes the notes around each task and checklist item.

It is a wealth of information that is consistent across every one of our CRM projects.

Before an implementation officially begins we print out the initial project report and make sure that all the pre-implementations tasks are completed. Including “validating the customer’s IT infrastructure”.

By reviewing and updating our master template that starts each Dynamics CRM project, we are constantly improving our processes, our results, and ourselves.

For more details see the post: How Microsoft Partners Can Use Checklists to Manage Implementation Projects in Dynamics CRM

By AbleBridge, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Partner, now a Crowe Horwath company.

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Why I Am Confident We Can Provide Fixed Fee Dynamics CRM Implementations

July 29, 2016 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

We provide Fixed Fee Dynamics CRM implementations. No gimmicks, No Games.

After more than a decade of experience with numerous and complicated CRM projects, we have developed a successful system for providing fixed fee Dynamics CRM Implementations.

Here’s how it works:

Part 1: Discovery Process (Free)

We take the time to go through a brief discovery process. We want to understand your business and understand the relationships that are important to you. (A CRM system is generally focused on tracking people, money and things and we want to know what you track.)

Then we want to learn about your requirements and goals in order to determine how a CRM system is going to meet those requirements and if Dynamics CRM is a good fit.

We don’t charge for this discovery and we can do it relatively quickly because we have been doing this for a long time.

Based on your business requirements, we will give you a loose project estimate. For example, an estimate of 100 to 300 hours for implementation (plus software licensing).

I agree, this is a pretty wide gap.

But it is important to start with this step because it makes sure we are both in the same ballpark. If you say, “Geeze, we thought this was going to take 15 hours,” then we both know this is not going to work.

But if you like our approach, and agree with the range, then we start getting specific.

Part 2: Functional Design Phase (Paid – Fixed Cost)

In phase two we will give you a fixed estimate to go through a functional design phase. For example, if the initial estimate was 100 to 300 hours, within that time we might schedule a fixed 30 hours as a paid engagement for the functional design process.

Together we will think through the functional design with your specific business requirements in mind. We will play devil’s advocate. We will ask leading questions. We will bring up topics that you, the client, may not have known to ask.

You many tell us you send invoices to customers. Great. But what are your common terms, what are you capturing? Where is that information coming from? Do you have a standard template for services versus products? Where is sales tax calculated? What is the output?

We guide you to the types of information that we need with an eye to detail and we give you homework to collect that information within the company. It’s not a quick process, but together we figure out exactly how it’s going to work and make sure you are thoroughly educated about CRM and what it can do.

And I’d like to point out that we don’t make any money on this functional design phase. We are trying only to cover our own costs. If we estimate 30 hours for a functional design document, we may spend 100 hours on it because it so critical to us that everything be correct. After all, this is what we will hold ourselves to during the fixed fee implementation.

At the end of these 30 hours we will give you a detailed blueprint for your Dynamics CRM implementation. We know exactly what we need to provide and you have a very good understanding of what you are going to get.

Part 3: Implementation Project (Paid – Fixed Fee)

When the functional design document is agreed upon we can confidently provide a fixed fee proposal for the entire Dynamics CRM implementation. You will know exactly how much it will cost, and how long it will take.

Even if it takes us longer to accomplish something we agreed upon, you will not pay more.

We design, develop and deploy the Dynamics CRM system based on that blueprint. There are no surprises. We bill against the budget and the budget is fixed.

If you decide that you want something that is not included in this blueprint, that is outside the scope of the project, you can choose if you want to pay extra.

Why do fixed fee projects make everyone happier?

Our process sets realistic expectations for everyone involved.

We are not shooting high on the price just to create some buffer zone in case something veers off course. When this is done the CRM partner can always find a way to “use” the extra money in the budget, so don’t expect to see a refund.

We are not underestimating the project just so we can win the deal. In this case, the partner will inevitably come back to you later and say they have reached the top of the budget and you have to decide if you will pay more to keep the project moving. By this time, you are already too far down the road to back out.

We are both on the same page about the final deliverable. Some CRM partners will say an implementation is complete while the customer says it is almost there but the setup did not take into consideration some specific business unit that does something different. The partner may feel that what they delivered checks all the high level requirements boxes and the budget is maxed. Then it becomes a tug of war.

These scenarios put the customer in a bad position and make the CRM partner look terrible. Next, people start throwing around the scary phrase “failed implementation.” Setting realistic expectations is what allows us to have happy customers.

What if changes come up during the fixed fee project?

Our goal is to flush out all the potential hurdles during the functional design phase so that changes do not come up. If you are wary about a certain element you can request that we spend more time on that during the design phase so that it is very clear.

However, once the blueprint is agreed upon, anything that you would like to change or add would be handled as a change control process. This means it would be a new project, with an additional fixed fee.

What can go wrong with a fixed fee implementation?

Unexpected situations sometimes come up, but we will provide exactly what we agreed upon, even if it takes us longer than we estimated.

For example, last year we let go an employee who was heavily involved in a specific CRM implementation project from the beginning. This was a large engagement and the ex-employee had been the person responsible for everything. We had to spend a considerable amount of time to get a new person up to speed on this project. But that was all on us. The client did not pay any extra.

If it turns out that a client gave us false information during the functional design process, that is a difficult situation. We either need to do a good job of outlining why it was false or we just “take one on the chin” and get through it. That is why we are extra careful when we make the blueprint.

Why should you trust AbleBridge with your Dynamics CRM implementation?

We’ve seen clients that were billed four times more than the amount that we would have charged for a project. The initial estimate may have been lower, but realistic expectations were not set. The CRM partner basically billed for every single minute that they spent on the project, no matter what.

Software implementations can be stressful enough, the last thing you need is big surprises on timeline and budget or a final result that does not meet your expectations.

Our fixed fee Dynamics CRM implementations keep surprises out of the equation.

If you are interested in discussing a fixed fee Dynamics CRM project, contact AbleBridge 877-600-2253 or [email protected].

By AbleBridge, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Partner, now a Crowe Horwath company. www.ablebridge.com

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Managing Complexity in Your Enterprise Implementations

January 2, 2015 Salesforce

Editors Note: This is the last in a 6-part series entitled Enterprise Architecture with Force.com. Our guest blogger, Greg Cook, is a managing partner of CloudPremise and currently holds all seven Salesforce certifications.

Greg Cookx120px yjbcm1 Managing Complexity in Your Enterprise Implementations Salesforce1 is a powerful platform that allows your organization to transform itself. But as Salesforce has grown, managing complexity in your Enterprise implementations has likely grown, as well. As a Salesforce Architect it is your responsibility to understand and orchestrate all the moving parts. This can be an overwhelming proposition when you consider some of the components that have been covered by this blog series:

And this just is scratching the surface…

So how do you begin to approach managing complexity in your Salesforce1 Enterprise implementations? Should all of your Salesforce resources be on the same team? Should Salesforce teams be distributed across Development, Architecture, and Operations? What is the best software development methodology to use? What tools are necessary? What are the roles and responsibilities that you need to consider when scaling Salesforce into your enterprise? And why should you – the Salesforce Architect, care about this?

Let’s start with the easiest question first: why should the Salesforce Architect be concerned with these issues? If you have looked into the qualification criteria for a salesforce.com Certified Technical Architect (CTA), you might be wondering why there are so many “non-Salesforce” aspects of the certification. Not only must you understand Salesforce inside and out; you must also understand things like Integration Architecture, Governance, Application Lifecycle Management, Change Management, Test Strategy, Release Strategy, etc. The reason behind this is that only someone who understands the Salesforce1 Platform AND these other components is truly qualified to lead a large Enterprise to their best approach for managing Salesforce.

So what goes into a good design for managing Salesforce1? Here are some of my recommendations:

Salesforce Architecture should fall under (and be a key driver) of your Organization’s Enterprise Architecture – This means following architectural guidance of any EA frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, Zachman, etc) that exist in your company.
Salesforce should adhere to IT Service Management best practices – I like to use the ITIL v3 framework here. You should consider your Salesforce Strategy, Salesforce Design, Salesforce Transition, Salesforce Operations, and Salesforce Continual Improvement as separate processes, and potentially different organizational constructs. Salesforce should fall under any organizational frameworks here, especially related to Change Management and Support.
Salesforce should remain as agile as possible – This is often a conflicting principle to the first two items in the list. But finding the right balance is critical to achieving agility AND predictability. There are numerous ways to do this: one is to create a clear policy of allowable production changes by administrators vs changes requiring a formal release window. Another would be to set up very clear technical boundary points between Salesforce and other enterprise systems through the use of staging tables or Apex Web Services.
Salesforce Support should follow a very structured Tiering philosophy – Primary support for Salesforce should come from Salesforce users themselves via a combination of self-service, knowledge documents, and delegated administration. Solely relying on your Salesforce administrators will lower your scalability potential.

So what does this “look like?” Here is a reference model that I use when trying to describe the organizational aspects of managing Salesforce. (Disclaimer: this is only a reference model and each company is different. What is important is to understand the Principles of the reference model, and then apply them to your own organization):

Let’s look at the layers and describe some of the important aspects:

Center of Excellence

The Center of Excellence (CoE) means something different to almost each company you talk to, and reconciling those differences is well outside the scope of this article. However I think some of the key aspects of the CoE are to provide Enterprise-Wide Salesforce strategy, standards, and governance. Therefore the CoE would determine what org a new project should be built in (or whether to have multi-org in the first place). They would also build and manage an Enterprise-Wide roadmap of business and technical capabilities for Salesforce. Therefore your CoE would need close alignment with your Enterprise Architecture team. Your CoE would also provide Enterprise-Wide configuration and development standards that all Salesforce orgs and teams should follow.

Lines of Business

It is quite possible (and sometimes desirable) to have multiple Lines of Business (LOB) coexisting in the same org. One of the key success factors for making this work is to build out a Delegated Administration function inside of each LOB. The goal is to provide immediate functional support to your business users without overloading your administration and technical teams. When a business user is empowered to build reports, create list views, reset passwords, even fix data, etc., it creates a great relationship between the business and Salesforce IT groups.

Your LOBs will be making a number of requests that cannot be fulfilled by their Delegated Administrators. Clearly defining theses processes (New Business Case, Logging an Incident, Salesforce Change Request, etc.) and how they pass into your technical teams is very important.

Help Desk

A mature organization will utilize the Help Desk if possible. Initial Salesforce implementations often bypass this step, but as your organization grows into Salesforce it is important to provide a single focal point of Service Requests to your users. It is also helpful to be part of this process when supporting complex solutions that might have many technology components such as middleware, CTI, SSO, etc. I recommend involving your Help Desk in your Salesforce Support processes as early as possible.

Salesforce.com Production Support

This is your core Administration or DevOps layer. Your admins and environment managers live here – supporting users, making (pre-authorized) configuration changes, deploying new releases, triaging and researching production incidents, etc. I recommend this group be the only users with true system admin privilege, and to use great discipline in all activities (such as logging all changes with cases, etc.). This group should be walled off from Development teams and users with only clearly defined entry points (service requests from users, deployment packages from developers, etc.).

Salesforce.com Technical Oversight

This layer is responsible for understanding the detailed design of your Salesforce environment. In a multi-org approach you might need one of these layers PER ORG. The reason is that this group is responsible for commissioning and approving any changes that happen to the org. I recommend at least three individuals in this layer: a technical architect who understands all of the code, integrations, and data conversion within the org, a functional architect (“app lead” or “solution architect”) who understands all of the business processes of the org inside and out, and a data architect who understands each object and field inside of the org.

This technical oversight team should be very hands-on and would be responsible for approving any releases to production. They should be completing design reviews throughout the development process. They should also be validating all changes conform to the Salesforce standards.

Salesforce.com Technical Teams

It is possible to have multiple technical teams working within the same org at the same time. You can have one team working on a specific LOB while another works a generic backlog for all others. Or perhaps you have one team working under a quarterly release cycle while you have another working on a weekly sprint. You can have a small internal development team but outsource large projects to a vendor. Whatever your use case, if you take the time and discipline to set up your teams and processes correctly, you can achieve this salesforce.com nirvana as well. Once you are mature enough with your management practices, you can centrally commission development efforts to discreet teams who can build and package your projects following your salesforce.com standards and deployment methodology. This is when you can really start to scale your usage of the Salesforce1 Platform in your enterprise.

Support

Another key success in managing complexity in your Enterprise Salesforce1 implementations is rigidly following a tiered support plan. Most support issues should be handled as close to the user as possible, with only the most severe and significant issues ever being escalated to your technical teams. Take the time to define your tiers and the escalation points. If you need an example here is one that might work in your company:

Tier 0 – Customer Self-Service Sites, Knowledge Documentation, Micro-Training Solution, Delegated Administration
Tier 1 – Your formal IT Help Desk where issues are logged, triaged, and escalated based upon formal Service Level Agreements. User access issues can even be deflected here with IVR and or SSO solutions.
Tier 2 – This is where your core administration team would really get involved. These should be true system issues or service requests that cannot be fulfilled by your delegated admins or help desk.
Tier 3 – Once issues are formally researched and escalated by the production support team, a technical team would get involved. This usually takes the shape of the original development team (if the project is still under warranty), a managed services team, a dedicated technical support team, or if all else fails, your salesforce.com Technical Oversight Team.

Understanding the Brick Wall

One of the most important aspects of the reference model is the brick wall. The brick wall is to signify the formality of migrating change into the production environment. The brick wall is your organization’s primary control point to ensure that only quality components migrate to production, and then only on a predictable cadence. I hope you read my article on Deployment Strategy – then you will understand the discipline necessary to migrate successfully and ensure your production environment (and all your sandboxes) are functioning as desired.

Summary

In many ways, managing Salesforce is no different than managing traditional technology platforms. It requires good strategy, architecture, development, deployment, and support processes. To me, the difference is that the usual traditional technology platforms CANNOT survive without those processes, while Salesforce projects can often survive without them due to its robust design. However it is impossible to scale the use of Salesforce in your company without taking the time and discipline to manage the platform as an Enterprise asset. With the right combination of organizational design, ITSM processes, and architectural governance, your salesforce.com implementations can truly help transform your Enterprise.

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