How to make your CRM Big Data small

No matter the size of your company, businesses love to think big, and the way to do that is with the right customer relationship management (CRM) technology. It’s important to select the right CRM system for your business tailored to your needs, data, and expected outcome. Find a CRM that can scale your business’ customer data needs by following a few guiding principles.

  • Start with the basics
  • Focus on areas that benefit you most
  • Take advantage of new technologies

There’s no one size-fits-all CRM strategy for capitalizing on the big data. Choose a CRM for your business that not only serves your needs, but reflect your goals as well.

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How technology is changing in the education sector

Classrooms today are packed with technology – from computers, mobile devices, interactive screens, and online learning.  As education technology continues to change, one of the sector’s big players is looking to keep pace with developments and encourage innovation. “The digital medium gives us the opportunity to really take the education and learning experience to the next level,” said Albert Hitchcock, chief technology and operations officer for Pearson Education. In the last few years, massive open online courses (MOOCS) have gained popularity. Companies like Pearson have the ability to deliver learning at any time and in any place around the world. Machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are at the core of the platform. It allows a personalized experience tailored to the student, and allows teaching faculty, access to how the student is responding to that experience.

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How to test your SOAP Web Service calls using Postman

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If you have worked with Web Services you can appreciate the ability to test your web service calls quickly and efficiently without a lot of programming. This is exactly what Postman was meant for. When you’re building SOAP service calls with IPA it can really make your life a lot easier if you have this particular skill and tool.
The secret sauce here is how you form the actual request. Just follow these steps:
  1. Set the method to POST
  2. Paste your URL in the “Enter request URL” field.
  3. Click the “Params” button and enter any parameters you may have. If you’re using IPA you probably don’t have any parameters to enter here and they’re all included in the body of your request.
  4. Click the Authorization tab and enter your authorization information. If you have user / password this is likely “Basic Authentication”
  5. Click the “Body” tab.
    • Select “raw”
    • From the drop-down on the right select “XML (text/xml)”
    • Paste your entire soap envelope into the body text area
  6. Click Send
That should do it. You’l be able to see the status code (200 OK as shown below) and the time it takes to make the call (570 ms below)
Then in the body of your response you can see what the request returns which is pretty great to see if you’re trying to get a feel for what you’re dealing with.

5 Reasons Why Your CRM And ERP Systems Should Talk

There are two things every company wants – to improve their customer relationships and operational efficiency. In most cases, companies implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, separate solutions, but with similar goals. CRM deals with front-end information such as recording customer interactions and behavior, sales tracking, pipeline management, prospecting, and managing marketing campaigns. ERP software works with critical back-end processes, including purchase history, billing and shipping details, accounting information, financial data, and supply chain management details. These systems in fact complement each both aiming for the goal of improving customer relationships and operational efficiency, yet companies utilize them as two different tools. Having both systems work side by side can open the door to better outcomes. Here are 5 reasons why your CRM and ERP systems should work together.

  1. Larger sales funnel
  2. More accurate sales proposals
  3. Quicker revenue recognition
  4. Faster product deliveries
  5. More accurate demand forecasts

With two such strong weapons being utilized in a company, a business has even more to gain from a CRM-ERP integration, resulting in increased revenue and customer satisfaction.

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How to make an HTTP request from command line

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There are many instances where you are making HTTP(s) requests from within your code or IPA flow to a Web Service or alike but you cannot RDP to the server to make sure HTTP requests will actually work once they run there. It would also be really nice to see the response code and return message in case you’re doing something wrong. This is of course almost always the case with the Infor Cloud as you are not able to remote to the server and test your request on a browser. But luckily you still have access to LID or IPA. Turns out there is a clean and easy way to run a command from LID that will simulate the HTTP request and bring back the header and body information. One such way is by using PowerShell. The following powershell command retrieves the content of the Infor website for example:
powershell -c “Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri https://www.infor.com” | lashow
You can type that command on your LID command prompt  and you should see the response from Infor.com as shown below:
 
Notice: In the command below I have piped the output to lashow for easier viewing
Alternative, if you do not have access to LID, you can use and IPA flow System node to run the command, and subsequently write the output of the command to a file that you can then view.
This is how we determined an issue we were having with making calls to the ExpenseWire web service from Infor Cloud. The server could not create SSL/TLS secure channel to ExpenseWire via https and resulted in this error in LID:
This was especially useful because the IPA flow that was making the Web Service call was simply returning the message:
“Received fatal alert: handshake_failure Message=Could not send Message.”

10 Ways to Avoid ERP Implementation Failures

In today’s business world, many companies are aware that they need to adopt digital technologies like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) programs to stay competitive in the market, but the fear of failure holds them back. Cloud ERP software companies need to educate their customers about the value of cloud ERP, meaning they need to teach both the benefits and the struggles. Below are 10 tips for those thinking about implementing an ERP system as part of their digital transformation.

  1. Selecting the right partner
  2. Selecting the right product
  3. Long-Term Planning
  4. Change Management
  5. Bureaucracy
  6. Establish Roadmaps and Delegate Responsibility
  7. Business Processes
  8. Forgetting about the Data
  9. Underestimating the Need for Training
  10. The Importance of Aftercare

ERP implementation is an ongoing process. Choose a software vendor worth your time and money, and will be with you throughout the implementation and after.

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Xometry Finds Scalable Solution for Custom Manufacturing with Infor

Xometry, an on-demand manufacturing platform, has selected Infor Cloudsuite Industrial to help the company increase agility and alignment with the fast-changing industry. The 4 year old company developed a software platform to enable product designers and engineers to upload 3D files and receive instant prices, expected lead times and manufacturability feedback across a wide range of manufacturing technologies. In the past year, Xometry has grown from having 100 manufacturers to over 1,100 manufacturers, serving over 10,000 customers seeking suppliers, including BMW and General Electric. With the rapid growth, Xometry needed to invest in a third-party solution to help them manage a large amount of small orders. Enter Infor Cloudsuite Industrial Solution. The Cloud based software offers Xometry an end-to-end solution for greater network visibility, and provides contextual analytics and collaboration tools designed to help with customer service.

 

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Can Brain Hacking Impact your CRM Program?

Technology has reshaped almost every industry today. Tech-savvy leaders and CIOs attempt to supplement productivity by incorporating cutting-edge business processes such as reward systems to drive customer engagement. Incentive systems release dopamine into consumers’ brains, which engages them to work more toward future rewards. Marketers leverage this drive to improve their existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs. If CIOs can prioritize potential customers, they can leverage these new age technologies without any complications. Companies should use data to customize and improve users experience with their existing CRM program.

 

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The Value of Artificial Intelligence in CRM

When Artificial Intelligence, as most other new technologies were introduced years ago, it was not met with a positive response. Today, people are wondering when AI will be more utilized. With immense potential, AI is making its presence felt in across many industries, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The marriage between AI and CRM can provide endless potential to any business. AI can assist CRM with customer engagement via web, phone, mobile applications, and more. With AI’s quick data analysis capability, all individual customer profiles can be analyzed in a fraction of second with greater accuracy reducing time and enabling better interaction. Recognizing AI’s ability, top companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce expect to see huge differences with this technology’s merger with their CRM programs.

 

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4 Valuable Lessons From Major ERP Fails

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can bring immeasurable benefits to any company. It is the backbone of any organization, playing a crucial role in keeping all operations running smoothly. Though, like any part of a business, it is susceptible to complications, leading to costly mistakes and lasting damages. Unfortunately, no company is immune to the devastating impacts of an ERP failure. In 2000, Nike lost $100 million in sales due to a failed supply chain project. Right before Halloween in 1999, Hershey’s was unable to distribute $100 million worth of chocolate because the company’s ERP implementation failed. In 2004, A buggy ERP implementation prevented nearly 27,000 University of Massachusetts students to register for classes or collect financial aid checks.

The good news is that ERP failured can be avoided. Below are lessons learned from ERP failures of the past to ensure future implementations run better.

  1. Expect Extended Timelines and Plan Accordingly
  2. Set Realistic Budget Expectations
  3. Be Patient and Prepared to Problem Solve
  4. Know What You Really Need

 

While most businesses make setup for ERP systems a breeze, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the challenges thereafter. ERP systems, even the best of the best, come with their fair share of complexities. Keeping in mind the lessons learned from past failures, your next ERP implementation can drive efficiency and security in your business and improve operations management.

 

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