SigmaWay Blog

Before implementation of a process it is very important to identify your ERP requirements. All ERP systems have different strengths and weaknesses and thus a package must be chosen which minimizes the business weaknesses. It is necessary to choose a system which lets us pay only for the functions needed now and easily adds modules in the future. Even scalability plays a crucial role as some ERP packages are designed in such a way that it is easy to scale by adding users or functions. The level of support provided needs consideration as ongoing support is required once the system is in operation. Training provided to staff members also plays an important role. Thus the consultant or the vendor must be able to provide the required training. The growth and prosperity of the business depend on the soundness of the decision made about your ERP requirements. To read more follow:-http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/inside-erp/identifying-erp-requirements-74112

The Fathom Neural Compute Stick -- the first product of its kind, is a modular deep learning accelerator in the form of a standard USB stick. Featuring a full-fledged Myriad 2 VPU, the Fathom Neural Compute Stick not only enables rapid prototyping, but also delivers high levels of neural network compute to existing devices via a USB port. Thanks to the ultra-low power Myriad 2 VPU, the Fathom Neural Compute Stick does not require an external power supply, and can accelerate neural network performance for a wide range of devices. To know more, follow: http://fossbytes.com/movidius-fathom-brings-ai-stick-supercomputing-usb-drive/

Braina (Brain Artificial) is an intelligent, personal assistant, human language interface and automation software for Windows PC that allows you to interact with your computer using voice commands in English language. Braina makes it possible for you to control your computer using natural language commands. It helps you in doing tasks. You can either type commands or speak to it and it will understand what you want to do. Moreover, using speech recognition built in Braina for Android App you can interact with your computer from anywhere in your house over a WiFi network.
To know more: http://fossbytes.com/braina-free-ai-software-for-your-pc/

Most integrated development environments (IDEs) and text editors are full of useful features, but, for the most part, they aren't connected to the Internet. The Kite is an artificial pair programmer that runs alongside your text editor or terminal. It suggests you command examples, library documentation, and code fixes to make your life easier as a programmer. At the moment, Kite only offers support for Python and OS X. To know more, follow: http://fossbytes.com/kite-artificial-pair-programmer/

Content Marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategy. Despite its effectiveness very few businesses know how to utilize it efficiently. To build a solid content marketing you must set KPIs and project ROIs wisely. Comments, page views, bounce rate, average time spent on your page, social sharing and keyword ranking are crucial KPIs to determine your content marketing success. An editorial calendar on the other hand helps you stay updated with the overall progress of your company’s brand story. Whom you hire for content marketing must have a good understanding of how to be professional and courteous along with innovation and creativity. The attempt should be to extract more value out of it. Your content should be promising and trustworthy. Tracking analytics and documenting all processes help you improve the content. To use educational and entertaining contents for increasing the customer conversion rate is the optimal way to utilize content marketing. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277700

The number of private companies going public has been drastically falling in the past few years. The question that arises while observing this trend is, whether a successful company should consider the thought of going public at all. Understanding today’s tech investment environment is a prerequisite to answer this question. The new crowdfunding rules have made it easier for small businesses to raise funds, in such a stage the more important question is how to use this piled up cash. Surely raising more funds and going public is a huge accomplishment for a business, but what is more important is to sustain steady growth and innovation. The factors that you shall keep in mind while raising fund is that the idea in your head truly fulfills a market need, your business partners and investors are picked smartly and you do not look at VC funding to answer for your growth. To answer whether to go public or not you must look at what is best for your company give the current scenario. Read more at:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279563

Websites are a great marketing tool for any online or offline business. Websites must be customized with proper content and tools. Good website builder is a must for creating a website. The website must have a clean design as it is much appealing to the visitors as well as easy to navigate. Websites must also be designed for mobile because nowadays most people browse using their mobile devices. Also sitemaps must be included. All important information about the business must be given to the users or customers in order to gain their confidence. To know what potential customers are searching online business may use keywords like Google AdWords Keyword Planner. The contents on the website must be shareable so that it is easier for the customers to spread the word about the businesses. To read more follow: - http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/marketing-strategies/3-features-your-small-business-website-needs-to-have-73589

Twitter hires ex-apple worker, Alessandro Sabatelli who is an interface designer and joined as the Director of VR and AR. He is also the founder of Ixomoxi. He will be working on the machine learning and AI team-Corex. Sabatelli will also work on Magic Pony, a technology that enhances video and image quality on twitter. By combing Machine learning and augmented reality together, Twitter can develop snapshot features like Face Swap etc. Also, augmented reality can combined with geolocation and geotagging tool. Read more at:  http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/twitter-hires-ex-apple-designer-as-director-of-vr-and-ar-322924.html?utm_source=top_stories 

Fed up from the endless advertisers, publishers and contact posts on Facebook? Well Facebook is updating its feed algorithm which will more priority for the friends post over ads, etc. Seems like Facebook wants to stick to its main principle 'Connecting people, places. Starting with people one is friends with on Facebook'. Many updates have been done already in the past like to reduce the amount of posts about friends liking or commenting on some post. It is clear that Facebook doesn't want to get into the business of spreading news issues the world should read about. But rather show articles, which are informative and interesting. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/06/29/facebook-tweaks-news-feed-algorithm-to-prioritize-posts-from-friends-you-care-about/#5b0bbedb2598

Prisma can be considered as one of the best examples of viral marketing in 2016. Social media sites are flooded with pictures from this application. As a marketer what you need to see beyond these pictures is why the simple photo filter app is gaining popularity with no efforts to promote it at all. The users promote the app on their own, for reasons like the simplicity of the application and easy integration of the app with the social media. Another smart trick that Prisma teaches us, is to offer a better alternative to products already being used by the customers instead of trying your luck with something totally new. The way Prisma used IOS to tease Android users and build the urge in them for the app, is another very smart technique to popularize your platform. Resist the urge to market more than needed instead let your customers market for you. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280101

Improving supply chain will result in overall efficiency and higher profitability of the businesses. The first step to do this is to get top management on board for making changes in the supply chain. The key here is a commitment from the top executives for improvement of supply chain and formulating well thought supply chain reforms. Also, if the ERP doesn’t give an insight and transparency into the flow of products within the company then changes must be made to the existing process. Information about all the phases of the supply chain, from ordering to warehousing, must be available through the ERP systems. Another important thing is traceability. This can be done accurately by maintaining a tight, close relationship with the vendors to track every product in the process. Nowadays the use of satellite transceivers on the trucks of the transportation companies is increasing. This allows the company to track the exact location of the shipment. RFID tags are also used to track individual pallets. To read more follow: - http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/inside-erp/improving-the-supply-chain-74053

Analytics has become much easier with the introduction of ERP. ERP nowadays includes a large no. of analytical and business intelligence tools. So this has made analysis much advanced as the emphasis in the modern ERP system is on practicality rather than comprehensiveness. But it is important to note that the businesses have to provide training to obtain the full benefits of these software. Another important thing is that business analysis must be introduced to people before the tools. Business intelligence must be an essential part of the corporate culture as BI tools gives better and more accurate information and solutions rather than a simple Excel spreadsheet. Introducing the managers to an environment of dashboards (which supplies enormous information at a glance) can simplify the analytical business culture. To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/inside-erp/business-analytics-and-erp-74058

Sales Promotion helps you develop a loyal customer base. Promotion is a powerful way that helps customers to know about you and your brand. However, if something goes wrong the same promotion can permanently tarnish your brand reputation. Letting your customers test the product you launch after the proper quality check is an impressive way to gain popularity amongst your customers. Predicting what can go wrong and taking appropriate measures so that the things don’t go wrong can save your reputation from being tarnished. To have a knowledge of the probability of occurrence of such wrong actions is also very helpful. Despite the precautions if anything goes wrong, the best solution is to stay calm and hunt at a better alternative. It’s important to identify whether wrong promotions will cause small problems or have a catastrophic effect on the brand. One should base his promotion decision on this identification. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279220

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a good long term choice as it encourages business growth.

1. It optimizes business processes: - it minimizes or eliminates redundant business processes by using identical business processes for a particular task. This increases efficiency as the business can now focus on more strategic job duties.

2. It replaces robust manual back office processes by fully digital back-office functions.

3. Data driven decision making processes are important for a business to prosper.

4. Security provided by ERP solutions will minimize intrusions and data breaches

Thus we can say that ERP solutions helps to gain long-term position and the business will grow in leaps and bounds.

To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/inside-erp/5-ways-erp-solutions-encourage-business-growth-74045

Although visual data discovery tools give a faster insight and better exploration than traditional BI tools, these have two things in common i.e. data validation and user training. With the help of both visualization of data discovery tools and BI tools users can dig into the data with simple queries, find out patterns and trends by looking at the data graphically. Previously, there was involvement of IT in data analysis in the form of building a metadata layer of abstraction from a physical database scheme with many tables, but now the visual data discovery tools automatically models a metadata layer. It is of utmost importance to know how to use visualization effectively for data analysis. Thus, user training is still important for gaining success. Also data validation cannot be ignored because data validation policies and procedures must be applied before the data is entered into a database.To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-solutions/two-ways-visual-data-discovery-tools-differ-from-traditional-biand-two-ways-they-are-the-same-74024

Augmented reality depicts the user environment in real-time through photographs or maps, unlike virtual reality which sketches artificial environments. For a successful enterprise augmented reality it is of utmost importance that it is able to integrate backend enterprise systems, can be used in real-world business environment, and is able to improve reality by adding virtual means for better and clearer understanding. For the creation of enterprise augmented reality, enterprise integration plays a crucial role. Enterprise augmented reality will bring about a revolution in technology markets. To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/integrate-my-jde/what-is-augmented-reality-in-the-enterprise-73990

An ambitious businessman owning a small business will like to keep track of all the activities in his business. At this point in time, anything that comes for free and easies your task is welcomed. Buffer is a tool that helps you to manage your various social media accounts efficiently without any sort of hindrance. Outlook is another very important tool that makes your life with emails very easy going. OnStar is of relief when you are on the roads. Waze saves you from losing time in traffic jam, it’s an app that gives you alert about traffic jams and accidents when you enter a destination. Triplt, on the other hand is a tool that helps you stay updated with your bookings in hotels, restaurants or flight reservations. It saves you from bearing the pain to go through printed travel reservations. Time saved with the help of these apps can be used to accomplish other important tasks. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/270400

In the digital era where an individual is afraid of losing jobs not to recession, but two robots and machine learning, it becomes important for us to learn about the extent to which machines can replace human beings. In the near future where automation might delete few occupations entirely, it is expected to affect almost all occupations to some degree. Knowledge about technical feasibility is a prerequisite for automation of the activity. The second major factor that is always the reason for concern is cost. The cost of developing such automation system needs to be taken care of. Physical activities are most susceptible to automation. The retail industry is another place where automation would do wonders. However, financial sector lies in the middle range of automation. People managing and developing things can still relax a bit as automation in this field has very low technical potential. The focus should be on automating sectors with high technical feasibility and replacement of workers from these sectors to opportunities where automation is yet to do wonders. Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/where-machines-could-replace-humans-and-where-they-cant-yet

In order to have an extensive customer base, inclusive of people from all over the world you need to check how efficiently you manage one of the most difficult tasks of targeting the right group of new consumers. When you know you are the lucky one to take birth in digital era, then be luckier and use it to sell information and subscription to the world. Sometimes staying quiet might help so please do not engage in any sort of politics over social media, which relates to the sentiments of your customers. This goes without saying, appear in all major social platforms and avoid the smaller ones. Boosting about the quality you provide accompanied by strong testimonials might help you to draw attention of the new customers. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279226

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is gaining popularity in recent times and the top four ERP trends are mobile ERP, social ERP, ERP integration and two tiered ERP. With the help of mobile ERP the work has become much easier as users can access their documents anywhere and anytime. The concept of social ERP is also increasing. ERP integration is helping companies to establish uniformity and consistency across several applications and platforms. Last but not the least two tiered ERP helps to improve the needs of 2 locations- the headquarter and the subsidiary. This is much cheaper than installing one homogeneous ERP system.

To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/inside-erp/the-top-4-emerging-trends-on-the-erp-market-73954