Benefits of Integrated Business Software

Lately, the term “Integrated Business Software” has been used very freely within the business software industry. Improper or incomplete terminology by the software makers leads only to further confusion and misunderstanding of the true meaning of fully integrated business software. When a company offers a variety of compatible software products, it does not always make them integrated.

However, when a software is conceived and taken through its development and evolution processes as a single database system with various interconnected business software modules seamlessly communicating with the database and each other, only then one can truly call it an Integrated Business Software.

Integrated business software has lots of advantages over its non or pseudo integrated counterparts. Most of these benefits come from the usage of a single system wide database.

First of all, your data is stored in a centralized location making it accessible from anywhere using any of its individual integrated elements. Any of the company business data from manufacturing, supply chain management, financing, human resources, customer relationship management and others is shared instantly throughout your organization based on a specific set of predefined access rules, therefore allowing the right people to have access to the right information. For example, managers and other superiors can keep track and monitor the entire business processes from development to post sales support.

Second of all, when using a single database software, your information security is maximized. On a properly setup system the information is practically fail safe and much easier to maintain and support as opposed to the other systems.

Third of all, your entire organization “speaks the same language” when it comes to any business processes. It completely eliminates problems and delays related to using different formats and standards. Time required for training new employees is minimized as well.

Finally, another great benefit of using such business software is that such system will fully meet company’s initial requirements by utilizing specific elements of the software suite. And because it uses a single database, it is also future safe, allowing you to add additional modules later on, without having to repurchase or reconfigure your existing system. The new elements are simply added without any incompatibility issues.

These are just some of the more important and obvious benefits one can expect from using a truly integrated software. The overall outcome of using such system will have a much more drastic impact on your organization’s performance. It will dramatically improve efficiency and productivity (like any business productivity software does) of any company’s activities related to software use, which is what any company regardless of its size and structural complexity always strives for.

Posted in Software | Tagged | Comments Off on Benefits of Integrated Business Software

The 1st Deadly Sales Mistake in Social Media

There are 5 deadly social media mistakes that are often made by salespeople. I have been guilty of committing all five – sometimes at the same time. As a seller it can be a challenge to stay on top of today’s ever changing technology: the i-phone 4’s, the Droid X’s and the various Sales 2.0 programs. Add to that the growing demands of our job, the increased competition and the pressures of doing business in today’s economy and it’s a wonder we have time to write a profile and create an avatar!

Here is the first deadly mistake and some tips for making sure you don’t fall prey to it.

Mistake #1: Hit and Run Social Media

We’ve all done it. No, I don’t mean leaving the scene of an accident, but jumping into a social media site and disappearing for extended periods of time. Raise your hand if you’ve ever tweeted 15 times in one day and then disappeared without even a glance at your TweetDeck (my what??) for 2 weeks. Keep your hand up if you’ve ever started a discussion thread on a LinkedIn group and abandoned it. How about loading up a video and thinking you’re set for the year?

Businesspeople, and salespeople in particular, often spread themselves too thin. In our attempt to “cover all the bases” we don’t make an impact in any of them. Many smart businesspeople walk away from social media shaking their heads saying, “it doesn’t work,” precisely because they’ve stuck their toe in the water of too many different pools without ever getting wet.

Developing and implementing a consistent strategy that you will stick to on a regular basis (and I mean 40-50 weeks out of the year) is going to ultimately determine whether social media will work for you, or (as some toe-dippers have concluded) it is a major time-waster. If you can’t commit to a consistent presence on Twitter, don’t tweet-unless you’re doing it for fun or personal reasons. If you can’t follow up on a LinkedIn discussion, don’t start one. In the social media world, half measures don’t get you half. They get you nothing. So get realistic about the time you’re willing and able to commit to it.

To calculate how much time you will need to commit to social media for it to be effective, answer the following questions:

How long will it take you each week to:

  1. Create interesting content specific to each site (tweets, discussions, photos, video, etc.)
  2. Post the minimum recommended number of times on each site.
  3. Read and respond to responses.
  4. Stay up to date on topics of interest to your customer or industry groups.
  5. Follow up with potential prospects or leads.

Now, multiply that by 120% (it always takes longer than you think) and that’s how much time you need to set aside each week for social media. Is it enough to spread over two sites? Three? Seven? Now set aside that time each week in your calendar, just like a real appointment. Because it is a real appointment. An appointment with members of the social media community. So don’t let them down!

Stay tuned for the rest of the 5 Deadly Sales Mistakes in Social Media or Subscribe to my Blog to get in advance.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged | Comments Off on The 1st Deadly Sales Mistake in Social Media

Chocolate Chip UI – A Cross-Platform Mobile UI Designing Tool

Popularity of mobile phones has been immensely increased in the last decade. Now, people are using mobile phones not only for talking but also for many other purposes. Modern mobile phones are known as smart phones and come with high processing and storage power. On these phones, users can install and run various apps, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Google+, and many more. With a significant increase in the use of smart phones and apps, demand of mobile User Interface (UI) developers is also increasing in the IT industry.

There are different mobile platforms are available in the market. The three most popular platforms are Android, Windows, and iOS. These platforms have different hardware buttons, navigation patterns, and styles. Therefore, for a mobile UI developer, it is a difficult task to create a design that can be used on different platforms. To overcome this problem, there are some tools available. These tools let you design a UI that can be seamlessly used on multiple platforms.

Chocolate Chip UI is one of the efficient cross-platform UI designing tools available. The library is built by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The library includes separate CSS themes for Android, Windows, and iOS platforms. While designing your UI, you just need to refer the respective CSS theme according to the platform, all your elements will be rendered according to the theme. In addition, you can also apply dynamic theme to render your elements. When you apply dynamic theme in your code, the underlying platform will be detected and the elements will be rendered accordingly.

The Chocolate Chip library contains a number of classes. One of the important classes is list. The list class is used for designing basic layouts. Using this class, you can design normal layouts that contain various list items. Each list item can include three elements: title, subtitle, and description. These elements are specified by pre-defined HTML tags. You need to use h3, h4, and p tags to represent title, subtitle, and description of a list item respectively. By default, these elements are stacked vertically. You can also add header and footer of a list by placing h2 and p tags before and after the list respectively. By default, the list header is displayed in upper case. To display the list header in normal casing, you need to use the normal-case class with the header (h2) tag. The list class is used to design simple layouts. To create more complex layouts, you can use the comp class. The comp class allows you to embed div and aside tags inside a list item.

The article gives you the brief idea about Chocolate Chip UI and what it does. To know more about the library and explore examples with complete code, you can visit the official website.

Posted in Mobile Apps | Tagged | Comments Off on Chocolate Chip UI – A Cross-Platform Mobile UI Designing Tool

How to Find a Great Online War Game

Finding a great online war game can be very difficult, there are thousands of options out there and there is no way we can test them all, so how do we make sure the game we found is a great one? I’ll try to squeeze in this list the basic steps to find the online war game that suits you better:

– Typing in Google something like: “online war game” will give you tons of results to scan and look for something that interests you, try to look for a game that is being recommended by someone else, in most cases it’s probably a better choice than if nobody is talking about it.

– There are many communities and magazines writing about the new coming online games, like gamespot.com, e-games.com.my, PC gamer, Gamepro, etc. Look for them if you want to keep updated.

– If you have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for, it is easier to find it, do you enjoy shooting people in the face or are you more of a strategic kind of guy? Does the graphics mean a lot to you or you have no problems playing browser based games? The more specific you get, the easier it is to find something you’ll probably enjoy.

And once you find it, make sure it’s a great one:

– Whether you care about the community behind the online war game or are more of a solo player, usually the bigger and more active the community is, the better the game. It’s also more secure since not many people playing means the game will probably get less support, updates and eventually shut off.

– It has to be easy to play, I mean it’s OK to have advanced features that you’ll be learning in time but if you are having too much trouble figuring out how to do basic stuff, chances are you are not the only one and that means less users, also you won’t have that much fun anyway.

– Make sure the online war game is fully featured, there are many games that start charging you monthly for playing or that are Free 2 Play but have items you need to purchase in order to actually have fun.

– Most games are exciting in the beginning but often become a boring routine of doing the same thing every time you play, so check if the game has variety, like many ways of doing things, many abilities to choose from or how it changes the more you play.

Keep this in mind and you’ll be finding a great online war game in no time. It would also be a good idea to ask advice from friends and family who are into gaming, playing an online war game is more fun if you do it with people you already know so don’t hesitate to ask or advice others.

Posted in Game | Tagged | Comments Off on How to Find a Great Online War Game