Kategorie: Business

There are a lot of
ERP solutions available in the market, but not all of them can be the right
choice for you. You have to think diligently and chalk out a list of problem
areas specific to your domain and industry before making the final purchase
decision.

Traditionally, ERP solutions were built, keeping in
mind the needs and requirements of a wide range of industries. During the
implementation process, the IT team would conduct a rigorous study of the
client’s specific challenges and then decide the features of the ERP system.

Generic ERPs were
costly to purchase, difficult to implement, and required a whole team of IT
specialists to maintain and update. It is why most companies took a
considerable amount of time before going forward with the final implementation.

As time progressed,
technology evolved. Today, ERP software provides industry-specific solutions,
thereby saving time and money in the long run. The plus point of industry-specific
ERP software is that businesses no longer require IT specialists to configure
it as per the industry’s needs. Also, it takes care of all business processes
with minimal or no customization required.

Research also
indicates the same. A recent survey of over 200 business executives reveals
that they require ERP software specifically built to deliver solutions
particular to their industry.

With improvements
in cloud technology and their easy integration with ERP systems,
industry-specific ERP software is gaining momentum. In 2018 alone, cloud-based
ERP systems had a 20.7% enterprise application growth rate. Leading research
institute Forrester has estimated that by 2020, the cloud subscriptions for
business applications will account for $170 billion in revenue.

Let’s see some benefits of the industry-specific ERP software and why companies invest significant time and money.

1. Minimal implementation cost

Generic ERP
solutions entail huge costs. Apart from the significant license fee, companies
have to pay for features that they may never use. Consider a company that
specializes in providing excellent customer service on behalf of its clients.
Seeing an increase in work, it decides to implement a generic ERP solution.
What benefit will it gain from features specifically meant to help sales,
marketing, and supply chain departments? On the contrary, it can save a massive
amount of time and implementation cost with an industry-specific ERP solution
solely built to assist support agents.

2. Reduced implementation time

An industry-specific ERP software will already have many built-in business-critical functions that will significantly reduce the implementation time. It also allows for essential integrations to other necessary software such as Finance and Account Management, Supply Chain Management, Retail Management, Customer Service, Business Intelligence, and Field Service Management. Such instant API connections will further pull down the implementation cost.

3. Cheaper maintenance costs

The best thing
about an industry-specific ERP solution is that you can readily take help from
domain experts in your field. They will identify problems, diagnose
bottlenecks, and eliminate errors as soon as they encounter them. This strategy
will help you get quick solutions and will significantly lower your maintenance
costs.

Why is an industry-specific ERP solution better than
a generic one?

There is no doubt
that generic ERP solutions provide a wide array of functionalities that can
simultaneously support multiple operations. But not many companies need all
those functionalities. They require help in a few areas and would prefer to pay
only for them. Customizing generic ERP solutions is a costly affair, and quite
often, it doesn’t attune to the company’s goals and objectives. In contrast, an
industry-specific ERP software provides an all-encompassing solution that
requires low cost and less time to implement.

Another vital
feature of industry-specific ERP software is that it is truly customer-centric.
It is designed keeping in mind the end user’s demands and needs. All the
elements — including monitoring, functional control, process orientation,
action on customer feedback, customer segmentation, forecasting sales trends to
name a few — are designed to provide better control and resolve the industry’s
specific challenges.

Further, it helps
companies to gain visibility in their processes and determine the problem
areas. This activity prevents manufacturing quality from falling and puts an
end to delivery delays.

For the business to
make profits and outperform its competitors, it has to ascertain customers’
needs and fulfill their desire. It’s also critical to fix competitive product
prices and maintain adequate stocks and supplies of essential goods. An
industry-specific ERP software will help you locate the exact pain-areas and
provide to-the-point solutions.

For instance, of
the many leading ERP solutions, Sage X3 ERP software is designed specifically
for the Pharmaceutical industry. It is designed to provide pin-point solutions
for supply chain management inefficiencies, strict regulatory compliances, and
rigorous quality assurances faced by Pharma companies to operate efficiently.
It streamlines daily tasks, allows data sharing across the organization,
maintains a consistent chart of accounts, and enables all business stakeholders
to work as a cohesive unit.

Takeaway

As a leading
manufacturer, you should lay out a detailed plan before making the final
purchase. The three points that top the list should be — smooth implementation,
a minimal investment of time and money, and easy maintenance.

If you are planning
to invest in an ERP solution, keep your mind open. A generic ERP software is
not explicitly bad, but it may fall short of providing industry-specific
solutions. On the contrary, it can be customized to offer a wide range of
functions that cater to multiple industries’ needs.

The final decision
rests upon your shoulders.

Industry-specific
ERP software is gaining wide recognition because of its ability to provide
pinpoint solutions. It is more affordable, is easier to maintain and upgrade,
and requires relatively less implementation time. Thus, it can give you the
necessary impetus to grow quickly in less time.

The post Why is Important for Businesses to Opt for Industry-Specific ERP Software? appeared first on ERP News.

Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) announced today that it was chosen to become TikTok’s secure cloud technology provider. This technical decision by TikTok was heavily influenced by Zoom’s recent success in moving a large portion of its video conferencing capacity to the Oracle Public Cloud.

“TikTok picked Oracle’s new Generation 2 Cloud infrastructure because it’s much faster, more reliable, and more secure than the first generation technology currently offered by all the other major cloud providers,” said Oracle Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison. “In the 2020 Industry CloudPath survey that IDC recently released where it surveyed 935 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) customers on their satisfaction with the top IaaS vendors including Oracle, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, and Google Cloud… Oracle IaaS received the highest satisfaction score.”

“As a part of this agreement, TikTok will run on the Oracle Cloud and Oracle will become a minority investor in TikTok Global,” said Oracle CEO Safra Catz. “Oracle will quickly deploy, rapidly scale, and operate TikTok systems in the Oracle Cloud. We are a hundred percent confident in our ability to deliver a highly secure environment to TikTok and ensure data privacy to TikTok’s American users, and users throughout the world. This greatly improved security and guaranteed privacy will enable the continued rapid growth of the TikTok user community to benefit all stakeholders.”

Based on decades of experience securing the world’s most sensitive data, the Oracle Generation 2 cloud was built from the ground up to fully isolate running applications and autonomously respond to security threats.  Oracle will combine its secure cloud technology with continuous code reviews, monitoring, and auditing to provide unprecedented assurance that U.S. TikTok user data is private and secure.

The post Oracle Chosen as TikTok’s Secure Cloud Provider appeared first on ERP News.

ERP News Magazine September 2020 – Issue #11 – Download Here (PDF)

Hello everyone from the 11th issue of ERP News Magazine,

The increasing number of alternatives in the ERP Industry triggers the question of how to choose the right system for your business through these troublesome times especially for those who have realized the necessity of digital transformation and getting ready to take the first step. Then, it all comes down to the critical decision that should be made: Should you go with a generic ERP solution, or are you looking for industry-specific ERP software? Many of both preferences are widely available in the market. It is all about analyzing your needs correctly!

In this issue, we asked the question of “How to Choose Between Generic and Industry-Specific ERP Systems?” to the industry professionals.  We hope their answers will enlighten your journey to digital transformation in which you will find all the advantages and disadvantages of both industry-specific and generic ERP systems.

Also, as always, you will find the latest news, articles, and interviews about the ERP industry through the pages of our new issue.

See you in our next issue …

The post ERP News Magazine September 2020 – Issue #11 appeared first on ERP News.

Sage Intelligent Time enables service businesses to leverage artificial intelligence to automate time entry, reduce revenue leakage, and improve employee utilization

ATLANTA – Sept. 21, 2020 – Sage (FTSE: SGE), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today announced the first artificial intelligence (AI) powered application developed for Sage Intacct. Sage Intelligent Time, built directly into the Sage Intacct cloud financial management system and available online or via a mobile app, provides continuous, timely, and more accurate insights to better manage billable time in services-based businesses.

Built-in collaboration with Sage Artificial Intelligence Labs (SAIL), Sage Intelligent Time uses the power of AI to automate time entry, helping services professionals to quickly reconstruct their workday. The personal time assistant aims to collect every billable minute – gathering and presenting the activities to the user to add to their timesheet with any necessary adjustments.

Reducing leakage from either not billing, or under-billing, customers for services provided enables firms to improve project profitability and increase revenues. For example, by properly accounting for billable work and eliminating just one hour of lost billable time per week, based on a $200/hour billing rate, a firm could generate up to $10,000 in additional revenue annually – per billable employee.

“For service professionals who work on multiple projects, multi-task, and are always on the go, timesheets are a dreaded process often saved for Friday night or weekends. Reconstructing the week’s activities for time entry often results in untimely, inaccurate, and incomplete timesheets,” said Erik Zahnlecker, principal product manager for AI and Machine Learning at Sage. “We developed Sage Intelligent Time to enable services-based businesses to more accurately collect the critical information needed to manage profitability and close the books on time while securing revenue often lost due to unlogged, billable activity.”

“AI-powered timesheets can provide a much-needed boost to professional service organizations that are trying to find ways to reduce revenue leakage that is commonly seen with traditional time entry,” added Brian Siefkes, director of professional services industry marketing for Sage Intacct. “At a time when capturing all billable activity is paramount, Sage Intelligent Time is a critical tool to solve the age-old problem of inaccurate time entry. It’s not a stretch to state that Sage Intelligent Time is the biggest advance in time entry since moving from paper time slips to digital.”

Continuous Visibility into Resource Management and Project Profitability

Automated time entry based on activity means time is continuously collected and offers the ability to include smaller activities, such as email, that are often too time-intensive to track manually. The role of the service professional shifts from reconstructing their time to reviewing
it—an easier task that, when done consistently, provides project managers with continuous
visibility into project hours, including real-time project status and profitability information. Armed
with these insights, managers can more accurately guide future project resourcing and pricing to
optimize profitability as well as provide more precise forecasts.

One early adopter, Sheri Petras, CEO, and partner at CFI Group, a leader in customer experience measurement and business insight services, noted: “We bill our projects on a fixed- fee basis, so accurate project cost data is critical for us to understand how we’re performing and how to price future work. Getting dependable project labor costs can be difficult when our team is working on 10-15 different projects in any given week, often spending time on unscheduled tasks. With Sage Intelligent Time, we are much more confident that we have the most accurate understanding of our project status and costs, so we can make financially sound decisions about current projects and better price future work.”

Intelligent Timesheets Streamline Data Entry and Accelerate Timesheet Submission

Sage Intelligent Time features a user-friendly mobile application, enabling service professionals
the ability to review and record billable time while working on the go. This can eliminate the
usual process of project staff spending 1-2 hours of their weekend attempting to reconstruct the
last week (or two) for their timesheet and helps get timesheets completed in a timelier manner.
The personal time assistant also gets smarter with every activity review, saving users even
more time as it learns.

Streamlining and accelerating the timesheet submission process also helps the finance team by
eliminating the need to play “timesheet cop” and track down overdue timesheets, so they can
close the books on time. In addition, as timesheets are more complete, client invoices are more
accurate and specific. Clients know exactly what they are paying for, which accelerates
payments and cash by reducing the likelihood of invoice disputes and trimming.

Another early adopter, Patricia Wakim, SVP of finance for M/A/R/C Research, a marketing
research firm, commented: “Our project managers are typically very busy and required to juggle
multiple projects, which can make time entry delayed and often less accurate. We depend on
that time entry to get an understanding of the financial performance of our projects and catch
any revenue leakage before it gets out of control. To streamline the process, Sage Intelligent
Time helps suggest what should be entered instead of forcing our project managers to dig
through their calendar and email to reconstruct the workweek. The automated alerts are also
helpful for me, so I don’t have to play ‘timesheet cop’ as much – but I will miss the opportunity to
wear the badge every Friday.”

Maintaining Privacy and User Control

User privacy is built into Sage Intelligent Time. The user is in complete control of what types of information to provide to their personal time assistant. The activity data collected by the time assistant is visible only to the user. Once Sage Intelligent Time suggests a time entry, the user can review and adjust it before applying each suggested entry using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Delivering the Future of AI for Finance

Sage AI Labs (SAIL) is a cross-functional group that drives the development of AI and machine learning services, infrastructure, and strategy at Sage. The SAIL team is comprised of top finance technology and AI experts intensely focused on revolutionizing the role of finance. The SAIL team has a visionary approach to deliver a continuous close so that finance has continuous trust in their numbers and continuous insights without the pain of the traditional close process. SAIL is helping Sage customers leverage AI to free their finance teams from repetitive tasks and empower them with actionable insights, so the CFO can be a more strategic leader to the business.

To learn more about Sage Intelligent Time, watch this short overview video and visit the Sage Intelligent Time product page.

Availability

Sage Intelligent Time is currently in the Early Adopter phase. It will be generally available from Sage Intacct and its network of channel partners in the U.S. in the next quarter.

The post Sage Launches First AI-Powered Timesheets App Built Directly into the Sage Intacct Cloud Financial Management System appeared first on ERP News.

Over the past few years, customer service organizations have undergone significant changes to meet evolving customer expectations, and the events of this year have understandably accelerated many of those trends.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of being resilient in the face of constant change. The pandemic turned service departments on their heads, shutting down at a moment’s notice and reopening with remote workers. At the same time, many service departments had been overrun with requests and have had to rethink how they operate in order to answer customers when and where customers want.

As service professionals look to the future – and in many cases, consider reinvention of their entire service departments – Oracle is here to help. To guide customers through these shifts and prepare them for the future, we have introduced a series of updates to Oracle CX Service within Oracle Cloud Customer Experience.

• New Digital Customer Service Tools: Context and understanding are everything in today’s environment. To help customer service teams meet these demands, we have introduced a series of new digital customer service tools.
  • Automated Service “Digital Trifecta”: Helps service teams deliver accurate service at scale by automating service 24/7 through the integration of our Knowledge, Intelligent Advisor, and Digital Assistant products.
  • Intelligent Advisor: An enhanced advisor helps enhance the customer experience with visuals such as uploading an ID, seeing a house on a map, and more, while also helping agents come to decisions faster with new real-time insights.
  • “Service at the Point of Need” Inlays: New inlays or “pop-ups” monitor digital behaviors to read signals when someone might need service, and then offer service proactively. Inlays are context sensitive to ensure personalized and intelligent interactions.
• New Service Center from Home Capabilities: As service departments stay remote during the pandemic – and look to maintain increased work-from-home programs afterward – we have introduced a series of new remote work tools.
  • Agent Experience Upgrades: To help service teams operate from anywhere and maintain productivity at scale, we have improved agent experience in the Oracle CX Service browser user interface. This allows agents to provide service from home or any location, via any browser or device, through an intuitive and customizable system.
  • New Slack integration: A new Slack integration with Oracle CX Service gives agents a familiar tool to collaborate and resolve customer cases faster. Teams can drag and drop cases and stay better connected with teams while remote.

• New Field Service Capabilities: Field service is vital in maintaining essential infrastructure (power, water, internet, etc.) as well as lifesaving equipment (MRI machines, ventilators, etc.). To help organizations enhance field service capabilities, we have introduced new collaboration, digital assistant, and advisor capabilities.   
  • New “Where’s My Technician?” feature: Helps customers follow the progress of their service appointments and engage directly with the field service teams in a style similar to an Uber app experience. Customers will also be able to confirm and change appointments, watch a vehicle pull up on a map, and more.
  • New Field Service Digital Assistant: A new digital assistant helps customer service teams save time by answering questions for technicians in the field.
• New Customer Data Management Enhancements: Customer service data is a critical source of customer information that is often inaccurate and difficult to share with the rest of the organization. New features in B2C Service Customer Data Management validates and de-duplicates customer data to ensure accuracy and completeness while making it easier to share customer data across the organization.
• New Knowledge Management Capabilities: To help agents navigate massive knowledge databases and quickly discover the best content, we are introducing artificial intelligence advancements. New artificial intelligence capabilities will proactively show agents the best answers, as well as help agents, write, and search for informative articles.

The post Oracle Helps Customer Service Teams Embrace Change appeared first on ERP News.

Maritime injury cases generally involve marine vessels. You are likely to encounter most water injuries due to recreational boating accidents or if you work in the maritime industry. In some cases, the injuries might emanate from some time of negligence on the part of the maritime company you work for. That is why it is necessary to understand the steps to protect your rights after a maritime accident. Let us cover what you need to know about maritime accidents, including hiring a lawyer.

Types of maritime injuries

Well, it is appropriate to understand the kind of maritime
injuries if you are to take the first step to protect your rights. Let us look
into some of them:

• Slips
  and falls: You can get injured if the boat’s deck, stairs, and the likes
  were wet
• Collision
  and bumps: You may sustain injuries due to improper safety
  precautions taken with cranes, dollies, carts or the
  machines on-board your water vessel.
• Heavy
  lifting: A maritime lawyer will also represent you if you sustained
  injuries for lifting a heavy object at a long time. For example, if the boat’s
  deck tilts unexpectedly, then you lose control and sustain injuries. 
• Sickness: if the company you
  work for didn’t follow sanitation and health guidelines, you might fall sick.
  In this case, you can hire a lawyer to seek compensation for negligence.

Now that you are well aware of the cases that you can hire a
maritime lawyer to help you settle, it is important to understand the maritime
law process and find a lawyer.

The maritime law process

After establishing that your injury falls under the maritime
injury category, the initial step is to reach out to the maritime lawyer. Speak
to a maritime injury lawyer who will discuss your case and
investigate the factors contributing to the injury. The next course of action
is to determine the case and see whether your lawyer will enter into
negotiations with your employer or an insurance adjuster, begin state or federal
legal proceedings or file a lawsuit on your behalf. Again, it is best to talk
to a maritime lawyer who will help establish the best course of action for your
case.

Why do you need to hire a maritime lawyer?

It would be best if you spoke to find a lawyer with a track
record handling similar cases. The following are the benefits of hiring a
qualified maritime lawyer:

• They have vast
  experience as maritime accident attorneys, meaning that they have developed
  legal resources specific to maritime law.
• They have resourceful
  networks of medical, engineering, and maritime industry experts. Hence they can
  easily get outside opinions that will help build a stronger case.
• They make excellent
  witnesses who will testify before a judge on your behalf.
• They understand the
  process and hence, will do the legwork for you as you focus on recuperating.

Final remarks

Accidents are sometimes inevitable. In a maritime
environment, you could easily get injured in the line of duty. It is crucial to
understand the legal process to protect your rights. Speak to a maritime lawyer
to help seek compensation for the injuries sustained.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Hiring a Maritime Lawyer appeared first on ERP News.

While there are more women than ever starting and leading businesses, female entrepreneurs still face some unique challenges. Fortunately, there are lots of supportive, inspirational women around the world who share strong, empowering wisdom to help aspiring female entrepreneurs push through and succeed.

So, no matter what challenges and obstacles you’re dealing with while trying to start or grow your business, we’re here to help. In this post, you’ll find seven inspiring TED Talks to support, delight and motivate you to keep going, no matter the daunting setbacks you may be facing now or in the future.

Editor’s note: Looking to launch a new online business but don’t know where to start when it comes to getting a website?  123 Reg will be explaining how to create a business website at this year’s Women In Business Expo. The event takes place virtually on the 14th and 15th of October 2020. Head here to book your Women In Business Expo ticket. You can learn more about the event and the other exhibitors here.

At age 64, Diana Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida. It wasn’t her first but fifth attempt. And it was a dream 30 years in the making that she never gave up on.

In this talk, Diana talks about persevering, never abandoning your dreams, and finding ways to power through obstacles, no matter what they are.

Hear her story as she shares three key messages you’ll want to remember: one is you should never, ever give up; two is you are never too old to chase your dreams; and three is it takes a team to succeed so don’t go it alone.

If you’ve never watched Dame Stephanie’s Ted Talk, you’re in for a real treat. She is a British information technology pioneer, businesswoman and philanthropist, and one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs you probably never heard of.

In the 1960s, she founded an all-woman software company in the UK, which was ultimately valued at $3 billion. In this amazingly inspirational and fun talk, she tells her story and explains why she went by the name of “Steve” as well as why it’s critical that you partner with the right quality people.

In business, the journey is often more fulfilling than achieving a goal because of the mistakes you make and learn from, the knowledge you gain, and the experiences you have along the way.

In this talk, art historian Sarah Lewis explains how not every piece of artwork from great masters was considered a masterpiece at first. So she asks everyone to consider the role of near failures or near wins in our own lives and journeys.

No matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, don’t forget to also celebrate the process as you move one step closer to success. And that process include both the small wins as well as the small failures you can learn from.

Marisa Peer is a world-renowned speaker, Rapid Transformational Therapy trainer and best-selling author. She has also been named Best British Therapist by Men’s Health magazine, and if you watch this talk you’ll see why.

Marisa has an amazing ability to empower women by sharing practical strategies for succeeding, and not just the theory behind it. Watch this talk as she walks you through a few strategies to train your mind to achieve higher success levels, an essential skill for any female entrepreneur.

If you want to start a business but are always finding excuses to put it off another month or year, or waiting for the “perfect moment” or the “right” thing to happen to get started, this is the Ted Talk for you.

In it, clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. Just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, that doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. Watch this talk to learn how to bring about the success you want in life starting now.

Balancing motherhood and a career is not easy but it can be done, and successfully. In this talk, Irene Mora, a part of Tommy Hilfiger’s Spanish merchandising team, credits her mother – who was the CEO of a multinational pharmaceutical company – for her ambition and drive.

So whether you’re a new mum, a seasoned veteran or years away from motherhood, you’ll find lots of useful advice and inspiration in this talk.

Entrepreneurship is time consuming, which means you’ll likely find yourself working relentlessly hard and sacrificing not only family and social life but also sleep. At least that’s the picture that’s often being portrayed as entrepreneurship.

In this talk Arianna Huffington explains we may have it all backwards, and why the key to success is in fact working less and getting more rest.

Wrapping up

Starting a business can be tough and scary. There are many challenges and obstacles you may have to face along the way. So whenever you feel stuck or need a little inspiration and motivation to keep going, watch these TED Talks to help you push through.

Now, if the thought of quitting your 9-5 job and going all in is just too scary, there are other options too. You can always start small, with a side hustle that’ll give you the chance to try out entrepreneurship and see if you have what it takes to become a full-time business owner.

And don’t forget, when you’re ready to start a new business 123 Reg has everything you need to build your own website.

The post The seven most inspiring TED Talks for female entrepreneurs appeared first on Better business online: Tips, insight and advice.

Editor’s note: Looking to launch a new online business but don’t know where to start when it comes to getting a website?  123 Reg will be explaining how to create a business website at this year’s Women In Business Expo. The event takes place virtually on the 14th and 15th of October 2020. Head here to book your Women In Business Expo ticket. You can learn more about the event and the other exhibitors here.

Women are rising to the top of the startup scene. According to a report by Crunchbase, the proportion of female co-founded companies worldwide has doubled since 2009.

Simply put, there’s no better time like the present to be a female entrepreneur in the UK and the world. And it’s not just because there’s an abundance of tools that make it easier to start a business. It’s also because these days, there’s a plethora of organisations, groups, communities, and resources designed to encourage and boost female entrepreneurship, better your professional self and find support along the way.

So if you’re looking to launch or grow an existing business, you no longer have to go it alone. Check out this list of incredible resources you can take advantage of to get all the knowledge and support you need to thrive as a businesswoman in the UK or anywhere else in the world.

Women Entrepreneurs UK is a website dedicated to women who aspire to start their own business. You’ll find here lots of useful information on the challenges facing businesswomen today as well as tips and advice on how to raise money for your startup.

If you’re looking to start a business from home, there’s also a section dedicated to that topic with ideas you can use to get started.

Click on “Entrepreneur Articles” in the menu and select between different categories depending on the topic you’re interested in, from “Black women entrepreneurs” to “Mumpreneurs” and “Best home businesses for women”.

The Businesswoman’s Network holds a variety of events (currently virtually) where women can learn the tricks of the trade, from how to make a good first impression to how to raise visibility for your business with Facebook Ads.

Here’s how one of the members describes this network:

“​BWN has been a fantastic source of inspiration to me and I look forward to each event. The BWN is a great tool to network and meet other business women who have opportunities to offer. […] I had a call from a business woman who needed a database and had found me on the BWN website. This network certainly works for me.”

Start by checking out the events calendar to see if there’s any event you’d be interested in attending.

Women Mean Biz (WMB) was founded by Philippa Constable, a networking expert, trainer, speaker and businesswoman who’s taken two start-ups from zero to success.

It’s a network of businesswomen and entrepreneurs working in all sorts of businesses from start-ups to established companies and large corporations. The group is currently holding weekly online networking meetings. You need to be a member to take part, but there are offers available, including a one-month trial membership.

Everywoman was founded in 1999 by Karen Gill and Maxine Benson, who have both been awarded MBEs. The group is dedicated to helping businesswomen grow their skills and thrive in business.

You’ll find here lots of valuable tools, services, events and information that you can use to boost your career as a female entrepreneur.

The Women in Business Network (WIBN) is another membership and networking organisation where women meet (currently, meetings are online) to connect and swap advice and knowledge on how to thrive in their chosen field.

It’s described as a “membership organisation for women who wish to gain new business opportunities through word of mouth. Whether employed or a business owner the network has a huge diversity of businesses involved. Our members support and encourage each other through collaboration and the sharing of business contacts and opportunities.”

Members can also use the platform to share business advice, tips, articles, useful blogs and information as well as to publish any press coverage they’ve received.

Prowess is an online hub that supports women in business, specifically those in the UK, with information, resources and inspiration.

There’s lots of advice on this site coming directly from professional advisors that you can take advantage of to start or grow your existing business. And if you need a little inspiration, you can also find many stories from women who’ve made their own way in business.

She Means Business is a popular Facebook Business page where you can find many valuable communities, resources, tools and inspiration that you can use to grow your business.

The page is supported by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) which aims to protect the interests of the 5.4 million SMBs in the UK.

So if you’re looking for groups on Facebook that discuss a specific topic like how to start a business or how to get funding, all you need to do is run a quick search on the site and then join the Facebook groups you’re interested in.

Need some inspiration? Check out the “Inspiration” section on the site to learn how other female entrepreneurs have built successful brands and the struggles and obstacles they’ve had to face along the way.

The Female Entrepreneur Association is a global community dedicated to helping female entrepreneurs turn their ideas into the businesses of their dreams. The organisation currently has 650,000 members from 67 countries.

You can watch a weekly video with advice on how to grow your business or read the monthly magazine with interviews and inspirational stories from female entrepreneurs around the world.

There are also lots of other resources you might find useful, such as the blog which is regularly updated with great business tips and advice as well as masterclasses, live Q&A sessions and more.

Wrapping up

There are many amazing organisations and resources in the UK and globally that encourage, support and provide female entrepreneurs with all the resources they might need to start a business and make it successful. Make sure you take advantage to get inspired and better your professional self as you embark upon your entrepreneurship journey.

The post Top organisations and resources for female entrepreneurs in the UK appeared first on Better business online: Tips, insight and advice.

Three things are crucial when you’re hosting a business online:

1. Having a fast site
2. Staying safe from attackers
3. Scaling up along with your traffic

Cloudflare can help with all three. But what exactly is Cloudflare and how can a CDN help speed, security, and scalability?

What is CloudFlare?

At the core, Cloudflare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) composed of hundreds of data centers located in more than 100 countries. Founded by Matthew Prince in 2009, Cloudflare has grown to handle five to ten percent of the global internet traffic, making Cloudflare one of the largest CDNs in the world.

Image source

How Does Cloudflare Work?

Caching

A CDN like Cloudflare makes use of a process called caching. A cache is a place where frequently-viewed data is stored to make it faster to retrieve.

Think about checking the time – if someone asks you what time it is, it will take some effort to pull your phone out of your pocket and check. However, if someone else asks you about it a few seconds later, you can just say the time you remember seeing. In that case, the time you remember is the cache. Of course, after time passes this cache will not be accurate anymore, so it’s important to refresh it as needed.

Cloudflare will check on your website (also known as the origin) every so often to keep its cache up-to-date. The Cloudflare CDN will then serve that cache to any visitors requesting your website. The main benefit of using Cloudflare is that visitors around the world will be downloading your website from a location that’s physically closer to them, giving them faster loading times. However, it also means that since some of the requests are handled completely by the CDN, your server will experience a lower load, and more visitors will be able to look at your website at the same time.

Filtering Incoming Traffic

Another capability that content delivery networks offer is filtering incoming traffic. This acts as another layer of protection to outside threats, along with your firewall and other security measures you may have implemented. Cloudflare is known for implementing some of the most powerful filtering techniques on their network, which your site can take advantage of.

DNS Network

Cloudflare is not only a CDN – they also operate the world’s highest-performance Domain Name System (DNS) network.

The DNS system is what translates your domain name into an IP address that a computer can understand and use to talk to a server. Your domain registrar first specifies an Authoritative Name Server (usually called nameserver), which stores all the relevant DNS records.

The DNS resolution process happens before a connection can be established, so it’s another important factor on the loading speed of your website.

In the default configuration, Cloudflare is set up as your domain’s nameserver, so your visitors will enjoy the quick DNS resolution provided by the Cloudflare network.

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What are the Benefits of Cloudflare?

Cloudflare has a free plan that lets you try many of their benefits without an upfront commitment. The only change you need to get started with is to change your nameservers to point to Cloudflare, which allows them to provide you with their fast DNS resolution and to proxy your web traffic through their network. Even in the free tier, Cloudflare gives you valuable improvements to both performance and security.

Here are four key benefits of using Cloudflare:

Protection Against Malicious Traffic

Since all traffic to your website first passes through the Cloudflare network, malicious traffic such as DDoS attacks, comment spam, or content scraping can be detected and filtered or rerouted without ever reaching your server in the first place.

Malicious agents are detected using a variety of identifiers, including previous known malicious IP addresses, the type of requests made, any malicious payloads that may be included in the request, or even the timing and frequency of their connections. This is weighed against the security level you’ve set up on your site to determine whether a visitor is let through, if additional verification on the visitor’s browser is required, or if the visit is blocked entirely.

Reduced Latency

Since your website’s data is cached across the Cloudflare network, site visitors will load your site from their nearest Cloudflare data center which will reduce latency, instead of having to load it directly from your server.

Reduced Server Load

Another benefit of caching is that your server won’t need to handle all of its web traffic. Instead, it provides the Cloudflare network with an up-to-date copy of the site as needed, which is in turn served to your visitors.

Universal SSL Certificate

Setting up an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) can be trivial, or can be quite a bit of work; depending on your webserver and your domain setup. Cloudflare automatically provides you with an SSL certificate on any proxied domain, so your visitors can enjoy a secure connection even if SSL is not set up at your server. You can also set up a flexible SSL setup, so a self-signed certificate can still secure your website in addition to the one Cloudflare provides.

What Other Protections Does Cloudflare Provide?

One of the most useful features that Cloudflare has is the Under Attack Mode, which can be enabled when needed through the Cloudflare control panel. This is designed to be used only when your site is under an active DDoS attack, and it gives every visitor a JavaScript challenge that their browser must complete before they can proceed to your site. Fortunately, this whole process happens in a few seconds without the user’s intervention, to minimize the impact on genuine visitors while still stopping as many automated bots as possible.

The “Under attack mode” is actually one of five security levels that you can set on your site, with the other four being off, low, medium and high. This granularity is useful to mitigate any problems your site may have with bot traffic, even if it doesn’t get to the point of a DDoS attack. You can also set custom security levels for individual pages using Page Rules.

Business and Enterprise Plans

Changing your nameservers may not be ideal if you already have a custom DNS setup, such as for an external mail exchanger. If you are using a custom DNS setup, you can use the Business or Enterprise plans to set up your custom nameservers while still taking advantage of the Cloudflare CDN. Besides custom nameservers, there are other specialized features provided by the Business and Enterprise plans, such as additional page-by-page rules and custom SSL certificates.

You can learn more about them on the Cloudflare Plans page.

What are the Limitations of Cloudflare?

Content delivery networks such as Cloudflare are not a magic wand, and being aware of their limitations can help you make more effective use of them.

Here are two cases when you may not want to have Cloudflare enabled:

During Development

One of the main features of Cloudflare is caching your website data to allow faster loading. This, in turn, means that changes you make to your site may not show up immediately. Thankfully, Cloudflare has the option to disable cache for any domain when needed. Keep in mind that this will affect all visitors to your site. One option to get around this without having to disable cache completely is to use your DNS hosts file to access your server’s IP directly, instead of going through the Cloudflare network.

For Real-Time Data

Just like before, the cache can work against you if your website’s data changes continuously, and you’d like to avoid having your visitors see stale data. Instead of having to disable Cloudflare for your entire site, you can use cache-control directives to tell Cloudflare how long to keep your site’s resources.

How Do I Get Started With Cloudflare?

Setting up a Cloudflare account is free and easy to do. The only requirement to add a domain to that account is to be able to change the name servers that are set up at your domain registrar. This ensures that anyone going through your site passes through the Cloudflare network instead of going to the server directly.

We have partnered with Cloudflare to provide several of their products to our clients. If your domain is registered with Liquid Web, then we can take care of the nameserver change for you. Regardless of whether the domain is registered with us or not, we can help you get Cloudflare set up on your account and point you in the right direction to finish the process.

Tired of a Slow-Loading Site for Global Customers? Try Cloudflare Today

If you are interested in getting started with Cloudflare right now, you can simply head over to our Cloudflare add-ons page to set it up in a few clicks, Live Chat our team, or call us at 1-800-580-4985.

The post What is Cloudflare and How Does It Work? appeared first on Liquid Web.

In Q3, to help our affiliates fill their calendar with content, we pitted our affiliate partners against each other in a friendly contest to see who could create the most engaging, enlightening, invoking, and amazing article about why to choose Liquid Web for VPS Hosting.

The Prize: Winners were awarded with some cash bonuses—but more importantly—bragging rights as Q3 Affiliate Contest Winners.

We received a great amount of participation among our affiliate partners, and we were really excited to read all of the articles. We have some really amazing affiliate partners (humble brag)!

Each piece submitted was judged based on the content’s overall quality, length, design, and accuracy of information.

Here are the affiliate partner winning articles for 2020.

Fall 2020 Affiliate Contest Winner: Hosting Pill

What did we love about it?

The article offered a great introduction of Liquid Web along with exceptional readability. The overall design and images balanced well, covering the products and services that Liquid Web offers holistically. And it really highlighted the ideal customer/solution match, helping readers connect with what they need. Check out this excerpt:

While a typical hosting company is a sort of jack-of-all trades that offers a basic range of hosting, particularly shared web hosting, Liquid Web specializes in managed, high-quality solutions.”

Read the full article: Liquid Web VPS Review (2020): Worth Signing Up With Them?

The article was written by Chris Wagner. Follow HostingPill on Twitter @hostingpill

Fall 2020 Contest Runner-Up: WP Mantis

What did we love about it?

The article had an easy-to-understand comparison between each of the types of hosting products. It also mentioned the InterWorx control panel, and highlights the amazing support team at Liquid Web nicely. Here’s an excerpt:

To outperform AWS is saying a lot about the solutions Liquid Web offers. And as the chart shows, to outperform all the top competitors is incredible.”

Read the rest: VPS Hosting – What You Need to Know

The article was written by Chris Eggleston.

Fall 2020 Contest Third Place: Blogging Beats

What did we love about it?

The article featured a nicely created infographic that really highlights the top reasons why you need to consider hosting with Liquid Web. It also walks you through the cart checkout process, which is an extremely nice addition. An excerpt from the article:

With Liquid Web’s Virtual Private Server, you can enjoy the power of a dedicated server and the flexibility of cloud hosting hassle-free.”

Read more: Liquid Web VPS Hosting Review 2020 (A Brand You Can Trust Blindly)

The article was written by Amit Garg. Follow Amit on Twitter @bloggingbeats

Fall 2020 Contest Honorable Mention: Web Hosting Cat

What did we love about it?

It provided readers with an awesome comparison to web hosting competitors they might be evaluating. See this excerpt:

You’ll be pleased to know that Liquid Web has a 100% Network and Power Uptime SLA Guarantee. If you have a mission-critical site that needs to be available to your customers, I would definitely look for this type of uptime feature.”

Read more: Is It Time for You to Upgrade to VPS Hosting?

The article was written by Michael James.

Fall 2020 Contest Honorable Mention: Medium.com

What did we love about it?

The article provided a great overview of all features offered by Liquid Web VPS Hosting. The information is present in a nice topical fashion. See this excerpt:

It is more than a hosting service or hosting on a server. It is a company that develops high-level digital solutions.”

Read more: Liquid Web Review: Analysis, Opinion, Ranking & Prices

We really appreciate the amazing interest we had in the contest, and really enjoyed reading all the great articles. A big thanks to everyone that entered and participated.

We have the best affiliate partners on the planet.

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Liquid Web Blog for more news from our affiliates, or sign up for the affiliate newsletter to compete in the next event!

The post 2020 Q3 Affiliate Partner Contest Winners appeared first on Liquid Web.