How to enable select all check box in the left side panel in Sage X3

As we all know, in Sage X3 when users want to create Purchase invoice against purchase receipt, he/she has to select receipt from the left list one by one. Recently one of our client wanted to have an option to select all Receipts in a single click from the left side panel while creating purchase invoice against a particular vendor.

New Stuff: How to exclude header part on the last page on Purchase Order

Purchase Invoice Screen

Purchase Invoice Screen

Previously user has to select receipt one by one which is very time consuming in case of 100 Receipts . So, we did modified invoice object PIH to have a check box in the left side panel of Purchase Invoice screen besides Receipt header as shown in the above screenshot which will select all the available Receipts in a single click.

Refer below steps that need to follow:

Step1 : Go to Development -> Select ‘PIH’ object.

Step2 : In General tab -> Management tab and then select management type as “ Simple selection “.

Step3 : Do validation of the object ‘PIH’ and also do global validation of that ‘OPIH’.

So using standard option available at object level, we did provided solution to our customer for selection all receipts on left panel.

How to exclude header part on the last page on Purchase Order Report

Sage X3 reports are developed in Crystal reports and can be modified as per user needs if you have required Crystal version installed on developer system. One of our client has requested to add ‘Terms and conditions’ on last page of the Purchase Order report. This was one of the easy task to add on the crystal for any developer but here we had one challenge to hide company Name & address for last page which was placed on the Page header and was printing on each page. So we come up with the solution and thought of sharing information with everyone.

This blog can be helpful when user wants to add summary or terms & conditions on the last page of the report and doesn’t want to include the page header details (company name, address, logo, contact details etc.) on last page.

To achieve this working in crystal report please refer the below steps:

Step 1:- Click on “Report” menu and select “Section Expert”.

New Stuff: Change the Date Format using 4GL

Report Menu

Report Menu

Step 2:- Select “Page Header” section from Sections.

Section Expert

Section Expert

Step 3:- Click on the icon at the right side of “Suppress(No Drill-Down)” and enter below formula in “Formula Workshop”

PageNumber = TotalPageCount

Formula Workshop

Formula Workshop

Step 4:- Click on “Save and close” to save changes.

Step 5:- Click on “OK” to save changes.

Output:-

Output-Fig. 1

Output-Fig. 1

Output-Fig. 2

Output-Fig. 2

In this way we can exclude the page header from last page of any report.

About Us

Greytrix – a globally recognized and one of the oldest Sage Development Partner is a one-stop solution provider for Sage ERP and Sage CRM organizational needs. Being acknowledged and rewarded for multi-man years of experience, we bring complete end-to-end assistance for your technical consultations, product customizations, data migration, system integrations, third-party add-on development and implementation competence.

Greytrix caters to a wide range of Sage X3, a Sage Business Cloud Solution, offerings. Our unique GUMU™ integrations include Sage X3 for Sage CRMSalesforce.com, Dynamics 365 CRM and Magento eCommerce along with Implementation and Technical Support worldwide for Sage X3. Currently we are Sage X3 Implementation Partner in East Africa, Middle East, Australia, Asia, US, UK. We also offer best-in-class Sage X3 customization and development services, integrated applications such as POS | WMS | Payment Gateway | Shipping System | Business Intelligence | eCommerce and have developed add-ons such as Catch – Weight  and Letter of Credit and India Legislation for Sage X3 to Sage business partners, end users and Sage PSG worldwide.

Greytrix is a recognized Sage champion ISV Partner for GUMU™ Sage X3 – Sage CRM integration also listed on Sage Marketplace; GUMU™ integration for Sage X3 – Salesforce is a 5-star rated app listed on Salesforce AppExchange and GUMU™ integration for Dynamics 365 CRM – Sage ERP listed on Microsoft AppSource.

For more information on Sage X3 Integration and Services, please contact us at x3@greytrix.com, We will like to hear from you.

Change the Date Format using 4GL Script

As we know, Sage X3 supports multiple date formats as per the users requirement. The default date format in Sage X3 is setup in setup–> Parameters. For the developers who wants to manipulate date field value, can use date functions in 4GL. Also there is inbuilt string function which can be useful for the developers to manipulate date using 4GL.

In this blog, we will see how we can manipulate date format using “format$”string function.

New Stuff: User Restrictions on Purchase Inquiry Screen

Syntax for date format

Syntax for date format

Syntax: format$(“format required”,”Date value”)

Let’s consider an example, format$(“YYYY[-]MM[-]DD”,date$) , Here we considered.

“YYYY-MM-DD” format and “date$” function gives us current date and we change the current date format of system to required format in our code.

In the above format square brackets i.e. “[ ]”are used to represent the constant value or spaces between date characters. The given date format is stored as a string in the system.

Output

Output

Below are some examples of the date formats with output which helps you to change the date format in 4GL script.

Examples of the date formats

Examples of the date formats

So by using Format$string function 4GL scripts, developers can change the date format according to users requirement& also can used in 4GL.

About Us

Greytrix – a globally recognized and one of the oldest Sage Development Partner is a one-stop solution provider for Sage ERP and Sage CRM organizational needs. Being acknowledged and rewarded for multi-man years of experience, we bring complete end-to-end assistance for your technical consultations, product customizations, data migration, system integrations, third-party add-on development and implementation competence.

Greytrix caters to a wide range of Sage X3, a Sage Business Cloud Solution, offerings. Our unique GUMU™ integrations include Sage X3 for Sage CRMSalesforce.com, Dynamics 365 CRM and Magento eCommerce along with Implementation and Technical Support worldwide for Sage X3. Currently we are Sage X3 Implementation Partner in East Africa, Middle East, Australia, Asia, US, UK. We also offer best-in-class Sage X3 customization and development services, integrated applications such as POS | WMS | Payment Gateway | Shipping System | Business Intelligence | eCommerce and have developed add-ons such as Catch – Weight  and Letter of Credit and India Legislation for Sage X3 to Sage business partners, end users and Sage PSG worldwide.

Greytrix is a recognized Sage champion ISV Partner for GUMU™ Sage X3 – Sage CRM integration also listed on Sage Marketplace; GUMU™ integration for Sage X3 – Salesforce is a 5-star rated app listed on Salesforce AppExchange and GUMU™ integration for Dynamics 365 CRM – Sage ERP listed on Microsoft AppSource.

For more information on Sage X3 Integration and Services, please contact us at x3@greytrix.com, We will like to hear from you.

User Restrictions on Purchase Inquiry Screen

In Sage X3, Users can check all the purchase related data using inquiry screens. But there is one drawback of this functionality that any user can check the data of all the other users also using inquiry screens. To overcome from this drawback, we did customization on Purchase Inquiry screens. By doing which users can check only those POs and GRNs in Inquiry screen which have been created by them. Users will be restricted to fetch other user’s data.

But there can be some users in the system who needs to see all the user’s data.

For this purpose, we have added “Full User” checkbox in the user master screen as shown in the below screenshot:

New Stuff: How to create and add formula on inquiry screen

[User Master]

[User Master]

If the Full User checkbox is ticked, then that particular user will have full rights to check the all user’s purchase related data and if it is not ticked then user can check only those entries which are created by him. As you can see in the above screenshot, full user checkbox is ticked for “ADMIN” user and not ticked for “ABHI” user in the user setup. So there can be two scenarios that either the user is a FULL USER who will have access to check other user’s Purchase entries or he is not a FULL USER who will be restricted and can check only Purchase entries which are created by him.

After that, we have added “My PO” and “None” radio buttons on Order Lines Inquiry Screen and “MY GRN” and “None” radio buttons on Receipt Lines Inquiry screen. Now, we will check how the functionality will work for both the Scenarios.

First scenario: Admin user is logged in. (FULL USER)

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ADMIN User (My PO Option)]

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ADMIN User (My PO Option)]

As you can see, when admin user has selected “My PO” option in inquiry screen, only POs created by him are getting displayed but when he has selected “None” option in the below screenshot, he is able to see all the POs which are created by other users also.

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ADMIN User (None option)]

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ADMIN User (None option)]

Second scenario: ABHI user is logged in. (not a FULL USER)

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ABHI User (My PO option)]

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ABHI User (My PO option)]

In the above screenshot, when ABHI user has selected “My PO” option in inquiry screen, only POs created by him are getting displayed and even when he has selected “None” option as shown in the below screenshot, same data is getting displayed i.e. POs which are created by him. He doesn’t have rights to check other user’s POs because he is not a FULL User as per the user master settings saved in the User setup.

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ABHI User (None option)]

[Order Lines Inquiry screen – ABHI User (None option)]

Also we have added “My Department” and My Sub-Department” radio buttons on both the screens. If department of the users is same and he has selected my department option then he can see POs created by him and other users as well who are having same department saved in user master. Same functionality will work for Sub-Department option.

Hence with the help of this customization, User will get restricted as per the given rights. And he will not get access to check other user’s Purchase related data.

About Us

Greytrix – a globally recognized and one of the oldest Sage Development Partner is a one-stop solution provider for Sage ERP and Sage CRM organizational needs. Being acknowledged and rewarded for multi-man years of experience, we bring complete end-to-end assistance for your technical consultations, product customizations, data migration, system integrations, third-party add-on development and implementation competence.

Greytrix caters to a wide range of Sage X3, a Sage Business Cloud Solution, offerings. Our unique GUMU™ integrations include Sage X3 for Sage CRMSalesforce.com, Dynamics 365 CRM and Magento eCommerce along with Implementation and Technical Support worldwide for Sage X3. Currently we are Sage X3 Implementation Partner in East Africa, Middle East, Australia, Asia, US, UK. We also offer best-in-class Sage X3 customization and development services, integrated applications such as POS | WMS | Payment Gateway | Shipping System | Business Intelligence | eCommerce and have developed add-ons such as Catch – Weight  and Letter of Credit and India Legislation for Sage X3 to Sage business partners, end users and Sage PSG worldwide.

Greytrix is a recognized Sage champion ISV Partner for GUMU™ Sage X3 – Sage CRM integration also listed on Sage Marketplace; GUMU™ integration for Sage X3 – Salesforce is a 5-star rated app listed on Salesforce AppExchange and GUMU™ integration for Dynamics 365 CRM – Sage ERP listed on Microsoft AppSource.

For more information on Sage X3 Integration and Services, please contact us at x3@greytrix.com, We will like to hear from you.

How to create and add formula on inquiry screen

An
inquiry screen is used to extract information from one or more table and
present it in the from of a grid. It help us to display the records based on
the filter criteria we entered.

In
Sage X3, we have a multiple inquiry screens available such as Stock by product,
stock by lot,stock by site etc where we can search a stock available by product
wise, lot wise and site wise etc. Stock by product screen help us to check the
stock of a product we want to search by specifying the name of the product in
the field. But if want to search based on some condition we can search the same
by creating a formula. Sage X3 provide us a functionality of  creating a formula where we can create a formula
based on any condition.

Sage
X3 allows the user to add formula to inquiries criteria that can help to filter
a specific record based on the condition specified in the formula. Here we want
to search a  stock of a product only  whose product status is active.

To
create a formula follow the below steps:

Navigate
to :
Set
up > General Parameters > Formula

  • Click
    new to create a formula.
  • Select
    the formula type as “Stock selection”.
  • Provide
    the code , description and short description.
  • Enter
    the condition in the formula based on which you need to search a product.

         We have specified [F:ITM]ITMSTA=1 as
we want to search the product whose status is active.

  • Click on the create button. Refer the below figure
Fig: Formula screen

In
this way we have to created a  formula
named as ZSP and now we can use the same formula in inquiry screen.

Follow
the below steps to add the formula in inquiry screen:

Navigate to : Stock > Inquiries > Stock by Product.

Fig: Product Stock screen

 Here we have specified the
product in the From product and To product field and clicked on search so we
can see the stock available for those product. If we wont specify any product
and click on search then all the products will get display whose status is
active as well as in active.

Since we need to search for all those product whose status is active. Click on the criteria button on the right side. Refer the below figure.

Fig: Stock by product screen

The
below window will get pop up. Scroll down to enter the formula.

Select
the formula you have created by clicking on the selection. Then click ok.

Once
you click on OK, then all the product will get display whose status is active.

Refer the below figure.

Fig: Criteria in product stock inquiry screen

In this way we can create a formula based on which we want to search a product and can be used in the inquiry screen.

In this blog, we came to know how we can create a formula and to use those formula in the inquiry screen.

About Us

Greytrix – a globally recognized and one of the oldest Sage Development Partner is a one-stop solution provider for Sage ERP and Sage CRM organizational needs. Being acknowledged and rewarded for multi-man years of experience, we bring complete end-to-end assistance for your technical consultations, product customizations, data migration, system integrations, third-party add-on development and implementation competence.

Greytrix caters to a wide range of Sage X3, a Sage Business Cloud Solution, offerings. Our unique GUMU™ integrations include Sage X3 for Sage CRMSalesforce.com, Dynamics 365 CRM and Magento eCommerce along with Implementation and Technical Support worldwide for Sage X3. Currently we are Sage X3 Implementation Partner in East Africa, Middle East, Australia, Asia, US, UK. We also offer best-in-class Sage X3 customization and development services, integrated applications such as POS | WMS | Payment Gateway | Shipping System | Business Intelligence | eCommerce and have developed add-ons such as Catch – Weight  and Letter of Credit and India Legislation for Sage X3 to Sage business partners, end users and Sage PSG worldwide.

Greytrix is a recognized Sage champion ISV Partner for GUMU™ Sage X3 – Sage CRM integration also listed on Sage Marketplace; GUMU™ integration for Sage X3 – Salesforce is a 5-star rated app listed on Salesforce AppExchange and GUMU™ integration for Dynamics 365 CRM – Sage ERP listed on Microsoft AppSource.

For more information on Sage X3 Integration and Services, please contact us at x3@greytrix.com, We will like to hear from you.

Ultimate Guide to Choose the Right ERP for your eCommerce Business



Ultimate Guide to Choose the Right ERP for your eCommerce Business


In today’s world, simply having an eCommerce software is not enough to influence an effective market strategy. It is essential to build an efficient relationship between your sales channels and backend operations to ensure a good approach towards your marketing, sales, and customer service operations. Apart from this, businesses have to take care of a lot of other things including finances, sales, inventory, and movement. For these tasks, selecting the right ERP for your businesses becomes crucial since there is a lot at stake here.


Businesses often opt for ERP software in order to manage their finances, sales, chains, inventory, customer relationships, and at the same time ensure a great eCommerce shopping and customer experience. We all know what an Enterprise Resource Management Software is, however, how exactly does it help your business? If chosen correctly, ERP can provide you with solutions that your business desires and needs. They can help in tracking workflow, establishing data integrity, and identifying duplication and use these to integrate the various business departments. They also help within improving your budget by bringing all important information on a single platform, automating various tasks, effectively track inventory and sales, generate analytics and report locations, and many more.



1. Understanding what you require


Before you select an ERP software for your business, you need to clearly lay down the objects, requirements, and expectations that you have from the software that you wish to opt for. This will help you in narrowing down the features that you want from your ERP software. Doing so will also ensure that you don’t get influenced by the marketing of various software or the vendor trying to sell you the software. In order to understand the requirements of your business, you can conduct meetings with the various departments of your business like marketing, finance, sales, customer service, and understand the goals, the scope, and areas of improvement, and which ERP software can help you tackle these problems.


2. Flexibility and Scalability


The solution that you are being provided with should be flexible in terms of its abilities as well as the price range depending upon what your requirements are. ERPs should be such that they are able to help you take orders even if you’re away from your desktop. Usually cloud-based are considered to be quite flexible and scalable, allowing you to a number of users which in turn leads to the growth of your business. Cloud-based ERP also eliminates the need for special hardware or staff by keeping the data offsite.


Integrate-Business-Apps-through-APPSeCONNECT


3. Compatible software


As an eCommerce business, you will want to ensure that the ERP solution you select works well with the eCommerce system that is used by your company. The integration and flow of information between these two systems need to be seamless and without any information getting misplaced. Seamless integration will also ensure that there is coherence across the various systems in your business which would ensure no delays in the inventory and shipping of products.


4. Inclusion of CRM


It is no news that good customer service functionality is extremely crucial for any business to survive in this competitive environment. Thus, to ensure that you’re serving your customers well and meeting all the orders in time, your ERP should be such that it has a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) feature. This is important to that in case of any issues, your ERP solution should be able to recognize them and then go ahead and fix them with ease.


5. Real-time Data and Support


The ERP software that you select for your business should be such that it provides you real-time crucial data that can help you make strategic decisions for your business and get analysis that can help you in understanding the areas where you can improve and meet your needs. Support is also an essential feature that must be there to ensure that the implementation process of ERP is seamless.


Integrate-Business-Apps-through-APPSeCONNECT


6. Get a demo


Before selecting an ERP software for your business, ensure that the vendor is giving you a demo of what’s in store for you. This demo should be designed keeping in mind the requirements of your business including the features you want, functionalities, and workflows that you specifically need for your business. Doing so will help you in making a better decision regarding the choice of ERP that will be the best fit for your business.


In conclusion, one can say that you should carefully evaluate all that an ERP has to offer to you and ensure that it leads to the enhancement of your performance. We hope you found this blog helpful. Let us know your feedback on the comment section below.


Stay safe!




APPSeCONNECT is a smart and robust business application integration platform that seamlessly connects all your business applications with each other to streamline operations and facilitate the free-flow of data across the platforms. It also helps businesses by successfully migrating all their master and transactional data into new systems and helping them boost efficiency. By moving into the region of iPaaS, APPSeCONNECT proves to be a best-in-the-class platform that easily connects systems and automates the business process.


Now, you can easily connect all your business applications under one single platform to automate the business process!Integrate-Business-Apps-through-APPSeCONNECT


You may also like:
Things to Consider while Migrating Data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
Salesforce Lightning Experience – How to Build Custom Pages
Data Integration in the Healthcare Industry: How iPaaS is Revolutionizing the Healthcare Sector






DELMIAworks 2020X Shows Our Commitment To Keep Innovating For Our Customers

The most valuable conversations we have every day are with our customers. Their challenges, needs, and requirements continue to be an excellent source of innovation. Our latest release, DELMIAworks 2020X, reflects our commitment to keep innovating by collaborating with them. SHOPWORKS, an easily configurable series of Work Center dashboards designed to improve shop floor efficiency, is an example. We’re accomplishing this by integrating with RealTime™ data capture into the application, helping to reduce their reliance on paper-based reporting.

What’s New In DELMIAworks 2020X

Of the many new features in DELMIAworks 2020X, the majority are based on customer insights. Customer-driven new features in DELMIAworks 2020X include enhancements to Advanced Warehouse Management, Engineering Quote Workflows, Pallet Building, and more. Additional features include the following:

  • SHOPWORKS, a touchscreen-based shop floor interface to DELMIAworks 2020X that improves production efficiency with configurable Work Center dashboards.  Key benefits include streamlining data access and RealTime™ information collection and availability, improving quality, and reducing costs. SHOPWORKS also helps digitize manufacturing operations and improve production efficiency.
  • Significant new improvements to Advanced Warehouse Management, including Directed Task Drop Zones and Directed Task Monitoring.  Directed Task Drop Zones give DELMIAworks 2020X customers the flexibility of defining a specific drop zone in a warehouse as part of a broader WMS process. Directed Task Monitoring activates automated directed task generation for all inventory items and all work centers throughout the system.
  • Several new enhancements to Engineering Quote Workflows.  DELMIAworks 2020x includes several significant improvements to Engineering Quote Workflows. First, there are new improvements to the quote approval process. Streamlining Quote Workflows with user-defined Quote types is one of many new enhancements. Additional enhancements provide users with greater visibility across the entire quote workflow. There’s also support for new templates, team members, IQAlert evaluation, and workflow forms available.
  • More options and flexibility for customers relying on RealTime™ Process Monitoring Setup, Intelligent Reject Reporting, and RT Station. IoT solutions in use across shop floors frequently need an automated solution for reject reporting during production. Intelligent Reject Reporting is designed to capture reject data during production via sensors with little to no input from the user. Reject data captured during production is collected and processed by the system, then the rejects are assigned the default reject code set at the device level.

Conclusion

DELMIAworks 2020x exemplifies our commitment to excellence on behalf of our customers. We’re passionate about delivering a unified platform that can flex, change, and grow as our customers do. And with our industry-leading manufacturing expertise – many say the best in the ERP industry – we’ve got the team to help any customer achieve their operations, financial, and service goals. Our unified platform’s many strengths are amplified with our latest release, DELMIAworks 2020x. We’re providing customer-driven innovations that give you greater control, traceability, and visibility across every production process so you know the impact on your financials. We’re focused and working diligently to help our customers excel and gain new production efficiency while improving quality. SHOPWORKS is designed with that goal in mind. The bottom line is DELMIAworks is completely committed to unleashing our customers’ greatest strengths and opportunities to excel and grow. We measure our success by our contributions to your goals – and your innovative ideas are helping both of us excel every day. Thank you for your contributions.

The post DELMIAworks 2020X Shows Our Commitment To Keep Innovating For Our Customers appeared first on IQMS Manufacturing Blog.

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

Instead of relying on data-driven signals of past accomplishments, Eightfold.ai is using AI to discover the innate capabilities of people and matching them to new opportunities in their own companies.

Bottom Line: Eightfold.ai’s innovative approach of combining their own AI and virtual hackathons to create and launch new additions to their Project Marketplace rapidly is a model enterprises need to consider emulating.

Eightfold.ai was founded with the mission that there is a right career for everyone in the world. Since its founding in 2016, Eightfold.ai’s Talent Intelligence Platform continues to see rapid global growth, attracting customers across four continents and 25 countries, supporting 15 languages with users in 110 countries. Their Talent Intelligence Platform is built to assist enterprises with Talent Acquisition and Management holistically.

What’s noteworthy about Eightfold.ai’s approach is how they have successfully created a platform that aggregates all available data on people across an enterprise – from applicants to alumni – to create a comprehensive Talent Network. Instead of relying on data-driven signals of past accomplishments, Eightfold.ai is using AI to discover the innate capabilities of people and matching them to new opportunities in their own companies. Eightfold’s AI and machine learning algorithms are continuously learning from enterprise and individual performance to better predict role, performance and career options for employees based on capabilities.

How Eightfold Sets A Quick Pace Innovating Their Marketplace

Recently Eightfold.ai announced Project Marketplace, an AI-based solution for enterprises that align employees seeking new opportunities and companies’ need to reskill and upskill their employees with capabilities that line up well with new business imperatives. Eightfold wanted to provide employees with opportunities to gain new skills through experiential learning, network with their colleagues, join project teams and also attain the satisfaction of helping flatten the unemployment curve outside. Project Marketplace helps employers find hidden talent, improve retention strategies and gain new knowledge of who has specific capabilities and skills. The following is a screen from the Marketplace that provides employees the flexibility of browsing all projects their unique capabilities qualify them for:

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

Employees select a project of interest and are immediately shown how strong of a match they are with the open position. Eightfold provides insights into relevant skills that an employee already has, why they are a strong match and the rest of the project team members – often a carrot in itself. Keeping focused on expanding employee’s capabilities, Eightfold also provides guidance of which skills an employee will learn. The following is an example of what an open project positions looks like:

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

Employee applicants can also view all the projects they currently have open from the My Projects view shown below:

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities

Project Marketplace is the win/win every employee has yearned for as they start to feel less challenged in their current position and start looking for a new one, often outside their companies. I recently spoke with Ashutosh Garg, CEO and Co-Founder and Kamal Ahluwalia, Eightfold’s President, to see how they successfully ran a virtual hackathon across three continents to keep the Marketplace platform fresh with new features and responsive to the market.

How to Run A Virtual Hackathon

Starting with the hackathon, Eightfold relied on its own Talent Intelligence Platform to define the teams across all three continents, based on their employees’ combined mix of capabilities. Ashutosh, Kamal and the senior management team defined three goals of the hackathon:

  1. Solve problems customers are asking about with solutions that are not on the roadmap yet.
  2. Accelerate time to value for customers with new approaches no one has thought of before.
  3. Find new features and unique strengths that further strengthen the company’s mission of finding the right career for everyone in the world.

It’s fascinating to see how AI, cybersecurity and revenue management software companies continue to innovate at a fast pace delivering complex apps with everyone being remote. I asked Ashutosh how he and his management team approached the challenge of having a hackathon spanning three continents deliver results. Here’s what I learned from our discussion and these lessons are directly applicable to any virtual hackathon today:

  1. Define the hackathon’s purpose clearly and link it to the company mission, explaining what’s at stake for customers, employees and the millions of people looking for work today – all served by the Talent Intelligence Platform broadening its base of features.
  2. Realize that what you are building during the hackathon will help set some employees free from stagnating skills allowing them to be more employable with their new capabilities.
  3. The hackathon is a chance to master new skills through experiential learning, further strengthening their capabilities as well. And often learning from some of the experts in the company by joining their teams.
  4. Reward risk-taking and new innovative ideas that initially appear to be edge cases, but can potentially be game changers for customers.

I’ve been interviewing CEOs from startups to established enterprise software companies about how they kept innovation alive during the lockdown. CEOs have mentioned agile development, extensive use of Slack channels and daily virtual stand-ups. Ashutosh Garg is the only one to mention how putting intrinsic motivation into practice, along with these core techniques, binds hackathon teams together fast. Dan Pink’s classic TED Talk, The Puzzle of Motivation, explains intrinsic motivators briefly and it’s clear they have implications on a hackathon succeeding or not.

Measuring Results Of the Hackathon

Within a weekend, Project Marketplace revealed several new rock stars amongst the Eightfold hackathon teams. Instead of doing side projects for people who had time on their hands, this Hackathon was about making Eightfold’s everyday projects better and faster. Their best Engineers and Services team members took a step back, re-looked at the current approaches and competed with each other to find better and innovative ways. And they all voted for the most popular projects and solutions – ultimate reward in gaining the respect of your peers. As well as the most “prolific coder” for those who couldn’t resist working on multiple teams.

Conclusion

Remote work is creating daunting challenges for individuals at home as well as for companies. Business models need to change and innovation cannot take a back seat while most companies have employees working from home for the foreseeable future. Running a hackathon during a global lockdown and making it deliver valuable new insights and features that benefit customers now is achievable as Eightfold’s track record shows. Project marketplace may prove to be a useful ally for employees and companies looking to stay true to their mission and help each other grow – even in a pandemic. This will create better job security, a culture of continuous learning, loyalty and more jobs. AI will change how we look at our work – and this is a great example of inspiring innovation.

How An AI Platform Is Matching Employees And Opportunities is copyrighted by Louis Columbus. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.


Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce and Zoho.

What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle For Endpoint Security, 2020

What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle For Endpoint Security, 2020

  • Remote working’s rapid growth is making endpoint security an urgent priority for all organizations today.
  • Cloud-first deployment strategies dominate the innovations on this year’s Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security.
  • Zero Trust Security (ZTNA) is gaining adoption in enterprises who realize identities are the new security perimeter of their business.
  • By 2024, at least 40% of enterprises will have strategies for adopting Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) up from less than 1% at year-end 2018.

These and many other new insights are from Gartner Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security, 2020 published earlier this year and the recent announcement, Gartner Says Bring Your Own PC Security Will Transform Businesses within the Next Five Years. Gartner’s definition of Hype Cycles includes five phases of a technology’s lifecycle and is explained here.  There are 20 technologies on this year’s Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security. The proliferation of endpoint attacks, the rapid surge in remote working, ransomware, fileless and phishing attacks are together, creating new opportunities for vendors to fast-track innovation. Cloud has become the platform of choice for organizations adopting endpoint security today, as evidenced by the Hype Cycle’s many references to cloud-first deployment strategies.  The Gartner Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security, 2020, is shown below:

What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle For Endpoint Security, 2020

Details Of What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Endpoint Security, 2020

  • Five technologies are on the Hype Cycle for the first time reflecting remote working’s rapid growth and the growing severity and sophistication of endpoint attacks. Unified Endpoint Security, Extended Detection and Response, Business E-Mail Compromise Protection, BYOPC Security and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are the five technologies added this year. Many organizations are grappling with how to equip their remote workforces with systems, devices and smartphones, with many reverting to have employees use their own. Bring your PC (BYOPC) has become so dominant so fast that Gartner replaced BYOD on this year’s Hype Cycle with the new term. Gartner sees BYOPC as one of the most vulnerable threat surfaces every business has today. Employees’ devices accessing valuable data and applications continues to accelerate without safeguards in place across many organizations.
  • Extended detection and response (XDR) are on the Hype Cycle for the first time, reflecting the trend of vendor consolidation across cybersecurity spending today. Gartner defines XDR as a vendor-specific, threat detection and incident response tool that unifies multiple security products into a security operations system. XDR and its potential to reduce the total cost and complexity of cybersecurity infrastructures is a dominant theme throughout this year’s Hype Cycle. XDR vendors are claiming that their integrated portfolios of detection and response applications deliver greater accuracy and prevention than stand-alone systems, driving down Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increasing productivity. Key vendors in XDR include Cisco, FireEye, Fortinet, McAfee, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro.
  • Business email compromise (BEC) protection is on the Hype Cycle for the first time this year. Phishing attacks cost businesses $1.8B in 2019, according to the FBI, underscoring the need for better security in the area of business email. Gartner defines business email compromise (BEC) protection as a series of solutions that detect and filter malicious emails that fraudulently impersonate business associates to misdirect funds or data. There have been many instances of business email compromise attacks focused on C-level executives, hoping that a fraudulent directive from them to subordinates leads to thousands of dollars being transferred to outside accounts or being sent in gift cards. Gartner found that fraudulent invoices accounted for 39% of such attacks in 2018, posing an internal risk to organizations and reputation risk.
  • Unified Endpoint Security (UES) is being driven by IT organizations’ demand for having a single security console for all security events. Gartner notes that successful vendors in UES will be those that can demonstrate significant productivity gains from the integration of security and operations and those that can rapidly process large amounts of data to detect previously unknown threats. CIOs and CISOs are looking for a way to integrate UES and Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), so their teams can have a single, comprehensive real-time console of all devices that provides alerts of any security events. The goal is to adjust security policies across all devices. Absolute’s approach to leveraging their unique persistence, resilience and intelligence capabilities are worth watching. Their approach delivers unified endpoint security by relying on their Endpoint Resilience platform that includes a permanent digital tether to every endpoint in the enterprise. By having an undeletable digital thread to every device, Absolute is enabling self-healing, greater visibility and control. Based on conversations with their customers in Education and Healthcare, Absolute’s unique approach gives IT complete visibility into where every device is at all times and what each device configuration looks like in real-time.
  • Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) is expanding rapidly beyond managing PCs and mobile devices to provide greater insights from endpoint analytics and deeper integration Identity and Access Management. Gartner notes interest in UEM remains strong and use-case-driven across their client base. UEM’s many benefits, including streamlining continuous OS updates across multiple mobile platforms, enabling device management regardless of the connection and having an architecture capable of supporting a wide range of devices and operating systems are why enterprises are looking to expand their adoption of UEM. Another major benefit enterprises mention is automating Internet-based patching, policy, configuration management. UEM leaders include MobileIron, whose platform reflects industry leadership with its advanced unified endpoint management (UEM) capabilities. MobileIron provides customers with additional security solutions integrated to their UEM platform, including passwordless multi-factor authentication (Zero Sign-On) and mobile threat defense (MTD). MTD is noteworthy for its success at MobileIron customers who need to validate devices at scale, establish user context, verify network connections, then detect and remediate threats.
  •  Gartner says ten technologies were either removed or replaced in the Hype Cycle because they’ve evolved into features of broader technologies or have developed into tools that address more than security. The ten technologies include protected browsers, DLP for mobile devices, managed detection and response, user and entity behavior analytics, IoT security, content collaboration platforms, mobile identity, user authentication, trusted environments and BYOD being replaced by BYOPC.

What’s New In Gartner’s Hype Cycle For Endpoint Security, 2020 is copyrighted by Louis Columbus. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.


Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce and Zoho.

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

Customers’ expectations, preferences, changing patterns in how and why they purchase need to be the core of any digital transformation effort. With it, digital transformation projects flourish and take on a life of their own. Without it, I’ve seen digital transformation projects become myopic, narrowly focused, substituting internal metric gains for measures that matter most to customers.

Digital Maturity Drives Revenue

Anyone who has worked on a digital transformation project quickly sees how the most digitally mature organizations can turn their investments in transformation into revenue by overwhelming customers with value. Initiatives that put customers first can serve to generate greater confidence among C-level executives and board members, leading to more funding. This is because business cases for customer-centric digital transformation projects are easier to create, more defensible and best of all, point to revenue gains and cost reductions.

Deloitte Insights’ recent survey uncovering the connection between digital maturity and financial performance accurately reflects the true state of customer-centric digital transformation. The article explains how the more digitally mature an organization is, the more achievable gains are in diversity and inclusion, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), customer satisfaction, product quality, gross margin and long-term financial performance. Deloitte’s latest study finds a strong correlation between the digital maturity of an enterprise and its net revenue and net profit margin. The following graphic makes clear how valuable pursuing digital maturity is, with customers being at the center of all transformation efforts. This contributes to greater net revenue and net profit margin growth:

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

A fascinating point regarding Deloitte Insights’ research is the correlation it uncovered between an organization’s digital transformation maturity and the benefits they gain in efficiency, revenue growth, product/service quality, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. They found a hierarchy of pivots successful enterprises make to keep pursuing more agile, adaptive organizational structures combined with business model adaptability, all driven by customer-driven innovation. The most digitally mature organizations can adopt new frameworks that prioritize market responsiveness, customer-centricity and have analytics and data-driven culture with actionable insights embedded in their DNA.

Mastering Data & Removing Roadblocks Are Key To Driving Customer Value

The two highest-payoff areas for accelerating digital maturity and achieving its many benefits are mastering data and creating more intelligent workflows. Deloitte Insights’ research team looked at the seven most effective digital pivots enterprises can make to become more digitally mature. The pivots that paid off the best as measured by revenue, margin, customer satisfaction, product/service quality and employee engagement combined data mastery and improving intelligent workflows. The following graphic shows how 51% of revenue growth can be explained by these two factors alone and 49% of improved customer satisfaction.

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

Data mastery and intelligent workflows are among the easiest areas to measure and include in a business case for digital transformation projects aimed at delivering a transcendent customer experience. Choosing to excel on the dimension of customer-centric data mastery gives enterprises the insights they need to create their unique omnichannel platforms. Adding in intelligent workflows that give customers the freedom to buy how, where and when they choose across any digital platform is the cornerstone of entirely new digital business models today. Capturing the voice of the customer and combining data mastery and intelligent workflows to gain an accurate, true 360-degree view of customers is invaluable for every aspect of go-to-market strategies.

Achieving Digital Maturity Requires A Framework

Enterprises that have customer centricity and a data-driven mindset are the most likely to succeed with a digital transformation initiative. As the Deloitte Insights study inferred, the most digitally mature organizations are continually adapting to customer and market dynamics. They’re prioritizing market responsiveness, striving to improve customer-centricity and have data-driven cultures with actionable insights as part of their DNA. Enterprises who see new digital business model opportunities and act on them capitalize on these three areas of organizational strength. They’re also able to combine their data mastery and intelligent workflows to identify areas of competitive opportunity to help them excel for their customers.

Consider how cybersecurity is now part of any customer experience, for good and bad. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) and many other forms of identity verification secure customer transactions, yet they can also cause dissatisfaction. For any digitally mature enterprise, integrating cybersecurity into their existing framework is a challenge. The growth of new frameworks designed to empower greater customer-centricity, agility and actionable insights across every facet of a business is a fascinating area of watch.

One of the more interesting is BMC’s Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) framework, which is shown below. Mapping Deloitte Insights’ top investment priorities for the next 12 months across all digital maturity levels to the ADE framework shows why frameworks like BMC’s are gaining adoption, particularly as organizations look to run and reinvent themselves with new digital business models built around AI/ML capabilities. The following graphic provides insights into how Deloitte’s top investment priorities are integral to BMC’s Autonomous Digital Enterprise Framework and its many contributions to the success of new digital business growth.

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

Conclusion

Quantifying the impact of having a customer-centric digital transformation strategy has proved elusive until recently. Deloitte Insights’ research shows how digital maturity enables greater gains from customer-centric digital transformation efforts. What’s fascinating about their research is how the progression of digital pivots leads to improved margin, revenue, customer satisfaction, diversity and inclusion and product quality gains. Equally interesting is the growing utility of frameworks like BMC’s, which are designed to enable long-standing enterprises to seamlessly embrace new digital business models, so they can flex and change with the world around them.

Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First is copyrighted by Louis Columbus. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.


Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce and Zoho.