Benefits of CRM

Benefits of CRM

Posted on: 27/02/14

Celerity has grown quite a lot over the last 11 years, from increased staff numbers and larger offices, to more internal systems and the hardware and infrastructure to run them. So when we looked at ways to improve and streamline our business processes as an IT solutions provider, a CRM system was the obvious choice. A Customer Relationship Management system would allow us to track everything from the beginning of a sales cycle with our marketing department, to the end of the cycle with happy customers.

After evaluating what was available on the market we decided to go with SugarCRM as it best suited our business. As an IBM business partner we were swayed a little more upon hearing that IBM had chosen Sugar to replace their existing Siebel system. It was the only system on our shortlist that offered integration with our IBM Notes collaboration and email system too.

 

Many modern CRM systems offer broadly similar features; when shopping around we decided that the following were requirements - SugarCRM met them all:

• Customer data - A centralised database of customer accounts, contact details, communications, and order details with histories of all related actions.

• Reporting - Allowing us to report on marketing analytics, sales trends, and track business performance. These can be run when required, or automated to send out reports on a schedule.

• Workflow Automation - Workflows can automate processes, cutting administration time and duplication of work to improve productivity.

• Integration - Many modern systems integrate with other applications. Our system integrates with our email system to link emails and calendars, Sage to produce invoices, purchase orders and sales orders, and also links to our office software.

• Platform independence – Any computer with an internet connection running a modern web browser can access cloud based offerings. Mobile apps and mobile browser versions of CRM systems let our staff access records whilst out of the office to help keep our information up-to-date.

• Data Protection – We have control over who can see what with team and role based access control meaning that we can keep our data safe. Easy reassignment of accounts and records means that we’re in full control of our data. Encryption of data in transit helps to keep communication secure.

• Customisable – Users can customise the layout of their screens so that they have quick access to the information relevant to them and their role. Administrators can customise what the users can see, and developers can customise modules to get more functionality out of the system.

• Ease of use – SugarCRM is very intuitive to use, but also offers some great training videos on its YouTube channel… 

The development process was a long journey as we had quite a lot of customisation to the system, the integration with Sage and importing of product catalogues from our suppliers makes the sales process faster for us. With a centralised system we have better coordination within the company, making it easier for departments to see what each other are doing and work towards a common goal. The value of what we do is now easier to recognise, allowing our business to make better decisions. Hopefully this will mean a better Celerity for staff and customers. Who knows what the next 11 years will bring?

Should you require any further information regarding Customer Relationship Management Systems, please do not hesitate to contact Celerity.

John Carson, Technical Consultant, Celerity Limited

To view this article on Celerity's website please click here or visit www.celerity-uk.com

POWER - Did You Know? ... 5 Top Facts

Posted on: 20/02/14

It is no secret that POWER systems servers run your mission-critical business. And you may even know that in excess of sixteen thousand applications can run on POWER7.

But did you know? …

1.0 POWER Explores Space

If you think your system is out of this world, you would be spot-on. POWER technology is a regular traveller to Mars. Processors built on POWER know-how are used on board many space craft such as the ‘Curiosity’,’ Pathfinder’, ‘Opportunity’, ‘Spirit’ and ‘Phoenix Mars Lander’ probes.

A radiation-hardened RAD6000 computer manufactured by BAE Systems is centred on the POWER chip and acts as the brains of the spacecraft, processing navigational data and driving key systems in space and on the Red Planet’s surface.

Vic Scuderi, Space Product Manager for BAE Systems says: “Surviving windstorms with speeds of up to 80 mph and temperatures of -199 degrees fahrenheit, radiation-hardened POWER has become the de facto standard for space-qualified processors.”

   Click here to read 'IBM Power Architecture Heads to Unexplored Region of Mars'

2.0 POWER Manages Three Operating Systems

POWER systems servers have been built to be the open platform for choice, offering flexibility for enterprises of all sizes to run the Operating System that best suits their business needs. Whether you want to administer AIX, IBM i or Linux (both Red Hat and SUSE), these world class Operating Systems run on POWER systems hardware.

This mix allows you to increase your options for quicker and efficient technology development and IT integration with existing resources and ecosystem technologies. Today’s resonant multimedia, big-data and multi device world requires flexible options and industry compatibility so that you can integrate what you have now with what is emerging tomorrow.

     

Click here to read 'The Power to choose: Linux, AIX, IBMi'

3.0 POWER Takes to the Road

POWER Architecture expertise is exploited in many automotive applications, including engine management, body control, gateway, safety, chassis and driver information applications.

Freescale Semiconductor Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors, is using POWER technology in its MPC56xx family of 32-bit microcontrollers. These little marvels provide vehicle engineers with sophisticated electronics applications that react to drivers and passenger simple requests, such as lowering a window or adjusting a seat, as well as the complex safety, emissions and communications tasks that motor vehicles handle these days. Used in half of today’s motor vehicles, you are likely to be driving along with POWER technology.

    Click here to read about the MPC56XX Family

4.0 POWER in Your Mobile Phone

Do you have an Android phone in your pocket? If you do, you are carrying POWER equipment. power.org – the open, collaborative organisation that enables, develops and promotes POWER Architecture technology, joined forces with VeriSilicon and Mentor Graphics to make the Android Operating System 2.3 (A.K.A. Gingerbread) available to developers as open source code.

With the same open spirit, IBM also worked together with Google, Mellanox, NVIDA and Tyan to form the OpenPOWER Consortium. The OpenPOWER Consortium is an open development alliance, centred on IBMs POWER Architecture technology. The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time, as well as making POWER IP licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. With this level of openness, you may start to see many other POWER Architecture-inspired technologies around - just as common as your mobile phone.

Click here to read Power and here to read IBM press releases

5.0 POWER is Finding Cures for Cancer

Watson is going to work and its first stop is healthcare – and the immense task of helping researchers to find a cure for cancer. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are working with IBM and Watson technology running on POWER systems servers to eradicate cancer.

Both cancer centers are combining Watson’s computational power and natural language processing capability with their own clinical knowledge, case histories and genomic data to create outcome – and evidence based decisions systems.

“This comprehensive, evidence based approach will profoundly enhance cancer care by accelerating the dissemination of practice changing research at an unprecedented pace...” says Dr. Mark G Kris, Chief, Thoracic Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

Should you require any further information regarding POWER or have any more interesting facts to add... please do not hesitate to contact us.

Chris Lang, Technical Consultant, Celerity Limited

 To view this article on Celerity Limited website please click here

Celerity Appoint New Business Development Manager Dominic Cheeseman

Dominic Cheeseman has joined Celerity as Business Development Manager based in our office at Ascot.

Dominic has been working within the IT industry for over eight years having worked for SMBs together with large global blue chip companies and has a wealth of experience working within the IBM arena for IBM Rational software, NetApp for storage solutions and Dell for enterprise solutions including server, storage and systems management software.

He has held several successful client manager roles and has been responsible for selling and managing the delivery of a portfolio of IT solutions spanning software, infrastructure and professional services with particular experience in software development, application development, modernisation and integration software solutions including software testing.

Celerity welcomes Dominic to its expanding team!

To read this announcement on Celerity Limited's website click here 

Celerity Adds 'OEM' to Microsoft Silver Competencies

Celerity has once again further strengthened its Microsoft offerings by adding OEM to its ever growing list of Silver Competencies, having already achieved Hosting, Server Platform and Midmarket Solutions Provider competencies.

 

OEM Competency

Partners with the Microsoft OEM competency have achieved a competitive edge with increased customer visibility in the marketplace. Through achieving the OEM competency, Celerity has demonstrated its ability to design and deliver quality hardware solutions optimised for Microsoft Software.

                                                                                  

As a Microsoft Partner it is essential that Celerity is able to deploy, recommend, sell and service the latest Microsoft technologies. By attaining a Microsoft Silver Competency it enables Celerity to set itself apart from the competition by demonstrating a specific, proven skill set to customers.

With the rapid rate of technology change in the marketplace, new product versions open new and exciting solution possibilities. By training and certifying staff on these latest products and technologies both from a technical and sales and marketing perspective, Celerity is able to gain a competitive advantage and is able to offer clients the most relevant solutions in market today.
 

To read this article on Celerity Limited's website click here

When is a Virtual Tape Library not a VTL?

A virtual tape library, or VTL, presents storage as a tape library with tape drives for use with backup software. As most backup software works with tape libraries this means a VTL device will work with all the major software backup applications. More recent VTL’s have introduced deduplication technology for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data so multiple copies of the same data are only stored once.

So ...  when is a VTL not a VTL?

Well when it is configured with a File System Interface (FSI). This makes it appear to the backup software as Network attached storage (NAS). The following article details my experience configuring IBMs ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway 7650G with FSI with some of the things you will not find in the IBM Redbooks.

 

The ProtecTIER Filesystem Interface is a relatively new feature, more commonly used on smaller appliance models and not often configured on gateway models where the greater throughput performance of the VTL is more commonly deployed. The 7650G is configured and shipped as either a VTL (with FC adapter cards) or FS (with NICs) but not both. This is something that has caught a few people out in my experience and is not easily rectified once the system is out in the field.

 

 

Unlike the appliance the storage is not integrated with the gateway model so connectivity to some backend SAN storage is required. It is recommended that SATA disks use RAID6 (6+2) and Fibre Channel disks use RAID5 (4+P to 8+P) for User data storage LUN’s and then RAID 10 for metadata LUNs (4+4 to 8+8). It is highly recommended that Fibre Channel disks be used for metadata LUNs as this stores the Hyperfactor index.

 

There is a sizing tool to assist with the calculations for the number of spindles, raid type, disk capacity and performance; this also requires customer information about data change rate, retention period as well as the size and frequency of backups. The sizing information is critical as you will be prompted to input these values when it comes to configuring the storage repository.

 

Network performance in terms of bandwidth between the ProtecTIER and the backup server is an important consideration when configuring the network port. On the ProtecTIER side the NICs come with options of either 2 x 4port GbE adapters or 2x 2port 10GbE. The ports can be bonded or linked together at a logical level to increase bandwidth over that of a single adapter. Round robin is the most straight forward option to configure as this requires no special configuration of the networks switch infrastructure and common sense dictates it is best to link ports across adapters to remove single points of failure. I discussed this with an IBM ProtecTIER consultant and was told this was suitable for performance < 500Mbps. For higher throughput speeds 802.3ad link aggregation is also supported on ProtecTIER but this must also be configured on the network switches and remember that whichever option you choose your backup server should also be configured with the same number of NICs otherwise a potential bottleneck could exist at that end.

 

Configuration of the shares and directories is much simpler than the ProtecTIER VTL setup as there is no requirement to configure tapes, drives, etc. we just need to create a share or shares of the required size. This makes it more straightforward to administer and manage than a VTL configuration. It is worth pointing out that using Workgroup authentication is much simpler to implement than configuring Active directory authentication which requires a detailed knowledge of an organisations AD setup.

 

One last point, in order for ProtecTIER’s deduplication to work it requires data to be written in large chunks from backup software application. You can present ProtecTIER file shares as NAS shares to a file sever but it will not deduplicate, which is the whole point of implementing it in the first place.

If it is a NAS solution you are looking for then a NAS storage implementation is best suited.

 

Should you require any further information regarding Virtual Tape Library please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Neil Hulme, Technical Consultant, Celerity Limited

 

To read this article on Celerity Limited's website please click here

 

 

- See more at: http://www.celerity-uk.com/news/251/when-is-a-virtual-tape-library-not-a-vtl#sthash.CczWluIY.dpuf