Saturday, 11 October 2014

Why your Business needs Management Software


Does your workday look something like this? You spend countless hours sifting through Excel spreadsheets or switching from one application to another to find the data you need. Eventually, the lost time adds up—but your workflow doesn’t have to be this inefficient.
Have you heard about Dynamics 365 Business Central? This enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is designed to connect data from several departments in your company and store it in a single database. With it, your staff will have access to all the data they need. And as a business owner, you’ll get a 360-degree view of your operations and know exactly what’s happening with your finances, inventory, customer service, and more. To learn more about buying an ERP system, read our 
blog.

Want to know more about how Business Central can help you streamline your company’s functions? 
We know what you’re thinking—my business is too small for this kind of solution. But the truth is that no business is too small for a solution that will help it be more efficient. If you want to succeed in today’s competitive market, you have to be faster and sharper than the guy down the street.

Did you know? A recent survey by Panorama Consulting Solutions found that 64% of business owners decided to implement ERP software to improve business performance. Source: Panorama Consulting Solutions 2018 ERP Report.

Whether you run a 10-person shop or a larger company with up to 50 employees, you really should consider this solution. Here are some of the ways Business Central will make your company more efficient.

1. Get a Grip on Your Finances
Let’s say you run a specialty coffee shop. How do you keep track of all your payments and invoices? Are they piled up in a folder in your filing cabinet? Do you have one file folder for payables and another for receivables? Maybe you’re still using a rolodex system to store your client and supplier contact information!
A management system like Business Central would allow you to store all invoices, payments and credit card transactions in one place. In just a few clicks, you’d get a real-time view of your monthly revenue and expenses. Your accountant would also be happy because she’d have automatic access to all client transactions. She’d know right away who pays their bills on time and who doesn’t.

2. Take Control of Your Inventory
It’s easy for a three-person shop to keep a close eye on what’s sitting in the backroom. However, as your business starts to grow, controlling inventory becomes more of a challenge. If you run a catering business and have a big job coming up, do you have a sure-fire way of knowing you’ll have enough food to feed your clients? If you run out of chicken breasts because another member of your staff used them for a recent banquet, you could be in big trouble. You need a reliable way of managing your inventory. With a system like Business Central, each chef who works for you would have access to the same up-to-date information about the number of chicken breasts and salmon filets that are sitting in your fridge at any given time. No more scrambling to find a decent supplier at the last minute.

Did you know?
A recent study by the Motorola Solutions Future of Warehousing predicts that 66% of retailers will make a significant investment in inventory management technology throughout 2018. Source: SkuNexus, October 18, 2018.


3. Find Important Business Information When You Need It
If I asked you how many orders your company got last week, would you be able to tell me right away? Not all small business owners would have an immediate answer to this question. That’s because they don’t have direct access to the data—these figures are usually kept by the accounting or sales departments and rarely made available to other members of the company.
As we mentioned earlier, you have to be quick on the draw to last in today’s competitive market. And that means having important information readily available. Business Central would give decision-makers like you a complete overview of all your operations, whenever you need it. With just a few clicks, you would see what the sales department is doing, which customers have placed orders, and when their products would be shipped. You’d also have information on client history—such as buying habits—that would help your customer service agents better respond to your customers’ needs.

4. Bring Your Accounting Department Up to Scratch
Sluggish accounting is one of the first signs of an inefficient company. Is your accounting staff still using paper-based invoices to keep track of sales? Do they spend countless hours manually entering this information into various accounting and sales applications? Think of what you could accomplish if all these tasks were automated with a single database! You’d also narrow the margin of human error that occurs when people have to enter this kind of information manually.

5. Stop Fighting with Your Technology
You’re a business person, not a technology wiz. So the last thing you want to do is spend your day trying to figure out how to customize and upgrade all your software systems. You’d be better off letting a cloud provider like LATVIK TECHNOLOGIES build a new solution for you.
We can customize Dynamics 365 Business Central to suit your specific needs. And we can help you expand it when your business starts to grow. You won’t need a whole new infrastructure to run it and won’t have to worry about technical support—because that’s our job. You’ll also benefit from pay-as-you-go billing; you use the applications when you want them, and you’re billed for what you actually use. It’s that simple.




Need More Information  Contact Us 



Best Regards ,


Latvik Blog Team
LATVIK TECHNOLOGIES ™ 

Sunday, 2 February 2014

How to make sense of Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)

These days, it seems everything is “as a service”—SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, XaaS. It’s a constant reminder of just how much technology’s shaping our business world. One service that sometimes gets overlooked is DaaS, or desktop-as-a-service. Often confused with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), this simple service is invaluable to companies. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about DaaS.




What Is DaaS?
It is a type of virtual computing that gives individual employees access to the data and applications necessary to do their jobs from any device at any time. Simply put, it gives employees a fully operational desktop in the cloud.

DaaS vs. VDI
Tech-savvy readers will instantly connect this to the more commonly discussed VDI, but there’s one key difference: VDI is an on-premises infrastructure, where the virtual desktops are linked to internal servers. DaaS, on the other hand, is hosted outside the company—in the cloud, on external, off-premises servers, usually by a service provider.

So why not just use VDI? Well, managing a VDI solution can be rather costly. It requires in-house equipment and teams to support and service that equipment. Implementing such a solution can cost upwards of $200,000 in upfront capex, in addition to a lot of time and manpower that many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB's) just don’t have access to.

Why Choose DaaS?
When looking at a virtual desktop solution, the biggest upside to DaaS is its lower cost. Since the price is based on a subscription model, customers save money on upfront, hardware, licensing, and management costs.It also moves expenses from capex to opex, something that benefits many companies. In fact, it can reduce capex by up to 56% annually and even slightly reduce annual opex costs. A virtual desktop lasts longer, does not use as much power, and lacks a physical hard disk, making it cost about half as much as a traditional PC over the course of its life.



Other Benefits
DaaS comes with many other benefits besides cost savings. Here’s a rundown of the most notable ones:
  • Flexibility: A DaaS environment enables you to easily switch environments, allowing you to offer Windows to some employees and Linux to others, or let them switch back and forth. In addition, updates can be done in minutes, not days.
  • Accessibility: DaaS allows your employees to work from anywhere, on any device, increasing productivity and efficiency. With the rising popularity of remote work, this is becoming even more important.
  • Security: Everything—such as what gets downloaded or when security patches are issued—can be controlled from one central point. Viruses also have a harder time entering a user’s system through the central server vs. individual machines. Finally, without information on physical hard drives, if an employee device is stolen, your company data isn’t compromised.
  • Disaster Recovery: While it does not replace a full disaster recovery solution, virtual desktops do enable your company to get employees up and running faster after a disaster.
DaaS Disadvantages-
That all sounds great, but we all know that every technical solution has its drawbacks. So what are the downsides of DaaS?


First, if you’re not careful, you may not see the cost savings typically associated with DaaS. While a DaaS solution will definitely be an operational expense, that expense could get out of control if you don’t pay attention to your provider’s terms of service or appropriately plan for usage rates.

Other disadvantages include:
Connectivity: Since DaaS requires a lot of data transfer via the Internet, you must ensure your employees have access to a solid Internet service—not doing so can result in network latency, especially with graphic-intensive applications.

Single Point of Failure: While the benefits are worth it, and good providers take steps to ensure a disaster recovery plan for their clients, DaaS does give you a single point of failure for all of your employees’ workstations. If your provider goes down, you’ll be at a standstill.


DaaS and MSPs : So we’ve established that DaaS is an important consideration for SMBs looking to reduce costs and increase efficiency via a virtual desktop solution, but what about managed service providers (MSPs)? Why is it important for an MSP to provide this service, from their perspective?

Target Market
The most obvious reason for an MSP to offer DaaS is that their target customer naturally wants this service. DaaS is typically used by SMBs, the same companies that normally enlist the help of an MSP. According to a Citrix survey of over 700 of its service providers, 70% of MSP customers have fewer than 100 employees.

Continuous Revenue
DaaS can provide a profitable and continuous revenue stream for MSPs, all while allowing you to keep your rates fair. This service is also easily manageable and won’t take a lot of manpower or specialty setup.

Other DaaS Benefits
If that’s not enough, you’ll also get more security, control, and ease of management out of implementing a DaaS service—more so than if you were to try to manage each employee’s individual machine. It also makes it easier for your customer’s employees to bring their own devices, something that’s in increasingly high demand.


How Nerdio Can Help-

Obviously, DaaS is something to consider for both SMB's and MSP's, but there are tons of solutions to choose from—so what’s the best one?

Nerdio from Azure is a great choice for your DaaS needs, it’s:

Flexible: Allows you to do everything from managing a few servers to providing a full-blown IT-as-a-service solution. Simply adjust Azure’s compute and storage usage to match your needs.

Simple: You can provision an IT environment in just two hours, without any help from an engineer. Everything is done in three clicks or less.

Easy to Manage: Everything—all of your clients’ environments—is controlled from a single dashboard. Backups are done automatically, and only as you need them.

Insightful: Nerdio’s performance monitoring allows you to measure real end-user experiences and gain valuable insights so you can make smart changes.

With researchers predicting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 29% for the DaaS market, this trend certainly isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Contact 
LATVIK TECHNOLOGIES today to see how we can help you make the most of your IT service offering.

Need More Information  Contact Us 



Best Regards ,


Latvik Blog Team
LATVIK TECHNOLOGIES ™