Great User Interface and User Experience (Ux) and a comprehensive mobile application development strategy is mandatory for media sites. Is your app or site competitive and user friendly?
Year: 2015
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are de rigueur these days, and that is a good thing for business. After all, it is hard to accurately plan for success when you are guessing at every turn. While small and large businesses alike are establishing KPIs, there is one thing that is not so de rigueur and that is establishing KPIs that are appropriate, objective, measurable and actionable! Yet, without those important considerations, KPIs aren’t worth the paper they are printed on – or the computer screen they are displayed on!
Appropriate Metrics: Let’s say that you own a company called, ‘Widgets Plus’ and that company manufactures (what else?) widgets. Among the factors that will affect business success: the quality and dependability of the widgets, competitive pricing of the widgets, supplying the right variety of widget sizes, and the timely supply of widgets to your customers. In order to establish appropriate metrics, the management team must focus on the key components of success rather than measuring the number of pens the staff used in the month of August or the average shipping costs for technical manuals. Of course, Widgets Plus cares about its expenses and it is in their best interests to control those expenses, but key metrics must focus on the things that are critical to business success, sales, corporate reputation, competitive positioning and product or service sales.
Did you know that nearly half of Smart Phone and mobile device users are unhappy with how business mobile applications perform on their devices? Recently, a study revealed that 43% of smart phone users and 41% of tablet users found their mobile business apps less than impressive, when considering simplicity of function or easy access to critical information. When planning for a mobile application, there are many factors to consider if you want to ensure a successful implementation and business user adoption.
User Involvement: First, the IT staff must ensure that the user and employee community is involved in planning and reviewing the requirements and the prototype. If the business wants to avoid a misstep, it must involve the users upfront and understand user skills, the way users need to interact with the application, the types of devices they will use to access information, and the workflow and processes they must employ to complete a task. Involve your users early and they will become your best advocates and champions.
The concept
This software testing approach dissects an application’s functionality without delving into the software’s internal structure or its working mechanism. The testing is versatile in the sense that its applicability spreads across every domain of testing with the spectrum spanning integration testing, acceptance and system testing to lower level unit testing.
Procedure
The testing is done on the premise that the programming of the software has been done in a robust manner flawlessly. The tester possesses knowledge of the outputs returned by typical inputs but usually is in the dark when it comes to knowing the specific programming constructs that yield the outcome. Test cases are developed based on specifications/ needs pertaining to the performance expected out of the software. The application’s extraneous characteristics provide assumptive data for the test with the gamut encompassing needs, specifications and design codes. Non-functional testing is also allowed. The tester picks inputs that may be valid or invalid and then ascertain the correct or desired output.
This software testing approach dissects an application’s functionality without delving into the software’s internal structure or its working mechanism. The testing is versatile in the sense that its applicability spreads across every domain of testing with the spectrum spanning integration testing, acceptance and system testing to lower level unit testing.
Procedure
The testing is done on the premise that the programming of the software has been done in a robust manner flawlessly. The tester possesses knowledge of the outputs returned by typical inputs but usually is in the dark when it comes to knowing the specific programming constructs that yield the outcome. Test cases are developed based on specifications/ needs pertaining to the performance expected out of the software. The application’s extraneous characteristics provide assumptive data for the test with the gamut encompassing needs, specifications and design codes. Non-functional testing is also allowed. The tester picks inputs that may be valid or invalid and then ascertain the correct or desired output.
My friend Roland sells football memorabilia. Last year, Roland signed up to do a holiday sale at a local community center. When he got the venue, he found that none of the prospective customers wanted his products. The event had been advertised as a ‘handicraft’ show, featuring hand knit baby sweaters, handmade aprons, blown glass tree ornaments, etc. Roland didn’t sell any football memorabilia that day
Why am I telling you this story? To prove the adage, ‘Know your audience’. That adage applies to any kind of customer, including an eCommerce client! If you are launching, migrating or upgrading an eCommerce site, you must design a site to attract and retain your target audience. It is important to understand more than the technical aspects of the site. Yes, performance, architecture and mobility is crucial but if you don’t know your target customers, their buying behavior and preferences, you will not get the results you want.
Tally ERP is a popular software solution for small and medium sized (SME) organizations. As these businesses grow, the critical information contained within the Tally solution and other best-of-breed or ERP systems may decrease in value because of the restricted ‘silo’ environment in which that data resides. During the critical period of business expansion, it is more important than ever to have integrated, concise information with which to make product and service decisions, pricing and financial decisions and customer targeting decisions. For the sales manager who has been assigned the task to increase sales and to improve customer outreach, the data within a CRM and/or the Tally Solutions system is critical to success. As an organization grows from small to medium and from medium to large the management team must find a way to address more complex reporting and analysis needs using existing data, and the sales management team and sales professionals must depend on this information to drive performance.
So, you’re an accountant, or financial professional? You can analyze a spreadsheet with the best of them. You can credit and debit with and you explain any portfolio, chart of accounts, balance sheet or P&L to any client. You may think that Business Intelligence tools are not applicable to your role or function but think again!Consider the data with which you work. Numbers come from many sources within an organization and those numbers come together to paint a picture – or at least they SHOULD! Understanding trends, patterns and results can help you to help a client in ways you never dreamed possible. Using BI tools to manage your own business can also help you to achieve better results, do more for your customers, find and fix issues and capitalize on opportunities.
The open source enterprise portal Liferay web application framework, written in Java and distribute freely is predominantly deployed for developing corporate intranets and extraneous nets. This web platform is richly decked with useful features that commonly are used for seamless site development.Liferay portal development is capacitated by the embedded web content management system which facilitates building of web portals as synergic sequence of themes, webpages, gadgets, portlets etc. driven by a common navigation control. Liferay platform extends support for an extensive array of programming languages such as Ruby portlets and PHP. Liferay developer need not possess comprehensive programming skills to get started with fundamental site installation and subsequent administration.
The good news is that today’s business and IT managers are excited about business intelligence and value it can bring to the organization, its users and its bottom line. The bad news is that, in their zeal to run headlong into the business intelligence market, many businesses are making missteps and mistakes that will haunt them and diminish the value of the business intelligence solution, thereby degrading ROI and TCO.
A business can make numerous missteps on the path to business intelligence. Here are just a few of them:
Today’s content management systems (CMS) are far more sophisticated than the CMS systems of old. Small and large business enterprises have found many uses for CMS frameworks and platforms – far surpassing the simple document management solutions of past decades. If your business wishes to leverage the new CMS solutions for eCommerce, blogs, consumer or employee portals, media outlets or other business sites or solutions, it may wish to consider the Umbraco open source content management system.
