I recently wrote a post about Microsoft Surface in a reatil setting, which can help differentiate you from your competition.
In this post, I have embedded a video about an offering that Accenture and Avanade have created for Financial Planning.
Through this technology, a firm can really differentiate themselves from their competitors with this unique offering. It is interactive and allows for a company to identify other opportunities for their clients.
If you would like to see how Avanade can enable your companay with unique solutions, like the Financial Planning Solution for Microsoft Surface, please contact us via email or in the Calgary office at 403-476-1473.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Energy Sector Partner Portal Presentation in Calgary
Today’s dynamic business environment requires companies to collaborate more closely than ever with key partners and stakeholders. Organizations need to share information and your partners require greater access key information held within the secure confines of your enterprise. But how can you enforce your enterprise standards and governance structures on your partners?
There are many questions that need to be asked:
• How do you provide access to your partners without adversely impacting your critical business processes?
• How can an organization enforce their corporate information standards on their partners to ensure security and data integrity policies are being met?
• What can a company do to manage and secure the identity of a user and allow them access to only the information that they require?
• How can you utilize technology to help improve the overall decision making process?
Avanade Inc. has created the Energy Sector Partner Portal (ESPP) to allow effective collaboration between all your partners, while protecting your most valuable assets; your information.
The ESPP, built on Microsoft’s Enterprise SharePoint platform, allows for effective governance and enables the consolidation of multiple information sources into a single source of truth. This, in turn, helps reduce non-productive time and significantly reduces project and operating costs.
Join us on February 22nd at 3 PM in the Accenture office at 2710, 140 – 4th Avenue SW in Calgary for a presentation on the Energy Sector Partner Portal.
Please RSVP to Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com. on Linked In at: http://events.linkedin.com/Energy-Sector-Partner-Portal/pub/224095
Avanade Inc., a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, is a global IT consultancy that enables solutions built on the Microsoft product suite.
There are many questions that need to be asked:
• How do you provide access to your partners without adversely impacting your critical business processes?
• How can an organization enforce their corporate information standards on their partners to ensure security and data integrity policies are being met?
• What can a company do to manage and secure the identity of a user and allow them access to only the information that they require?
• How can you utilize technology to help improve the overall decision making process?
Avanade Inc. has created the Energy Sector Partner Portal (ESPP) to allow effective collaboration between all your partners, while protecting your most valuable assets; your information.
The ESPP, built on Microsoft’s Enterprise SharePoint platform, allows for effective governance and enables the consolidation of multiple information sources into a single source of truth. This, in turn, helps reduce non-productive time and significantly reduces project and operating costs.
Join us on February 22nd at 3 PM in the Accenture office at 2710, 140 – 4th Avenue SW in Calgary for a presentation on the Energy Sector Partner Portal.
Please RSVP to Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com. on Linked In at: http://events.linkedin.com/Energy-Sector-Partner-Portal/pub/224095
Avanade Inc., a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, is a global IT consultancy that enables solutions built on the Microsoft product suite.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Realizing results using a Consolidated Business Intelligence (CBI) portal
How many systems do you have to report different pieces of information from your organization? How many reports do you have that are required by your company?
Information sprawl is rampant within organizations today. In fact, many businesses spend more time looking for and organizing information than they do actually using that information. Avanade's Consolidated Business Intelligence (CBI) allows businesses to effectively inventory, locate, secure and share business data assets—such as reports, scorecards, dashboards and data lists—without consolidating reporting systems or data repositories. CBI is a cost-effective solution that provides true business value though a single, easy-to-access portal that helps improve and accelerate decision-making processes.
CBI Features:
There are numerous benefits to your company in using Avanade's Consolidated Business Intelligence (CBI) solution. They include:
Screen Shot of CBI:
Click on the picture to get a bigger view.
Case Study:
Like many IT organizations, Microsoft maintains a complex reporting environment with numerous server-based business information systems. The challenge Microsoft IT faced is that multiple reporting systems can cause business and technical issues, such as silos of information, multiple data repositories, reporting tools, and complicated permission schemas.
To help business units within Microsoft make better and faster decisions CBI was developed as a centralized portal application built on Microsoft’s SharePoint Server and SQL Server products. CBI is part of Microsoft IT’s Enterprise Data Warehouse strategy, the solution helps to surface data sources, data subject areas and identify opportunities for data consolidation and enrichment.
If you would like understand how CBI can help your company, please contact Avanade via Email or in the Calgary Office at (403) 476-1473. Please call to arrange a meeting and presentation
Information sprawl is rampant within organizations today. In fact, many businesses spend more time looking for and organizing information than they do actually using that information. Avanade's Consolidated Business Intelligence (CBI) allows businesses to effectively inventory, locate, secure and share business data assets—such as reports, scorecards, dashboards and data lists—without consolidating reporting systems or data repositories. CBI is a cost-effective solution that provides true business value though a single, easy-to-access portal that helps improve and accelerate decision-making processes.
CBI Features:
There are numerous benefits to your company in using Avanade's Consolidated Business Intelligence (CBI) solution. They include:
- Increased Ability to Make Informed Business Decisions
- Single Source for Business-Critical Information
- Ability to Easily Locate Information Assets
- Personalized, Consistent and Flexible User Experience
- Increased productivity through streamlined report processes
- Reduced Development, Maintenance, and Support Costs
- Increased Data Security
Screen Shot of CBI:
Click on the picture to get a bigger view.
Case Study:
Today at Microsoft, the CBI implementation is used by more than 50 business units, it has over 20,000 subscribing users and is accessible by over 90,000 employee, vendors and partners. These numbers grow on a monthly basis as Microsoft IT, with the help of Accenture and Avanade, onboard new business units and their associated users.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
ACA Accelerate - Driving Unnecessary Costs Out of the IT Department
I have blogged about this in the past, but it makes sense to do another post on driving costs related to redundant or underused software out of a company.
With company's making the move to Windows 7, there is a perfect opportunity to look at the software that is being used, or more accurately not used, and then creating a definitive software library (DSL).
A properly executed process for determining at DSL can help drive hard cost savings in a company. The process that Avanade uses is called ACA Accelerate, which will help drive upwards of $500 in software license savings. Another offshoot is that fact that you do not need to support nearly as much software, so you should also see up to $500 is labor savings per desktop.
Below is a slide presentation that talks to ACA Accelerate.
A typical engagement with Avanade is less that 2 months and based on the costs, the return on investment can be significant with a 20 X plus multiplier on the cost. With cost savings like this, you might even be able to cover the costs of a Windows 7 migration and have enough left over to take your team out for pizza (numerous times).
If you would like to find out more on how Avanade can help you creating a DSL, please contact us at 403-476-1473 or via email.
With company's making the move to Windows 7, there is a perfect opportunity to look at the software that is being used, or more accurately not used, and then creating a definitive software library (DSL).
A properly executed process for determining at DSL can help drive hard cost savings in a company. The process that Avanade uses is called ACA Accelerate, which will help drive upwards of $500 in software license savings. Another offshoot is that fact that you do not need to support nearly as much software, so you should also see up to $500 is labor savings per desktop.
Below is a slide presentation that talks to ACA Accelerate.
A typical engagement with Avanade is less that 2 months and based on the costs, the return on investment can be significant with a 20 X plus multiplier on the cost. With cost savings like this, you might even be able to cover the costs of a Windows 7 migration and have enough left over to take your team out for pizza (numerous times).
If you would like to find out more on how Avanade can help you creating a DSL, please contact us at 403-476-1473 or via email.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
tCatalog for Retail - Differentiate your company from your competition
Want to see something totally cool for a retail store? tCatalog for Retail from Avanade and Accenture built on Windows 7 touch screen technology.
The uses for this in a retail environment can be pretty amazing, such as:
- Product information
- Product comparisons
- Reviews
- Associated literature
This is also a great way to use a loyalty program to allow someone to go into a store and see what items might be a good recommendation for your clients.
tCatalog can be used in numerous other sales settings such as:
- Insurance
- Investments
- New homes
- Many others
If you would like to see how Avanade can enable tCatalog for your organization, please contact us in the Calgary office at (403) 476-1473 or via email.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Microsoft Surface in the Retail Environment
Ever heard of Microsoft Surface?
According to the website, Surface is a revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, helping people interact with digital content in a simple and intuitive way. With a large, horizontal user interface, Surface offers a unique gathering place where multiple users can collaboratively and simultaneously interact with data and each other.
One of the areas that Microsoft Surface can be used is in a retail setting. Microsoft Surface can connect customers with more and richer product information and create collaborative sales engagements right inside retail outlets, connecting the physical store, sales staff and digital content. For example, Surface recognizes mobile devices, allowing customers to download product information, compare products, cross-sell related items, and select add-on features.
Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content. Leave the mouse and keyboard behind. Surface lets you grab digital content with your hands and move information with simple gestures and touches. Surface also sees and interacts with objects placed on the screen, allowing you to move information between devices like mobile phones or cameras. The result is a fun, social and exciting computing experience like you’ve never had before.
Microsoft Surface provides tremendous potential for businesses to improve communication, and be more efficient in how they deliver information and services to their customers. The intuitive and approachable interface is easy to learn and the familiar software platform makes it easy to manage, too. The multi-touch and multi-user capabilities create an incredibly collaborative experience, where sharing and exploring information is easier than ever.
The video below show the Retail Solution for Surface from Avanade and Accenture.
There are so many possibilities for Microsoft surface in different retail settings. To find out more on how Avanade can enable your environment with Microsoft Surface, please feel free to call us in the Calgary office at (403) 476-1473 or email us.
Digital Marketing - How to reach your audience
Avanade, in conjunction with Accenture, have created the Digital marketplace offering that utilizes the Microsoft product suite.
The concept behind Avanade's Digital Marketing is getting personalized, targeted information to your audience.
In addition to the delivered content, tracking clickthrough rates and utilization rates, allows an organization to monitor their marketing spend to see if it is being used efficiently. The solution also helps an organization understand who is visiting, where your audience is coming from and how they are converting. This will help clients get a better grasp on their overall online presence.
The video below is an overview of the Avanade Digital Marketing solution.
If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you with your online presence, please feel free to contact us via email or on the phone at (403) 476-1473.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
How to Reduce IT Project Spends By Up To 50%
The attached slides show how an IT department can reduce the cost of an IT Project by up to 50% without impacting the overall quality of the project.
If you would like to see how you can reduce the costs associated with your IT projects by up to 50%, then please feel free to contact Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or click here to send an email.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Top 6 Reasons to use Total Solution Financing From Microsoft to Pay for an AX Implementation
If you are looking at implementing the Microsoft AX software package, you should really look at utilizing Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Finance. Below is a list of 6 reasons why you would want to consider financing.
Top 5 reasons to finance your AX implementation:
Top 5 reasons to finance your AX implementation:
- You can finance the AX Software
- Your company can finance the Service to implement the AX software
- Also include financing the Hardware to implement AX
- Finance any 3rd party software required to implement AX
- You can also finance any Microsoft related software that will be used in the implementation
- Finally - Terms from 24 months to 60 months
3 other reasons to finance your AX implementation:
Gain a competitive edge. Many companies are reconsidering their technology investments because of uncertainty in the business world. But now is precisely the time to be proactive and invest in your company's future—because stalling technology investments in the short term can cripple the long-term growth of your company.
Improve your cash flow. Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Financing transforms large "cash up-front" technology investments into affordable monthly payments. You get the benefits now but pay over three to five years. That means you can keep cash reserves and invest in other critical assets or preserve capital for emergencies.
Make things easier on yourself. Total Solution Financing from Microsoft Financing makes the process of financing your technology investment easy. For example, you'll talk financing with people who understand your business. Avanade understands the details of your implementation project and the concept of software and services as intangible assets.
If you are considering an AX implementation and would like to find out more on how to finance the implementation, please contact Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or email us.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Most Companeis are Wasting Up to $500 per Desktop: How to Create a Difinitive Software Library and Drive Cost Savings
Most medium to large companies typically don't have a clue how much software they own or how much it is being used. It would surprise most CIO's and anyone who manages software for companies that companies are overspending by up to $500 per desktop on software that isn't required.
One way to address this issue is to create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that inventories all the software a company owns, the costs and the utilization rates. The unfortunate part is that most companies don't know how to do software rationalization and usually if they do, they only gather a fraction of the total software that companies use. Avanade offers a service, called ACA Accelerate, to help companies create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that is extremely accurate.
ACA Accelerate is approximately a 6 week process and the cost for the service will easily be covered by the savings. The outcome is that it will drive software compliance and provide a hard cost savings for a company.
A few other major benefits include:
One way to address this issue is to create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that inventories all the software a company owns, the costs and the utilization rates. The unfortunate part is that most companies don't know how to do software rationalization and usually if they do, they only gather a fraction of the total software that companies use. Avanade offers a service, called ACA Accelerate, to help companies create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that is extremely accurate.
The premise behind ACA Accelerate is to collect information on the current state, which is done through a proprietary process, and then figure out a future state model for the company. The current state will show the current software inventory (including versions) with associated users. A cost is assigned to each software title and this will help a company create a dollar figure on the current state.
Once the current state is know, then the future state can be modelled by consolidating software titles, versions, functionality and such. When the final model is created, then a definitive software library is created and the total costs can be applied to the list. This is were you will find the savings that be achieved.
Typically Avanade will see up to $500 in hard cost savings through the software audit that can be added straight to the bottom line of a company when a company goes through the ACA Accelerate process.
An example of the cost savings on a single software package would be Adobe Acrobat Professional, which retails for $200/desktop. Avanade worked with a company that included Acrobat Professional as part of the standard Desktop Image. Could you imagine if your company were over 10,000 employees and you were paying $2M per year for a piece of software that 90% to 99% of your organization doesn't require or could be replaced with a free piece of software that accomplishes the same functionality. This would help drive significant savings for a company.ACA Accelerate is approximately a 6 week process and the cost for the service will easily be covered by the savings. The outcome is that it will drive software compliance and provide a hard cost savings for a company.
A few other major benefits include:
- Report Functionality: the process delivers a great report with graphical representations of key metrics. This is great for telling the savings story to other key individuals in your company.
- ACA Accelerate is also great for a Windows 7 upgrade as it identifies software that should be retired, potentially re-written, virtualized, etc. The savings can be used to pay for most or all of a Windows 7 upgrade.
- ACA Accelerate can do hardware too, which is ideal for any upcoming Windows 7 upgrades to see if there are any peripherals that need to be replaced prior to the upgrade.
- Drives software license compliance.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Microsoft Online: How Hosted Exchange Reduces Costs by 30% and Greater
In case you have been under a rock for the last few months, you probably have heard that Microsoft has jumped into the cloud computing world through a service called Business Productivity Online Suite or BPOS.
Basically, it a hosted model, or “Software as a Service” (SaaS), of several Microsoft stacks that take the headache out of managing them internally at your organization.
Some Statistics on SaaS:
• By 2012, 20% of enterprise market e-mail seats will be delivered via SaaS and similar models versus 1% of enterprise seats in 2007 (Gartner)
• Solution providers say that software giant Microsoft—and not Google—will be their biggest competitor for managed and hosted software and services over the next 24 months (Gartner)
• The worldwide enterprise e-mail and calendaring market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2007 through 2012, with regional differences being evident (Gartner)
According to Microsoft, BPOS is:
“a set of Microsoft hosted messaging and collaboration solutions including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. When your company subscribes to one or more of the services, it connects to the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications with the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services. Because Microsoft hosts the services, it reduces your company’s need to maintain IT services on site. Many organizations today are moving to this "software-plus-services" model, because it decreases the need to manage hardware and software.”
“a set of Microsoft hosted messaging and collaboration solutions including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. When your company subscribes to one or more of the services, it connects to the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications with the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services. Because Microsoft hosts the services, it reduces your company’s need to maintain IT services on site. Many organizations today are moving to this "software-plus-services" model, because it decreases the need to manage hardware and software.”
Basically, it a hosted model, or “Software as a Service” (SaaS), of several Microsoft stacks that take the headache out of managing them internally at your organization.
Some Statistics on SaaS:
• By 2012, 20% of enterprise market e-mail seats will be delivered via SaaS and similar models versus 1% of enterprise seats in 2007 (Gartner)
• Solution providers say that software giant Microsoft—and not Google—will be their biggest competitor for managed and hosted software and services over the next 24 months (Gartner)
• The worldwide enterprise e-mail and calendaring market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2007 through 2012, with regional differences being evident (Gartner)
• Hosted business e-mail market segment will grow at an average annual growth rate of 26% between 2007 and 2011 (Radicati)
Cost Estimator on Seat Basis:
Cost Estimator on Seat Basis:
Microsoft has a great tool for helping people discover the costs associated with their BPOS offering. The links are:
Canadian Costs: http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx?lang=en-ca
US Costs: http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx?lang=en-us
Cost Analysis for 500 Seats of Email only:
Over a 6 year period, a company may see a $580,000 reduction in costs.
In this scenario, specific to hosted email or hosted exchange, the total cost of ownership for a 6 year on-premise solution is $1.2M or an average of $200K/year. With Microsoft's hosted email solution, the cost is $620K over 6 years, which is $103K/year or a savings of just under $97K per year. This is a 49% cost savings.
BPOS/Microsoft Online Benefits:
There are numerous benefits to going with a hosted model as opposed to on premise. Some benefits include:
1. Total cost of ownership reduction – often 30% and greater
2. Elimination of future implementation costs
3. Reduced capital costs
4. Reduced patching, security and upgrade costs
5. Reduced software license costs
6. Decreased upfront investment
7. Improved security and data privacy
8. Improved compliance
The bottom line is, BPOS or Microsoft online can had a significant impact on helping reduce costs on a service that is non-core to most companies. It is an option that really should be explored.
If you would like to have a free Cost Analysis for your organization, please contact Avanade at 403-476-1473 in Calgary or email us here .
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Top 10 Reasons for Using a Client Relationship Manangement (CRM) System
If your company is not using a Client Relationship Management (CRM) software or a CRM system, then you are probably missing a good opportunity to increase revenues and reduce costs.
There are numerous benefits to properly implementing CRM software and I have gone through several web site and compiled information into a top 10 list.
Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Use CRM Software:
There are numerous benefits to properly implementing CRM software and I have gone through several web site and compiled information into a top 10 list.
Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Use CRM Software:
- Revenue increases of up to 41% per sales representative - That's $410,000 additional on every $1M in quota.
- Decrease sales cycles by over 24% - If you average sale takes 4 months, this is like adding 1 additional sale per year.
- Lead conversion rate improvements by over 300%
- Increase customer retention improvements by 27% - This can have a significant impact on adding to the bottom line - less costly to maintain a current client then to get a new one.
- Decrease sales and marketing costs by 23% - Huge impact on the overall performance of a company.
- Improve profit margins by over 2% - This also has a significant impact on the overall performance of a company.
- Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%
- 65% of a businesses revenue is generated by loyal repeat clients - Understand what clients are your best clients and get to know them and their spending habits - Upsell them!!!
- 80% of sales leads are lost, ignored or discarded - Just because someone didn't buy in the past doesn't mean that they are not interested today - Follow up.
- 73% of organizations have no process to requalifying or revisting business leads - Gain business that you didn't have before.
An interesting piece of information that IDC reported is that ROI from CRM is between 16% and 1000% and that half of all companies surveyed see between 50% and 500% on ROI.
The whole concept behind these figures is that you adhere to a process to manage sales and by managing this process, the benefits will follow. Key to making a CRM system work is to understand what you want to accomplish and implement CRM to meet your goals. Over 50% of all CRM implementations are deemed to be a failure due to the fact that there was not a proper implementation to meet the objectives that were desired. So just implementing CRM alone is not the answer. Determining what you want to accomplish and mapping it out is where you want to start.
If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you leverage the power of CRM for your organization, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com .
Avanade offers a hosted model in addition to a client server model.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Windows 7 Upgrades Creates Up to 15% Reduction in TCO - Putting Money Back In Your Pockets
If you work for a company contemplating upgrading your desktops from older versions of Windows to Windows 7, there is a way to offset the cost associated with the upgrade and pay for the upgrade out of operational savings. These savings could add up to over $700/year per desktop image.
Avanade Inc. has a method that will assist companies with paying for their Windows 7 deployment through cost savings. The cost savings are derived from creating a Definitive Software Library (DSL) and truing up software licensing.
Avanade Inc.'s process is called ACA Accelerate and it allows organizations to understand what software their company currently owns, how many users and what versions the company is running. This creates a current state software list and Avanade uses this information to model a future state which will typically drive approximately a $400 per desktop in software savings.
A typical desktop environment cost $5000/year to maintain according to Gartner. Software typically costs about 25% or $1,250 of the desktop expenses. Through a rationalization process, a company can usually reduce redundant or unused software between 25% to 33% of the overall software costs, which would produce savings between $312 per desktop and $412 per desktop.
In addition to these savings, Microsoft has come up with a total cost of ownership reduction figure of approximately $155 by using Windows 7. If you were to add Application Virtualization into the equation, then there is approximately another $155 cost savings. By adding these TCO reductions with the savings from using ACA Accelerate to create a Definitive Software Library, this can provide over $700 per desktop in savings. At most, your desktop migration to Windows 7 shouldn't cost more than $350/desktop and that would be at the high end with a lot of hand holding and white gloves involved.
Example of a TCO Reduction For a 5,000 Desktop Company :
As an example, if your company were to have 5000 desktop images, your approximate yearly cost to manage that environment would be $25,000,000 ($5,000 per desktop time 5000 desktops). By utilizing Avanade's ACA Accerate service to derive $400/desktop in savings while creating a Definitive Software Library, your savings would be $2,000,000 in the first year and then adding the savings, $310 per desktop, that can be had by efficiency gains from upgrading to Windows 7, that would add another $1,550,000 in savings yearly savings.
So for this company, if they didn't upgrade to Windows 7 from their current Windows Platform, they would spend $25M/year on their desktop environment. By using ACA Accelerate to rationalize applications and then upgrading to Windows 7, the annual desktop costs would be $23M with savings of $2M and by utilizing Application Virtualization, the total costs of the desktop environment would be $21.45M which would drive savings of $3.55M or over 14%. Over a 5 year period, this would provide over $17M in savings for your organization.
| Cumulative Costs | With Windows 7 Savings and ACA Accelerat Savings | Cumulative Savings | Percent Annual Savings | |
| Year1 | $25,000,000 | $21,450,000 | $3,550,000 | 14% |
| Year2 | $50,000,000 | $42,900,000 | $7,100,000 | 14% |
| Year3 | $75,000,000 | $64,350,000 | $10,650,000 | 14% |
| Year4 | $100,000,000 | $85,800,000 | $14,200,000 | 14% |
| Year5 | $125,000,000 | $107,250,000 | $17,750,000 | 14% |
| Total Savings: | $17,750,000 | |||
This chart shows the cumulative costs associated with not going to Windows 7 in Blue.
The Red in the chart show the cumulative effects of using savings from ACA Accelerate and the potential savings from Windows 7.
If you are contemplating a Windows 7 Upgrade, you owe it to your company to contact Avanade to see how you can reduce your overall cost and either pay for all or a large portion of you upgrade. Avanade Inc. will provide and initial assessment free of charge for Calgary based businesses if you contact us at 403-476-1473.
If you would like to understand how ACA Accelerate can help you can reduce your Windows 7 implementation in Western Canada or for that matter, anywhere in the world, please contact Chris Hamilton at Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Dynamics CRM - Simple Statistics That Can Help Increase Sales
Increasing Sales and retaining clients are typically top priorities for sales departments of most companies. If you are fortunate enough to use a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system, then you may already experience the added sales and client retention benefits that a CRM system can bring to your organization.
If you are looking at implementing a CRM, you should look at the efficiencies that can be gained. Some of the major benefits that CRM can bring to your organization include:
• Revenue increases of up to 41% per sales person
• Decreased sales cycles of over 24%
• Lead conversion rate improvements of over 300%
• Customer Retention improvements of 27%
• Decreased sales and marketing costs of 23%
• Improved profit margins of over 2%
These figures typically are achieved only if you implement a CRM system properly and wrap and embrace the process change that comes with it.
ROI Example:
In order to show how a proper CRM implementation will help a company, I will use and example of a company with $100M/year in revenue with 10% Gross Margins or $10M in profit, and 15% of total revenues are cost of sales or $15M. We will assume a company this size will have 20 seats of CRM and using a potential cost of $3,000 for a first year cost, which includes installation and software (assuming a Dynamics CRM implementation). The first year costs for CRM is $60,000.
Using this example above and looking at the parameters of Decrease in Sales Costs and Increases in Gross Margins, then the following results could be expected:
1. Decreased Sales and Marketing Costs:
With a 23% reduction in sales and marketing costs applied against a 15% cost of sales on total revenue of $100M would be equal to $3.45M in cost reduction.
2. Improved Margins:
With an average of 2% increase in margins, this would mean on the example, 2% on $100M would be $2M. Another way to look at the gross margin increases would be to understand how many additional sales you would need to achieve this figure. In this case, it would be equal to selling an additional $20M in revenue (10% GM percentage on $20M is $2M in GM).
These two parameters added together would potentially be worth $5.45M in value.
One factor that isn't included in these figures would be the client retention number, which could be 27% (on average) of a potential client lose. Unfortunately I cannot find any figures to give exact numbers on client lose per year, but if you use 10% and you can maintain 27% of that number then this would be worth $2.7M in this example.
Although this is a fictitious example, it is there to show the power of a positive ROI on a CRM implementation. An investment of $60,000 is has a return of 9,083%.
As can be seen by this example, embracing a methodology and utilizing a CRM system properly will more than pay off and have a significant ROI.
If you would like to learn more on how CRM can help your organization increase sales, boost profits and margins and retain clients, please contact Chris Hamilton at Avanade Inc. at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or by phone at 403-476-1473.
Friday, May 15, 2009
4 readily available processes that reduce your IT Project spend by up to 50% or greater
Are you aware that there are four readily available and often overlooked processes that IT organizations can follow that can potentially reduce an IT spend by up to 50% or greater.
These processes are available in a discussion document that I have put together for review.
Each of the processes individually will provide at least a 5% cost savings, but any of these in conjunction with each other gain synergies.
The processes are as follows:
Process One: Underutilized government program that can add up to 30% savings on IT projects.
Process Two: Rarely accessed procurement service that can reduce hardware and software spend by up to 20%.
Process Three: A community effect that reduce the cost of projects at least 10% and potentially allow for the savings to self fund the entire project.
Process Four: Access to cost cutting measures on labor that can save up to 70% on labor costs.
If you would like to understand how these processes can be accessed and how you can reduce your overall IT project spend, please contact Chris Hamilton at Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
These processes are available in a discussion document that I have put together for review.
Each of the processes individually will provide at least a 5% cost savings, but any of these in conjunction with each other gain synergies.
The processes are as follows:
Process One: Underutilized government program that can add up to 30% savings on IT projects.
Process Two: Rarely accessed procurement service that can reduce hardware and software spend by up to 20%.
Process Three: A community effect that reduce the cost of projects at least 10% and potentially allow for the savings to self fund the entire project.
Process Four: Access to cost cutting measures on labor that can save up to 70% on labor costs.
If you would like to understand how these processes can be accessed and how you can reduce your overall IT project spend, please contact Chris Hamilton at Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
How to save up to 35% on your IT projects
IT projects for corporations are typically expensive undertakings often costing multi-millions of dollars.
There is a way to potentially reduce the overall costs of your IT projects done in Canada by up to 35% through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program run by the Canadian Revenue Agency.
The basics of the program are as follow:
Who qualifies?
“Generally, a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) can earn an investment tax credit (ITC) of 35% up to the first $2 million of qualified expenditures for SR&ED carried out in Canada, and 20% on any excess amount. Other Canadian corporations, proprietorships, partnerships, and trusts can earn an ITC of 20% of qualified expenditures for SR&ED carried out in Canada”. CRA
What kind of Project qualifies?
Work that qualifies for SR&ED tax credits includes (from the CRA SRED website):
experimental development to achieve technological advancement to create new materials, devices, products, or processes, or improve existing ones;
applied research to advance scientific knowledge with a specific practical application in view;
basic research to advance scientific knowledge without a specific practical application in view; and
support work in engineering, design, operations research, mathematical analysis, computer programming, data collection, testing, or psychological research, but only if the work is commensurate with, and directly supports, the eligible experimental development, or applied or basic research.
IT Project Example:
The following example compares both a private company and a public company with a $5M IT project that has $3M in qualified expenditures for SRED Credits.
Private Company
IT Project is $5M
Qualified Expenditures: $3M
SRED Credits: $900K (35% of the first $2M and 20% of the next $1M)
Potential Project Cost with SRED credits: $4.1M
Savings: $900K
Percent Savings: 18%
Public Company:
IT Project is $5M
Qualified Expenditures: $3M
SRED Credits: $$600K (20% of $3M)
Potential Project Cost with SRED credits: $4.4M
Savings: $600K
Percent Savings: 12%
As can be seen, SRED credits have a tremendous impact on the overall costs of IT projects. Basically, in this day and age, if you are not exploring ways to reduce your overall project costs, you are doing your company a disservice.
Rules change all the time and you should consult the Canadian Revenue Agency’s website to see what they are:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/bts-eng.html
Avanade in Calgary can assist you in any of your IT projects and help you offset the costs by assisting you with navigating the SRED program.
If you would like to find out more on how to potentially reduce your IT projects, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
There is a way to potentially reduce the overall costs of your IT projects done in Canada by up to 35% through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program run by the Canadian Revenue Agency.
The basics of the program are as follow:
Who qualifies?
“Generally, a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) can earn an investment tax credit (ITC) of 35% up to the first $2 million of qualified expenditures for SR&ED carried out in Canada, and 20% on any excess amount. Other Canadian corporations, proprietorships, partnerships, and trusts can earn an ITC of 20% of qualified expenditures for SR&ED carried out in Canada”. CRA
What kind of Project qualifies?
Work that qualifies for SR&ED tax credits includes (from the CRA SRED website):
experimental development to achieve technological advancement to create new materials, devices, products, or processes, or improve existing ones;
applied research to advance scientific knowledge with a specific practical application in view;
basic research to advance scientific knowledge without a specific practical application in view; and
support work in engineering, design, operations research, mathematical analysis, computer programming, data collection, testing, or psychological research, but only if the work is commensurate with, and directly supports, the eligible experimental development, or applied or basic research.
IT Project Example:
The following example compares both a private company and a public company with a $5M IT project that has $3M in qualified expenditures for SRED Credits.
Private Company
IT Project is $5M
Qualified Expenditures: $3M
SRED Credits: $900K (35% of the first $2M and 20% of the next $1M)
Potential Project Cost with SRED credits: $4.1M
Savings: $900K
Percent Savings: 18%
Public Company:
IT Project is $5M
Qualified Expenditures: $3M
SRED Credits: $$600K (20% of $3M)
Potential Project Cost with SRED credits: $4.4M
Savings: $600K
Percent Savings: 12%
As can be seen, SRED credits have a tremendous impact on the overall costs of IT projects. Basically, in this day and age, if you are not exploring ways to reduce your overall project costs, you are doing your company a disservice.
Rules change all the time and you should consult the Canadian Revenue Agency’s website to see what they are:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/bts-eng.html
Avanade in Calgary can assist you in any of your IT projects and help you offset the costs by assisting you with navigating the SRED program.
If you would like to find out more on how to potentially reduce your IT projects, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
VB6 Migration - Moving Mission Critial Application off VB6
There are numerous companies that are still unaware that they may have VB6 applications that are running mission critical processes. A major concern is that VB6 is no longer supported and could put your company in jeopardy, especially if you are running applications that roll up into financials.
With proactive IT investments delayed due to economic challenges,organizations like yours are beginning to outgrow their legacy Microsoft Visual Basic applications and must increasingly dedicate resources to keep these systems running. By migrating Visual Basic 6.0 and earlier applications to the .NET platform, your company can achieve a highly scalable, extremely reliable foundation for mission-critical applications and realize substantial maintenance-related savings.
Gain competitive advantage by updating your applications:
In order to be successful, your Visual Basic applications must evolve with your organization’s ever-changing business needs.
- Do you have a clear picture of the benefits and costs of migrating your applications to .NET and how to remain competitive during migration?
- Do your current Visual Basic applications meet minimum performance, stability,and enterprise-scalability requirements?
- Are you concerned about security vulnerabilities in your older applications?G Can your legacy applications meet current business standards and easily adapt to new industry regulations and legislation?
- Do you have a Visual Basic application performing critical business activity that needs new functionality and are struggling with the best approach for implementing that functionality?
Migrate to Microsoft .NET and maximize your IT investments Migration to the .NET:
Framework is essential for applications that will continue to be important to your organization. Aligning your future IT strategies with .NET through languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C# will enable you to take full advantage of your existing investments in Microsoft technologies. The .NET Frame work presents an outstanding opportunity to increase developer productivity and stability for your organization’s most critical applications.
- Improve the scalability, performance, stability, and security of your Visual Basic applications.G Shorten development time and reduce risk by utilizing existing code and taking advantage of tools to automate code conversion.
- Leverage your investments in supporting infrastructure areas of the Microsoft environment, including IDE and developer tools licensing, build and test environments, and technical resources
- Gain competitive advantage by creating new, lower-cost applications and modifying your existing applications to allow for future growth and agility, while remaining competitive during migration.
- Take full advantage of open standards and new technologies such as XML, Web services, and smart clients, while moving toward Service-Oriented Architecture.
- Reduce your long-term maintenance-related expenses and build on existing support and vendor relationships.
A proven migration methodology:
When it comes to the Microsoft enterprise platform, Avanade has the deep product knowledge and real-world experience that customers demand. Avanade offers a proven migration methodology, including a full Application Migration Assessment, to ensure that organizations get the most value from their Visual Basic-based applications.
- Avanade Application Development Workshop In a two- to five-day workshop, Avanade reviews your organization’s development capabilities and challenges to identify and prioritize the applications most in need of improvement and offer recommendations to take advantage of new technologies. A gap analysis of your organization’s capabilities is incorporated into an action plan that supports your priority application migration opportunities and closes any capability gaps.
- Avanade Application Analysis In a formal one- to three-week process, Avanade examines your existing applications to determine how your organization can benefit from migration to .NET technologies, including reviews of infrastructure platform, technical architecture, application architecture, and application functionality.
- Avanade Application Proof of Concept As the final step in the assessment process, Avanade can build a prototype application to demonstrate the migration process and benefits.
Based on the results of the assessment and proof of concept, Avanade will provide a complete migration plan, including an estimated timeline,detailed project plan, and complete set of deliverables to jump start the creation of your next-generation business applications.
Reduce costs through strategic global delivery:
As a true global services company, Avanade has a worldwide presence and proven delivery record. Our global network of delivery centers in over 30 locations, including India, offers customers the benefit of multi site delivery. Offshore resources, highly trained in Avanade assets,architectures, best practices, and our comprehensive delivery methodology,provide accelerated development of solutions. Our strategic global delivery approach to application migrations allows companies to take advantage of the right combination of onshore, nearshore, and offshore options, resulting in increased productivity and cost-effective solutions development.
If you would like to find out more about our Dashboard offering or any other solutions that we provide, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
With proactive IT investments delayed due to economic challenges,organizations like yours are beginning to outgrow their legacy Microsoft Visual Basic applications and must increasingly dedicate resources to keep these systems running. By migrating Visual Basic 6.0 and earlier applications to the .NET platform, your company can achieve a highly scalable, extremely reliable foundation for mission-critical applications and realize substantial maintenance-related savings.
Gain competitive advantage by updating your applications:
In order to be successful, your Visual Basic applications must evolve with your organization’s ever-changing business needs.
- Do you have a clear picture of the benefits and costs of migrating your applications to .NET and how to remain competitive during migration?
- Do your current Visual Basic applications meet minimum performance, stability,and enterprise-scalability requirements?
- Are you concerned about security vulnerabilities in your older applications?G Can your legacy applications meet current business standards and easily adapt to new industry regulations and legislation?
- Do you have a Visual Basic application performing critical business activity that needs new functionality and are struggling with the best approach for implementing that functionality?
Migrate to Microsoft .NET and maximize your IT investments Migration to the .NET:
Framework is essential for applications that will continue to be important to your organization. Aligning your future IT strategies with .NET through languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C# will enable you to take full advantage of your existing investments in Microsoft technologies. The .NET Frame work presents an outstanding opportunity to increase developer productivity and stability for your organization’s most critical applications.
- Improve the scalability, performance, stability, and security of your Visual Basic applications.G Shorten development time and reduce risk by utilizing existing code and taking advantage of tools to automate code conversion.
- Leverage your investments in supporting infrastructure areas of the Microsoft environment, including IDE and developer tools licensing, build and test environments, and technical resources
- Gain competitive advantage by creating new, lower-cost applications and modifying your existing applications to allow for future growth and agility, while remaining competitive during migration.
- Take full advantage of open standards and new technologies such as XML, Web services, and smart clients, while moving toward Service-Oriented Architecture.
- Reduce your long-term maintenance-related expenses and build on existing support and vendor relationships.
A proven migration methodology:
When it comes to the Microsoft enterprise platform, Avanade has the deep product knowledge and real-world experience that customers demand. Avanade offers a proven migration methodology, including a full Application Migration Assessment, to ensure that organizations get the most value from their Visual Basic-based applications.
- Avanade Application Development Workshop In a two- to five-day workshop, Avanade reviews your organization’s development capabilities and challenges to identify and prioritize the applications most in need of improvement and offer recommendations to take advantage of new technologies. A gap analysis of your organization’s capabilities is incorporated into an action plan that supports your priority application migration opportunities and closes any capability gaps.
- Avanade Application Analysis In a formal one- to three-week process, Avanade examines your existing applications to determine how your organization can benefit from migration to .NET technologies, including reviews of infrastructure platform, technical architecture, application architecture, and application functionality.
- Avanade Application Proof of Concept As the final step in the assessment process, Avanade can build a prototype application to demonstrate the migration process and benefits.
Based on the results of the assessment and proof of concept, Avanade will provide a complete migration plan, including an estimated timeline,detailed project plan, and complete set of deliverables to jump start the creation of your next-generation business applications.
Reduce costs through strategic global delivery:
As a true global services company, Avanade has a worldwide presence and proven delivery record. Our global network of delivery centers in over 30 locations, including India, offers customers the benefit of multi site delivery. Offshore resources, highly trained in Avanade assets,architectures, best practices, and our comprehensive delivery methodology,provide accelerated development of solutions. Our strategic global delivery approach to application migrations allows companies to take advantage of the right combination of onshore, nearshore, and offshore options, resulting in increased productivity and cost-effective solutions development.
If you would like to find out more about our Dashboard offering or any other solutions that we provide, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Dashboards for The Oil and Gas Industry
Recently Avanade in Calgary has been working on a quick dashboarding solution that is geared towards the oil and gas industry.
One of the issues that a lot of oil and gas or E&P companies face are the disparate systems that contains data that is relevant to providing meaningful information that should be correlated and used to getting your job done.
A couple of our local Architects have created a quick dsahboarding solution that is specific for E&P's to provide quick visibility into key performance indicators (KPI's) that they measure, such as production growth, capex spend to budget, output per dollar spent on a project or project type, among others.
This solution is utilizing SharePoint, XL Services and Silverlight and can typically be implemented in days as opposed to weeks or months for other dashboarding solutions. Most organizations already own this infrastructure, so deployment is usually quick and inexpensive.
One of the primary uses for this solution is in small divisions or departments of E&P's. For example, a regional division of an oil company may require a dashboard that show their daily production digits. They can benchmark if their numbers against what is required and if a problem occurs where production is lower, then they can drill down to spot the problem.
This solution can be extended to many different areas in an oil and gas company and any information that is contained in a system can be displayed on it's own or correlated with other information.
If you would like to find out more about our Dashboard offering or any other solutions that we provide, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
One of the issues that a lot of oil and gas or E&P companies face are the disparate systems that contains data that is relevant to providing meaningful information that should be correlated and used to getting your job done.
A couple of our local Architects have created a quick dsahboarding solution that is specific for E&P's to provide quick visibility into key performance indicators (KPI's) that they measure, such as production growth, capex spend to budget, output per dollar spent on a project or project type, among others.
This solution is utilizing SharePoint, XL Services and Silverlight and can typically be implemented in days as opposed to weeks or months for other dashboarding solutions. Most organizations already own this infrastructure, so deployment is usually quick and inexpensive.
One of the primary uses for this solution is in small divisions or departments of E&P's. For example, a regional division of an oil company may require a dashboard that show their daily production digits. They can benchmark if their numbers against what is required and if a problem occurs where production is lower, then they can drill down to spot the problem.
This solution can be extended to many different areas in an oil and gas company and any information that is contained in a system can be displayed on it's own or correlated with other information.
If you would like to find out more about our Dashboard offering or any other solutions that we provide, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton at chris.hamilton@avanade.com or at 403-476-1473.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Next Generation Workplace
It is estimated that up to 45% of the current workforce are Knowledge Workers (KW) and that by 2012, there will be a 6 million person gap between the supply and demand for Knowledge Workers.
There will be a tremendous strain on how your Knowledge Workers will access information and there are several time sinks that IDC has identified as having a significant impact on organizations that is wasting on average $30,000 in time of Knowledge Workers time per year.
IDC - * The Hidden Costs of Information Work, IDC – April 2006
1. Reformatting into one document - 3.8 hours per week - $5,701/year
2. Search but not find - 3.5 hours per week - $5,251/year
3. Recreating content - 3.0 hours per week - $4,501/year
4. Multichannel publishing with multiple applications - 2.8 hours per week - $4,201/year
5. Moving documents from one format to another - 2.4 hours per week - $3,600/year
6. Acquiring archived records with little or no automation - 2.3 hours per week - $3,450/year
7. Version control issues - 2.2 hours per week - $3,300/year
and more …
Total: $30,000 + / worker / year
Extrapolate (400 person company) - $12,000,000 / year
Avanade Inc., a global IT consultancy joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, has worked on a solution to this issue with our parent companies called The Next Generation Workplace.
THE NEXT GENERATION WORKPLACE (NGWP):
When it comes to communication and collaboration, the way we work and the technology that empowers us has changed dramatically. What was leading edge and made sense 7-8 years ago is now of limited value. As blogs, wikis, video calls, instant messaging, shared workspace and other social networking tools become popular inside the corporation, employees are building cost-effective communities of knowledge that enable them to share information more efficiently and simplify knowledge transfer—but managing costs and security has become a priority, requiring a more controlled and centralized infrastructure, while compliance is becoming critical for tracking mechanisms.
Business Landscape:
In increasingly service-based economies, information is the vital asset- communication and collaboration is the engine that generates value from this asset. Information technology is essential to enable enterprises to build a collaborative environment for competitive advantage and business success. Specifically, digital collaboration—the use of technologies to allow efficient and valuable connections among people and information—is critical to becoming an innovative company, to establishing high-value relationships with customers, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders; to attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce; and to achieving high-performance operations.
In order for companies to realize the full potential of digital collaboration, IT departments will need to provide new service offerings and take a holistic and proactive view to enable companies with technology to meet their needs now and well into the future. What was once a perfect fit may no longer meet your business needs due to rapid changes in how people work together and what technology can now enable.
Are you seeing a lack of responsiveness among your employees? Issues with an increasingly virtual workplace? Compliance problems? Workers constantly reinventing the wheel? Sales force not connected to your organization knowledge base (people and assets) when they are on the road? Need to share information between customers, partners, and suppliers in a fully secure environment? If you answered ‘yes’ to some of these questions, maybe it is time to rethink your Business Productivity platform.
The Solution:
With the recent releases of a series of Microsoft products, it is now much easier to get people sharing information, connected to each other and turn the corporate, external and team information into strategic assets. A dynamic IT infrastructure is a critical foundation for businesses as it can really empower the information workers to be more productive, more knowledgeable and more connected. In order to illustrate the benefits of digital collaboration, Avanade has built a business illustration which demonstrates what could be the next generation workplace for workers who deal with co-workers, customers, suppliers and providers.
This business illustration is based on various business situations borrowed from the real life:
• Unified Communication: presence-based capability delivering seamless integrated communications for e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging (IM), telephony, voicemail and web conferencing.
• Enterprise Content Management: capability to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes
• Collaborative Workspaces: bringing real-time solutions to current day-to-day collaboration challenges
• Enterprise Search: accessing the right information/people at the right time regardless of the format (structured/non structured), the source (documents repository, LOB, emails, software package, etc) and the location (PC, intranet, internet)
• Knowledge Governance and Control: information policy management ( documents, email, voicemail, etc)- access control, auditing, retention and workflow
• User Self-Service and Dynamic Provisioning: ability for a worker to dynamically perform resource provision (applications, printer queues, e-support etc) as and when they require them
• Performance Workspace: shows the evolution of web portals into actual performance workspaces where user’s roles are taken in account. This presents the user with relevant information, processes and applications, as well as connectivity to other collaborative tools such as live meeting
• Dynamic Workplace: enabling connectivity from any device anywhere to the Enterprise Network
The Technology Used:
The Next Generation Workplace centre of excellence is NOT a futurist environment. It is based on current Microsoft product and could be implemented today. The Microsoft software and Avanade assets used are :
· Microsoft Vista and XP
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Exchange 2007
· Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2
· Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
· Microsoft Office Live Meeting
· Microsoft Groove Client 2007
· Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
· Microsoft Office 2007
· Microsoft SQLServer 2005
· Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
· Microsoft Right Management
· Microsoft RoundTable™
· Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile
· Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access
· Avanade Desktop Transformation Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Communication Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Collaboration Solution
· Avanade Migration for Lotus Notes Solution
· Avanade ACA Dynamic Systems Framework
· Avanade ACA Messaging Migration Engine
· Avanade Application Lifecycle Manager
· Avanade ACA.NET
What’s Next:
In a constantly changing workplace, communication is more than a technology—it needs to be part of a strategic long-term vision for your business and technology platform. Does your current platform offer the flexibility to provide users what they need today and will want tomorrow? Does it offer a strong foundation to build on? Avanade can assist your organization to review and assess your current platform with a business productivity assessment, discuss and draft a business productivity long-term strategy with a tactical roadmap, document a business case to quantify benefits versus cost, and then work with your organization to implement an improve rationalized digital collaboration platform.
For information on how Avanade can enable Microsoft technologies for the Next Generation Workplace, or other services that Avanade Inc. can provide your organization in Western Canada, please contact Chris Hamilton at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
There will be a tremendous strain on how your Knowledge Workers will access information and there are several time sinks that IDC has identified as having a significant impact on organizations that is wasting on average $30,000 in time of Knowledge Workers time per year.
IDC - * The Hidden Costs of Information Work, IDC – April 2006
1. Reformatting into one document - 3.8 hours per week - $5,701/year
2. Search but not find - 3.5 hours per week - $5,251/year
3. Recreating content - 3.0 hours per week - $4,501/year
4. Multichannel publishing with multiple applications - 2.8 hours per week - $4,201/year
5. Moving documents from one format to another - 2.4 hours per week - $3,600/year
6. Acquiring archived records with little or no automation - 2.3 hours per week - $3,450/year
7. Version control issues - 2.2 hours per week - $3,300/year
and more …
Total: $30,000 + / worker / year
Extrapolate (400 person company) - $12,000,000 / year
Avanade Inc., a global IT consultancy joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, has worked on a solution to this issue with our parent companies called The Next Generation Workplace.
THE NEXT GENERATION WORKPLACE (NGWP):
When it comes to communication and collaboration, the way we work and the technology that empowers us has changed dramatically. What was leading edge and made sense 7-8 years ago is now of limited value. As blogs, wikis, video calls, instant messaging, shared workspace and other social networking tools become popular inside the corporation, employees are building cost-effective communities of knowledge that enable them to share information more efficiently and simplify knowledge transfer—but managing costs and security has become a priority, requiring a more controlled and centralized infrastructure, while compliance is becoming critical for tracking mechanisms.
Business Landscape:
In increasingly service-based economies, information is the vital asset- communication and collaboration is the engine that generates value from this asset. Information technology is essential to enable enterprises to build a collaborative environment for competitive advantage and business success. Specifically, digital collaboration—the use of technologies to allow efficient and valuable connections among people and information—is critical to becoming an innovative company, to establishing high-value relationships with customers, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders; to attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce; and to achieving high-performance operations.
In order for companies to realize the full potential of digital collaboration, IT departments will need to provide new service offerings and take a holistic and proactive view to enable companies with technology to meet their needs now and well into the future. What was once a perfect fit may no longer meet your business needs due to rapid changes in how people work together and what technology can now enable.
Are you seeing a lack of responsiveness among your employees? Issues with an increasingly virtual workplace? Compliance problems? Workers constantly reinventing the wheel? Sales force not connected to your organization knowledge base (people and assets) when they are on the road? Need to share information between customers, partners, and suppliers in a fully secure environment? If you answered ‘yes’ to some of these questions, maybe it is time to rethink your Business Productivity platform.
The Solution:
With the recent releases of a series of Microsoft products, it is now much easier to get people sharing information, connected to each other and turn the corporate, external and team information into strategic assets. A dynamic IT infrastructure is a critical foundation for businesses as it can really empower the information workers to be more productive, more knowledgeable and more connected. In order to illustrate the benefits of digital collaboration, Avanade has built a business illustration which demonstrates what could be the next generation workplace for workers who deal with co-workers, customers, suppliers and providers.
This business illustration is based on various business situations borrowed from the real life:
• Unified Communication: presence-based capability delivering seamless integrated communications for e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging (IM), telephony, voicemail and web conferencing.
• Enterprise Content Management: capability to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes
• Collaborative Workspaces: bringing real-time solutions to current day-to-day collaboration challenges
• Enterprise Search: accessing the right information/people at the right time regardless of the format (structured/non structured), the source (documents repository, LOB, emails, software package, etc) and the location (PC, intranet, internet)
• Knowledge Governance and Control: information policy management ( documents, email, voicemail, etc)- access control, auditing, retention and workflow
• User Self-Service and Dynamic Provisioning: ability for a worker to dynamically perform resource provision (applications, printer queues, e-support etc) as and when they require them
• Performance Workspace: shows the evolution of web portals into actual performance workspaces where user’s roles are taken in account. This presents the user with relevant information, processes and applications, as well as connectivity to other collaborative tools such as live meeting
• Dynamic Workplace: enabling connectivity from any device anywhere to the Enterprise Network
The Technology Used:
The Next Generation Workplace centre of excellence is NOT a futurist environment. It is based on current Microsoft product and could be implemented today. The Microsoft software and Avanade assets used are :
· Microsoft Vista and XP
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Exchange 2007
· Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2
· Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
· Microsoft Office Live Meeting
· Microsoft Groove Client 2007
· Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
· Microsoft Office 2007
· Microsoft SQLServer 2005
· Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
· Microsoft Right Management
· Microsoft RoundTable™
· Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile
· Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access
· Avanade Desktop Transformation Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Communication Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Collaboration Solution
· Avanade Migration for Lotus Notes Solution
· Avanade ACA Dynamic Systems Framework
· Avanade ACA Messaging Migration Engine
· Avanade Application Lifecycle Manager
· Avanade ACA.NET
What’s Next:
In a constantly changing workplace, communication is more than a technology—it needs to be part of a strategic long-term vision for your business and technology platform. Does your current platform offer the flexibility to provide users what they need today and will want tomorrow? Does it offer a strong foundation to build on? Avanade can assist your organization to review and assess your current platform with a business productivity assessment, discuss and draft a business productivity long-term strategy with a tactical roadmap, document a business case to quantify benefits versus cost, and then work with your organization to implement an improve rationalized digital collaboration platform.
For information on how Avanade can enable Microsoft technologies for the Next Generation Workplace, or other services that Avanade Inc. can provide your organization in Western Canada, please contact Chris Hamilton at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Avanade's Next Generation Data Center - Data Center Optimization
In this tight economic climate, customers look to fund projects that offer a fast return on investment and provide opportunities to lower costs. In a 2008 survey, CIO Insight ranked IT cost cutting as a major priority for CIOs.[1] According to Gartner, Inc., server consolidation and virtualization projects provide an attractive option to reduce costs and improve flexibility and they predict that virtualization will be the most important technology in IT infrastructures and operations up to 2010.
Initiatives to create “green” data centers are gaining importance as companies seek to reduce costs while cutting energy demand and carbon emissions.[2] With strong price-for-performance advantages, Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft® System Center technologies helped Microsoft attain a 23 percent share of the virtualization market in 2008.
[3]
Key competitive virtualization vendors include VMware, HP, and IBM. Competitive offerings lack the full range of capabilities found in the Avanade solution or depend on hardware that adds cost and complexity. Independent analysis confirms that, on the whole, Microsoft virtualization can cost as little as one-third the price of VMware.[4] Drawing upon our unique and long-standing partnership with Microsoft, Avanade provides holistic solutions that help customers take advantage of compatibility throughout their Microsoft infrastructure. Our solutions provide a breadth of virtualization and management capability at the most cost-effective price for the enterprise.
Avanade is in a uniquely advantageous competitive position as a leading global IT consultancy dedicated to the Microsoft platform. Our innovative tools, methodologies, and accelerators extend the capabilities of Microsoft data center solutions and speed time to deployment and implementation.
With the Avanade Virtualization Business Case Estimator™, Avanade consultants can accurately estimate deployment time and resource requirements for server virtualization projects, and project customer cost savings. Our Avanade Connected Architecture® Dynamic Systems Framework provides a platform for Avanade consultants to design, build, and deploy next generation data centers in a highly repeatable and predictable fashion, accelerating time to delivery and enhancing implementation quality.
In addition to privileged insights into Microsoft road maps and new technology, Avanade has a depth of internal resources with more than 9,000 professionals in 22 countries worldwide, including development centers in India and the Philippines. Using the right mix of local and remote resources, Avanade helps customers realize results with our next generation data center solution.
Initiatives to create “green” data centers are gaining importance as companies seek to reduce costs while cutting energy demand and carbon emissions.[2] With strong price-for-performance advantages, Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft® System Center technologies helped Microsoft attain a 23 percent share of the virtualization market in 2008.
[3]
Key competitive virtualization vendors include VMware, HP, and IBM. Competitive offerings lack the full range of capabilities found in the Avanade solution or depend on hardware that adds cost and complexity. Independent analysis confirms that, on the whole, Microsoft virtualization can cost as little as one-third the price of VMware.[4] Drawing upon our unique and long-standing partnership with Microsoft, Avanade provides holistic solutions that help customers take advantage of compatibility throughout their Microsoft infrastructure. Our solutions provide a breadth of virtualization and management capability at the most cost-effective price for the enterprise.
Avanade is in a uniquely advantageous competitive position as a leading global IT consultancy dedicated to the Microsoft platform. Our innovative tools, methodologies, and accelerators extend the capabilities of Microsoft data center solutions and speed time to deployment and implementation.
With the Avanade Virtualization Business Case Estimator™, Avanade consultants can accurately estimate deployment time and resource requirements for server virtualization projects, and project customer cost savings. Our Avanade Connected Architecture® Dynamic Systems Framework provides a platform for Avanade consultants to design, build, and deploy next generation data centers in a highly repeatable and predictable fashion, accelerating time to delivery and enhancing implementation quality.
In addition to privileged insights into Microsoft road maps and new technology, Avanade has a depth of internal resources with more than 9,000 professionals in 22 countries worldwide, including development centers in India and the Philippines. Using the right mix of local and remote resources, Avanade helps customers realize results with our next generation data center solution.
For information on how Avanade can enable Microsoft technologies for data centers or other services that Avanade Inc. can provide your organization in Western Canada, please contact Chris Hamilton at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.
For a white paper on Virtualization entitled "Server Virtualization: A Step Toward Cost Efficiency and Business Agility", please click on http://avanadecalgary.com/Avanade_Calgary/Whitepapers.html and fill out the form.
[1] Source: CIO Insights, http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Research/CIOs-Rank-Their-Top-Priorities-for-2008/.
[2] Source: Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008, http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=530109.
[3] Source: IDC, http://www.virtualization.info/2008/10/microsoft-already-took-23-of.html.
[4] Clabby Analytics: Six Reasons Why Microsoft’s Hyper-V Will Overtake VMware to Become the Major Player in the x86 Server Virtualization Marketplace, May 2008, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/docs/05-2008ClabbySixReasonsWhyMSwillovertakeVMW.PDF.
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