Month: April 2020

How Robotic Process Automation Improves Efficiency of Manufacturing Sector?

Posted on by stridely

Ever wondered how much does the execution of repetitive and mundane tasks cost to your company? Well, it does cost you huge.

How about replacing these and embedding automation? Like you have bots that would do all the boring days to day activities, freeing the staff and allowing them to focus on much more important stuff. This would not only reduce the total man-hours required to execute an operation but at the same time, increase the efficiency and reduce the cost.

Great, right?

This is what the Robotic Process Automation does.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

In simple terms, RPA is embedding automatic in the manufacturing industry to carry out everyday tasks more effectively. You can consider it to be a software that integrates with your line of business operations and help automate tasks which otherwise is done by a workforce, consuming time and effort.

Several manufacturing industries have already adopted this form of operation and attained a huge level of efficiency, streamlining the back-office processes.

In case, you are yet to make the decision and wondering why on earth you would automate your work in an office job, this article is just right for you.

Why Should You Implement RPA?

Before we move ahead to see how RPA benefits the manufacturing industry, we highlight the reasons that compel the need to do.

The first and the most important being the need to map the rising business requirements. It is no surprise that enterprises today are fighting to remain atop. With constantly evolving expectations of the customer, the business needs change and it is a must to adhere to the same in order to safeguard their position in the industry.

Given the existing infrastructure, it is impossible to maintain a balance between the company offerings and consumer demands. Also, mapping the industry advancements mandate leaders to upscale their business operations or simply automate.

A recent incident suggests a manufacturing industry adopted Robotic Process automation within their line of operations and while doing so, they cut down a total of 2650 hours every month. Imagine the level of efficiency and the extent of productivity achieved.

And this is just one case and one example, if implemented right, RPA can:

  • Accelerate the time to market
  • Eliminate the possibility of errors within the execution phase
  • Enhance and optimize everyday routine tasks.
  • Lower the cost of operations
  • Add more agility to the business operations.

In short, embedding robotic process automation within your manufacturing industry is a win-win for all. Your staff can focus on better tasks, the production time is reduced, the efficiency increased and, in a way,, your customers are way happier. It is expected that a full-proof implementation of robotic process automation within the manufacturing industry can increase the overall productivity by 40%, not to mention the cost savings and the increment inefficiency.

Excellent right? Now that you are pretty much moved with the idea of integrating RPA, let’s move ahead to see how RPA benefits the industry. We know what it does, the question now is how?

How RPA Enhances Efficiency Of Manufacturing Industry?

Manufacturing industries have a lot to do and while doing all, they are bound to be knocked by some challenges. These reduce efficiency and Robotic Process Automation is what we do to combat the effect of the same.

Here, we outline three major challenges faced by the present-day manufacturers, followed by the solution rendered by RPA.

  • Challenge One: BOM Execution

    As a manufacturer, you might be aware of what bills of material are and how does that benefit your organization, right? In simple terms, it is an ERP solution that creates a list of raw materials needed to manufacture a product. When done with manual support, the odds of committing errors is huge.

    To deal with the above, manufacturers can easily put RPA to use. These bots are so designed that they can handle all of the BOM needs in real-time, eliminating the possibility of errors. This fosters the process of manufacturing products without costing the company more than needed.

  • Challenge Two: Communication Gap

    Given that there are several stations and working offices of a single manufacturer, followed by loads of users, adhering and addressing each of their concerns is a time-consuming task. Further, neglecting issues faced by a consumer, you might end up losing one.

    Under the influence of RPA, organizations can better track the communication between the enterprise and the customer. As so it appears, bots are trained to handle these communications, automate replies and send emails as and when required. Also, communication is shared with the concerned representative to avoid any possible conflict.

  • Challenge Three: Data Migration

    Imagine the time and effort taken to migrate all of your organization data from the old system to a new one or from files to online software. Organizing, managing and feeding loads of data with manual support is no less than a nightmare.

    RPA is an excellent solution for the above. They digitize the entire process and convert the data to the system automatically. The fact that they are machines, they run endlessly throughout the day, increasing the amount of work done, saving human labor. Also, the fact that everything is automated, the possibility of committing errors is next to zero.

The Final Word

Robotic Process Automation is the new normal and nearly every industry, let alone the manufacturing sector should deploy the same to enhance, optimize and improvise their end to end business operations, increasing productivity and reducing costs, at large.

 

Streamline processes & tasks to boost your business productivity, with Microsoft Power Automate!

Posted on by stridely

Digitization happens to have a profound impact on business operations. Organizations are keenly eyeing upon apps to improve their business workflow and aid automation. As a matter of fact, there do prevail a number of applications that have the power to transform the course of day to day activities. One among these is the unprecedented application namely, Microsoft Power Automate.

As opined by some of the industry experts, this software works miraculously, tying up all other enterprise applications to be used through a single platform. Put simply, Microsoft Power Automate aims at uniting all applications and enforce them to work like a daisy chain. Well, that’s what the nerds speak about. Let’s not get blindsided and peak in to find the actual implication of the technology.

What is Microsoft Power Automate?

Have you ever thought about how can you get two machines to talk to? Machine Learning, you guessed it right. How about having two applications talk?

Not sure?

Now that’s the power of Microsoft Power Automate. A cloud-based office 365 solution tailored to connect different enterprise applications in a way that they can communicate and build a workflow.

Consider, for example, your inventory is expected to have 500 units of a certain chemical. To ensure that the stock is always above this threshold, you would need to be on the lookout and keep track of the same, every now and then. At any point in time, if there occurs a fall, an order has to be made to the production department, right?

Now all of this is done manually. Imagine having a system that can all by itself keep track of the stock and as soon as the number falls below 500, an order is automatically raised. Surprised?

This is exactly what Microsoft Power Automate does. It automates the workflow between multiple applications in order to increase the productivity and efficiency of the entire infrastructure.

What’s best about Power Automate is that all of the workflows are customizable and you can create a simple or a complicated one, based on the needs of your organization. With this, you can also create multi-step workflows which include integration between platforms such as Mailchimp, Salesforce, LinkedIn, etc.

Features of Microsoft Power Automate

While the organizations that have served their time with Microsoft Flow might be well versed in the concept of automation and the manner in which, Microsoft facilitates workflow. Yet, Microsoft Power Automate is an enhanced version of Microsoft Flow and has some exciting add-ons.

The core features of Microsoft Power Automate includes:

  • One-Point Integration

    With the sole intent of integrating all enterprise apps in a single platform, Microsoft Power Automate fosters uninterrupted communication between all of the apps operational in the enterprise.

  • Intuitive Interface

    The software solution has a very simple and interactive interface. It gives you the ease to use the predefined templates, drag them and add to the optimized workflow. Microsoft Power Automate fosters no-code interface making it easier to automate the business workflow.

  • Seamless Optimization

    The power platform gels well with all kinds of applications, even the ones that are part of the siloed infrastructure and lacks API. The UI easily induces desktop applications and legacy-based web solutions within the platform.

  • Embed RPA

    One of the excellent features of Microsoft Power Automate is the introduction of Robotic Process Automation. The feature is capable of tracking each and every activity of the user and the replace the same in an automated environment. Right from the mouse click to the document sent, the robot can do all. It seems as these bots are intelligent machines and have the power to trigger actions without human intervention.

  • AI Intelligence

    Besides supporting the RPA application, the power automates platform also embed AI intelligence to drive a series of tasks and business processes. Inducing a zero-code environment, the professional using the platform must not be a technology expert. Integrating AI models is pretty easy and can be done within a matter of seconds.

  • Power BI Connectors

    Connecting additional databases have never been easier before. Thanks to the Power BI connectors present in the Microsoft Power Automate platform, deployment teams can instantly drive a connection between the enterprise applications and the third party databases. This helps leverage business intelligence and advanced analytics to gain insights and drive smarter decisions.

  • Mobility

    With power automate, you need not stick to the norms of a desktop. The platform is compatible with most of the devices including smartphones and tablets. This gives you the ease to keep track of your business processes remotely and even access information anytime, anyplace.

Advantages of Microsoft Power Automate

  • Streamline the day to day tasks, ensuring that you never miss a mail or any important notification.
  • One platform to share, connect and collaborate data enterprise-wide.
  • Common data model with equal access to all of the potential members of the team.
  • Automation drives the processing time, increasing the speed as well as efficiency. Also, the fact that machines are allocated the day to day mundane tasks, they render accurate results and aren’t prone to errors.
  • It does not require additional knowledge or expertise to run and configure the system.

Does Your Organization Need Microsoft Power Automate?

Knowing about the platform and the features it has to offer, a question arises here is where your organization needs the power to automate the platform?

Given the features as said above, Microsoft Power Automate tends to automate the entire business workflow and in a way, improves the productivity of the organization. Whether it is about collaborating different mails or receiving notifications about the same from a particular sender, the power automate platform does all.

Wondering if you could process forms between emails and SharePoint? Don’t worry the Power Automate platform helps here too. And the best thing being, one need not be a tech expert or have coding knowledge. Any person with a decent knowledge of working over digital platforms can customize and configure the platform, initiating automation.

 

 

SAP Business One for Chemical Manufacturing Industry – Features, Benefits and More

Posted on by stridely

Digitization has hit the entire business economy hard. Nearly every sector has undergone tremendous changes and the chemical manufacturing industry is no exception.

As one of the fastest-growing sectors, the Chemical industry mandates the use of significant tools and technologies to map the ongoing trends of automation. A chemical manufacturing industry has multiple things that need to be done and executed, to ensure smooth functioning of all. Right from the manufacturing to the development stage, everything has to be organized and streamlined, facilitating better and faster results.

In case, you are one of these companies looking for a centralized and integrated solution to unite your business operations, SAP BOne is the best fit.

What is SAP Business One?

SAP Business One or SAP B1 as designated by most of the industrial experts is an all in one ERP solution tailored to map the management needs of small-sized and medium scale companies. The software offers affordable solutions to manage and monitor all core functions of a business. It helps integrate all the departments such as the customer representative, the financial and the operational team, together.

Chemical Industry is one sector that involves the dearth of operations benefits a lot from the SAP B1 portal. While the crux of the industry is all about manufacturing goods with utmost quality and safety, collaboration dies a terrible death. It is seen that professionals fail to communicate with each other at different levels of production. No matter how efficiently is the product manufactured, the siloed communication infrastructure delays the product lifecycle.

In addition to innovation and optimal resource utilization, integration is the key to the chemical industry. As more and more technologies evolve, the chemical industry needs dedicated solutions that could enhance and optimize its on-premise operations. This is where the idea of SAP B1 finds its place.

As mentioned above, SAP B1 is an enterprise-class solution that aims to streamline end to end business operations. The ERP solution of SAP B1 is based on the SAP HANA technology and is both engaging and flexible.

Features of SAP Business One

SAP Business isn’t just about optimization or task organization, the technology has more to offer than we actually predict.

  • One-Point Integration:

    The first and the most important feature of SAP Business One is its centralization. It is the single point of contact for all the departments across the enterprise. Everyone is expected to share their piece of information on their channels and data is stored in a centralized pool, accessible by all.

    Consider for example, if the marketing team has collaborated with a customer and shared the corresponding details, the same can be viewed and accessed by the sales team. Under the existing solution, the team needs to recollect data from the user. This leads to data duplicity and consumes more space than needed. Using SAP Business One, you can not only optimize space but also centralize your point of interaction.

  • Real-time Updates:

    Using SAP Business One as the enterprise software solution creates an infrastructure where updates and information can be released in real-time making it easier for the team to collaborate.

    Imagine a situation where the customer representative visits a customer and closes a deal. The customer data can be recorded and stored instantly which is then updated on the platform. The production can team can then use this data to start their job even before the representative is back in the office. Similarly, when the sales team updates the portal about sales and other events, the marketing can instantly put this data to use and generate reports to outline the overall performance of the organization.

  • Inventory Management:

    The SAP Business one platform is so designed that the inventory gets updated automatically after a sale is initiated. As and when the value falls below the threshold, notifications are sent to the concerned representative. Also, tracking the performance of the organization and the sales pipeline, the team can effectively get away with slow-moving goods while emphasizing the production of goods that are sold best. All in all, the solution help manage the production of goods ensuring that supply meets demand.

Benefits of SAP Business One In Chemical Industry

By now, it is clear that the SAP Business One ERP Solution not only eases the execution of tasks within the chemical manufacturing industry but at the same time, embeds other benefits.

  • To start with, the software has inbuilt software that helps optimize inventory and make the most out of their business.
  • A single point of data storage accelerates the pace at which business executes its everyday operation.
  • Embedded with a significant level of automation, the solution reduces the overall cost of operation, in a way, optimizing it for the good.
  • Smarter systems help generate reports and attain significant insights into the business fostering better and smarter decisions.
  • Since everything collaborates, there is on-time delivery of goods, leading to higher and improved customer experience.
  • The enterprise software solution ensures all of the regulatory norms are ideally met.
  • The Sap Business One software comes with mobile compatibility and can be integrated with third-party apps.
  • Dashboard to track overall performance and completion status.

Apart from the above, you can have 360° of all the customer data in a single platform and use it as a leverage to take customer-specific decisions, enhancing your business offerings.

Conclusion

Though the choice of embedding the SAP Business One ERP solution in your chemical industry is totally yours, we recommend you to integrate and adopt the solution without thinking much. The fact that organizations worldwide are expanding their business, it’s time that you too made the move and transformed your business ecosystem to suit the changing dynamics of the industry. Failing the above, you will not only turn your organization outdated but also restrict its growth in the future. Given the pace at which competition is rising, it’s better to take the leap of faith and restructure your business ecosystem, migrating the siloed infrastructure to SAP Business One.

 

 

COVID-19: A Random Pandemic or an Event to change how World Operates?

Posted on by stridely

The entire world is forced to lock themselves behind their door, self-isolate, and not step out for an indefinite period of time. Though the impact is equitable worldwide, one segment that is grappling to align their work with the ongoing trend is the corporate sector.

Given the outrage created by the widely discussed pandemic ‘COVID-19’, organizations have migrated to a work from home policy with the sole purpose of keeping their business running, uninterruptedly. Doesn’t it look like a random pandemic, or observation, just like black swan Event?

Wait. Do you have the faintest idea about black swans? Let’s just have a small theory about it.

Earlier, Europeans were of the view that Swans are primarily white. And one day, all of a sudden, someone traces a Black Swan. Now, this was something totally unexpected and largely, abnormal. Since then any or every event that seems to be extraordinary and totally out of the box is deemed as a Black Swan Event.

So, coming back to the main point, are we experiencing something relatable to a Black Swan Event? Definitely a yes.

Whether one agrees to this or not, the overall effect of this meteorically growing virus is longstanding. This is compelled organizations and corporate institutions to come up with alternative policies, one that would help them deal better with the ongoing situation.

It appears as if history has repeated itself and once again, we are stuck with a situation, similar to that of 9/11. The entire world is affected and the only way to survive is to change tracks. It is expected that the economic slowdown would be worth $1 trillion.

So what to do?

Well, every company has a specific notion and is trying best to adjust to the prevailing conditions. Where few have been successful in combating the negative impact, others are still struggling to get their business back on track.

Challenges Faced by Organizations and Corporate Offices

As evident, all of the offices and organizations have been asked to shut their business, at least physically or switch to remote working. However, it is easier said than done.

Not all organizations are equipped in the needed facilities and face severe challenges when moving to a work from home culture. Few of these include:

  • Lack Of Resources

    The first and the most important challenge as faced by a majority of organizations today is the absence of resources and dedicate software solutions to keep up with the office. For one, employees working remotely must have a dedicated laptop with decent connectivity to work online. As so it appears, several organizations work on hardware and require equipment to continue with the work. It is obvious that employees do not have such equipment at their place and hence, their work remains affected.

  • Poor Security

    In the best-case scenario, even if organizations have staffed their employees with all the necessary types of equipment and tools, network security remains untouched. While office networks are designed to be highly robust and hack-proof, local networks used to access the files and folders of their organization are vulnerable. In tough times such as these, compromising the security of organizations’ data simply adds to the worries.

  • Inability to Meet Deadlines

    Not to mention the fact that inability to work would account for missed deadlines and losing projects. Companies fail to provide customer service which further leads to canceled contracts. All of this reduces the overall productivity of the firm, costing the company money as well as reputation.

Stridely Solutions Approach- Defining Policies, Changing Norms

True that we all are facing a difficult situation and it is only worsening with each day passing by. However, we at Stridely Solution have been vigilant since day one and are proud of all our undertakings. Our entire team has been working day in and out to keep up with the need and assure nothing falls back.

Some of our key undertakings include:

  • Remote Working:

    Stridely Solutions has a vast reach with remote teams and offshore customers. Our employees are accustomed to the idea of working from home and connecting with others virtually. As a matter of fact, our employees are equipped with the needed hardware and software. Stridely has been careful in deploying state-of-the-art technologies & ways required for remote working. All of this facilitates dedicated solutions for all to promote WFH.

  • Security:

    The entire infrastructure is guarded with VPN connectivity and there are no ways clients have to store documents locally. This aids a secured infrastructure eliminating the possibility of thefts and threats. Additionally, we have a team working on software updates, locating software patches ensuring total compliance.

  • Support Team:

    Stridely has employed a 24/7 support desk to address and adhere to issues and concerns of the customers as well as clients. We take immense care of every activity in and out of the organization, assuring that no client is left unanswered.

  • Resources:

    Stridely Solution has been always on the forefront of adopting modern solutions. To aid this, we have equipped our employees to network with uninterrupted broadband and electricity connectivity. All of this merges well with Stridely’s IT policy. Additionally, we have also provided our staff with company-owned laptops so that they can easily work from home. These devices have software of latest configuration, secured connectivity to client’s machines via VPN and all terminals/machines connected through secured VMWare. All in all, Stridely has done all to keep up with the changing times and map the dynamics of business today.

  • Online Training:

    Our management team is keeping an eye on every employee’s activity. They are also providing regular online training to employees when needed. Periodic tips are laid by the company HR to motivate employees to work effectively.

The Conclusion

Predicting what’s next would not be feasible for now. What we are sure about is the fact that our entire team at Stridely is well organized and structured. We all are working together as a team and doing all that’s needed to serve our clients without a break.

A random pandemic or a revolutionary change activist for our normal lives, Stridely is ready to face all!

 

 

Audience Targeting in Modern SharePoint – A Comprehensive View

Posted on by stridely

Microsoft always manages to stay at the top of the industry with innovations and enhancements. It starts with designing solutions for a problem and then, adding more features to optimize the functionality of the same.

A similar trend is in the process as Microsoft comes up with an update rather than an addition to the SharePoint family. Primarily designed to be the document management platform, Microsoft SharePoint collaborates with Microsoft Office facilitating the creation, modification, and sharing of files, enterprise-wide.

A new addition has been the feature of Audience Targeting that aims to improve and enhance the overall SharePoint experience. While most of the SharePoint Online focuses on filtering the editing experience and helping members publish posts without much obstruction, the concept of Audience Targeting focuses on improving the end-user experience.

So, what is Audience Targeting?

What is Audience Targeting In SharePoint Online?

Audience Targeting as the name suggests is one way to target content towards a specific user. The content displayed is in a manner that fits best the user profile. Even though the concept of audience targeting has been within the software for long, it is now that Microsoft has enabled used based linking of content.

Consider, for example, there is a piece of content that you want only the Financial Department to view, edit and modify. Until now, the only way to achieve the above was to create a separate page and then share the profile with the department. However, this method isn’t effective when they are multiple pages to share with a different set of users. This is where the concept of audience targeting comes in. It allows you to use the same site page, embed certain rules and then, enhance the visibility by targeting it to a dedicated group of users.

With the new SharePoint Development, you can now target content to a specified group of audience. What happens here is you can create groups or systems based on Active Directory and once significant user groups have been formed, you can then assign library items of SharePoint to that particular group. One thing to note here is that the documents or files shared would be visible only to the members of the group.

Another advantage of using the SharePoint Online’s Audience Targeting feature is the ease to target links of site navigation to the desired audience. This enhances the end-user experience as they would see only those links that are relevant to the user.

How the Audience Targeting Simplifies Management and Sharing?

Audience targeting helps prioritize content and share it with the ideal user. Apart from this, SharePoint Online’s Audience Targeting feature embeds high-level description. Using this feature, you can better outline the position of articles as well as the news pages on the site. It becomes easier to configure the entire site visibility and personalize the same.

In simple terms, Audience targeting eliminates the need to create multiple pages for different users. Instead, you can customize a single page to display information based on the user’s interest. Audience Targeting thereby enables one to personalize a centralized home page to map the interest of the user.

Another benefit of the said feature is data collection. Earlier, dedicated forms were used to gather user data. However, these weren’t competent, not to forget the series of steps one had to follow. On the other hand, Microsoft’s built-in platform for data collection eases the process by which data is gathered as well as analyzed. They not only streamline the process of data collection but also help categorize data, as per the audience preferences.

Audiences are picked based on the SharePoint groups, the security group or the distribution list and the global audience.

Enabling Audience Targeting

Knowing all about the features of audience targeting, we now see how to enable rather where can we enable audience targeting while using SharePoint online.

  • Navigational Links

    Use audience targeting to promote links to dedicated audiences throughout the site’s navigation which includes navigation across hub and footer.

  • News Web Part

    Apart from the mobile app and the start page of the site, the news web part allows embedding audience targeting features to promote posts to particular audiences.

  • Pages

    Specific pages can be sent to or targeted to audiences as defined in the page library.

  • Highlighted Content

    Share parts of content from the site or a page using the audience targeting feature.

Things To Consider: Best Practices When Enabling Audience Targeting

True that audience targeting in an exclusive feature that makes sharing personalized content to a specific audience easier and better. However, simply enabling the feature would do no good. It is important to be cautious about the manner in which you move ahead with the feature.

  • Even though there are four different ways you can enable the feature of audience targeting, currently the feature is applicable to highlighted web content and news part.
  • Using the Audience targeting feature, you can bulk edit the property of the audience either on the library or the site page library.
  • Do not mistake the feature of audience targeting with security trimming. In case, you wish to trim your content and display only a few parts of the content to the audience, you would need to manually trim the content rather security trim it to be sure that the parts visible are only the ones permitted to be viewed.
  • Once you target the content/news or any page to a particular group of audience, no matter if the one visiting the page is the site collection administrator, he/she would not be able to view the content. Only users that are part of the targeted group can view the content.

Conclusion

To end our discussion, Audience Targeting is an excellent feature that makes it easier for the editor to share and collaborate documents with a particular user. In case, you have been building a new rather a modern SharePoint site for your enterprise, integrating the audience targeting feature would be ideal.