Beyond Transformation: Recent Episodes
Beyond Key
The podcast today is the latest episode of Beyond Transformation, where we talk about Snowflake DBT or data build tools. To help with the topic, Prabhash Thakur from Beyond Key joined.
Beyond Transformation is brought to you by Beyond Key. Beyond Key is a software development solutions organization. One of the services that we offer is Snowflake. DBT interacts with Snowflake.
Snowflake DBT OverviewDbt is short for a data build tool. It’s a development framework combining modular SQL and software engineering best practices to make your data transformation reliable, fast, and fun.
Dbt is familiar to those who know how to write SQL select statements. They have the power to build their models, write test scenarios, and schedule their jobs to produce reliable, actionable data sets.
When you have data, you need to transform the data to give you business insight so that you can build the report on top of this. DBT acts as an orchestration for your transformation.
What is Dbt? First, dbt is not a data warehousing solution. For example, in data warehousing, you follow the ETL (extract, transform, and load) approach,
In ETL, you first extract and load full raw data into your data warehouse that will act as a data link, and then you do the transformation on top of that raw data.
You then always have the true data, so you can perform as many transformations as you want. DBT helps you with the “T” or the transformation part of ELT.
Analytical Engineering: Data Engineering and Data Analyst DBT uses another concept called analytical engineering. Analytical engineering acts as a bridge between data engineering and data analysis.
When we talk about data engineering, we build custom data integrations to manage the overall pipeline orchestration. Then, we deploy machine learning endpoints to build and maintain the data platforms.
Data engineering folks will then do some performance optimization. Analytical engineering provides clean, transformed data ready for analysis using software engineering best practices.
For example, delivering your models into small sprints. That’s agile methodology. It’s very difficult to perform agile methodology in data engineering because it is not enabled everywhere.
DBT comes with that. The tool documents the transformation in case anyone needs to review how the data transformed, what logic was used for the process, and the data sources.
On the other hand, a data analyst will do deep inside work like why did this point spike last month? What are the best acquisition channels? Then, they will work with the business users to understand data requirements to build forecasting dashboards.
DBT is key to analytical engineering because it maintains the documentation and trains business users how to use the data visualization created from the transformation of insights. As we said earlier, DBT is the “T” or the transformation of data.
How can you use DBT to transform your data into usable insights? DBT is not connected to your extraction tool like how data is coming inside Snowflake or other data warehousing solutions like:
- BigQuery
- Databricks
- Postgres
- Redshift
- Spark
- Azure Synapse
- Teradata
The number of platforms connected to DBT keeps changing. You need to take the data and load it in raw format into your data platform; DBT will connect your data platform.
It will use your data platform’s compute and storage resources. You can access the DBT through your account credentials or use service account credentials to perform the transformation.
How can you use DBT to transform your data into usable insights with the right BI tool?
You can start building your DBT models by creating SQL files with select statements. DBT will do the rest for you.
For executives, an SQL file is like a CSV file. You create a .SQL file that works with any code editor like Notepad++ or VS code to store relational databases.
You can write data testing scenarios to make your data trustable, which is, again, very easy as dbt comes with some generic test scenarios.
Not only this, but you can also use packages like dbt-expectation to solve your complex and granular test scenarios.
And still, if that doesn’t fit your requirements, you can write your custom scenario once and use it across your project.
DBT also acts as a single source of truth. You can define your metrics inside dbt and connect your reporting tools with dbt (which dbt calls the semantic layer) to get those metrics directly from dbt. By doing this, you never get two values for the same metrics.
Once that is ready, you can connect your BI tools as usual and start consuming those tables for your report.
What data engineering problems does DBT solve?
Eliminates Data Silos:
Data silos are isolated data that are stored in separate data sources. Today, data silos are common trends across industries.
Data from different departments like sales and marketing reside in various sources. Without centralization, marketing professionals will struggle to access sales data and vice versa. This reduces the data engineers’ productivity as they often must work on ad-hoc data models for different teams. Being reactive over proactive impacts the efficiency of the entire organization.
You can become proactive by creating a centralized logic for different dbt use cases within a data warehouse. Dbt can help you create all your transformational logic with models that can be leveraged across multiple downstream processes.
Data Quality
Data quality is one of the biggest challenges for data engineers.
Most of the time, data engineers spend on updating, maintaining, and identifying quality issues in the data pipeline. Since data come from multiple sources, the same records are often stored in different forms and structures. This makes it challenging to clean and enrich data to create a single source of truth.
dbt allows you to clean data with simple SQL statements or Python programming.
As we already discussed, how dbt can help you with testing scenarios.
You can also add a source freshness test, which will give you a warning or error if data becomes stale after a certain period.
Brings Transparency
Analysts are often critical of the data they are using for generating insights. This happens because analysts are not aware of the source of data. You need to understand where the data is coming from and what kinds of transformation it has gone through.
Answers to these questions allow analysts to carry out business intelligence processes and generate reports confidently. Analysts can communicate with the decision makers to trust the insights if they know everything in and out of the data source.
dbt eliminates the need for guesswork and brings trust among stakeholders by providing data lineage and documentation. Data lineage lets you track the data’s history, origin, and transformation. Data lineage in dbt is represented by a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). It is also used to understand the dependencies among models to ensure you build dbt projects with complete transparency.
On the other hand, dbt documentation assists you in identifying the types of transformations, the logic associated with models, and more. dbt documents also include information about test cases to eliminate any data discrepancies. Any business needs to make decisions based on accurate insights. As data engineers can streamline the generation of documentation and data lineage, it brings trust among decision-makers.
Simplifies Data Pipeline Workflows
With dbt Cloud, you can use built-in CI/CD features that don’t require extensive maintenance. You can set up CI/CD with GitHub or Azure DevOps to automate runs and check your data on pull requests. CI jobs can be further triggered with APIs to check the impacted models before deployment. You can also standardize the format of SQL code pushed to make changes.
Is it better to use DBT Cloud or DBT Core? Although dbt core is free to use, and dbt cloud comes with some costs starting at $100/month, Dbt cloud is a better option. It comes with beautifully integrated capability for CI/CD Jobs and scheduling pipelines.
It’s a browser-based UI with no need to install any software or maintain any dbt version. The UI has SQL formatting capability, making your code look good and readable.
It also comes with dbt documentation hosting that supports API Job triggers. You can orchestrate your data ingestion and then data transformation.
As we discussed earlier, the dbt semantic layer will give you a single source of truth for your business metrics; it is supported only by the dbt cloud.
Finally, the dbt cloud has certifications for ISO, SOC2, GDPR, PCI, and HIPAA data security.
What BI tools will this work with specifically? Depending on your data warehouse, dbt is an orchestration tool. The queries will still run inside your data platform using the data platform’s resources like computing and storage.
Regarding the semantic layer, currently, only 5 BI services are supported, such as Tableau, Google Sheets, Hex, Lightdash, and Power BI Mode.
The key is whether your data warehouse can connect to these services. If so, then dbt is just like an orchestration tool. Queries will still run inside your data platform using the data platform’s resources like compute and storage.
Final Thoughts If you have more questions about dbt Cloud and how to integrate it with Snowflake, connect with our team for a free 30-minute consultation call.
Today on Beyond Transformation, we have some exciting news to share with you in honor of 2023 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Learn how you can protect yourself and your business from ever-present threats in the digital world.
The Current Cyber Threat Landscape2023 has seen cyber threats everywhere. Every click, download, or email carries the potential for danger. But what if we told you that you have the power to turn the tables and protect yourself? It’s not as tricky as it seems, and it’s all within your reach.
Beyond Key’s Free Security AssessmentThis October, during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Beyond Key offers you an opportunity you won’t want to miss – a free security audit. Yes, you heard that right. We have an exclusive audit for 10 free audits in October. Claim one of the ten free audit slots this month.
Your Four-Week Journey to Peace of MindBeyond Key’s free audit covers a wide range of areas to ensure your online presence is secure. Over four weeks, they’ll assess your website, protect your mobile platforms, tune up your network, and shield your valuable data. This comprehensive approach lets you enjoy peace of mind knowing your cybersecurity is airtight.
Benefits of the Free AuditSo, what are the benefits of this free audit? Beyond Key ensures you stay compliant with regulatory standards, which is more critical than ever in today’s digital landscape.
Why Your Business Needs CybersecurityNow, you might be wondering, “Why does my business need cybersecurity?” Without it, you’re vulnerable to ransomware, cyberattacks, and hefty data breach costs. But with Beyond Key’s cybersecurity solutions, you can reduce successful attacks, decrease remediation time, and save your business significant money.
Cybersecurity Awareness ConclusionSo, don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity during the 2023 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Outsmart the invisible and champion the unseen with Beyond Key. Claim your free audit and take the first step towards a safer digital future. Stay tuned for more cybersecurity insights in future episodes. Thanks for joining Beyond Transformation!
Getting donors is one of the most crucial aspects of any nonprofit organization. That is why it is vital to have the right donor management solution for your organization.
The information below comes from a Donor Management Solutions webinar we hosted leveraging Dynamics 365, SharePoint, the Power Platform, and Azure.
https://youtu.be/YnYwmMHr24c
Donor Management Solution OverviewToday, let’s begin our discussion by focusing on the opportunity for the donor management solution to leverage your donor data. The opportunity is to understand what type of people donate to your organization. Where did you find them?
Target Donor AudiencesFor example, is your organization very active on social media? Do you have an extensive referral network? Are you getting people that you’re talking to on the street? Your media campaigns may generate interest. How do you find these opportunities? How do you source them?
Also, not only that, who are these people that are, are donating to your organization? For example, a nonprofit like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has a particular targeted pro profile.
They connect with mothers of middle school and high school-age students to make sure those mothers can have access to the correct information. And they know those mothers will also be more likely to donate to their organization. It’s a targeted profile to ensure they’re helping kids stay safe. That compares very differently, by the way, if you’re in some other organization.
If you happen to work with a community kitchen, your target audience will be quite different. You’ll need to communicate directly with more individual philanthropic individuals who may not be directly connected to the cause.
How do you connect with that audience? Understanding that target profile is vital. And the more you have information to that, that data, that opportunity, and this is something that you could also enter a CRM system, the more you can integrate that into your payment systems.
Payment SolutionsOnce you have the opportunity, you want to connect them and get them to donate to your organization. Other work happens here to build that relationship. Still, for the donor section, we’re helping you integrate it into your payment gateways and website. Whatever you do to get them to that step to donate, you have a path for them to do that. And you could integrate that. And by the way, this doesn’t have to be an external solution.
We mentioned earlier the Power Pages. Maybe you’re using Power Pages to give your donors a place to go where they could set up a donation. And the great thing is, once they’ve made that payment, they also have the information they added.
When people donate, you ask them to enter your credit card information. You’re asking for their name, their email, their phone number. You might ask, why are they donating? You might also ask, how do they find out about you? You start tracking this information. And the great thing about doing this online is that you can monitor mobile and online donations.
You could start tracking that if multiple people visit your portal through their smartphones. That means you know how to find those people better through mobile than through a laptop. It’s all about understanding that information because you can start tracking it once you have it. Then you can start automating your processes. For example, we discussed building the relationship with the integrations.
Donor Management RelationshipsYou don’t just go from finding someone who wants to be a donor to asking them two minutes later to donate. That might work occasionally, but more than likely, people need to build up a relationship with your nonprofit before they donate. You could start creating automated messages to those opportunities and let them know how they can be part of your organization and how they could help your organization. Once they’ve donated, you could also talk about how they could refer others. You can create an Automated Message series to help you with this process.
Donor Management Solution ReportsFurthermore, automation doesn’t just help with connecting the message to the opportunity. The automation also helps with creating reports. I mentioned earlier how knowledge workers spend 50% of their time creating documents, preparing documents and reports. Think about how much better your organization would be if you automate those reports.
So instead of having to spend all that time looking at Excel spreadsheets, they were able to start building up the messages, finding suitable donors, connecting with them, building the relationships in other ways, whatever you need them to do to make sure that they’re getting the most out of their time with your organization.
By automating these messages and reports, you can also have smarter fundraising decisions because this automation means more messages, reporting, and data. All this comes together from all these opportunities, integrations to donor tracking, and the automation to help you create smarter fundraising decisions. This business intelligence component is crucial to that process.
How does it work with the solutions we’re discussing today? Well, it’s simple. Remember that we’ve talked about the first step you need to do is create events and collect donations. And you do this by tracking the opportunities and integrations. There are different tools that you have under the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. You have PowerApps, Power Pages, and SharePoint.
Whichever tool you use, you can collect those donations and create the events you need for your organization. And we’re going to show you how some of this works.
Final Thoughts Storing your donor data is a critical component of making sure you can make smarter decisions. You need a way of storing that data to have a way of organizing it. Then, you need a way of organizing to analyze your donor data effectively for better business intelligence. So it all works together. Once you have this process, you can set it up.
You can use whatever tools you need to ensure you can go from collecting donors or collecting opportunities and donations to analyzing that to improving your processes and moving forward.
During our Data Analytics Panel, we discussed leveraging data analytics to improve your operations. In this segment, Piyush Richhariya and Raj Krishnan share their thoughts on creating a cohesive data analytics strategy.
Data Analytics Strategy TranscriptionIt is crucial to demonstrate the potential impact of data analytics projects or tools to earn stakeholder buy-in. You can achieve these goals through key metrics and how they will improve with the introduction of data analytics.
The key to getting stakeholder buy-in for data analytics projects or tools is to focus on the impact on the business and involve stakeholders in the process from the beginning. By demonstrating the potential benefits and keeping stakeholders informed, you can build support and ensure the project’s success.
It is essential to focus on the outcomes that matter to get stakeholders interested in data analytics. While they may not be interested in the technical details of how ML improves Power BI (Business Intelligence) or what platform to use, they care about data analytics’ impact on the business.
To build interest and buy-in, you must show stakeholders how data analytics can help them achieve their objectives and key results (OKRs) for the project. This requires understanding the stakeholder’s priorities and how data analytics can help them solve genuine business problems.
One practical approach is to start with a specific business problem or challenge the stakeholder faces and then show how data analytics can help solve that problem. This could be improved customer satisfaction, increased operational efficiency, or better decision-making.
Another approach is to provide examples of how data analytics has helped other businesses achieve their goals. This can help stakeholders see the potential benefits and get excited about what data analytics can do for their business.
Finally, involving stakeholders in the process from the beginning is important. This can help build interest and ownership in the project and ensure that the final solution meets their needs and expectations.
Final ThoughtsData analytics is great for helping stakeholders leverage data analytics for their operations. If you have additional questions about how to use data analytics for your organization, schedule a free consultation with our team today.
https://youtu.be/ua0ZAEpZ0cE
Do you want to ensure your corporate documents are safe and accessible simultaneously? Then you need the right technology to ensure this happens. That is why more and more companies migrate their documents to SharePoint Online. Microsoft’s enterprise-level security and cloud access ensures that registered users can access and share their files on any device.
The podcast episode shares how the SharePoint Migration Process works. Also, check out our on-demand webinar to learn more about the Benefits and Strategies for SharePoint Migration.
https://youtu.be/zmrjUWDcZRs
5 SharePoint Migration Process StepsWhen we talk about the SharePoint migration process, here are 5 steps that take you from an on-prem to an online SharePoint Document Management System.
Step 1: discoveryAs the name suggests, with the discovery, you start by evaluating your current on-premise server. For example, “We have 100,000 documents stored on our site.” The question becomes how many of these documents are PDFs. How many of these documents are word docs? How many are JPEGs or images?
It’s important to understand this breakdown, research that information, and see how much space you’re using on your current server. Discovery gives you a baseline of what and how much data you need to transfer.
Step 2: AssessmentNow you can assess what your needs are. Again, maybe you have 100,000 documents, but maybe 10,000 haven’t been opened in three years or more. Do you still need old files? With that line of thinking, how long do you need to keep documents in your organization?
For example, you must keep financial documents secure for seven years because that’s how long the IRS can go back to audit. So by looking at this information, you have to assess your specific needs and which documents you should migrate ahead of time.
Step 3: PilotOnce you’ve assessed your documents, you could start creating a pilot. Instead of just moving everything over at once, you want to test that things work correctly first. You may have a few department members test how the process will work. Instead of sending 100,000 or 90,000 documents, you send 1000 documents over and test whether it works in that small, limited pilot.
Since documents and data are the lifeblood of your organization, you want to reduce interruptions. A pilot migration can help with this objective.
Step 4: ExecutionThe SharePoint migration doesn’t start until you get to the execution stage when you send over your documents. Remember the first three steps focus on the functional migration part of this process.
The fourth step we’re talking about for execution handles the content side. You can automate this process using the right software and tools when you perform steps 1-3.
You can find a demo of the SharePoint migration process in the on-demand webinar we mentioned previously.
Step 5: OnboardingOnce you finish the execution stage, remember you still need to finish the onboarding because your staff needs to know how to use your new SharePoint online site correctly to ensure it fits in with your processes and systems.
SharePoint Migration Process Final ThoughtsIf you are interested in learning more about how your organization can migrate your SharePoint site, contact us for a free 1-hour consultation.
If you want raving fans, then it is vital to set up a quality customer service flow. Dynamics 365 can help with this process.
This podcast episode shows how Dynamics 365 for Customer Service flow works. To learn more, check out the entire webinar: Create Raving Customers With Dynamics 365.
https://youtu.be/O1XoVMEI1p0
Dynamics 365 Customer Service FlowHow does the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Flow work? Well, let’s take random customer questions about sprockets. They decide they need to know more about how to use a specific sprocket and want the ultra-sprocket.
What they do is say, “Hey, look, I’m having trouble with my ultra-sprocket. Can you please help me?” They go into the Power Apps portal and initiate a case. Once they do that, the customer can then reach out to your company, and they can do this through your portal.
You can use the workflow to help with the following:
- Text messages
- Phone calls
- Chat or email
Let’s talk about automationOne of the great things is that once the customer creates the case, it automatically creates a case. And we’ll show you how cool this looks on Dynamics 365. It will create a case number, and what they’ll do is it’ll allow it to route that case automatically over to specific agents.
Customer service exampleLet’s say you have a company with 500 to 700 employees, and maybe you have about 20 to 30 different customer agents working at any time.
You have 20 to 30 agents working on sprockets. Well, maybe only five of them are trained in knowing how the ultra-sprocket works. What it could do is route that information to that specific agent. The agent will ask, “Hey, okay, so this person has a question about the ultra-sprocket. Let me see what I could do to help them.”
Even though they know a lot about the ultra-sprocket, they might not know everything. And that’s where that knowledge management module comes in. It helps you research the information and say, “Oh, you know what? It looks like you’re having this problem with the sprocket. Let’s see how we can help you out.”
They could go through that information; they could research it. Then they could go back to the customer and help resolve that case by sharing that knowledge with the customer. And once that happens, the knowledge is then you could then resolve the case.
Remember that if you have a company that sells a hundred thousand sprockets a year, you’re probably not just having one customer reach out to you yearly. You have 20 or 30 agents in this example.
In that case, you need to make sure there’s a queue here, and then the agent could return to the remaining cases. The example discussed above is one case among many. And every time you have a case, this process starts over again. The customer initiates the case, and they reach out. Then the agent identifies, researches, resolves the case and then goes back to the next one. So that’s one example of what we see.
Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Final ThoughtsIf you are interested in learning more about improving your customer flow, let us know how we can help. Set up a free 1-hour consultation with our Dynamics 365 experts to improve the quality of your customer service.
The ability to visualize your data is one of the greatest advancements over the past decade in the data analytics field. Tools like Power BI make this a reality by quickly showing information that would take hours to create through spreadsheets and other legacy systems.
This podcast discusses the many data visualization benefits your organization has when they use these tools correctly. The clip for this episode comes from the Data Visualization Tools webinar, where we share tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Domo.
https://youtu.be/Xch0RELdeeg
Data Visualization TranscriptFirst, remember data visualization is not new. People have been turning data into charts and graphs for a long time. The difference is now we can incorporate real-time updates thanks to data visualization software.
Organizations need better ways to sift through daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports. That is because it takes a long time to sift through the data with real-time analysis.
Data visualization helps you automatically see what’s happening in your organization to make faster, more educated decisions. That happens due to integrating numerous secure data sources. The keyword for your privacy is in a secure environment.
If you have customer data you want to transfer into a data visualization platform, you must ensure it’s safe. Fortunately, Power BI safely and privately integrates your various programs to make sure you can see what your business intelligence operations look like across multiple tools
Business intelligence visualization tools improve planning across departmentsA lot of what we’re going to discuss today is how organizations can leverage the data to complete different tasks.
For example, if you’re in the marketing department, you generate website traffic from social media and search engines. You can compare quality traffic breakdowns between search and social traffic. It helps to have a process to analyze how all different marketing components work together in one central location.
If you don’t have a unified way of seeing the entire picture, you will struggle in today’s competitive environment.
If they could say, “Hey, look in quarter one, we did this. Here’s what I think we can do in quarter two, based on our website traffic in quarter one, your organization can take advantage of opportunities faster and remove the speedbumps from your marketing efforts.
Final ThoughtsLeverage data visualization services to help your organization understand your story and predict where your organization can go with the right information. Contact us today to set up a free 1-hour consultation with our data visualization team.
If you had superpowers, would you want to know what they are and how to use them? So does every other organization. That is why we help organizations learn more about how they can leverage PowerApps to supercharge their operations.
The latest Beyond Transformation Podcast covers a clip from our free On-Demand Webinar, Discover the 5 PowerApps Use Case Superpowers. As the name suggests, the webinar covered information about leveraging PowerApps for your organization. We provide you with different use cases that explore how various organizations use this tool.
https://youtu.be/4z1ChcGxxX8 PowerApps Webinar Transcript Using tools like PowerApps, you have an enterprise-level platform that helps you easily build new business applications or customized existing apps. How can PowerApps help your organization? PowerApps is a framework to run your cloud-based PowerApps applications. You can even leverage their sample apps library. So, even if you don't know the exact business processes or don't know how to connect different things, you have a sample apps library that guides you to update your processes.
Furthermore, you don't always need to know how to code.
The great thing about PowerApps is it connects your PowerApps with over 480 different data sources, as the last time we checked, and this is a growing list. As you continue to watch this, it's very possible that it will continue to grow over time because it has so far.
In addition, I mentioned that you don't need to have a lot of coding experience. The one coding they have on PowerApps is what's called Power FX. Power FX is an open-source coding based on Excel formulas. The idea is that you're using these formulas to help understand how to manipulate the data for your own purposes. With that said, there are some limitations of PowerApps. We're not going to say this is the end-all, be-all of all applications.
So, you must first know that this is not for commercial use. So, you're looking at PowerApps, you're like, "Oh, this is so great. It connects all this data. It does all these things." What does PowerApps not do? One thing it does not do is you cannot sell it on an app store. So, for example, if you go into the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store, you could download an application. This is not for that type of use. This is for internal audiences only.
Additionally, because this is designed for citizen developers, there are some limitations on what developers can do with customizing HTML and JavaScript code. Furthermore, you're also reliant on Microsoft to roll out new functions. That said, they do have a regular schedule.
For example, we talked about the Dataverse in terms of connecting information and connecting data. One of the things they just rolled out was a simplified Dataverse search to help connect all this information together, and you now have a way to search for it. There are also advanced lookup capabilities and model-driven apps.
There are model-driven and canvas apps. And this is a model-driven app that helps you so that you have better ways of creating those different model-driven apps. So again, they are rolling out new functions regularly, but you are relying on Microsoft to roll out those functions in the first place. Final Thoughts Thanks again for listening to the Beyond Transformation Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And again, don't forget to check out the free webinar.
https://youtu.be/gRZ9NFhVeAE
Every organization wants the ability to peek into the future. That's a superpower to see how you can increase profits or how you ensure your organization weathers the next storm (or pandemic).
Thanks for reading the transcript of the latest Beyond Transformation podcast from Beyond Key. Today's episode discusses how to use business forecasting with Power BI. The video and podcast are clips from the business forecasting webinar on this topic.
During this episode, we discuss how to analyze trends and apply those to real-life scenarios in your organization. Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you're interested in watching the webinar in its entirety, go to beyondinternet.com/webinar. Thank you very much. Enjoy the episode. Business Forecasting Uses Business forecasting uses predictive analytics to estimate an organization's future. Not to say that we could have a crystal ball, but we're using predictive analytics. We use tools that combine ideas like classification, decision trees, and machine learning to provide a more intelligent understanding of data.
The more data you have, the more you learn from ideas like text analysis and regression theory. The concept combines different ideas, and what you're doing is the more data you have, the more you can have predictive analytics.
The idea here is that predictive analytics and forecasting are two sides of the same coin. You predict or forecast what happens in your company's future based on what happened in the past.
Organizations use business forecasting to understand how their strategies should work in sales, marketing, finance, operations, and hiring situations. Business forecasting relies on trend analysis, mathematical models, and indicator approaches. Business Forecasting Example Let's say you're doing the hiring for next year, and you want to know how many people you need to hire. You review past hires from the last three years to help your departments thrive.
You load the data into Azure to connect to the cloud, so you have a backup of the information. One of the great things about using Azure is that it has AI and ML capabilities inside.
Some business intelligence tools allow you to turn data into intelligent insights. Using that, you could then start getting a better understanding of your data. Once you convert raw data from Azure, you can load it into Power BI to create a visual version of intelligent data.
If you realize over the past year, you hire five people for accounting and five for sales, but then you hire ten for operations, then you have to take a look, "Why is that? Why do we hire those people?" Those visuals can give you an idea of why that happened, and you start to get a picture of where you need to go with your hiring. Business Forecasting Final Thoughts If your organization needs help navigating the future, then business forecasting can help you. Contact us today to help your organization with its finances, sales, marketing, and operations.
The blog post today is from the webinar on how to Discover the 5 PowerApps Use Case Superpowers. By understanding PowerApps' capabilities you can start to understand their superpowers more effectively.
https://youtu.be/pODntlQJGsM 6 PowerApps Capabilities 1. Drag and Drop Builder You don't have to be a coder. PowerApps is a low code tool. The only code is the low-code power FX, where you're using Microsoft Excel formulas. The cool thing about using PowerApps is you have the ability as a citizen developer to create this without getting an IT degree. 2. AI Builder PowerApps is also an intelligent system with a built-in AI Builder when you need it.
For example, you can extract text from a picture using OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities.
In this case, let's say you take a picture of a mountain. That's great; you now have a picture of a mountain. If you tag that mountain, every time someone else takes a mountain picture, the AI builder starts to recognize, "Oh, wait, that's a mountain."
PowerApps starts learning what that information is to identify items in the future. This is great for organizations with an extensive list of products where people take photos of the products to purchase. More and more uses like this are being created every day. 3. Microsoft Dataverse The Microsoft Dataverse connects over 480 data sources (connectors) directly into PowerApps. Therefore, if you want to combine different ERP, CRM, marketing automation, or HR tools, you can connect those tools directly to Microsoft's PowerApps. 4. Azure cloud platform PowerApps is a cloud-based service that runs on the secure Azure Platform. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform. Because the server runs on Microsoft secure Azure Platform, your application also has access to enterprise-level security. 5. User Roles As an enterprise-level tool, it is possible to create multiple admin roles. For example, if you need different roles for different people, you can give them varying levels of access to your applications. 6. Scalabilities Thanks again to the Azure Platform; you can scale your applications. It doesn't matter whether you're a small organization or a Fortune 100 company; you can scale the PowerApps to your specific needs.
This scalability relies on how you customize the application to fit your strategy and business processes because PowerApps is not about creating an application just to make an application. The tools help you create an application that fits your specific needs. PowerApps CapabilitiesFinal Thoughts PowerApps has the flexibility to help your organization with a number of different tasks. If you want to learn more about their capabilities, then schedule a free consultation with our team.
Today's blog post comes from the webinar on How AI-Powered OCR Software Saves Money and Time. The clip covers how to use cloud tools like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
https://youtu.be/xo69HrRpZpQ OCR Software using Azure and Amazon Web Service I want to talk a little bit about how this OCR process works. For example, OCR helps banks read different lending documents. If someone submits a bank statement, OCR can make the process easier.
You can use OCR software to upload documents to Azure. Uploading the documents to the cloud is like when you physically upload a document. Once the documents go online, automated technologies take over.
In this case, Azure Blob Storage stores the data and creates a trigger that goes to an Azure Function. That Azure Function then sends an API call to a Computer Vision API. Computer Vision reads the lending statement.
During the webinar, we scanned a bank statement with five pages of data. It reads the information quickly and then spits out all the income and expense lines on the account. You can go through the financial data much faster. The added benefit is that the Azure Cosmos Database stores all this info.
Again, you don't have to do anything once the data is in the Azure Blob Storage because this is all automated. Suppose you were reviewing data in the past. You need to check the document manually line by line before storing the data afterward. The OCR automation makes the process more robust. Final Thoughts OCR is a powerful tool to help organizations with their data extraction process. You can scan documents and have them read at a rate that would not be possible less than a decade ago. Cloud tools like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services make this easier.
We can make the OCR software setup even more accessible. Please set up a free 1-hour consultation with our team today.
The SharePoint intranet did not just appear. It took time to develop into the employee engagement tool you see it as right now.
The video and information below about the SharePoint Intranet transformation is part of a larger webinar on A New Intranet for Modern Employees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXGxAnktHCs SharePoint Intranet Transformation When we talked about the intranet, we shared different SharePoint features. These features did not appear randomly but developed over decades to create the modern intranet. The transformation from a basic intranet service to the next generation intranet we're talking about today. 1990's We must go back to the 1990s when they introduced essential intranet services. The service allowed executives to a top-down communication platform.
There is nothing wrong with the top-down communication platform. Employees want to know about the latest hires, acquisitions, revenue numbers, company mission, or other internal news.
However, top-down communication is not the only line of communication in an organization. That would be employee-to-employee communication. As the 2000s started, the intranet added new social features. It wasn't as interactive, but it was the beginning of the next-generation intranet movement. Also, the content management tools helped with collaboration features. Eventually, it became a hub for forums, processes, news, policies, and procedures. 2000's Facebook and Myspace started in the 2000s, and they began to become popular with business crowds around the last crash. What started happening over the previous decade was how the intranet took its cue from social networks with interactive features for employees like shares, likes, and comments.
Instead of being a top-down communication platform, you have cross-departmental and peer-to-peer or cross-departmental communication. For example, when sales and marketing need to talk, the intranet helps them connect. 2010's SharePoint created a digital workplace solution in the past decade with additional social features like shares, likes, and comments.
It was closer to what we would want for a modern intranet but there was not enough development towards the employee engagement they needed. 2020's When we talk about how the next generation operates in the 2020s, we start talking about personalization. These updates are a crucial development from being a podium where executives could dictate the organization's future. 1. Personalization Today when you want to engage employees, you can personalize the look and feel of each employee. 2. Knowledge Hub The intranet is a knowledge hub, with an easy-to-use and accessible format for finding your information. For companies with remote workers, SharePoint Migration strategies are more vital. 3. Employee Directories The great thing about the intranet is that you have a lot of utilities that make it better than the platform on it's own. You have additional features like employee directories and employee onboarding apps to help employees connect. 4. Mobile-friendly SharePoint is now a mobile-friendly tool thanks to how it moved over to the cloud. The cloud is a crucial component because employees can use the intranet on their mobile devices. They can access SharePoint anywhere, which allows the organization to engage employees more thoroughly. 5. Integrations There are also easy integrations as well. Whether you want to connect with Microsoft 365 systems like Dynamics, Power Apps, or third-party systems like Smartsheets, you can get more out of your intranet. 6. Gamification Furthermore, the engagement increase with gamification features as well. Reward employees and give them a sense of accomplishment by tracking and awarding them points for a job well. 7. Secure and Confidential It is essential nowadays to ensure you have secure, confidential information in an intranet because all your employees' information is there.
In our recent webinar on Dynamics 365: Creating a Better Vendor Experience, we share how companies can stay competitive when working with vendors today.
The blog post today on the Power Apps portal and Dynamics 365 vendor management process is part of this broader webinar. If you are interested in learning more about how to improve your vendor management process, check out the entire Dynamics 365 webinar.
https://youtu.be/WFL44GA9_Iw What is the Dynamics 365 Vendor Onboarding Process How does the onboarding process work? There are five different steps we discuss below. If you look at the dots here, there's green and blue. The green dots are for the Power Apps Portal. The Power Apps Portal is an external-facing portal that vendors can use to fill out their information. It makes it easier for them to do those steps that we were talking about, so you can automate many of your processes.
We don't talk as much about the Power Apps Portal in this webinar. If you want to learn more about Power Apps, check out our free Power Apps webinar.
The other component of this onboarding process is Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365). The Dynamics 365 vendor management process helps admins add their insights and see what's going on from their different suppliers or vendors.
So how would the process work? As you see at the beginning, a vendor registers their organization. They put their information into the system. At that point, the admin reviews the request like, "Hey, look, John from ABC company with a phone number of 123-456-7890 wants to join. Will you approve or reject that request?" Your admin says yes or no, and the onboarding process begins. Dynamics 365 Vendor Management Questions Keep in mind how you can start customizing how the onboarding process works for your organization. You can add items like:
What information should vendors submit? What certifications do you need? Do you have project-specific questions? Do you need to know their credit history?
For example, suppose you're working with a vendor who requires a certain portion upfront. In that case, you want to make sure they're reliable and not stealing money from you. It's essential to make sure that you know their credit rating before you pay them. If they haven't supplied your organization with what they need, you should probably not pay them.
Finally, once you've onboarded them, the supplier needs to perform specific tasks. Remember, data they add. They should submit:
Add their data or address Identification information like what their tax ID number is. Add certifications and developers
What do we mean by developers since this is an online onboarding process? We're going to talk about how a manufacturing company has a lot of different products. They have many suppliers work with them to give them those products. That means they often need to integrate with their e-commerce system as well.
There's a lot of work that developers might need to do to provide tools, resources, and products at the right time. Developers might have to be able to get better information about that, which means integrating the dynamic system that we're about to show you with their portal. Dynamics 365 Vendor Management Final Thoughts If you want to improve relationships with vendors today efficiently, it is vital to have lean and agile technologies. If you want to use Dynamics 365 CRM for these technologies, you want the right team to help get the most out of your new software and systems. Connect with us today to receive a free 1-hour consultation.
Data visualization integrations make it possible to connect your data with data visualization tools to improve your organization.
Therefore, we want to help you choose between AWS vs Azure to determine the best option for your data storage.
If you want powerful ways to automate repetitive, tedious business processes, then Microsoft Power Automate could be the answer.
Microsoft robotic process automation tools can help organizations update their processes with technology.
Microsoft Teams is more than just a communication platform. In our podcast clip of the week, we wanted to share with you how to get the most of your Microsoft Teams. This clip is from our Microsoft Teams webinar. You can watch the entire webinar by clicking the Teams Webinar Link.
https://youtu.be/Pp3LSeyD0UQ What is a CRM? A CRM is a customer relationship management tool that helps you cultivate current and prospective donor relationships. Here are multiple ways to use Microsoft Dynamics 365 as your Non-Profit CRM. Non-Profit CRM uses Major Gift-Giving Program The example here is a major gift-giving program. If your goal here is for the board of directors to attract major gifts then keep in mind that is a long-term process.
It's going to take time to build up the relationships, get to the ask, and get to the point where they can bring in $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, or million-dollar-plus donations. They don't come around every day.
If you want to build up those relationships, you need to stay on top of the donors. Keep in mind that it takes time.
A CRM helps you with task reminders to stay on schedule, so you broaden your circle, and communicate and build your community through more donations. Fundraising Events Many organizations use a CRM for their fundraising events. A lot of non-profits live and die on their fundraising events.
Whether it's a charity ball, walk, run, or golfing event, fundraising events are a core piece of many non-profits. Being able to tie this in with your project management software, you can track what donors might come to the event and also how you could work with those donors to raise funds.
For example, one of the ways you could pair up board members with donors through the CRM.
For example, making sure they sit at the same table or have the same foursome. That way you could build a relationship with all your attendees, and track the progress of that relationship after the fundraising events. Volunteer Management Running a non-profit is not just about building donors. A lot of organizations' lifeblood is in the volunteers. Think about community kitchens or Habitat for Humanity; they're using volunteers for the organization for the purpose. It's very important that they maintain and sustain communication with those volunteers so they can improve their impact in the community. Non-Profit CRM Customization What we're going to talk about here is how a CRM can work, but the truth is your CRM are probably a little bit different than the other organizations because you have a specific need. Having a custom CRM for what you're doing is important.
For example, if you want to apply for grants, you need grant management software. It's important to understand how the grant management software will help you with compared to whether you use a major gift-giving program. Neither one is wrong. It's about what's right for you. Non-Profit CRM Final Thoughts Non-profits looking for an edge in getting new donors can use every tool in their toolbelt. Whether they want to attract those donations from grants, fundraising events, or major gift-giving campaigns, having the right CRM can help.
If your non-profit organization needs help setting up Dynamics 365 for your CRM, please schedule a free consultation with us today.
The text below is taken from a webinar Beyond Key held on Dynamics 365 for Sales.
https://youtu.be/OPaDpX5qD0g Let's talk about the reasons you want to use Dynamics 365 Sales 1. the tool increases conversion rates. If you are trying to work on your conversions and sales in your business, you need to make sure conversions are number 1. The tool makes you smarter because you are making better decisions. 2. you identify the best time to connect with prospects. We will discuss this more with you in one of our use cases. 3. you can determine what matters most to your prospects. Understanding what matters most to your prospects is the basis of all sales. If you understand the WIIFM, what is in it for me, you can understand how to help your prospects. 4. spend more time selling. If you are spending more time selling, you can get more leads and conversions as well. Because you are using a tool like this, it helps you stay on top of your work. 5. give sales managers a better way to help their team. We talk about the fact with 365 sales, it is not just for one person, but it also works great for teams. A sales manager can work with their team, understand what they are working on, and look at their activity to improve their sales. They can be more of a guide when they understand what they are working on. 6. flexible CRM solutions. One of the great things about Dynamics 365 for Sales is that it has a lot of customizations. We are not going to be able to talk about all of the customizations, but we will do our cover as many as we can. It is essential that if you need it to customize for your specific business, you can. Final Thoughts We hope you enjoyed the snippet from our Dynamics 365 Sales webinar. If you want to hear more about Dynamics 365 from a real Microsoft expert, watch the full webinar here.
https://youtu.be/KP1rvlrrrwY
A Modern Data Warehouse is a cloud-based solution that gathers and stores that information. Organizations can process this data to make intelligent decisions. That’s why various organizations use a Modern Data Warehouse to improve their finances, human resources, and operations business processes. Quality cloud-based warehouse departments need this information to make smarter decisions.
Modern Data Warehouse Pyramid There are five different components of a Modern Data Warehouse.
Level 1: Data Acquisition Data acquisition can come from a variety of sources such as:
- IoT devices
- Social media posts
- YouTube videos
- Website content
- Customer data
- Enterprise Resource Planning
- Legacy data stores
Level 2: Data Engineering Once you acquired it, you need to upload it into the data warehouse. Data engineering uses pipelines and ETL (extract, transform, load) tools. Using these different tools, you can upload that information to a data warehouse similar to a factory. Data engineering is similar to a truck bringing raw materials into a factory.
Level 3: Data Management Governance Once the data comes into the factory, you need someone to evaluate the quality of the data. You then need to steward that data because security and privacy must be considered.
Data governance helps ensure the quality of the info by stewarding, prepping, and cleaning the data to ensure it is ready for analysis.
Level 4: Reporting and Business Intelligence Once you prep and clean the data, you can start using factory analysis to take that raw material(data) and turn it into a finished good (business intelligence). For our purposes, we will use Microsoft Power BI to help you visualize the information by using advanced analytics, KPIs, and workflow automation. When you are finished, you can see exactly what’s going on with your data.
Level 5: Data Science Modern Data Warehouse is about more than seeing the information; it’s about using the data to make smarter decisions. That’s one of the key concepts you should walk away with here today. There are several different programs to help you leverage the data to your benefit, including:
- AI
- Deep learning
- Machine learning
- Statistical modeling
- Natural language processing (NLP)
Keep in mind that all the algorithms above need data to work successfully. The more data you provide, the smarter your decisions, and the smarter your results. It’s essential to see if you want to understand your reports that you leverage AI to get better answers, leading us back to Modern Data Warehouse. Again, it is more than gathering and storing data. It is about making smart decisions.
Final Thoughts Modern data warehouse takes the data most corporations have and turns it into actionable intelligence based on visual stories. If your organization is looking for ways to get the most out of this data, contact us today for a free 1-hour consultation.