Whitepaper | Empowering Your Team: A Guide to Successfully Rolling Out Microsoft Copilot Part One: Piloting Copilot

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As AI comes to dominate the world of technology, generative AI tools are becoming the key to staying competitive and efficient.

Enter Microsoft Copilot, an AI-powered assistant integrated with Microsoft 365. By automating routine tasks and providing intelligent suggestions, Copilot has the potential to revolutionise your team’s productivity and streamline your workflows.

However, a successful implementation takes more than purchasing licences and adding desktop shortcuts. A well-planned and structured rollout of Microsoft Copilot will ensure that your organisation reaps maximum benefits from this world-changing tool, while minimising disruption and wasted resources.

This guide outlines the essential steps for businesses to successfully implement and maximise the benefits of Copilot

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Whitepaper | Your Employees Are Probably Using ChatGPT – Are You Ready for the Risks?

The past two years have seen the meteoric rise of a technology that many experts hail as world-changing: generative artificial intelligence (AI). AI chatbots like ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, have become a nearly ubiquitous tool for individuals and businesses across many sectors. In fact, one in 10 Australians now report using ChatGPT for work 1 —regardless of their workplace’s official stance on AI usage.

To use ChatGPT effectively and safely at work, employees must be educated about its features, risks, and limitations. Key training topics are covered in our free whitepaper below!

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Supercharging CX with Customer Journey Management

Source: inQuba

The Value of Optimised Customer Experiences

It's difficult to argue that positive customer experiences don't provide benefits to both customers and business. When customers have a seamless, rewarding experience, the result is greater loyalty, improved customer retention and customer lifetime value (which invariably means greater customer spend). Having worked with businesses in a variety of industry verticals, it has always been exciting to demonstrate these principles when correlating CX scores with operational metrics, such as revenue or profit. And in reality, the points generally hold true.

Better customer experience also translates to lower operational cost to service the customer - this can be via lower complaints or through more efficient handling of customer queries/issues.

And because experiences are more difficult to replicate, than say a product feature, they can also be the ultimate competitive differentiator..

Source: inQuba

Where Traditional CX Falls Short

There is a "but" however. Simply measuring customer feedback, obtaining scores for your key metrics, and even correlating these with business outcomes, is no longer enough in today's hyper-connected world where an omni-channel approach to the customer journey is mandated.

I'm often reminded of my grandmother's ISP, who only offers support via a single channel, which isn't easily accessible for many people like her. But efficiently delivering a well-orchestrated omni-channel customer journey isn’t all that easy. Which begs the question; is it valuable to know that CX metrics for a given channel are on-target, if the customer is traversing many other channels to reach their goal? Or how do we know where the customer is dropping off and which journey path is actually the best for that individual customer?

And how does one bring together all experiences, touchpoints, and channels along the customer journey to ascertain (with a strong degree of confidence) where the pitfalls and opportunities are... all in real-time so that the customer can be engaged appropriately?

Add to this that often it is difficult to demonstrate tangible business value from traditional CX programs, within a reasonable lead time to ROI. Business leaders aren't merely interested in a CX-metric uplift; they want to understand what improvements mean in terms of increased acquisition, retention, and upsell revenue.

The need is for a better understanding of causality and improved control over customer outcomes along the journey i.e. Customer Journey Orchestration or better Customer Journey Management.

Customer Journey Orchestration

What really excites me about Customer Journey Management/Orchestration is that it provides a mechanism to help customers reach their goals, all while making it easier to demonstrate tangible business results to leadership. It all starts with a clearly-defined goal, followed by a mapping of the key journey points that customers traverse towards that goal (which are often done via customer Job To Be Done and Journey Mapping Workshops).

Like any CX or Customer Journey Management methodology, good data is the cornerstone of a successful program. However, where many methodologies and technologies miss out is the customer's context - there's a reason they say that "Context is King".

But context needs to extend beyond behavioural context (i.e. what the customer has done or what they are likely to do). It must include the customer's emotional context (what they think/feel), and this often requires a "conversation" or dialogue with the customer.

A good example of this was with an insurer's onboarding journey, where we were able to ask customers what they wanted to achieve in retirement. This simple additional emotional context allowed us to better understand the customers' context and thereby personalise the customer's journey accordingly. It facilitated personalised customer nudges along the onboarding journey, and the results spoke for themselves; with the test group cohort outperforming the control group by 34%.

Example Customer Journey: Acquisition Journey (source: inQuba)

Finally, Customer Journey Orchestration needs to extend beyond a single channel. Where customers need or want to switch channels, the methodology should allow them to do so. Think about my grandmother with her ISP. Alternatively, think of a customer that is going through the Application Journey and hits a snag when completing online forms. Typically, this customer might drop off if the effort is too high, but by managing the customer journey we can identify when the customer has gone idle and nudge them, perhaps by offering support via a different channel such as the call centre. There might be other points along the journey where the customer goes idle, and where different nudges/engagements would be appropriate, but the compounding effect of these incremental, contextual nudges adds immensely to the final result - customers reaching the goal.

Journey Summaries, including Journey Duration, Status, and Sentiment Overview (Source: inQuba)

Demonstrating Value

To my earlier point, business leaders need to demonstrate causality in order to prove the value of initiatives. Customer Journey Orchestration is no different, which is why an experimental design is best when first testing your program's impact. Experimentation in business is nothing new, with Harvard Business review writing about it back in 2014 already.

To ensure that you can more easily demonstrate the value of your journey programs, I find that it is best to consider the following design principles:

• Start small by selecting a customer journey (what others might often call a "micro journey") that has high business impact

• Embed test and control groups in the program design, at least until you've proven that your approach adds value

• Embrace Outside-In input by leveraging the expertise of people outside your domain to help uncover blind spots in your Customer Journeys and Engagements

• Be bold; to innovate by definition means to do something different. Many of our customers have realised immense value by trying new digital channels and nudges/engagements to help customers along their journeys

Getting Started

Customer Journey Management and Orchestration is as much a methodology as it is a technology-based approach. That is why we recommend starting with Journey Workshops, where we identify customer journey points, drop-offs, goal(s), as well as opportunities to engage and nudge the customer.

If you're as excited about Journey Management and Orchestration as I am, look out for one of our webinars or round-tables. Or, get in touch for a coffee & chat.

Hook, Line, and Sinker Building Phishing Resilience in Australian Businesses - Whitepaper

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The threat of phishing cannot be underestimated—nor can it be entirely eliminated. However, with diligent attention to education, preparation, and response, Australian businesses can build a resilient defence that significantly reduces the risk and potential impact of phishing attacks.

We’ve created this whitepaper to help raise awareness so you and your business can avoid being compromised.

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Use Case | Australian Healthcare Provider Maximises Efficiency and Success Through Data Integration, Business Intelligence and Modern Reporting

Business owners, CEOs, managers, and employees all face decisions daily that impact the success of our organisations and individual roles. It is crucial to use data to make the best decisions and focus energy on getting the best return on time investment. We have lots of data, that is a certainty!

One of our clients in the healthcare sector had a significant problem with data integration and effective reporting. While providing medical devices for patients, they were unable to make data-driven decisions due to lagging and inaccurate reporting. This impacted their appointing setting across the entire business and across various locations in Australia.

Reporting challenges faced were:

• A lack of insight into the business, proving difficult to make good decisions on staffing and resource planning.

• Difficulty determining which clinics were busy and the number of reserved appointments/placeholders available within the calendars.

• Inconsistency across the retail brands.

• Different diary management systems and appointment definitions.

• Operational data entry issues.

The business needed to run more efficiently, and management had to make effective decisions.

To address these challenges, we used a Business Intelligence tool (PowerBI, Qlik, and Tableau are popular examples) to create a holistic view of business performance and leveraged the data warehouse for the brands.

Data integration and Business Intelligence tools allowed us to:

• Create reports according to exact Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

• Create a mapping table for appointment types and a traffic light "dashboard" for quick identification of low/high-performing areas, with a drill-down function for further investigation.

• We can now examine the percentage of booked/busy areas by business unit, state, clinic, and medical practitioner to make changes in real time.

• Determine the number of reserved "test" appointments available.

• Check for free space within the calendars.

• Enable reconciliation and check for any data entry errors.

Using this approach provided the following business and efficiency benefits:

• A holistic view of the business.

• Management can make informed decisions on where to deploy resources. Call centre staff can be tasked with booking appointments for clinics with a high vacancy rate or moving appointments forward if needed.

• Connecting various data sources highlighted the inconsistent format/terminology used across different clinics, which was then improved.

• Reduction in errors due to manual data entry.

You may already have access to Microsoft PowerBI or have used it before, but are you getting the business benefits discussed above? We work on new projects to make clients more efficient and effective with better data integration, reporting, and insights.

Phone: 08 8238 6500

Email: sales@advance.net.au

Website: www.advance.net.au

DATA: Data Debt - A Silent Challenge in Data Engineering

In the realm of data engineering, the spotlight often falls on technological innovation and how to manage burgeoning datasets efficiently. Yet, a critical but less discussed aspect is 'data debt.'

What is Data Debt?

Data debt arises when shortcuts in data handling, such as collection, storage, and management, are taken. Driven by the urgency to produce results, compromises like embedding transformations directly into SQL, instead of utilising variables, are made. Although this might offer immediate time savings, it can lead to poorly structured datasets and overlooked documentation, causing long-term complications.

Real-World Impact

The repercussions of data debt are significant and widespread. While no one intentionally codes a server’s IP address only to change the production server pre-weekend with a Monday board meeting looming, such scenarios are not unheard of. This often results in teams spending excessive time deciphering value calculations and dependent data sources, causing project delays and data inaccuracies.

Strategies to Mitigate Data Debt

Documentation: While documenting data sources, transformations, and assumptions can seem burdensome, it's invaluable for managing complexity. Balancing the speed of development with adequate documentation is key. Encouraging new hires to contribute to documentation and code improvement can also be effective. This not only ensures the upkeep of your data processes but also fosters a learning environment.

Data Governance: Implementing a solid data governance framework is essential. This involves establishing clear policies and procedures for data management to minimise inconsistencies and inefficiencies, ultimately reducing data debt.

Regular Audits: Conducting regular audits is crucial. Surprisingly, some ETL/ELT processes yield inconsistent results upon repetition. Regular audits help identify data quality issues, code alterations, and state-dependent calculations, ensuring reliability and consistency in data processing.

Looking Ahead
As Joel Spolsky aptly put it, "code doesn't rust," but in our interconnected world, even code can 'rust.' Adapting swiftly is crucial, yet challenging when burdened with significant data debt.

One lingering question remains: Is managing data debt a technical challenge or a strategic business issue that requires proper budgeting and management?

Have you encountered similar challenges? How does your organisation address data debt?

Use Case | Unlocking Efficiency: Data Integration Transforms Travel and Accommodation Business

Data is the lifeblood of success, but it's also overwhelming, and people often ask us where to start with a data project. Usually, it's the place that is causing significant pain.

In the example below, we discussed the existing process and the challenges this causes and applied a process and software to automate and simplify the process.

Invoice/File Processing

Challenges

1. Invoice Overload

Travel and accommodation businesses deal with a high volume of invoices daily. Manually processing and approving these invoices can be overwhelming, leading to delays, errors, and inefficiencies.

2. Visibility Gap

Without real-time visibility into invoice commitments, businesses often find themselves in the dark until month-end or the next reporting cycle. This lack of transparency hampers decision-making and financial planning.

3. Manual Data Entry Woes

The tedious task of manually entering invoice details consumes valuable time and resources. Errors are common, and the process is prone to bottlenecks.

Solutions

1. Streamlined Approval Process

We’ve transformed the way invoices are handled. By implementing an automated scanning and approval process, we enabled swift and accurate invoice management. Say goodbye to paperwork overload!

2. Web-Based Portal

Our user-friendly web portal empowers clients to track invoices in real-time. From submission to approval status, everything is at their fingertips. No more waiting for month-end reports!

3. Budget Alerts

Our system proactively alerts departments and projects when invoices threaten to exceed budgets. Timely notifications prevent financial surprises and allow for course corrections.

Benefits

1. Workload Reduction

Significantly reduce manual effort. Staff can focus on strategic tasks, knowing that routine processes are automated.

2. Informed Decision-Making

Real-time visibility enables better decisions. Businesses can allocate resources wisely, optimise spending, and stay ahead of financial commitments.

Data and system integration is not just about solving problems. This type of work empowers businesses to thrive. Efficiency, transparency, and informed decision-making are the cornerstones of our success.

Interested in transforming your business? Reach out to us today below.

Email: sales@advance.net.au

Phone: +61 8 8238 6500

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Cybersecurity Myths Debunked - Whitepaper

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Cybersecurity is no longer a new topic for most organisations.

Digital transformation creates incredible opportunities in almost all industries, but it brings with it unique and modern challenges. While those challenges are generally understood, several myths still surround them. In this whitepaper, we take a look at some of the common ones and check the facts.

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Data Security - ASD Cyber Threat Report 2024

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Every business needs to protect its data. The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) releases a Cyber Threat Report every year that covers the state of cybersecurity, cybercrime, and cyber resilience in Australia. In this whitepaper, we summarise and analyse the most important findings that are essential to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

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Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan

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A CIRP empowers business leaders to take a proactive, predictable approach to cybersecurity incident management—rather than waiting for an incident to occur and trying to determine how to respond under intense pressure.

In this whitepaper, we’ll delve into the essential components of a CIRP and how to create one that suits your organisation’s specific needs.

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Cybersecurity: What is a cyber-aware culture, why it’s important, and how to create one.

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Employees can be a business’s greatest cybersecurity asset or its biggest vulnerability. As modern businesses place greater emphasis on technical cybersecurity defences and controls, cyber attackers are increasingly focusing on the ‘human factor’ by targeting employees.

It’s often said that a business is only as secure as its least informed employee. No matter how much a business has invested in cybersecurity, the unfortunate truth is that it can all be undone in seconds by a single employee who lacks a basic understanding of cybersecurity. This is why building a “securityaware culture” within an organisation is not just a high return on investment, but a cybersecurity necessity.

So, what is a Security-Aware Culture? Read the whitepaper to get a grasp on this important element in protecting your data, improving compliance and safeguarding intellectual property.

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Cloud Security - A Shared Responsibility | Understand the basics

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Using cloud software like Xero, MYOB, or Salesforce? Our free whitepaper provides a foundation of cloud cybersecurity considerations to ensure your data is secure.

While it would be nice to say that security in the cloud is purely the responsibility of the cloud service provider, the reality is that such an important responsibility must be shared between the cloud provider and the consumer.

However, ‘cloud’ is a broad term that describes several different technical frameworks, and the security responsibilities are shared differently in each.

This paper will cover the three most common cloud frameworks and how security responsibilities are split between the provider and the consumer.

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Essential Eight Best Practices Guide: Multifactor Authentication

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Have you ever been annoyed by those multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes that are sent to you via SMS or email when you try to log in to your online accounts? While it's true that these codes can be a bit of a hassle, they serve an incredibly important purpose - protecting your accounts from being stolen. Also, we can actually make those codes a much more seamless experience with lower friction and fewer steps to gain access to your systems.

In today's digital age, over 5 billion people are connected to the internet, and any of them are potential cybercriminals who may try to guess your username and password to gain access to your accounts.

While it's essential to use strong, unique passwords for all of your online accounts, it's not always enough to protect you from account takeovers. That's where MFA comes in. This security feature requires you to provide an additional form of verification, such as a code that is sent to your phone or email or available in an app, which is needed to log in to your account. And it's incredibly effective - MFA has been shown to block 99.99% of account takeover attempts.

Check out the whitepaper which covers MFA in more detail above.

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Customer Story | Meals on Wheels SA centralises IT to realise $50,000 cost saving

Meals on Wheels SA centralises its IT environment to better coordinate thousands of daily deliveries

Almost everyone has heard of Meals on Wheels. It was first formed in South Australia (SA), in 1954. Founder Doris Taylor MBE, wheelchair-bound from an accident as a teen, empathised with the challenges of those returning home from the hospital. She noted, in the elderly in particular, that they had trouble shopping and preparing meals for themselves, often depriving them of the ability to live independently.  Meals on Wheels was her remedy. Nearly seventy years on, more than 50 million meals have made their way into SA homes. The organisation is currently providing 4,300 meals per day to customers across the state.

 Key Challenges

• The state-wide operation included a vast degree of variation among branches

• There was no single payments system and accounting was resource-intense

• COVID-19 caused a surge in demand that could only be met by a centralised model

In every other Australian state, Meals on Wheels operates as several independent entities. However, Meals on Wheels SA is a state-wide association with 80 branches. Some were established under the state-wide model, while others were independent organisations incorporated into the association - the latter managed their own affairs, with committees, treasurers, bank accounts and chequebooks. Add to this that many pre-dated the internet, set up without the benefit of computerised systems, and you get an idea of the variation within the Meals on Wheels model.

Even so, it’s a model that has served the community well for 50 years. Testimony to its success is the tenure of its volunteers. Among seven thousand volunteers, the average age is 75. David Smith, Executive Manager, Corporate Services for Meal on Wheels, recalls the first time he attended an annual award ceremony recognising long term volunteers; “There were 40 people who had been volunteering for 40 years,” he says. 

COVID-19 caused a surge in demand

When COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, hitting Australian businesses hard, Meals on Wheels wasn’t one of them. “Quite the opposite,” Smith says. A surge in demand for meal services presented the organisation with the challenge of meeting it with maximum efficiency.

Growing fast in a controlled way required digitising and automating financial processes. It also called for complete compliance with Work health and safety (WHS) standards which view volunteers as employees, governed by the same safety rules. This includes 75 to 90-year-old volunteers who'd never had to think about them before during their working lives. “They've always stood on a ladder on top of a table to change a light bulb, so why would they not do it now?” says Smith. 

Finally, the model needed to flexibly accommodate digital and non-digital interaction. Any assumption that in time everyone will become comfortable with internet-based services doesn’t take into consideration the aging population. “Just because you are computer literate now, it doesn't mean that when you're 85 or 90 you're somehow going to be magically better. And so this market for people who are getting older, and some of their capacities have diminished, they're always going to need a meal delivered to their house,” says Smith.

Meals on Wheels SA contacted Advance Business Consulting to help them cut through these requirements to arrive at a system that would allow them to grow securely with a fraction of the effort while getting more from their technology and data.

The challenge of connecting everyone

Creating a common organisational infrastructure was a priority. But not every branch had a physical office to call their own, and a few smaller branches had been relying on their own computers to log into Meals on Wheels. Smith leaned on Advance’s consultancy services to design an infrastructure capable of accommodating what Smith refers to as the “lowest common denominator of what you need a computer to be.” In this way, it would be embraced by everyone, regardless of their circumstance.

Security was top of mind. “If you have to put a secure internet connection in a branch and a managed computer, and that computer is only going to be used for one hour, twice a week, it's quite a big investment for a very small use case. Also, you don't know who's going to be using it. It might be 20 different people in a branch,” says Smith, who looked to Advance to propose the most viable security strategy.

Opportunity to streamline payments processes

Digitising and automating payments within one simple payment system was identified as an excellent way to inject efficiency into operations. In the past, Central Office would invoice the branches for meals delivered, and reimburse costs incurred by them. If those costs had been incurred directly by Central Office and not the branch, which sometimes happened, another invoice would be issued for the money to be returned. A reconciliation was completed every three months on a simple electronic cash book, to check the accuracy and retrieve surplus funds advanced but not used. There was also an exercise of distributing funds from more profitable branches to those who needed “propping up” to ensure equity across the model. Accounting in this way took time and resources that Meals on Wheels decided it would prefer to apply to service excellence.

Solutions:

• Advance standardised how branches connected to Central Office

• World-class security was built in via VPN enabled teleworker devices

• M-Files automated important processes like payments and reimbursements

One simple means of connecting

Advance migrated Meals on Wheels from Telstra 4g connections to a Cisco Meraki SD-WAN with Teleworker VPN, which has proven to be incredibly successful. Teleworker devices are not carrier dependent, for one thing, which supports the association’s need for flexible connectivity, as well as delivering world-class security. In this model, secure corporate LAN connectivity is extended to employees at remote sites via Meraki APs (access points), without needing them to install VPN software on their devices themselves. It can all be done centrally, keeping things simple. 

Added security benefits are realised through Meals on Wheels’ ability to whitelist applications, making them unavailable to users on their devices, as well as best-in-class anti-virus software. This provides better protection from hackers. “Meals on Wheels is a very well-known name, which unfortunately makes us an obvious target for cybercrime,” says David.

A unified payment system

Improving the efficiency of the outgrown payment system began with eliminating the need for branches to pay their own invoices. “How do you get at branches to be able to effectively send invoices into Central Office if they want to send them by fax, which some still do?” says Smith. “But of course, that really just pushes the workload elsewhere.”

Advance suggested M-Files, a document management system for coordinating the right information to the right people at the right time. This immediately gave branches the ability to scan an invoice, sign to confirm goods had been received, and be paid automatically. Where branches don’t always have a reliable internet connection, M-Files helps with that too: “M-Files was great because we could actually fall back to a mobile phone to do the same thing,” says Smith. “And in a couple of cases we still do use the fax, but what it means is no longer needing branches to pay any bills”

Verifying and reimbursing drivers

Additionally, M-Files was set up to support driver reimbursement. Volunteers are paid a fee per delivery for their petrol and wear and tear. “They used to be paid in cash. The driver could take the money and if they didn't, it got flipped into a bucket and then banked as a donation,” says Smith. M-Files has automated the entire process with a workflow that lets Meals on Wheels collect a declaration from drivers with their bank account details for payment. Stored securely in M-Files, it can be centrally and accurately managed. 

“We realised while we're doing this, it would be useful to check that the person we're paying a driver reimbursement to is actually a volunteer,” says Smith, explaining that people used to get roped in to be a deliverer and stay for 10 years when they're not actually on the books. If they're not registered, it means they haven't had a police check. “Right through this process, we found little added gains from simply just trying to improve a process,” Smith says.

Compliance is much easier

Driver verification is one aspect of compliance, but it’s not the only one to benefit from the new technology-enabled operational model. Meals on Wheels can now issue communications on things like Work health and safety rules to employees and volunteers with minimum effort and feel confident they have been received.

Outcomes:

• Closing the branch bank accounts saves $50,000 per year

• New employees can be onboarded, from anywhere, in moments

• Centralised management of data drives compliance across 80 branches and 7000 volunteers

When you no longer need to pay for anything by cash or cheque, you don't need money. Meals on Wheels has been able to close all its bank accounts. This simple act is saving of $50,000 per year in bank fees and transaction costs. 

Security concerns are alleviated through central controls configured by Advance that let Meals on Wheels whitelist applications and prevent people from running programs that are not supposed to.

The project, which began pre-pandemic, turned out to be well-timed since it allowed Meals on Wheels to rapidly transition to a work-from-home strategy during COVID-19 restrictions with the Meraki teleworking devices. “When our staff had to work from home, it was a trivial matter to give them a network device with a SIM card in and connect them and get them working. It was an accidental benefit that really set us in good stead.”

Since kicking off its transformation, Meals on Wheels SA has gone from strength to strength, most recently introducing a new ERP system, Pronto, for dealing with manufacturing, and other important resources, with efficiency, and creating a host of web applications using low-code development tool Intrexx, provided by Advance.  

With the expansion of services no longer a heavy lift, the sky is the limit.

CONTACT US

For any further information regarding how Advance can help implement a successful digital process in your industry, get in touch with us here. We’re here to help!

KEY TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS

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Cyber Security | SD-WAN | Cisco Meraki

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Low-code development platform | Intrexx

Customer Story | Accurate data delivers 1834 Hotels a competitive edge with Qlik

In 2021 we held our Innovators 2021 event focussed on client stories about how they tackled COVID-19 and what role technology played during this unique time. You can read the recap and watch the full video of the event here.

Continuing on from the event, we sat down with 1834’s CEO Andrew Bullock to write up this customer story. This case study outlines what 1834 Hotels do, the challenges in managing data and how a business intelligence tool can streamline reporting to free up staff and automate daily business tasks.

Click on the case study below

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1834 Hotels Case Study

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Build Apps quickly to unlock efficiencies | Intrexx: A Low-code Development Environment

People often ask, what is a low-code development environment and why do we use Intrexx for our own apps at Advance as well as for our clients.

What is a low-code environment?

These environments are for people in need of quickly building apps and employing visual development environments and automated links to back-end systems, APIs, databases, other systems or data sources. They are designed to make it comparatively easy for people to design, build, and launch apps and solve business problems.

How to describe Intrexx

Intrexx is a complete low-code development environment which at its core contains:

1. A data integration platform

2. A process automation engine

3. A responsive end-user interface builder for both web and mobile applications

Intrexx allows developers to build applications faster by leveraging pre-built data and application connectors, a drag & drop process builder and UI designer.

What can you build with Intrexx?

1. Data integration systems. Read, transform and write data from and to multiple sources using pre-built connectors, or develop your own.

2. User-focused applications which integrate cross-departmental digital workflows.

3. Customer and supplier extranets.

Benefits of Intrexx

Reduce the number of applications and systems employees need to use. Break down silos and streamline workflows.

Accelerate entry of data and access to information. Combine information and workflows from multiple sources.

Build, innovate and change. New applications can be built and deployed in 20% of the time taken using traditional coding methods.

Zero deployment client access, users can immediately start using applications in any browser or phone without needing software to be deployed.

Platform agnostic - development environment runs on Windows, OSX or Linux reducing the cost of entry. Cloud options are also available where a local environment isn’t available.

Summary: Designed to make it relatively easy for people to design, build, and launch applications quickly, without having to worry about the nuances of underlying operating systems or scalability requirements.

Examples of projects we have built

1.       Customer portals to allow users to place orders, view transaction history and communicate with suppliers. The key benefit of using Intrexx, was the speed of development, the ability to rapidly change the user interface based on customer feedback and the ability to integrate with a number of existing legacy systems.

2.       Financial processing applications. Accounts Payable (AP) processing is an area which often varies between businesses. Many off-the-shelf AP automation systems are complex to configure as approval processes can be quite unique. Intrexx allowed us to integrate with multiple systems, email notifications and provide an easy interface for users to view and approve requests.

3.       Data entry and integration portals. In many businesses, we find that users are using multiple systems; even so, there may be data which is missing between these systems or not consistent between them. In such cases, we have found Intrexx to be able to provide a unified view of the data and allow users to enter additional data as required.

4.       Systems integration applications. Intrexx provides a structured and rapid platform to allow the integration between existing applications.

5.       Internet of things – Intrexx can subscribe to IoT services that gather IoT endpoint data. We’ve used Intrexx to display real-time sensor data in production scenarios and provide process visibility to operators.

You have the data, use it. Low-code platforms and ECM solutions can help here. As mentioned above, inputs from e-forms like an expense claim or a leave request can be connected to a workflow to automate the approval for such requests. Rules can be applied and a query against a database can automatically check if an employee has the leave entitlement they are requesting. If that leave is available, the system sends an approval that can be completed by a manager from their mobile device. This saves time and provides instant approvals with self-service applications.

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Digital Transformation | 5 Step Practical Roadmap For Digital Transformation

Leading digital transformation and data science experts like Bill Schmarzo say that Digital Transformation should be EVERY organisations’ #1 strategic business initiative.

We have been working with client’s to digitise manual processes and automate tasks to unlock efficiencies and a to create a better customer experience. These are the early steps in starting digital transformation. Below is a practical guide on how you can implement digital transformation in your business. 5 things that will have a big impact and accelerate innovation.

Process automation and improving efficiencies are at the core of digital transformation. Organisations must be more vigilant than ever in remaining innovative and future-proofing their businesses. This is critical in remaining profitable and competitive.

On average, “digital masters” are 26% more profitable than their peers according to George Westerman, Principal Research Scientist with the MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation.

Like to speak to us about what we can do for your business? Reach us here.

Digital Transformation Defined

There are many definitions of digital transformation. Think of it as a shift in philosophy. Digital transformation will allow an organisation to quickly adapt to new changes and opportunities through making the most of technology.

It is the process of using digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes and culture to deliver a better customer experience.

Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people and processes to fundamentally change business performance. Digital masters do two things better than other companies: identifying digital ways to change their businesses, and building leadership capabilities to drive transformation, according to George Westerman.

As employees, our everyday work life is filled with digital technology and yet the reliance on manual, paper-based processes and systems is still huge. We know what we know, and sometimes miss the opportunities provided by today’s platforms to improve our business operations. Simple fixes that capture data electronically, autmoate processes and provide new insights. The real value is in acting on the data we collect.

5 Tangible Steps to Transform your Business.

Step 1. Centralised Document Management

Today I spent close to an hour looking for a document. I wanted to use a file i’d created which had a lot of historical data and a good process document for a project we completed around business intelligence. For some reason, I didn't save this document to our document repository (M-Files) and it's lost somewhere on 1 of the 6 devices I use regularly. In contrast, I was able to collaborate with our marketing manager on an event plan and save my changes to his document. All with version control and from my mobile phone because it was saved in the repository.

Centralised document management is powerful, and it can be simple and quick to deploy.

Enterprise Content Management enables:

• A central place for documents

• Powerful search

• Collaboration on documents, sharing and co-authoring

• Security - Only the right staff see particular documents and you have digital copies

• Eliminate duplicates

• Workflows to automate processes

• Version control and easy to restore documents without needing IT

Step 2. Digitise Paper Forms

Unlock efficiencies by digitising files. Reduce errors, lower risk and open the door for process automation and new insights.

Think of the new employee onboarding process for HR as an example. There are lots of forms, social media policies, privacy policies, payroll information and so on. All of this is repeatable when a new employee joins or leaves the organisation.

Instead of paper forms, you can easily create digital versions that work with mobile devices and enable your new staff hit the ground running, instead of getting up to speed for a week or more before they can contribute to your business. Apply digital forms to repetitive processes.

Did you know that even some of the largest vendors of software products still needed their employees to send in paper receipts for expense claims? Not all vendors embrace their own technology and someone has to physically validate the receipts and there was no way to efficiently pick up on duplicates or fraud. Smarter organisations like the Australian Tax Office now use predictive analytics tools to pick up on anomalies and provide new opportunities to detect fraud.

Did you know that you can quickly digitise paper forms using affordable platforms? Low-code, drag and drop platforms like Intrexx make it easy for virtually any employee to create e-forms which work on mobile devices and they can be plugged into a workflow to automate a manual process like an expense claim or a pricing request approval.

3. Automate Processes

You have the data, use it. Low-code platforms and ECM solutions can help here. As mentioned above, inputs from e-forms like an expense claim or a leave request can be connected to a workflow to automate the approval for such requests. Rules can be applied and a query against a database can automatically check if an employee has the leave entitlement they are requesting. If that leave is available, the system sends an approval that can be completed by a manager from their mobile device. This saves time and provides instant approvals with self-service applications.

4. Connect to Business Systems

Data collected from e-forms will be more valuable if it is connected to a business system. For example, the accounts receivable process (AR) will work more efficiently if invoices are connected to an accounting or ERP system like Xero or SAP. Workflows will automate a process and make it more efficient. Invoices can be automatically scanned, routed to the next step of the approval process, fields can be prefilled and the invoice can be sent to the right person to sign-off and complete the transaction. Connecting business systems will enable a holistic view and opportunities for better reporting.

5. New Insights. Analyse and Act on New Opportunities.

Digital transformation creates new data and the value realised when you can analyse and action it.

Take advantage of opportunities created by new views and a fresh perspective.

Centralising documents increases efficiency and enables productivity. The opportunity for better collaboration and process automation through workflow is now possible.

Digital forms save time and let you capture, automate and analyse data trapped in paper documents. Risk and compliance is improved with access to digital documents and if someone leaves the organisation, you still have control over valuable intellectual property.

You can transform the way your business operates with what you have achieved through digitising your business and developing digital processes. Electronic document management platforms and electronic forms provide access to operational data you can report on.

Analyse the data and look at trends, issues or opportunities to increase revenue. The reporting functionality of platforms has come a long way and should provide with a good baseline view for analysis. You can connect the data into operation dashboards or automate reporting using any of the major business intelligence (BI) and visualisation tools which are very powerful and affordable.

Digital transformation reduces administrative tasks and that directly helps staff to focus on their core job and higher-value tasks.

Summary

Digital transformation is all about efficiencies. Capturing data in digital forms enables automated processes and workflow. This is a key output from digital transformation and will transform the way a business operates. Digital transformation will help make a business smarter through new insights, leaner with increased efficiencies and more secure through reduced risk and improved compliance.

True digital transformation is a new way of thinking and applies to the whole business. In practice, you can start small and get some wins with things like digitising paper forms or implementing a central document repository. A phased approach will help you demonstrate what is possible and show a tangible result that is truly transformative. A better way of doing things that not only improves efficiency but also improves employee's job satisfaction by reducing the low value, repetitive tasks.

Want to know more? Take a look at the videos below or speak to us about how other companies have transformed their business. One small process can make a huge impact. Reach us here. We have been working with clients to get the most out of their technology for over 20 years.

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Like to speak to us about what we can do for your business? Reach us here.

3 Ways BI Increases Your Profits

By now we’re sure you’ve heard about Business Intelligence, or BI. Everyone is saying that it can help your business and streamline your processes. Perhaps you're on the fence about it? Maybe you don't know enough about it to make a decision? Let us break it down into the simplest form for you… Business Intelligence is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyse an organisation's raw data. Now that you know what it is, you may ask if it's really worth the money? The answer is, YES! and here’s why. 

BI allows your decisions to be driven by data

When you are the one making day-to-day decisions about where your company is heading, or where to best spend your money, it can become a stressful roller coaster. Sometimes you just have a hunch...which can be very wrong. Other times decisions are made based on anger or personal issues, or even out of fear.

With a quality Business Intelligence software in place, you’ll never have to speculate again about whether or not to trust your gut. BI enables you to get well-organised and detailed data that allows you to move in the right direction based on hard facts. Having that ability arguably leads to better informed business decisions. Having consolidated facts about your business helps to also make very specific adjustments. For example, you might find that one of your products or services isn't selling well and choose to stop offering that product, or make an adjustment to it.

The real beauty of BI is its ability to help you get to know your customers better. What are they buying? How often are they returning? This allows you to increase opportunities for your high-value customers. Business Intelligence can improve profits in all of these scenarios.

BI data helps you decide where to cut costs

It’s the question we all want the answer to… how can we improve profits? Well the answer lies in Business Intelligence. The reason for this? it helps you find out where you can cut costs. It’s simple common sense… if your expenses are less, your profits immediately go up. The data you receive from using BI is packaged in a format that's easy to read. You can even do a query search to find specific information. When you evaluate your data, you can find out what isn't working efficiently and fix it. You can learn which products or services are not selling and stop providing them. Sometimes, you will discover that you can cut costs by using another manufacturer, or offering a more tailored service based on your customers needs. There are innumerable places where BI can help you cut costs, and thus, improve your profits.

Some of the BI products we offer

Greater insights into consumer behaviour

One of the main advantages of investing in BI and skilled personnel is the fact that it will boost your ability to analyse the current consumer buying trends. Like any business, once you understand what your consumers are buying, you can use this information to develop products that match the current consumption trends and consequently improve your profitability.

BI can be used to enable informed business decisions across the whole business, increasing operational and strategic efficiency on both a micro and macro level. Whether you are looking to to gain an accurate view of sales or profit figures in real-time, consolidate critical reports, drill-down deeper into the numbers or set business priorities and goals at a top level, implementing an effective BI tool can help you make the right decisions at the right time.

To learn more about the Business Intelligence products we offer at Advance get in touch with us today!

Security Considerations When Employees Leave

With an increase in the use of external websites which store data, personal mobile devices being used for work and the rising trend of employees performing their duties outside the traditional workplace model – you need to ask yourself, are you doing enough to ensure the security and confidentiality of yours and your customer’s information?

When an employee leaves a business, it is imperative that a process is followed to de-provision access to systems they may have used. Here a problem arises – it is likely that the Company has not kept sufficient records of what information the now ex-employee could access, and as such will likely miss one or more areas that the employee can access.

As an example, have a look at some access rights that an employee may begin with and gain over their tenure with your business:

• Internet Access
• Internal WiFi Access
• Domain Access
• Security/Alarm access codes
• Website Passwords
• Social Media Passwords
• Credit Card Details
• Car Keys
• WiFi access
• Stored login information on personal devices
• Cloud Account login information
• USB backups held offsite by that employee
• VPN Details to connect to the internal server
• Knowledge of other employee’s usernames and passwords

More information given in confidence to an employee results in more work that needs to be done to remove that employee, leaving the whole termination process liable to human error. It is vital to ensure that employee access to systems and data is de-provisioned completely and on-time to protect your business.

Simple Steps: Begin with provisioning and recording

Once a decision has been made to hire an employee for a certain role; access rights, hardware requirements and external access should be determined prior to their start date. This information needs to be recorded consistently, and an approval process needs to be in place for any security related process or device.

Using a hardware or software solution, you should enable enough security to prevent users from using their own file sync solutions (e.g DropBox, Box etc). The same applies with USB devices, implement hardware or software restrictions to ensure that USB’s can only be used with the right approval.

If users have private work information or data on a mobile phone, implement a device management system that supports the remote wiping of data on mobile devices – this includes tablets. An extra measure would be to encrypt laptops and hard drives to ensure that no sensitive information is lost when a device is lost or misplaced.

Simple Steps: Employee leaving

Once an end-date has been determined for an employee, they should be put into a process to have their rights and access removed – starting with a review of your documentation on their current access. Once their end date is reached, the removal should begin almost as soon as they are out the door.

Retrieve any hardware and mobile devices that belong to the business, change passwords for accounts that didn’t have unique logins for each user (e.g social media), remove the users security access to the building (change the pin code if necessary) and if the office WiFi uses a single password, have this changed. If the employee had a credit card, ensure it is cancelled completely and they are removed from the account.

Simple Steps full stop

To reduce the impact of an employee’s departure, it is beneficial to implement policies and access methods that reduce the need for hands-on changes which can affect other staff (password reset’s, access code changes, etc)

Our tips:

• Ensure that each user has their own personal login where possible, including domain access, systems that are used and websites.
• Ensure that important financial information is never given out to employees. If they do have a credit card, it should be on the business account but under their details, with its own limit.
• Limit access to USB ports and other ports that can transfer information, ensuring that employees do not have installation rights.
• All employees to understand the importance of not sharing usernames and passwords
• Rather than using a WiFi password to authenticate wireless users, this should be done by MAC address with approval, keeping record of who devices belong to.
• Do not give any employee access to social media sites. This should be controlled by one person only and when that person leaves then all passwords should be changed immediately.

What can’t be helped

Even with the best security and processes in place, there will always be ways that your security could be compromised. However, with effective internal processes, good documentation, follow ups and reviews of your procedures you can drastically minimise the effect of an employee leaving.

Why not start looking at your systems now?

For more information on strengthening your IT security please contact us.

Are Your Business Processes a Target For Scammers?

Cyber criminals are tricking CEOs out of millions of dollars by exploiting their organisations poor business processes and fooling unsuspecting employees into transferring money. The growing trend, known as ‘CEO Whaling’, involves plain text e-mails being sent to employees’ responsible financial transactions, masquerading as their boss requesting them to urgently pay invoices. Those falling victim have no way to recover the money with insurance generally not covering international fraud.

These highly organised con artists are not just spamming companies at random, instead they’re using social media to research potential victims, taking advantage when they’re most vulnerable. For example they may identify through social media that the boss or the person responsible for financial transfers is on a holiday and that’s when they strike, sending an e-mail saying they’re about to get on a flight and need an invoice paid urgently. They use a fake e-mail address and include some personal details uncovered via social media to give the e-mail just enough validity to trick the employee into believing it needs to be done and that requesting confirmation will probably make their boss angry due to the delay caused by being on a flight and unable to respond.

Organisations with business processes that rely on an e-mail from the boss for financial approvals are at high risk of falling victim to this scam as the process doesn’t include any validation that the invoice hasn’t been modified or that the approval has come from the person with authority to approving it. Busy people find the use of e-mail in a process like this convenient as they can be sent at will from virtually anywhere, on any device, at any time, putting them at risk of being exploited. Processes that involve printing, stamping, signing and shuffling paper around for approval stall when the approver is not in the same location as the document. Allowing e-mails to be used in place of an actual signature on the document makes the process susceptible to scammers. This issue was recently reported on in The Advertiser, read that article here http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/how-australian-bosses-are-being-tricked-out-of-millions-of-dollars-by-cyber-criminals/news-story/57318e06c02a8215b8d67d521a219aea.

The solution to avoid being tricked by the scammers is to implement a flexible solution like M-Files where the business process is migrated into the system with secure access provided via desktop, web and mobile app. M-Files stores a single electronic version of the invoice with security that restricts access to only the people involved. This avoids copies of the invoice being e-mailed, instead those involved all refer to the same version stored in M-Files. With the approval process managed via workflow, the approver is notified of an invoice to approve and is required to authenticate themselves to view and approve, which can be done quickly a simply via the mobile app using fingerprint authentication. The people responsible for payment are then notified and required to authenticate to access the approved invoice. M-Files keeps a detailed version history of every change the document goes through, so if the person responsible for payment wants validation that the boss approved the invoice for payment, they can review the documents history to confirm it was actually approved by the boss’s user account. The version history can be used to identify changes to the original document and can potentially identify fraud attempts where bank details for payment have been changed on an invoice. Aside from not falling victim to fraud, the benefits of keeping the records electronically rather than physically include incredibly fast retrieval of information and increased office space when you recycle the filing cabinets for scrap metal.

If you’re still using a manual process that involves printing, stamping, signing and shuffling paper around your organisation for approval that can be short circuited by e-mails, you are at risk of being scammed. If you think it won’t happen to you, think again as the Federal Government have been briefed on the severity of this trend because the losses are increasing into the millions. If you want to know more about how M-Files can help your business, please contact us.