Significance of Field Force Automation in Customer Relationship

Customer care makes a prime consideration when it comes to keeping the customers hooked to a particular service. Thus, providing the operators with suitable solutions to manage any kind of request such as payment, service ticket modification, request for new equipment, etc., are very important in terms of having a strong customer relation.

Field force automation deals with making effective use of technology to confine field sales or information in the best possible time. This requires use of technology such as handheld PDAs, tablet PCs, wireless devices or cell phones in order to capture the data. The confined data is then instantly transferred to back end systems including CRM, ERP or accounting systems via a wireless connectivity.

The immediate capturing of information decreases time delays, avoid manual redundancy data errors, thus augmenting the field force productivity. From operations point of view, accessibility to information in real time enables convenient planning of delivery schedules, reducing inventory as well as effectively scrutinize and optimally manage the field workers.

The major challenge with field force automation is developing an easy, yet usable user interface for hand held devices or mobiles across operating systems along with ensuring connectivity. The problem of connectivity can be overcome by ensuring a system that possesses the ability to retain the captured information within the device cache and synchronize it later with the back end systems.

Today, field service is significantly observed as a vital part of unified customer strategy which is enhanced over a period of time as a part of meticulous project. It can also be considered as a service life cycle management as well as service resource planning. This is as crucial as marketing, sales and customer support to any product centric business. For a fact, varied people, working from different corners of the world, help you run your business and accomplish your business goals successfully, think about a tool that effectively synchronizes activities related to field force including broadband billing, installations and collections with a database positioned in the centre. Your workforce, separated by long distances, would have an efficient tool to work with a faster pace and in a smarter way.

  Field force automation offered by SURE! allows you to exchange required information with your field engineers and representatives without any hassle. It helps the organizations to maintain healthy customer relationship. Businesses can now have easy to use mobile devices that effectively support activities associated with field force automation including broadband billing printing, deactivation, activation, re-tracking, trouble ticket tracking, installations and collections.
SURE! field force automation system in known to offer the below mentioned benefits:

• Enhances accuracy
• Augments field force productivity
• Optimizes business operations
• Assists in ensuring customer satisfaction
• Integrates with SMS payment opportunity
• Helps in dynamic scheduling
• Faster reporting 

Thus, enabling you to assign work to the closest and appropriate skilled employees, optimizing stock management, augmenting information flow, forecasting future demands, gaining insight into performance, field force automation helps your organizations deliver top notch service to your customers, thus ensuring healthy customer relationship and increased enterprise benefits. 

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Automating and Orchestrating Your Applications

Automating and Orchestrating Your Applications


Cloud gives endless options to use various resources on demand the customer pays only for what he has been using. In today’s world, where the demands and requirements are  dynamic, a constant change is also seen in the IT environments. As a result, in order to avail advantage of the cloud, it is important to accustom with cloud technology that it is not expensive and painful from the resource perspective.

We have been hearing terms like “infrastructure automation” and “DevOps” many times in the last few years - however infrastructure automation mainly focused on deployment and setup of complex system.

A typical deployment comprises of various artifacts which further include monitoring configuration, configurations management, SLAs, incorporation with third party components and custom scripts.

All this leads to high levels of complexity.

What is cloud orchestration?

Automating your deployment would help you save time and be more efficient and productive. This can also have an additional benefit as the possibility of manual configuration errors is reduced.
The new cloud orchestration makes the process of automation easier for the user. Basically, it is a service which allows a person to create, revise and manage cloud resources and its various components before deploying them in an automated and repeatable fashion. Previously one has to worry about API call code services to get their applications up and running.

However, with the help of cloud orchestration API, you can easily declare the resources which are required for your activities. This service implements automation for its customers.

Configurations updates can be performed by editing the template and making an API call to orchestrating. Even the task of deleting entire stack is usually done with the help of single API call.

The declaration and configuration which are supported by cloud orchestration include:

• Cloud database
• Cloud servers
• Cloud DNS
• Cloud load balancers

With SURE!, highly effective cloud billing solution can be offered to the clients. Having stated that, quite a large difference separates cloud orchestration and cloud automation. When it comes to cloud automation, the subject is discussed under the context of task, however when we talk about orchestration, it refers to processes automation and workflow.

Therefore, after automating your infrastructure, you would be required to orchestrate the components startup. For an instance, take an example of the simplest application that has database and a web server. After configuring the application, it is important to ensure proper working of database as the web server would work only after the database is started. This is the stage where all the automation processes have their focus on.

At the base level, it is believed that orchestration is a higher form of cloud automation that can help a person to setup all the important pieces which are related to the application ranging from infrastructure to platforms on which an app runs.

Benefits of cloud orchestration

There are a large number of benefits that can be availed by a person opting for cloud orchestration. Cloud orchestration takes good care of order-ability of the stack. This service ensures that the servers are working with appropriate IP addresses and it gets added to the load balancer as well. The system has the intelligence of determining the ordering of the tasks, thereby addressing a big concern area for the person managing the activities.

The templates used by cloud orchestration are nestable, portable and reusable, further helping in improving the productivity. Previously created templates or those which have been created by communities can be re-utilized easily. New configuration based templates when deployed in same manner can help in reducing errors.

Managing all the applications over cloud involves various moving parts which are put together to reduce the error. SURE! platform can be used to automate the application cycle, shifting it from deployment to scaling, monitoring, failover and infrastructure. With SURE!, service providers can be sure of receiving reliable and dependable cloud automating and loud orchestration services. Automating the services reduces the hassle and decreases the margin of error.

The services related to automated cloud billing ensure that the customers do not have to wait in long queues to make the payments. With the help of a suitable cloud billing solution, customers are sure to benefit a lot.

So, ensure to opt for online and automated billing solutions offered by SURE! and access your content from multi locations or devices. Being a service provider, you can offer reliable cloud billing services to your subscribers.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestration_(computing)

http://www.experiencesure.com/solutions/cloud-billing-solution/

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How to Revamp Cloud Billing To Put Partners in Control

Revamp Cloud Billing To Put Partners in Control

With its announcement to launch latest program strategies, Microsoft has aimed to provide better control of cloud transactions to partners. Titled The Cloud Solutions Provider Program, it is initially to be offered through InTune and Office 365. The number of pilot partners will also be limited in the initial few months, by providing them complete control of what is called customer lifecycle, which includes billing, support and provisioning.

Partners will be provided the ability to provision the customer subscriptions directly, as well as provide monthly bills. Moreover, the technical customer support relationship will also be owned by the partners.

Cloud Billing Software Contribution:

As per the officials, it is the cloud billing systems which have been a prominent topic on which constant feedback was given across various cloud services. Rather than calling it a monetization or margin issue, it should be regarded as being able to control customer relationship. This allows partners to show that they are able to provide desired service in order to improve the experience of their clients. This Cloud Solutions Provider Program is set to roll out for Office 365 initially for a few partners all over the world in the coming two months from making this announcement. After which they are planning to expand it on a higher level from next financial year. SURE! has lot more on it http://www.experiencesure.com/solutions/cloud-billing-solution/

By making Azure a part of Open licensing mechanism, Microsoft attempts to open another way for improving the partner's participation in cloud environment. According to the company representatives, this will enable partners to purchase Azure dollars commitments on open licensing which can be sold to customers.

Cloud Based Billing Can Control A Lot:

There are many reasons which will make it a great option for their local partners. First of all it offers an amazing advantage in the form of price point. In other words, it enables partners to get Azure components, for incorporating these into a wider solution for customers.

Second benefit, which is also considered to be most important, is that it shows the efforts that are being put in for improving the partner's participation in cloud ecosystem. Usually in midmarket and SME segments customers previously used direct payment system to Microsoft through Azure portal with the help of monthly billing or credit card. Doing this enables partners better control on cloud billing relations, which for a part of broader solutions for customers.

As per them, incorporating Azure into Open has been a great step. However, in the end it does not mean that it is the only option left for the company. Ultimately it is about giving a choice to customers, as they can either opt for direct billing with Microsoft through Enterprise Agreement, or they can maintain the already there billing relationship which also includes services and products offered by them.

While it is being expected that this change will be warmly welcomed by most of the systems integrators as well as service providers, all the partners might not be equally excited about the prospects of cloud based billing developments.

However the basics of billing remains the same in cloud, for example automated billing using credit cards or debit cards needs registration for first time to enter the bank details like bank name, card number, ifsc code, etc. Want to double check your ifsc code and other details, try these tools tool 1, tool 2, tool 3.

For more on cloud billing and other billing software solutions visit www.experiencesure.com

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