Tag Archives: Software

guest blogger, Project Management Software, Project planning

Why Project Management Software is Important for Your Business

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The goal of project management software is to support your organizational team with collaboration, achieving milestones, keeping the work budget within given limits and effectively completing the work on schedule. A project management software system can help you to manage complicated projects and avoid the common pitfalls of doubtful roles, communication gaps, complex tasks and insufficient responsibility.

Project management software is becoming an essential part of the present day business world. It manages the action of planning and acquiring the required people and resources, keeping costs within budget and scheduling limits. In any kind of industry (and some of the most common include construction, IT, architecture, software development and banking) you can use it to manage projects effectively and efficiently. The global project manager, along with other team leaders, uses this software to evaluate, plan, schedule, and manage the projects. However the project management software can also enhance the productivity of the entire project team.

Project management software includes programs that companies use to plan tasks in corporate programs (rather than ‘projects’). The software enables the manager to monitor the results of team members, restrict cost issues and ensure effective completion of corporate initiatives. Indeed it is often quoted as one of the easiest ways to enhance the process of efficiently allocating talent.

 

What makes for good project management software? Firstly using it will make your working existence more organized and structured and, ultimately, simpler. Secondly, everybody in your organization should be able to use and understand the application within a couple of days, with hardly any training needed.

Project management software is a good way to control four of the key project factors: work, time, budget and personnel. With the aid of relevant software, viewing the progress of a project should be simple. What’s more, viewing the length of time a specific project needs means that you can plan tasks accordingly. Project management software that includes time monitoring tools will also allow you to look into the performance and achievement records of personnel.

Organizing people and projects can be a frustrating and tiresome task, but if you understand the proper application of project management software, you’ll be able to easily handle all tasks, projects and team people. This can help in staying up-to-date with the marketplace changes, and you’ll be able to plan your moves accordingly.

Project Management Software and collaboration software provide many services. Let’s talk about a few of them:

  • Team collaboration: Forget office conference rooms and late evening conferences. No need to travel to different locations for discussions and demos. Your team and clients can collaborate online. It will save energy and keeps your team and clients up to date with the latest information.
  • Versatility: Web project management software provides versatility in company projects. Online project software typically provides up-to-date dashboards for rapidly reviewing the latest events in a project. When combined with online collaboration, these tools can keep everybody in your team on ‘the same page’ and helps to ensure each group or resource knows what others are doing. This then allows project managers to assign tasks and to-do lists, monitor progress, schedule due dates, accomplish key events, and much more.
  • Accountability: When used well, the software increases personal and financial accountability. The majority of the online project controlling system provides graphs, feedback, time sheets, key events and task assignment. The more sophisticated or specialized ones also monitor project costs, checks expenses, adjust assets and provide estimations about future project expenditure.
  • Organization: Effective resource management is flexible. The project controlling system handles all assets-employees, free-lance talents, budget and time. Often knowing your teams’ potential and effectively applying their abilities can mean the difference between failure and success. The right resource management enables you to build a thriving team.

Your company is important, and so is your ‘bottom line’. If there is a means to increase your productivity and improve your profits, why not take advantage of it?

Whether opting for online or stand-alone software, do try to make use of the many reviews available. They honestly do assist you in find the solution that best matches your needs, and (most of the time) are genuinely written by people who have used the program.

Author Bio:

UntitledSeamus Collins has 18 years of experience in the Project Management industry, and has completed assignments with leading global companies in China, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, the UK and the USA. He is also the founder and owner of Velopi, – a PMI Registered Education provider that has helped hundreds of people obtain their PMP certification

Careers Advice, Project Management Training, Software

5 less known development & analytical software skills which will slingshot your hireability

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Individuality is important. With that in mind, it is understandable why you wouldn’t want to make a habit of following trends, but if you want to be popular in the world of software development and analytics, you have to be able to supply what’s in demand.  When I say popular I really mean, ‘employable’ and, although experience counts for a lot in the IT industry, when it comes to new fields of technology having the right skills will put you right in the frame.

If you are considering which new skills you may need to add to your portfolio, it is worthwhile spending some time considering the technological driving forces that are likely to define the IT world over the next few years.  These trends will be instrumental in shaping your training plan and ensuring you’re able to fully utilise your new skills.

As a software professional in today’s world, your skills will have to be usable on both what the industry has inherited and, what it aspires to build.  Over the last few years, things like social media, cloud computing and big data have made a strong entry into industries which in turn, changes the game for people with a more ‘traditional’ skill set.  Generally, social media and cloud computing can be developed using broadly traditional tools such as PHP, PERL, Python, JAVA, C++ etc. so other than the paradigm shift in application interaction points and scale, they are created in using the old code type just in new places.

Big Data and Analytics

GlobalKnowledge Research report that Cloud Computing, Big Data and Data Analytics are amongst the biggest strategic targets for the technology sector and that this will undoubtedly create demand for jobs in these fields.  Unfortunately, ITBusinessEdge rather gloomily predict that although this may lead to as many as 4.4 million jobs in these fields by 2015, current training and employment trends suggest that only one third of them will be filled.

Pessimism aside, what are the jobs in Big Data & Analytics and what can you do about filing them?

EMC, Teradata & Hadoop

The major players in the emerging markets are using some new and proprietary products to provide the scalable environment that define the big data revolution.  EMC, Teradata and Hadoop are a few of the names establishing themselves as having a serious part to play in this emerging market and they are ideal for new implementations.

Traditionally, the providers of existing data platforms such as Oracle, SQL and DB/2 have been left wanting in these developments but take heart because these skills are still increasing in demand.

 SQL

SQL skills were still cited as required for 8 out of 10 of the top IT job categories by the E-Skills Council in their 2012 report.  In fact jobs requiring SQL and SQL Server skills have typically constituted around 20 % of IT jobs advertised in the UK each quarter since 2010.

Programming

And, as a nod in the direction towards these legacy skills, products such as Lingual by Concurrent Inc has been developed to allow native SQL queries to be used on the Hadoop platform.

SPSS

IBM, although not exactly hitting the mark with their DB/2 offering in the past, look determined to ensure they will have a hand to play with Netezza and their SPSS analytics application. IBM bought the SPSS application a few years back and after a time of looking lost in the wilderness, the application may be a key player in their ‘Smarter Planet’ initiative.

On its own, SPSS has had a 30 year pedigree in data analytics and has become a de facto standard for statistical analysis across social science and academic environments.  The social media data boom and big data analysis requirements will bring SPSS into a more commercial frame as correlation and statistical reporting becomes the next big thing.

Though there are no current formal certifications as yet for data analytics, EMC, Datameer, IBM and CISCO are all setting up programmes help customers and developers alike.

So it looks like the old dogs will indeed be learning new tricks and the legacy skills in SQL and analytical tools like SPSS, will have an important part to play throughout the Big Data revolution.  Don’t neglect them.  They will serve you well through the coming years.

After brushing up on these skills or perhaps enrolling in a SQL or SPSS training course, maybe take some time to look at the Hadoop platform in conjunction with EMC’s Greenplumb and IBM’s Netezza and you will be well on your way to becoming indispensable through the Big Data and Analytics revolution.

This article was brought to you by Acuity Training. Acuity is an instructor led, hands-on training company based in Surrey. Acuity offer crystal reports, autocad training and much more.

Change, guest blogger, News, Technology

Changing with the Times – ERM & CRM Systems

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The terms Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have been buzzwords in modern and efficient businesses for some years now. However implementing change can be difficult when there are in-built procedures that are working, but may not be as efficient as your competitor’s streamlined system. Jon Mell from IBM says there are some environments that still operate with huge mainframes that are unlikely to ever migrate. Yet innovation is the only way to remain competitive today and resistance to change will have a detrimental impact on business.

The problem most businesses face is accepting the initial cost expenditure in order to reap the rewards in the long-term. There is always a problem accepting that something needs to change when there seems to be little wrong with existing systems. In many situations it is hard to attribute a rise in costs because of extra marketing and sales efforts to lowering levels of competitiveness. It is easy to assume our businesses are suffering from the effects of the global downturn and shortening margins are an industry problem.

This is the best time to bring in some business analysis so a suitable design solution can be presented that can highlight where your business is haemorrhaging profits and falling behind similar businesses chasing the same clients. Data migration is almost always possible in modern systems and migration presents a perfect time for a remodelling of your data structure and this provides opportunities to streamline and improve efficiency.

In a world where data accessibility is improving productivity in workforces, empowering employees to implement change and giving leaders the tools to monitor and improve, the trend to encapsulate data in a decision centric environment is more critical in competitive marketplaces than ever before.  Some businesses will only need help on project management for specific initiatives, whereas others would require a complete design and build for an enterprise wide evolution. Whichever it is, there are obviously many ways to squeeze maximum profits from any operation.

Many companies have adopted ERM and CRM systems in the last ten years, but a lot has changed in computing in that time. Ten years ago, social networks were a concept and ten years before that we had no internet worth speaking of. Technology is constantly improving our lives in every way and businesses that are able to benefit from the right attitude to change will profit as a result.

Speaking to a professional who are specialist Netsuites consultants can give you a better idea of how a change can bring massive improvements in efficiency and profitability.