As the eForms market evolves, so do the features you need to evaluate. Pay close attention to rich UI, cloud vendors, and mobile functionality, as all three improve overall usability and decrease grief.
Use this Solution Set to:
•Understand what’s new in the eForms market.
•Evaluate eForms vendors and products for your enterprise needs.
•Determine which products are most appropriate for particular use cases and scenarios.
Ensure that you select the best eForms product for your enterprise needs.
Business Process Management (BPM) has received increased attention recently, as many organizations view automation as a quick way to reduce costs. In fact, the principal benefits of BPM come from its improvement of process effectiveness, not through reduced headcount. To achieve these benefits, the organization must adopt a staged approach to BPM, proceeding through five steps:
•Identify key target processes for BPM implementation.
•Document processes using standard process notation.
•Refine by reshaping processes to improve effectiveness.
•Automate processes to increase effectiveness, consistency, and efficiency.
•Control processes by monitoring to avoid business issues.
While the stages remain the same from company to company, Info-Tech encourages organizations to choose from three implementation plans that reflect an increasing scale of investment. Use the tools that accompany the set to choose the plan that best matches your organizational and process characteristics.
IT organizations are faced with shrinking budgets and increased end user demand for better collaboration tools. As organizations create competitive positions centered on collective knowledge and resources of their workers to build better products and create effective solutions, they need tools to make those assets more efficient and effective. IT executives are continuously aiming to position IT as a business enabler rather than a cost center. To maintain that balance, IT executives are looking into solutions that let IT do more with less while remaining agile and continuing to innovate.
With the rapid proliferation of smartphones and tablets, the demand to deliver electronic forms to many people across multiple devices, both online and offline, has grown multifold. Now electronic Forms integrated with Workflow solution enables customers to automate forms based Workflow. The E-Forms with Workflow does have a "built-in" workflow engine and design tool that enables users to create process flows through a point and click GUI, assign forms to those processes, view, fill and route the forms to users and even monitor workflow operations with valuable reports. Electronic forms and workflow now operate in one elegant package.
In 2006, Adobe and IBM were the clear market leaders in e-forms. In the past few years, activities in the market have led to consolidation as well as transformation, as e-forms today are more aggressively integrated with content management and business process solutions to support internal data capture and Web self-service. The maturity of the technology over time and its future plans clearly indicates that it shall stay in the IT ecosystem for long.
This document outlines the finer elements of the technology, future directions and product & Vendor comparison. No interview has been taken from the organizations or its customer and is fully researched product with varied inputs available in Public Domain.
Implemented salesforce and CRM application, in this application employees and customers are sharing same platform which increases productivity and saves time for customers.
Salesforce CRM: A new way of managing Customer Relationship in cloud environmentEECJOURNAL
with the appearance of distributed computing, associations are hoping to move their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications from an On-Premise environment or we can say local servers to an On-Demand environment that is on a cloud server. The on-Premise environment is when an association has the framework and programming inside its system. In On-Demand environment, an outsider has the base and programming and charges the relationship in light of its participation show. Salesforce is the principle On-Demand CRM thing.
Business Process Management (BPM) has received increased attention recently, as many organizations view automation as a quick way to reduce costs. In fact, the principal benefits of BPM come from its improvement of process effectiveness, not through reduced headcount. To achieve these benefits, the organization must adopt a staged approach to BPM, proceeding through five steps:
•Identify key target processes for BPM implementation.
•Document processes using standard process notation.
•Refine by reshaping processes to improve effectiveness.
•Automate processes to increase effectiveness, consistency, and efficiency.
•Control processes by monitoring to avoid business issues.
While the stages remain the same from company to company, Info-Tech encourages organizations to choose from three implementation plans that reflect an increasing scale of investment. Use the tools that accompany the set to choose the plan that best matches your organizational and process characteristics.
IT organizations are faced with shrinking budgets and increased end user demand for better collaboration tools. As organizations create competitive positions centered on collective knowledge and resources of their workers to build better products and create effective solutions, they need tools to make those assets more efficient and effective. IT executives are continuously aiming to position IT as a business enabler rather than a cost center. To maintain that balance, IT executives are looking into solutions that let IT do more with less while remaining agile and continuing to innovate.
With the rapid proliferation of smartphones and tablets, the demand to deliver electronic forms to many people across multiple devices, both online and offline, has grown multifold. Now electronic Forms integrated with Workflow solution enables customers to automate forms based Workflow. The E-Forms with Workflow does have a "built-in" workflow engine and design tool that enables users to create process flows through a point and click GUI, assign forms to those processes, view, fill and route the forms to users and even monitor workflow operations with valuable reports. Electronic forms and workflow now operate in one elegant package.
In 2006, Adobe and IBM were the clear market leaders in e-forms. In the past few years, activities in the market have led to consolidation as well as transformation, as e-forms today are more aggressively integrated with content management and business process solutions to support internal data capture and Web self-service. The maturity of the technology over time and its future plans clearly indicates that it shall stay in the IT ecosystem for long.
This document outlines the finer elements of the technology, future directions and product & Vendor comparison. No interview has been taken from the organizations or its customer and is fully researched product with varied inputs available in Public Domain.
Implemented salesforce and CRM application, in this application employees and customers are sharing same platform which increases productivity and saves time for customers.
Salesforce CRM: A new way of managing Customer Relationship in cloud environmentEECJOURNAL
with the appearance of distributed computing, associations are hoping to move their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications from an On-Premise environment or we can say local servers to an On-Demand environment that is on a cloud server. The on-Premise environment is when an association has the framework and programming inside its system. In On-Demand environment, an outsider has the base and programming and charges the relationship in light of its participation show. Salesforce is the principle On-Demand CRM thing.
E commerce ( system analysis ) chapter 4Qamar Farooq
Learning Objectives:
* Explain the process that should be followed in building an e-commerce website.
* describe the major Issues.
* Understand the the issue involved in choosing the most appropriate hardware for an e-commerce site.
* Identify additional tools that can improve Website performance.
* Follow , share , like
Evolution of BMC ITSM Service Request ManagementBMC Software
Join us as we review the history of BMC Service Request Management and how we arrived at where we are today. We'll focus on the solution's rapid improvements and how they help business, as well as some of the little known, but useful, functionalities in the out-of-the-box application.
Application framework (ofen called TAM) is Application component of TM Forum frameworx. TAM maps with Business Process framework (aka eTOM) and Information Framework (aka SID).
TM Forum Frameworx 17.5 togehter with Sparx Systems ProCloud ServerTransWare AG
Overview:
Frameworx is an enterprise architecture framework based on SoA concepts for the telecommunication industry. It consists on the sub-frameworks eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map), TAM (Telecom Applications Map) and SID (Shared Information & Data Model).
Its intellectual property is owned and the content managed by TM Forum (TMF) (www.tmforum.org).
Frameworx content is available for TMF members from the TMF webpage as download of XML or HTML. This type of content is not easily to be re-used in BPM or EA modeling tools for transformation projects.
TransWare is a member and partner of TM Forum. As partner TransWare provides Frameworx for use by different modeling tools such as Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Microsoft Visio and Software AG ARIS.
Active Content:
TransWare developed the Frameworx systematics with Enterprise Architect concepts (UML profiles, MDG technology, EAP file for content).
Frameworx for Sparx Enterprise Architect is available for license purchase and download at the TransWare Webshop https://www.transwareag.com/shop.html
Frameworx can be used with Enterprise Architect
* Within transformation projects as basis for the design of blueprints with Enterprise Architect
* For team collaboration using the ProCloud Server and its central model repository
* For communication with publishing by WebEA
* Generating end-to-end test-cases (a TransWare model-based solution with e.g. HP ALM)
* Process performace publishing of KPIs from backend systems like SAP ERP (a TransWare solution)
Key Takeaways:
* Frameworx uses the core technologies from Enterprise Architect like MDG as native implementation.
* It can be used as active modeling content, an accelerator for transformation projects, best practice to be tailored, extended on implementation level using the existing concepts and standards like BPMN.
* Standard products like end-to-end test case automation or performance publishing for KPI are available from TransWare
* Frameworx is tested on Sparx EA 13.x and 14.x and can be used for collaboration and communication with the Sparx ProCloud Server and WebEA publishing
* Frameworx for Enterprise Architect is available at https://www.transwareag.com/shop.html
Workflow & Business Process Automation Opportunities in the Healthcare MarketY Soft Corporation
Wouter Koelewijn, Y Soft Vice President and Managing Director of Y Soft Scanning Division, talked about opportunities in workflow and business process automation for healthcare market in USA.
YSoft SafeQ is a leading print management and document capture solution currently uses by more than 14 000 companies in more than 100 countries.
If you want to find out more about YSoft SafeQ, contact us at www.ysoft.com/contact-us or schedule your Live Demo at www.ysoft.com/demo.
E commerce ( system analysis ) chapter 4Qamar Farooq
Learning Objectives:
* Explain the process that should be followed in building an e-commerce website.
* describe the major Issues.
* Understand the the issue involved in choosing the most appropriate hardware for an e-commerce site.
* Identify additional tools that can improve Website performance.
* Follow , share , like
Evolution of BMC ITSM Service Request ManagementBMC Software
Join us as we review the history of BMC Service Request Management and how we arrived at where we are today. We'll focus on the solution's rapid improvements and how they help business, as well as some of the little known, but useful, functionalities in the out-of-the-box application.
Application framework (ofen called TAM) is Application component of TM Forum frameworx. TAM maps with Business Process framework (aka eTOM) and Information Framework (aka SID).
TM Forum Frameworx 17.5 togehter with Sparx Systems ProCloud ServerTransWare AG
Overview:
Frameworx is an enterprise architecture framework based on SoA concepts for the telecommunication industry. It consists on the sub-frameworks eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map), TAM (Telecom Applications Map) and SID (Shared Information & Data Model).
Its intellectual property is owned and the content managed by TM Forum (TMF) (www.tmforum.org).
Frameworx content is available for TMF members from the TMF webpage as download of XML or HTML. This type of content is not easily to be re-used in BPM or EA modeling tools for transformation projects.
TransWare is a member and partner of TM Forum. As partner TransWare provides Frameworx for use by different modeling tools such as Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Microsoft Visio and Software AG ARIS.
Active Content:
TransWare developed the Frameworx systematics with Enterprise Architect concepts (UML profiles, MDG technology, EAP file for content).
Frameworx for Sparx Enterprise Architect is available for license purchase and download at the TransWare Webshop https://www.transwareag.com/shop.html
Frameworx can be used with Enterprise Architect
* Within transformation projects as basis for the design of blueprints with Enterprise Architect
* For team collaboration using the ProCloud Server and its central model repository
* For communication with publishing by WebEA
* Generating end-to-end test-cases (a TransWare model-based solution with e.g. HP ALM)
* Process performace publishing of KPIs from backend systems like SAP ERP (a TransWare solution)
Key Takeaways:
* Frameworx uses the core technologies from Enterprise Architect like MDG as native implementation.
* It can be used as active modeling content, an accelerator for transformation projects, best practice to be tailored, extended on implementation level using the existing concepts and standards like BPMN.
* Standard products like end-to-end test case automation or performance publishing for KPI are available from TransWare
* Frameworx is tested on Sparx EA 13.x and 14.x and can be used for collaboration and communication with the Sparx ProCloud Server and WebEA publishing
* Frameworx for Enterprise Architect is available at https://www.transwareag.com/shop.html
Workflow & Business Process Automation Opportunities in the Healthcare MarketY Soft Corporation
Wouter Koelewijn, Y Soft Vice President and Managing Director of Y Soft Scanning Division, talked about opportunities in workflow and business process automation for healthcare market in USA.
YSoft SafeQ is a leading print management and document capture solution currently uses by more than 14 000 companies in more than 100 countries.
If you want to find out more about YSoft SafeQ, contact us at www.ysoft.com/contact-us or schedule your Live Demo at www.ysoft.com/demo.
Themen:Traumhafte Locations: Schlösser, Burgen, Hotels, Restaurants, Schiffe, Special
Deko-Ideen: vom Farbkonzept bis zur Tischdekoration
Foto-Aktion 3mal zwei Brautstyles
Mehr auf http://www.meinhochzeitsratgeber.de/
Although many are in peril, a number of unique regions around the world provide adventurous travellers with the opportunity to see endangered species and unusual animals roam free in their natural habitats. Here the zoologist Mark Carwardine picks some of his favourite wildlife destinations. He is the author of Ultimate Wildlife Experiences, published.
“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”
Government Facilities - Turnkey Energy SolutionsMcKenney's Inc
McKenney’s, Inc. specializes in innovative, turnkey solutions for energy-consuming systems in military bases, government office buildings, correctional facilities, VA hospitals and many other types of facilities. For more info visit http://mckenneys.com/
"Alternatives per evitar l'estrès" amb Rosa Grisaleña i Olga Caro. Xerrades de salut comunitària en col·laboració amb l'equip del CAP Manso - EAP Via Roma a Golferichs, centre cívic. Divendres 13 de març de 2015.
High-end forms automation systems can be a six or seven figure investment for companies. These systems can be justified by companies whose core business is directly dependent on forms automation, such as financial services companies, insurance companies, and many public sector entities. However, small enterprises that do not require high-end forms automation as a core business function nonetheless have an opportunity to improve execution of many internal processes through the use of electronic forms. Benefits from automating forms-based processes include: reduced process cycle time, error reduction, increased use of self-service, and improved retrieval/discovery through increased use of electronic documents.
apidays Helsinki & North 2023 - How can data-driven DevRel help identify gaps...apidays
apidays Helsinki & North 2023
API Ecosystems - Connecting Physical and Digital
June 5 & 6, 2023
How can data-driven DevRel help identify gaps and enhance APIs?
Hemchander Sundaraveloo, Sr. Developer Advocate at Pipedrive
------
Check out our conferences at https://www.apidays.global/
Do you want to sponsor or talk at one of our conferences?
https://apidays.typeform.com/to/ILJeAaV8
Learn more on APIscene, the global media made by the community for the community:
https://www.apiscene.io
Explore the API ecosystem with the API Landscape:
https://apilandscape.apiscene.io/
The "Vision Paper" behind the success story of commercetools, created 2011Dirk Hoerig
In 2011 we started the development of a new kind of technology platform for eCommerce. What today is called "Head-less" or "API-first" we kicked off late 2010. To explain our ideas behind it to all our stakeholders at that time - our employees, our investors and our partners - I created that vision paper and released it in April 2011. Not everything that we envisioned at that time came exactly that way, but the core of the concept and its assumptions became reality. A reality that in 2019 was proven with a 145M USD investment round led by Insight Partners for our company that empowers the commerce offerings of companies like AT&T, Express, Lego and VW today. Though this was already quite a journey we still feel that we are at the beginning. So if you are also up to something with your business or you have a great vision for technology and markets - go for it. This document should encourage you to go the extra mile. This is why I released it here. Have fun reading it (and please excuse my language, it was never supposed to be released to the broader public and share with you the un-edited version).
For those who know us: GRID was our initial product we released 2007 based on an existing monolithic JEE platform. We decided 2010 to replace it with a new technology built-from-scratch that we called internally GRID 2.0 - which later became public as SPHERE.IO. Today it's simply the commercetools platform.
This presentation is a case study on an external piece of analysis conducted by the author for Nisbets on an approach to select an ecommerce platform and how to manage an ecommerce channel.
Processes in the Networked Economies: Portal, Vortex, and Dynamic Trading Pro...Amit Sheth
Amit Sheth, Keynote at the Software Architectures for Business Process Management (SABPM'99) Workshop at CAiSE *99, Heidelberg, June 1999.
Processes will be chief differentiating and the competitive force indoing business in the networked economy. They will be deeply integrated with the way of doing business, and that they will be
critical components of almost all types of systems supporting enterprise-level and business critical activities.
http://knoesis.org/amit
Processes Driving the Networked Economy: Process Portals, Process Vortex and ...Amit Sheth
Amit Sheth's keynote at SABPM '99: Software Architectures for Business Process Management, (Workshop at the CAiSE*99, Heidelberg, Germany, June 14-15, 2009.
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/cgi-bin/TGI/pnml/getpost?id=1999/04/1203
Related paper: http://knoesis.org/library/resource.php?id=00246
One Tap Publisher is typical of the evolution of traditional online advertising, typically distributed to the network by newspaper editors, television and radio stations. Historically, customers can rely on local newspaper, television and radio stations to find products and local products. With the development of the network, buyers are increasingly using search engines such as Google to find local products and services online
After more than 6 months of analyses, dozens of interviews with editors and a tool developped internally to find out the market shares of each solution, our Benchmark of e-commerce solutions came out in 2013, screening 12 solutions through 160 pages.
The new version of this benchmark will be published in 2016.
Your Challenge
As the market evolves, capabilities that were once cutting edge become default and new functionality becomes differentiating.
Vendors use a lot of marketing jargon, buzzwords, and statistics to sell their solutions, making objective evaluation rather difficult.
The endpoint protection (EPP) market is overcrowded and fragmented, resulting in information overload and consequently, a difficult vendor assessment.
Disparate product solutions are being bundled into one-off solutions or suites, often resulting in less efficient solutions than the more niche players.
Imminent obsolescence is an issue. Previous EPP solutions have not adapted with the rapidly evolving threat landscape and are no longer relevant, resulting in breaches or vulnerabilities.
Critical Insight
Don’t let vendors and market reports define your endpoint protection needs. Identify the use cases and corresponding feature sets that best align with your risk profile before evaluating the vendor marketspace.
Your security controls are diminishing in value (if they haven’t already). Develop a strategy that accounts for the rapid evolution and imminent obsolescence of your endpoint controls. Plan for future needs when making purchasing decisions today.
Endpoint protection is a matter of defense in depth and risk modelling, there is no silver bullet protection and mitigation solution. As end-client-technology providers release regular product/software updates, security tools will become outdated. Multiyear endpoint protection commitments will leave you playing a constant game of catch up.
Impact and Result
The solution is a holistic internal security assessment that not only identifies, but satisfies, your desired endpoint protection feature set with the corresponding endpoint protection suite and a comprehensive implementation strategy.
Use this blueprint to walk through the steps of selecting and implementing an endpoint protection solution that best aligns with your organizational needs.
Your Challenge
Companies understand the importance of business process improvement (BPI) and recognize the touted benefits: cost savings, waste elimination, and process efficiency.
With this said, 70% of companies that embark on process improvement initiatives fail.
The high probability of failure is attributed to a number of factors, including lack of continuous improvement and failing to define measurable outcomes.
Our Advice
Adopt a forward-facing outlook. Don’t focus solely on the current state, set improvement targets upfront to drive the initiative.
Break problems down into root-cause variables. Don’t look at the symptom, dive deeper and alleviate the root cause.
Empower business analysts. Create a practical process improvement methodology that your analysts can follow.
Impact and Result
Kick off process improvement by identifying the goals and defining the improvement targets.
Start by referring to the operating model and identifying level 1, 2, and 3 processes. Once the team understands the relationship between processes, they can begin to map a level 3 process using a standard mapping notation.
Use qualitative and quantitative techniques for analyzing the root cause rather than the symptoms.
Ensure the design is aligned with the initial improvement targets. Focus on value-added activities.
Consistently monitor the process and assess the root-cause variables to gauge the success of the process improvements.
Your Challenge
Internal stakeholders usually have different – and often conflicting – needs and expectations that require careful facilitation and management.
Vendors have well-honed negotiating strategies. Without understanding your own position and leverage points, it’s difficult to withstand their persuasive – and sometimes pushy – tactics.
Software – and software licensing – is constantly changing, making it difficult to acquire and retain subject matter expertise.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Conservatively, it’s possible to save 5% of the overall IT budget through comprehensive software contract review.
Focus on the terms and conditions, not just the price.
Learning to negotiate is crucial.
Impact and Result
Look at your contract holistically to find cost savings.
Guide communication between vendors and your organization for the duration of contract negotiations.
Redline the terms and conditions of your software contract.
Prioritize crucial terms and conditions to negotiate.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure, by focusing on the reliability, availability, and serviceability of existing platforms, is perceived as a cost center rather than a business enabler.
Business stakeholders look to external vendors, rather than Infrastructure, to exploit emerging technologies. This leads to duplication of effort, inconsistent standards, and ineffective IT governance.
Infrastructure directors are unable to draw a line showing how their activities directly support the overall business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Think of the roadmap as a service, not a product. Its value is inversely proportional to the time since its last update.
Alignment perception issues can be addressed by having the infrastructure practice formally engage and communicate with business stakeholders.
Shadow IT can provide business-ready initiatives that need only to be tweaked to align with Infrastructure’s internal goals.
Impact and Result
This blueprint will help you build:
A formal channel and way of communicating value bottom-up and top-down between IT and the executive team.
A methodology to prioritize and create projects that generate business value.
A tool that can produce multiple outputs of value for different audiences using the same data.
An ongoing roadmap process, rather than a static document, that is able to adjust and react to evolving business circumstances.
Your Challenge
Risk is an unavoidable part of IT. And what you don't know, can hurt you. The question is, do you tackle risk head-on or leave it to chance?
Get a handle on risk management quickly using Info-Tech's methodology and reduce unfortunate IT surprises.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
1. IT risk is business risk.
Every IT risk has business implications. Create an IT risk management program that shares risk accountability with the business.
2. Risk is money.
It’s impossible to make intelligent decisions about risks without knowing what they’re worth.
3. You don’t know what you don’t know.
And what you don’t know can hurt you – so find out. To find hidden risks, you need a structured approach.
Impact and Result
Stop leaving IT risk to chance. Transform your ad hoc IT risk management processes into a formalized, ongoing program and increase risk management success by 53%.
Take a proactive stance against IT threats and vulnerabilities by identifying and assessing IT’s greatest risks before they happen.
Involve key stakeholders including the business senior management team to gain buy-in and to focus on IT risks that matter most to the organization.
Share accountability for IT risk with business stakeholders and have them weigh-in on prioritizing investments in risk response activities.
Your Challenge
Service desk managers with immature service desk processes struggle with:
Low business satisfaction.
High cost to resolve incidents and implement requests.
Confused and unhappy end users.
High ticket volumes and a lack of root-cause analysis to reduce recurring issues.
Wasted IT time and wages resolving the same issues time and again.
Ineffective demand planning.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t be fooled by a tool that’s new. A new service desk tool alone won’t solve the problem. Service desk maturity improvements depend on putting in place the right people and processes to support the technology.
Service desk improvement is an exercise in organizational change. Engage specialists across the IT organization in building the solution, and emphasize how everyone stands to benefit from the initiative.
Organizations are sometimes tempted to track their work under a single ticket type. Unfortunately, the practice obscures the fact that incidents, requests, and projects require radically different amounts of time and resources, and can create the impression that IT is underperforming. Distinguish between incidents, requests, and projects, and design specific processes to support and track the performance of each activity.
Remember, the value of any IT service management (ITSM) tool is a function of the processes it supports and the adoption of those processes. The ITSM tool with the best functionality is worth little if you do not build the right processes, configure the tool to support them, and work to improve tool adoption in your organization.
Impact and Result
Increase business satisfaction.
Reduce recurring issues and ticket volumes.
Reduce average incident resolution time and average request implementation time.
Increase efficiency and lower operating costs.
Enhance demand planning.
Your Challenge
Companies are approving more projects than they can deliver. Most organizations say they have too many projects on the go and an unmanageable and ever-growing backlog of things to get to.
While organizations want to achieve a high throughput of approved projects, many are unable or unwilling to allocate an appropriate level of IT resourcing to adequately match the number of approved initiatives.
Portfolio management practices must find a way to accommodate stakeholder needs without sacrificing the portfolio to low-value initiatives that do not align with business goals.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Failure to align projects with strategic goals and resource capacity are the most common causes of portfolio waste across organizations. Intake, approval, and prioritization represent the best opportunities to ensure this alignment.
More time spent with stakeholders during the ideation phase to help set realistic expectations for stakeholders and enhance visibility into IT’s capacity and processes is key to both project and organizational success.
Too much intake red tape will lead to an underground economy of projects that escape portfolio oversight, while too little intake formality will lead to a wild west of approvals that could overwhelm the PMO. Finding the right balance of intake formality for your organization is the key to establishing a PMO that has the ability to focus on the right things.
Impact and Result
Eliminate off-the-grid initiatives by establishing a centralized intake process that funnels requests into a single channel.
Improve the throughput of projects through the portfolio by incorporating the constraint of resource capacity to cap the amount of project approvals to that which is realistic.
Silence squeaky wheels and overbearing stakeholders by establishing a progressive approval and prioritization process that gives primacy to the highest value requests.
Read this Executive Brief to understand why your team should make the case to modernize your communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Understand why it's time to move forward with modernizing your communications infrastructure.
Discover the productivity and efficiency gains you can achieve.
Redefine how you think about communications.
Learn how to build a strategy that addresses both unified communications and collaboration.
Understand Info-Tech's methodology and approach to modernizing communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Your Challenge
Organizations have to adapt to a growing number of trends, putting increased pressure on IT to move at the same speed as the business.
The business, seeing that IT is slower to react, looks to external solutions to address its challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
IT and business leaders don’t have a clear and unified understanding or definition of an operating model.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The IT operating model is not a static entity and should evolve according to changing business needs.
However, business needs are diverse, and the IT organization must recognize that the business includes groups that consume technology in different patterns. The IT operating model needs to support and enable multiple groups, while continuously adapting to changing business conditions.
Impact and Result
Determine how each technology consumer group interacts with IT. Use consumer experience maps to determine what kind of services consumer groups use and if there are opportunities to improve the delivery of those services.
Identify how changing business conditions will affect the consumption of technology services. Classify your consumers based on business uncertainty and reliance on IT to plan for the future delivery of services.
Optimize the IT operating model. Create a target IT operating model based on the gathered information about technology service consumers. Select different implementations of common operating model elements: governance, sourcing, process, and structure.
Info-Tech is the most innovative firm in the industry, and we pride ourselves on delivering better research than anyone.
Become a member and unlock a range of data-driven tools and resources to drive systematic IT improvement.
Your Challenge
It is difficult to start the project, engage the right people, and find the necessary requirements to drive the value of an enterprise architecture operating model.
It is challenging to navigate the common enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks and right-size them for your organization.
The EA practice may struggle to effectively collaborate with the business when making decisions, resulting in outcomes that fail to engage stakeholders.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
The benefits of an EA program are only realized when all components of the operating model enable the achievement of the program goals and objectives. Many times organizations overplay the governance card while ignoring the motivational aspects that can be addressed through the organization's structure or stakeholder relations.
Info-Tech’s methodology ensures that all components of an EA operating model are considered to optimize the performance of the EA program.
Impact and Result
Place and structure your EA team to address the needs of stakeholders and deliver on the previously created strategy.
Create an engagement model by understanding each relevant process of COBIT 5 and make stakeholder interaction cards to initiate conversations.
Recognize the need for governance and formulate the appropriate boards while considering various policies, principles, and compliance.
Develop a unique architecture development framework based on best-practice approaches with an understanding of the various architectural views to ensure the creation of a successful process.
Build a communication plan and roadmap to efficiently navigate through enterprise change and involve the necessary stakeholders.
Your Challenge
Business transformations are happening, but CIOs are often involved only when it comes time to implement change. This makes it difficult for the CIO to be perceived as an organizational leader.
CIOs find it difficult to juggle operational activities, strategic initiatives, and involvement in business transformation.
CIOs don’t always have the IT organization structured and mobilized in a manner that facilitates the identification of transformation opportunities, and the planning for and the implementation of organization-wide change.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Don’t take an ad hoc approach to transformation.
You’re not in it alone.
Your legacy matters
Impact and Result
Elevate your stature as a business leader.
Empower the IT organization to act with a business mind first, and technology second.
Create a high-powered IT organization that is focused on driving lasting change, improving client experiences, and encouraging collaboration across the entire enterprise.
Generate opportunities for organizational growth, as manifested through revenue growth, profit growth, new market entry, new product development, etc.
Craft an End-to-End Data Center Consolidation Strategy to Maximize BenefitsInfo-Tech Research Group
Your Challenge
Data center operating costs continue to escalate as organizations struggle with data center sprawl.
While data center consolidation is an attractive option to reduce cost and sprawl, the complexity of these projects makes them extremely difficulty to execute.
The status quo is also not an option, as budget constraints and the challenges with managing multiple data centers continues to increase.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Despite consolidation being an effective way of addressing sprawl, it is often difficult to secure buy-in and funding from the business.
Many consolidation projects suffer cost overruns due to unforeseen requirements and hidden interdependencies which could have been mitigated during the planning phase.
Organizations that avoid consolidation projects due to their complexity are just deferring the challenge, while costs and inefficiencies continue to increase.
Impact and Result
Successful data center consolidation will have an immediate impact on reducing data center sprawl. Maximize your chances of success by securing buy-in from the business.
Avoid cost overruns and unforeseen requirements by engaging with the business at the start of the process. Clearly define business requirements and establish common expectations.
While cost improvements often drive data center consolidation, successful projects will also improve scalability, operational efficiency, and data center redundancy.
Your Challenge
Organizations are struggling to keep up with today’s evolving threat landscape.
From technology sophistication and business adoption to the proliferation of hacking techniques and the expansion of hacking motivations, organizations are facing major security risks.
Every organization needs some kind of information security program to protect their systems and assets.
Organizations today face pressure from regulatory or legal obligations, customer requirement, and now, senior management expectations.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Performing an accurate assessment of your current security operations and maturity levels can be extremely hard when you don’t know what to assess or how to assess it.
Alignment can be a difficult area for security to get right when it’s trying to balance both regular IT and the business.
Communication is needed between the business leaders, IT leaders, and the security team for an effective security strategy to be in place.
Impact and Result
Info-Tech has analyzed and integrated regulatory and industry best practice frameworks, combining COBIT 5, PCI DSS, ISO 27000, NIST SP800-53, and SANS to ensure an exhaustive approach to security.
Through this process, a comprehensive current state assessment, gap analysis, and initiative generation ensures that nothing is left off the table.
This project will elevate the perception of the security team from being a hindrance to the organization to an enabler.
Your Challenge
Even though organizations are now planning for Application Integration (AI) in their projects, very few have developed a holistic approach to their integration problems resulting in each project deploying different tactical solutions.
Point-to-point and ad hoc integration solutions won’t cut it anymore: the cloud, big data, mobile, social, and new regulations require more sophisticated integration tooling.
Loosely defined AI strategies result in point solutions, overlaps in technology capabilities, and increased maintenance costs; the correlation between business drivers and technical solutions is lost.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Involving the business in strategy development will keep them engaged and align business drivers with technical initiatives.
An architectural approach to AI strategy is critical to making appropriate technology decisions and promoting consistency across AI solutions through the use of common patterns.
Get control of your AI environment with an appropriate architecture, including policies and procedures, before end users start adding bring-your-own-integration (BYOI) capabilities to the office.
Your Challenge:
As Portfolio Manager, you’re responsible for communicating portfolio results and future capacity to your steering committee.
Business and IT leaders need more accurate information on project status and resource availability to decide when to start and stop projects.
You need to better understand the needs of the PMO and assess the costs and benefits associated with different tools and approaches to PPM.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
PPM is a practice, not a tool. Before succeeding with a commercial tool, you need to establish discipline and trust around reporting processes, which can be done using spreadsheets and other simple tools.
Portfolio management is separate from project management. Think of it as the accounting department for time. Project managers report into the portfolio and are held accountable to it, but it isn’t simply an extension of project management.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Decrease the wasted portfolio budget by reducing the number of cancelled projects and other sources of efficiency.
Establish the portfolio as the “one source of truth” for project reporting by increasing rigor around project status updating and reporting.
Align project intake with resource capacity to improve throughput, quality of estimates, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Your Challenge:
Implementing a shared services model is a difficult process to undertake, and is comprised of many different components. Becoming a shared services provider is comparable to becoming a vendor and most IT groups don’t have the capabilities to easily make the transition.
Most companies look to achieve cost reductions through offering a shared services model. Adopting a shared services model doesn’t always result in these intended cost reductions. Simply combining the operations of two IT organizations doesn’t necessarily result in economies of scale and cost efficiencies. Before leaping forward with your shared services implementation, determine if the project will deliver value to your organization.
Our Advice - Critical Insight:
Implementing a shared services model needs to be viewed as more than simply extending a current service to other sites. The organization providing services essentially turns into a vendor. As a vendor, think of the IT service you’re offering as the “product.”
Remember that there are people, process, and technology capability pre-requisites to successfully becoming a shared services provider. These capabilities are not typical for the average IT shop, and need to be taken into consideration when you look to transition to a shared services model.
Our Advice - Impact and Result:
Before jumping into the implementation of your shared services project, assess your customer requirements and your current people, process, and technology capabilities to assess whether your organization is ready to implement a shared services model.
Understand the financial implications of moving to a shared services model prior to implementing. Make sure there is a strong case for implementation.
Your Challenge:
Situation
Enterprise Architecture increases the organization’s ability to provide consistent services, accessible information, scalable infrastructure, and flexible technology integration on demand. It helps bridge the gap between business and IT and creates a shared enterprise vision.
Complication
EA programs that are run without the required EA capability level are prone to failure.
EA capability optimization and EA operating model design skills are not common, as they are not everyday tasks.
Our Advice:
Critical Insight
Using this research while assessing and optimizing your EA capability will help you:
Architect the EA capability by applying four architectural perspectives: Contextual, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical. Develop an EA Operating Model starting at the contextual level, and proceeding through to the physical.
Develop a sponsored mandate for EA capability. Identify and engage EA capability stakeholders. Determine organizational scope, i.e. responsibility and authority of EA. Identify business drivers for optimizing an EA capability. Analyze organizational context. Secure executive support and authorization to execute.
Establish EA capability purpose and strategic direction. Write EA capability vision statement. Craft EA capability mission statement. Define EA capability goals and measures. Create EA principles. Assess current and determine target EA capability level.
Document EA management process. Define EA management practices. Define interactions between EA management and other processes. Define EA capability performance and value measurement approach.
Design EA organization and roles. Design EA organization structure. Define EA roles. Define required skills and proficiency levels for EA roles. Determine required EA staff capacity.
Standardize EA tools and work products. Establish an EA repository. Decide on EA tools to be used. Define EA artifacts and work products.
Develop an EA capability improvement plan. Consolidate and refine steps required to roll out the target EA operating model and improve EA capability. Draw an EA capability improvement roadmap.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a button
Select an e forms vendor
1. Select the Right eForms Solution If process is a buster, eForms will automate.
2. The eForms Vendor Landscape is a mix of new and established vendors addressing a field of different scenarios. Use cases will determine best fit. Introduction Enterprises seeking to select a solution for Forms Automation. Their web conferencing use case may include: Ad Hoc Form Automation Departmental Process Support Enterprise Mission Process Critical Business Process Workflow Automation This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You: Understand what’s new in the eForms market. Evaluate eForms vendors and products for your enterprise needs. Determine which products are most appropriate for particular use cases and scenarios.
3. Executive Summary The eForms market is evolving away from the paper form entirely, replacing it with a rich UI and integration with both new digital media and more advanced mobile functionality. Adobe LiveCycle and Acrobat, IBM Forms, and Autonomy LiquidOfficeeForms are all champions within the market space. Once value for money is taken into consideration, Adobe Acrobat and PerfectForms become the most compelling options, though both lack the functionality for the most complex and advanced large enterprise use cases. Each product evaluated has a different set of features designed to cater to different needs based on process criticality and use cases. Choose your solution based on the criticality of your process, your use case, your industry, and your mobile needs.
4.
5. The emergence of digital media, e.g. new cameras and input methods, in personal devices is creating an increasingly digitized world, allowing more rich content to be built into forms.
6. Cloud-onlyvendors are appearing and allowing form data to be stored entirely in the cloud, without offering an on-premise solution at all.
7. Mobile form use, previously only enabling simple workflow participation (e.g. approvals) is expanding to more complex forms and tasks, and onto tablets for field operations, e.g. real estate, insurance, field sales.
10. Next, they could be completed entirely online but were still tied to the look and feel of the paper business form.
11. As electronic use and access increased, forms-driven business processes have evolved to become electronic only and never hit paper.
12. With more external stakeholders gaining electronic access, forms could exist entirely online and no longer be tied to a physical counterpart, i.e. the physical form metaphor is no longer a constraint. As a result, e-forms are employing more rich user interfaces.As the market evolves, so do the features you need to evaluate. Pay close attention to rich UI, cloud vendors, and mobile functionality, as all three improve overall usability and decrease grief.
13. eForms Criteria & Weighting Factors Product Evaluation Features Usability The solution provides basic and advanced feature/functionality. Features The five year TCO of the solution is economical. Affordability Affordability Architecture The solution’s dashboard and reporting tools are intuitive and easy to use. Usability Product The delivery method of the solution aligns with what is expected within the space. Architecture Vendor Evaluation Vendor Vendor is profitable, knowledgeable, and will be around for the long-term. Viability Viability Reach Vendor is committed to the space and has a future product and portfolio roadmap. Strategy Vendor offers global coverage and is able to sell and provide post-sales support. Reach Channel Vendor channel strategy is appropriate and the channels themselves are strong. Channel Strategy
14. The Info-Tech eForms Landscape Champions receive high scores for most evaluation criteria and offer excellent value. They have a strong market presence and are usually the trend setters for the industry. Emerging Players are newer vendors who are starting to gain a foothold in the marketplace. They balance product and vendor attributes, though score lower relative to market Champions. Innovators have demonstrated innovative product strengths that act as their competitive advantage in appealing to niche segments of the market. Market Pillars are established players with very strong vendor credentials, but with more average product scores. For a complete description of Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape methodology, see the Appendix.
15. Every vendor has its strengths & weaknesses;Pick the one that works best for you Product Vendor Features Usability Affordability Viability Strategy Channel Reach Architecture Adobe LiveCycle Adobe Acrobat Autonomy Cardiff IBM Lotus Forms MS InfoPath Form Services MS InfoPath Client PerfectForms Formatta LincDoc Harvey Ball scores are indicative of absolute performance ratings but are not an exact correlation. Exceptional performance receives a full ball, poor performance an empty one, with a range in between.
16. What is a Value Score? Adobe Acrobat and PerfectForms provide the best bang-for-your-buck, but may not have all the features you need On a relative basis, Adobe Acrobat maintained the highest Info-Tech Value Score of the vendor group. Vendors were indexed against Acrobat’s performance to provide a complete, relative view of their product offerings. The Value Score indexes each vendor’s product offering and business strength relative to their price point. It does not indicate vendor ranking. Vendors that score high offer more bang-for-the-buck (e.g. features, usability, stability, etc.) than the average vendor, while the inverse is true for those that score lower. Price-conscious enterprises may wish to give the Value Score more consideration than those who are more focused on specific vendor/product attributes. Sources: To calculate the Value Score for each vendor, the affordability raw score was backed out, the product scoring reweighted, and the affordability score multiplied by the product of the Vendor and Product scores.
17. Every vendor in the game has the basic table stakes, but who goes above and beyond in the areas that matter to you? The Table Stakes What Does This Mean? Product supports its own signature system, a pubic certificate standard, or both. Digital Signatures The products assessed in this Vendor LandscapeTM meet, at the very least, the requirements outlined as Table Stakes. Many of the vendors go above and beyond the outlined Table Stakes, some even do so in multiple categories. This section aims to highlight the products capabilities in excess of the criteria listed here. Product allows users to create and design their own eForms. Form Design eForms can be pre-populated and integrate with data sources. Data Integration & Pre-Population Product provides a client for eForms users to fill out forms. Form Fill If Table Stakes are all you need from your eForms solution, the only true differentiator for the organization is price. Otherwise, dig deeper to find the best price to value for your needs.
18. Table Stakes aside, vendors were evaluated on their individual advanced feature offering What We Looked For Features Advanced features scoring methodology: Self-Serve Design & Collect eForms design and collection can be done with a rich UI and doesn’t require IT. Info-Tech scored each vendor’s features offering as a summation of their individual scores across the listed advanced features. Vendors were given 1 point for each feature the product inherently provided. Some categories were scored on a more granular scale with vendors receiving half points (see Partial functionality criteria). Archiving Archive form submissions to PDF/A. Partial: Archive to an image archive format (e.g. TIFF) Sample Forms Provide sample business process forms to be customized. State Transformation Image capture through OCR/ICR, barcode generation. Partial: Through third party tool. SharePoint Integration Formal library services integration with MS SharePoint. Create forms on the fly based on existing form components. Dynamic Assembly Rich UI eForms themselves can be designed with a rich UI for enhanced user experience. Industry Standard Support Supports industry standards, e.g. ACORD, MISMO. Data Analysis & Survey Function Can capture survey data and multiple data sets may be output for analysis. Workflow Offers a rules and routing engine for eForms workflow. Mobile iOS, BlackBerry, and Android or Windows Phone 7. Partial: Any mobile client.
19.
20. Contrary to popular belief, LiveCycle offers full XML and HTML, not just PDF forms.
21. Adobe and partners are building out a library of vertical solutions, continuation of which will be critical to continue to compete with vertical ERP and ECM vendor forms solutions.
22. While its product offering is far above the standard offering in the landscape, so is its price point; LiveCycle is definitely not priced for enterprises with light eForms needs.
26. Supports industry standards, e.g. ACORD, MISMO, PISCESPriced between $100,000 and $250,000 Info-Tech Recommends: If you need a comprehensive and dynamic enterprise eForms solution for mission-critical form-based workflows, then Adobe LiveCycle is Info-Tech’s highest recommendation.
34. Native SharePoint integration supports library services.Priced under $1,000 Info-Tech Recommends: For those not looking for server-based workflow and dynamic assembly capabilities, Adobe Acrobat is an otherwise robust and hugely affordable eForms solution backed by a strong vendor.
41. Cloud origin enables rapid growth of ecosystem of other cloud partners for value-added services like e-approvals.Priced under $1,000 Info-Tech Recommends: Despite being a vendor underdog compared to the big market players, great usability, features and architecture make PerfectForms a cloud eForms innovator and a product worth evaluating.
47. While positioning of IBM Forms vs. IBM FileNet Forms has improved in the last two years, the IBM portfolio still contains overlaps between Forms, FileNet, Lotus Notes/Domino, and Websphere, which can confuse eForm buyers.
52. Offers OCR/ICR capture capabilities.Priced between $100,000 and $250,000 Info-Tech Recommends: For those in need of a robust solution and are okay with forms remaining entirely in IBM’s XML technology, IBM Forms is a very strong eForms product backed by a committed and strong vendor.
58. Part of a family of leading content-oriented products from a strong vendor in the information management market, Autonomy.Priced between $100,000 and $250,000 Info-Tech Recommends: For more advanced dynamic assembly and capture needs, LiquidOffice eForms is a great choice. It can also handle more basic scenarios, but won’t provide the best value there.
59.
60. Part of the SharePoint Enterprise Edition, NOT Standard.
68. It is fully integrated with Microsoft SharePoint library services.
69. Employs InfoPath’s strong XML-based format.Priced between $100,000 and $250,000 Info-Tech Recommends: For SharePoint Server Enterprise Ed. users, SharePoint forms services offers strong integration and a robust architecture. Uncertain product strategy and price of InfoPath limit the value though.
72. Microsoft’s continued refusal to create a free InfoPath filler has evolved from being costly to being downright annoying to customers. This prevents it from seriously challenging Adobe Acrobat for desktop eForms.
77. Provides data analysis and survey capabilities.Priced between $100,000 and $250,000 Info-Tech Recommends: While easy to use and great features, InfoPath remains an eForms gadfly without a free form-filler client.
84. Web client for Apple iPadPriced information not available. Info-Tech Recommends: Formatta lacks the functionality and architecture to be a leader in the eForms space. That said, their parent company, Access is worth watching and offers impressive niche eForms solutions.
85.
86. More a multi-tenant architecture (cloud and on-premise) in progress right now than a fully-baked eForm solution.
87. MS Word/Adobe Acrobat-based form design and creation process is more difficult and unrefined than most form designers evaluated.
88. Workflow and case management, while available, is fairly light and not suitable for more enterprises with more robust needs.
94. A vendor to watch.Priced between $25,000 and $50,000 Info-Tech Recommends: When it comes to forward thinking functionality like mobile support and cloud ecosystems, LincDoc is a winner. However, clunky form creation and weak workflow hold it back.
95. When it comes to eForms, price is directly linked to functionality for advanced use cases. If you don’t need it, don’t pay for it. Select your product based on your use case; they aren’t interchangeable 1 Affordable Form Fill Use Case Workflow 2 Process Criticality Form Services LiveCycle Acrobat (Both) (Both) Data Analysis & Survey Function 3 Industry State Transformation (Paper to/from Electronic) 4 Mobile
96. Different enterprise problems are solved by different levels of form automation. Some solutions cater to lower levels, others to higher levels. Select a product appropriate to the role forms play in your organization; there is no one size fits all 1 Ad Hoc Process Forms Use Case 2 Process Criticality Departmental Process Support LiveCycle Acrobat (Both) 3 Industry Forms Turbo Mission Critical Process Support 4 Mobile Forms
97. If your industry requires adherence to particular standards, then standards support or industry-tailored solutions will be the backbone of your decision. Some products cater to particular sensitive industries. Select accordingly. 1 Financial Services/Insurance Use Case Education 2 Process Criticality LiveCycle LiveCycle LiveCycle Healthcare 3 Industry Government 4 Mobile
98. Mobile is the future of eForms. While most vendors are expanding compatibility with each release, determine what your people need now. If eForms will be utilized by a mobile workforce, select a product that supports your standard platform. 1 Apple iOS Use Case BlackBerry 2 Process Criticality Form Services Form Services Form Services Form Services LiveCycle LiveCycle LiveCycle LiveCycle Windows Phone 7 3 Industry Android 4 Mobile
100. Methodology – Vendor Landscape & Harvey Balls Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape market evaluations are a part of a larger product selection solution set, referred to as a ‘Select Set.’ From the domain experience of our analysts, a vendor/product shortlist is established. Product briefings are requested from each of these vendors, asking for information on the company, products, technology, customers, partners, sales models and pricing. Our analysts then score each vendor and product across a variety of categories, on a scale of 0-20 points. The raw scores for each vendor are then normalized to the other vendors’ scores to provide a sufficient degree of separation for a meaningful comparison. These scores are then weighted according to weighting factors that our analysts believe represent the weight that an average client should apply to each criteria. The weighted scores are then averaged for each of two high level categories: vendor score and product score. A plot of these two resulting scores is generated to place vendors in one of four categories: Champion, Innovator, Market Pillar, and Emerging Player. For a more granular category by category comparison, analysts take the individual scores for each vendor/product in each evaluation category before they are normalized with the other vendor scores and convert those to a scale of zero to four whereby exceptional performance receives a score of four and poor performance receives a score of zero. These scores are represented with “Harvey Balls”, ranging from an open circle for a score of zero to a filled in circle for a score of four. Harvey Ball scores are indicative of absolute performance by category but are not an exact correlation to overall performance. Individual scorecards are then sent to the vendors for factual review, and to ensure no information is under embargo. We will make corrections where factual errors exist (e.g. pricing, features, technical specifications). We will consider suggestions concerning benefits, functional quality, value, etc; however, these suggestions must be validated by feedback from our customers. We do not accept changes that are not corroborated by actual client experience or wording changes that are purely part of a vendor’s market messaging or positioning. Any resulting changes to final scores are then made as needed, before publishing the results to Info-Tech clients. Vendor Landscapes are refreshed every 12 to 24 months, depending upon the dynamics of each individual market.
101. Methodology – Value Index Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape market evaluations are a part of a larger product selection solution set, referred to as a ‘Select Set.’ The Value Index is an indexed ranking of value per dollar as determined by the raw scores given to each vendor by analysts. To perform the calculation, Affordability is removed from the Product score and the entire Product category is reweighted to represent the same proportions. The Product and Vendor scores are then summed, and multiplied by the Affordability raw score to come up with Value Score. Vendors are then indexed to the highest performing vendor by dividing their score into that of the highest scorer, resulting in an indexed ranking with a top score of 100assigned to the leading vendor. The Value Index calculation is then repeated on the raw score of each category against Affordability, creating a series of indexes for Features, Usability, Viability, Strategy and Support, with each being indexed against the highest score in that category. The results for each vendor are displayed in tandem with the average score in each category to provide an idea of over and under performance. The Value Index, where applicable, is refreshed every 12 to 24 months, depending upon the dynamics of each individual market.