We are happy to announce Joe Topinka as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Advanity Technologies

I am thrilled to announce that I have accepted a new role as CEO of Advanity Technologies, a global Information Technology, Services, and Consulting company.

I’ve spent my career as a business leader building long-term relationships that are based on authenticity, integrity, care, and compassion. Taking on the Advanity Technologies CEO role is an easy decision. As a consultant, I’ve been working with the Advanity Technologies leadership team for many years. I’ve come to know them and how they operate. We share the same guiding principles that people come first, and respect and honor should be a vital part of an organization’s operating principles. These are more than just words with this leadership team. They take their role in our industry seriously and they truly care about the people and the companies they serve.

The passion this team has for its people and customers goes beyond relationships. The Advanity Technologies team feels gratitude for the opportunities the U.S. had offered them. I am reminded in a very real way what it means to be an American and live with the freedoms and autonomy that we enjoy this country. It is easy to take what America has to offer for granted. Working with this team of leaders, all from other countries has given me a very clear reminder of what made America the great country that it is.

I share this with you today because with all that is happening around the world, it is easy to forget what the American spirit has to offer. Seeing this country through the eyes of these newcomers inspires me and fuels my own passion for people, purpose, and planet. We believe in the American spirit and are investing in talent right here at home. Our Source USA program is focused on tapping into the talented workforce we have right here across America.

With Source USA, we aim to help people, their companies, and their communities thrive and succeed. That is why this new role is so appealing to me. We want to delight and deliver value through long-term relationships. Our aim is to do whatever it takes to help our clients and their companies succeed. Our commitment to you is to deliver on our promises and do so with honor and integrity. We are the real deal, and we will do what it takes to deliver positive results for our clients.

We are not just another consulting company. We are our clients’ partners. We are committed and authentic. We welcome the chance to show you what hard work and dedication can do for your company.  We are here to remind you what the power of American entrepreneurialism has to offer as we work hard to earn your respect and partnership.

I am excited about what’s next and look forward to having Advanity Technologies help you on your journey.

 

 

What Is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrencies are encrypted digital or virtual currencies that make counterfeiting and double-spending difficult. Blockchain technology, a global network of computers that enforces a distributed ledger, is at the heart of several cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies differ from traditional currencies in that they are not issued by a central authority, making them more resistant to government intervention and manipulation.

Understanding Cryptocurrencies

Online payment systems employ virtual “tokens” to represent ledger entries on the system’s internal ledger. The term “crypto” encompasses many encryption techniques and approaches, including elliptical curve encryption, public-private key pairs, and hashing algorithms.

Types Of Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin was the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency, and it remains the most widely used and profitable one today. Today, there are thousands of different cryptocurrencies, each with its unique set of features and needs. Some are forks or clones of Bitcoin, while others are whole new currencies.

“Satoshi Nakamoto” created Bitcoin in 2009, a person or organization that goes by the pseudonym “Satoshi.”.

1 Over 18.6 million bitcoins were in circulation in March 2021, with a market capitalization of $927 billion.

Litecoin, Peercoin, Namecoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and EOS are some of the alternative cryptocurrencies generated by Bitcoin’s popularity, known as “altcoins.” The entire worth of all cryptocurrencies is presently about $1.5 trillion, with Bitcoin accounting for more than 60% of that amount.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cryptocurrency

1. Advantages

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to simplify the transfer of funds between two parties without the need of a trusted third party such as a bank or credit card company. These transactions are secured using public and private keys and different incentive systems like Proof of Work and Proof of Stake.

A user’s “wallet,” or account address, in modern cryptocurrency systems, has a public key, while the owner knows the private key and is used to sign transactions. Customers can avoid high wire transfer costs for banks and financial institutions by using a low processing fee service.

2. Disadvantages 

The semi-anonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions makes them perfect for a range of illegal activities, including money laundering and tax evasion. On the other hand, cryptocurrency supporters sometimes emphasize anonymity, citing benefits such as safety for whistleblowers and activists living under oppressive regimes. Some coins provide greater anonymity than others.

Bitcoin is a wrong choice for doing illegal business online because the forensic study of the Bitcoin blockchain has aided authorities in arresting and prosecuting criminals. Other privacy-oriented currencies, such as Dash, Monero, and ZCash, are far more challenging to get.

How Does Cryptocurrency Work?

Cryptocurrency operates similarly to PayPal or a credit card, except that you trade digital assets for products and services instead of US dollars. To perform a crypto transaction, you must exchange currency with a peer using a crypto wallet, which is a digital wallet.

A cryptocurrency wallet is a software that enables you to move money from one account to another. You’ll need a password, also known as a private key, to execute a transaction—the private essential functions similar to a bank account. You can control numerous keys and any cash delivered to them.

Recorded transactions are on a public ledger, which displays transaction totals without exposing individuals’ identities.

The process of verifying transactions with cryptocurrency is known as cryptocurrency mining. Mining requires a lot of computer power and sophisticated algorithms, but those who solve issues might receive reward coins, tokens, or transaction fees.

How Does The Cryptocurrency Market Work?

Cryptocurrency markets are decentralized, meaning they are neither issued nor supported by a central authority like a government. Instead, distribution happens throughout a computer network. On the other hand, Cryptocurrencies may are purchased and traded on exchanges and held in ‘wallets.’

Cryptocurrencies, unlike traditional currencies, only exist as a shared digital record of ownership recorded on a blockchain. A user sends bitcoin units to another user’s digital wallet. The transaction isn’t complete through a process known as mining until it’s confirmed and added to the blockchain. In this manner, the production of New cryptocurrency tokens happens.

What Is Cryptocurrency Trading, And How Does It Work?

With IG, you may trade cryptocurrencies using a CFD account, which are derivative products that enable you to wager on whether the value of your chosen crypto will rise or fall. In traditional currencies, the prices are as the US dollar, and you never possess cryptocurrency.

CFDs are leveraged products, meaning you may open a position for a portion of the trade’s entire value. Leveraged products can increase your earnings, but they can also increase your losses if the market swings against you.

Is Cryptocurrency Reliable And Safe In Business?

Many dangers exist in the crypto market that does not exist in traditional financial needs, such as bonds and equities. It is something that small companies are paying attention to and investing. There are several Cryptocurrency chances in India, and they will soon be available in the commercial sector.

However, an unstable market structure might result in significant financial losses. When it comes to illegal activity, the bitcoin market is constantly in danger. Hipsters try to deceive investors by making false claims about the best outcomes from blockchain initiatives, but they invest in the market in other ways.

As a result, investors will suffer significant losses.

* Cryptocurrencies are unlike equities and bonds in that they are challenging to store. Another consideration is that the crypto project you invest in may not always succeed.

* The most intriguing aspect is that bitcoin is still a growing technology that has not yet fulfilled the expectations of the natural world. As a result, many cryptocurrency initiatives fail, but a small percentage of them thrive.

* Small businesses must use their account for commercial objectives and generate a significant profit through bitcoin investment; otherwise, the firm will fall behind the next-level investment possibility in a legal format.

* The cryptocurrency sector is constantly developing new financial techniques, like institutional-grade custody, to assist investors in protecting their investments. In India, investors may sell and buy cryptocurrency using well-known services such as Square and PayPal.

* MicroStrategy, a well-known company, has invested millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies and bitcoin. Tesla is the second corporation, having invested around $1.5 billion in bitcoin at the start of 2021. These two significant businesses are living examples of cryptocurrency trading.

Alternative currencies are the best way to explain Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As previously stated, they are not yet generally acknowledged as a means of trade.

Cryptocurrencies have a binary future: either they will fail, or they will take over the world. The last element contributes to the cryptocurrency market’s increased risk and higher potential return.

The cryptocurrency began as an anti-establishment movement at the grassroots level. Still, corporations and financial institutions are already embracing it for its potential to disrupt clunky old processes and diversify investment portfolios.

The definition of bitcoin will continue to develop as new technologies transform the cryptocurrency sector, including intriguing new projects like decentralized finance (“DeFi”).

Choosing between in-house development or software outsourcing is a major concern for businesses looking for software. In this blog, let us check out the pros and cons of both approaches.

Software is the core of any business! Whether it is a business or a startup, no business can prosper without software. Software development can be done in two ways: In-house development or software outsourcing. In this article, I will compare the in-house development to outsourcing and detail when to choose which.

Software development outsourcing is a catch-all term, and in recent years, companies have leaned more towards outsourcing their IT requirements. The factors that lead to this decision are high value for money, fewer hiring problems, faster time to market, etc.
The other way out is in-house software development. Assembling an internal team takes a lot of time, commitment, and patience.
There are risks involved in both approaches. Let’s first try to understand what in-house development and software outsourcing are. Then, we will compare in-house development or software outsourcing using the pros and cons of each approach.

The post-COVID world will undergo a massive digital disruption that will impact business processes. With so many people working from home, digitizing assets, moving to the cloud, and digital transformation (connecting people where they are using various channels) are becoming key priorities to companies entering a disruptive 2021. It is interesting to know that McKinsey states that there will be a new operating model where Business and IT will massively collaborate and become one and the same.

While going agile, becoming an API driven organization, and delivering data products have become the new normal for organizations changing their mindset and culture, they still struggle to understand “data-driven” decision making through advanced analytics techniques such as machine learning and centralized data platforms. Companies’ digital strategies must take a data-driven approach to provide meaningful insights at the right time to the right person in the right platform. We are outlining 6 topics that will become a crucial part of analytic product teams in 2021. Over the coming blogs, I will break out each of these topics and explain them in detail.

Analytics Topics to Watch in 2021

1. Analytics of Things (AoT):
   In a survey conducted with 620 types of IoT platforms, AoT seemed to an essential character and value proposition, according to IoT analytics.com. The most common being a mobile phone, telematics, digital twins, power generator grids, health diagnostics devices, smart cars, among others. Each of these platforms generates so much data. Without AoT, this data is just a piece of “Dark Data” waiting to act upon.
2. Virtual Analytic platforms (Single Pane of Glass):
   Every customer I talk to have at least 3 different analytic tools (Tableau, Cognos, Qlik, MicroStrategy, Power BI, Looker…) and rightfully so. Analytical tools are now readily available as SaaS services in app stores and can be spun up in minutes by a non-technical user. However, what this means is the ability for multiple versions of the same dashboard in multiple technologies creating confusion and lack of trust for CXO’s on their organizational analytics. The answer can be IT overruling and coming up with a single BI product or to have a single-entry point such as Theia, which will improve the data literacy of the organization with a single pane of glass. Also, these virtual layers can provide a catalog of dashboards and reports regardless of the underlying producer of analytic dashboards with appropriate governance.
3. Self-service and Data Prep:
   One of the most significant pain points, as stated by Tableau, is the lack of a full picture of the data that users want to consider providing meaningful Insights. To avoid wastage of time, analytic companies such as Tableau and Power BI released their own data preparation tools such as Data prep and Dataflow correspondingly. These tools allow the analytic user to consider doing simple data preparation activities, including standardization, data cleansing, and pattern recognition by connecting the user with hundreds of data sources. However, be wary of using the data preparation tools to any form of unstructured data as they are not mature enough in that space.
4. Process Intelligence:
   While AoT is the capability where large volumes of datasets are analyzed to be useful, there is no purpose for this analytics unless there is an action tied to the analytics. Take a simple example of a smart thermostat, such as Nest. Nest regularly mines the data for temperature changes, people in the room, and appropriately control the room temperature with maximum efficiency. Also, using a mobile phone app, a person can track the decision-making process and the parameters for those decisions. This level of process intelligence can be automated (Alteryx coined the term “Analytic Process Automation”), which will simplify the decision-making process.
5. Business-critical Analytic Technologies:
   When a marketing team is building a CRM system to track their closed-loop marketing spend, they would want to have analytics over their marketing process, including segmentation, Clickstream analytics, and customer intelligence. These simple yet powerful analytics does not require enterprise data warehouses and complicated data models. They need the ability to hook up data in motion and create ad hoc analytic models and dashboards by non-technical users. Besides, intentionally, these analytic technologies deliver a limited set of visualization capabilities as relevant to the analyst users. Examples would be Analytic dashboards from Tealium CDP, Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce.com.
6. Cognitive Computing:
   Named from “Cognitive Sciences”, this is the field of analytics that applies human-like intelligence for specific tasks relevant to vision, speech, and text(commonly called unstructured data). These are compelling technologies that can take inputs in the form of natural language or machine vision and provide outputs that are relevant to a “context.” Take Watson Analytics, for example, which combines AI and analytics and delivers predictive and prescriptive analytics for decision making. Cognitive Vision (CV) has become a typical implementation pattern used in driverless cars and large machines such as oil drills.

According to Ulster University research, 90 percent of the data floating around in the digital world today “has been created in the last two years.” This means organizations that invest in data products and think of creative ways of Infonomics using Analytics can “Uberize” industries and can disrupt traditional ways of doing business.

Advanity Technologies has practice areas that can help get to it faster. Reach out to us.

Are you planning on hiring a pool of candidates for your organization? But, does it feel like an intimidating task to go talent hunting, screening, and on-boarding the suitable candidates? Advanity Technologies are sure it does. Fortunately, we live in an era where we can easily get assistance from the best IT staffing agencies to meet our needs.

If you are new in the business, multiple questions might be arising in your mind like – How does a staffing agency work? Or how do we search for them? Or what is the best IT Staffing agency? Blah, Blah, Blah!

Advanity Technologies understand your curiosity, and we promise by the end of this blog you will have a fair understanding of how the IT recruitment firm can offer you top-notch professionals. Follow our lead!

IT Recruitment Agencies ensures the candidates’ qualification

IT employment agencies have a strong network that leads them to hundreds of applications on every job posting. Screening these applications and sorting out the most suitable candidates might take up weeks. Lining them up for the interviews is another task.

Here is where the staffing firms come into the picture. They take care of every stage of hiring, right from shortlisting the on-boarding. In order to leave no space for any doubt, hiring managers meet the candidates face to face and ensure their qualification.

boarding. In order to leave no space for any doubt, hiring managers meet the candidates face to face and ensure their qualification.

IT staffing solution serves as a medium to find a critical resource

The job market is not always a solution when you are looking for a highly skilled IT resource. One needs to run its search a little deep. In addition, traditional job posting cannot work effectively when we want to reach niche talent. But, but, but.

There is a way that can make this critical process a simple one. Do you know what it is? It is a partnership with the best IT staffing agencies. Staffing firms have their own ways to reach the potential candidates even for the difficult position

Staffing firms are aware of and practice the latest tools and trends

One thing a non-staffing firm cannot do is keep up with the latest trends in the recruitment industry. This lack of knowledge can lead to dead ends for every search. But as far as IT Staffing companies are concerned, they make it a point to keep their consultants aware and updated about the latest tools and trends.

Hence, handing our recruitment needs to the consulting agencies can actually lead us to a resource that is multi-talented.

IT staffing agencies minimize time and maximize the efficiencies

It is a huge possibility that your internal hiring process is working but taking too long to complete. In such a situation, the best thing to do is outsource your recruitment needs to a reliable IT recruitment consulting firm.

They are mostly powered by a team of consultants that deliver 2 weeks of work in 3 days. You can understand the benefits of the ratio. Plus, in a time of crisis where the project needs urgent employees, you can rest assured knowing that your partner will do the job quickly and fast.

You get the latest market insights and analysis

Domains like IT faces major fluctuations now and then. It’s hard to keep up with the changes and demands of the business. Another thing to note is the candidates’ viewpoint. People no more want a job in an organization that only has a name. They lookout for a better salary, work culture, and benefits.

If you are offering all of these below the bar then the chances of losing a valuable resource are high. Do you really want to face that risk? Advanity Technologies know you don’t. So how do you stay updated about these things? There is only one answer to it – embrace IT staffing services offered by a trustworthy IT staffing agency.

So far, we have answered you how the staffing agencies work and what they bring to the table. However, we still want to tell you how can recognize the best staffing agency! Keep the following points in mind.

1.       The one who has a huge database
2.       The one with the global reach
3.       The one with a proven record of successful deliveries
4.       The one offering both, single resource hiring and pool hiring too

Hiring has to be a smooth process so that business can focus n their core goals. If you wish to have an efficient IT staffing firm to help you, contact Advanity Technologies. We with our team of certified consultants will help you hire top-notch talent

Automation is the key to realizing the philosophy of DevOps and in ensuring that it delivers. The underlying building blocks of DevOps are to ensure that the engineering platform is in place to facilitate continuous delivery, integration, and improvement.

• Consider the following processes that have traditionally been carried out manually-
• Creating development, testing and production infrastructure and configuring networks
• Harnessing security and data protection
• Setting up, configuring and deploying software
• Testing and validation of data – data generated from the application and about the usage of the application
• Supporting infrastructure and the applications running on it – maintenance, upgrades and transitions

In a traditional development scenario, each new environment has to be created from scratch and include all of the above processes, making it a very tedious and lengthy process. However, in a DevOps environment, releases are more frequent and time for testing and quality assurance is therefore much shorter. Performing all these tasks manually therefore severely undermines the efficacy of the DevOps approach.

However, it is not just about making DevOps possible, it also has its own advantages. Unexpected errors in production still occur in manual builds as it is difficult to exactly replicate each environment. This in turn, increases the risk of errors occurring in production after testing has been carried out on non-identical pre-production systems. In today’s software world, it is all about productizing and replicating solutions. A product needs to be customized and deployed at a new client site within a really short period of time. Once deployed, the operations support team must be able to support with issues, bug fixes and day-to-day activities in a smooth manner. Similarly, a product deployed for one business domain must easily be configured and utilized by another industry. Such is the flexibility expected from software today.

What’s more, in the traditional development cycle, each member of the team has a local copy of the code. When a developer implements a new feature or fixes a bug locally, once complete, the new code is committed back to a central repository. But in a team of developers and system operators, more than one individual can be following this process at the same time, unintentionally breaking the code or affecting another developer’s code.

The rule of thumb is that the greater the human intervention, the more testing that will be required. Pre-production or development environments become non-standard which makes processes like testing or releasing new software versions more difficult to repeat and more prone to error. In worst-case scenarios, developers are left to re-invent the wheel each time they need to make changes in response to new business demands.

The Advantage of DevOps

By creating a more responsive development environment that is closely aligned to business requirements and which removes human error from the project lifecycle, DevOps enables organizations to:

• Reduce the implementation time of new services from months to minutes
• Increase productivity of business and IT teams
• Save costs on maintenance and upgrades, and eliminate unnecessary capital expenditure
• Standardize processes for easy replication and faster delivery
• Improve quality, reliability and reusability of all system components
• Increase the rate of success for digitalization strategies and transformation projects
• Ensure that money invested in cloud infrastructure, analytics and data management are not wasted

Since it focuses on delivering value much earlier in a project lifecycle, DevOps can be seen as an ideal approach to national and government IT projects, as well as massive scale projects for the private sector. It helps accelerate new services through continuous improvement and operational flexibility, providing innovative and cost-effective ways for delivering value through new ways of development and operations. Devops course helps in automation of organization & more benefits

Digital marketing plays a valuable role in shaping consumer behavior in today’s world, but how does it positively impact businesses? And more importantly, why? Here are a few reasons why every business should prioritize digital marketing over traditional methods of advertising.

Digital marketing levels the online playing field. 

When it comes to a business’s visibility on the web, just like opening a store, location is everything. Being easily noticeable on the web, getting a business’s name out there, and updating information frequently will bring customers to its door.

Digital marketing helps businesses stay a step ahead of their competition.

Digital marketing is the best way for a brand to get a leg up on its competition. Think SEO, organic search, local search, Google AdWords, social media, and blogs. Businesses want to reach as many people as possible, and this is significantly easier to achieve on the web than it is in person.

Digital marketing is less expensive than traditional advertising. 

Traditional advertising can cost large sums of money, whether it be via television, radio, newspaper, magazine, or direct mail. Now business owners can find a cheap equivalent online. Think YouTube instead of television, blogs instead of magazines, social media instead of flyers, and podcasts instead of the radio.  Some of the digital equivalents to traditional advertising are free, and all can be much cheaper than their traditional counterparts if the business has someone to manage and develop its strategies.

Digital marketing delivers analytics. 

The good news about digital marketing is that an ad’s creators can find out how it is pulling through using analytics that can’t be executed with traditional methods of advertising. Analytic reports can quickly be pulled up to test ad campaigns and find out what is getting read, looked at, or bought.

Digital marketing reaches mobile users. 

Digital marketing can be formatted to mobile devices in order to reach customers no matter where they may be. Once a business’s local search and digital presence have been optimized, it can rest assured that it will be found. Having a digital presence and local search optimization is vital as people increasingly rely on their phones’ web browsing capabilities.

Digital marketing builds brand recognition.

Since there are so many channels on the web with marketing potential, getting the message out about new brands is easier than ever before. Shotgun marketing approaches will confuse potential customers. It is much better to invest in a succinct campaign and build onto it from there, maintaining a distinct voice and brand style.

Digital marketing allows businesses to monitor their brand. 

The great thing about digital marketing is that those who use it can easily check their reputation and engage with unsatisfied customers, making it possible for them to address negative press before it circulates too far and too wide. Just because a business doesn’t take advantage of the web and social media doesn’t mean that its customers don’t. It is far better to know what is going on as it happens than to find out the hard way along with everyone else.

Digital marketing can help brands develop trust with their audience. 

If a business is following its customers on social media and reaching out, commenting, and showing them that they care, it will gain trust, camaraderie, and friendships, in addition to more customers. There is nothing greater than engaging with a customer online and seeing them come into the store later to say how much it meant to them that the business took the time to connect. It is the small things a business can do that often make the most difference.

Digital marketing provides businesses with additional sales channels. 

Think of digital marketing as branches off a brick and mortar business. One branch of the business contains social media posts with tips, advice, local news, and events involving the brand. Another branch hosts the business’s blog, which serves to educate, inspire, and entertain its audience. Branching off from these main channels are landing pages and blog posts for different products. Add in YouTube videos, and the business can be everywhere on the web, delivering its message and brand, and promoting its products and services.

Digital marketing can educate customers. 

One of the best features of digital marketing is its ability to help brands educate their customers and share information that makes their lives better. One of the greatest reasons to use digital marketing is the potential that it must improve others’ lives. By sharing expertise, business models, and positive lifestyles, businesses truly can make the world a better place for the next generation and beyond.

Digital marketing brings a brand’s story to more people.

Lastly, digital marketing is about telling a unique story to the world. Digital marketing is a business’s best chance to stand up and be heard, bringing its brand to the doorsteps of people that need the product or service, and those that might like to learn more about it.

Advanity Technologies is a digital marketing firm located in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Irving and India providing marketing services to small to mid-sized local businesses. Specializing in social media and content marketing, Advanity Technologies focuses on aligning with clients, the ‘Advanity Technologies Community’, to deliver innovative ideas and translate those into refreshing results. For more information about Advanity Technologies, visit www.advanitytech.com

According to a recent report by Accenture and SuccessFactors, a SAP company, HR operations need to be more agile than ever to keep up with today’s workforce. In this respect, automating HR processes is not enough. Traditional approaches don’t work the way they used to, and it’s necessary to revise outdated employee management architectures and find more effective alternatives to traditional methods of managing human resources.

The solution is digital transformation in HR exploring and implementing new ways of working with specialized apps that revolutionize HR management and employee experience at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

 

Hiring

Hiring the right people is more than just filling vacancies. Companies need the right team members to set up new locations, develop new markets and implement new business models. Rising competition for high-skilled candidates generates the necessity for HR managers to enhance their talent acquisition capabilities: increase the quality and speed of hiring.

Even if you get the most from your website, public job boards and social networks (for example, LinkedIn), far better results are possible with technology-driven tools for hiring:

• Online interviewing and interview management improves recruitment efficiency and increases its speed when many candidates should be interviewed.
• A digital competency library can become a handy tool to quickly develop accurate job descriptions and hold competency-based interviews.
• Using CRM-like approach to active head-hunting: creating expanded candidate profiles with additional professional details from a variety of sources (for example, online assessments), nurturing candidates, matching previously rejected candidates to new vacancies.

Such tools transform the way HR departments find suitable talents, communicate with them and hire them. On top of that, technology-driven approach to hiring becomes an exciting experience for both HR managers and candidates and supports a company’s employment brand.

Onboarding

To employ suitable candidates is just the first step to building a competitive talent pool newbie should be introduced to their responsibilities and blend into the team. HR Digital Transformation uncovers new ways to organize onboarding and communicating with newbies to make this period smoother and faster than ever before.

One way to ensure successful onboarding is to use a personal employee page that contains a detailed onboarding plan with the goals for the adaptation period (for example, introductory training sessions and test tasks).

The progress in introductory training and assignments is not the only side to control during onboarding: another important thing is an employee’s satisfaction and comfort level in a new team. For this purpose, a company can use the tools to gather and analyse newbies’ feedback, for example, online questionnaires. It’s even better if feedback becomes visualized to display statistics in a more digestible way. Moreover, this data can show the quality and effectiveness of the corporate onboarding program and point at its gaps.

Team development and corporate trainings

Even if you hire the best employees, in a dynamic working environment their skills can become obsolete within several months. This makes the need for both rapid and continuous learning more important than ever, and companies need to re-strategize the way they educate their employees.

Digital transformation in HR empowers companies to go beyond traditional approaches to learning and, apart from improving the trainings, make employees more involved in education.

Engaging in learning may be difficult for the staff because of a heavy workload – they just cannot find enough time. To promote corporate education and target-based development of competencies, companies can use mobile learning apps that make learning more accessible, interesting and effective.

Also, traditional training sessions can be enhanced with new features: interactive tests and quizzes, virtual reality, video conferencing and online sessions for those who cannot participate.

Apart from studying new things, reviewing is also important – partially it happens in everyday working activities, and additional revisions can be conducted with apps (let it be quizzes, for example).

IT solutions also modify the approaches to corporate education and prompt at new smart learning paths such as:

• Engaged learning: entertainment approach to training, gamification, involving augmented reality.
• Contextual learning: information given at the training is linked to practical context: participants solve themed challenges in real-world situations. Employees get immediate results and stay motivated to learn.

These are only a part of the educational opportunities provided by digital solutions. Still, they can become great supplements to help your talents remain competitive.

Assessment

Real-time employee analytics becomes crucial for organizations to see how effective they recruit from the perspective of value and cost, select underperformers for trainings (or firing) and promising employees for promotion, identify whether employees are given right salaries and salary increases and more.

Traditional ways of stuff assessment, for example, managers’ feedback, can be rather subjective, inconsistent and time-consuming. Here’s just a couple of examples of how IT solutions can upgrade stuff productivity evaluation:

• CRM can become a great tool to assess the sales reps’ efficiency in interaction with customers.
• Automated competency tests and intranet surveys can become reliable ways to receive and process data about employees’ skills. Automatically generated reports can provide a detailed view of employees’ data and ensure continuous and transparent competency assessment.
• Feedback templates help managers give quick but comprehensive feedback on performance.
• A frequent practice for evaluating management activities is to ask subordinates how well they understand the goals set by the manager. For such cases, an intranet integrated with survey services can automatically initiate template-based surveys.

IT tools cannot replace humans in evaluating employees’ productivity, but digital solutions can transform this process and empower managers to increase the quality and speed of assessment.

Improving work environment

Due to high recruitment costs, investing in employee wellness seem a reasonable thing to do to retain employees and create a friendly and productive work environment. Technologies have strong potential to improve employee wellness, control work-life balance and drive performance.

To be productive the whole day, employees need to recharge. Some companies introduce wearable devices to enable employees to create and manage fitness challenges. Enterprises can inject new life into everyday working routine with mobile apps that give healthy tips, fitness reminders and coffee-break notifications and more.

All this makes work less monotonous, improves work communication and makes employees become enthusiastic about their work and more loyal to employers.

To sum it up

To win the best talents, retain them and help them remain competitive, companies need to go beyond automating traditional HR approaches because these approaches don’t answer present-day talent management challenges and don’t meet the expectations of the present-day tech-savvy workforce.

With well-chosen IT solutions, a company can transform and enhance everyday HR activities in various aspects:

• Solutions for hiring reduce time and costs on hiring and increase its effectiveness.
• IT-driven onboarding support helps newbies feel at home and unlock their potential.
• Regular training sessions and competency assessments enable employees to develop their professional skills and knowledge.
• Interactive features (for example, healthy tips in smartphones) enliven office work and make your people more motivated and productive.

Of course, the best option is to gather all HR-related tools in a centralized HRM system. But if a standalone multifunctional application seems too expensive or a company is not sure about its effectiveness, introducing additional features to the systems already in use will be a good way to test digital innovations and enter the path of HR digital transformation.

If you still don’t know how to begin, digital transformation consulting services can help to work out the best approach to HR transformation and invest in the right things.

Business owners are often searching for the right technology and platforms to improve and expand their business, serve customers better, and build resilience in the operations. Data analytics has been a game-changer in how companies do business. But many business leaders are still unsure of how they can benefit from the technology. Here is why they should think about including analytics in their tech tool kit.

 

Analytics in Business

Data analytics can provide a wealth of information that can help businesses become more efficient and make more informed decisions. There are multiple uses for analytics throughout business processes from growth, expansion, customer service, marketing, operations, and more.

 

Use insights to become Proactive

The pandemic has caused disruption across industries globally. Business leaders are finding out that traditional KPIs (key performance indicators) are no longer enough to help determine the path ahead. Customer requirements have changed overnight, sales numbers are no longer reliable to deliver forecasts and industries have had to pivot quickly to meet new demand. Organizations now need more data sets and micro and macroeconomic data to map out trends and customer behaviour in order to respond. This where analytics platforms step in, providing key insights that the organizations can act on. Business leaders can take advantage of the predictive insights that business analytics tools generate to optimize expansion plans and identify niche markets. What is particularly exciting is the fact that business analytics study the factors that are impacting specific industries – this is what helps organizations make better decisions. This has a significant impact on how the company responds to the crises – if it can get the edge or risk a slump into irrelevance.

 

Develop a business plan

Data can provide a clear picture of how the business is currently faring. Business analytics platforms can go a step further and provide forecasts about trends in growth and sales. These insights help develop a long-term business plan going forward. These business plans can be tweaked as the situation demands when more insights and data come into play. Business analytics provide insights via dashboards. These dashboards provide data visualizations that are easy to understand, like graphs and charts, and they can be customized by users so that they have only relevant data and are not inundated with excess information. This can considerably assist planners as they go about building strategy.

 

Build a marketing strategy

Analytics tools and platforms can provide granular details on customers which can help business owners design and tweak their marketing strategy. For example, tools like Google Analytics can analyse a website’s reach and audience to help develop a marketing strategy that is more precise.

These tools give you key metrics like which pages attract the most viewers and which show most engagement. It tracks the visitor’s actions on the site, all of which can provide insights into how to improve customer engagement. It also reports on keywords that people search and how they land on your site, which gives more information on website traffic.

Similarly, your social business strategy can be improved with Twitter analytics tools that track hashtag trends that connect with customers. This data can help fine-tune the brand messaging and advertising/marketing campaigns. Analytics can help businesses research the competition and eventually narrow down on which audience segment has the most scope to develop and identify opportunities with maximum potential.

As companies begin to chart out a pandemic recovery plan, they should adopt analytics tools and platforms that will provide them with the relevant insights to make informed decisions and move quickly. There is a wide variety of analytics tools available, which can be confusing. So, it is good practice to work with a reliable IT-services provider to ensure that your business is getting the right analytics programs. Advanity Technologies has partnered with multinational enterprises and start-ups alike on their data analytics processes over the long term. Connect with us today to learn how your business can gain the edge with business analytics.