The Gap in Cloud Skill Increases the Need for Automation

The world today is experiencing changes in technology every single day. What was trending a decade ago is considered archaic today. This means for us to remain relevant especially in the workplace, we have to keep up with the changes in technology.

Companies are finding the use of cloud relevant and more profitable to the business. The need to move data to cloud and manage services from there is becoming a necessity for many companies whether big or small.

However, companies are experiencing a blackout in human capital. They lack a robust IT department that can handle the migration of data to cloud or even manage customers and the business once everything has been migrated to cloud.

This has become a common problem for many companies. It can result to massive losses due a workforce that lacks the necessary skills to operate services and manage clients on cloud.

Technology has, however, taken care of this headache. To combat the failures of human capital and an unskilled IT department, automation is the solution that your company needs. With automation, your company is going to reap the following benefits:

1. Data recovery

With automation, your company’s data is backed up and secured. This means that you can recover any data lost securely and within a short period of time. This will also help the company save money in terms of human capital to manage and backup your data. The system does not have to engage a human administrator to recover any lost data. This can be done automatically by the system once you adopt automation.

2. Flexibility

With automation you can scale up your business demands for bandwidth on a need case basis. This means that you do not have to invest on infrastructure that will not be optimally used by your company. Optimization means you only acquire bandwidth that is required by your company.

Once your company grows, you can incise the bandwidth. In case you are downsizing, you can equally reduce the bandwidth. This agility can give your business a competitive edge over your competitors

3. Automated software updates

Once you automate your business process, you no longer need to worry about checking on the systems. That is the power of adopting an automated system. The Automated System will take care of all your security updates. In case of the need for a system upgrade, it will occur flawlessly. This leaves you time to focus on more important aspects of the business.

4. Increased productivity

With an automated business, your team’s productivity will increase. This is because of the ease in sharing data and information among your team members effortlessly. Their productivity is also measured on a real time basis. Teams can exchange wok progress and share challenges experienced in executing projects. This fosters teamwork and enables departments to support each other.

5. Secure

An automated system can identify system users and authenticate any requests made to access the system. The system also allows the users access only within their work class according to an organization’s structure. In case the work class changes, amendments can be easily made to accommodate the new role.

The system can also track workflow and report any unutilized applications. With an automated system, an organization can keep a secure system by ensuring only authorized people have access to it.

6. Adherence to policies and procedures

Adoption of an automated system gives a company improved adherence to policies and procedures. Through automation, predication and consistency are possible. Using intelligent applications and devices, the system can avail solutions that are repetitive and consistent for every user within the same work class role.

Human errors are also eliminated in the system, making data processing accurate. It also makes auditing easy and improves monitoring and evaluation.

7. Cost effective

Automation reduces the need for human capital in a business. Though it does not entirely eliminate human capital, it reduces the need for human interaction by a great percentage. It replaces some of the roles that only humans can execute.

Resultantly, this reduces the recurrent expenditure of a company through wages and salaries, and in the long run, it increases the company’s profitability. The money channeled to cater for salaries and wages can be used to improve the infrastructure of the company and for expansion.

8. Bigger outreach

By adopting Cloud Automation, you can reach a wider network of people using a lean IT department. Through the use of intelligent apps, the system can flawlessly interact with more people and cover a wider geographical area.

As a result, marketing becomes easy and more profitable. The system can be tuned to contact people within a certain target area and send promotional messages to them. This is especially so in social media marketing. It helps you achieve your marketing goals within a small budget.

With this knowledge, automation is clearly the future of businesses. To ensure your business grows and is in line with changes in technology, automation can no longer be ignored.

 

How Is Automation Changing The Hospitality Industry

Automation has become a necessity for various businesses as it helps to eliminate human errors and time. Be it general automation, task scheduler, PowerShell automation or cloud automation, every industry is getting the benefits of using VisualCron’s automation for effective outcomes.

Of late, Automation has become an essential part of the hospitality industry and more and more hotels are embracing this technology to have a good impression in the business space. They believe that automating the hospitality industry can bring a better experience for the guests and provide meaningful conversations between guests, employees and the hotel management.

Automation in the hospitality industry can bring a lot of benefits and we have noted a few below.

  1. Automation helps better service to the guests

The hospitality industry works round the clock and the pressure on the employees are so much that often their work have some errors. The employees have to take the bookings, allot rooms, look after the guests and in this process often they tend to commit mistakes. Hence, the paper and pen work of the hotels should be replaced by automation where the employees can automate the booking and room allotment process and they can even use the task scheduler to set certain tasks by alloting the time.

  1. Automation helps better interaction with the guests

Good reviews means more business. It will not be possible to reply to all the good or even negative reviews quickly by the employees. Even there are instances when guests may have queries or complaints and they send mails. Acknowledgement is the key to have a good impression and if your mails are automated using VisualCron’s automation, then the business will earn a good name among the guests.

  1. Automation helps reduce costs

One of the primary goals of any business is to cut down costs. Automating a hotel business can help reduce cost and increase the ROI. App based request from guests can translate into more sales. Moreover,hiring more staffs means providing training which involves huge costs and additional payroll expenses too. By using automation you can provide more efficient error free services and make huge profits.

  1. Automation helps guest satisfaction

Automation can perform any task faster than manual labor. This in turn brings guest satisfaction. Guests can avail and order for any service through their smart devices and Cloud Automation will notify the employees with the requirements. This will help the staffs to provide the guest needs quickly.

VisualCron is your best automation partner!

If you own a hotel or have any other kind of business, automation is a must in today’s highly competitive market. This will help your employees set all the required pending tasks in Task Scheduler and focus on the other priorities that needs to be taken care of. You can also keep an eye on all the ongoings in your business with the help of cloud automation as you will have the access to all data anytime, anywhere. What are you waiting for? Request a free price quote today!

Business Automation : The Perfect Solution To Your Revenue Leakage Problem

Working with an inefficient and outdated financial system that is manual process doesn’t give you a clear picture of where exactly your revenue is going. Revenue leakage can easily impact your bottom line, stealing you of the new business opportunities due to lack of funding. This is where business automation comes into play. It is basically an organization transformation that aims to provide transparency and drive efficiency.

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What is Revenue Leakage ?

Revenue leakage is basically the potential or actual revenue lost through transactions or processes. You are not receiving this money because due to various ineffective and inefficient processes, the revenue is leaking that is rightfully yours. The core problem is not having the knowledge of its origin that you can understand and control through Business Automation.

Let’s take a look at the signs that indicates there is revenue leakage in your organization and its solutions:

Manually tracking employee expenses - The paper based expenses are hard to track as all the receipts must be kept, filled in a spreadsheet and then sent to the accounting department. Moreover, you have to monitor the employees to ensure that personal expenses are not included. With the help of VisualCron, you can automatically reconcile the expenses into accounting software. Furthermore, you can monitor and control unauthorized expenses.

No ROI from your current technology - Many businesses purchase a technology without knowing the business drive behind the decision. You need to have the knowledge of how it will help you achieve the goals, how will it integrate with the existing technology, its support and maintenance costs along with the type of technology your competitors are buying. At VisualCron, our team provides you complete support along with video tutorials to understand the technology better.

Outdated billing systems - Outdated practices basically hold your business back. Manually entering the payments and invoices also lead to errors and loss of revenue. If your customers and vendors doesn't pay you promptly, you are billing products and services at wrong prices, there are errors in contracts and you are spending too much time doing all this then your system is simple useless. VisualCron is an effective way of automating your billing system and making it productive.

Relying on manual time tracking - It is an extremely long and complicated process to manually track your employee hours. It is quite easy to miscalculate a date that flows between employees, finance department and supervisors. VisualCron provides you with automation services to get the right data within time.

Reasons behind not knowing it

Company culture - One of the main reason behind not knowing where the problem is, could be the competition between the departments. Working in isolation without supporting each other or not sharing the information plays a big role here.

Inefficiency - As you are manually doing the work and not using business automation, you are wasting your significant time, resources and manpower in repetitive tasks.

Disconnected - Using different systems that work independently prevent you from getting an overall view of your business.

So, take a look at your business processes and remove the areas or parts which are causing the revenue leakage. Business Automation is basically the answer to your problem, so if you want to automate your business, get a free price quote today!

The Gap in Cloud Skill Increases the Need for Automation

When it comes to choosing an automation service, there are a large number of options available out there. As everyone’s workflow and business is unique, choosing the best automation service provider is a taxing process. Moreover, the potential cost and time involved in evaluating the number of tools can be pretty overwhelming.

Automation is basically the technique of making a system or process operate automatically. It helps your business in maintaining quality and consistency, reducing the cost, improving the productivity, performance and reliability. Being a long term investment, automation is an important tool that every business needs to have in its arsenal.

So, when going for a company that provides automation services, how do you choose the best one for your business. There are certain things that you need to keep in mind, let’s take a look at them:

1. Check References

It may sound obvious to you but would be surprised to know that there are many people  that overlook this part. There are organizations that tout themselves advanced automation companies but doesn’t have much to offer you in terms of services. You need to know about their experience, expertize, customer testimonials, availability and maintenance of different tools and equipments.

2. Identify Your Needs

Another important step in choosing the right automation service is to conduct an inventory to ascertain which of the tasks can be automated. Make sure you also include the workflows that should be automated to make the operations more effective. Once you have identified all your needs, focus on finding a uniform solution according to your needs.

3. Seek Cohesiveness

With too many tools working, that too against each other, a number of businesses struggle with automation. You need to recognize that some automation tools, unintentionally can do more harm than any good. Make sure the tools you go for complement other systems and can be integrated with the existing ones. Avoid the ones that compete and can disrupt the flow of things.

4. Variety of Automation Tools

In order to automate your business effectively you need to integrate the automation process into your system. There is not one but many process to be automated that requires a variety of automated tools to be used such as cloud automation, task scheduler, powershell automation, encryption automation, Robotic Process Automation etc. So, when choosing an automation partner, make sure they will be able to provide all these tools and more.

5. Shop Around

Do your homework and shop around. Don’t go for one company that you get to know of. Do a proper research, look at their websites, ask them related questions, compare the services and cost before narrowing down your search to at least three companies. Then make a decision according to their success rate and if they would be able to meet your requirements.

This way you would be able to choose an automation service provider that is right for your business and can offer something substantial in the long run. If you want to get your business automated, get a free price quote right away!

 

5 Sure Shot Ways To Achieve Automation Success

The business processes and operations affect every part of a business from finance, engineers to technical support and agents on the ground. It could be pretty daunting to adjust the processes that basically forms the backbone of these functions. So, it is very important to never undertake an automation project lightly. It needs proper planning to become a success. People usually seek out automation services when they have already hit a critical point in their business operations. Their current processes are no longer manageable and are having serious revenue leakage problems.

During this pivotal moment of your business, you need your Automation project to be a success. So, how do you make this happen? Here, we are going to discuss a few of the best tips to ensure this, take a look:

1. Analyze your pre-automation processes

This will provide you with a deeper understanding of your pain points, where are they located and how exactly your business works. Moreover, it will allow you to identify the high value areas for automation. It will put you in best position possible to automate processes that fix your issues and answer your key pain points. Work with your provider and benefit from their expertize and years of experience.

2. Extreme focus

Start with setting up your goals and then stick with them. The key factor here is communication. Communicate your priorities, scope and timelines on a continuous basis to keep everyone focused. By being focused on your goals, your drive the project and the people around you. Make sure you get the best people on the project right from the start.

3. Define what you want to accomplish

You have to know what you want in a clear and explicit manner. Your provider will guide you through this on the basis of their experience and the functionality of their solution. But having a clearly defined project means everyone on board knows the details, no time wastage by meeting the deadlines and further objectives are achieved and milestones are met.

4. Benchmark yourself

Are your goals, better, cheaper, faster, achievable or what? You have to define the measurement of your success upfront. By knowing how to quantify the measures in an automated system, you will be able to know if you are succeeded or not. Moreover, you also get to know to which extent you have succeeded, how much you have saved and the revenue recovered.

5. Trust the company you choose

Automation is basically a long term investment in your business, time, money and a business partnership with the providers. As your technology and business evolve, it will help you bring profits for years. When finding the right partner, look for someone who has a proven track record of success. Research, check out their clients, testimonials and then reference check them to get the best provider.

By making sure you take care of all these things, you can enjoy the rewards of project well run and managed. If you are looking for getting your business operations automated, get a free price quote right away as VisualCron is known for its quality, experience and amazing services!

A Beginner’s Guide : Know The Need To Automate Your Business

With the advancement in the technology era, automation has emerged as a powerful tool for businesses. It provides real solutions to the problems such as process complexity and operational visibility. But what is it exactly? It is basically a process to manage data, information and processes to reduce investment, cost and resources. It further increases the productivity by making use of computing technology. To help you with the whole automation process, we are here to provide you with a beginner's guide to Business Process Automation.

Meaning of Automation

It basically means that step by step processes are getting performed automatically without the involvement of humans. It is all about converting the repetitive and tedious manual tasks into an effective automated processes. VisualCron is one such automation that automates routine business tasks through various means while achieving business wide efficiency. 

Why Automation?

Manual processes results in ineffectiveness, revenue leakage and low customer satisfaction. VisualCron offers you a wide range of benefits that are explained here:

  • Consistency and Quality - Machines are free from the interruption of different people during a task. They do exactly the same thing every time and the process gets completed in only one way. Tasks are further completed as per the specifications. As a result your customers will consistently experience the same level of service.
  • Cost Reduction - It is a fair investment initially but over time the costs are quantified. As machines run faster and longer than humans, the capital cost per task is reduced drastically. VisualCron allows you to accomplish more with fewer resources.
  • Time Saving - Manual tasks take time whereas machines can do multiple tasks at once. VisualCron reduces the number of tasks you need to do manually. This saves you a lot of time and increases productivity while allowing you to be more innovative.

These newly found savings, consistency and speed means a lot for your business in terms of:

  • It all goes a long way to increase the customer satisfaction.
  • Being dependent on people, manual processes are prone to human errors that leads to revenue leakage. VisualCron removes these factors, allows you to identify the sources of leakage and to further plug them.
  • With tasks being completed easier and quicker, it allows you to respond to your customers with more agility. You can further deliver the product effectively and at faster speed.

Things To Keep in Mind

An Investment - VisualCron is an investment both in terms of financially and time. Be aware of your processes, their working and improvement because it evolves along with your business.

Choose The Right Partner - It is important that you choose the right partner, especially where long term investment is involved.

Clarify Your Goals - Have a clear idea of your objectives and the ways to achieve them. It will ensure your success with the automation of your business.

So, these are some of the important things that you need to know about automation. If your looking to automate your business, Contact Us to get more information regarding business automation.

Understanding The Evolution Of Automation

IT companies and departments have always had a need to complete tasks faster and cut down on costs. Previously, they used job scheduling solutions and batch processing to achieve this. This would have them carrying out tasks in large batches all at the same time as opposed to one at a time.

This reduced the cost and time spent on task execution because the system was static and time/date based. It was also carried out overnight when business activities were done.

IT has evolved over the years and technology has grown in leaps and bounds, thus affecting the tasks carried out in IT companies. Businesses are also handling large batches of varied data that all require processing.

Processing systems improved with time, but were required to process multiple batches of data with different dependencies and over several platforms. Job scheduling turned into what is now known as workload automation. Workload Automation solutions are now an integral part of business operations that help to meet the data dependencies.

Efficiency vs. Scalability

The focus was getting the tasks done while saving the most amount of resources. Efficiency was essential in job scheduling but the main focus now includes not just efficiency but scalability, accuracy, speed and agility.

It all comes down to great automation. IT departments are faced with complex data every day and manual manipulation would take lots of time and resources that could be used to come up with better solutions to improve business processes.

With increased data flow over the years, different departments are more reliant on IT to help solve their internal issues. The HR department, for instance, would require the help of IT to onboard new employees or generate reports. While the interdependence and collaboration is commendable, it reduces efficiency and beats the whole purpose of automation.

Self-Service Gets More Done

This has lead to the introduction and uptake of self-service automation solutions. It is basically where other business users that aren’t IT staff are able to carry out their own activities without direct involvement of IT.

It makes other business users more productive and much less frustrated as compared to when they have to wait for IT to get to their ticket. IT staff also benefits from this with reduced operation issues to handle. They can focus their attention on overall productivity of the systems and ways to make them better and more efficient.

The business demands are rising day by day, but the manpower to keep up the business needs in time is lacking. Skilled IT individuals are much fewer and harder to find and this always increases their workload almost tenfold. Enabling all other staff to carry out their everyday processes without IT staff is definitely a win for any business.

Big Data, Complex Processes and Automation

Automation tools of VisualCron don’t require any programming skills whatsoever, to use. They help control workflow, handling errors, a large number of tasks, and room for some programming interaction for those who can handle it, all on a simple interface. They facilitate the improvement of business processes at any given time thus improving efficiency and productivity all round.

With the increase of data from all quarters, data analytics is inescapable. Wearable devices, social media platforms and other sources all provide big data that must be sifted through to be put to good use. Workload automation must adjust accordingly and stay reliable throughout so as to execute the complex workflows arising from it.

Automation is here to stay and can only get better just as it has over the years. Big data, big implementation strategies and better automation solutions to execute all of it seamlessly is the future of automation. Order your needs today from VisualCron and get your business automated for an efficient working environment.

Manual Vs Automation : Database Cluster Management

When it comes to managing a cloud infrastructure, management of persistent data is the most challenging part. Persistent data in this case is basically any data that should survive the destruction of a cloud environment.

Since you can easily reconstruct your software, simple configuration files, and operating system; they can’t be termed as persistent data. Only the data you can’t reconstitute qualifies as persistent data and this data stays in your database engine.

The problem ensuring database consistency isn’t unique to the cloud. Well, the cloud creates a new challenge to an existing problem of backing up a database, since your database server in the physical environment is more reliable than the database server in the cloud. The virtual server that runs your database can likely fail completely and with no prior warning.

Whether physical or virtual, when the database fails, the files in the database are likely to get corrupted. And the possibility of file corruption is dependent on the database engine you’re using. Nevertheless, it can happen with any engine.

Avoiding Data Corruption

The most reliable mechanism you could use to avoid corruption is to leverage the abilities of a database engine that does support clustering. A clustered database environment is one in which several database servers do work together as one logical database server.

In such an environment, a transaction performed to the cluster will still survive even if one node fails. Clients of that database won’t be able to tell if a node went down, and will keep operating.

Organizations continue to demand huge data storage spaces, scalable and flexible productivity systems and fast data synchronization.

Therefore, cloud services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive continue to provide an exceptional service that creates files and folders with many inbuilt sharing features. VisualCron works effectively with each of these cloud platforms and allows you to sync things easily.

Download and Upload Capabilities

In Cloud Automation, there are two essential features: uploading and downloading. With the downloading feature, you can have access to your files and file clusters using a shareable link.

On the other hand, the upload feature keeps a copy of your local data in the cloud, making it easy for you to have remote access whenever you want. If by accident, the data is lost on the local servers, all you need to do is to relax and download a copy of data that was initially uploaded to the servers.

Manage Files and Folders

What’s more, you can go ahead and create, rename or even delete a number of files and folders. The cloud services come with inbuilt tools that you can use to read the data.

VisualCron’s automation lets you upload and download files and folders easily; you just need to define a rule or task. The execution of the task will take place within the time preferences defined by the user.

The Power of Automation

When it comes to cluster database management, data automation has several features like data backup, fixing schedules, automatically running scripts, process execution and killing, registry updates, creation of system log information, file and folder copying, deleting and renaming files, and so forth. Only an organization can fully understand the need and power for automation. Businesses of all sizes have embraced this contemporary technology and keep using it.

The Place of Manual Data Input

It is worth noting that data automation isn’t applicable on every function and rightly so. Some functions may require manual input of data, and will only be constructive if handled manually.

Most importantly, data Automation saves organizations a lot of time that could be spent executing several tasks. Such time can be channelled towards managing other processes which require human intervention.

Organizations treasure their data, as they can use it for reference purposes. It is important to ensure that the management can access the data when required. Data automation is paramount as it makes data management effortless. With the automation features of VisualCron, the work at the workplace will become more easier. To get a Free Price Quote, get in touch with us today!

It’s Time You Renovate Your Organization With Self Service Automation

One of the major buzzword in the IT community nowadays is self service automation. It may seem foreign to some people but actually it is a part of our everyday life. From ATM, self checkout lanes to automatic doors, self service automation technology is everywhere. It has been further adopted by industries as a means to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Although it is being used widely by businesses, the IT sector hasn’t embraced it.

Self service Automation is basically revolutionizing the way people across the entire company do their job. You need to realize that offering end users self service automation that is VisualCron, can significantly benefit the different departments and the organization as a whole. Let’s take a look at these benefits:

  • End users as well as IT departments will experience the increase in efficiency and time savings. It is all the result of faster management and execution of requests.
  • It further provides the organization with resources and to process traceability as well as transparency.
  • Non IT users will be able to resolve the problems and stay updated with information without the constant support from IT. It will provide more time to insight and promote a better partnership between end users and IT.
  • Organizations will get to experience an overall improvement in their productivity.
  • With the management of IT services, there would be positive end user experience.
  • VisualCron enhances the quality of the service which means happy end users.

Over time, it is becoming a widely known fact that VisualCron provides an organization with many benefits. The question that is still in people’s mind is what is it exactly? VisualCron basically empowers non IT departments and users by providing them the ability to proactively take on ad hoc and daily processes.

Reliance on IT intervention leads to inefficiency and frustration on both parts. Through VisualCron, you empower business users to accomplish the day to day tasks and process on their own. It will save the IT department’s time that they can put into more critical tasks. Self service automation basically allows the end user to resolve the problems  independently. It can also be used as a proactive means to transfer ownership from IT department to end user. Be it for development, production or test tasks, effective IT service management starts with automation solutions and self service.

Conclusion

Over time, with the increase in the amount of technologies, it is harder to find the right IT staff and in right quantity. With the help of VisualCron, you can offload many of IT department's daily tasks, making the handling of human resources a bit easier.  It further facilitates a business in being more productive while providing with more time to focus on core areas and further the IT and non-IT collaboration is improved and strengthened.

5 Reasons Your Billing Reports Require Automation

Meticulosity is necessary when it comes to billing as the smallest of mistakes can bring severe impact on the bottom line of your business. The billing process of goods and services is a taxing process which involves huge stacks of paper and the challenge of managing the information, not to mention the large amount of man hours and efforts it requires. With the number of transactions being too high along with volumes of data and information processing, it is the perfect opening for errors to creep in.

Automated billing reports eliminates any unexpected errors while providing transparency and efficiency. Crystal reports Automation is one such example to make it happen in your business. Through this blog we will help you in providing an insight, regarding the need of getting your billing reports automated.

#1 Unexpected Irregularities

To correct any irregular billing errors is a daunting task as once you have released the batches, trying to correct them can lead to a domino effect which in a way ruins the whole billing cycle. The management of all the information that is stored at different places is like a nightmare, especially when they can't communicate with each other. VisualCron makes the extraction and sharing of data an easy task while making the process faster and eliminating these unexpected irregularities.

#2 Decision Making

An invoice needs approval for payment after it is being received. Some invoices  may require signatures while others need proofs to be validated, which could lead to suspension or denial of payment. Through VisualCron, you can match the invoices to orders during the capture process itself. Decision making becomes easy and instant as invoices can be reviewed and signed by the authorized parties from even remote locations.

#3 Transparency

Revenue leakage is a growing concern of the business houses. To firstly identify and then to eliminate the causes of revenue leakage, requires high levels of transparency. With VisualCron, you can configure your billing reports in such a way that the information is optimized, creating complete transparency. You can have the information however way you need. Analyzing of trends and spotting errors is an added advantage of VisualCron.

#4 Detail as well as Value

Without automation, a huge amount of time is spent majorly on processing, handling management and enquiries that is prone to errors and is time consuming. VisualCron allows you to focus on the areas that requires special attention and closer inspection. With this customized automation, more time can be spent on finding ways to add more value to the business and to follow a proactive approach towards the work, errors and roles.

#5 Compliance and Audit

Digital storage of information provides the proof and makes the tracking of information quite accurate and fast. Not just internal tracking, it also provides digital trail in mere minutes with the detailed information of what, who, when and why of it all. This way, VisualCron keeps everyone in the information loop and helps your company to comply with the rules and regulations along with the audits to meet the requirements.

All in all, VisualCron facilitates consistency, accuracy and completion. So, as the aforementioned reasons bring forward the need of automation, get your billing reports automated instantly!

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