What’s new with Process Maker 3.0.1.8 Community Edition

ProcessMaker 3.0.1.8 New Features

Processmaker is an open-source web-based Business Process Management (BPMN-3) Application. This is cost-effective, easy to use(it has evolved assisting ample of ), and can assist many organizations(irrespective of their sizes), any size of designing, automating, and deploying business processes or workflows of various kinds for decision making. It is simple, handy, manageable, and coordinates workflow throughout the organization – including user groups & departments. Processmaker is workflow software that can also interact with other applications and systems such as ERP, business intelligence, CRM like Suite CRM, and Document Management.

Now let’s understand what’s new with ProcessMaker version 3.0.1.8 :

The latest version i.e. 3.0.1.8 is available in 18 languages and supports BPMN 2.0.BPMN ( Business Process Modeling Notation) is very similar to the concept of flowcharting that has been around since the 1980s. Like flowcharting, BPMN modeling has the aim of allowing a person to map the workflow in such a way that it could be understood easily by users. BPMN is designed to facilitate communication along with an understanding of business processes. The graphical notation(‘N’) consists of designated symbols that represent action, flow, or process behaviors. Visual symbols are standard after OMG(Stands for Object Management Group) released the first version of the BPMN 2.0 specification in May 2004. BPMN is not software, but its language used to facilitate communication developed by the OMG as a notation standard that can be understood easily by the Business analysts, Technical developers, and project managers. ( Working System Flow )

process

Coming to processmaker, many business professionals are comfortable with using BPMN 2.0 to visualize business workflows, but added advantage of BPMN 2.0 is that the people who write code to automate processes understand BPMN 2.0 too. Developing workflows is a process of capturing all relevant information that goes into the process, who is involved, what they are responsible for, and how the tasks are handed off, which tasks are manual and which are automated. Ideally, the first stage in business process modeling of workflow is the gathering of relevant information. And next, the process and workflow are modeled. At last, the new workflow is tested, implemented, monitored, and modified as necessary. ( Below is a simple Workflow Design )

dashboard1

In reference to the diagram above, all elements that are used for design purposes fall under, the Descriptive Modeling Subclass to name a few – Swimlanes, pools, and the black box pool. Where the pool is the graphical representation of a participant in a collaboration. A pool can also act as a “swimlane” and graphical container which partitions a set of activities from other pools usually in the context of B2B situations. A pool may or may not have internal details, if it does have then it will be in the form of the Process that will be executed. A lane is a sub-partition within a process or a pool and it extends the length of the process, either vertically or horizontally. Lanes are used to organize and categorize activities.

The diagrams rendered under BPMN 2.0 are similar to those created under older versions, but BPMN 2.0 offers a number of new elements as well, including:

  • Multiple parallel events

  • Escalation events

  • Different task types (service, send, receive, etc.)

  • Global activities

  • Sequential multiple instances of tasks and associated subtasks

  • Event-based instantiating gateways

  • Event-based sub-processes

  • New types of data objects (data input, output, message, collection, etc.)

Shapes and symbols that were used under earlier versions of BPMN are still used under BPMN 2.0. One major change is that BPMN 2.0 adopts the XML interchange format, which makes it easier to turn a model and its notation into an automated, executable process. That means that workflow software vendors using BPMN can more easily take BPMN 2.0 input and automate it.

Some of the Key features of Processmaker 3.0.1.8 from our perspective are as follows:

  • Improved HTML5 and Multi-column design that supports on-the-fly responsive design and added external libraries to check compatibility with mobile, desktop, and tablet views.

  • Key improvements are made in the following things

  • New and modified PMFuntions to reduce the code complexity.

  • Improvisation of executeQuery which restricts access to the core tables of Processmaker and preserves Data Integrity.

  • It also addresses security issues, say for example it prohibits the use of multiple instances of browsers by the same user in Processmaker.

  • Selective Exporting/Importing of process objects like Triggers, Input/Output Documents, Variables, Dynaforms, DB connections, and so on.

  • It permits strictly defining Process level variables that help to reduce confusion about the same variable not being created in the same process.

  • It allows you to seamlessly connect to third-party applications with the help of RESTful API over multiple languages e.g. Ruby, iOS, Android, JAVA, and python.

dashboard2

Front End Changes :

  • The drag-and-drop layout of gateways, activities, and events.

  • Easy to move, resize and label all process elements.

  • Powerful OAuth2.0 and REST API for integration with Other Applications.

  • Pools for multiple processes in a project.

  • User Portal and Management with creating Different types of roles.

  • Message types for Inter-Process communications.

  • Import/export of processes in the BPMN 2.0 format. ( JSON ).

  • Auto Responsive forms that adjust for the desktop, tablet & smartphone.

  • Output Document Builder is used to create invoices contracts, letters, electronic receipts, confirmations, or any other type of printable Document.

  • Compatibility with desktops, tablets, and mobile devices

  • Dynaforms Multilanguage support

  • Extensive Dynaforms with panels.

Feel free to get in touch with us or email us at sales@bistasolutions.com for more insights.

5 Ways to Secure Your Small Business and Prevent Data Breach

5 Ways to Secure Your Small Business and Prevent Data Breach

Electronic world Data breaches

When a person’s confidential information like name and address details, Mail IDs, Social Security number, driving license number, or any credit or debit card details — is put at risk either electronically or on paper. In today’s Electronic world Data breaches can take place in many ways which include activities like hacking, an introduction of malware or spyware, skimming, an insider breaching the data, or even physically losing a payment card or a device like a computer, laptop, or CD.

Often Targets for Hackers:

Small businesses especially those that use open-source tools and platforms for their functioning are often the target of hackers; this could mean a loss of private company plans, designs, and forecasts for your future. Small businesses usually store their private data on their servers which makes them popular targets for hackers. Breaches to the server data can lead to identity theft. Among the most common techniques that hackers use to collect data are phishing attacks. Such fraudulent practices induce people to reveal their details like credit card details via email messages and quote their identity to belong to a reputed company but in reality, they are a hoax. The emails can even appear to come from someone within your organization sometimes. These emails contain links to malicious websites or they are spyware that unknowingly sneaks into your data. Users must recognize these phishing scams to keep the network safe. Keep private company and employee information under lock and key, and educate your employees on the dangers of phishing emails. Here are 10 ways you can avoid the breach of sensitive Data to a great extent:

1. Secure Beyond Passwords:

You must secure all the sensitive data of your Organization by using strong passwords and keep changing these passwords regularly. To increase the level of security of your business data always prefer to have a multi-level authentication procedure such as OTP(One Time Password), Finger Print Recognition, and so on for every online account of your organization. These authentication passwords should be unique only to you. In addition, you can also have the system return to the login screen after five minutes of inactivity.

2. Use Best Business Security software:

Most small business organization secure their sensitive data by using anti-virus/anti-spyware software, but they usually forget or neglect to do is updating this software and using the latest versions of software. The organization must also take care of disaster recovery software, and anti-malware software and also make it a point to utilize the firewalls for the various web application. Some example small business protection suites include: Symantec’s small business protection, McAfee Complete Endpoint Protection, Keeper enterprise security service, Endpoint Protector, Avast for Business Software, AVG Internet Security Business Edition Software, and so on. Employees must also ensure they download any software from authenticated sites only as this may lead to an introduction of malware in disguise.

3. Encrypt Data:

You must ensure all your transaction over the web is encrypted via SSL. The real meaning of encryption is achieved only when the entire data of an organization is encrypted this includes encryption of Email(when sensitive data is being transmitted), Encryption of data in circulation, or encryption of data that is already stored(at rest), encryption of the whole eCommerce platforms that you make use of. Encryption of the that will keep the data safe even in the case of a data breach.

4. Do Some Security Checks Before Employing :

Before you employ a new employee into your organization do have a check with his previous employer and his co-employees to check his integrity and credibility and take efforts to verify that the employee has no criminal records in the history and is reliable enough.

5. Isolate/Segregate Your Data :

Keep your sensitive data separated from the rest of the organizational data and if possible on a different network altogether. Keep this data in a minimum number of computers as the lesser the number of copies of data the safer it is. If at all you file your data in rooms then lock these rooms or password protect these rooms and enable access to these rooms only to trusted employees of the company.

Conclusion:

  • Educate your employees to be careful about phishing emails and not to fall prey to fraud activities that demand revealing the sensitive data of the organization.

  • Ensure multi-layer Authentication of passwords of all online transactions.

  • Stop the circulation of any Unencrypted data in your organization.

  • You can also partner with your bank to prevent any unauthorized transactions.

  • Keep your financial activities and other social media and emailing activities on two different dedicated machines.

  • Keep changing your passwords and security questions related to them after every 40 to 60 days.

  • It’s important to remember that no business is “too small” for a hacker–all businesses are vulnerable.

We hope these tips help your secure your data from Hackers. Feel free to get in touch with us at sales@bistasolutions.com.

Important Things to Consider When Opening an eCommerce Store

Introduction

We know that online shopping is picking up the pace in a big way globally, it is changing the retail scenario totally. Even now there are so many new e-commerce ventures, who already have the huge customer base and they are not even 5 years old.

Things to consider before starting an ecommerce business

  • Identify a perfect name for your business

The first thing that will populate the customers attention in any e commerce venture is its fascinating domain name. Now the norms say that the name should be short, recallable and easily spell-able without any mistake.

  • Building your online ecommerce store

After finalizing a good name for your ecommerce business next thing is to find a developer for your ecommerce store. For better features and single point solution for everything you can use any good e-commerce platforms like Magento, Woocommerce, etc or you can hire a web design agency .

  • Registering for an ecommerce company

Registering a e-commerce company is not very different from registering a regular companies. It does not require any unique registrations or licence. It is just like any trading or retailing firm, you just have to get your firm registered.For getting a payment gateway and invoicing, business registration is required. It’s not compulsory to have a firm registered for online business. There are other alternatives for payment gateways like pay u money, which does not require any firm’s registration for using its services.

  • How to get Payment gateway

Payment gateway is the one of the major link for accepting payments online in your website. There are two types of payment gateways:

  1. Payment gateways with no setup fees are very popular but they have higher Transaction rates per transaction(TDR’s) few examples are PayPal, Payumoney, Airpay etc.

  2. Payment gateways with setup fees have lesser TDR’s per transaction and faster processing, few examples are Payu, ccavenue, etc.For applying for a payment gateway you will be required to submit few documents(ID proofs, phone bills etc)Address is also verified in process.

  • E-commerce logistics

Next thing you will be needing is Courier service partner for logistics. For this either you can approach your local Courier service provider, who also have big network of logistic services throughout your country (and even abroad) like bluedart, aramex, fedex, UPS or you can talk to automatic logistics solution providers in country for e-commerce. You can compare their Currier rates, taxes and delivery time.They may request you for an agreement signing, in which you can request them for monthly billing.

  • How to market your ecommerce

Marketing your online ecommerce store can be done by paid marketing like Facebook Ads, Google display ads and web based advertisements. You can also go for SEO and Social Media Marketing, this can also be outsourced to any professional companies.

  • Inventory Management

Inventory management is the series of activities involved to ensure that items needed for the business to run are always available in optimal quantity. This means that there should neither be too much stock nor too little, but just the amount required with enough backup

Tips for managing inventory:

The Core and Non-Core Products should be kept separate:

Simply put, core products are those products that a business absolutely relies on and does not want to find a shortage of. Everything else are the non-core products.

Leverage JIT Inventory Management:

JIT or Just-In-Time inventory management strategy is used to increase efficiency and decrease waste. It is achieved by receiving the required goods only when they are needed in the production or the sale process.

Improve prediction:

As mentioned above, the key to successful inventory management is accurate prediction is When a retailer knows that the customer needs, where and what quantity, it is needed they will be in a better position to meet the customer’s expectation without generating stockpile beyond a certain point. To achieve better prediction, the business needs to be able to conduct market research, analyze demand patterns and understand required stock levels.

E Commerce accounting

You have to be informed and updated with all the laws and regulations surrounding business accounting under your control.This will require research online and perhaps speaking to a tax advisor.Keep records of all your financial transactions.If you do not do this!!!, you’ll end up wasting lots of your precious time trying to find out the missing documents later, which will cause stress.Preserve all your invoices, receipts and anything else that shows your income and outgoings.Ideally, it is better to have all these documents copied to digital device.

Choosing a Accounting solutions

To manage the accounting of your ecommerce venture use an online accounting solution.They enable you to take control of your accounting.They are easy to setup and use

Logistics

Logistics acts as a important coordinating mechanism among multiple partners of supply chain.As we have competition between supply chains, competitive success will depend on the ability to coordinate and integrate the production activities at the geographically dispersed and organizationally distinct locations.Here elogistics will play important role in future of businesses.Logistic software provides the necessary tools to support in the execution and management of product delivery business. There are two sides to this kind of software:

Supply chain management.

The features that manages the execution of the freight pick-ups, tracking and deliveries. SCM leads to managing all the inventory and shipping details to get the product to the customer.

Brokerage and bidding.

Freight brokerage software needs to manage the business aspect, too, Since most logistics operators serve third parties on a contract basis.These softwares can include bid, contract management, CRM, accounting and other business functions. Because some businesses focus only on this consignment fee aspect, there are also specific software solutions, often labeled freight forwarder software, which cater directly to these types of operations.

Competitive research

Why complete a website competitive research ?

We should perform competitive research to make and update our own marketing strategy and plans.Following are the key points of competitive research ie analyzing the competition for…

Traffic and ranking estimations

  1. What keywords are they ranking for?

  2. How much is their estimated traffic?

Search engine friendliness

  1. What is their website speed of loading?

  2. Is their site have a responsive design?

Site marketing performance

  1. Do they have a blog also do they use videos?

  2. What points of conversion do they have (contact, live chat, email, phone etc)?

Social media performance

  1. They are on which social networks?

  2. Their most shared pages?

The above mentioned are just some of the few things which have to be considered when opening an ecommerce store.If you have any feedback please provide them via feedback@bistasolutions.com

How to use Power BI in Education Industry – A Case Study

Power BI in Education Industry

power-bi

Being into a BI Industry and offering various solutions to our Client for a long time, we had come across many tools and trends in Business Intelligence which helps Client in making correct business decisions based on our solutions. One of the trends which are booming currently is the Self Service BI’s, where the Client itself gets the flexibility to view their reports from their perspective and can churn their data to get it more user-friendly and dynamically. We came across one of our existing esteemed Client who wanted to implement BI solutions based on their existing ERP system for getting more business insight and better control over the business decisions. Looking at the trend and flexibility, they opted for a Self-service BI from Microsoft which is called as Microsoft Power BI.

Power BI as best BI tool

Power BI has evolved over the time and has proved to be one of the best BI tool available in the market today. Over the complete implementation phase, we were able to provide one of the best types of flexibility and visualization to our client. Since it’s a Microsoft Product, so it goes well with all its supporting Microsoft products and one of the greatest advantage for the Education, Government and NGO’s Industries is, Microsoft provides Power BI at a special price which usually goes easy on Client’s pocket.

Let us share some of our experiences with you all so that it will portray, how effectively we can use Power BI in Education Industry and bring changes to your businesses as well.

So to begin with, we delivered “Ask a Question” functionality through one of the existing features of Power BI. Under this functionality, Client has the flexibility to ask questions directly to his visuals and as per the question, the visuals would display the result. This is something which makes PowerBI stand out of the other BI tools available in the market. For e.g. Client wanted to know about the invoice details for a student whose name is “Aziz”. So he can simply ask a question in the dashboard stating “What is the Invoice for Aziz”. And the result would come up with all the Invoice details of Aziz present in the system, it’s that simple.

drill-down

The next feature provided was the “Drill Down” functionality which helped our Clients in getting the drill down values of the Visuals which were displayed on the report. For e.g. if Visual A which will show fees paid by each student during the year, so it’s Drill Down will represent all the frequencies or the fees type which was paid, by student wise over the year. So basically it’s about getting more details about your visuals with just a click of a button.

Another feature provided was the “Interaction” feature which helped in interconnecting multiple visuals together. For e.g. Client wanted to know a student detail from multiple visuals like Invoices, Transportation Consumed, and Medical history. So under this scenario with the help of Interaction feature Client has to select Student in any one of the Visuals and the remaining two would automatically bring up the corresponding value of the same. The same way we had also provided a feature called as Slicer and Filters which gave our Client flexibility to slice and filter out the data and clearly visualize it for better understanding.

Looking at the business perspective of our Client, we were mostly focussed on the Accounting part of the business and we started with Fee summary report where the fees collected from the student were projected. It was further classified into Fees Invoiced, Fees paid and the Outstanding Fees for the Student. Also as per the requirement discounts provided to the students were separately tracked on each fee type and when the invoice was generated it made sure that all the appropriate discounts are applied to the fee type. Partial payment scenarios where the student has paid their fees partially and still has some more payment outstanding were also considered. All the three sub reports worked in a combination so that for a single student we can easily visualize how much he had been invoiced, how much he had paid and how much is the outstanding fees left from his side.

drill-down2

The other report is talking about the Fees which paid in Advances or the balance which was left for the Student. This report helped our Client in deciding and keeping a track on the Advances and Balance amount recorded in their system and based on that they can make further business decisions.

The same way we have deliver reports where the Clients can track their various Accounts, Journal Vouchers, New student registration, online payments etc. separately and last but not the least as most of our Clients request commonly we have implemented Money Inflow and Outflow report, which helps in projecting all the sources and the destinations from where the flow of the money is receiving and releasing, so the complete inflow and outflow of money in the organization can be easily visualized.

After the successful implementation of Microsoft Power BI in Education Industry for one of our Client, today we are confident in bringing a positive change in your business which will add value through one of the leading BI tools in market i.e. Microsoft Power BI. If you are looking forward to similar type of Implementation or interested in any of the features, you can simply mail us on sales@bistasolutions.com

Odoo v9 Community vs Odoo v9 Enterprise

Odoo 9 New Features
  • by bista-admin
  • Jun 20, 2016
  • 0
  • Category:

Odoo is a fully-functional, modular structure system for Enterprise Resource Planning. Technically, Odoo Enterprise is Odoo Community with some additional functional modules. The Odoo community is the Core system which consists of all the databases and core applications and some basic functionality.Odoo Enterprise edition is enabled with the support of migrating to next versions by the Odoo engineers ,in addition to which Odoo Enterprise edition also allows you to install Apps from the Odoo Store .However it is very important to note that the Odoo Enterprise version is not open source , which means the code is made available only to Official Odoo partner and Odoo itself, no other partner is allowed to sell the Enterprise Edition.

In the previous versions of Odoo(6,7,8), there was no evident difference in technical or functional aspects in both the editions (community and enterprise) of Odoo. However the new Odoo V9 has brought about many changes.Here are the major differences between community and enterprise editions put in a graphical representation, this let’s you understand which version has to be chosen based on the requirements.

enterprise-funtionality

Specialisation

Now let us consider various characteristics on the basis of which we provide a tabular differentiation between Odoo Enterprise Edition and Odoo Community Edition in Odoo V9.

table-odoo1

Features

In this section, we will understand the major feature difference between the community and enterprise editions of Odoo v9. Let’s see one by one section wise.

Planner Facility:

The planner is the new facility for all odoo users which is available in enterprise edition only.The planner is a status of your apps, a planner is located at top of the menu bar and can be opened by just clicking on the status bar.Given below is a planner snapshot which is set as mark done 15%.

your-customers

Finance/Accounting Management :

Features In Enterprise,

Accounting changes is a pretty big game changer in Odoo 9, and includes the following:

  • Basic Accounting

  • No need to create fiscal year : just need to define dates from account configuration

  • Lock Entries : Lock on the invoice if lock date is set

  • Dynamic Reports & Executive Summary

  • Legal Statements

  • Bank Interfaces (US,NZ & Canada)

  • Reconcile payment against pending invoice from dashboard

  • Statement Import : Coda,OFX,QIF

  • Internal transfer : eg. bank to cash in easy way

  • Check Printing & Deposit

  • Customer Follow-ups

Features In Community,

It has the basic accounting features available which is enough for ordinary accounts managements with features like:

  • Accounting Dashboards

  • Check Printing and Deposits

  • Bank Reconciliations

  • General Ledger Maintenance

Accounting Reports

Here is a snapshot of how an accounts report looks like:

accounting

Project Management :

The project management module in Odoo deals with organise,scheduling,planning,developing and analysing the enter project. It also enables the checking of availability of the resources and their allocation to the project.Let us now understand the variations in Enterprise and Community versions of project management module of Odoo v9:

Features In Enterprise,

  • Tasks

  • Issues

  • Timesheets

  • Timesheets Chrome & Mobile App

  • Forecasts

  • Gantt Charts

Features In Community,

  • Tasks

  • Issues

  • Timesheets

Odoo v9 Timesheets

Here is how the timesheet activities look like in Odoo v9 :

time-sheet

Sales and CRM Management :

The Odoo Sales module deals with management of all the Quotations,Opportunities,Product Lines and so . The odoo Sales module is also integrated with well known shipping services such as FedEx,Usp,DHL and more. The Sales operations are made very easy in Odoo and include the following:

Features In Enterprise,

  • Sales

  • CRM

  • VoIP Integration

  • Customer Portal

  • Signature

  • Subscriptions

Features In Community,

  • Sales

  • CRM

Smart Sales Dashboard

  • Great sales journeys start with Sales Dashboard,

  • Faster user interface designed for sales.

  • All the information you need where you need it.

  • Send quotes in just a few clicks, manage your pipeline with drag & drop, etc.

  • Full overview of your personal activities, next actions, and performances

dashboard1

Inventory Management:

The Inventory Management helps in organizing the stocks in the warehouse, managing deliveries on time , managing back orders, managing transfers and so on. Odoo automatically calculates the shipping price, validates the customer addresses, prints shipping labels and cancellation of orders.This module is integrated with Manufacturing, Sales, nd Purchase which keeps everyone together.

Features In Enterprise,

  • Inventory Management

  • MRP Management

  • Purchase Management

  • Barcode Support ( Barcode Scanner connected to the system)

  • Integrated Shipping service with : UPS, FedEx,DHL,USPS,Temando

  • Multi-Company Flows

Features In Community,

  • Inventory Management

  • MRP

  • Purchase Management

Website Builder :

The Odoo Website Builder Module helps you build attractive websites with better ranking on the search engines.It has great marketing tools which inturn attract users to the website.The website builder helps build websites which can be viewed easily by all users irrespective of the device they are using.The Website Builder also manages all the SEO related activities of the website.Odoo eComerce websites are integrated with shipping services like FedEx,UPS,DHL and so on and in addition to this the products from Odoo eCommerce websites can be sold on Amazon and Ebay too.

Features In Enterprise,

  • Website Builder

  • Blogs

  • Presentations

  • Themes ( Free )

  • Form Builder

  • Call-to-Actions Blocks

  • Versioning

  • A/B Testing

Features In Community,

  • Website Builder

  • Blogs

  • Presentations

  • Themes ( Free )

Marketing Management:

The Odoo Marketing Module helps the user in managing all the Marketing aspects of a Company, which includes building great campaigns, sending mass mails to the customers, calculate the ROI per customer, Tracking your links, develop various content management plans and so on.

Features In Enterprise,

  • Events
  • Expenses
  • Email Marketing
  • Live Chat
  • Lead Scoring
  • Email Marketing Templates

Features In Community,

  • Events
  • Expenses
  • Email Marketing
  • Live Chat

Digital Signatures Documents :

The Odoo eSignature features helps in sharing various documents online on a single click.This is a easiest way to upload documents, verify and Sign and avoids the manual pain of printing and scanning various documents.This is fast and uses no papers.It provides user friendly drag and drop functionality for adding fields in the document like adding Initials(Name), Signature, Date,Email and also allows you to specify who is supposed to fill up each field in the document and this can be sent out to multiple people at the same time. You can also manage and track document in a easy way.Odoo eSignature is also cent percent secure.

Here is a snapshot of adding fields to a document:

digital-dashboard

Reference Link : https://www.odoo.com/editions

These were the main highlights of the Odoo v9 Community vs Odoo v9 Enterprise. If your looking out for more insights on the various Odoo functionalities and modules you can get in touch with us on sales@bistasolutions.com

Also do let us know what you think about this blog at feedback@bistasolutions.com

When testing gets better, business runs smoother

Good Testing Makes Business run Smoother

Agile Testing

 When it comes to testing, the question that arises is why do executives see testing as an Epic Fail? According to software testing expert Scott Barber, it all comes down to accounting. “When you look at the accounting spreadsheet,” Scott says, “testing is a cost center, not a profit center “. This is how executives look at testing; they don’t care about testing; they are only concerned about what kind of value you bring to the product. Indeed, a good quality product sells better — but this is only till you reach a point of minimizing returns. The Value of any product lies in, shorter time in market, error-free software, conform to customer requirements and compliant to standards.

But, what brings you this value and better quality software? Testing does! And to achieve it on a large scale, Agile Testing comes in the picture. Agile Testing ensures that your product doesn’t affect interacting systems in a negative manner.Instead, agile software development and Agile testing help in encouraging repeated sales and gain customer’s trust.

Business Driven Test Management (BDTM)

In today’s rapidly growing business world, companies are now focused more and more on achieving maximum business value from their product, service or software. As a result, high-speed software delivery and high quality are even more important. Hence the likelihood of deficient software quality even greater. Here is where Business Driven Test Management (BDTM) comes into the picture. BDTM acts a guide and demonstrates how to organize, manage and execute a test process.

It converts an organization’s business goals into test goals, allowing a client to more effectively control the test process and consequently, the results of testing. Depending on rational and economic business considerations and identified risks, the right components are tested. And during the process, there is a strong focus on clear and effective client communication.

BTDM Process

The BTDM process includes a certain set of repetitive steps to be followed, We describe them here with an iterative process diagram below,

1. Prepare assignments and Identify the test goals.

2.Understand the risk class for each combination of characteristic and object part.

3. Decide if a combination of characteristic and object part have to be tested thoroughly or ‘lightly’.

4. The fourth step is to Estimate and plan test execution.

5. Assign most appropriate test design techniques.

6.Give the client and other stakeholders of the project/product appropriate insights into the test processes and test objects throughout the test execution process and keep track of all the change requests through proper documentations

Also in the evolution of the business and technology today, organizations are under immense pressure to remain competitive in the market. They need to have reliable and

pic1

efficient systems that are capable enough to support the complex business processes.In addition to this organizations need to grow their competencies at a faster pace.To achieve all these points business leaders today are aiming at developing Testing center of excellence(TCoE).The TCoE is command center which provides the standardized methodology, best practices of testing, metrics and automation tools and ensures high quality of the product during the developmental cycle as well as during the deployment process.Some of the listed Advantages of TCoE would be: Greater Agility, Cost efficient, Better Quality, and Faster Releases.The TCoE also can be phased like the BTDM process, the following would be some of the important phases in your path:

1.Establishment of standards and policies and basic governance measure and policies of the Testing methodologies.

2.Determine the product and test infrastructure and standardize your testing tools, which will consequently consolidate the cost of procuring the testing tools.

3.Determine the Service Utility, which means TCoE will act as a source of expertise to the whole organization.

4.Last but not the least the Quality innovation in-charges will provide everything for a centralized testing environment, which includes resources, tools, management and governance of all applications and various business processes.

pic2

Conclusions:

These unique business-driven testing services approach will enable your clients to achieve the highest quality application deployments, with less cost, less risk and faster time to market. And so goes the phrase, “When testing gets better, business runs smoother.”

Tell us what you think about this blog on feedback@bistasolutions.com. Feel free to get in touch with us through sales@bistasolutions.com for more insights.

Top Features of Power BI

As a complete Self-service BI Tool, Power BI stands out with it’s unique array of features that facilitate developing truly interactive BI Dashboards. One can build interactive dashboards using varied data sources in minutes. The dashboards are accessible in app-based Power BI service platform, where the user can view, drill-down & apply report filters & even download them. Power BI Suite comes with some unique features in the BI Analytics space

Power BI suite

Power BI suite encapsulates features of PowerPivot, Power Query and Power Maps to provide a comprehensive solution for BI Reporting & Analytics Reporting. One can easily build a pivot table summarizing the data. With Power Query, one can combine, and refine data across a wide variety of sources including traditional data sources, relational, structured and semi-structured, Web, Hadoop, Azure Marketplace, & others. Power Query also allows one to search for public data from sources such as Wikipedia. With Power Map, one can easily visualize data split by geographies. Also, Power BI can be quickly integrated with Microsoft Excel through Excel-Add Ins. So one can also publish a Dashboard Report made in Excel in just 1 click.

Importing data from multiple sources

Data can be imported from sources ranging from conventional relational databases to varied data source platforms. Data can be imported from Facebook, Sharepoint Online list, SalesForce, Google Analytics, Microsoft Azure data warehouse, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and much more

One can instantly create the website usage Dashboard by connecting the google analytics provided in Online Services of Power BI

importing-data

Visualizations

Combo charts, treemaps, fill maps, gauges and funnel charts provide customers with more ways to view their data in Power BI.

Power View enables for ad hoc, self-service data visualization, and Power Maps. It enables users to view data containing almost all geographical attributes  in a 3D-rendered Bing Maps environment.

visualization

Natural-language search technology

Natural-language search technology, helps users ask questions of their data by typing into a dialog box. The system then understands and provides answers in the form of interactive tables, charts, and graphs. It also allows one to ask questions about the data & get answers in visuals.

With Natural-language search, one can just for the search for something & get macro-level insights represented by interactive dashboards quickly in minutes. So to get counts split in various geographies one can search something like Olympic medals by Country, Unemployment Rate(US), Housing Prices by cities & many more questions.

Power BI Advantages & Features

To summarize, below are some the unique features of Power BI

  • Reports are deployable on multiple platforms like web, mobile apps, tabs. It allows you to choose device of your choice without worrying about the database platform

  • NLP is a unique feature which helps to create reports with data from online services like Bing Maps, Google Analytics

  • Power BI is capable of independently handling almost all the Data extracting & Data summarizing functions which ANSI-SQL scripting & Excel provides. So no need for SQL scripts for extracting & summarizing data

  • Visualizations facilitate drill-down & drill-up & get data & even export data as per the hierarchy.

  • Easy integration with Excel Data source including charts, pivot tables, pivot charts. Excel Dashboard can be pinned & published to Power BI service

  • Text Searches gives all possible answers about the data in Power BI service. Power BI identifies objects by the keywords typed in provides the output in form of visualization

  • Calculated columns & measures can be incorporated in the loaded Dataset independent of the Data source. Also, Queries parameterized Queries & filters can be applied on the Dataset level without any effect on the Data Source.

  • Separate Relationships interface with auto-detect relationships IntelliSense.

  • DAX functions supported. Also, the UI has a great intelligence of identifying the tables & field names as you type in.

  • Facilitates incorporating Interactive visuals. Also one can import visuals from Visuals gallery, which is a free online collection of visuals & can quickly incorporate it in the report.

  • Lastly, pricing is per user/month is like pay-as-you-go, which is very aggressive. For more details on the pricing please click Power BI pricing.

  • Power BI users also have access to online community where they can ask questions & raise tickets & the official website has blog & great resources for self-learning

Contact us at feedback@bistasolutions.com. For a free evaluation of how big data can be leveraged to provide you a competitive advantage.

Supply Chain Optimization using Big Data

As we witness a pivotal change in the way big data is revolutionizing and redefining all aspects of our lives, it becomes increasingly necessary for professionals from all domains to think radically on its application in their industries. The inventions around the Hadoop ecosystem has enabled ground-breaking technologies from driverless cars to intelligent assistants like Siri. It is not surprising, that the crucially important field of supply chain optimization, is ripe for a major breakthrough in how it has been approached until today.

side1

Traditionally, procurement has been planned around either predefined reorder points triggering a procurement request, or around fixed forecasting period using safety stock and average sales forecast. The problem with this approach was that there was no feedback loop to react in real time as business scenarios changed. This lead to either a “lost opportunity” in terms of not having the right inventory or the right price, or “dead stock” due to wrong stocking or purchasing decision. 

 

 

supply-chain-process-challenges

This problem of not being agile and responsive to the events occurring in the marketplace can be addressed by using big data technologies. The process starts by dividing the various steps involved in supply chain automation into multiple operational windows. This facilitates the prioritizations of various decisions based on how frequently they need to be evaluated. The results of each phase in the process feeds into the decisions of the next process thus creating a positive feedback loop which makes the entire process more responsive to external events.

The process starts with Strategic planning which involves the high-level analytics process in Hadoop to baseline the data. In this we automatically calculate the various parameters which impacts the supply chain decision process. This process will generally be an iterative process, run on a quarterly or monthly schedule, based on the type of business. The metrics from previous period will feed into this process and the performance of various parameters is evaluated and tweaked accordingly.

The next phase involves tactical decisions making, where various decisions regarding procurement and transfers are made based on the parameters and demand forecast. In this phase decisions related to what to buy, when and from which vendor are made. The decisions on how to stock a multi-echelon distribution network is also made in this step.

After this step, the next phase involves continuous evaluation of the performance of the supply chain and making tweaks to the inventory placement, the price at which to sell etc. These techniques of near real-time decisions are also referred to as “Demand Sensing”.

optimization-cycle

The Details

Strategic Planning:

  • Inventory categorization: In this part, various methodologies of categorization of Inventory is used. This includes FNS classification, Order frequency analysis, Price sensitivity analysis.
  • Multivariate clustering: The various parameters which influences the demand are then automatically evaluated by creating clusters using techniques like Principal Component Analysis and other clustering models.
  • Determining best-fit algorithm: Each Item in the inventory has a different demand pattern, it could have a trend, seasonality etc. The model which will be the best to forecast the demand would vary for Items in different clusters. The best model is identified and stored for forecasting.
  • Multi-echelon network calculation: If the company has multiple warehouses which form a part of the distribution network, we need to determine the best strategy of roll-up and aggregation for each Item in the network.
  • Supply chain parameters: The various parameters which influence the procurement and transfers are calculated based on the demand pattern and historical receiving performance.

Tactical Planning:

  • Demand forecast: The demand forecast for the various Items in the inventory for the selected period. The best-fit algorithm and clusters determined in the Strategic planning process is used to calculate the forecast.
  • Procurement plan: The projected demand and the forecasted inventory position in the period is used to calculate the procurement plan. The historical performance of the vendor is used to determine the date of order and the quantities. The EoQ, Safety Stock and other inventory parameters are used to create the procurement plan for the period.
  • Inventory transfers: For a distribution network, the stock placements at various locations are calculated and the transfers are created.

Demand Sensing:

  • The most crucial aspect of the big data architecture is the ability to respond to changes in the actual sales and adapt the strategy to it.
  • The “Lost sales” can be tracked and compared against the forecasted sales to evaluate a under or over-demand scenario. If the demand is more than the forecasted sales, the Purchase orders can be expedited to meet the unexpected demand. This can also lead to decisions to internally transfer inventory across various locations (Inventory levelling).
  • The price sensitivity determined during the strategic planning phase can be used to increase lagging sales. It can be decided to run promotions to boost the sales to the expected values.
  • Some of the variations in supply chain, like delay in shipments by vendors can be handled by either inventory levelling or expediting other POs on order.
  • The advanced feature of Text analytics can be used to forewarn of potentials disruptions to the supply chain and precautionary steps can be taken to avoid any impact to the Inventory.

automation-workflow

Conclusion:

The new age of data science and big data technology opens new vistas for automating the hitherto manual process of supply chain optimization. Technologies like Hadoop enable working with SKUs running into millions of counts and historical data running into several years with billions of transactions. The integration of machine learning libraries in tools like Spark has brought predictive analytics into the mainstream.  Latest Lambda and Kappa architectures enable streaming processing of near real-time data and creation of predictive models which can respond to changes in business patterns. The above process can greatly improve the performance of the supply chain and thus the overall business.

Video of the webinar :-

Contact us at feedback@bistasolutions.com for a free evaluation of how big data can be leveraged to provide you a competitive advantage.

 

How to Launch your own Magento 2 store

Launch your own Magento Store

To Download the latest Magento 2 from the Magento Ecommerce website.

Please refer the link: www.magento.com/download

Prerequisites for Magento 2 are as follows:

  • Apache 2.2 or 2.4
  • PHP 7.0.2, 5.6.x or 5.5.x (PHP 5.4 is not supported)
  • MySQL 5.6.x

Assuming you have the Apache, PHP and MySQL ready. And it matches the prerequisites mentioned above for e-commerce Magento shopping sites.

Let’s Start:

STEP 1: Extract the Magento 2 folder for Magento store and make it accessible through the web server. Recommended to put it in Html folder if its apache2.4 or you can create a virtual host and make Magento 2 accessible from anywhere .

STEP 2: Place the Magento 2 accessible URL in your web browser. Follow the Magento 2 installation instructions, suggested step by step that are displayed on your browser. Now, you will be able to successfully install a Store and an Admin panel of your Magento website.

WE RECOMMEND: During the installation Magento 2, check for few PHP and apache libs to be pre-installed before installing Magento 2. Make sure you have them ready, else you will not be able to proceed further with your installation.

Magento 2 setup will guide you through.

STEP 3: At the end of the installation Magento 2, Asks for magneto admin unique URL. Make sure you remember it or make a note of it before you proceed ahead along with the admin Username and Password.

Installing Magento 2 is one aspect but setting up a store for your product is entirely different. There are a couple of things that you need before you launch your online stores like Products, Categories, Store URL, Secure URL, Email Configurations, Contact Detail, Payment Gateway and Shipping method details. Magento is one of the best e-commerce platforms.

You can send us your comments on feedback@bistasolutions.com

Automation testing – Myths and Realities

It is always very important to analyse what purpose does a particular technology serve before adapting it into your organisation.Even though Automated Software Testing has several known advantages like High productivity,Faster Regression,Quick Feedback to Development teams,Increased ROI to name some, not all organisations can adapt to Automated Software Testing and replace Manual Testing.A Lot of Testers have superstitious beliefs that Automation Testing is better than Manual Testing and the former testing can replace the later,however, this is true only in a few circumstances.A testing team should be aware of the Myths and the Realities of the Automation Testing and then jump to accept it.Here are a few misnomers of Automation Testing followed by their realities.

#Automated Software Testing is Fast! -Myth

#Well Automation testing does consume time! – Reality

Automated Software Testing can help the organization in a big way when used in the right way and with the right set of expectations. But for this to be possible, we have to put in some time, money and most importantly patience.Testers need to understand the domain, the test cases to be automated and then choose a framework accordingly to Build automated scripts. This will result in strong foundation building for further challenges to come.

The amount of efforts to be put in for Automated Software Testing is equal to the amount of efforts that are put in for developing an application which needs thorough validation. Automation testing scripts must be scrutinized properly keeping every possible set of test data under consideration which also includes negative testing. Failing to do so and handing over a partly tested tool consequently leads to failure of automated scripts during execution, as a result of which you tend to lose confidence in the tool…

#Automated Software Testing is a Replacement for Manual Testing! – Myth

#Automation Testing does prove to be better than Manual Testing,but not always!-Reality

Just the way robots cannot replace humans on earth , automated machine testing will never be able to replace the manual testing capabilities completely . Rather it is unrealistic to believe that automation testing is a replacement for manual testing. A project will always need a human brain to analyze the test results for applications that are unstable and change frequently.In this case, automation testing is used only as a reference and not a replacement.Automation testing is best suited for applications which are static, independent of other modules and needs to be checked during regression testing or for applications whose development is complete.

#Automated Software Testing has Quick ROI! -Myth

#Automation Testing’s ROI is a long term return! – Reality

While implementing Automated testing Solutions ,apart from just writing the test scripts there are also a few interrelated software developmental tasks that are involved.First of a framework that can support the testing operations has to be developed , which a huge task in itself and will require highly skilled people to work on it.However even if a team decides to us a fully developed framework , the initial test case checks will take more time than manually executing the test.So if an application is still in the developmental stage and requires quick feedback , Test Automation is not the right action. The ROI of Automation Testing is, therefore, a long run action plan.

#Automated Software Testing hold good for any Test Case Scenario! -Myth

#Automated testing at GUI layer is always a critical problem! – Reality

Automation Testing to check the process flows, to check user experience with the application or to check the integration with 3rd party application works considerably well.But when it comes to using Automation Testing for checking the functionality of a GUI of a system this will have a setback.GUI of a system undergoes frequent changes in their designs and usability,Although the functionality of the UI remains the same and this is the reason why Test Automation for a UI constantly fails.Having Automation Testing applied on UI is also slower in speed and so is the feedback to the developers from Automation testing.

#Expecting Cent % Automation without any Failure! – Myth

#Executing Automated Software Testing without a failure is practically Impossible! -Reality

There can be several reasons why test scripts (software testing program) can fail in their execution.Be it due to data variation or environment issues(down), or network issues (failure),or changes in the UI failure of Test cases cannot be ruled out.

Conclusions :

Automation Testing is undeniably a prime strategy for any Testing team yet not all organisation sail through in adapting it. This can be addressed by taking care of the following points :

  • Before adapting Test Automation first do some homework on understanding the application which has to be automated,this will help in setting the right deadlines and expectations.

  • Discuss and decide with the team as to what are key areas that need to be automated.

  • Automation Testing is only for stable and developed applications and not for those applications that keep changing from time to time.

  • Do not be afraid of tests that are constantly giving wrong results instead keep faith and aim at a clean and reliable test suite.

Please Feel Free to write your feedback to us on how this blog helps you with understanding the Realities of Automation testing on – feedback@bistasolutions.com