A cloud outsourcing analysis: should your company consider it?

There are many benefits to cloud computing, including cost savings, flexibility, and scalability, and it’s a popular choice for many businesses. In fact, over 50% of corporate data was stored with a cloud provider in 2021.

The uses of cloud computing for businesses are numerous, from an initial transfer of data and services to automating company activities via the cloud. Many businesses prefer to outsource some of their cloud management capabilities in order to consolidate their IT resources.

What is cloud outsourcing?

A cloud outsourcing provider delivers managed cloud services for businesses. When a business chooses cloud outsourcing, they get all the benefits that come with cloud computing along with a dedicated team that manages their cloud services.

These providers can design elastic architectures in the cloud and migrate your current infrastructure and legacy applications to the cloud for you. Once they have your business processes and systems in the cloud, your provider’s team will make sure they are all running at peak efficiency and handle maintenance tasks.

The managed solution provider will assess the way you currently use technology in your business and create a custom solution using one, two, or all three types of cloud computing service models.

Types of cloud computing service models

Each cloud computing model provides different types of services. The model a cloud outsourcing provider chooses to implement depends on the legacy systems they are replacing and their customers’ technology needs.

Here are the three main cloud computing service models:

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): With SaaS, a business buys fully functional software from a cloud provider on a subscription basis. The business’ employees access the software via the internet, and the cloud provider manages all upkeep and maintenance.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): With IaaS, businesses purchase the infrastructure they need from a cloud provider via a subscription, and the infrastructure is delivered over the internet. These resources could include data storage, networking, servers, file storage, and more. The cloud services provider keeps all underlying hardware and software up to date.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): With PaaS, a business rents a complete application development environment and tools from a cloud provider, which the business accesses via the internet.

What’s the difference between traditional outsourcing and cloud outsourcing?

Some businesses outsource marketing, accounting, and other functions (such as IT) to third parties who complete all associated tasks as if they were an extension of the client.

With traditional IT outsourcing, businesses work with a third-party IT solutions provider that manages their data, servers, network, security, and more. The third-party is responsible for the functionality and upkeep of all services they supply. These providers are often known as managed service providers (MSP).

Cloud outsourcing is similar, but there are some key differences. A cloud outsourcing services provider still manages a business’ IT solution, but they do so using cloud computing technology. Traditional MSPs may have their own data centers where they store client data.

With cloud outsourcing, a business gets the best of two worlds. The upkeep, management, and configuration of the technology they use are handled by a third party, and their applications, data, networking, databases, and more are hosted with a cloud provider. According to one survey of businesses using cloud outsourcing, 96% of companies were satisfied with the results.

Pros of cloud computing

Cloud computing has many benefits; here are some your business can take advantage of by choosing a cloud-managed service provider (cloud outsourcing):

Unlimited storage capacity

With a traditional IT infrastructure, more storage requires more hardware, installation, and maintenance. In the cloud, this infrastructure is readily available because the cloud provider has planned ahead for growth. Adding more storage happens with the click of a button, or can even be automated based on needs.

Automated backup/restoration of files and data

Another thing you can automate in the cloud is backups. Each time data is stored or files are uploaded, a redundant copy can be created and stored securely. If anything ever happens to live production data or files, this copy can replace the original in a matter of seconds.

Reduce infrastructure costs

This is one of the main reasons businesses choose cloud outsourcing, as hardware is the responsibility of the cloud services provider. The end user doesn’t have to buy, maintain, or fix hardware-related issues, which can lower ongoing costs.

Cons of cloud computing

Most of the cons of cloud computing can be solved through the correct configuration of cloud resources, so with the right cloud services provider, they won’t be an issue. But it’s always better to be prepared, so here are a few to be aware of:

DoS attacks, data loss, and theft

When you store your data on a server you don’t control, you are trusting its security to a third party. You could also be just as susceptible to DoS attacks as you would be if you hosted your technology in-house.

Fortunately, most data loss and theft on the cloud are due to misconfiguration, which often happens with users new to the cloud but rarely with experts (such as the staff of a managed services provider).

Technology vulnerabilities, especially in shared environments

There are some hazards involved with sharing a cloud provider. Unauthorized access via poor access restrictions and the abuse of employee credentials are among the most common cloud security problems.

These issues usually occur when cloud resources are misconfigured or user passwords don’t comply with security standards, and can be mitigated by following best practices.

Dependent on an internet connection

Cloud computing does require an internet connection to work, meaning your service can be affected by internet outages. On the provider side, this is a rare concern as cloud service providers use redundant resources, and resources that fail are replaced on the fly.

If the internet connection for a business using cloud services goes down, employees can often still connect to the services via a cellular data connection.

How to choose a cloud service provider

It can take time and work to migrate a business’s technology to the cloud, so it is important to vet providers and choose one that fits your business. Here are some topics to focus on, and questions to ask as you explore cloud outsourcing:

• Service-level agreement (SLA): Will the service provider supply an SLA that guarantees the uptime of your system? What other details are included in the SLA? Make sure to examine it thoroughly.
• Scheduled maintenance: How will your service provider handle scheduled maintenance and mission-critical events? What do they do if a data breach occurs?
• Recovery and backup: Does the provider supply disaster recovery as a service? What is their continuity plan?
• Security: The questions you ask your provider about cybersecurity are among the most important. How do they handle it? How big is their team? What type of physical security do they use at their data centers?
• Compliance: If you have to store data that falls under compliance standards such as PCI or HIPAA, make sure your provider can store this data according to regulations.
• Scalability: How does the provider handle changes in traffic and usage? Can you adjust it yourself, or will it scale automatically? If you experience usage surges, you will want to choose an auto-scaling option.
• On-site services: After cloud migration, will some of your data, hardware, or software remain on-premise? If so, will the provider train your staff and show them how it integrates with the cloud infrastructure?
• Customer service: The provider should be available when you need them. Do they have teams working 24/7 to handle issues and customer service requests?

Author: Stephan Miller

Source: Capterra

It’s a no-brainer that good customer service experiences boost satisfaction, loyalty, and can influence top line revenue. Good service — whether it’s to answer a customer’s question prior to purchase, or help a customer resolve an issue post-purchase should be easy, effective, and strive to create an emotional bond between the customer and the company. Here are 5 top trends – out of a total of 10 – that I am keeping my eye on. A full report highlighting all trends can be found here:

Trend 1: Companies Will Make Self Service Easier. In 2015, we found that web and mobile self-service interactions exceeded interactions over live-assist channels, which are increasingly used by customers as escalation paths to answer harder questions whose answers they can’t find online. In 2016, customer service organizations will make self-service easier for customers to use by shoring up its foundations and solidifying their knowledge-management strategy. They will start to explore virtual agents and communities to extend the reach of curated content. They will start embedding knowledge into devices — like Xerox does with its printers — or delivering it via wearables to a remote service technician.

Trend 2: Field Service Will Empower Customers To Control Their Time. 73% of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service — whether on a call, in a chat, or while waiting for a service technician to troubleshoot and fix their product. In 2016, customer service organizations will better support customer journeys that start with an agent-assisted service interaction and end with a service call. They will explore lighter-weight field service management capabilities, which give customers self-service appointment management capabilities and allow agents to efficiently dispatch technicians and optimize their schedules.

Trend 3: Prescriptive Advice Will Power Offers, Decisions, And Connections. Decisioning — automatically deciding a customer’s or system’s next action — is starting to be heavily leveraged in customer service. In 2016, organizations will use analytics in a much more prescriptive manner – for example to prescribe the right set of steps for customers or agents to more effectively service customers; to correlate online behavior with requests for service and prescribe changes to agent schedules and forecasts. Analytics will be used to better route a customer to an agent who can most effectively answer a question based on skills and behavior data, or to better understand customer call patterns and preempt future calls.

Trend 4: Insights From Connected Devices Will Trigger Preemptive Service and Turn Companies Into Services-Based Ones. Companies use support automation to preemptively diagnose and fix issues for connected devices. For example, Tesla Motors pushes software patches to connected cars. Nintendo monitors devices to understand customer actions right before the point of failure. In 2016, the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to transform companies from being products-based to services-based . Examples abound where companies are starting to monitor the state of equipment via IoT, and realizing new streams of revenue because of their customer-centric focus. To make the business model of IoT work, companies must keep a close eye on emerging interoperability standards: device-to-network connectivity, data messaging formats that work under constrained network conditions, and data models to aggregate, connect with contact center solutions, and act on the data via triggers, alerts to service personnel or automated actions.

Trend 5: The Customer Service Technology Ecosystem Will Consolidate. The customer service process involves complex software that falls into three main categories: queuing and routing technologies, customer relationship management (CRM) customer service technologies, and workforce optimization technologies. You need to use solutions from each of these three software categories, which you must integrate to deliver quality customer service. We believe that the combination of: 1) mature software categories in which vendors are struggling with growth opportunities; 2) the rise of robust software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions in each category; 3) rising buyer frustration; and 4) the increasing importance of delivering simpler and smarter customer service makes for ripe conditions for further consolidation to happen in the marketplace, This consolidation will make it easier for buyers to support the end-to-end customer service experience with a single set of vendor solutions.

Source: customer think

Companies across industries face some very common scenarios when it comes to getting the most value out of data. The life science industry is no exception. Sometimes a company sets out to improve business intelligence (BI) for a brand, division or functional area. It spends many months or years and millions of dollars to aggregate all of the data it thinks it needs to better measure performance and make smart business decisions only to yield more data. In another familiar scenario, a team identifies critical questions the BI system can't answer. Again, months and millions go into development. But by the time the system goes live, market and/or company conditions have changed so much that the questions are no longer relevant.

Building Better Business Intelligence Systems
Today's challenges cannot be met by throwing more dollars into the marketing budget or by building more, or bigger, data warehouses. Ultimately, navigating today's complexities and generating greater value from data isn't about more, it's about better. The good news is that other industries have demonstrated the power and practicality of analytics at scale. Technology has evolved to overcome fragmented data and systems. We are now observing a real push in life sciences for a BI capability that's smarter and simpler.

So how do we build better business intelligence platforms? In working with life sciences companies around the globe, IMS Health has observed a recurring journey with three horizons of business intelligence maturity: alignment of existing KPIs, generation of superior insights and customer-centric execution (see Figure 1).

What does it take to advance in business intelligence maturity?
No matter where a company currently stands, there are four fundamental steps that drive BI success: the ability to align business and information management strategy, improving information management systems integration and workflow, engineering BI systems to derive more value and insights from data, and making the most of new cloud computing technologies and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models for delivery.

Step 1: Align Business and Information Management Strategy
Many IT and business leaders recognize that the traditional "build it and they will come" mentality can no longer sustain future growth in agile and cost-efficient ways. To be successful, companies need to focus upfront on developing an information management strategy that begins with the business in mind. Through a top-down and upfront focus on critical business goals, drivers and pain points, companies can ensure that key insights are captured to drive development of commercial information management strategies that align with prioritized business needs. Leading organizations have achieved success via pilot-and-prove approaches that focus on business value at each step of the journey. To be successful, the approach must be considered in the context of the business and operational strategies.

Step 2: Improving Information Management Systems Integration and Workflow
Although technology systems and applications have proliferated within many organizations, they often remained siloed and sub-optimized. Interoperability is now a key priority and a vehicle for optimizing commercial organizations-improving workflow speed, eliminating conflicting views of the truth across departments and paring down vendor teams managing manual data handoffs. Information and master data management systems must be integrated to deliver an integrated view of the customer. When optimized, these systems can enable advanced BI capabilities ranging from improved account management and evolved customer interactions (i.e. account-based selling and management, insights on healthcare networks and relationships with influencers and KOLs) to harnessing the power of big data and demonstrating value to all healthcare stakeholders.

Step 3: Engineering BI Systems to Derive More Value and Insights from Data
Life sciences companies compete on the quality of their BI systems and their ability to take action in the marketplace. Yet existing analytics systems often fail to deliver value to end users. Confusing visualizations, poorly designed data queries and gaps in underlying data are major contributors in a BI solution's inability to deliver needed insights.

By effectively redesigning BI applications, organizations can gain new insights and build deeper relationships with customers while maximizing performance. Effective BI tools can also help to optimize interventions and the use of healthcare resources. They can drive post-marketing research by unearthing early signals of value for investigation, help companies better engage and deliver value to their customers and contribute to improve patient outcomes. This information can advance the understanding of how medicine is practiced in the real world-from disease prevention through diagnosis, treatment and monitoring.

Step 4: Making the Most of New Cloud Computing Technologies and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Models for Delivery
Chief information officers (CIOs) are increasingly looking to adopt cloud technologies in order to bring the promise of technology to commercialization and business intelligence activities. They see the potential value of storing large, complex data sets, including electronic medical records and other real-world data, in the cloud. What's more, cloud companies have taken greater responsibility for maintaining government-compliant environments for health information.

New cloud-based BI applications are fueling opportunities for life sciences companies to improve delivery of commercial applications, including performance management, advanced analytics, sales force automation, master data management and the handling of large unstructured data streams. As companies continue their journey toward BI maturity, getting the most from new technologies will remain a high priority. Leveraging cloud-based information management and business intelligence platforms will bring tremendous benefits to companies as approaches are revised amidst changing customer demands and an urgent need for efficiency.

The Way Forward
While each organization's journey will be unique, advancing in business intelligence maturity-and getting more value from data - can be achieved by all with these four steps. It's time for BI that's smarter and simpler and that realizes greater value from data. With focus and precision-and the support of business and technology experts-companies can hone in on the key indicators and critical questions that measure, predict and enhance performance.

Source: ExecutiveInsight

• IT has become a bottleneck. You should not be limited by the speed at which your technicians can run analysis. If your reps find themselves waiting on reports to come through because your current solution requires a lot of IT expertise to use, it’s time to look for a faster solution that everyone can use.
• You have too much data, but not enough information. Your analytics should be taking advantage of every aspect of the data you’re gathering to give you a full view of your company. If you find that you’re monitoring and gathering tons of data, but that you don’t know how to make sense of it or aren’t using it to find out what improvements are needed, you should be upgrading to a system that can make use of all your data.
• You have data coming in from multiple sources, but joining them is a pain. It’s likely that you have more than one source of data input, depending on how your company is set up. Your analytics software should easily pool this data into one location and convert it into a format that’s ready for analysis. If you find yourself dreading joining data from different sources and wasting lots of time finding ways to do so, it’s time to upgrade.

• You’re wasting time modifying your software to prepare reports, rather than actually planning for the future. Your analytics software should be able to put together the reports you need to answer your business questions without much need for modification or programming. If you find yourself trying to create the reports you need instead of actually conducting the analysis, you should find a software that provides the reports you need.
• Your competition always seems to be one step ahead and you can’t figure out why. In the competitive world of SaaS, if you start falling even a little bit behind, you’ll find that you’ll also start losing potential customers to competitors. If you start noticing that you can’t seem to scale fast enough to keep up, the right BI software can give you that edge to stay competitive.

• Choose a business process that has a direct impact on revenue. You want to make sure you’re making an investment that will have direct returns. This process should also be standardized across the company so as to have the most impact.
• Determine how you want information presented. Ultimately you want to present information in a way that your execs can use to easily facilitate confident and rapid decision making. Analyze how your company makes decisions and how you want information collected, analyzed and published to determine what sort of reporting to look for.
• Make sure there’s a good onboarding process. Just as much as the BI system needs to fit your company, your team also needs to be properly and effectively trained in how to use it. Make sure to avoid any user resistance with an onboarding process that gives a thorough look into the software.

• Use Case: Quick Guided Analysis. This type of software is for the companies that want to give sales reps and analysts the ability to create recurring snapshots of performance without needing to constantly bug a developer every time a report is due. Some software may even allow for limited exploration of the data to do a bit of further analysis. However this software is limited by the need for a consistent set of accurate data, and end users can’t create their own data visualizations or bring in more data sources without the help of a developer.
• Use Case: Guided Analysis with Integration. Similar to the previous case, this software also requires a consistent set of accurate data, but now comes packaged with the ability to integrate with multiple data sources or enterprise operations systems. This allows your team to use this BI system in tandem with other tools they may already be familiar with and comfortable using.
• Use Case: Self-Service Analysis and Personalized Reports. This is the most flexible and powerful use case, but also requires your end users to be fairly self-sufficient. Users have the ability to bring in data from any source, do intensive data exploration and create advanced visualizations but require the proper training to fully utilize all the possibilities available to them.

• Must-have: This classification is very black or white. If a software doesn’t have this feature, then it’s immediately eliminated. Examples include: various data sources, web-based client user interface, dynamic in-memory connection to database.
• Nice-to-have: These are the features that will set apart the good options from the great ones. They will help you tip the scales in favor of one option or another. Examples include: context-based filters, social interaction, performance monitoring.
• Will-not-use: Often, the BI software you’re looking at will have a long list of features that you may never use. These can be ignored during your evaluation. Sometimes, too many features in this category may even make a software less attractive if you will find yourself cherry-picking the useful parts of a software.

Nederlandse bedrijven maken steeds meer gebruik van software oplossingen uit de cloud

Van de Nederlandse organisaties gebruikt 68% een of meerdere software-oplossingen uit de cloud. In 2016 had nog 52% van de organisaties een of meerdere cloudoplossingen in huis. Dit blijkt uit een analyse van Smart Profile van de cloudmarkt waarvoor het 7800 organisaties met meer dan 50 medewerkers ondervroeg. Bij multinationals en de overheid zijn cloud-toepassingen het meest populair. Het onderzoek laat verder zien dat Microsoft met oplossingen die door 39,7% van de respondenten gebruikt worden, de grootste leverancier is van cloud software.

Van alle SaaS (Software as a Service) oplossingen die gebruikt worden betreft het grootste deel toepassingen voor kantoorautomatisering (24,7%). HR-oplossingen volgen daarna met 18,8%. Verticale toepassingen gericht op bijvoorbeeld het onderwijs of de zorg maken 11,5% uit van alle gebruikte SaaS-oplossingen. Microsoft is met 39,7%, onder de respondenten de grootste leverancier van software uit de cloud. Het gaat hierbij vooral om Office365, SharePoint en Exchange. De plekken twee tot en met vijf worden ingenomen door AFAS (10,2%), RAET (8,1%), Salesforce (5,9%) en Schoolmaster (5,1%).

Salesforce nadert Oracle

De analyse van Smart Profile van de eindgebruikersmarkt laat verder zien dat Oracle Eloqua met 31% de meest gebruikte marketing automation oplossing uit de cloud is. Salesforce Pardot volgt echter kort erna: 29,8% van de respondenten die een marketing automation-oplossing uit de cloud gebruikt geeft aan voor Salesforce Pardot te hebben gekozen. Adobe’s oplossing Marketo (15,3%), Hubspot (13%) en Act-on (7,3%) maken de top 5 compleet. De groeiende populariteit van de cloud uit zich ook in de toenemende adoptie van cloud-capaciteit in het datacenter. Overall is het in een jaar bijna verdubbeld. In alle branches is een forse toename te zien van cloud-capaciteit die als IaaS (Infrastrcture as a Service) of PaaS (Platform as a Service) worden afgenomen. De grootste leverancier van public cloud in het datacenter is Microsoft. 79,5% van de organisaties die gebruik maken cloudcapaciteit geeft aan dat ze Azure gebruiken. Amazon volgt met 21,7%.

Analyse markt cloud-leveranciers

Naast een analyse van de eindgebruikersmarkt onderzocht Smart Profile ook de markt van cloudleveranciers. Uit deze analyse onder de 1587 belangrijkste partijen wordt onder meer duidelijk welke strategie leveranciers nu hanteren, waarschijnlijk over twee jaar zullen hanteren, en wat de trends zijn. Het volledige onderzoek vindy u hier.

Bron: BI platform

Half of company offices say that they use application software from the Cloud. This means that the use of Cloud applications has risen by almost 20% over the last 24 months. The use of applications from the public Cloud is highest in the education sector by a considerable distance. Learning environments and student administration systems are largely Cloud applications, so penetration of Cloud applications is rapidly heading for 100% in this sector. The construction sector still seems to be the most reserved, with only 29% of locations using applications from the Cloud. This has emerged from an analysis by Computer Profile of 6,000 interviews conducted with IT managers from Dutch company offices with at least 50 employees. The Cloud definition used is based on applications from the public Cloud.

Segmentation according to extent (employee category) shows that the centre of gravity in the use of Cloud applications is amongst company locations with about 200 employees. The fact is that with 50 to 100 employees penetration is at 42.6%, with  100 to 200 at 52.7%, with 200 to 500 at 49%, with 500 to 1,000 at 48.5%, and 38% at locations with over 1,000 employees.

Cloud applications are often HR and Office

For each application listed by Computer Profile we asked whether or not it was a solution from the public Cloud, a hosted or private Cloud solution, or whether the application still operates on premises within one’s own organisation. If we look at the total of public Cloud solutions which we encountered, it emerges that the biggest share of current public Cloud applications is still an HR solution (26.2%). Branch-specific applications form about 24% of Cloud applications  (vertical 15% + e-learning 5%). The share that Office takes up from the Cloud has increased considerably in comparison with a year ago and forms the third biggest group of Cloud applications with about 23%.

If we look at the spread of public Cloud applications, we see that of all company offices (>= 50 employees) about 22% say that they use an HR solution from the Cloud. One year ago, that figure was still 18% and two years ago it was 14%. Office applications from the Cloud are used in over 20% of company offices, a strong increase as compared 12.5% in 2014 and 8.4% in 2013. This increase is accounted for mainly by the increased use of Office 365 from Microsoft. CRM software from the public Cloud is in use amongst 6% of the company offices in the 50+ segment. The majority are Salesforce.com applications followed by Microsoft CRM online and Oracle . Both document management systems and financial applications from the Cloud are found amongst about 6% of company locations.

Suppliers of Cloud applications

Microsoft is the most popular vendor of public Cloud solutions. Applications from this maker are used by 17.5% of all company offices. This comes about because Microsoft has several irons in the fire in the field of Cloud applications. The use of Office 365 continues to rise, but in addition Microsoft also supplies Exchange solutions from the Cloud, Share Point and Dynamics. Cloud solutions from RAET are used by 8% of locations and  Schoolmaster by 6.3%. All other vendors are found at no more than 6% of locations.

Source: computerprofile.com, December 23, 2016

Why you should implement automation in your business

When automation is done well, it accomplishes more than just saving time and money. It minimizes errors, improves productivity, increases employee satisfaction, and enhances the customer experience. When incorporated into a business strategy, employees get more done, in the same amount of time, allowing them to focus on the important objectives of their role.

While automation may not be the latest advancement in technology, it will have the greatest impact on how we do business over the next decade. IT managers who fail to employ automation will likely lose their competitive advantage. Gartner estimates a 25-percent reduction in customer retention over the next year for companies that choose not to incorporateautomation into their business strategy.

What is automation and why do it?

Automation enables the workflow to proceed without human oversight. Automation can be deployed in place of traditional manual systems such as entering purchase orders, customer service, data analysis, and reporting. Eventually, nearly all IT teams will automate some aspects of their businesses. As businesses grow, automation will expand customer service without increasing the number of employees. Successful automation enables your existing teams to manage additional customers with the same speed of service. Simply put, automation allows the company to accomplish more with less.

Automation benefits both the company and its customers. Customers report an improved experience due to better consistency in order fulfilment, faster response times, and lowered costs. Improved customer experience will improve brand loyalty and increase customer lifetime value. Automation empowers companies to optimize the way they allocate internal resources to save money, and take advantage of new opportunities to increase sales. In other words, businesses are either saving or earning money when they automate.

Reporting

Automated reporting comes as part of the package with BI solutions. Users can access relevant and timely data on how the business is performing across all domains. By instantly converting raw data into actionable information, automated reporting eliminates the challenges associated with traditional forms of reporting. Now users can see what has happened, what is happening, and what is likely to happen in the future.

Reports can be generated automatically at set times, such as every monday morning for the weekly sales meeting. Reports also may be triggered by certain events, such as when sales figures fall within a certain range. Self-service analytics also provides users with a customizable dashboard for on-demand reporting based on job role. A dashboard allows users to see what is happening in real-time, and to drill down into the details to see the root cause of problems, as well as to identify new trends and opportunities. From sales teams to inventory managers, users have access to up-to-the-moment data from anywhere, on any device.

Security

The cloud offers cost savings as well as added security benefits. IT managers and CTOs work with the SaaS providers to determine the level of access to be provided to users in their business. They can determine when devices should be able to access resources and restrict permissions to users based on their job roles. Security should be a priority. Both in private cloud and dedicated SaaS, it is important to manage and minimize data breaches the best way possible. To ensure the ongoing security of customer data, independent regular vulnerability and penetration testing and having a security incident response policy in place is recommended.

When companies embrace automation, employees have time to work on items that add genuine value to the business, allowing them to be more innovative and increase levels of motivation. Customers also benefit from improved service and experience.

Source: Phocas Software