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Technology Trends that Influence the Digital Transformation of SMEs

Valuable IT Solutions for Business

It’s no secret that the use of up-to-date IT technologies ensures the rapid development of companies.

This allows businesses to optimize their costs and increase the return on investment (ROI) in digital technologies. So, what technologies should you pay attention to? What IT trends will influence the development of business in 2022?

The Most Promising Technologies for Businesses in 2022

Every year, the technology research and consulting company Gartner creates a list of the most promising IT trends that can be useful for business development.

The list of IT trends for 2022 includes 12 different technology areas that, according to the company, will affect the development of business.

The following technologies are on the list of the top strategic technology trends.

  • Data Fabric
  • Cybersecurity Mesh
  • Privacy-Enhancing Computation
  • Cloud-Native Platforms
  • Composable Applications
  • Decision Intelligence
  • Hyperautomation
  • AI Engineering
  • Distributed Enterprise
  • Total Experience
  • Autonomic Systems
  • Generative AI

Some of the above technologies are already used in some companies but hardly heard of it.

Many small and medium-sized companies are unable to keep up with rapidly developing new technologies. However, focusing on trends, we can advise on the development of which technologies you should start the digital transformation of your business.

From the list above, there are 2 main IT solutions that really have a big impact on business development, and are important for SMEs. These are Cloud-Native Platforms and Hyper automation. Let’s explore in more details each one of these technologies.

Cloud-Native Platforms

Cloud technologies have been in trend for several years, but in 2022 they will be even more widely used among businesses of any size.

The Lift-and-shift cloud migration trend, which involves moving legacy workloads and hosting them in the cloud, will continue, but there will be a significant increase in the proportion of services and applications built natively in the cloud infrastructure. This will provide companies with flexible, reliable, and fast resource exploitation.

According to Gartner, more than 95% of new digital initiatives will be built on cloud-native platforms by 2025, up from less than 40% in 2021.

Thus, more and more companies are using the Cloud Only approach when building their IT infrastructure.

They are able to completely abandon the deployment of local data centers through cooperation with cloud service providers.

Moreover, there are many benefits for companies when they not only host their resources in the cloud but also outsource their IT infrastructure to a cloud service provider such as Namtek Consulting Services.

What are Managed Cloud Services?

A managed cloud service is defined as outsourcing IT infrastructure and its support to a third-party provider.

The company’s cloud environment will be monitored, secured, and maintained by the service provider for improved business efficiency.

Namtek Consulting Services provides personalized managed cloud services tailored to the needs of any business.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting consists of an isolated environment (private cloud) dedicated to one client.

With this cloud model, the client receives a fully-managed cloud service package, including a dedicated cabinet, hardware, implementation, and managed cloud services.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is Managed Cloud Services. Customers can use our equipment, and resources will be allocated according to their commitments. Shared hosting is an affordable business model that offers excellent operational security, availability, and stability.

Colocation

The colocation option enables our customers to rent space in a state-of-the-art data center that is hosted by our partner (eStruxture).

Hyperautomation

The goal of hyperautomation is to discover, validate, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.

To accomplish this, it is necessary to use a variety of technology tools and platforms, such as RPA (Robotic process automation), low-code platforms, and process mining tools.

Thus, this is a trend towards automating the maximum number of business processes. Through automation, companies can significantly increase their profitability by reducing the influence of the human factor and making the business more stable.

Hyperautomation provides an opportunity to reduce headcount by automating many of the workflows that were previously performed by employees. Thus, automation frees up company resources, helping them focus on more complex or strategic tasks, which helps companies to be more efficient and agile.

System Integration

Hyperautomation: Start with Systems Integration

However, if you face reality, many medium and small enterprises are still far from hyperautomation. Many companies are just starting out with basic process automation. This is reflected in the increasing demand for business systems integration.

System integration is an automated process whereby “heterogenous” business systems such as ERP, CRM, databases, or accounting applications can interact with each other in real-time.

Most often, companies need to integrate CRM and ERP systems, as these are two fundamental systems with a lot of constantly changing data.

Synchronization between ERP and CRM is necessary to obtain an automatic exchange of information between all departments of the enterprise.

Systems integration significantly increases the efficiency of the enterprise, the decision-making process.

Data Flow Automation with Magic xpi

Magic xpi is an integration platform that offers a complete solution for automating the flow of data between any business system. This integration platform can integrate all your business systems on-premises, on the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.

Magic xpi Integration Platform

Magic xpi includes over 100 ready-to-use connectors to all common IT systems, as well as many certified connectors for branded ERP/CRM systems such as JDE, SAP, Dynamics AX, Oracle, SharePoint, IBM, Google, and more. This allows performing integration process s quickly and reliably.

To learn more about integration read our blog: Systems integration platform to improve business performance

Conclusion: Digital Transformation of SMEs

Companies need digital transformation to stay competitive. Start with business process automation and increase productivity by connecting CRM and ERP systems.

You can take advantage of our over 21 years of experience in integration and advanced technologies.

Contact us for an initial free consultation.

Free IT Consultation
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3 reasons for EDI integration with Shopify

3 reasons for EDI integration with Shopify

This article was taken from our blog, published on our EDI2XML platform.

Shopping cart Icon on smart phone screen over blur mall

Many times, when I meet business owners and executives, the same question comes up during the discussion: why do companies operating eCommerce stores on Shopify or Magento need to have EDI integration? I decided to publish this post, and explain my points, by identifying the top (3) reasons why businesses running on Shopify, need to comply and integrate with EDI.

What is Shopify?

In a quick description, Shopify is one of the leading Canadian eCommerce platforms offered to clients based on monthly subscription fee, where companies and individuals can subscribe, put up their own items on the eCommerce platform, and start selling to the public. For more information about Shopify, you can visit their website, it has tons of information about how things are done.

Who uses Shopify?

Individuals or companies of all sizes, who want to sell products online to their clients and B2C consumers, are mostly the users of a platform such as Shopify. With less than 100 $ a month, they can start selling products and ship it to their clients.

A word about Drop-Shipping

One important thing to emphasize here is that with the emergence of the online retail and eCommerce over the internet, companies selling products online on platforms such as Shopify, are not necessarily carrying inventory of the products they are selling.

They do receive the order from the consumer online into the Shopify platform (or store), and than they transfer this order to the manufacturing business partner(s) for shipping and delivery, while “white labelling” the packaging delivery. This concept is called “Drop-Ship” (or Drop shipping) in the retail and eCommerce world. The store owner will receive the order from the consumer, who gets paid for the merchandise upfront. The Store owner forward the order to the maker for shipment and direct delivery to the consumer.

What EDI has to do in this context of eCommerce?

As a reminder about EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), it is a set of standards and processes to exchange documents of business nature electronically between business partners. What I mean by business documents is Purchase Order, Invoice. This data exchange can happen in both direction (in and out).

In the context of online sales over the internet on a platform such as Shopify and drop-shipping orders, the EDI comes into play for several reasons:

  • Most manufacturing an major distribution will require a system-to-system integration through some sort of EDI
  • Shipping companies require also integration via EDI
  • Consumer today is very well educated and require to be informed on the status of their orders at every step of the way during the shipping process.

As you notice, all the above requires system-to-system integration between so many heterogenous systems and platforms. All major companies and retailers are well equipped with EDI platforms and standards that they have been investing in developing for years now, so it is the right moment for them to pay off all their investments.

Top (3) reasons why you need EDI integration with Shopify

As you might have noticed from the previous sections, the reasons are very obvious, to have an EDI integration with your Shopify store:

  • If you are in the Drop-Ship business and you are selling online, chances are that your suppliers will impose on you to go on EDI.

  • When you are selling online on Shopify, and you have a high volume of clients, that require to be informed of their orders at any given moment, this is another reason why you need to have EID integrated with your Shopify store

  • In case you are dealing with shipping companies (FedEx, Purolator, UPS…) and you have high volume of shipments daily, you need to integrate your systems and Shopify with EDI

The above are the main reasons for such a need, still more reasons are out there, just wanted to share the most important ones.

But can we integrate Shopify with EDI?

Certainly, it is feasible, we do this every day. With the right team of integrators, that have years of expertise in integrating EDI to any system, there is no going wrong.

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The BDC’s Do’s & Don’ts of Successful Businesses

We love when the BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) comes out with new infographics. They are filled with excellent information for small to mid-size businesses. Today’s infographic has to do with the 5 Do’s and Don’ts of Successful Businesses, brought to you by the BDC. Read more

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Why software upgrades in companies can cause panic and fear

panic and fear_software upgradesWe’ve seen many companies go through software transformations. Either they are upgrading their current system or implementing an entirely new and improved solution. Either way, when employees hear that their current system is changing, they panic, before they even get a chance to see or try the new system. Unfortunately, this happens all too often and can cause implementation projects to take longer than originally planned. The users are of course an important and necessary part to any software implementation process. Without their open-mindedness and willingness to learn the new system, this project can either fail or be a major headache for everyone involved.

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Why it’s easier than you think to implement IT solutions

In our previous blog, we wrote about how NOT to get spooked by IT implementation. Today we will show you how it is easier than you think to go through with implementing IT solutions, if done properly and efficiently.

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Halloween Special: Don’t get ‘spooked’ by IT Implementation

halloween_special-1Implementing a new software solution can be quite ‘spooky’ for many business executives. Some would choose to work with outdated systems rather than upgrade to a fully integrated and efficient solution, even if they know it can improve their business processes. Why is this so?

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Top 5 Popular IT Business Solutions

 

 This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.

Namtek-IT Services2022 was a year where business executives really began taking a deeper look into new IT solutions to improve their company’s processes. ‘Cloud’ and ‘Mobility’ were, and still are, much talked about terms that have the potential to bring about big positive changes for companies of all sizes, such as growth, process improvements, software flexibility, mobility, ease-of-use, data accuracy, and overall efficiencies.
Here are the top 5 most popular IT solutions SMEs have been demanding in the last year:  Read more
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ERP Implementation Checklist: Small Business Software Upgrade

It’s difficult for many business executives to find the time to begin new projects, especially when it entails implementing a new ERP software solution. Of course, this kind of project takes a lot of planning, researching, overseeing, training and so forth. However, it doesn’t have to be quite so time-consuming if the right IT provider is chosen and a solid plan of action is set in place beforehand.

Here is a quick checklist that can help in a successful software implementation project:checklist

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5 Signs You Should Invest In IT Services

IT services and IT providers are terms that are very popular in the IT market. It actually became even more popular with the evolution of the cloud. For many business owners and executives, the term “IT provider” is associated with a dollar sign and a negative connotation. However, in the past few years, IT services […]

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