Leveraging The Benefits Of Advanced Social Analytics

Social media monitoring and networking is no more an option today, rather it is a necessity for any forward thinking company/brand that wants to strengthen its base in the market. Apart from getting connected to your online audience, social media monitoring helps companies to stay tuned about market updates, new product trends, customer feedback and preferences and many other essential inputs that helps in branding and marketing strategies.

 

Much as everyone think that social media monitoring is easy, in reality it is only easy when you make use of the correct social analytics. The main objective behind social media monitoring is to connect with the audience and establish a deeper connection with them. This helps the brands to stay in the top recall value of the customers. Today enterprise’s are concentrating more on the quantitative analysis and analytics tools that help them to enhance and improve. The appropriate data can offer actionable insights and the required social intelligence that helps companies to know what works for their online campaign and what is not. However, most companies today find it a challenge to select the appropriate social media analytics tools.

 

Today eminent solution providers specializing in social analytics have come up with advanced social media analytics tools  that offer actionable and perceptive user insights that allows an organization to make necessary modifications in the business and online strategies. This apart, the perceptive insights are offered in real time that assists the end users to attain quicker, smarter and better operational decisions and establish automated business procedures. Innovative advanced analytics offer you the following benefits:

 

  • Assess the data in real-time across all social, mobile and web platforms that enable the game developers and social commerce enterprises to enhance consumer engagement, acquisition and monetization campaigns in an end-to-end basis
  • Helps organization’s to modernize their capacity to capture broad data, discover meaningful insights and close the loop with automated responses. All this takes place in real time.
  • Assists companies to keep a track of user behavior in real-time and get instant feedback on what is working versus what is not successfully working
  • Makes use of a visualization interface that assists you to truly understand business performance to make smarter business and operating decisions

 

With social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook every corporate brand today has a social profile making its social presence strong. Advanced social analytics help companies to carry the same in a seamless and efficient manner.

 

Learn more about : Facebook Analytics

 

Efficient Data Management with Complete Unified Solutions

Organizations of all sizes have been experiencing considerable pressures on storage budgets, costs, capacity, and performance for quite some time. Organizations that have long utilized separate arrays for file- and block-based workloads can look to consolidate these workloads onto a unified storage platform to help drive down costs, improve storage resource utilization, and increase management efficiencies.


To set up and manage storage pools, storage solutions ought to have a centralized, simple to use management interface. And the allure of a unified storage product is that all of the essential disks can be presented as numerous storage protocols, to ensure that plenty of disk resources are not needed for each storage domain. A unified storage gateway system is usually recommended to satisfy the file sharing need in a pure SAN environment. Most functions evolve over time and this demonstrates the flexibility of unified storage to adapt and change as end-users see their requirements change.  


By moving to a unified platform, an organization can bring its block and file workloads together into a centralized environment that will ultimately reduce costs and management burdens. Unified storage reduces hardware and management requirements by enabling both block and file data to be stored in a single system and accessed through standards-based protocols. Unified storage solutions offer an easy to use, scalable storage platform for mid-sized business that helps IT achieve greater operational efficiency while meeting their service-level agreements. Fully integrated value added features such as mirroring, replication and data migration provide the tools necessary to keep the business running.


Most likely to become the standard storage platform in the data center, unified storage is said to be both the present and the future of data storage. With decreasing IT budgets to provide sufficient storage for an organization’s needs, the unified storage platform fits the current environment perfectly mostly due to its lower initial capital investment and reasonably low operation cost. Therefore the data storage platform that is chosen needs to be able to sustain and analyze the environment and applications that it supports.


With the right storage server, enterprises can build an efficient information infrastructure that lets them store, protect, optimize, and leverage their information, from a single email to production databases. A unified storage platform helps leverage application-optimized storage solutions that can make your SMB environment more flexible, agile and adaptive to different needs, without introducing additional complexity. Invest in the right solution to that can enable your organization to reduce backup costs, simplify data recovery and improve protection.


Read More About: custom computer systems, data center solutions, oem manufacturers

Brand Counterfeiting- Harmful Environment for Business Growth

Today with technological evolution, a large number of enterprises have entered the world of e-commerce. With  strong footprints on the World Wide Web, these brands have ventured to make large profits too. However, along with the world wide digital presence of their brands, these enterprises are also challenged by threats from cyber criminals.

 

One of the major threats faced by these enterprises today is that of brand counterfeiting.  The criminals generate fake products and cheap alternatives of the original ones, creating a harmful environment for the brand and its reputation. Reports suggest that the international trade in counterfeit products is nearly 6% of total global trade, making it dangerous not only for investors and business but is also damaging the global economy. Besides having an adverse effect on brand integrity, counterfeit activities tend to wipe away brand loyalty and revenues.

 

As part of anti-counterfeiting measures, organizations need to deploy efficient brand protection solutions. The earlier version of brand protection methods involved scanning the internet for any trademark or brand abuse. However, today with counterfeits having entered all industries and product sectors, it has become essential for the high-tech industry; pharmaceutical sector and retail sectors to be equipped with systems that would provide visibility into the specific products that face counterfeiting and understand and protect against counterfeit transactions. 

 

Such demands of part of the customers have led to the development of anti-counterfeiting software with cloud enabled brand protection solutions. These solutions offer the enterprises dynamic visibility and real-time dashboards that would enable the global organizations to identify and locate violators. Further the 24/7 monitoring system helps organization to take proactive steps against counterfeiters and bring brand erosion to a halt.

 

The brand protection solutions are incorporated with innovative search tools which help the enterprises to continuously monitor the open market through the buying/selling listings and part numbers.  These online brand protection tools track information for franchises and distribution markets, gray market websites, auction sites, B2B and B2C trading websites and trade boards., Auction sites, B2B and B2C trading websites and trade boards.

 

Counterfeit products and gray market sales besides being illegal are also big threats to the safety and health of the society. Organizations thus tend to look for effective online brand protection and anti-counterfeiting solutions. The brand counterfeiting solutions from the leaders in the industry are focused on products, price monitoring, and discount percentage. A thorough investigation and enforcement services as part of the implementation process will help shut off violators and ensure end-to-end brand protection for the global enterprises.

 

Read More About: Pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting

Importance of Proactively Educating Users to Avoid Phishing Attacks

Emerging security threats to the corporate landscape put both the information and the company as a whole at risk. Sophisticated Phishing attacks are a  popular tool in the kitbag of the cyber-criminal, and are in regular use. Phishing is one of the fastest growing forms of Internet fraud. With Phishing attacks predominantly targeting end-users, there is a need to drive to the heart of the problem by investing in a security education and awareness program to raise the profile of risk and get adequate protection against Phishing.


With phishing attacks wreaking havoc, enterprises need to take a proactive approach and engage in external threat monitoring against your brand, assets, and intellectual property. These anti-Phishing solutions proactively seek out threats against an organization that can be discovered across the public and hidden internet, such as targeted Phishing or malware attacks, so that they can be taken down before they succeed. Protecting an organization from the damage incurred by Phishing and malware scams requires advanced anti-Phishing tools.


The goal of Phishing attacks is to trick the customer into voluntarily providing information that can be subsequently used for identity theft or to access his account. It is also imperative for organizations to not only concentrate on technical measures, but also on providing the required education to employees and users.  Thus, a key defensive measure is to educate customers so that they will be on guard for these attacks, recognize them when they occur, and not provide the information that these attacks seek to obtain. Security awareness programs must be part of every enterprise, but the best line of security defense has been and always will be educated users.  It is important to educate users on Phishing protection and the risks of phishing, how it happens, how to identify phishing attempts etc.


Phishing scams will evolve and we need to evolve with them. Many Phishing attacks are actually sent on an individual basis to users not protected by cutting edge Phishing detection solutions. Enterprises need to learn how to identify common Phishing scams and arm your employees against attacks by investing in a solution that can aid the organization in dealing with potential Phishing risks. Educating the users, the management, and employees help and organization to be better prepared.


While there are many new technologies available to help prevent Phishing, look for a solution that provides statistics on user behavior, measures security awareness among employees, identifies data leakage and above all provides complete Phishing protection.


Read More About: Simulated phishing attack , protection from phishing , anti phishing tool

Say No To Phishing Attacks With Anti-Phishing Software

The advent and progress of internet technology on our society and business are manifold. Most eCommerce and online trading companies have leveraged technological advancements in order to strengthen their base and flourish. This advancement has brought in numerous advantages in terms of better business scopes and venturing into untapped areas. Along with the benefits there are few perils too in the form of counterfeits and intruders that pry into another person’s account and aim to rob them of their critical data.

 

Phishing is one malicious software that attempts to steal personal data and even hamper the computing device. It is a byproduct of social engineering and makes way to your Inbox in the form of authentic mails and URL links asking you to share confidential details.


Effects of Phishing Attacks.


In the recent past, Phishing attacks have resulted in major loss to banks, retail brands, online shopping websites and financial companies. Phishers today successfully launch crafty and sophisticated Phishing attacks that might be difficult for a layman to recognize. Therefore, the success Phishing attacks is not in its intricacy, rather it depends hugely on an individual’s perception power and sense of awareness. Keeping  this fact in mind, eminent companies are aiming as Phishing awareness programs that resolves Phishing attacks and also educates people so that they are able to deal with any attacks in a sensible way.

Most Phishing protection programs that are available these days mostly address the technology and process aspects. However, certain solutions only address the people’s risk factor. Though this is helpful but at times it overlooks some of the crucial aspects of Phishing attacks. The most plausible approach today is the “incident based” approach that helps in empowering the employees about the required knowledge they need on Phishing protection.


Hence, the new age anti-phishing software provides benefits such as:


* Helps enterprises in estimating the potential risks linked to phishing

* They offer flexible reporting capabilities and incorporate them back into the enterprise’s key performance-indicator framework

* Offers a detailed “road map" solution concentrating on the security awareness and training within the company

* Helps in recognizing the weakness within people, process and technology links

* Helps in prioritizing remediation attempts through effective benchmarking and maturity analysis

* Helps in increasing employee awareness and knowledge to help guard sensitive information


Any kind of data is crucial to an organization as it comprises valuable information from financial details of new business development plans. Whilst minor attacks can be remedied, complicated attacks result in revenue loss and brand erosion and the data sacrificed cannot be retrieved. In order to safeguard your organization from such negative impacts it is better to invest in an appropriate Phishing protection solution.


Read More About: protection from phishing, anti Phishing tool, Enterprise Spear Phishing

Smarter Business Decisions with Advanced Analytics

Not long ago, the idea of a business forecast was a simple, spreadsheet-based extrapolation of previous performance. Today, however, business executives are recognizing the need for more advanced analytics and moving beyond reporting and business intelligence to more sophisticated analytics forecast. The arrival of this market trend is reinforced by industry analysts whose optimistic  indicate that advanced analytics will be a driving force in the BI market. It is said that advanced analytics tools will become more relevant in an organization's daily operations as the opportunity to embed such tools into analytic applications increases.

 


Advanced analytics are valuable tools that can help businesses of all sizes make faster, smarter decisions to ensure innovative business models. It goes far deeper into the actual reason of a situation and the likely outcomes. The effect of advanced analytics on an organization is helping to identify trends and likely behaviors of suppliers, customers, partners and competitors and this insight enables organizations to make cost-saving and profit-maximizing decisions. They help spotlight clever ways to improve business processes and serve customers better much ahead of the competition.

 


To drive better decision management, the business intelligence (BI) market, organizations are focusing more on quantitative analysis and analytics tools to help them optimize and improve. The right data can provide actionable insights to tell you what’s working and plan your strategy accordingly. Advanced analytics are a staple in business life, but having the right tool for the job, and using it effectively, remains a challenge.

 


Advanced analytics
 help enterprises become more efficient with marketing efforts with and have become highly essential to the delivery of high-value, decision-oriented functionality like forecasting, prediction, simulation and optimization. Whether aimed at strategic or operational issues, advanced analytic applications can dramatically improve the consistency and quality of decision making throughout an organization, enabling decisions that are based on quantified costs, benefits and risks, instead of sheer instinct. At the same time, they accelerate the decision-making process, allowing managers to focus their time and attention on more pressing issues.


 

Invest in a solution that can analyze data in real-time from across social, mobile and web platforms to allow game developers and social commerce companies to continuously improve customer acquisition, engagement and social game monetization  campaigns. The solution you opt for must modernizes your social media analytics   to go beyond simple metrics and yesterday’s measurements, and also allow you to focus on social analytics to understand the segments that drive the most revenue. Build a sustainable competitive advantage through adaptive and embedded analytics with the right solution.

 

Reasons for Implementing E-Discovery Corporate Investigation Solutions

In the wake of today’s corporate shake-ups that are highly publicized, internal or corporate investigations have attained national prominence and have marked itself as an essential management tool. This trend further provides challenging and stimulating scopes for both the internal lawyers and external counsel to conduct efficient corporate investigations. The task however has its own pitfalls to be dealt with.

If your organization is a legal firm or is in global business, then you surely are aware of corporate investigation, especially with the latest adoption of the U.S Dodd-Frank Act, calling in for financial rewards for corporate “whistle blowers”. However, you still be considering whether corporate investigation programs including web based analytics can simplify the process. However, the onus lies on your hand the way you choose to minimize your company’s risk.

Furthermore, conducting corporate investigations can also pose certain risks for your organizations. But with the help of efficient corporate investigators and solutions it is possible to reduce these risks by :

  • Complying to the guidelines set by the attorney-client work product and privilege doctrine
  • Conducting witness interviews effectively
  • Reporting tactfully about the corporate investigations to the management by efficiently communicating the report content to the client in a way that offers complete management. At the same time, it is crucial to ensure that it restricts distribution to the narrowest possible audience and reduces issues such as defamation suits and data leakages.


Today the answer to all these corporate investigation concerns and requirements lies with the top ediscovery solution providers that have introduced e-discovery corporate investigation solutions. These solutions enable organizations with easy data collection of crucial data sources for instance file shares, email servers and other cloud applications for corporate investigative purposes. The solution also offers other features such as discussion threads, transparent search, people and topic analytics to spot relevant data quickly. Other features and benefits include the following :

  • Helps to resolve corporate investigations precisely and quickly
  • Collects the suspect data easily from significant data sources
  • Helps in quickly identifying participants that are involved in an investigation
  • Helps in quickly delivering evidence to the internal sponsors online
  • Helps in eradicating the manual review of numerous false positives


This apart, advanced ediscovery corporate investigation programs help investigators to efficiently detect smoking-gun documents and instantly monitor who saw the documents and when. Furthermore, the corporate investigators are able to manage more investigations in a  short time.

Also read more on - electronic data discovery, e-disclosure

Enhanced Reliability with Effective Supply Chain Consulting

Supplier relations are a necessary part of business. Today's rapidly changing business needs to operate at a lower cost to compete and create its own core competencies to not only distinguish itself from competitors but also stand out in the market. Various activities in the supply chain management solutions involve the processes of turning the raw material using resources into finished product to be delivered to the customer. While technology is important and will help you do things you can’t do today, it may not deliver the results you need unless you also rethink your chain design and processes.

 

Nowadays with the increased competition supply chain consulting firms have become in high demand which is not surprising with because of their numerous benefits. Using supply chain consultants can bring many benefits to your business. Acquiring the services of supply chain consulting firms will help you plan according to your business needs. The experienced and professional consultants will work with you on your business plan and specific company needs in order to minimize the time it takes to produce the product and get it delivered.

 

For a business that is having problems getting their supply chain running smoothly, sometimes the best solution is to bring in supply chain consultants. A qualified supply chain consultant can help ensure that products are being delivered to the correct locations and tracked properly. They work on reducing the inventory level and hence maximizing your productivity. Before choosing to use a supply chain consulting firm in to your organization, you need to look into is the experience of the consultants. It is essential that they have enough experience and knowledge about the market or industry in which you are operating and more importantly, they should know your business and your business needs.

 

With a supply chain consultant your business will have a new and fresh perspective to the situation as they will be able to provide unbiased and informed guidance on the various strengths and weaknesses.  They can help you maximize your business income and can often make the money you pay them a very worthwhile investment.

 

Partner with a specialist consultant who also have effective supply chain solutions and also offer advice on long-term strategies that will fit in with your overall business goals and plans. A supply chain consultancy may also be more knowledgeable in current industry best practice than you due to their constant immersion in the industry. They can offer ideas or innovations that you would never have considered or come across otherwise.

 

Also read more about : supply base management & Fulfillment Solutions

 

Implications & Penalties Of IRS Amnesty 2012

The Internal Revenue Service known as the IRS does not extend any amnesty time span for the evaluation of interest and penalty charges, it generally provides a complete dismissal or an abatement of the penalties when the taxpayer reveals justifiable reasons for not being able to pay taxes. However, on the other hand there are rigid penalties for the taxpayers who have skipped to file their income tax returns on purpose.


The primary objective of the IRS Amnesty 2012 is to identify the taxpayers and individuals who own undisclosed foreign accounts and foreign entities in order to avert tax into compliance with the U.S tax regulations. The IRS has also reopened the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program i.e. OVDP as it is working with a wide selection on global tax concerns. It also keeps up with end-to-end initiatives with the Justice Department to follow legal prosecution of tax evasion globally.


IRS Amnesty only offers an abatement for penalties only when the situation appears a “reasonable cause” for the Internal Revenue Code in the United States. The IRS that at the starting adjudicates abatement requests, do not offer an official definition of this term. Though it is generally considered to be an occurrence that would make an intelligent individual act in a way that he/she had to witness an IRS assessed penalty.


Assistance From Tax Planning Agencies


Today leading tax planning agencies in the United States and other places offers a comprehensive and perceptive insight that is applicable for the ones residing in U.S as U.S citizens and Green Card Holders. This apart, tax planning agencies help the consumers with the following services:


* Complete compliance

* Impact and consultation analysis

* Planning and analysis to bring down FBAR penalty

* AMT strategies

* Foreign tax credit

* Review of 2009, and 2010 OVDI cases

* Mutual Fund

* Preparation of forms that are needed to take part in the OVDP program

* Preparation of Tax Amendments and delinquent FBAR

* IRS Representation by Enrolled Agents or Affiliated CPAs and Attorneys


However, the IRS does not certify that the taxpayer's request for an abatement by making use of the Form 843. There can be a situation when the taxpayer might also request an abatement by documenting and signing a request to the IRS. When taxpayers are writing an abatement request then it needs to comprise all relevant data that are asked to fill up in Form 843.


Read More About: Overseas voluntary disclosure

Guidelines for Tax Planning In Small Businesses

While tax planning is a year-round event if you want to minimize your business's tax bill, and effective tax planning is essential to ensure the financial success for any business, be it big or small. Many small business owners ignore tax planning, and don’t even think about their taxes until they’re scheduled to meet with their accountant at the end time of settling their taxes.


To comply with federal and state tax laws small business owners need to understand tax basics. Experts recommend that entrepreneurs and small business owners conduct formal tax planning sessions in the middle of each tax year as it will give them time to apply their strategies to the current year as well as allow them to get a jump on the following year.


These guidelines can help small businesses assist with tax planning


* Set up a Calendar


One of the most important tax-planning tools are a tax calendar. You can utilize the calendar to keep track of important dates and deadlines. Also, you can list filing deadlines for forms such as 1099s and W-2s. The IRS website has a desktop calendar tool you can customize to meet the individual needs of your business.


* Appoint a Professional


As a small business owner you are responsible for ensuring your business taxes are filed properly. One way to make sure your business is in compliance with federal and state tax regulations is to hire a tax professional. The today majority of entrepreneurs realizes that paying slightly more professional fees will make tax savings outweigh the initial expenses.


* Preserve Documents


Document maintenance is an important part of tax planning. Maintaining tax records, such as income statements, balance sheets and purchase receipts, helps you prepare your tax return as well as manage your business development.


* Keep a track of expenses


As the IRS allows tax deductions and credits for qualified business expenses, it is essential to keep a track of all expenses related to your business throughout the year.. Keeping a thorough record of deductible expenses will ensure you do not forget them when preparing your tax return.


Look for effective tax planning solutions as a positive balance sheet is a better choice instead of remitting greater amounts in taxes. Expert tax professionals can provide advice and guidance on deductions and credits your business may qualify for and they are knowledgeable about the tax laws and codes that could affect your business.


Read More About: IRS Amnesty ,  FBAR ,  Overseas voluntary disclosure , Entity Formation