Doing business is faster, more efficient and cheaper with cloud computing. On the surface this may seem a very simple expressions but it has very deep implications.  All of a sudden millions of businesses that were kept away from state-of-the-art business applications due to daunting costs in terms of effort and money can leverage these applications and compete with bigger players.

Using business intelligence tools for the purpose of growing is ineluctable and this constraint was holding many businesses back.  Cloud computing allows you to enhance your software needs as your business grows.  For instance, if you think that a relational database application can help you grow your business you don’t have to hold yourself back simply because you don’t have the resources to purchase expensive hardware and software or enough space for the machines and the people needed to take care of those machines. Cloud computing helps you cut to the chase and straightaway start using the applications.  It’s like, waking up one day in the morning and deciding to use a customer relationship management application for your business and start using it within the next couple of hours (or within the next 10 minutes, depending upon whether you work from office or home).

You also no longer have to worry about being stuck with an expensive purchase in case you discover that you’re not happy with the solution.  Cloud-based applications let you try out different solutions before you settle down with the one you want.  This lowers the entry-level bar for practically every business.

Cloud computing also allows small businesses to work with employees from various geographical regions. There is no need to have a single office where everybody has to gather in order to use the applications that are installed on office computers.  Since all cloud-based applications can be accessed from the Internet there no longer remains the need to come to the office.  Just imagine how much travel time it saves and how easy it becomes to access global talent from the basement of your house.

It also makes collaboration a piece of cake. Teams of journalists working from different locations can easily work on a single document from their respective locations using different devices.  No longer there remain compatibility issues. Since all you need is a browser and every operating system and working environment has a browser you don’t need to bother about compatible applications.

Since most of the real-time data is easily available across the devices executives, managers and decision-makers don’t have to carry along piles of papers or CDs when they are travelling across the borders. While making presentations and preparing reports they can immediately carry out data analysis and generate reports on the fly.

What are the other benefits that come to your mind when it comes to cloud computing? Do share your thoughts in the comments section.

In order to survive the ever-competitive markets businesses all over the world continuously try to reduce their costs and improve their efficiency. SaaS is the perfect step towards this direction.

SaaS stands for Software as a Service: it means you can use enterprise-level software without having to buy it and install it locally.  You can simply log onto a particular website that lets you use the business solution whenever you need to.  And this is not the only benefit; you can pay according to your requirement. This actually opens a floodgate of opportunities both for users and vendors.

The Internet is all about numbers: providing low-cost services to a greater number of people is far more profitable compared to providing high cost services to a select few. SaaS enables vendors to provide the same services (application, actually) to businesses of various sizes without much overheads or cutting losses.  This is because most of the SaaS-based applications are highly modular and most of these modules can be independently used.  For instance if you’re looking for only a couple of features that you find in a standard ERP system you don’t have to buy or lease the entire solution; you can simply pay for the module as you want to use and get going.

The central feature of every SaaS-based business application is that it resides in the cloud.  That means all these applications are accessed via a remote server.  A minor snag is that you always need to have an Internet connection in order to use a cloud-based service.  But every device these days comes with connectivity features and this is no problem.  The overwhelming benefit on the other hand is that you don’t have to be at the central location in order to access your applications and data.  From wherever you can log into your dashboard you can carry out your business operations just as if you’re sitting in your own office in front of your own computer.

Additionally, a SaaS-based application, as far as you as a user are concerned, grows with your business requirement.  It is always evolving or de-evolving. It is continuously scaling up and down according to the fluctuations of your business.  With the increase and decrease of your business you can also increase and decrease your IT costs.  But let us not think about a decreasing business.  As you expand your business you require more features and you may also need more and more employees to use the system.  You can do this any time without incurring great costs.  Want to increase the number of employees using the system from 20 to 30?  Simply start paying for those extra 30 employees and go on doing your business as usual.  Want to add 2 more modules? Log into your dashboard, add the modules, pay for them and start using them.

This is also called the “long tail” way of providing cutting-edge business solutions to even small-scale businesses and organizations. Using the same set of solutions a particular vendor can provide unlimited combinations to a multitude of customers without forcing them to pay you through their noses.

“Build it and they will come” is a misconception that has been proven wrong time and again. When people had just started building websites and opened up shops on the Internet it could have been true because there were very few websites vying for the space. But as the number of businesses on the Internet increased so did competition and soon it grew cutthroat. Hence grew the need for online marketing services. It’s not just about creating great websites; in order to succeed online you have to increase your visibility and reach out to your prospective customers and clients.

Online marketing constitutes of

• A fully functional business website
• Online advertising campaigns
• Search engine optimization
• List building and e-mail marketing
• Content creation and distribution
• Blog publishing
• Social media marketing

All these activities when combined together give you a turnkey online marketing solution.

Concego’s turnkey online marketing services provide you all that you need at a single point. You don’t have to deal with multiple service providers in order to run a successful business on the Internet. All that you need to promote your business we can provide you. This enables you to focus on your business while we work hard at getting you targeted traffic.

Your online business success depends a lot on constant connectivity with your prospective customers and clients. Things move very fast on the Internet due to easy accessibility, a deluge of options that are growing exponentially and fierce competition that is healthy as well as constraining. So you always need to proactively promote yourself whether it is direct marketing, SEO, or social media and networking. You have to be at the right place at the right time.

Business website

Providing cutting-edge business websites is our core strength along with providing enterprise level business intelligence solutions. Having a business website is the first step towards marketing your business online. Without an online presence all the effort is futile. This is where the real conversion takes place. No matter how many successful campaigns you run to generate targeted traffic, eventually it is your website that converts that traffic into real business. So we pay very close attention to even the tiniest of details like usability, content relevancy, content optimization, source code optimization and accessibility.

Online advertising campaigns

These may constitute of banner ads and link ads and various other link exchange campaigns. Every website aims to improve its organic rankings among various search engines but you cannot depend too much on search engine traffic. You need to advertise on other online properties that can send you niche traffic. We can use a combination of Google Adwords and media partnerships to get your website links prime exposure at various locations.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization means getting traffic from search engines for the right keywords. You can choose to build a website and then leave up to the search engines to send you random traffic or you can create a strategy that sends you exactly the traffic that increases your business. There are many keywords and key phrases that are associated with your business — words and search expressions that people use to find what you provide, on the search engines. You want to optimize your website for these keywords and search terms because if you don’t get traffic for these words your competitors will. Search engine optimization involves generating optimized content and arranging your source code in such a manner that the search engine robots can easily make out what keywords you’re trying to highlight and then rank your website accordingly.

List building and e-mail marketing

It is one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing and perhaps still the most effective. You build a list of people who are eager to receive your updates and then constantly keep in touch with them by sending them routine e-mails. List building is a very crucial aspect of online marketing because here people actually volunteer to receive your messages. When they subscribe to your e-mail updates they are fully aware of what sort of messages you are going to send and that is why e-mail marketing is so effective. We partner with one of the best e-mail marketing companies to provide you solutions that help you thoroughly analyze the effectiveness of your various campaigns.

Content creation and distribution

You need targeted content to promote your business on the Internet. You also frequently need to distribute your content to various websites and blogs to increase your brand presence and increase back links. The more content you can distribute the more back links you can garner. You also constantly need content to promote your presence and strengthen your brand on social media and networking websites because a presence over their without solid content on your website is like having a body without a backbone.

Blog publishing

It is actually a subset of content publishing on your website but it is a separate activity because blogging in itself is a complete form of online marketing. You can develop entire communities around your blog. Through your business blog you can establish your authority and expertise and create a ripe ground for your visitors to interact with you directly and provide you feedback in real time. Blogs are also a hit among search engines; they get crawled and index faster than normal websites due to the organization of content and the fact that there is always something new that can be found on a blog and this is what the search engines prefer.

Social media marketing

Your social media presence brings you in direct contact with your core market. This is the place where you become one of them: your customers and clients. You can engage them and interact with them through your social media profiles. Of course this takes lots of effort and running a business while interacting through social media is not possible. This is why Concego can take care of your social media marketing strategy and presence. We shall be talking more about our social media marketing services in future blog posts.

Our objective through our turnkey online marketing services is to provide you one-stop marketing solution that takes the weight off your shoulders and provides you a level playground. Whether you are a mid-sized business or a large-scale business we can provide you just the right online marketing solution to give you the much-needed thrust.

Decision-makers and managers are travelling all the time but they still need to remain connected to their core business intelligence applications and data. Cloud-based ERP and CRM solutions let them stay connected and perform their responsibilities whether they are in transit or staying at some remote location. Long gone are the times when they had to wait for e-mails and faxes from the head office before making calculated decisions. They can immediately log into their dashboard and retrieve all the information they need.

Computing is rapidly shrinking to smaller devices that can be easily carried around. Since these devices are not stationary they all carry the ability to connect to the Internet. PC sales are declining and smart phone sales are increasing all over the world with greater emphasis on consistent connectivity. This necessitates a paradigm shift towards computing that does not depend on a single machine or a group of machines.

Another growing trend that creates a ripe ground for cloud-based ERP and CRM applications is interoperability and inter-device communication. Computers can talk to cell phones and handheld devices and vice versa. Similarly people are using different operating systems and computing environments. Since it is still not very easy to create applications that can easily function under various operating environments they need an interface that works in every environment, and presently that interface is your browser. No matter what device you are using, no matter what operating system you prefer, you have a browser working for you. And if you have a browser, you can access a cloud-based application. The cloud-based applications vendors leverage this advantage. And it’s not just the vendors, even consumers benefit tremendously with this feature. They no longer need sophisticated machines and operating systems to run and manage their ERP and CRM solutions. All they need is a browser with conventional capabilities and they are ready to go.

The cost is also a big factor. Until recently only large-sized businesses could afford ERP and CRM solutions due to the scale of investment required in terms of hardware, software and the staff to manage the both. The on-demand feature in cloud-based ERP and CRM solutions allows even mid-sized and small businesses take advantage of these business intelligence software applications. They can be easily scaled and tailored according to the individual requirements of businesses. You can pay for only what you use. First of all, you don’t need the infrastructure at your own location. All the applications exist on remote servers that you can easily access through your browser. The moment you log into your dashboard all the modules and data are available to you.

Since you are not managing the infrastructure at your location you don’t need to worry about maintaining it too. This immediately eliminates the cost of security, maintenance and staffing. Even if you are a single person business you can just pick the modules you want to use and pay for them. There are many services that charge per user. This way if you only have 5 employees in your office you just pay for those 5 employees. This way you can use cutting-edge ERP and CRM solutions at a nominal cost.

Smart phones these days come with all the processing power, connectivity and space they need. For example a typical Google Nexus One is shipped with Wi-Fi, 1 GHz processor and a 32 GB SD card to enable you run the most advanced smart phone applications available in the contemporary times.

Being at the forefront of information technology Concego continuously strives to provide applications that are not only in sync with the present but also future technological trends. So naturally it is our priority to create applications that are smart-phone-ready. And these applications are not just to amuse you: they can be used to run real-world businesses in real time. Our objective is to make smart phones smarter by enabling you to access your business data and reports and run complex analytical reports without having to access your PC or laptop. Just fire up your business intelligence application on your smart phone and make decisions that are based on sophisticated data extraction. For instance you can immediately log onto your inventory system while giving a presentation to a customer in order to provide the most accurate information without having to carry tons of paper with you. Similarly there are many enterprise resource planning applications that let you make spot decisions without resorting to guess work.

Access your business applications any time anywhere through your smart phone running our smart applications. The intuitive interface beautifully works within the constraints of the small screen. The data practically comes alive under your fingertips. In the world of mobile computing everything becomes now.

This is a question you will ask in a few years, maybe just 5-6 years. With more and more software application providers providing “cloud versions” of their conventional software applications they are becoming more of a norm than an exception.

Does cloud computing sound “geeky”? Actually it is not. You have been using cloud computing for many years now it’s just that you didn’t realize it. When you access your e-mail using a Web interface you are actually using a cloud-based service. Similarly if you use a shopping cart you are using an application that is running on a remote server and you are accessing it remotely through your Internet connection. The same characteristic manifests in other applications.

Take for instance  GoogleDocs; people have been using this great online office suite for many years now. In fact services like GoogleDocs and Zoho (another online applications suite) are giving Microsoft Office a run for its money. These cloud-based applications support all the functions that you get in a conventional office suite such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and basic database functions. Some of them even offer project management, invoicing and CRM solutions for small businesses. These service have totally eliminated the need to install software on your PC or mainframe.

So you have already been using the services for a long time without coming across the tag of “cloud-based applications”.

You may come across people asking, “Why access critical business applications over the Internet when you can easily install them locally especially when storage space is so cheap these days and so are other hardware and software?”

This is true, and cost is definitely a big factor but cloud-based applications are not only cheaper compared to conventional set-ups they are also more convenient to use. And the biggest advantage is scalability: whether you are a corner store or a Fortune 500 company you can easily avail the services of a company that provides cloud-based solutions within your own budgets. You can easily scale up or scale down the same service according to what you need and how much you want to pay. But that’s another point. We are considering the installation part.

Installing applications has always been a major headache for big and small businesses. Most of the enterprise level applications require lots of technical expertise and high-end hardware to run. You need technical know-how even to install and set up these applications. This significantly increases your IT costs. You acquire hardware, you arrange for the space for the hardware, you employ people to take care of it, you need power to keep the infrastructure running and you constantly need to spend money on maintenance and upgrades. All this adds up to a big chunk of your business expenses.

Cloud-based applications on the other hand can bring down your IT expenses  by more than 80 to 90 per cent. In fact, even more. All you have to do is launch your browser, go to the website of the company that provides the cloud-based application you’re looking for, select the appropriate plan, pay for it, and start using it — it is as simple as that. You only need to bother yourself with the features you need and not with the implementation and customization.

Everything is managed by the company that provides you the service. You don’t even need to invest in new hardware. Most of the cloud-based applications can easily be accessed through a browser having contemporary features and add-ons. This totally eliminates the need of installing software on local machines. Even upgrades and backups are taken care of by the service provider. All you have to do is use the service, leverage its features and focus on your business.

The fact that cloud-based applications drastically bring down your costs and immensely improve your efficiency is rapidly eliminating all the reasons for installing business applications on your local machines. That is why we are pretty sure that in the very near future people will balk at the idea of installing applications locally.

The detractors of SaaS applications always use the argument that they are less secure and less dependable because you cannot directly control them and the connections are not as secure as needed by critical enterprise level business intelligence solutions.

What do you think is the flaw in this argument? They are not entirely wrong but their apprehensions are misplaced. If security is their main concern all mainstream SaaS application providers use the best security setup possible under the contemporary technological firmament. If despite that security breaches take place, well, they can also happen if you’re running mainframes at your own premises. In fact, unless you have a full-fledged dedicated security setup it is practically impossible to keep your data and applications impregnable.

SaaS companies on the other hand — since they provide professional services to a multitude of clients — closely work with security agencies that monitor the systems 24 x 7 using the most cutting-edge tools. So you are anyway better off with your data and applications being handled by an agency that specifically does this work.

Aside from keeping their data centers secure they also take backups on a daily basis. Taking backups is a long, tedious process replete with technical expertise and you often require a big team of systems administrators to take and maintain regular updates. You may also have to invest in extra hardware and software in order to keep your backups safe. When you partner with a company that provides SaaS-based applications this is being taken care of automatically. You don’t have to bother about taking backups or worrying about your database security.

And what about being dependable? You can apply the same logic as mentioned above. Whenever you are looking for dependability you need to partner with a company or an organization that has good reputation and that has been providing software applications services for a long period of time. You need a dependable partner even when you are installing new software on your local machines, purchasing new computers and laptops and even while purchasing your car. Just like there are reliable and unreliable people in different fields there are reliable and unreliable companies providing SaaS applications too. You just need to be careful and conduct thorough research before deciding to partner with a particular company.

Another aspect about dependability is the features and availability of SaaS-based applications. These depend on, again, with whom you partner. All mainstream SaaS applications come bundled with almost all business intelligence features you have so far been using on your conventional set-ups. Besides, these applications are constantly being developed: new features are added and existing features are revised/updated.

Another great thing about SaaS applications is that most of these applications are available on your smart phones and other hand held devices. This gives you perpetual connectivity with your data and application modules no matter where you are. You just need connectivity. This sort of dependability is hard to get in conventional software set-ups.

Of course every technology comes with its own hiccups but early adopters always have an edge over the ones who don’t. These applications are already matured and many Fortune 500 companies have already implemented them to handle their day-to-day business operations, but still if you start implementing them in your own organization you will be at an advantage when they stop supplying conventional applications; this is going to happen within the next 5-10 years. Remember that Y2K problem?

Read more here:
http://www.concego.com/internet-technologies

How does this become possible?

As mentioned above software applications under this category are accessed and used over the Internet. You don’t need to purchase a license fee and install the software copy locally. You just need a contemporary browser and you’re ready to go. You don’t need high-configuration hardware and you don’t need IT professionals to take care of your hardware/software infrastructure. You don’t even have to purchase multiple licenses if you want 50 employees to use the application.

All you need to do is contact the company that provides solutions based on the SaaS model, subscribe for the services you would like to utilize, pay for them, log into your account, and start using the application — it is as simple as that. Can you ever imagine implementing, let us say, a payroll system or an inventory management system with such an ease? You can literally decide to act upon your IT requirements and have the system running in as little as 30 minutes.

When your running your business applications in-house there are many one-time as well as recurring costs such as

• License fee for the copies of the software you use
• Compatible hardware for the software
• Ongoing maintenance of software and hardware
• Regular backups
• Security measures
• Personnel to take care of your IT infrastructure
• The space that you require for your IT infrastructure
• The power that you use to run your hardware
• Routine upgrades

All these costs are immediately eliminated the moment you decide to adopt the SaaS model for your business.  Even laptops and computers with no hard drives can manage large scale enterprise level database applications as easily as checking your e-mail. All you need is an Internet connection and a contemporary browser.

SaaS provides you just those software modules that you need. The problem with conventional way of getting softer is that you get hundreds of features that you may never use particularly for your business but you are nonetheless paying for them because they are a part of the package after all. With the SaaS way of using applications you can scale up or scale down according to your individual needs and you can do that at any time. Suppose in a typical business application there are 40 commonly used functions and you require only 15.  You can just subscribe to those 15 functions/modules and avoid paying money for the remaining 25.  Similarly, at any time you can decide that instead of 40, only 10 employees need to use the application and then pay your monthly subscription fee accordingly.

With SaaS you are never stuck with the package you initially bought. It is totally flexible and customizable and it provides you all the features you need to run a successful business no matter what is its size.

Our SaaS model on the other hand allows you to do exactly this — no need to buy or lease an entire assortment if you are never going to use it. You can select only what you want. This is the beauty of the SaaS model aside from getting to use it through the Internet.

Coming back to the real world cloud-base solutions: we provide business intelligence services that are totally secure and extremely easy to use — “extremely easy” in the sense of the dashboard-based interface and not in the terms of the features they bring to the table or their ability to solve intricate business problems.

For instance, if you go for a CRM solution: although you have this ability to choose independent modules specific to your requirement it is the most advanced piece of software you can get anywhere in the world. There is no customer relationship problem that cannot be solved with our cloud-based CRM solution functioning on the SaaS model (Software as a Service) and this holds true for every business application available at Concego. When we provide you cloud-based smart applications we don’t build sandcastles: we build real-world solutions that cater to various industries including

• Communications
• Finance
• Health care
• Media and entertainment
• Online/Web gaming
• Education
• Retailing
• Manufacturing

We provide leading-edge cloud-based business solutions to the above-mentioned industries. Our services include transformation of proprietary applications to cloud-based applications and developing new solutions from scratch that our clients can lease on the basis of modules they would like to use.  These modules are highly customizable and they can be easily tailored to your specific requirement.

Practicability is very important at Concego and this is what we aim for whenever we are working on a new business intelligence solution or transforming an existing solution. Do subscribe to our RSS feeds to get regular updates on what is the latest buzz on cloud computing and the SaaS model of providing business applications over the Internet.

Your business data is completely secure when you are running your corporate operations through a cloud-based interface.  Data and applications are run on multiple servers and there are multiple backups taking place constantly.  So the moment a particular server goes down your data and applications are immediately available through alternative servers.  There are strong enterprise level firewalls to constantly keep your data thoroughly protected.

The company that provides you the business solution takes care of all the hardware and software updates without ever bothering you.  Whenever they are introducing new features they are automatically available to you unless they require additional payment (for example an entirely different business module).

This model of providing business applications through the cloud is gaining popularity with great speed due to its simplicity and perfection.  Whatever you seek in an enterprise level business application you can get on a cloud-based interface. There is no compromise on quality and functionality.  You can access your applications, data and reports from anywhere in the world at any time without requiring interference of any sort.  after a while you start using your cloud-based applications without even realizing what a big difference they are making to your day-to-day business operations.  They are so smooth, complete and unobtrusive that you can be at your productive best without ever having to take care of the nitty-gritty of running a dedicated IT department.

This is the advantage of the SaaS model and the cloud-based applications that keeps us perpetually excited here at Concego. We aspire to create affordable yet highly advanced business intelligence applications that can take care of the demanding requirements of Fortune 500 companies as well as small mom-and-pop stores, with equally flexible costing.