Speed Up Your Financial Transactions Efficiently

With developments in computer, internet and other software applications, most organizations are resorting to electronic payment process for their financial transactions. The reason is that, this process is fast and contributes efficiently to the smooth operational flow of an organization.

Today, the market records the presence of eminent brands and companies that provide the users and customers with easy financial transaction methods such as electronic payment process solutions. Furthermore, these processes are an essential part of the Cloud Processes as well. They enable you to optimize and mechanize the overall manner in which you will handle the electronic financial transactions. At the same time, the inefficiency caused due to manual administration and tedium is eliminated. Other benefits include minimized processing time and enhanced processing accuracy.

The new age electronic payment processes has the ability to effortlessly incorporate your company’s system along with your collaborating business members and their respective systems. The business process networks too taken into account. There are configurable and well-defined business rules. As a result, you have total authority over the master data, for instance, its accessibility, integrity across the pertinent value network of the partners.

Electronic payment process and invoice creation

Service providers of electronic payment process solutions offer an invoice management platform that helps to receive and generate electronic invoices and save them with the present legal requirements accordingly. Various types of invoice include the invoices based on:-

• Transport
• Orders
• Travel
• Periodic invoices, for instance, mobile phone and electricity

The processes that are included in the automated credit card processing transactions for travel expenses, comprising electronic payment process are listed below:-

• Credit card transaction receipts regarding all travel expenses
• Reconciliation of expenses against the travel booking
• Generating reimbursement for travel costs
• Transfer of data to the salary system for payment with salary

Electronic payment process leads to a certain set of benefits to the organizations and companies using it. Some of them are listed below-

• Enhanced cash flow
• Enhanced saving
• Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Improved visibility of processes, that includes invoice and payment processes.
• Brings down the administrative cost to a great extent along with enhanced accuracy
• Has the capability to cope with any alterations in your ever-changing business environment

All these processes and benefits together provide a competitive advantage to the organization using the modern day electronic payment process.

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e-government - Public Sector On The Cloud

The techno savvy business world today needs an effective network to collaborate across the global clientele and the mobile workforce. The organizations success depends on the effective collaboration and mastering the inter dependencies in the network.  The use of conventional methods, however does not give the business houses or the government organisations the required reach, control and visibility to effectively manage these increasingly complex networks. Further, these inefficiencies may cost the enterprise its life.

The advent of cloud computing technology and cloud process helps to integrate a multi-enterprise business processes in a network so as to make the information available across all authorized components of such value networks. Being an automated process this offers faster processing of the work schedules, end-to-end transparency and round the clock control.  Integrating cloud technology into the e-government or public sector domain results in free and faster movement of people, goods, capital, and services in a global environment.

The public sector is an integral part of the global community.  Because of its financial interdependencies, role in international investments, global trading, it plays a major role in the country’s economy. Modernizing this with the technological innovations, and better infrastructure, will only enhance the e-government’s efficiency. The cloud based services and technological knowledge can be utilized for the practical up gradation of the e-government process focusing on the e-procurement and developing purchase order software. Further, the provision of better infrastructure will ensure implementation of improved public sector procurement process. This would enable the small and medium business enterprises also to be a part of the public sector and in turn would facilitate regional development.

The involvement of technology in the workflow-oriented process of the e-government reduces operating costs by facilitating the automation of most of the manually conducted tasks such as handling of business transactions, procurements, travel, inbound and outbound order fulfillment, and financial transactions. With a nearly 100% transparency, faster implementation of the public services, eco-friendly and sustainable operation, the use of cloud technology provides for shorter lead-time in the operational process, lean change management and better customer satisfaction.

The e-government being a major buyer of goods and services, the cloud processes enables an  “on demand" sourcing for the company needs. This paves way for reducing the corporate expenditure as well as the investment capital in case of industry sectors such as pharmaceuticals, medicines and other critical goods and services.

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Mobile Application Development – Providing the cutting edge

Communication is very vital in any society. The present technological era looks for clear and free communication and is considered one of the factors for the today’s developing business world. Procuring of information is also equally vital for all businesses. Due to the consistent flow of information corporate sectors and global business houses are able to gauge the market trends of the customers. They then plan out their organizational strategies in line with this study.   Communication therefore has to be fast, precise and consistent to facilitate prompt decisions, which would lead to progressive developments in business without any delays.

The advent of mobile technology has not only made communication faster but has also become an indispensable part of our day-to-day lives. The introduction of cellular phones and wireless devices has brought about the concept of being in touch even on the move.  However, these devices require sophisticated and advanced technological applications in order to enable seamless communication for its clientele. .

These mobile applications have a number of features, which can benefit the customers. These applications provide the facility to shop online from online shopping websites, play games, watch movies, listen to music, check emails, conduct business, seminars, meetings etc. the growth in the knowledge and understanding of the benefits of mobile technology, among the customers has is directly reflected on to their demands for better mobile features, high level of integration, flexibility and very high levels of data security.

To meet up to the demands of the customers in providing upgraded features is no easy task. These features can be incorporated only after developing the solutions required. To cater to the demands of the customers, the development professionals need to include capabilities such as location based services, mobile media streaming, messaging and syncing, mobile advertisements and ad engines, mobile VoIP, games and social networking.

However, these professionals with their expertise in mobile application development,  designs applications which can be compatible across various platforms.  The professionals while working on the software development process also provide for effective product lifecycle management solutions by integrating the process with billing systems and support and maintenance services.  

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What you need to know about Egypt before expanding your Business there

What you need to know about Egypt before expanding your Business there

Being in the core of the Middle East, Egypt serves as a bridge between the European west and the Arab east. It is one of the most populous Arab countries in the world and derives most of its culture from Mediterranean, African and Arab influences. Egypt is becoming one of the fastest developing countries in the world where investment is diversifying where there is a justified air of confidence. It has the potential to be counted among the emerging markets ready to offer good returns for foreign investment.

The Egyptian Economy
Although decreasing as a percentage of GDP, agriculture employs approximately 30 percent of the population. There has been an enormous improvement in the economy, and the new regulations have brought about much confidence within the business community. The existing government revived a stalled economic reform program that was intended at decreasing the size of the public sector and expanding the private sector, thereby resulting in a new market for foreign business.

The Main Business opportunities
With natural gas production increasing rapidly, Egypt is a major oil and gas producer.  It is always good to have a clear and detailed idea of the market before expanding business overseas. A recent study has shown that education & skills, ports & logistics, railways have a lot of prospects.

What you must know about the Free Zone
The Investment Law also regulates the Egyptian Free Zones. To make the most of on Egypt's strategic geographical location, and seeking to attract foreign investors, the government has been establishing and promoting free zones.  Most goods and materials imported to a Free Zone project are not subject to import duties or customs regulations just as the goods and materials exported from Egyptian Free Zones are also not subject to export duties or regulations. Any company that is formed to operate in the free zone is exempt from all Egyptian income taxes for an unlimited period. To encourage foreign investment, there are attractive trading conditions and numerous free zones where the laws are relaxed or removed.

Overcoming the Challenges
Before incorporating a business in Egypt, it is best for investors to conduct a though market research as there could be significant risks while expanding your business in Egypt. Seeking counsel from a professional will ensure that you are taking the right steps towards the fulfillment of your overseas expansion. You can avoid the pitfalls and get the right guidance on local business practices, such as hiring employees, tax regulations, international accounting, or expat tax advice.

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After Sales Service – Strengthen Your After Sales with Cloud Processes

Today after sales service is an integral part of any organization’s sales strategy. When you have a well structured after sales strategy in place, you are able to attain greater market share, minimize all your after-sales related overheads on goods and services. Most of all it results in customer retention. Majority of customers will not continue with an enterprise’s offerings or make a repeat purchase, if there is any bad experience.

Even in this fast expanding market, numerous enterprises underestimate the power of after sales that can help in achieving a competitive advantage over others. Nowadays, all customers look forward to a high-end customer service, more so if they aim to receive a good with “value for money” and are ready to pay few extra bucks to the service providers who can deliver the best.

As per the American Express Customer Service Barometer, 89 percent of the customers buying decisions are influenced by expediency and approximately 90 percent of the buyers give great importance to “value-for –money” deals. Furthermore, approximately 90 per cent of the consumers decide to purchase a good or service, owing to the after sales customer service.

The procedure of product management post their purchase, has several names. Some of them are After Sales, After Sales Service, Reverse/ Service Management, Reverse Logistics, and Customer care. Today, eminent service providers of after sales service solutions use the Cloud Processes that makes the process utility-oriented for the consumers. There are 10 essentials of Cloud Process after sales service:-

• Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Rules (BPR)
• Cloud Process Tools for End-user Participants
• Master Data Management
• Business Process Network (BPN)
• Process Improvement Service
• Third-Party Best-of-Breed Cloud Brokering
• Information Monitoring and Management
• Performance Management
• Cloud Process Hosting
• Cloud Process Customization

The benefits that results to small as well as huge scale organizations from the new age after sales service solutions:-

• Improved Customer Satisfaction
• Reduced Costs by 10-50%
• Reduced Lead Times by 20-50%
• Improved Control

The new age after sales cloud process are able to optimize, rationalize and automate in the work process continuously. At the same time, it integrates the overall value network that includes all the collaborating systems and members. This in turn helps you attain continuous visibility of the procedure based on up-to-date data. Furthermore, all the necessary information pertaining to after sales service is easily available at your end.


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E-procurement - Changing The Purchasing Strategy

In a competitive and globalized business environment, corporate sectors and business houses need to be abreast with new technological developments as well as manage reduction of operational costs while meeting the organizational goals and objectives. The advent of technological invasion into the marketplace, have created e-markets in every business sector. This has paved way for a faster connectivity between B2B and B2C exchanges.

The benefit of online purchasing not only showcases the cost savings but also improves the way companies operate. It helps them to deal with a chosen few suppliers with better buying strategy as well as slash down the administration costs. Today’s technological business world has turned to an electronic procurement system between business-to-business or business to consumer and even business to government. The electronic procurement system or e-procurement as it is called involves purchase and sale of products, supplies and services through the various networking systems such as electronic data interchange & Internet.

E-procurement does not mean just online purchasing decisions. It involves connecting the suppliers and employees of the organizations into the purchasing network companies that embarking on e-procurement buying programmes, will be able to aggregate purchasing across multiple departments or divisions without removing individual control, reduce rogue buying, can get the best price and quality products from a wide range of suppliers. For the suppliers, e-procurement is a boon because they can be very proactive in their business proceedings.

Although e-procurement is still in its infancy, some companies have made impressive savings through radical streamlining of their buying activities. E-procurement actually automates the purchasing and procurement process of a company and integrates the buyers and suppliers through relevant IT systems, which together forms a value network for the company. The automation of the end-to-end procurement workflow has taken over the traditional purchase order software. It helps to improve the organizational efficiency and control over the procurement activities and need not worry about post award management.

The advent of cloud computing concepts and using the cloud process for e-procurement has automated the procurement process further. The management of agreements & contracts, price list verification, product comparisons, article selection has not only become simplified but also speedy. The post award management is highly configurable, with detailed reports, order confirmation, and other display of procurement transactions. The cloud process verifies the accuracy of electronic invoices and article level matching of the relevant contract, ending with the automatic accounting from backend financial systems.

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After Sales Service - Benefits of After Sales Cloud Processes

Numerous sales staff’s are not able to comprehend the immediate ROI that might accrue to an organization through a sound after sale service.  Most employers are of opinion that post the sales procedures and commissions spent, any further time contributed to a customer or client is a waste of valuable time. They think that the sales staff is not gaining remuneration to retain a customer. However, effective after sales follow ups lead to grater profits and revenues.
Market analysts’ harps on the significance of an efficient after sales service process at work.  As a sales staff is following up with client(s), he is delivering more value than the client has paid for.  This very aspect would result in increased referrals, word of mouth promotion, greater business, and sales. Business consultants suggest three important steps:-
• Continue selling
• Work up to playing a chief role when a customer/client meets any issue with account management
• Try to be accessible 24x7 for customer inquiries
Concisely, after sales service refers to running and organizing the products after selling them and dealing with client behavior.  Today, numerous organizations have come up with after sales service solutions by using cloud processes.  They render users a competitive advantage. As a result, your company would own a greater market share. Other benefits include reduced after-sales related overheads on products and services and better customer retention.  Ten essential components of after sales cloud process are:-
• Master data management
• Business process network
• Business process rules and business process management
• Cloud process systems dedicated to end-user members
• Performance management
• Cloud process hosting
• Cloud process customization
• Process improvement services
• Information management and monitoring
• Third party best-of-breed cloud brokering
In addition to that, there are certain advantages that a company would witness from after sales solutions using cloud processes. They are-
• Approximately 68 percent of returns are free of technical faults
• Lead time minimized by 20 to 50 percent
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Cost reduction of 10 to 50 percent
• Improved control
In the recent times, the market scenario is competitive where each brand or organization wants to make great profits and leave a mark. A sound after sales service procedure guarantees increased sales returns as well as greater customer maintenance.

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Importance of Cloud based Supply Chain Management Solutions

Supply chain management solutions are of great significance to every business organizations today. The two important aspects of revenue recognition are availability of products and sound market coverage. Both these aspects are dependent on sound implementation of the supply chain strategy. Simply put, as soon as a new product is advertised and launched in the market, all sales counters need to have it for customers to purchase. Any delivery bottlenecks that hinder the product delivery will make the customer loose demand and interest on that particular product that might in turn lead to low revenue. Transportation network management and design thus are of great significance to marketing strategy and supporting sales. 

Two other important elements of supply chain management solutions are inventory visibility and inventory control. In any operations, these two elements are considered as cost drivers and have an effect on bottom lines included in the balance sheet. To any organization inventory is synonymous to value and is an asset. Every organization has its own criteria for inventory turnaround. It refers to how many times the same have been replaced and sold within a year.  Hence, the inventory health is indicative of the business health and condition.

Speaking of a global business scenario sometimes completed goods inventories are stopped at various distribution centers and locations, and are organized by third parties. There are cases when they are also held up in pipeline transportation rather than retail stocking points.  Owing to the fact that, any kind of inventory loss is synonymous to value loss, a sound control of inventory and visibility is an important aspect of the supply chain management function. 

Today, service providers of supply chain management solutions use Cloud process for effective results. These cloud based solutions help various kinds of companies, for instance manufacturing, distribution, consumer good, transportation, third party logistics and retail to enhance and attain real-time authority on the supply chain. It works in the following three steps or approaches:-

• Streamline – Helps in setting up a supply chain with transparent quantifiable processes.
• Focus – Helps in recognizing and concentrating on the concerns that requires attention.
• Improve- Helps in making apt business decision that in turn optimizes and improves the supply chain process.

Supply chain management solutions with Cloud processes offers web-enabled visibility that covers up every supply chain customers and members to provide higher customer value and minimized cost.  

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order management system, digital management

Reverse Supply Chain- Make Your Returned Products More Profitable

Many a times for most of the production organizations material supplied to the market are returned through the reverse supply chain function. Most distribution networks are not set up to manage products that come back from the field.  Now what is a reverse supply chain? It is a set of activities required to get back a product that can be products return, damaged goods or service depot returns etc., either to dispose it of or reuse it.

And for a growing number of manufacturers, reverse supply chains are becoming an essential part of business with product returns management statistics indicating that the overall cost of product and scrap material returns to manufacturers is continuing to increase. The Aberdeen Group estimates that high-tech companies alone spend approximately 8% of revenue just to manage their reverse logistics function.

Earlier companies used to spend more time, effort and money on timely supply of the products to their customers using the forward supply chains, while ignoring the backward supply chains. However, in today's competitive business environment, companies can no longer ignore reverse supply chains bringing many benefits to the companies.  

Apart from benefits companies establishing a reverse supply chain also face many challenges. They have to establish new points of contact with customer; decide which activities to outsource and what not. In general with these costs adding to overall operating expenses, they need to discover innovative ways to recover value from material returns - and keep costs to a minimum. Reverse supply chain process is still treated as a back end process of a logistics.  Compliance laws are becoming more stringent and fines increasing, companies need returns goods management program to keeps them compliant.

Operations Cost – Reverse supply chain reduces operating costs as products or components can be reused. The returns need to be carefully managed else companies may find their warehouses flooded with returned products. Companies often will need to work closely with retailers and other distributors to coordinate collection.

Inspection and Disposal - The returned products need to be tested, sorted, and graded. The returns process needs to be streamlined using RFID sensors, bar codes, and other technologies to automate tracking and testing. Companies should dispose of the product based on quality and product configuration to eliminate logistics overhead costs and get remanufactured or refurbished products to market faster.

Refurbishing - Damaged products in the reverse supply chain get a new lease on life, through test and repair methodologies, companies can provide testing, depot repair and refurbishment services for products to create an “all in one” reverse logistics solution.

Distribution and Sales – Once the product has been refurbished it can be sent back to the market. To sell a recycled product, organizations need to create a market for it, invest in consumer education and other marketing efforts. Potential customers for remanufactured products or components include not just the original purchasers but also new customers in different markets.  

Thus by using reverse supply chain management system, returns are transformed from assets gathering dust into cash.

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Driving up the Value Network’s Efficiency

Today’s global business environment is radically sensitive, complex and demanding. It is a world where decisions have to be taken correctly without wasting much time. You have to work under tremendous pressures as you have to perform consistently without upsetting costs. This uphill task can be exhausting and make you weary before your goal is accomplished. However those who can keep up with the pressure and deliver on time enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Business today means numerous collaborations with vendors, third parties, suppliers, associates and partners to serve your customers with quality services at reasonable and affordable prices. Your professional alliances cumulatively form the value network that helps your business to progress without causing any disruptions in the service. Thus you need to have a flexible value network that can help you comply with the customers’ demands. Also you need to procure a system that can promote extensive visibility so that you are aware of the operations in your value network. Without transparency in the after sales process you are at a disadvantage that may culminate into expensive losses.

With the proliferation of your business your value network chain also gets larger. This means you will have to dedicate more resources, time and money to engage in a hassle-free environment. The administrative work also increases and that means added expenditure incurred for hiring new personnel. Also manual operations are liable to contain more errors that could prove fatal for your business. Preservation of environment has become another major issue where businesses are not allowed to indulge in practices that may cause detrimental effects.

It is heartening that there are various solutions available to make your business as effortless as possible without causing you any major distress, and also give you the rich benefits. One such solution is the cloud process. This solution has become popular amongst the business fraternity, and organizations have already started experiencing its advantages. The cloud process takes care of all your issues that have so far been acting as a deterrent for maximizing your value network and promoting a cohesive unit.

Employing cloud practices to further your business’ prospects is justified. You can gain increased awareness of your value network as visibility is prominently highlighted. All the work undertaken is put through an automated procedure, thus ensuring a regularized system. The cloud process is replete with thoroughly integrating capabilities that leverages productivity and reduces cost, manifesting in marvelous ROI. Also with the cloud process you can be guaranteed a relevant compliance system that helps you conduct your business within the permissible limits and gain maximum mileage. The cloud process is your most ideal partner that gives you the opportunity to concentrate on distinctive, innovative and productive strategy implementations.

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