Ideaca Renews Multiple Microsoft Gold Competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network

We have renewed our gold competencies in Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Portals and Collaboration and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as well as silver competencies in Virtualization, Web Development, Application Integration and Data Platform.

"These Microsoft competencies showcase our expertise and commitment in today’s technology market and demonstrates our deep knowledge of Microsoft and its products,” said Mike Alkier, Managing Partner, Ideaca.  “Our plan is to accelerate our customers’ success by serving as advisors for their business technology needs.”

“By achieving a portfolio of competencies, partners demonstrate deep expertise and consistent capability on the latest Microsoft technology,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “These partners show true commitment to meeting customer technology needs today and into the future.”

Check out the full story here.
 

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RIS Reveals 2012 Mobile App Award Finalists

Mobile apps have become huge in retail and are continuing to grow in popularity at a rapid rate. They are becoming ubiquitous in the retail landscape from both a consumer and corporate standpoint.

Retail Info Systems News (RIS) has just revealed their 2012 Mobile App Award Finalists, categories include: Enterprise Excellence, Innovation, Shopping, and Store Operations.

A few facts based on recent RIS research were also included in the article:

• More than half (a total of 57.2%) of responding retailers update their mobile apps every three months, or more frequently, 42.9% every two to three months, and 14.3% every month
• 50% of consumers return to the retailer's app at least once a week
• Mobile app budgets are on the rise among nearly three-quarters of surveyed retailers
• Among those with growing budgets, the average increase is 50%

The finalists, and the above facts, speak to the advancement and innovation occurring in the retail mobile app space. Retailers are starting to pick up on this so the next year should be interesting...

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Corporate Mobile Application Strategy

In the March/April edition of Exchange Magazine, Ideaca's Brad Blaskavitch wrote an article around creating a Corporate Mobile Application Strategy for your business.

In this article Brad outlines five essential technology components for a successful mobile strategy:

1. Mobile Devices: Smartphones and new generation tablets are more powerful and capable than ever before, and keep evolving at a rapid rate. Their power allows for more advanced applications. The ability to store data when network connectivity is lost, has been critical to corporate mobile application initiatives.

2. Mobile Applications & Platforms: Previously, organizations delayed investment in mobility for fear of tying themselves to a single hardware vendor, causing paralysis. Today's mobile computing platforms and development tools have advanced to the point that device OS/manufacturer is no longer significantly relevant. Mobile applications can be developed once to run on Android, Apple iOS and Blackberry.

3. Network/Carrier Infrastructure: Wireless telecom companies have made tremendous investments to improve the speeds of data transfer and expand their geographic coverage. We have seen the transition from 2G to 4G networks. These improvements allow mobile applications to have more capability and perform at acceptable speeds.

4. Corporate Technology: Many companies have invested heavily in corporate systems and line of business applications to improve operational efficiencies in administrative functions, systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Financial, Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence. Organizations now have the key internal infrastructure to support a true corporate mobility strategy and extend these capabilities to their mobile workers in an integrated solution.

5. Cloud Computing: While many will argue that it isn't a core requirement, cloud computing has allowed many organizations to scale their technology footprint without incurring the significant capital costs of a more traditional on-premise hardware strategy. The ability to scale up or down the computing power of an organization, eliminating hardware and IT resource constraints, has freed up capital and IT resources to focus on value add solutions to increasing the organizations competitiveness.

For the rest of the article, click the link below to check it out on page 32-33. http://www.exchangemagazine.com/currentissue/ExchangeVol29No4/

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Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

Check out this recent post on Project Management from Ideaca Partner, Evan Hu's blog "at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership". Evan goes into detail about why projects fail, and what you can do to ensure future success.


Beyond Project Management to Project Leadership

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How Corporate Collaboration Strategy Affects Profits for Retailers Event

Last week Ideaca teamed up with Microsoft to put on an event focused around Corporate Collaboration and Store Portals for Retailers.

John Torella from J.C. Williams Group, gave an inspiring talk that made our attendees realize they need to keep with today's emerging technologies by being a differentiator.

"Surprise and Delight your Customers".
- John Torell

 Rob Alexander-Carew from Microsoft Canada, discussed how to Resolve your Retail Business Challenges

Valerie Prendergast and her team from Ideaca gave an impressive demo showcasing Store & Corporate Collaboration in Practice

The event was a great success, and motivated our retail audience to consider making impactful and necessary changes to their corporate collaboration strategy.

If you missed out on this event, don't worry! We are hoping to have a recording of this session up on our website in the near future. Stay tuned!

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The Resurrection of Canadian Manufacturing

The crash of the financial markets threatened to eliminate the importance of Canada's manufacturing sectors. With over 300,000 jobs having been lost as a result of the financial crisis, economists were reluctant to paint a rosy picture of the future of manufacturing in Canada. But according to the Financial Post, the manufacturing landscape in Canada is beginning to flourish, particularly for businesses whom had managed themselves well enough during the economic collapse.

Interestingly enough, businesses that were able to survive the crash did so without succumbing to off-shoring practices; rather, they innovated at home to continue to illustrate their strength as a business. In order for manufacturing firms to innovate and withstand some of the issues that arise with an ageing labour force, they will need to invest in proper on-boarding solutions and other technologies that not only encourage a younger workforce to thrive in their business, but also allow them and your business to continue to innovate and become best-in-class leaders in their field.

Click here for more details about how we can help your manufacturing firm become best-in-class leaders.
 

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