Archive for September 19, 2018

Box & NetSuite Power Seamless and Secure Collaboration

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 19, 2018 by itnerd

Box and Oracle NetSuite today announced that Box has extended its integration with NetSuite to make it even easier for organizations to work faster, more collaboratively and securely with their connected content across both systems. The enhanced integration brings seamless and secured content collaboration powered by Box, directly into the NetSuite platform. The new integration, available today, provides greater productivity and delivers even more control of content throughout the entire business.

The enhanced integration provides a new layer of visibility and control for admins through:

  • Improved folder and permissions mapping and a new nested folder structure provides a more flexible and intuitive way to manage permissions on folder organization structure.
  • Freedom from root parent folders provides the ability to associate any existing Box folder with a NetSuite record.
  • New folder naming conventions enable Box folders to be directly mapped and named based on NetSuite records.

Built for NetSuite is a program for NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) partners, like Box. The program provides partners with information, resources and a method to help them verify that their applications and integrations, built using the NetSuite SuiteCloud Computing Platform, meet NetSuite’s standards and best practices. The Built for NetSuite program is designed to give NetSuite customers additional confidence that SuiteApps have been built to meet these standards.

Since 2010, NetSuite and Box have made valuable business content –such as invoices, contracts, purchase orders and sales collateral –accessible and shareable when viewing records within NetSuite. For example, the finance team can manage and share sales orders and invoices stored in Box directly from NetSuite, speeding up workflows, securing and organizing content and helping businesses work more collaboratively.

Existing core capabilities of Box integration with NetSuite include:

  • Open, edit and collaborate on Office 365 or G Suite files directly within NetSuite, and leverage integrations from both NetSuite and Box partners.
  • Apply consistent security and governance on all content in NetSuite, including retention policies and granular permissions.
  • Apply Machine Learning to invoices, contracts, purchase orders and other content stored in NetSuite to trigger workflows and auto-update records.

Pricing & Availability

Updates to the Box integration with NetSuite are available to all joint Box and NetSuite customers today. Box and NetSuite customers leveraging the current integration can upgrade by the managed bundle. More information on the integration can be found on SuiteApp.com, NetSuite’s marketplace with over 400 applications from SDN partners.

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Salesforce Named a Leader in B2C Commerce Suites by Forrester Wave

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 19, 2018 by itnerd

Salesforce has announced Salesforce was named a leader by Forrester Research in its report, The Forrester Wave: B2C Commerce Suites, Q3 2018.

Salesforce B2C Commerce, a product of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, received the highest
possible scores in the category of market presence, as well as the criteria of personalization and artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the report, Forrester describes Salesforce B2C Commerce as a “retail digital commerce behemoth.”

Today, the costly legacy systems that many brands and retailers use to power their commerce do not support the entire customer journey and lack the flexibility required to connect the variety of channels consumers use for shopping. Forrester states, “Vendors that can provide a better shopping experience with efficient business user interfaces and operational excellence position themselves to successfully help their clients grow revenue, deepen customer loyalty, and expand into new markets.”

Salesforce B2C Commerce is consistently adding new commerce functionality – 8 to 10 releases per year – to help customers grow revenue and connect with their customers. Artificial intelligence powered by Einstein is built in to personalize the shopping experience, automate merchant tasks, drive growth and improve productivity. Marks and Spencer is a example of a retailer leveraging Einstein to drive significant lift in GMV. With AI-powered product recommendations, Marks and Spencer drove an 11 percent higher interaction rate than its previous recommendation engine. And, using the Salesforce B2C Commerce platform means retailers like Puma can streamline mobile shopping and increase conversion all while getting to market faster. Since re-launching its sites in July 2017, Puma’s mobile sites now render and fully load 35 percent and 69 percent faster, respectively, resulting in sub-two second image-load times on the product detail page. Conversion has improved from sub 1 percent to 1-1.5 percent.

Salesforce B2C Commerce powers commerce across the entire customer journey, including web, social, mobile, in-store and more. As the leading enterprise cloud commerce solution, it allows the world’s top retail brands to continuously innovate in the complex, consumer-driven world. Commerce Cloud runs more than 3,000 sites in 53 countries, with more than $21 billion in gross merchandise value processed through the platform in 2017.

As part of the world’s #1 CRM platform, Commerce Cloud is uniquely positioned to empower companies to deliver a consistent brand experience throughout the customer lifecycle. By leveraging Salesforce’s leading sales, service, commerce, marketing, communities, analytics, IoT, AI and platform solutions, brands and retailers can ensure every engagement, no matter the channel or device, is completely unified.

Additional Information

The 2018 Forrester Wave for B2C Commerce Suites is available here:
https://www.salesforce.com/form/commerce/2018-forrester-wave-b2c-commerce/

Learn more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud here:
https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/overview/

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EXCLUSIVE: Is Apple Pay Cash Coming To Canada? [UPDATED: NO]

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 19, 2018 by itnerd

I’ve been doing testing of watchOS 5 so that I can write a detailed review of Apple’s OS for their insanely successful wearable devices. In the process of that I came across something interesting. I went to respond to a text message yesterday and found this which I promptly posted to Twitter:

There’s a Apple Pay icon that wasn’t present before. And an erase and reinstall of watchOS 5 does nothing to make it go away. Thus I have to assume that this is one of three things:

  1. This is a mistake by Apple where Apple screwed up and made this visible to Canadians. I say that because they have made this sort of mistake before. But whatever feature that they accidentally made visible disappears a few days later. That has not happened in this case (so far).
  2. This is by design. As in the button is present but not active unless turned on in that country.
  3. Apple Pay Cash is coming to Canada.

So far I have no indication of which of the three this is. But I am trying to dig to see if I can get some answers. For example, I tried to go to wallet on my iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 12 to see if I could activate Apple Pay Cash. But no luck there. Having said that, you can help me to figure out what is going on. If you have an Apple Watch running watchOS 5 and you are outside the US, can you tell me if you see something similar to the picture above by leaving a comment. I’d really appreciate it.

In the meantime, I live in hope that Apple Pay Cash is coming to Canada as this country is also still waiting for Apple News, and will likely be waiting for a while for the ECG function that is part of the Apple Watch Series 4. While I understand that it can take time for stuff to appear in Canada, it often takes an absurdly long time for features to appear here from an Apple perspective.

UPDATE: I have just updated my Apple Watch Series 4 to watchOS 5.1.2 and discovered this:

So I guess the answer is #1 which was that this was a mistake that Apple has now fixed. This will be disappointing to Canadians for sure.

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Guest Post: Top three Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities Your Business Faces Right Now

Posted in Commentary on September 19, 2018 by itnerd

By: Kim Del Fierro, VP of Marketing for Area 1 Security

The business world has become more competitive than ever. Not only is there increased pressure on companies to be profitable, but also to keep information safe. For many companies, cybersecurity is an area that’s easy to cut back on, but that can prove to be an expensive mistake.

According to the PwC Global Economic Crime Report, cybercrime is now the second most reported economic crime, affecting 31 percent of organizations. The percentage is high, and if cybersecurity doesn’t become a priority in business, it will certainly get higher. As the leader and owner of a company, do you know which cybersecurity vulnerabilities your organization may have right now? Let’s take a look:

 

1. Lack of Policies that Prevent Most Common Threats

The first and most apparent vulnerability in any system relates to security fundamentals. Today, every company needs a cybersecurity policy to set security standards. Specific, well-established practices such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) have proven risky and need to be strictly governed. According to the 2018 Verizon Mobile Security Index, 74 percent of businesses say that their mobile security risks have gone up in the past year. Therefore, if you haven’t set strict security standards for your employees to follow, it’s time to start.

 

2. Reactive Mindset

Due to resource constraints, many organizations will do only the bare minimum when it comes to cybersecurity. However, in this day and age, covering the basics is not enough. Waiting for an attack to happen and then reacting is a sure-fire way for you to be much worse off when everything is over than if you had taken proper steps to protect your assets.

While having a reaction plan in place is generally considered good practice, that can’t be the extent of your cybersecurity solutions. Considering how fast cybersecurity threats are evolving, investing in proactive security solutions is quickly becoming a must for businesses.

 

3. The Human Factor

According to Experian’s 2018 Managing Insider Risk Through Training and Culture Report, 66 percent of surveyed professionals felt that employees posed the greatest vulnerability when it came to cyberthreats.

This isn’t unexpected, considering that the human factor is usually the weakest link in any security system. While training can help to eliminate the most common causes of human error in cybersecurity, described as “general carelessness,” it isn’t enough.

When you take into consideration the fact that a majority of organizations face phishing email attacks frequently, the scope of the problem falls into perspective. Even when employees are rigorously trained, mistakes happen. All it takes is one careless reaction to a suspicious email.

This is why we must work on solutions that prevent phishing cyberattacks before they even reach your employees’ inboxes. Area 1 Security’s Anti-Phishing solution offers precisely that, by spotting phishing attacks days in advance.

Businesses today might be even more vulnerable than they seem to their owners. It’s crucial for every C-level executive to know precisely what type of damage a data breach can inflict, and which proactive solutions can prevent it from happening. When it comes to phishing attacks, you’ll be far safer with Area 1 Horizon, the anti-phishing technology that neutralizes today’s most dangerous cybersecurity threats.

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