Software

Both automation and orchestration have the ability to make complex and repetitive business processes seamless, regardless of whether your data is stored in the cloud or an on-site server. However, many confuse orchestration and automation, but there is a big difference between the two. If you understand what each term means and how it can help your business, you will be more likely to make the right choice.

Understanding Automation

Automation is used for a single repetitive task that a bot completes without human intervention. Generally, automation is used for manual processes that are laborious and time-intensive. It helps to make the processes more efficient and reliable.

In the world of IT, automation can be used for a wide array of tasks and processes. Whether it is deploying or integrating an application, creating service tickets, or securing endpoints, automation can prove to be of great assistance. You can use automation for cloud and on-site tasks.

Understanding Orchestration

While automation is used for a single task or function, service orchestration software is used for the entire workflow. It can help you manage large-scale networks and the virtual environment. It is possible to use the software to integrate as well as schedule automated tasks between complicated and complex services and distributed networks. It enables you to simplify and streamline connected workflows, workloads, and processes that are repetitive.

With the help of orchestration, it is possible to automate the management, arrangement as well as the coordination of complex services, middleware, systems, and networks within the computing environment. It also aids in directing automated processes to support bigger and more complex workflows.

A majority of IT teams manage hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. Hence, it is not feasible to administer these applications manually. An RPA orchestrator is required to ensure you have access to available, performing, and dynamically scaling applications and systems so that the IT team is not weighed down by heavy burden.

The Difference Between Automation and Orchestration

Now that you know what is automation and orchestration, it is time to look at the difference between the two.

In simple and layman’s terms, automation is used for a single task while orchestration is used to automate multiple tasks within a workflow with the aim to streamline it and make it less laborious and time-consuming. In doing so, orchestration helps to optimize workflows.

A good example to explain orchestration is an app. When you use orchestration, it not only helps to deploy the app but also aids in connecting the application to the entire network so that it can communicate not just with the user but also apps in the network.

When you use orchestration for cloud computing, you can rest assured that the software will ensure automated spin-up activities, such as auto-scaling, occurs in the right order, and also follows the necessary security protocols and also makes certain that the permissions are in place.

Importance of Orchestration Software

In the modern IT landscape, automation plays an important role. It can handle repetitive workflows, deploy applications, and even manage the lifecycles of multiple applications. It works to facilitate enterprise-level security and also offers flexible monitoring as well as visualization.

In case you are wondering why organizations are embracing orchestration software, here are some of the benefits that you should know:

• It helps to minimize human error by automatically handling the setup as well as the execution of tasks that you automate
• Ensures users get the right permissions, thereby preventing unauthorized access to the automation system
• Minimizes virtually all human intervention for managing automatic tasks
• Makes the process of setting up data integration simpler by handling the governing policies related to the integration
• Provides a generalized infrastructure that takes away the need to build ad-hoc tools
• Offers wide-ranging diagnostics that enable you to debug and audit more quickly
• Integrates easily with existing data management systems

There you have it – the difference between automation and orchestration, and why companies are moving from manual orchestration to orchestration software. 

How important is it for you to detect flaws in your early product development life-cycle? Wanna save your organization from bearing heavy financial losses? Then you must have qualified testers in your QA team or may hire services of independent software testing companies to make your application bug-free in early software development life-cycle. Catching an important bug in your application can help you relieve from facing costs and increases your chances of standing out.

No doubt, all systems, and applications may have some glitches. The desire to create a bug-free application is in contradiction with the reality i.e the lack of special tools to uncover the glitches until it’s too late in the application development life-cycle. On the other hand, catching bugs can be a great challenge for testers. Many testers are formally trained before it is expected of them to catch bugs while many use their own specific innate abilities to detect. In the Information Technology domain, effective bug hunting is a competitive niche among the testers. 

Here we are spilling out some of the best practices for hunting bugs, which testers can adopt to ensure best quality software product;

Try to explore as much as you can – It is widely being observed that a loophole in tester’s failure to hunt for bugs is their strict adherence to the pre-defined test cases. Test cases are good at detecting flaws and errors but they can’t make sure that an application is 100% free of bugs. It is therefore recommended for testers to explore the functionality of an application under test. It is found as an effective method of suspecting glitches and bugs, by different high profile testers.

Look out for patterns – Software errors are inherently social in nature. They like to stay in groups. Most of the errors have their own unique nature, that makes them singular. Try to look for the patterns that software bugs follow. Jot down the test ideas which helped you in the past for the detection of bugs as past experiences prove to be very helpful.  

Work hard in the most hurtful place – When you encounter errors, don’t panic and take it easy. This may just be a starting point, not the end! Don’t race to log it into the bug/issue/defect tracker. 

Suspecting an error directs that there is a loose link in the software. Before coming across this error, the system may have entered an unstable state. Assume that the system is in a shaky state, it is recommended to abuse it more; provide more crazy input than ever; encourage gallon data entry; reduce available system resources; try to place it to the point where it may cause the application under test to crash. Who knows that you may soon experience the horrible face of early bugs! Once you suspect it, don’t skip to jot down all the details and check the repeatability before logging it into the tracker.

Hear the steps of an approaching bug! – A good tester must hear the hiss of an approaching bug! It’s not an exaggeration at all. One of the common practices of successful testers is that they wear a headset while hunting for bugs. This way testers are enabled to hear the various background sounds including the ding of a warning message or a buzz of several other messages. Moreover, it also aids in listening to the specific background sound of errors which usually don’t show up on the screen. 

Better a couple than single! – A most common statement is remarked about testers that they never run out of ideas. Well, this quality is a desirable one. Testers are humans too and are also prone to failures. Sometimes it’s possible that your test cases may not be able to uncover the bugs in the application or software. That’s the point where you need another tester to intervene. Request your fellow tester to come and test along with you. This helps in the generation of more and more test ideas and thus results in brilliant testing i.e 90% error detection. 

Conclusion

The practices we have described may work in your case but not in another because it might vary from context to context. Therefore it is recommended that the tester must know what sort of problems he is likely to encounter and then research or jot down different globally appreciated practices to hunt bugs. 

The oil and Gas industry undertakes massive projects, wherein multiple segments need to be collaboratively regulated. Compliance, risk analysis, site inspection, asset management, license and clearance, finance, suppliers and contractors, and many more operations need to be taken care of.

Managing these segments becomes more complex in the Oil and Gas industry because a large part of the work order involves field service activity, which is to be coordinated, managed, and balanced with back-office operations. Is there any solution that can simplify all these complex jobs?

Oil and gas companies can manage their work order and reap the benefits of automation by leveraging on oil and gas field service software. It is an intuitive and user-friendly solution that has been designed after careful analysis of oil and gas field service requirements. It is meant for reducing complexities, improving efficiency and visibility in the overall management and implementation of projects in the oil and gas industry.

Let’s talk about the asset management feature of oil and gas field service software that helps in the smooth handling of the field workforce and work orders to ensure timely delivery of the services. Following is a brief on how the asset management feature of oil and gas field service software can be utilized to achieve maximum client satisfaction.

Work distribution: The software is highly intelligent in analysing the availability of the workforce and accordingly jobs can be scheduled. The app can effectively be used for scheduling jobs among large workforce working on different roles across different sites.

Using the app, work updates can be sent regularly and as per job-scheduled, day to day tasks can be managed.

Reporting: Oil and gas field service software facilitates real-time reporting on an ongoing basis, which keeps the supervisors informed about the work status through timely updates. Also, timely inspections of the work sites can be scheduled for tracking breaches and progress.

Supervision: Through effective reporting and tracking, the app is extremely helpful in monitoring the field activities of the workforce. This helps in getting an insight into the performance standard of the workforce. Fleets can be tracked in real-time through route mapping. The monitoring elements offered by the software maintain transparency and helps in supervising the whole chain of stakeholders to identify the gaps in the service if any.

Requirement analysis:  The app can be used to record the inventory status of the stocks. The requirements, along with specifications, across departments, can be captured at a centralized location. Accordingly, the coordination with suppliers and contractors can be managed and supplies can be provided on time.

Data Analysis: The system intelligence of oil and gas apps help assist various business analysis. The inbuilt analytics can be used for analysing the cost of the project referring to the past records. Similarly, analytics can provide insights into productivity, profitability and an indispensable demand for work. There is analytics to make an easy estimation of resources based on project details, thus helps in managing work orders more effectively.

Oil and gas management software helps in expense management as well by allowing integration with a third-party system like ERP.

Conclusion

Asset Management features of oil and gas management software not just help in having a thorough understanding of the workforce and supplies requirement, but the system’s intelligence and automation helps in managing those with maximum efficiency. Along with that, effective reporting and tracking processes of the software helps maintain transparency in work.

More to this, when there is a central system to manage all the field-related requirements, managers can easily have a hold of all the operations that are being performed on the field. This helps them manage the resource and their on-field activity while remaining aware of their work schedules on a daily basis.

The customer is always right!

Therefore as the above-stage adage goes your business probably does (and certainly should) side with your customers- even if they stand out wrong.

This is because when any customer voices his/her displeasure; you usually have a good idea as to why they are right or wrong.

Now the problem lies with the fact that according to surveys done on customer experience most consumers primarily do not complain and secondarily if they are unhappy with any brand, odds are that they start looking elsewhere when shopping for their new requirements and needs.

Moreover, even if they are pleased and satisfied with your products and services, consumers usually refrain from offering customer feedbacks and instead quietly keep buying from their preferred brands and businesses.

Hence in this precarious environment to build a solid customer base, companies need to understand what the satisfied or dissatisfied customers might think long before they make any buying decisions for your offerings, and to do so you need to bring out the best out of them.

Now how do you do this apparently impossible task?

According to Michael Schrage (an MIT Research Fellow) as he urges to the readers of his popular book “What Do You Want Your Customer to Become,” businesses need to reevaluate and reconsider how to calculate CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) which can be done by adopting a CLM CRM software.

Furthermore Schrage writes that while viewing from the company’s perspective when brands treat their customers as value-creating partners, loyal consumers often provides their preferred brands good ideas, try their new offerings, share data with their brands, introduce their preferred brand to other customers and even evangelize for their brands on social media platforms, which in turn helps in reducing promotional costs incurred by the companies.

Therefore in this article, we have highlighted how businesses can overcome this challenging situation by increasing customer lifetime value by following these not-so-difficult steps, to engender an even deeper relationship with their customers and also accurately measure their levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction once they use business growth technology like CLM CRM software for revenue growth.

1. Understand What Your Customers Are Doing

If you are a vendor of a popular lead management software like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms used by small businesses the software is probably helping many businesses to drive their initiatives and aiding their brands to create long term value for your customer’s customers.

But nevertheless, how can you be sure that you are a committed partner on their growth path and helping your customers to innovate and create winning products and services?

Now software usage analytics offer a unique window into how customers are using your offerings and lets you serve as a true partner of your customers but in a non-disruptive manner.
Moreover, the insights received from your customer’s usage of your offerings also lets you incessantly and quickly create useful features and fix frustrating functions in your product line.

However, just relying on the insights received from a handful of willing customers or user surveys can never provide these above-stated objectives unless you encompass insights that are required and can be gathered through usage statistics that you can only receive once you buy CRM and use CLM CRM software.

2. Stay In Touch With Useful Information

Always remain at the forefront of your customer’s minds by crafting enticing and engaging social media posts that provide bite-sized helpful and important tips or lead to larger blog content by creating educational posts following a regular cadence, aiding your consumers with instructive instructions that they are looking for.

Now, to do this the biggest challenge that most brands face is finding the pain-points and blog topics that resonate with their customers.

However again for this, the data and insights into your customer’s usage of your offerings can easily enable your teams to identify and prioritize topics that matter the most to the consumers of your brand.

This is because, by viewing which are the features and functionalities that are mostly used by your customers, you can develop unique content that ensures your customers are maximizing the benefits of those most used features of your offerings.
Similarly by viewing the features of your products and services that are used the least, by looking into the analytics found in CLM CRM software platforms, you can progressively educate your consumers about the valuable features in your offerings that your customers have not yet discovered and if needed update your product to make those features easy to find to the consumers of your offerings.

3. Treat Customer-Related Data With Care

B2B and even B2C consumers want to know how their data has been used. Hence privacy and security should be one of the topmost goals of your company.

Moreover, with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and other data privacy and protection measures that are tightly governing the use of the information received from your customers, businesses nowadays need to take complete responsibility for how they manage and use this information stored in their business growth technology and tools.

Therefore businesses must ensure proper clarity of the data ownership chain so that they can attest to the provenance of data by understanding what information they have and for how long they possess it in their CRM database, which in turn helps in providing insights about data management processes that aids in sharpening a businesses’ ability to follow regulations and adhere to the legal regulations of their land.

Conclusion

Hence in a gist gaining total insights once you buy CRM and use a CLM CRM software on how customers use the offerings they purchased from your brand, will not only help brands to manage their customers and let them use your products satisfactorily, but it also makes the customers recognize that they have a relationship worth keeping with your company- a commitment that has a lifetime value and therefore can help in your business growth.