Content marketing has consistently proven itself more cost-effective than traditional advertising. And to make content marketing work online, you’ll need a suitable content management system (CMS). However, investing in the wrong CMS can be costly, damaging, and hard to reverse. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to choosing the right CMS for your business.

Open-source CMS vs proprietary CMS

The first decision you’ll come across is whether to use an open-source CMS or a proprietary CMS. In our experience, open-source is almost always better.

Using a proprietary CMS is like renting the software from a third party. If that third party goes out of business, you no longer have access to the CMS. While it’s unlikely that a company like Adobe will go under soon, it isn’t a risk worth taking.

Besides this flaw with proprietary CMS, using an open-source CMS has a host of benefits as well.

• Limitless CMS flexibility

Open-source means the CMS source code is open to the public. So with the right CMS development expertise, you can modify that code however you want. You aren’t limited by what another company has done before. Your CMS can be truly unique.

And because open-source code is so available, you’ll be able to find many highly qualified CMS developers to help.

• Better value for money

“Open-source” doesn’t necessarily mean “free”. You’ll still have to spend time and money on setting the CMS up properly for SEO, security, and UX.

However, this investment is typically less than the monthly fees you’d pay for a proprietary CMS. And open-source gives you more flexibility for your money.

• Faster updates and fixes

Literally millions of people use, develop, and support open-source CMS. In contrast, the proprietary CMS user base is comparatively small.

For this reason, open-source CMS users tend to report any bugs in the code more quickly. And that accelerates the fixes as well.

• More eyes on security

You might think that open-source software is more vulnerable, because hackers can study the code. On the other hand, being open-source means that thousands of developers worldwide are constantly testing the code for vulnerabilities. Famous names like The New Yorker, Sony Music, and Beyonce all use the open-source WordPress CMS, for example.

How to choose the best open-source CMS

We’ve covered the benefits of choosing an open-source CMS rather than proprietary. But there are still dozens of open-source CMS to choose from. There is no universal answer to the question “What is the best open-source CMS?” It all depends on your business, your marketing goals, and your workforce.

Overall, the points you should consider when choosing a CMS are:

• How will this platform effect your business?
• What is the full cost of owning this CMS?
• What ongoing requirements will there be?
• How well does the CMS fit into your existing technologies?
• Is the CMS easy to use for your teams?
• Does the software have adequate security built in?
• Will it be easy for non-technical staff to customise?
• Does the platform help marketers with SEO?
• Are there reliable support options for the CMS?

Comparing the top open-source CMS

Among the open-source CMS crowd, there are two stand-out leaders: WordPress and Umbraco.

WordPress is the most widely-used CMS today, powering 39.5 percent of all websites.

Umbraco has a much smaller market share, less than 0.1 percent of all CMS.

However, the number of users isn’t necessarily the most important factor for your business. Let’s dive into some more comparisons that will help you in choosing the right CMS.

1. Umbraco

• Technology

Microsoft’s ASP.NET framework is the tech behind Umbraco. For companies with in-house Microsoft development expertise, this familiarity will be to your advantage.

• Usability

With Umbraco, you start with a blank-slate CMS and develop the functionality you need. In that sense, Umbraco doesn’t immediately give non-technical staff as much as WordPress does. Umbraco is more suited to a company that needs high customisation and has a reasonable development budget.

• Customisation

While there are Umbraco plugins, you’ll need a developer to code them into your site. This means more time and effort, but also the ability to alter plugins however you want. To do that, you’ll need a team with bespoke software development skills.

• Security

Microsoft invests heavily in protecting its solutions and languages, including ASP.NET. You can rely on Microsoft’s frequent penetration tests to spot and fix any issues with the code underlying Umbraco.

2. WordPress

• Technology

WordPress CMS is built with PHP, a language that powers 79 percent of all websites. Due to the language’s popularity, you will have a wide choice of software development experts to help if required.

• Usability

A major reason for WordPress’s popularity is its ease of use. Because it started off as a blog platform, WordPress guides users through the publishing process. An ever-growing ecosystem of plugins and templates adds styling and functionality at the touch of a button.

• Customisation

WordPress famously has a large ecosystem of plugins. These cover essentials like contact forms, site analytics, SEO, caching, chatbots, and much more. However, these premade plugins don’t offer the same flexibility as you’ll find in Umbraco’s coded plugins.

• Security

The downside of the WordPress plugin ecosystem is the possibility of poor design and security flaws. It’s best to use only plugins from trusted providers and get help from a WordPress expert when installing them.

Summary: choosing the right CMS

We can sum up this comparison as follows:

• while WordPress is more user-friendly, you have to rely on third-party plugins for customisation
• while Umbraco is designed for customisation, you’ll need to invest in development time

For these reasons, WordPress is often more suited to SMEs that want to get a website up quickly. Umbraco, on the other hand, may suit large enterprises with a need for high security and customisation.

Need help choosing the right CMS and customising it to your business? The good news is that we have a software development team that specialises in PHP and ASP.NET. So whichever of the leading CMS you choose, you can rely on our experts to achieve the results you need.

Moving your intranet to the cloud is no simple undertaking — so is it worth the trouble? In this article we’re going to assess the benefits of SharePoint Online vs on premise. Overall, our experience as SharePoint consultants shows that moving to SharePoint Online is beneficial for the majority of businesses.

Before we can assess benefits, though, we need to know what we’re measuring. So the first thing we should ask is: what challenges is SharePoint trying to solve?

A very brief history of SharePoint

In the past, businesses used to store and manage their documents on file servers. While this was a step up from everyone keeping files on their own hard drives, there was room for improvement.

Firstly, people can easily forget to save files on the company drive. Then someone has to spend time scouring their inbox or getting the file from a colleague. It’s also common for content to get duplicated, meaning staff are working on outdated versions. The outcome is a less productive workforce.

Some of the features that differentiate SharePoint from file servers include:

• automatic versioning: SharePoint preserves a draft every time a document is updated or revised. Each version is linked to all the other versions, so it’s easy to find and restore versions if necessary
• built-in integration: Microsoft tools like Word and Excel integrate seamlessly with SharePoint. This Microsoft ecosystem eliminates the friction between different types of software
• file check-in: SharePoint keeps track of who is working on a document at any time. This stops people unwittingly overwriting each other’s changes
• custom workflows: SharePoint helps speed up processes like document review, by automatically emailing the right people at the right time

In essence, SharePoint emerged to overcome the challenges that had plagued file servers. SharePoint Online is the latest step in that evolution — bringing even more flexibility, functionality, and value to the workforce. We’ll cover these SharePoint Online advantages in more detail below.

What are the benefits of SharePoint Online vs on premise?

Microsoft offers SharePoint Online as a stand-alone product or as part of the Office 365 suite. Whichever you choose, SharePoint Online’s cloud deployment makes it easy to integrate with both Microsoft and third-party applications.

And remember that migrating to SharePoint Online isn’t all-or-nothing. You can keep sensitive information and custom functionality in SharePoint on premise, while moving the rest to the cloud.

With this in mind, there are very few organisations that will not see benefits from moving to SharePoint Online. Based on our 30 years’ experience of intranet portal solutions, we’ve picked out the top advantages below.

1. Better value for money

Maintaining on-premise servers puts a heavy strain on IT budgets and personnel. A decision to migrate to SharePoint Online frees that time and money for more valuable tasks.

Your IT team will thank you for letting them drive the business rather than endlessly supporting dated technologies. And your intranet will achieve more for less.

2. No end-of-life worries

One of the major benefits of SharePoint Online vs on premise is saving yourself from the need to upgrade. Microsoft end of support and end of life are always looming over your on-premise SharePoint servers.

SharePoint Online users, on the other hand, benefit from automatic updates. This won’t override any customisation to your SharePoint sites, but will make sure the system is up-to-date and secure.

3. Collaborate on the go

The line between business-facing software and customer-facing websites is increasingly thin. Employees expect your intranet to be just as user-friendly as the commercial apps on their phones. And why not?

Thankfully, SharePoint Online sites are now mobile-friendly by design. That means your employees no longer have to squint at tiny text on a mobile screen.

The benefit is clear: no matter where they are, SharePoint Online gives people the tools they need to collaborate effectively.

4. Advanced online features

New Microsoft features reach SharePoint Online before they appear on-premise (if they reach on-premise at all).

Some of the most useful online-only features include:

• Microsoft Graph: a database for collecting information on user identity and activity
• Delve: a collaboration tool that connects colleagues to create, edit, and share documents
• Power Automate: build time-saving workflows for individual tasks and large-scale systems
• Power Apps: build and share low-code apps to modernise business processes

To see what these features can achieve for businesses, see our recent SharePoint and Power Apps data integration project.

5. Manage access more easily

Compared with on-premise, SharePoint Online makes it much easier to grant external user access.

If the user has a Microsoft account connected to their business email address, you can share SharePoint content with them.

It’s also possible to create Guest Links for users outside your business. You decide the level of permission — Read or Edit — and can revoke the permission at any time.

6. Improved software security

At first glance it may seem that on-premises systems are more secure than the cloud. But in reality, both deployment models are equally vulnerable — if the IT team responsible makes a mistake.

As a leading software provider, Microsoft invests heavily in security. A team of the world’s leading cyber security experts is working around the clock to protect SharePoint Online. It’s unlikely that most businesses will put the same investment into protecting an on-premises server.

Additionally, SharePoint Online comes with a host of related Microsoft security features. You can use Azure Active Directory to create a single sign-on solution that prevents password hacking, for example. There’s also Microsoft Intune, an endpoint manager for protecting mobile devices that access SharePoint Online.

Sadly, around 50 percent of small businesses fail within five years. But there are practical ways to protect your business. One way is by finding the right business intranet. And because SharePoint leads the intranet market, we want to tell you about the benefits of SharePoint for small business.

Why is an intranet important for SMEs?

You might be wondering what difference an intranet can really make to your bottom line. Or you might have heard someone say that SharePoint is “just file sharing software”. But this attitude doesn’t gel with the fact that over 200,000 businesses use SharePoint worldwide.

In our 30 years of intranet experience, we’ve found that SharePoint is a cost-effective way of streamlining many business processes. That means squeezing more value out of every staff member, every hour of the week. And it doesn’t take a maths degree to grasp how that will help your business prosper.

Top 5 benefits of SharePoint for small business

So how exactly does SharePoint address the challenges faced by small businesses? As a Microsoft Gold Partner with extensive SharePoint experience, we’ve highlighted five major benefits of SharePoint for small business below.

1. Meeting GDPR compliance rules

Every business holds some form of sensitive data, whether it’s related to staff or to customers. Without an automated solution, most SMEs will be swamped by the technical and time-consuming data protection requirements. And then you risk breaking data compliance laws.

However, Microsoft has taken great care to ensure SharePoint meets GDPR rules. Users have granular control over which data is held, where, and for how long. You can also use SharePoint to automate the expiration of data that should be held for only a certain time.

2. Helping staff find documents quickly

Checklists, guides, forms, invoices, and inventories — even a small business amasses a lot of important documents over time. However, they are useless if your employees can’t find them.

When that happens, people will start saving copies on their hard drives. Then you’ll have multiple versions floating around. And then nobody will know which is the original.

SharePoint has a powerful search function that even corrects for spelling mistakes. When your staff can find everything in one place, the temptation to save copies will disappear. You’ll have a single source of truth that everyone can rely on.

3. Solving document versioning issues

There’s nothing worse than perfecting a document and then discovering that your version wasn’t up to date. Before intranet solutions like SharePoint, companies had to manually keep track of document versions. And there was no way to easily link those versions or switch between them.

By automatically saving and linking all versions of a document, SharePoint solves this collaboration challenge. Multiple people can work on a document and see everyone’s changes in real time.

4. Onboarding new staff securely

There are times when you might want to let someone access only certain documents. This could be a potential new member of staff or a freelancer engaged on a specific project. One option is to email documents back and forth, but that isn’t fast or transparent.

SharePoint answers this need by allowing customised external access. You can give new hires or freelancers permission to view or edit a particular file or folder on your intranet. Any changes will reach you in real time, with no risk of them accessing information outside the permissions you’ve granted.

5. Enabling a flexible workforce

It’s becoming mainstream for companies to allow some remote work. And as this trend grows further, businesses with no remote work capacity will be at a disadvantage. You’ll have a smaller talent pool to choose from, and staff retention may suffer.

We’ve written before about how intranets boost the productivity of remote workers. Being mobile-friendly and accessible through any web browser, SharePoint certainly fits the bill.

If you follow web technologies, you’ve probably heard of headless content management systems (CMS). The basic difference is that headless CMS have no built-in visual layer. But is this just a novelty, or is there a business benefit? In this article we’ll look at the headless CMS advantages for specific business goals.

Traditional CMS vs Headless CMS  image provided by ContentStack.

The top five headless CMS advantages

While headless CMS are useful, are they the right choice for your business? It depends. Based on our 30 years of CMS development expertise, we can break down the differences as follows:

For more detail, see our breakdown of the top five headless CMS benefits below.

1. Adapt content to any medium

The purpose of a traditional CMS is to produce website pages. There’s no simple way to display content from that database on mobile sites, apps, and conversational interfaces, for example.

This is one of the strongest headless CMS use cases — when you want the same content to reach multiple devices.

Why? Because a headless CMS has no inherent bias for any device. You can build any number of front ends and draw in the same CMS data through the APIs.

This also means that a headless CMS is future-proof. Maybe in five years we’ll all be interacting with holograms. But that won’t be a problem for your headless CMS — your hologram can still access the API.

2. Use any front-end technology

As noted above, you access headless CMS data through APIs. Because this technology is basically universal, it doesn’t matter which front-end technology you use.

This is ideal for building with front-end frameworks like VueJs, React, and Angular.

It also works with static site generators like Jekyll and Middleman.

Another use case is native mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

So if you want this kind of versatility, that is one of the key headless CMS advantages.

3. Stop repeating yourself

“Don’t repeat yourself” (DRY) is one of the first things you learn in software development. Did we mention that “don’t repeat yourself” (DRY) is one of the first things you learn in software development? Yes, we did.

But due to the number of digital platforms today, businesses often have to duplicate their CMS many times over. Copying content from a website to an app to a digital display isn’t a valuable use of time.

By working from a central headless CMS, you eliminate that problem. Make changes in the CMS and that change happens instantly across all connected devices.

4. Promote agile development

Having multiple “heads” on your CMS allows teams to work in parallel. You can do away with the waterfall development model and start working agile.

This greater speed and flexibility gives your business the edge when it comes to releasing new software.

5. Personalise and localise

Gathering user data, analysing it, and personalising accordingly is complex at any time. Now imagine you have to do that across multiple CMS: one for your website, one for your app, one for your display devices. It quickly becomes impractical.

But in the world of ecommerce, personalisation has a huge impact on sales. What to do?

By keeping all your content on a central database — the headless CMS — you can make personalisation that much easier.

Which headless content management system?

Some CMS are born headless, some achieve headlessness, and some have headlessness thrust upon them.

In the “born headless” camp we have options such as Umbraco Heartcore. This is based on an Umbraco back-end that’s been around for 15 years. There are obvious advantages to using a CMS that over 500,000 websites already use worldwide.

In the “thrust upon them” camp we have WordPress. The world’s most popular CMS was born with a built-in front end. User demand for a WordPress REST API led to the development of headless access. It’s now possible to have a WordPress back end with an entirely different front end, such as React.

Of course there are many, many more headless CMS to choose from. If you need in-depth advice on which to choose, please speak to one of our CMS development team.

Let’s say you want to improve customer experiences, automate manual work, or boost staff engagement. Thankfully, you can achieve all this by developing a bespoke web portal. If you have in-house developers, that’s no problem. But otherwise you’ll need help from a web portal development company.

And that leads you to the question: how can you know which developers to trust?

As a company that’s been developing enterprise-grade portals for 30 years, we at egforit Software can give you some pointers. So read on to learn the skills we believe every good web portal development company should have.

The expertise needed for portal development

If you have a particular language or platform in mind, then finding web portal developers with that expertise is crucial.

On the other hand, you may be unsure about the best technical approach. In that case, it’s best to choose a web portal development company with many strings to its bow. That versatility means the developers will be able to adapt to your portal requirements.

As for the skill set a good web portal development company should have, we can break this down into six parts.

1. Front-end development

Your staff will be happier and more productive using an intuitive, attractive, and branded portal interface. That’s why front-end development experience is a major factor in successful portal development.

A web portal development specialist will know how to create easy-to-use interfaces that are consistent across devices. The developers will also have a good knowledge of content personalisation and interactive media. Well-structured navigation with good search functionality are another important factor for high staff adoption.

2. Back-end development

Portals are all about bringing workplace tasks and information together under a single umbrella. Back-end development skills are needed to connect the functionality and data behind the scenes.

One aspect of this is scalability. To provide long-term value, your portal’s back-end systems need to flex to meet any volume of users and data. This is why many businesses choose to host their portals in a scalable cloud such as Microsoft Azure.

Related to scalability is performance. A sluggish portal isn’t going to help get things done. Your portal developers should know how to build for fast and efficient data transfer.

3. Security and compliance

If you’re in a regulated industry like healthcare or banking, data security is particularly crucial. But in fact every company handles sensitive data in HR and accounts. A data breach can be damaging to your customers and your reputation.

So how can you know which web portal developers will protect your data? The answer is: by looking at their track record. If the development company has clients in banking and government, for example, that’s a sign of high security. Finance companies and government bodies wouldn’t work with developers who don’t meet security standards.

4. Cloud migration

While some companies have good reasons to stay on-premises, web portals often perform better hosted in the cloud. It’s also possible to keep some data on-premises and integrate that securely with the cloud.

Our experience has shown that Microsoft Azure is the most cost-effective, fast, and versatile platform for cloud-based web portal development. From climate change reporting portals to training management portals, we’ve built Azure-based portals for many uses and industries.

5. Digital integration

As well as unifying access to existing applications, a portal can also enable new interactions between your applications. A good web portal development company will be able to bring data from any source in to your portal. Your people can then view or interact with this data through the portal interface.

If it’s a customer-facing portal, for example, you might want to integrate e-commerce functionality and data from your customer database.

For an internal portal, you might need to link ERP and HR software to enable better financial reporting. A web development company with good systems integration experience will have the skills to make this a reality.

5. Ongoing support

A web portal is a long-term investment. And as your business changes over time, your portal will need to adapt. For this reason, you’ll get better value from a web portal development company that offers fully managed IT services.

This support might take the form of development hours for adding additional portal features. Or you might want a portal helpdesk service to help your staff with any technical challenges. A web portal support team will also monitor security and maintain backup and recovery processes.

Our web portal development experience

egforit Software has been providing business portal solutions for over 30 years. Take a look at our recent success stories:

• Weather data analytics portal for Kent County Council
• Project management intranet solution for tech consultancy
• Energy management portal for energy company
• Intranet development for global insurer
• CMS customisation for financial services company

A typical intranet serves many departments, tasks, and business goals. Ideally, your intranet will make that complexity seem simple for end-users. But not every intranet meets this ideal standard. So how can you identify the most common intranet issues? And when is it time for an intranet redesign?

Below are some of the intranet challenges we solve for clients. After 30 years of intranet development services, we’ve seen these issues time and time again.

1. Change in use

No two intranets are alike. That goes for intranets in different companies, but it also applies to the same intranet over time. Especially in today’s fast-moving economy, it’s likely your intranet will need a regular refresh.

Solution: measure change

The first step in keeping your intranet up-to-date is understanding your audiences. You can break this down by departments, offices, regions, or operations.

Then look at usage: how are the various audiences using different communications, applications, and tools within your intranet? It’s useful at this stage to survey users, interview management, and hold focus groups. This will help you understand what your users need more and less of from the intranet.

Finally, it’s time for a content audit. This means assessing how well content has been grouped, categorised, and tagged. If content isn’t being assigned the right metadata, it’s important to update users on the process.

2. Usability intranet issues

As your intranet evolves over time, the interface can grow more complex than originally intended. Good planning can simplify that complexity.

Lack of planning, however, can force users to click ten times to navigate between pages. If employees can’t quickly find the information they need, your intranet isn’t serving its purpose.

Solution: analyse usage

You can analyse intranet use in two ways: with subjective feedback and objective usage data. First survey staff to find out how they use the intranet, what helps them, and what could be improved. You can then use heatmap technology to see where users are clicking. This will help you find the “path of least resistance” for users.

3. Merger, acquisition, or divestiture

When a company changes hands, it’s crucial to get everyone working harmoniously from the start. That often requires an intranet redesign for both functionality and branding.

Solution: content migration

Migration itself is usually the simplest part of moving to a new intranet. But without a thorough content audit and migration plan beforehand, your migration is unlikely to meet expectations. You’ll need a detailed inventory of pre-existing content, including:

• custom applications
• workflows
• types of content
• site columns
• permissions
• user alerts
• users and groups
• large lists or libraries
• UI customisations
• branding

A good intranet consultancy will use the results of this audit to recommend the best migration approach.

4. Business transformation

Perhaps your strategic vision has changed. Or maybe you’ve added new products or services. Either way, your business has transformed — and your intranet must adapt to stay relevant.

Solution: goal-oriented redesign

The method here is to map your new business goals to the functionality that will support them. You can then decide how much change is needed in your current intranet.

It could be you need new workflows, for example, or to integrate data from different sources. You’ll save time and money by getting assistance from an experienced intranet solutions provider.

5. New technology

There are two ways to get more value from your intranet. One is by cutting the cost of the technology itself. The other is by making the intranet more effective for employees.

These two motivations are also the drivers of adopting new intranet technologies. Moving to the cloud, for example, brings cost savings compared with on-premise servers. And upgrading to the latest SharePoint version brings you new features that make work more productive.

Solution: upgrade or migration

If you need to stay on-premises, then you’ll have to upgrade your intranet every few years. Migrating to a cloud solution like SharePoint Online brings the advantage of automatic updates.

6. Company rebranding

Your intranet is your company’s internal face. So if your website is all sleek curves and slick animations, then your intranet shouldn’t be stuck in the 90s. In brief, the intranet should make employees feel positive about the company. The interface should also reflect the latest version of your company’s logo, colour palette, and so on.

Solution: visual redesign

Many packaged intranets allow some no-code customisation. But for something as unique as most public websites, you’ll need developer assistance. This typically means including custom web parts on pages, styling with CSS files, and adding custom JavaScript code.

7. New security needs

Data protection rules are growing stricter. Meeting GDPR data laws requires granular control over customer information. Then of course there are industry-specific security regulations to follow as well.

Solution: security audit

An intranet security audit will start by looking at your security policy, user permissions, and network structure. From there, the audit will analyse areas such as:

• data protection compliance
• encryption and authentication
• server hardware and software defences
• user password security practices
• content publishing and management
• intranet firewall settings
• remote access and VPN usage

Our experience in intranet redesign

Today’s businesses are spoilt for choice in the variety of applications available. But using dozens of disparate apps also raises challenges for security, usability, and IT support. In brief, the benefits of single sign-on solutions consist of overcoming these challenges.

To give a concrete example, consider the Google suite of applications. Google owns Chrome, Google Drive, Gmail, YouTube, and more. But you don’t need a separate username or password to sign in to each Google app. If you sign in to one Google application, you sign in to them all. That’s the beauty of single sign-on (SSO).

These Google applications are an example of customer-facing single sign-on, but SSO has similar advantages for internal business applications. We’ll expand on the internal and external benefits of single sign-on solutions below.

Customer-facing advantages of single sign-on

1. Protect with risk-based authentication (RBA)

SSO solutions enable customers to use multiple applications with a single set of credentials. Adding risk-based authentication (RBA) to your single sign-on solution is a powerful way of enhancing cybersecurity.

For example, you can set up automated alerts for unusual user behaviour, such as the wrong IP or multiple failed logins. You can then ask the user to verify their identity with extra authentication. If the user fails the verification, it’s easy to block them.

2. Increase customer conversions

It’s recommended for users to create a unique password for every application. This prevents attackers from gaining access to every application in one swoop.

However, this means the typical user has to remember dozens of passwords. And the greater the number of passwords, the greater the chance of forgetting them.

Sadly, forgotten passwords and password reset issues are a major cause of customers abandoning websites. Therefore, replacing multiple passwords with single sign-on is an effective way to boost conversion rates.

Internal benefits of single sign-on solutions

1. Encourage unbreakable passwords

SSO solutions are a great way to protect against password theft. Because users only have to remember one login, they’re likely to create a much stronger password. They’re also less inclined to write passwords down on sticky notes. Both of these factors reduce the risk of passwords being cracked or stolen.

Plus, you can combine SSO solutions with multi-factor authentication for added security.

2. Eliminate shadow IT

When it’s hard to log in to business applications, users sometimes resort to unofficial alternatives. This is the meaning of “shadow IT” — parallel systems that aren’t secured by your IT team.

By making it easier for employees to log in, on the other hand, you reduce the need for shadow IT. You can also use SSO solutions to monitor the apps that employees use and spot risky behaviour.

On top of this, SSO’s unified entry point makes it easier for IT to ensure compliance regulations are being met.

3. Maximise software adoption

Signing in to applications should be a painless process. One of the main advantages of single sign-on is letting your employees use applications without frustration. And that has the knock-on effect of providing better value from your software investment.

4. Automate regulatory compliance

As touched on above, SSO solutions have added advantages for regulated industries. The security capabilities of SSO help to meet data access and antivirus protection standards. SSO also enables tracking of user activity and access for auditing purposes, as well as automatic user logout.

Virtual teams were increasingly part of the norm even before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many businesses are still unsure about this digital workplace strategy, wondering whether teams lose productivity working from home.

The pandemic has tested this theory globally, and in general we’ve seen that remote workers are actually more productive. Let’s take a look at some of the recent remote work productivity evidence:

• companies gain an extra workday a week from each remote worker — Harvard Business Review
• businesses save $11,000 per person per year by allowing 50 percent remote work— Global Workplace Analytics
• remote work led to a 13 percent increase in employee performance in China — Stanford Graduate School of Business
• companies that support remote work have 25 percent lower employee turnover — Owl Labs
• 97 of remote workers said they would recommend remote work to others — Buffer

Enabling productivity working from home

“Can’t we just use Slack or Workplace?”

If an intranet is for company communication, then what’s the advantage over apps like Slack? The answer is: an intranet is the foundation of your digital workplace strategy, combining communication with workflows, collaboration, and engagement.

Apps such as Slack or Workplace aren’t designed as document repositories or workflow automation solutions. An intranet provides the foundation for all employees and processes, with the ability to integrate new functionalities as needed. Without that core platform you’ll end up with a bunch of disparate applications.

So without further ado, here are the top ways a remote intranet helps boost productivity working from home.

A business intelligence portal provides a single interface for users to access multiple BI technologies. And since no two businesses use BI in exactly the same way, a BI portal has to be unique.

But what are the advantages of having a bespoke BI portal built? Why would you choose one over packaged BI software? These are the questions we’re going to answer below.

When it’s time for a business intelligence portal

The BI software marketplace has seen a proliferation of choice in recent years. Rather than sticking to one vendor, businesses can now pick and choose the best tool for each task. This is desirable — but difficulties can arise in making those disparate BI tools work in harmony. The challenges here include:

• a long learning curve for new recruits to learn all the BI tools
• users having to repeatedly log in to multiple BI solutions
• more time spent managing user permissions and authentication
• lack of built-in data integration between BI software vendors

The good news is, you can overcome these issues with a custom BI portal.

Advantages of business intelligence portals

If you want to make multiple BI tools work in a unified way, then a BI portal holds the answer. These are just a few business benefits of owning a custom business intelligence portal:

• increase efficiency by cutting the need to switch between BI applications
• improve employee satisfaction with a streamlined BI user experience
• get the exact mix of analytics, reports, and dashboards you need
• multiply the value of BI software by integrating it with other BI capabilities
• enhance your brand with custom portal styling, logos, and interfaces
• meet security and regulatory needs more easily with a single log in

How do you develop a custom BI portal?

1. Software requirements gathering

The beauty of custom BI software is that it’s built to meet your exact requirements. For this reason, a good software development company will always start by understanding your business goals. Once those are quantified, it’s time to design the system that will best achieve those aims.

Some of the questions we often ask at this stage are:

• do you have a data platform or does one need to be built?
• what variety of data formats do you need to integrate?
• are there any regulatory restraints on data management?
• what online analytical processing tools (OLAP) are needed?
• should the BI portal be accessible on mobile or only desktop?
• what level of technical skill does your user base have?

By answering dozens more questions covering cost, security, performance, and more, we build a complete picture of the software required.

2. BI portal development

Depending on the plan established in stage one, the development process can include:

• designing an integrated data warehouse or data lake
• extract, transform, and load (ETL) data integration design
• integrating data from on-premises and cloud-based BI software
• building custom user interfaces, dashboards, and query tools

Real-life BI portal examples

While Microsoft Access was once an innovative database, it is now looking more and more like an outdated system. As many businesses go serverless, it’s essential to consider the benefits of Microsoft Access to cloud migration.

Microsoft Access is nearly 30 years old, which means it’s under constant threat of reaching the end of Microsoft support. If you think your version of Microsoft Access may be expiring soon, double-check the Microsoft lifecycle search.

And if you work with sensitive data, you’ll need the more extensive security that software like SQL Server has to offer. Many of our clients who need to migrate Access to the cloud opt to use SQL Server as the database with an Access front end. 

On top of this, the unique Access file format means there’s a lack of built-in integration with other common business software.

For these reasons, it’s clear that Microsoft Access to cloud migration is a priority. In this article we’ll walk you through some of the benefits of moving your data to a cloud solution such as Microsoft Azure.

1. Strong data security

2. Reduced costs

3. Worldwide connectivity

4. Web applications

How we help Access migration

With over three decades in the business, we are qualified to find the ideal set-up for your requirements. We offer end-to-end support to ensure your unique Access migration needs are met. Here are just some of the services we offer:

Access to Azure

We can help you migrate your database and improve productivity with your current Access application. Our tried and tested process helps minimise migration effort and user disruption while maximising ROI.

Custom development

If you need to create a new database application, we can use Azure’s low-code development tools to deliver much faster than traditional web development.

Source code control

With our assistance, you can protect your Access investment by managing the source code in a hosted repository. We also offer set-up and training for Access Source Code Control utilities.

Access support

If you currently have an Access application that’s been abandoned by developers, we have the expertise to help. You can rely on us for data migration, integration, and custom development.

Planning a move to the cloud can raise a lot of questions in a business owner’s head. For an example of a successful migration, see our recent case study:

Recycling company solves data corruption issues through cloud database integration