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Technology

  • Home > Blog > Technology
  • Top reasons to move to the cloud

    Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud is gaining popularity, but some companies remain on the fence whether to make the switch or continue with an on-premise system. There are many benefits to consider that may tip the scales in favour of migrating to the cloud, especially now that the power of Sage 200 Professional is available on the industry-leading Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.

    How cloud computing will improve your business

    According to the Cloud Industry Forum research, customers sited the following benefits:

    1. Invest in your business, not hardware. 72% of UK companies surveyed saw decreases in operational costs*. When you have a traditional, in-house data centre, you become beholden to maintaining hardware. While updates will help keep everything current for a short time, eventually the hardware will become too aged to continue. Replacing hardware gets expensive, and there will be a need to budget for new equipment on a regular basis. The result is, you must balance investing in hardware versus other areas that could grow your business.
    2. Focus on growing your business. Managing existing IT infrastructure is time-consuming, at times unpredictable, and requires specialised personnel to manage it. With cloud computing, you enable a trusted cloud service provider to manage the complexities of security, upgrades, and maintenance for your business critical applications, such as Sage 200, freeing your team up to run and grow the business.
    3. Respond for business continuity. 65% of businesses surveyed believe cloud working offers them the agility to seize opportunities, and respond to risks*. For a business to grow it must be flexible, agile and have the ability to respond and react to market opportunities, as well as threats. With cloud computing, business leaders can access vital business intelligence in real-time. Data-driven decisions from anywhere, at anytime is a distinct business advantage, as managers can explore new opportunities and/or mitigate risks.
    4. Leverage the latest technology. 70% of UK companies surveyed believe by accessing critical business applications in the cloud, anytime, anywhere offered them financial stability* – which in turn, offered a greater competitive advantage. As the company grows, a traditional system can be difficult to expand as needed. You may not have the storage capacity, available users, or even new functionality and compliance that the latest release offers you. Moving to the cloud better enables the scalability that you will need to keep up with the network growth demands. A cloud-based system eliminates that problem by offering scalability in a flash.

    Now is the time for a cloud-based solution.

    Making a move like this is a lot to think about for your business and your customers, but we’re here to help. We can answer any questions you and your team may have about the transition.

    Speak with one of our experts today

    *Research from the Cloud Industry Forum (https://www.cloudindustryforum.org/content/uk-cloud-adoption-rate-reaches-88-finds-newresearch-cloud-industry-forum)

    3 Ways Construction Job Costing Software Can Improve Your Profits & Increase Growth

    Many construction firms today contend with increasingly narrow margins and many more difficulties associated with boosting productivity. In a heavily saturated market, estimated to be worth 12.7 Trillion US Dollars globally by 2022, construction software is fast becoming vital to achieving a competitive advantage.

    McKinsey Global’s 2017 study estimates that the implementation of digital technologies across the construction sector would result in a 14-15% improvement to the industry’s productivity.

    This article will detail our top three ways that job costing software can improve your profits and increase growth, allowing your business to stay competitive.

    Improved Estimating Accuracy

    Probably the most obvious of ways job costing software can increase profits, being able to breakdown all costs associated with a project, enabling you to more accurately estimate. New projects happen in various phases, meaning each phase may have several associated costs such as labour, materials, equipment etc. By using job costing software, you gain the ability to truly understand these costs on a project basis and ensure you never take on a project which results in you losing money.

    Increase Growth & Reduce Risk

    Construction firms today operate in a risky landscape with extremely tight profit margins. As a result, many firms keep their bids moderate. The concept being that a £10,000 loss is better than a £100,000 loss. Modern construction software enables you to ensure that every new project increases profits. You may not win as many contracts, but accurate quotes, with a time-saving bid process, allows you to bid for more jobs with the peace of mind that your numbers are correct.

    Business Intelligence & More Accurate Future Quoting

    Business Intelligence is becoming increasingly more important in many B2B software packages today and construction software is no different. Over time, as you accurately cost projects with the software, you can gain major insights into both profits and overheads, even at the task level. This information not only allows you to improve the accuracy of your quoting in the future, by comparing estimates with actual figures, but also allows you to see which areas are the most profitable. For example, you may find your firm isn’t particularly competitive on groundwork but IS for electrical labour.

    Conclusion

    Construction job costing software is fast becoming a necessary investment for competitive construction firms trying to increase profits and operate effectively in a tight industry. As previously discussed, construction software grants you a wide-range of benefits including accurate job costing, correctly allocated costs, business intelligence etc. All these factors contribute greatly to reducing risk throughout the business, allowing you to focus on the bottom line; improving profits.

    Written by Sam McDonald

    The Ideological Turing Test: More Important Than Ever?

    For those of you unfamiliar with the Turing Test, it was first proposed by Alan Turing in 1951 in a paper called ‘the imitation game’. In Lehman’s terms, it proposed a test in which there are 3 connected computers in 3 separate rooms. In one room sits a human, in the second a computer, and in the third sits a person – call him or her the “judge”. The judge’s job is to decide which of the two people talking to him through the computer is human, and which is the machine. Turing proposed that if, under these conditions, a judge was correct less than 50% of the time, then the computer must be a passable simulation of a human being and hence, intelligent. The game has been recently modified so that there is only one contestant, and the judge’s job is not to choose between two contestants, but simply to decide whether the single contestant is human or machine.

    The Ideological Turing Test, created by Bryan Caplan in 2011, is designed to test whether a partisan individual fully understands the political and ideological beliefs of those on the other side of the political sepctrum. Two parties of opposite ideological beliefs are required to answer a question or write an essay from the point of view of one side, for example, a Democrat would be challenged to write as Republican. If the judge was unable to accurately discern which answer or argument was written by which side, ie the Democrat posing as the Republican vs a Republican, then the Democrat would have successfully passed the Ideological Turing Test.

    Although the test is a few years old, it may never have been more relevant. There are massive social and ideological cleavages in the US and across the world, and the first step to healing those divides is for both sides to try to understand where the other side is coming from. If you can truly understand the point of view of a person across the other side the ideological spectrum, then you can begin to have a sensible discussion about the divide between you. I couldn’t put it better than Atticus Finch himself, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”.

    However, the Ideological Turing Test has come under some criticism. Blogger Noah Smith questioned whether the Ideological Turing Test was flawed based on the logic of the Chinese room thought experiment. The Chinese room though experiment postulated that if you asked a computer questions in Chinese and it’s responses were good enough to fool a person into thinking that they were talking to a Chinese person, that the computer would still not truly understand Chinese, it would only be simulating this knowledge. When considered for the Ideological Turing Test, it poses the question, do you really need to truly understand an ideological argument to replicate it. It is easy enough to parody a point of view without understand where they come from, so how could the test be accurate or even worthwhile?

    I think the point of the test has been missed when you consider this argument. I think the main point of the Ideological Turing Test is to teach people to consider the other side of an argument. To begin to work with the other side to discuss the divisions and truly understand the nature of the differences in opinion. There are many divisions in America and across the world that could be at least partially solved or improved by both sides considering why the other side feels the way they do. Police vs minority communities, republicans vs democrats, socialists vs capitalists, pro life vs pro choice, the list goes on. Hillary Clinton had a leaked phone call in which she was saying that she doesn’t understand some of the extremists in the country, and to me it seemed like she wasn’t trying. The left doesn’t want to understand the right, and vice versa, and that is what brought us to our situation today.  There is a massive amount of work that needs to be done to bring together a country that is more divided than ever. That starts with understanding the grievances on both ends of the political spectrum.

    This article was originally posted on the www.thejist.co.uk

    Blockchain Explained

    Digital cryptocurrencies have become increasingly popular in recent years but, yet, haven’t replaced its more traditional counterparts in the world of finance. It is the technology underpinning these currencies that looks set to revolutionise the way we make transactions.

    Bitcoin was first conceptualised by an unknown person(s) under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto published a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-Peer Electronic Cash System” on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.com in October 2008 which detailed a revolutionary cash system that enabled online payments to be made directly, without the need for a middle man. Bitcoins global expansion has meant Nakamoto is now estimated to be worth $700m

    While Bitcoin itself has become increasingly well known, it is the technology behind it, blockchain, that has far greater implications in the future and will transform the global economy.

    So, what is blockchain?

    Blockchain is a global, decentralised ledger that keeps a record of every digital transaction that has taken place. Rather than having a centralised body, like a bank or government, the ledger is part of a network of identical ledgers which are synchronised and readable by any members of the network in question.

    When a new transaction is made, it is then grouped with other transactions that have been made in the last 10 minutes and distributed across the network. This is where ‘Miners’ come in. Miners will then compete to validate transactions in exchange for rewards, for example Bitcoins in the Bitcoin blockchain. Mining is intentionally designed to be difficult and time consuming to provide a higher degree of security to the system through incentive. For a more in-depth explanation of mining, check out Investopedia’s explanation.

    Each, now validated, group of transactions are then added to the ledger making a chain which shows the transaction history updating the entire blockchain so every single ledger in the network is uniform. This transparency and decentralisation means that any attempt of hacking becomes incredibly difficult if not impossible. A hacker would have to target every single block in the blockchain simultaneously to be successful in contrast to large, centralised third party organisations, like banks, where a single attack can be co-ordinated.

    The uses of blockchain networks are potentially limitless with some experts predicting that they will be used for the collection of tax in the very near future. Blockchain could easily become a global, decentralised source of trust but it seems not everyone is ready to embrace it.  A large number of third party trust services now face major challenges, for some their very survival. A 2016 IBM report states that by 2020, 66% percent of banks expect to have blockchain in commercial production and at scale showing the true significance of the blockchain revolution.

    In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Paul Brody, EY’s Global Innovation leader discussed the real world application of blockchain stating “Supply chain management, procurement, and order to cash processes are probably the hottest areas right now outside of finance,” “Related to that, we think there will be a big push around tax, audit and cyber security as enterprises embrace the immutable and distributed nature of blockchain technology.”

    Through complex mathematics and cryptography, blockchain offers a transparent and decentralised database, or ledger, of any transaction such as money, goods, services, property and many more. The growth of blockchain networks will see the future global economy move toward a model of disseminated trust, where anyone with an internet connection can become involved in transactions which will ultimately remove the need for third party middle men such as banks or notaries.

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