1. What is WordPress?

The post Ridiculously Challenging WordPress Quiz first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

26 août 2022/par Service comm.

Building a Data Pipeline Using QuestDB and Confluent Kafka

A data pipeline, at its base, is a series of data processing measures that are used to automate the transport and transformation of data between systems or data stores. Data pipelines can be used for a wide range of use cases in a business, including aggregating data on customers for recommendation purposes or customer relationship management, combining and transforming data from multiple sources, as well as collating/streaming real-time data from sensors or transactions.

For example, a company like Airbnb could have data pipelines that go back and forth between their application and their platform of choice to improve customer service. Netflix utilizes a recommendation data pipeline that automates the data science steps for generating movie and series recommendations. Also, depending on the rate at which it updates, a batch or streaming data pipeline can be used to generate and update the data used in an analytics dashboard for stakeholders.

23 août 2022/par Service comm.

How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Three

Actualités, Actualités

Two weeks ago, you started a web design agency. Last week you began to define your agency by choosing clients, setting red lines, and writing your elevator pitch.

This week, we will implement some practical solutions before problems occur. Remember one task per day; it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Day Fifteen: Terms of Service

In the rush of excitement surrounding a new project, it’s too easy to skip the preliminaries and jump into work. Before you know it, you’re halfway through the job, and it’s too late to set terms.

Your terms of service document is a formal statement of the terms under which you agree to work. This document is best prepared by a legal professional with experience in your jurisdiction, but you can write it yourself with a bit of guidance. Fortunately, as a web design agency, you’re not supplying physical products, which simplifies the document considerably.

You should include a statement limiting your liability. You need to assert your intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, you also need to include details of what happens when a client fails to pay an invoice.

Write the document in clear, friendly language. Don’t use marketing speak, and do not try to disguise anything onerous. A good client will respect you for being upfront in a professional manner.

Your terms of service should be on your website and sent to potential clients alongside any quote — I know some people who send their terms in the same PDF as the quote, so the client can’t overlook them.

Day Sixteen: Project Management

Project management is probably the most crucial skill you’ll have to master. Meeting deadlines, bringing in enough work to cover the bills, and not pulling all-nighters depend on effective project management.

A huge and ever-growing number of apps promise to help you with project management. We have a list here of some of the best. However, if you already have a tool you use to manage your work that you’re comfortable with, consider sticking with it. Do not fall back on a notes app or a pen and paper.

Remember: organizing your work days is not billable. The more you can automate this process, the better.

Day Seventeen: Quotes & Invoices

Up until now, we’ve deliberately done one thing per day. Today, we will do two because they’re so closely related.

There are all kinds of business documents that pass money back and forth between companies, for example, purchase orders or credit notes. For a small web design agency, you’ll need two: a quote document and an invoice document.

Invoices are documents requesting payment and providing the details for payment. Quotes are previews of an expected invoice.

Some people like to have a receipt document that they send out to acknowledge payment. However, in my experience, sending a hand-written email is better; it’s an excellent opportunity to personalize your communication and foster a good relationship.

There are legal requirements that vary by jurisdiction, but an invoice typically includes: your trading name; the invoice number — an incrementing number code; your tax code if you have one; your address; the time the client has to pay — “Net 14,” meaning the total amount within 14 days is standard; the date issued; the client’s name and address; a list of services provided together with the rate for each service and the total; the pre-tax total; the total amount of tax; the total; and most importantly a way of paying.

Back on day two, you contacted your tax department to determine your liabilities. You may or may not have to charge sales tax or VAT. Always include the amount of tax on your invoice, even if the total is $0, so it’s clear whether or not it has been charged.

A quote document is virtually identical to an invoice, except that you remove the payment requests. You should also add a note stipulating how long the quote is valid — 3 months is standard.

Plenty of services will create these documents for you as part of an accounting system. For example, Xero, FreshBooks, or Bloom. Even PayPal will allow you to send invoices. If you prefer, you can create your own quotes and invoices and send them as PDFs — this option is best if you want total control over your documents’ design, but it will take longer, and it’s worryingly easy to make a mistake.

Day Eighteen: Social Media

Start today by researching social media accounts. Look at the list of target businesses you made on day eight; which social media channel do they use the most? For example, if the niche you picked on day three is restaurants, they probably use Instagram. If you chose retirement communities, they probably use Facebook.

Once you have a clear picture of your clients’ channels, pick one (yes, 1) and register an account.

Social media is a significant drain on your time and provides considerably less return on investment than you might expect. So, choose one service that your prospective clients use and start building your profile. It’s far better to invest your time and effort in a place your clients will notice you than to spread yourself too thin.

Day Nineteen: Domain & Hosting

It’s another two-task day. We’ve grouped these together because domains and hosting are frequently rented together.

Back on day nine, you selected your tech stack. You’ll be building your own site with the technology you offer clients, so it’s important to ensure your hosting enables this. If you intend to develop with WordPress, you need WordPress hosting. If you intend to build with Wix, you need a Wix account. If you’re planning on offering any kind of web app, you probably need Netlify.

Whatever you choose, choose something appropriate for your tech stack. The only exception is if you plan to specialize in a niche service like Shopify, which is entirely inappropriate for an agency portfolio.

There are endless debates over whether or not you should register a domain with the same company that hosts your site. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who registered a domain, and then something improbable happened to cause them to lose the domain that wouldn’t have happened if they’d hosted separately.

Back in the real world, simplicity is a gift you give yourself. Choose a reputable company, register a good domain, host in the same place, and let their support sort out your DNS for you — many good hosts will even give you free domain rental for a year to entice you to take up their hosting.

Good hosting is reliable, with plenty of room to grow. If it can be cheap too, that’s a bonus. It’s common to start with bottom-end(ish) shared hosting and expand to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) at some point in the future.

Day Twenty: Email

Despite the massive growth in messaging apps over the last decade, email is still your most important business tool.

Depending on the hosting you set up yesterday, email inboxes may have been included. If not, you’ll need to set up a separate email provider.

You’ll need a general email address. Traditionally this has been info@, but hi@, hey@, hello@, and ciao@ are a little more friendly.

You need a personal email address that’s just for you. For example, I use ben@.

You also need a separate account for finances that you can use for invoicing and services like Stripe and PayPal. accounts@ or billing@ are fine.

Finally, you’ll need to set up a catch-all email forwarder for all the times people guess your email, mistype your email or assume you used info@. Forward those emails to your general address.

Once that’s done, set up an email signature for each account. Include your logo, contact details, and the social media address you set up a couple of days ago.

Finally, update your email address with your hosting company, social media account, and business accounts.

Day Twenty-One: Rest

That’s it for this week. So shut down your machine, go outside, ride a bike, go on a hike, learn to skateboard, and relax with family and friends.

We’re approaching the sharp end of this process, and next week will be busy, so do whatever you do to recharge your batteries.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Three first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

19 août 2022/par Service comm.

Dirickx modernise et accélère son activité services avec SAP FSM

Actualités, ERP & Applications, SAP

Le Mayennais Diricks souhaite booster son activité services. Mais il lui faut pour cela s’équiper d’un outil de gestion des interventions. Pourvu d’un ERP SAP, l’industriel a opté pour la solution SAP Field Service Management.

Dirickx est le premier fabricant français de clôtures, portails et contrôles d’accès, à destination des particuliers comme des professionnels. Tissé, soudé, rigide, barreaudé ou sur mesure, Dirickx peaufine son savoir-faire depuis 100 ans déjà. La société emploie plus de 300 salariés et réalise 50% de son chiffre d’affaires au travers de la grande distribution : BigMat, Castorama, Leroy Merlin, Point.P…

En 2017, la société est reprise par des investisseurs belges, avant de devenir la filiale d’un nouveau groupe, PICOT, toujours implanté à Congrier, en Mayenne. En plus de son activité industrielle, le groupe assure des tâches d’installation et de maintenance, au travers de Dirickx Espace Clôture et de Dirickx Services.

Dirickx Services est une entité en pleine croissance. Fin 2021, elle faisait déjà travailler une dizaine de techniciens, mais avec un processus de gestion des interventions encore très basique. « Les fiches d’intervention étaient transmises sous forme papier à nos bureaux, qui se chargeaient de facturer le client, ce qui pouvait faire prendre jusqu’à une dizaine de jours, témoigne Laurent Dargelosse, Manager de Dirickx Services. Pour développer cette activité, il était impératif que nous options pour un outil capable d’accélérer la remontée et le traitement des informations de terrain. »

Un projet couronné de succès

Comme toutes les autres sociétés du groupe, Dirickx Services réalisait déjà sa comptabilité sur un ERP SAP. Il était donc logique d’y intégrer la facturation client, puis d’y rattacher un outil de gestion des interventions. La solution SAP Field Service Management (SAP FSM) est apparue assez rapidement comme un bon candidat pour gérer les opérations de maintenance réalisées sur le terrain.

« SAP FSM répondait à tous nos besoins, confirme Benjamin Subile, Responsable informatique chez Dirickx : gestion du planning des techniciens, enregistrement des temps, remplissage et signature de la fiche d’intervention, remontée de photos et notes, automatisation de la facturation dans l’ERP. Le tout à l’aide de tablettes qui accompagnent les techniciens sur le terrain. »

Dirickx cherchait un intégrateur SAP FSM capable de travailler en français. Une relation tripartite s’est mise en place, avec d’un côté Codilog, se chargeant des licences et de l’interaction avec SAP, et de l’autre l’entreprise Canguru, pour son expertise sur la solution SAP FSM.

Le projet a démarré en février 2021, avec une mise en production début décembre 2021. Le temps nécessaire pour permettre aux équipes de réaliser toutes les tâches requises : achever la bascule de Dirickx Services vers l’ERP SAP, activer le module de gestion des ventes, mettre en place SAP FSM, puis former les utilisateurs et les équiper en tablettes.

« L’un des points sensibles était la connexion de SAP FSM, qui est une solution cloud, à notre ERP SAP ECC, qui est déployé on premise, signale Benjamin Subile. Nous avons pour cela utilisé le connecteur standard proposé par SAP, qui permet aux deux solutions de communiquer de façon fluide. Cette intégration facilitée est un des avantages d’avoir opté pour une solution qui fait partie de l’écosystème SAP. »

Un outil rapidement adopté par les techniciens

Après une courte phase d’adaptation, les techniciens se sont approprié la solution. « S’ils ont pu être un peu sceptiques au départ, dès les premières utilisations, ils ont adopté l’outil, explique Laurent Dargelosse. Il leur permet de travailler plus efficacement et d’avoir une vision plus claire sur leur planning et leur stock. SAP FSM a apporté beaucoup d’améliorations pour les intervenants travaillant sur le terrain. »

Et il était temps, car l’entité Dirickx Services s’est fortement développée depuis début 2021, en passant de 13 à 18 techniciens, assurant chacun 2,5 à 3 interventions par jour. « Une telle charge n’aurait pas pu être gérée efficacement avec un processus papier », confirme le manager de Dirickx Services.

Cette croissance devrait se poursuivre, avec une vingtaine de techniciens d’ici la fin de l’année et un redécoupage du territoire français en trois régions, contre deux actuellement. Le groupe étant également très présent en Belgique, il envisage de développer l’activité Dirickx Services au Benelux, ce qui devrait – là encore – se traduire par de nouvelles embauches de techniciens de maintenance… lesquels seront équipés de tablettes connectées à SAP FSM.

The post Dirickx modernise et accélère son activité services avec SAP FSM appeared first on SAP France News.

17 août 2022/par Service comm.

How to Measure Live Chat Performance

Actualités, Actualités

Live chat is one of the most powerful tools for customer experience in the current marketplace.

In a world where customers are constantly connected to the online world, online chat is a reliable way of getting quick solutions to common problems.

Today’s consumers prefer talking to an agent over chat to calling a contact center, and they often feel that live chat is less frustrating than waiting for the right person to answer the phone.

Of course, like any digital tool, live chat is only effective when using it correctly. Today, we’re going to show you the crucial KPIs you need to consider if you want to ensure that your chat strategy is delivering a tangible return on investment.

The Most Important Metrics to Measure for Live Chat

These days, implementing live chat tools is easier than ever.

You don’t necessarily need to hire a professional developer unless you want a specialist widget with specific functions and unique branding. Many plugins and tools for sites built on Shopify and WooCommerce allow you to instantly access chat functions.

However, just because implementing live chat is easy doesn’t mean that there aren’t countless ways for your strategy to go wrong. Keeping an eye on these crucial KPIs and metrics ensures you’re making the right impression with your chat strategy.

1. First Response Time

First response time is a crucial live chat metric. This measures how long customers need to wait before someone responds to them. Technically, this metric only refers to how quickly an actual agent responds to your customer, so automated “thanks for getting in touch” messages don’t count. However, immediately responding with one of those messages can convince your audience to stick around for a little longer.

The faster your agents can respond to messages and solve problems, the better your brand reputation becomes. The good news is that a good live chat strategy can lead to pretty quick response times. The average time for an agent to see a live chat message is around 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

To improve your FRT statistics, make sure you:

Invest in chatbots: AI chatbots can support customers 24/7 with handy, self-service functionality. These tools will also filter out the customers waiting for an agent who can find a solution to their problem on your FAQ page.
Prepare canned responses: Quick responses to common queries can help you to address a problem much faster. In addition, preparing canned responses will ensure that your team members can quickly respond to more customers.
Increase your resources: Ensure you have the right hand and enough agents to handle peak demand.

2. Average Resolution Time

The first response rate only looks at how quickly someone responds to a customer’s message for the first time. However, it doesn’t show how rapidly you deal with client problems. Average Resolution Time is the metric that helps to measure customer satisfaction by seeing how long it takes to get to a point where your customer can close the chat.

If it takes too long for your employees to solve problems, there’s an increased risk of your customers becoming annoyed and frustrated. Additionally, the longer agents take dealing with each individual chat, the more other consumers will have to wait for someone to become available. Finally, the longer it takes to resolve an issue, the more customer satisfaction decreases.

The key to success is ensuring that the right agent deals with the correct customer and that everyone on your team is empowered with the appropriate tools and information. Boost resolution time by:

Giving customers a quick self-service solution: For common questions, make sure that you have an FAQ section that you can direct your customers to. In addition, a chatbot that can offer quick canned responses to regular queries can save time. Plus, they’re great for reducing the pressure on your agents’ shoulders.
Integrate CRM tools with live chat: Make sure your agents have access to information about each customer as soon as they start the conversation. This information should include the customer’s name, what they’ve purchased before, and if they’ve issued any support tickets. Integrating with the CRM makes it easier for agents to jump straight into the action without needing the customer to explain everything first.
Keep resources handy: Your team members should have instant access to all the information they need to answer customer questions. Ensure that searchable data repositories are available for everyone on your live chat team.

Remember, routing tools that automatically send customers to the agent with the proper knowledge or skills will also improve response times and reduce the number of times a customer needs to repeat themselves.

3. Chat to Conversion Rate

Live chat tools aren’t just an avenue for problem resolution. Although customers can get excellent service through live chat, they also look to chat to collect information before a potential purchase. Around 38% of customers say that they end up purchasing a positive live chat experience.

The live chat app on your website can provide real-time assistance for sales queries, converting leads, and maximizing your return on investment. However, to determine how successful your chat system is at encouraging sales, you must look at the chat to conversion rate metric.

Essentially, you measure the number of chats your company has been involved in, then compare that number to the total number of conversions from those customers. It might be helpful to narrow down your results here by using your data and analytics tools to separate your total number of live chats into those intended for sales information and those requiring assistance.

If your chat to conversion rate isn’t as high as you would like, there are lots of things you can do to start making a positive impact:

Automatically launch a chat: As soon as someone comes to your website, launch a chat window with a bot that asks whether you can help your customer. You can even include a list of commonly asked questions so your customer can get help faster.
Follow up on chat conversations: Make sure you follow up on any questions that customers ask on your chat widget with an email. This is a great way to reach out to customers that may have been distracted and ended up abandoning their cart.
Personalize suggestions: Use AI insights and information from your customer management tools to determine which products are most likely to appeal to each customer, then suggest those items. Remember to ensure that your tone of voice in the chat matches your brand too.

Remember, the faster you can answer customer queries and address their concerns with your live chat strategy, the more likely the chat will lead to a sale. Ultimately, customers are convinced to purchase when they believe they can trust your business to deliver excellent experiences.

4. Customer Satisfaction Score

The customer satisfaction score is probably one of the most critical metrics in any customer experience strategy. It directly measures customer satisfaction levels and gives you an insight into how well you’re doing from the perspective of your target audience.

The best way to measure CSAT through live chat is to add a survey to the end of the chat session. For instance, you could ask, “How would you rate this session on a scale of 1 to 10”. Then, based on the score, you’d calculate a “Net Promotion Score.” Each score falls into one of three categories: “Detractors 0-6”, “Passives 6-8,” and “Promotors 9-10”.

The more information you collect about your CSAT score, the easier it will be to determine where you’re going wrong with your live chat strategy. On the other hand, if the score is pretty good after a chat session, you’re probably on the right track. To improve your overall score:

Encourage feedback: Getting people to leave feedback, even on a live chat app, can be difficult. Offering customers the chance to win something in exchange for their insights could help you to get more data.
Follow up: Connect with your “detractors” to find out what you did wrong. Follow up in the live chat session by asking if they’d like to leave a more comprehensive review. Alternatively, you can send an email asking for additional information.
Reach out to promotors: Connect with the people who give you the most favorable scores to ask them for their insights. Find out what they enjoyed most about the experience and request a review that you can place on your website for social proof.

5. Missed Opportunities

The longer someone waits for you to answer their question in a live chat or respond to their initial message, the more likely they’ll give up on the conversation. Unfortunately, this means that your company ends up with missed opportunities. You lose the chance to potentially make a sale, delight a customer, and strengthen your brand reputation.

While you might assume that your customers will know you can’t be available to answer all of their questions immediately, that’s not the case. INC tells us that 51% of consumers believe a business should always be open. So every missed chat is another negative mark against your reputation.

If you discover that your team is missing a lot of chat chances, this could be a sign that you don’t have enough resources available in this area. However, there are a few ways that you can reduce your chances of missed opportunities, such as:

Hiring more team members: If you know that there are times of the year or week when you have peaks in demand, ensure that you have the correct number of staff members available.
Using chatbots: Chatbots won’t be able to answer all customer questions, but they can deliver quick responses to commonly asked queries and reduce the risk of lost opportunities.
Provide alternative forms of communication: if your customer can’t reach you on live chat, make sure that there are other options available, like a phone number and email address or a form where your customer can automatically submit a ticket.

6. Total Number of Chats and Tickets

Keeping track of the total number of tickets your customers submit, alongside the number of chats your employees engage in, will give you helpful information. First, the total number of conversations shows how many customers are taking advantage of your live chat function on the website.

You’ll also be able to compare your total number of chats to the number of resolved problems you deal with for your customers. For example, comparing your total number of chats to an unlimited number of tickets shows you how many customers have been left to rely on other sources of communication. You can also see how good your employees are at following up with tickets issued by customers.

When you’re analyzing your number of tickets and chat sessions, you might notice that many of the queries you dealt with were connected to specific questions or topics. If that’s the case, you might be able to create a new FAQ page for your customers or provide your chatbot with extra information that it can use.

If you’re getting more support tickets through alternative means than live chat, it might be time to ask yourself what’s wrong with your live chat performance and why your customers choose not to use it.

Improving Live Chat CX for Your Business

Live chat can be a powerful tool for improving customer experience and an excellent way to strengthen your relationship with existing and potential clients.

Step into the shoes of your customer and discover what it feels like to walk through the whole live chat experience, from the moment that you send a request to the live chat team to the moment when you close down the chat with a solution to your problem. Other quick tips include:

Getting the software right: Make sure your live chat app is easy for your end customers and your employees. The chat app you use should be convenient and suit your brand. It also needs to collect information effectively without causing problems like GDPR and regulations. Get a developer involved if you think you have a problem with your chat functionality.
Guide your team: Remember that your team needs to know how to use the live chat tools available effectively if they’re going to deliver the best results to your customers. Make sure you give your employees scripts to deal with problems if needed. In addition, chatbots that can quickly grab information from integrated CRM tools and other solutions could make your agents’ lives much more manageable.
Pay attention to feedback: Ask your customers for feedback on their live chat experiences whenever you can. Ensure you pay attention to what they say they like and dislike about the encounter. If you can listen to your customer’s opinions, they’ll give you a lot of helpful information to work with when you’re enhancing and optimizing your live chat strategy. In addition, listening to your audience shows that you have their best interests at heart.

Remember, as well as customer feedback; you might be able to ask your employees for their insights into how you can improve live chat performance too. Employees also work with these tools regularly, so they know which features are more problematic than others.

Measuring and Improving Live Chat

Live chat functionality isn’t something that you implement into your website and forget about. Instead, like any form of customer service or engagement tool, your live chat solution should be something you test regularly and constantly update to suit your customers’ needs.

Knowing which metrics to measure when examining live chat functionality and performance will boost the experience you can give your audience and even open the door for better relationships with clients in the long term.

The post How to Measure Live Chat Performance first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

12 août 2022/par Service comm.

How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Two

Actualités, Actualités

Last week, you started a web design agency. This week we’ll help you take the next steps towards making your agency viable.

The first couple of days were spent on legal checks and taxes. After that, you’ve picked a niche to specialize in, an awesome name, worked out how much you’re going to charge, and set up business accounts. Then, finally, you took a day off to prepare for this week. (If you skipped any of those steps, go back and catch up now.)

This week, we’ll start defining who you are as an agency. The process is the same as last week: focusing on one task per day. By the end of the week, who you are as an agency will start to become apparent.

Day Eight: Choose Your Clients

For any new business, the temptation is to grab any work you can get to keep the money flowing in. However, chasing money is counter-productive; you end up clutching at opportunities instead of taking a targeted approach.

Last week you selected your niche. Today, you will choose the clients you intend to work for. And we mean that literally: draw up a list of target clients.

Do you want to work for Nike? Fine, add it to the list. Think Apple would look good in your portfolio? Add it too. Make sure you add a few that are more realistic but don’t aim too low.

By the end of the day, you should have a spreadsheet of companies to target.

Day Nine: Tech Stack

Now you know who your agency is planning to work for, it’s time to identify the technology stack you’re planning to offer them.

It may be that you will be a full-service agency handling everything from branding to custom apps. Alternately, you may perform better handling one aspect of the job well and outsourcing the rest.

However you plan to approach the actual work, you’ll need a full-stack solution for most clients. That means brand design, web design, marketing and content, front-end code, content management, and SEO.

The best advice is to focus on your existing strengths and develop a skill to an expert level. Then, once you’ve done so, you can expand sideways to plug any gaps.

For example, moving into WordPress development is a good option if you already know HTML and CSS. On the other hand, if you’re more design orientated, a site builder approach using SquareSpace or Shopify might be a better fit.

Technologies change, so you shouldn’t expect your core technologies to stay with you throughout your career. But these are the solutions you’ll become an expert at over the next few years.

Day Ten: Define Your Red Lines

All companies have brand values, whether they define them or not. So at this stage, it’s more practical to look at what you’re not prepared to do.

Everyone has red lines that they’re not prepared to cross. Would you work for a pornography company? Would you work for a radical political group? Would you work for a controversial religion? Would you work for a company with a patchy human rights record? Would you work for big pharma?

There’s no right and wrong answer to this; it all comes down to your personal values. However, you will be asked to cross the line at some point. It’s easier to say “no thanks” if you know where the lines are in advance.

If you don’t have red lines, that’s valid too. But be aware that once you’ve crossed a line, that line will stay crossed; you’ll attract more of that type of work, which will define you.

Day Eleven: Write Your Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a short couple of lines that can be delivered to a prospective client on a (hypothetical) elevator ride between two floors.

When someone asks you what you do, “Um, well, you know, mostly just websites and stuff.” Is not a good answer.

Your language should be natural, non-technical, and self-assured. Something like, “We help startups like yours outperform their competitors on Google.”

Once you’ve settled on a good elevator pitch, practice it over and over. Write it on a post-it and stick it to your monitor, screenshot it and use it as your phone’s wallpaper. Say it over and over in the shower, in the car, and in the elevator. Learn it so that when someone asks, it trips off your tongue effortlessly.

Day Twelve: Pick a Coffee Shop

You don’t need fancy offices to start a web design agency, and in fact, the first agency I worked for tanked primarily because they couldn’t afford their office lease.

People are used to remote work now, and most meetings can be conducted by video call. But you will still find clients who like to meet one-to-one, especially for a kick-off meeting.

It’s always best to visit a client’s premises if you can, but coffee shops are a good alternative, and every new agency should have one.

Consider your coffee shop your meeting room. If you’re lucky enough to be in a town or city where there are a few to choose from, try to pick one that matches your values: quirky and independent, efficient and corporate, etc.

Check when the quiet times are (you don’t want to be shouting over the buzz of rush-hour orders). Make sure you know where the nearest parking or public transport is so that you can direct clients. Ensure the wi-fi is OK, preferably free, and find out the password in advance.

Day Thirteen: Start Your Branding

Two weeks in, you finally get to do something creative: design your logo.

If you’ve been matching days to the days of the week, then it’s Saturday. That should give you more time for this task, but don’t go to town. Your logo is going to change and evolve. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in tiny details like logos and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Remember: no logo, no matter how cool, ever won a pitch.

If you’re a designer, you probably ignored us and started the logo on day one. In fact, you’ve probably had something knocking around in a sketchbook for a while.

If you’re not a designer, type out your name in a geometric sans-serif, tighten the tracking, and call it a day.

Either way, by the end of today, you’ll have something that fits your niche, ties into your elevator pitch, and appeals to your target clients.

Day Fourteen: Rest

Hopefully, you learned the benefits of a rest day last week, and this week was easier as a result.

It’s time to do whatever you do to relax. If you can, do it outside away from your computer. Create some distance and recharge your batteries.

Next week, we’ll start putting together the assets you will use to present your business professionally.

Featured image via Unsplash.

The post How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Two first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

10 août 2022/par Service comm.

Secure Your Web Apps With an API Gateway

API management solutions, also known as API gateways, are a must in the day and age of APIs. However, once you’ve set up such a gateway, you can use it for different purposes unrelated to APIs. Today, I want to show you how to improve the security of web apps.

Prevent Sniffing

Browsers are fantastic pieces of technology that try to make the life of users as comfortable as possible. However, the balance between ease of use and security may sometimes tip on the former to the latter’s detriment. For example, if an HTTP response doesn’t set the content type, the browser may try to infer it:

Source de l’article sur sap.com

24 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

Nomination d’Olivier Nollent au poste de Managing Director de SAP France

Actualités, ERP & Applications, SAP

Levallois-Perret, le 21 juillet 2022. SAP annonce la nomination d’Olivier Nollent au poste de Managing Director de SAP France. Olivier Nollent reporte à Rohit Nagarajan, Président EMEA North de SAP.

Olivier Nollent dirigera l’activité de l’une des plus importantes filiales commerciales de SAP, leader mondial des logiciels d’entreprise. Il aura pour mission :

de renforcer les synergies avec les clients, ainsi qu’avec l’écosystème de partenaires, dans leurs grands enjeux de transformation numérique (gestion de l’expérience, gestion intelligente des dépenses, réduction de l’empreinte sur l’environnement…), et d’innovation (intelligence artificielle, big data, blockchain…) grâce à ses technologies avancées et ses centres de R&D (SAP Labs) et avec son accélérateur de startups SAP.iO basé en France.
de poursuivre la croissance de SAP en France via le développement de ses activités Cloud auprès des grands comptes et des PME. Il s’appuiera à cet effet sur l’expertise du Groupe dans les domaines des logiciels ERP, Analytics, Supply Chain Management, RH et de gestion de l’expérience client, ainsi que sur le plus large portefeuille de solutions modulaires disponibles sur site, Cloud ou hybrides.

Olivier est diplômé de l’INSEEC et a débuté sa carrière chez HP, puis a passé 13 années chez Microsoft où il a occupé avec succès plusieurs rôles de direction commerciale, jouant un rôle clé dans la transition de l’entreprise vers le Cloud.

En avril dernier, après 5 années chez Salesforce, il rejoint SAP en tant que Senior Vice President Industries.

Son expérience des grands acteurs du secteur, sa solide expertise dans le développement des business de la Tech et son leadership éprouvé auprès de grandes organisations commerciales sont autant d’atouts pour accompagner la dynamique de croissance de SAP France.

Gérald Karsenti reste Président du Conseil d’Administration, assurant la direction générale de l’entreprise. Il accompagnera également Olivier Nollent dans sa transition vers son nouveau poste, en consolidant la notoriété de SAP sur le marché et en cultivant les relations avec ses clients et son écosystème.

The post Nomination d’Olivier Nollent au poste de Managing Director de SAP France appeared first on SAP France News.

21 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

Release Management for Microservices: Multi vs. Monorepos

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Imagine a microservice application consisting of dozens of continuously-deployed autonomous services. Each of the application’s constellation of services has its own repository, with a different versioning scheme and a different team continually shipping new versions.

Riddle me this: How can I tell the (whole) application’s version? Being that the change history is scattered among dozens of repositories, what’s the most efficient approach to keeping track of changes? And how do we manage application releases?

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

9 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

Building an E-Commerce API Using Nestjs, SQLite, and TypeORM

Introduction

Nestjs is a cutting-edge Node.js framework for developing server-side applications that are efficient, dependable, and scalable. It is simple to integrate with NoSQL and SQL databases such as MongoDB, Yugabyte, SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, and others. It supports popular object-relational mappers such as TypeORM Sequelize and Mongoose.

In this tutorial, we’ll create an e-commerce application with SQLite and TypeORM. We’ll also look at Arctype, a powerful SQL client and database management tool.