Fortinet Secure SD-WAN Ensures User Experience Across 3,000 Branch Offices

Customer Perspectives

An organization’s continued growth depends on their vision and roadmap to expand business opportunities, and this is especially true in the financial services industry. And with expansion, comes the immediate need to implement solutions that meet the demands of business-critical applications rapidly shifting to the cloud, while preserving a strong security posture at all edges. Organizations have understood the cost effectiveness of moving away from MPLS to cheaper and more effective alternatives such as broadband and LTE for some time now, but this has not exactly solved the problem of achieving the best user experience with visibility and control into their network performance. 

Large distributed enterprises with thousands of branch offices need reliable and secure connectivity from home to branch to data center to cloud. There is an urgent need for digital innovation to address challenges such as a lack of centralized control, poor real-time application performance with traditional routing technologies, and security. They require quick deployment and change management enabled with automation to translate their business intent to effective business policies and deliver exceptional application performance while maintaining business continuity. 

With a single dedicated WAN link at every one of their 3,000 branch locations, one large financial services organization began experiencing poor application performance that had a severe impact on their workforce and customer experience with business-critical financial applications. Security measures for centralized inspection and cloud access were implemented in their data centers, which forced branch traffic to be backhauled. These factors put tremendous strain on bandwidth and performance across their dedicated MPLS circuits, and the clear solution was to move away from MPLS to multiple direct internet access with a secure, reliable, and consolidated WAN Edge. Consolidation also meant complete visibility into all their applications, improved network performance that extends to branch/LAN networks for easy management and troubleshooting while also simplifying the network infrastructure, reduced OPEX + CAPEX costs, and accelerated cloud access.

Financial Service Organization Expands Business Opportunities 

With several SD-WAN vendors vying for selection as part of their proof of concept trials, this organization was quick to discover that Fortinet’s robust Secure SD-WAN solution differentiated itself by providing a fully integrated solution that combined business agility, optimal connectivity, strong security, and best user experience into a single form factor that was easy to deploy and manage. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is also able to provide WAN Edge consolidation with integrated self-healing SD-WAN and security on the industry’s best-performing appliance and centralized management extending to the branch network. Fortinet was the only solution that proved this organization could replace their legacy routers, poorly performing security solutions, and MPLS circuits with a single vendor to solve their infrastructure needs to ensure business continuity, improve application performance, and simplify branch management.

Key Benefits of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

A few of the key benefits and immediate business outcomes provided by Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution include:

  • Self-healing Capabilities to Achieve Exceptional User Experience: Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solved their need for traffic steering based on application policy and network SLA such as packet loss, jitter, and latency to achieve best user experience for their business applications designed to handle critical customer financial transactions. With a compact desktop form factor offered with the FortiGate 50E series, they were able to replace MPLS circuits with dual high bandwidth broadband circuits that can effectively forward traffic in an active-active fashion and transform their infrastructure to self-heal with SD-WAN remediation capabilities and deliver optimal application performance across all branch offices.
  • Reliable Connectivity for Business Continuity: This organization required reliable connectivity for their real-time application traffic, used extensively for companywide collaboration and customer service. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN’s ability to enable branch-to-branch VPN connectivity at scale and detect SLAs ensured the voice/video traffic were forwarded on the best available, highest performing, and lowest latency path to achieve best quality of experience. 
  • Cloud On-Ramp for Accelerated Cloud Access: They also required secure cloud access for compute and business applications hosted on AWS across their branch offices. Fortinet’s integrated NGFW and one touch connectivity to AWS virtual WANs enabled accelerated access to critical business applications on direct internet links, while ensuring a strong security posture. 
  • Ease of Management with Consolidation and Simplification from the WAN to LAN Edge: Prior to implementation, this organization experienced longer troubleshooting cycles due to limited visibility into their LAN and applications during their network outages. This also meant significant delays for their customer transactions, support and services. Fortinet’s centralized management and control offered with FortiManager enabled their IT staff to handle change management from WAN to LAN in a matter of days. Advanced analytics and telemetry offered both in real-time and historical via FortiAnalyzer allowed quick resolution cycles and IT staff to spend more cycles on digital innovations. 
  • Leveraging Fortinet Secure SD-Branch to Ensure Branch Office Security Without Impeding Productivity: By implementing Fortinet Secure SD-Branch at their remote locations, this organization gained complete visibility and control across their entire digital attack surface and was able to extend the benefits of the Fortinet Security Fabric to their distributed branch locations. Further, with branch-to-branch VPN connectivity at scale, this financial service organization enabled secure connectivity without impeding productivity for employees. 

Take a security-driven approach to networking to improve user experience and simplify operations at the WAN edge with Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution.

Read these customer case studies to see how De Heus and Burger King Brazil implemented Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN to alleviate network complexity, increase bandwidth, and reduce security costs.

Engage in our Fortinet user community (Fuse). Share ideas and feedback, learn more about our products and technology, or connect with peers.

As Fortinet partners, Net Universe offers all Fortinet devices and subscriptions with worldwide Delivery Services.
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Security groups help manage groups used for security and access control

What’s changing 

We’re making security groups available in beta. Security groups help you easily regulate, audit, and monitor groups used for permission and access control purposes. They enable admins to: 

  • Apply a label to any existing Google Group to distinguish it from email-list groups. 
  • Provide strong guarantees that: 
    • External groups (owned outside your organization) and non-security groups cannot be added as a member of a security group. 
    • Security labels, once assigned to a group, cannot be removed. 
Soon, you’ll be able to use more granular admin roles to separate administration of security and non-security groups. Keep an eye on the G Suite Updates blog for an announcement when that rolls out. 

Who’s impacted 

Admins and developers 

Why you’d use it 

Groups are used in a variety of ways. This can include groups that help teams communicate and collaborate, as well as groups that control access to important apps and resources. Security groups can help customers manage these categories of groups differently to increase their overall security posture. 

For example, if you have compliance or regulatory requirements for managing access control, you may have set up naming conventions to keep track of which groups were used for this purpose. With security groups, you can now assign a security label to these groups and more easily manage them without having to use workarounds like naming conventions. 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now for all users in beta. 

Availability 

  • Available to all G Suite customers 

Resources 


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New device management API now generally available

Quick launch summary 

Earlier this year, we announced that a new API to manage company-owned and personal mobile devices and desktop devices was available in beta. Now, we’re making that API generally available. There are no changes to the new API since we launched the beta. 
The new Devices API enables you to manage mobile and desktop devices within your organization. It is intended to fully replace the existing Mobiledevices endpoint of the Admin SDK Directory API, and provides some significant additional functionality as described below. The Mobiledevices endpoint (aka “old API”) will continue to be supported. 

The device management API implements the following new functionality not found in the Mobiledevices endpoint of the Directory API: 

  • Support for desktop devices 
  • Add company owned devices to the device inventory 
  • Manage company-owned devices inventory 
  • Manage desktop device inventory 
  • Ability to manage devices under all management modes (Fundamental, Basic or Advanced) 
  • Create and manage custom state with each user account on a device. This custom state can be used in making context-aware access decisions. 

In addition, the following main functionality from the older API is also available in the new API: 

  • Manage BYOD inventory for Android and iOS devices 
  • Manage organizational user accounts on devices 
  • Devices under Basic or Advanced management can be managed 
  • Perform actions such as wipe on devices and organizational user accounts on devices 
  • Search devices and organizational user accounts on devices 

Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all G Suite customers 

Resources 


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Adding present and chat Meet moderator capabilities for education users

What’s changing

We’re giving hosts (meeting creators and calendar owners) of G Suite for Education meetings new meeting safety controls to manage who can share their screen and who can send chat messages within the meeting.

Who’s impacted

End users

Additional details

Manage who can share their screen

To control who can share their screen in a meeting, hosts can turn “Share their screen” on or off. By default, this setting will be on.

When “Share their screen” is on, participants will see the option to share their screen to all meeting participants.

When “Share their screen” is off:

  • Only the host can share their screen.
  • The option to “Present now” won’t show for participants.

Hosts can turn “Share their screen” on or off from within meetings on the web. Hosts will not see the option to change this setting on mobile devices.

Manage who can send in-meeting chat messages

To control who can send chat messages in a meeting, hosts can turn “Send chat messages” on or off. By default, this setting will be on.

When “Send chat messages” is on, participants will see the option to send chat messages to meeting participants.

When “Send chat messages” is off:

  • Only the host can send chat messages, but participants will still be able to see messages sent by the host.
  • Messages sent when “Send chat messages” was on will still show in the chat history.

Hosts can turn “Send chat messages” on or off from within meetings on the web. Hosts will not see the option to change this setting on mobile devices.

Moderator controls for who can share their screen
Moderator controls for who can send chat messages
If you’re unable to turn the features on or off, it’s possible that you have a Chrome extension for Meet which is preventing the features from working. To fix the issue, try turning your Meet Chrome extensions off.

Getting started

Admins: There are no admin controls for these features.

Rollout pace 

Availability

  • Available to all G Suite for Education and G Suite Enterprise for Education customers
  • Not available to G Suite Essentials, G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, and G Suite for Nonprofits customers

Resources

Roadmap


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See read receipts on direct messages in Google Chat

Quick launch summary

No sooner than October 5, you’ll be able to see when your Google Chat direct messages have been seen. This will only apply in active chat windows for one-on-one conversations on Android, iOS, and the web. In these messages, you’ll see the avatar of the person you’re chatting with to the right of the last message they’ve seen.

See when your Google Chat message has been read
Read receipts will show a sender when a message has been read by the recipient or if the recipient has replied to a message from a notification. Read receipts won’t be visible in group messages or rooms.

This feature was previously available in classic Hangouts and is now available in Google Chat.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all G Suite customers


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Part 1 – Sophos News

Threat Detection and Response (TDR) is a methodology that enables security operators to detect attacks and neutralize them before they cause disruption or become a breach.

In this first of a series of articles on the topic, we’ll be taking a step-by-step look at what TDR is all about, from the key components and investigative process, to why it matters. Subsequent articles will go through components in more detail.

Why do we need it?

It is increasingly difficult for cybersecurity teams to identify, investigate and act on cyber threats across operating environments and to do so effectively and efficiently.

As the threat landscape has evolved, adversaries have become stealthier, implementing advanced evasion techniques to avoid detection by security technologies. They are also making widespread use of native operating system tools, or open source or freeware attack tools, which enable them to undertake their malicious activity without alerting the cybersecurity team.

Such attacks are often directed by human operators, able to test and try different options and move quickly in unexpected directions if they encounter an obstacle.

Threat hunters and analysts uncover these hidden adversaries by looking for suspicious events, anomalies and patterns in everyday activity and investigating them to see if they are malicious.

Their human insight is complemented by automated security intelligence technologies including AI-guided detection. Together, they form a strong line of defense in a layered next-generation security system.

Threat hunters and analysts don’t stop at finding the threat, they work with colleagues to mitigate and neutralize it. This is TDR.

The TDR framework

Cybersecurity borrows heavily from military concepts and TDR is no exception. For instance, the Sophos investigative framework for threat hunting and response is based on the military concept known as the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

This framework enables threat hunters and analysts to work in a consistent, structured way and ensure nothing is overlooked.

  • Observe: what do you see in the data?
  • Orient: what is the context, the behavior, how does it map against known attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)?
  • Decide: is it malicious, suspicious, or benign?
  • Act: mitigate, neutralize, and re-enter the loop

In applying the framework stages, threat hunters and analysts build up a picture of what is happening inside the environment, determining whether it is malicious, and what action needs to be taken.

The five core components of TDR

There are five key components of TDR that underpin the various stages of the framework. Let’s consider each of them more closely.

1. Prevention

The first, and most important thing to do is to strengthen your defenses to prevent attackers from being able to penetrate your network.

Effective prevention involves knowing where your critical data and compute resources (the infrastructure that provides processing capabilities) live on the network and ensuring they are protected with competent security technologies that offer an array of protection options.

It is vital that you configure the technology properly; regularly and promptly apply updates; and tightly manage access controls, as all this will significantly limit the attack surface.

Having robust prevention technologies in place also reduces the number of security alerts that are generated on a daily or even hourly basis.

With fewer alerts to wade through, the security team is better able to spot and focus on the signals that matter.

2. Collection of security events, alerts and detections

Data is the fuel that powers threat hunting and analysis: without the right type, volume, and quality of signals it is incredibly difficult for security operations teams to accurately identify potential indicators of attack.

Yet data absent context complicates the analyst’s conviction decision. Without meaningful metadata associated to the signal, the analyst will have a harder time determining if the signals are malicious or benign.

The most common methods for collecting and reviewing security data are as follows:

Event-centric

The classic example of an event-centric approach is security incident and event management (SIEM).

SIEMs ingest and aggregate data points, such as log files, from different sources across the network. It is up to the SIEM operators to understand the context, determine what to filter, what to create correlation logic around and attempt to minimize and manually curate the data so they don’t overwhelm the investigation team, while balancing the miss-rate (also known as ‘false negatives’, where an actual threat is not detected as such).

Threat-centric

In this model, signals are prioritized and used to programmatically create cases that are reviewed by analysts. In addition, threat hunts are performed based on intelligence trends and an attack hypothesis (see component (4), Investigation, below).

Signals need to be prioritized based on how actionable or useful they are for investigations and should indicate adversarial tactics, techniques and procedures (see component (4)).

Signals that more commonly result in the identification of adversarial activity should take priority over those that do not.

To set the criteria by which signals are deemed worthy of investigation, different algorithms or machine learning models can be applied that look at things such as behavior, raw data, attack vector, attack method and so on.

Hybrid

This is a combination of both event-centric and threat-centric methods. It relies on speed to detect, investigate and respond to data from both sources, and to supplement threat-centric detections and any resultant cases with correlated data from other event and telemetry sources. This approach is used most effectively by mature security teams.

The advantages of external support as part of a hybrid model

Engaging an experienced external security team to help with data collection and detection frees up internal teams to be more strategic in their activity.

For instance, more time could be spent on enhancing prevention or reducing attack surfaces; or focusing on important business processes, applications, or assets, where the data and associated detections need to be customized and targeted.

External teams can also offer a wider perspective gained from defending a range of customers. They will have more experience with emerging threats and handling incidents that involve active adversaries.

Internal teams will know their environments better, but their “battlefield” experience will be less.

The important thing to remember is that the alerts themselves are not the endgame.

Often, you don’t initially know whether a signal is malicious or benign, and if it is malicious, where it fits in an attack sequence.

Are you seeing an alert at the beginning or in the middle of an attack? Did something happen prior to this event, or will something happen afterwards? You need to understand the context before deciding what course of action to take, if any.

3. Prioritization of the signals that matter

Threat detection is a critical component of security operations, but it is only the first of a multi-step, human-led process that includes validation, investigation (threat hunting) and threat response (neutralization).

It is important to remove friction between each of these activities. SIEMs and other log-based approaches typically lack the context needed to make well-informed decisions about where to focus attention, resulting in reduced time efficiency or even missed critical events.

To avoid being overwhelmed by data and failing to spot the items that warrant closer investigation, you need to be able to pinpoint the alerts that matter.

This is harder than it looks. The more you can improve signal-to-noise ratios by using a combination of context that only event producers can provide, together with automated and artificial intelligence, the better. Even with automation, it is not a simple process.

For instance, you need to be careful not to over-filter the data. In one case seen by our TDR team, a monthly log of two billion events revealed just three security incidents after all the filters had been applied.

4. Investigation

Once you have isolated the key signals, it is time to add insight, and to measure what you have discovered against industry frameworks and models to build towards a confidence threshold in the conviction of malicious or benign behavior.

These include the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a globally accessible knowledge base of known adversary tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), or Lockheed Martin’s Cyber Kill Chain model, which identifies the key steps adversaries attempt in order to achieve their objective.

This is the time to consider things such as:

  • Where you’re detecting the signal
  • Is this what you expected to see?
  • Are there repeated patterns in the signals that look unusual?
  • Is data moving in a typical direction or to a known/common device?
  • And more…

The aim is to understand not just whether the signal is indicative of an actual attack, but where in the attack sequence it falls. You want to block the attack as early in the threat chain as possible.

The outcome of the investigation will hopefully enable you to decide: (1) if the signal is a known or potential attack indicator, and (2) what the unfolding attack process is likely to be.

This provides you with a hypothesis for proactive threat hunting across the network: you can test ideas and assumptions and anticipate what might happen next, making it easier to find and block the threat at any stage of the attack.

5. Action

This is a big one. Once you’ve determined that you are dealing with a threat, you need to do two things – and they are equally important.

The first is to mitigate the immediate issue, while the second is to remember that you are probably only addressing a symptom of the attack, and still need to hunt down and neutralize the root cause. The first must be done without impairing your ability to do the second.

Sometimes it will be enough to quarantine a machine or to disconnect it from the network, while at other times the security team will need to go deep into a network to extract the tendrils of an attacker.

For instance, just because you’ve successfully blocked and removed malware from your system and stopped seeing the alert that put you onto it, this doesn’t mean the attacker has been eliminated from your environment.

Professional threat hunters who see thousands of attacks know when and where to look deeper. They look for what else attackers are doing, have done, or might be planning to do in the network – and neutralize that too.

We’ll be publishing further articles that dive deeper into the TDR methodology.

At Sophos, we design and build leading security products that can be managed by customers and partners, and solutions that fuse technology with service delivery where services can be consumed without interaction, through collaboration, or in notification-only mode.

This was by design, as organizations are at different levels of capabilities in their own security operations journeys and need their products and services to be flexible enough to meet them where they are – and grow with them to where they want to be.

For more information on how Sophos enables Threat Detection & Response (TDR) capabilities through our Managed Threat Response (MTR) offering, visit our website or speak with a Sophos representative.

If you prefer to conduct your own threat hunts, Sophos EDR gives you the tools you need for advanced threat hunting and security operations hygiene. Start a 30-day no-obligation trial today.

Net Universe offers all Sophos Devices and subscritpions also consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/sophos.

Keeping support executives on top of online order delivery issues

This is a guest post by Rohan Rinaldo Felix, Content strategist at LateShipment.com.

With unstoppable growth in online sales, what according to you is the single most important concern for every business?

Customer Experience.

But, as an online merchant, handing off your “order fulfillment” process to third-party shipping carriers means leaving the critical post-purchase experience in the hands of third-party vendors.

Parcel deliveries are more error-prone than shipping carriers admit. Customers who face delays with a brand tend to switch to a competitor for subsequent purchases. It doesn’t help that shipping carriers are notoriously opaque with data about delays, and even if some information is provided, details are scant.

An error-prone post-purchase phase combined with a lack of accountability on the part of your shipping carrier has severe consequences for your business. All the effort that went into providing a delightful on-site shopping experience is negated.

Your support team needs to take proactive steps to prevent or rectify post-purchase issues that impact customer experience and retention.

The post-purchase customer experience gap and its consequences  

While you might do everything right in terms of providing customers a memorable on-site experience up to checkout, once a parcel has been handed over to a shipping carrier, a third party, you lose control of the experience you offer.

Any customer anxiously awaiting their parcel expects you to ensure timely delivery. Pointing a finger at your shipping carrier after a delay doesn’t help.

How delivery issues impact your business

1. You lose loyal customers

2. Your brand reputation is hurt through negative online reviews and word-of-mouth that deters prospective customers.

To take control when these situations happen and prevent them from happening again, empower your support executives with a quality independent solution to proactively handle post-purchase customer issues.

Supercharge your customer support with the LateShipment.com and Zoho Desk integration

LateShipment.com is an independent Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform that makes it possible for support executives to gain visibility into in-transit parcels and proactively engage with and delight customers in the post-purchase parcel-delivery phase.

The LateShipment.com integration for Zoho Desk has a variety of use cases to address the pain points of your remote customer support team. Here are some of them:

As a customer support executive, I often have to respond to anxious customers because their parcels are delayed. If it were possible for me to have visibility into issues before customer impact, I would be better able to handle such situations.

Anxiety while awaiting parcels is very and common. LateShipment.com lets you strategically respond to anxious shoppers by providing you unprecedented visibility into in-transit parcels across over 40 carriers in real-time within its interface.

Using the real-time information on offer, it is possible to address delivery issues before customer impact: a capability that can provide you a definite edge over competitors.

In order to afford you a broad overview of the parcels in transit for the day, they are intuitively categorized based on status. Views like Today’s Expected Deliveries, Predicted Delays, Failed Deliveries, and In-Transit with Delays help you get up-to-speed quickly. You can also view additional categories such as Returned Shipments, Damaged Shipments, and Just Shipped.


As a customer support executive, my job would be easier if it were possible for me to proactively take action from within my help desk to fix late deliveries before customer impact.

LateShipment.com’s intelligent algorithms are capable of predicting delivery delays well before the fact. Enabling the integration automatically triggers delivery-related tickets to be preemptively pushed to Zoho Desk from LateShipment.com.

The integration allows you to have seven types of tickets triggered and automatically sent to Zoho Desk for issues including In-Transit with Delays, Delayed Deliveries, and Returned. This will afford you enough time to deal with issues in the post-purchase phase before your customers even know of them!


I am required to ensure parcels reach customers on time. However, I find relatively uncommon situations like weather-related exceptions and the COVID-19 pandemic challenging because I am unable to inform specific customers in time that their parcels will be delayed.

Uncommon situations like the current COVID-19 pandemic or weather-related exceptions can disrupt logistics operations as many distribution centers are inactive. This necessitates empathetic communication from support executives to inform impacted customers in time.

Alongside Zoho Desk, LateShipment.com makes it possible to reach out through customizable emails to specific customers whose orders are facing delays and keep them informed of revised timelines for delivery. A coupon code for a subsequent purchase could be added to such an email, an action that can make a positive impact on an affected customer and turn a challenging situation around.


I receive a high volume of WISMO (Where Is My Order) calls from anxious customers who are in the dark about the whereabouts of their parcels. I’d be able to focus on more critical support tasks with a scalable way to inform customers of parcel status. 

WISMO calls are a hassle for support executives. They steal away time from addressing critical product-related issues.

LateShipment.com helps you address this situation by making it possible to send automated email and SMS updates to customers on the completion of standard shipping events like Shipped, Out for delivery, Attempted, and Delivered.

The post-purchase phase is a part of the customer journey that is often neglected. Consequently, it ends up being a weakness for businesses. Fortunately, businesses can regain control of it by proactively resolving delivery-related issues through top-quality customer support and automation. Taking charge of the post-purchase experience increases customer retention and lifetime value.

Try LateShipment.com for Zoho Desk


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4 benefits of embedded analytics, and the success stories to prove it

Today, embedded analytics has moved from a “good to have” luxury to a “must have” necessity for solution providers. Analytics can be a key differentiator for data-driven businesses to stand out in a highly competitive marketplace, especially when companies are now facing a major challenge to retain customers and sustain revenue flow.

We had discussed earlier about the criteria to look out for in an embedded analytics solution. In this blog, we’ll talk about the four key benefits that businesses can derive from embedded analytics, plus some examples of just how successful this approach can be.

4 benefits of embedded analytics, and the success stories to prove it

 Increase in customer engagement and usage 

With the rise of digitisation, there has been an explosion in business use of analytics. Though the number of users with access to self-service analytics tools has increased, the percentage of those who take full advantage of their capabilities is far less. Embedded analytics integrates BI & Analytics within the core business workflow that significantly increases the utility and adoption of the combined solution.

It happened for our customer, Peri CRM, who embedded Zoho Analytics—white labeled as Peri Analytics—into their CRM offering, and saw increased traction among their customers, who invariably had BI needs. To put it in actual numbers, one out of six of their customers started using Peri Analytics, and there was a 50% increase in customer engagement after Peri partnered with Zoho.

I took a detailed demo and I was sold on acquiring the solution right away because of two reasons: 1. A product company was talking to me like a service company 2. With my experience in fiddling with data, I was able to churn out amazing output on the very first day.  
– Harsh Kohli
Founder, Peri CRM  

Gain a competitive advantage   

A key impact of embedded analytics is value addition that brings about a unique selling proposition (USP) to the existing product/solution offering. Infusing advanced analytics into users’ workflows makes it more comprehensive—users may no longer balk when encountering an obstacle in their workday. Instead, they’re provided with relevant insights that help to resolve their problem and move forward with ease.Such deep and contextual integration of insights, enables the solution provider to carve out a positive impression amongst its customers and build it as a niche advantage in the marketplace.

Catalyst Inc., a global supply chain management (SCM) consultancy needed a white label BI and analytics solution within their inventory management offering to provide performance insights. They decided to embed Zoho Analytics, which enabled the creation of a centralized tool to manage and compare the supply chain performance of their customers. It also offered ad-hoc self-service BI capabilities to access deep insights that delivered a competitive advantage to its customers.

We have been looking for two years, for a reporting tool that can sit on top of our replenishment system. Most of the stuff was built for really technical people. I decided to check if Zoho has something and found the brand-new Zoho Analytics. Within 15 minutes . we found the tool, imported the data and had everything looking the way we wanted.Also they got us a private white-labeled solution ready within one month. That was unbelievable.
Dan Craddock 
Co-founder, Catalyst

 Drive revenue growth 

As discussed earlier, with embedded analytics, the data generated out of business activities can be utilized better—the value it adds creates opportunities for additional revenue.

 A common goal for business applications/suites is to upsell; encourage customers to buy added functionalities over time. By adding embedded analytics to the suite, the revenue for the provider increases, and there’s one more choice available to customers for tailoring their experience.

 A leading US telecom vendor added revenue of $3-4 million by augmenting their network services offering with a Zoho Analytics white-label solution. The solution was a portal embedded with analytics & BI module that tracks and provides deep insights on their customers’ network performance in real time. Notably, this solution was also successfully applied to a government customer who used analytics both on-premises and in the cloud.

Real-time decision-making

At the heart of every business decision is an inference made from data, visualized through reports and dashboards which are shared, presented, and discussed collaboratively. This decision-making experience can become much easier with embedded analytics, which eliminates toggling between applications and allows users to analyze, evaluate, and share insights with the same context. The result? Decision-making made faster, and done in real time.

 Theometrics Consulting, a specialist in data analytics consulting, ended up with Zoho Analytics as their preferred white label analytics partner after trying other leading products in the market. They offer embedded BI solutions using Zoho Analytics. The advantage for their clients is that they can quickly get the right data within minutes. These self-service analytics capabilities also provide autonomy to their end users to do their own analysis, create reports, and make decisions.

Thanks to Zoho Analytics, we can combine all types of data to be able to manage them. Prior to the use of  Zoho Analytics, we had worked with the main tools in the market, such as QlikView, IBM Cognos, Business Objects. However, we realised that before knowing Zoho Analytics, we had never found a tool that was so easy to use.
Jonathan Theodose,
Director, Theometrics Consulting

We at Zoho provide deep embedded analytics solutions with white labelling, both for on-premises and cloud models. You can reach out to us to learn more about the solutions we offer.

Net Universe offers all Zoho subscritpions and consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/zoho.

How to better manage employees during the new normal

The COVID-19 crisis has changed HR management completely. Some organizations are still trying to identify the best balance between working from home and working in their offices. Other organizations are planning to reopen as soon as governments relax their stay-at-home orders. Either way, it’s necessary to align your HR operations with the “new normal.” Running your business the way it was run before the pandemic might put your employees in needless danger.

Role of HR in the new normal

Every stage of the employee journey, right from recruitment to offboarding, should be conducted in a way that is consistent with safety guidelines. Here’s how you can adjust each process to create a safer workplace:

If your organization is hiring, determine any vital areas of your business that have been impacted by COVID-19. This will help you to understand what skills you need from potential employees. Conduct virtual interviews until you can be sure about the candidate’s health status.

If you are working from the office, onboarding can be conducted normally. However, it might be a good idea to ask new hires to do a medical screening. If you are working from home, virtual onboarding is the only option. New to virtual onboarding? Check out our detailed infographic to learn more.

It’s good to conduct online learning and development programs for a while to keep your employees motivated without compromising their safety. Using a Learning Management System makes online learning organized, interesting, and engaging.

During these unprecedented times, keeping your employees engaged should be your top priority. If they’re working remotely, work on strengthening communication, collaboration, and employee recognition. If your employees are working from the office, it might be prudent to keep digital collaboration tools in place to promote social distancing. No matter the scenario, try to be more understanding and flexible.

Continuous performance reviews yield better results than having a single annual review. They allow employees to voice the concerns that are holding them back as they come up, and employers can provide valuable feedback to better motivate their workers. Continuous reviews give employees a chance to define and focus on short-term goals.

Offboarding, especially during this time, should be made smooth for your employees. This is a difficult time to be out of work. Be compassionate, and involve your IT and legal teams to ensure compliance.

Read more about the role of HR in the new normal.

Net Universe offers all Zoho subscritpions and consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/zoho.

Quickly add a contact into a Gmail message on Android

Quick launch summary

Gmail users on Android can now automatically add a contact to the “To” line of an email by typing “+” or “@” in the body of the email and then choosing the contact’s name from the list that appears.

This feature was previously available on the web.

Getting started

Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.

End users: This feature will be ON by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sending messages in Gmail.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all G Suite customers

Resources


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