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Essential Enterprise Software Solutions To Integrate With Your Business
As an entrepreneur, one does not have to think much about investing in comprehensive software tools when the business is in its initial phases.
13:42 11 June 2021
The first few phases usually don’t require you to invest in specialized software and automation simply because the workload is not too overwhelming.
However, as your business reaches a certain size, the processes become too complex and time-consuming, and it becomes difficult to manage every process manually. That’s where quality software tools that are on the enterprise level come in handy.
This article lists a few solid software options that you should consider integrating with your business.
ETL Software
Every business that is successful is bound to grow. However, with growth comes the increased amount of data coming from various different sources.
There is virtually no practical alternative to good ETL software for extracting and processing the gathered data to make it available and useful for analytics and other applications.
The benefits that ETL software brings with it are numerous. First of all, ETL has the ability to ensure that business users have fast access to huge amounts of transformed and integrated data to inform their decision-making.
Since ETL tools perform most processing during data transformation and loading, the greatest portion of data is already ready for use by the time it’s loaded into the data store.
On top of that, good ETL tools have a graphical user interface (GUI) that makes it convenient for employees to create ETL processes with minimal technical knowledge.
Instead of dealing with SQL, Python, or Bash scripts, stored procedures, and other technologies, all your employees have to do is define rules and use a drag-and-drop interface to map the flows of data in a process.
When you are able to see each step between source systems and the data warehouse, you also have a greater understanding of the logic behind the data flow.
IP Address Geolocation Tool
You are probably wondering why exactly you would need to invest in a good IP API. Well, you’ll be happy to find out that an IP address geolocation tool can tell you a lot about your clients or customers.
A good IP API can provide you with important info about a certain IP address. This allows you to know a person’s country, city, state, province, local currency, latitude and longitude, company details, ISP, language, zip code, time zone, and so on.
An IP address carries an incredible amount of data that will be useful to your business. It is not only about geolocation, ASN, ISP, and domain information. Many IP intelligence companies process terabytes of data on a monthly basis to extract some even more important insights about users.
This tool can help your business do the following:
- Geo-target your customers - good for content personalization, geotargeting, geofencing, ad targeting, and digital rights management
- Target new audiences and expand your brand’s reach
- Content localization
- Autocompletion (for a better consumer experience)
ERP Software
The vast majority of businesses keep a database of customers, manage their inventory, process orders, and keep their books tidy using almost obsolete tools. They have no data flowing around because they don’t use a system of any kind.
This approach may still work, but it is, without a doubt, very dependent on the human factor. However, we all know humans are prone to making mistakes.
When your employees handle data manually, it may come with delays, it may have errors, and all of that will certainly lead to revisions and losses. That is not how big and successful businesses take care of their processes.
However, a good ERP system can be a new heart and brain for your company, creating a unified database that reduces the chance of errors. The data is entered once and can be used by employees in all departments.
The system is made of many modules, each of them digitizing a different area of your business:
- Accounting
- Inventory management
- Customer service
- Human resources
- Shipping
- Order management
Business Intelligence Platform
Business intelligence software can help your company get actionable insights based on data that comes from various different sources such as sales, marketing HR, manufacturing, and so on. A good BI platform uses data mining, benchmarking, and advanced statistical algorithms to uncover patterns and make accurate predictions.
To help you detect trends and patterns in huge amounts of data, BI systems rely on various graphs, charts, and tables. This covers almost everything you need to make better decisions without a background in statistics.
Businesses across many industries have made BI tools essential, including IT, healthcare, construction, and recruitment. Top BI tools vendors are Microsoft, Salesforce, and Tableau, just to name a few.
Enterprise Security Software
Unfortunately, every company is at risk of getting attacked by cybercriminals. And when you consider that only 5% of companies’ data is properly protected, it is time to sound the alarm.
You should not be a part of the larger group of companies that fail to keep their data safe with a proper enterprise security software solution.
Enterprise security software can come in many shapes and forms, but every tool of this kind is designed to protect businesses and end-users, preventing and remediating threats. This is the only way to keep the data safe from falling into the wrong hands.
This is why you need to do your best to find a good security tool that will keep your business safe from data theft, phishing attacks, and ransomware.
Failure to keep your data safe (and the data of your customers) could destroy everything you have fought so hard to build. But if you find a security software solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools and antivirus features, you will make your business cybercrime-proof.
Final Words
With great power comes great responsibility. The more your business grows, the more you will have to invest in every possible method to better its processes.
One investment of that kind includes your efforts and money provided for enterprise-level software solutions for your company. The tools listed in this article should help you get better insights, process data, and keep your business safe.