April 2017 - Intech

5 ways a cloud-based email solution saves you time

Posted on April 25, 2017August 3, 2022 by Intech Systems

Email continues to be one of the most popular communication methods for businesses, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. With email taking the lead in business communications, you need to ensure your business is set up for success. Here are five ways how cloud-based email can save time for both your IT department and users.

1. Eliminate hardware or solution maintenance

Moving your email to the cloud means no more attention wasted on onsite servers. Additionally, migration and continuous software updates can help decrease (or even eliminate) maintenance-related downtime. Without the need for on-premises hardware upkeep, your IT team has more time to take on other projects.

2. Avoid costly downtime

Every moment your email is down costing your company in a number of ways. With onsite email solutions, updates, scaling, and other threats could potentially lead to downtime. In 2016, unplanned outages cost companies up to $2.4 billion, according to research by the Ponemon Institute. That’s more than double the cost in 2010. The top three factors costing your company during downtime? Business disruption lost revenue and reduced employee productivity, the report states.

3. Seamless integration means more efficiency

Don’t let your teams get stuck with clumsy servers and cumbersome integration processes. An integrated email solution saves time and energy for your employees. Additionally, cloud-based email has rapid application delivery. This, as a result, helps ensure that business processes remain efficient.

4. Easily scale and update

Cloud email solutions provide you with the ability to quickly scale and update—saving your IT team a lot of headaches. Companies that migrate to cloud-based email see the benefits of standardized and automated functionality. You then don’t have to worry about the updates as they are automated and up-to-date.

5. Better security and compliance

For many industries and businesses, security and compliance are vital to ensure trust and help follow strict regulations. Unfortunately, maintaining high-security standards and adhering to compliance regulations takes much time and hinders productivity when managing it on your own. Effective cloud-based secure email solutions help organizations comply with global, regional and industry-specific requirements. In addition, applications stay up-to-date with evolving privacy compliance standards.
In conclusion, all of this is simplified into one huge benefit: increased productivity—which can save your company time and money.

This post was originally published by Microsoft in Office Blogs and has been updated with minor edits for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Checklist to make your business GST ready

Posted on April 12, 2017August 3, 2022 by Intech Systems

Intech’s ERP Solutions – Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics NAV are GST ready. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has formally approved all the GST laws. The GST is expected to be implemented by end of July 2017.
With GST now in place, it is time for you to ensure you catch up to speed and seamlessly adapt it in your business as other taxes such as VAT, Excise, service tax, etc. will disappear giving way to one single Tax. GST would bring in significant changes to business processes. Depending on the operating size, geographies, and sector, the changes would be substantial and may require proactive planning with a time-bound action plan.
To make it a point that you’re GST ready, Look into this checklist to see if your business is geared up for this change:

1. Understand your business process in GST scenario and classify which transactions are goods and services.

These transactions will be most affected by GST. Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) model of taxation has been adopted for interstate transactions where Center would levy IGST which would be CGST plus SGST. Make sure that you thoroughly understand and bifurcate your transactions. This will help you in understanding the overall impact of GST on your business.

2. Classify your transactions under goods and services, and place of provisions

After classifying the goods and services related transactions, recognize which provisions will be applicable to them. GST is a just broad topic which comprise of many provisions for various goods and services. These provisions differ with location, industry and type of commodity. Thus, identifying what will be applicable to your business beforehand will take you a step further in GST compliance.

3. Define the change in business in stages of pre, during and post manufacturing

GST is surely going to change almost all your processes – be it manufacturing, trade or supply chain. Reorganized manufacturing plants and warehouses would reduce the primary freight charges. GST would eliminate the existing penalties on interstate sales transactions and facilitate the consolidation of vendors and suppliers. Before GST sets in, make a calculation of how your various functions are going to change and operate.

4. Understand your logistics model – depot and branches.

GST is a destination based tax. There will be a greater impact on logistics and the charges/taxes levied. After GST implementation, your warehousing and logistics decision will be based on economic efficiency such as costs and locational advantages vis-a-vis key customers. You may have to strategize your supply management strategies in a manner that minimizes cash flow impact.

5. Define your sales policies – schemes, discounts and returns

Should you charge GST to your customers on the items or services you provide? Would your pricing still be competitive? All such questions are going to affect the selling price of your goods and service, discounts and returns you provide to your customers and other such pricing policies. Defining your sales policies in compliance with GST will help you maintaining your profit levels and customers.

6. Review your contracts – Amendment to current POs

Though GST is still few months away, make sure that you make the required amendments in your current POs and contracts. It is advisable to define the terms and conditions to meet GST requirements. will make your work easier in the future.

7. Review your suppliers – nature of goods, place of supply, contractual terms

Contract terms, not only with your customers but also with your suppliers need to be revised. With GST regime, the supply chain network design would be more flexible. GST would lead to club many small warehouses and have bigger, fewer, and highly efficient warehouses. Thus, changes have to be made in contracts with your current suppliers at various places. Make sure that you review your suppliers, what and where they supply and the mutual contracts.
Given the sparsity of time, being at the cutting edge of technology is now the only way to adopt this change smoothly. Want your business to be GST ready? Our team is here to help you navigate this change.

6 signs that your business needs Exchange Online

Posted on April 6, 2017August 3, 2022 by Intech Systems

Free email providers are mushrooming everywhere. Such free email solutions might look lucrative at first but as your business grows, you need a more sophisticated solution. The business email requirements of a growing company are much different than those of a small start-up. But how do you know when you have grown beyond the capabilities of your free email service?
Whether you are using a local email service provider or a well-known one, there are some signs that indicate your business has outgrown free email. Exchange Online comes with those features which are for every business size and yet comparable to local email service in terms of cost. So, do away with the troubles of managing your email data and server as everything is on cloud!
When in doubt whether to continue with a freebie and much ado or go with a standard email provider and hassle-free operations, take into account these six capabilities. These are the important capabilities you need now (or in the future) to ensure your business is not affected just because of an email solution.

Needing any one of these capabilities is an indication that it’s time to consider moving from a free to a paid email solution:

Security – The very first thing you need from an email provider is security. You don’t want your emails to get hacked or read by someone else. If you remain in constant fear of security breach, you need a more sophisticated solution that offers increased, enterprise-class security capabilities.
Storage – Your business is running smoothly and then one day, you can no more use the email as you used to. Why? Your storage has reached its maximum capacity and it needs upgradation. Storage space should never cause you to delete or change how you use your email. On the contrast, Exchange Online is offering large stores of data.
Tools – Free email services don’t provide robust inbox and user-management tools. Exchange Online offers a range of features for managing users and extensive rules for managing your inbox. As a result, you spend less time managing your inbox and more time managing your business.
Custom domain names – Using a custom domain is an important aspect of businesses. Custom domains will give your business a professional touch. For example, “yourname@yourcompany.com” has a lot more credibility than “yourcompany@domain.com.” Free email services do provide custom domains but not without security threats. They use shared hosting of multiple business emails on a single server.
Data – When you are using a free email service, you don’t own and manage your email data. This leads to giving them rights to mine your data and send you ads. With Exchange Online, be sure that you don’t get distracted by irrelevant ads and are focused on business.
File sharing – Need to share files and collaborate securely with your team? Exchange Online enables team-based collaboration and sharing without putting confidential company information at risk.

Exchange Online offers your growing business increased security, enhanced customization and a variety of features and capabilities to improve collaboration – on Cloud. Not only will this keep your company running smoothly, your IT team will no longer spend time on administering and managing the data.

Month: April 2017