Are you a Growing business? It’s time to size up your Business Management Software

Businesses today, have grown beyond boundaries and deal with huge amounts of data that come from various channels. They have to handle a large operational force, manage complex supply chains, deal with multiple currencies, adhere to various regulatory bodies depending on the geographic location and manage customers from across the world. Is your business management software solution adding to your woes? The key to an efficient IT solution is to get a system that is easy to scale, caters to all your business requirements and most importantly stands the test of time. Unfortunately, solutions that got you to your current size may not be sufficient to power you through to the next level of growth. This is how SAP Business One can help you!

• The software presents you with a single accurate source for all the critical information in real-time that gives you a complete view of your business. You have all the critical information at your finger-tips.
• The CRM and eCommerce capabilities of the system keeps you informed across sales, financials and distribution.
• Generates workflow based alerts that trigger automatic responses for critical business events.
• The system can be easily scaled and adapted to suit every business niche and gives business owners the upper hand.
• Streamline your workflow by seamlessly integrating key business processes and recording accurate data eliminating any chance of discrepancy.

If supply chain management is a key factor to the success of your business the SAP Business One ERP solution is a sound investment. The system not only keeps you posted with all the necessary information, it makes it easier to make informed business decisions.

SAP Business One software helps you manage supply chain by:

• Optimizing production scheduling by taking into account the production data, warehousing necessities and the execution of quality assurance measures.
• Using the “Pull” strategy to balance material and capacity across extended supply networks.
• Employ supply chain visibility and sales forecast to guide and assign work for operators.
• Automates processes to remove errors and eliminate unwanted processes, thereby drastically reducing the cost of manufacture and logistics.
• Track and monitor inventory levels with contrast to customer purchase patterns.
• Facilitate better communication with vendors through electronic data sharing tools, thereby ensuring on time delivery.

In a recent article on supply chain sustainability, Patrick Burnson the executive editor for Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management Review magazines and mentioned that

“Supply chain management’s role in sustainability is becoming more key to strategic growth. The degree to which companies are in a position to respond to this call will to a great extent determine their future sustainability. Grappling with these issues will be the key challenge in the year ahead.”

He goes on to emphasize the importance of an efficient supply chain management system to boost the growth of your business. Take up the opportunity to give your business a complete management solution through the SAP Business One ERP solution.

Silver Touch globally has been a partner of SAP for over 5 years and has implemented over 90 solutions in 15+ industry verticals. Our services span across SAP Business One license procurement, implementation, installation, customization, training & support and integrating add-ons.

To leverage the most from SAP Business One and learn how your business can benefit from the technology, get in touch with our team. You can give us a ring at +44 – (0) 1277 364689 drop us an e-mail at info@silvertouchtech.co.uk

This article originally published at Silver Touch UK Blog here

Did you know that high-growth SMEs running ERPs have 11% lower operational costs?

Never before have the conditions been better for small and medium sized companies to grow. Not just the small, incremental growth — huge, unprecedented leaps forward. We are talking in terms of operational costs, better financial management, CRM and project management capabilities. Today, SMBs are found to generate vast amounts of business data and managing this data can be quite a challenge.

To take advantage of this opportunity, you’ll need access to technology that can simplify, manage, control and reduce risk. SAP Business One solutions help small and midsize businesses turn every data source into real business value — and more confident decisions. These affordable solutions are designed to work with your existing infrastructure and to scale with your business.

Here’s how we would implement the SAP based ERP to help you manage your business and focus on your goals.

Enhance visibility and collaboration across your business with data you can trust

Having the right kind of information at the right time can make all the difference between a well informed business decision and a hasty step. With the SAP Business One solution, we would be able to provide you with all the critical data across finance, customer operations and sales. All of this data would be made available company- wide in a single well integrated system eliminating any discrepancy. The system is designed to give you undivided visibility into the current status of your business and judge its performance.

Monitor, manage and improve financial performance in real time

The ERP provides you with a comprehensive set of tools that help manage and streamline your company’s financial operations. The system enables you to accurately manage cash flow, handle multicurrency transactions, track assets, monitor budgets and project costs. It also makes banking and reconciliation easy and quick. Effortlessly generate bank statements and manage payments through various channels – check, bank transfers and cash. The system automates every-day accounting tasks making it easy to maintain ledger, handle tax calculations, etc. Also, the tool helps create reports from real-time data to plan your business and audit reviews.

Drive sales and increase customer engagement at every channel

Customers are the core contributing factor to the success of any business. Today, companies identify Customer Relationship Management as one of their top priorities. A well integrated ERP system helps you handle the same in a systematic manner. Through SAP Business One solutions, we make managing the entire sales process and customer life cycle easy and efficient. The various tools enable you to track and manage sales opportunities right from the point of contact to closing. You can also create, analyze and manage marketing campaigns and asses its impact. The software stores all the customer data in one place and provides you with a dashboard to manage the same. You can also create detailed reports on the various aspects of sales such as pipeline tracking, sales forecasting and so on.

Innovate faster so you can get to the market faster

In order to make the most of your innovations, you should be able to get it to the markets before your competitors get there. For a business to come up with innovative solutions in their respective niche, they should be armed with all the necessary market research and data in a format that is easy to access and use. The SAP Business One Solution does exactly the same for you. It provides you with all the critical information across sales, finances, operations and customers integrated into one system enabling trouble-free access. The SAP Crystal reports software and SAP HANA empower the system to create robust Enterprise Resource Planning software that provides you with everything you need to catapult your business to greater heights.

Recent surveys show SAP to be ahead of the game with features like HANA that cater to niche functionality empowering businesses with a tool that fits like a glove. Hence, SAP Business One is the most comprehensive ERP tool to empower your business.

Silver Touch has been a partner with SAP for over 5 years and has to its credit over 90 solutions implemented across 15+ industry verticals. We know SAP Business one in and out and would be able to effortlessly integrate the system with your business model.

Call us at +44 – (0) 1277 364689 or drop us an e-mail at info@silvertouchtech.co.uk and our team would be happy to help you.

This article originally published at Silver Touch UK Blog here

10 Reasons why SAP Business One solutions is the best suited for SMEs

An efficient Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is like the backbone to any business establishment. It helps regulate work flow, manage resources and handle your finances in the most optimum manner. As the name ERP suggests, the system was initially designed to manage large scale enterprises but with SAP Business one solutions it’s a different story. SAP has successfully recognized the potential of a well-oiled business management system and adapted it to suit the needs   of small and midsize enterprises. Here are ten reasons why SAP Business One is best suited for the job.

Leadership – SAP has a long standing name and recognition in the IT market as one of the leading software providers across multiple industry verticals. Gartner’s magic quadrant for single instance ERP for product-centric midmarket companies showed SAP to be a “Leader.” Statistics go on to show the huge amount of trust that SME customers have placed on SAP. There are more than 199,500 SAP SME customers and this number is still growing. Of the customers using SAP Business One solutions 80 percent clients employ less than 50 users. A glance at the global presence of SAP goes on to emphasize the extend of its success – 120 countries, 25 industries, 30+ languages, 75 country offices and over 13000 partners worldwide!

Choice – Not every business management system gives you choices to fit the way you conduct your business. With SAP you can get just that and much more. At Silvertouch technologies, we use SAP to deliver a complete and integrated system in the way you want it.  With SAP you can choose between a packaged and customized system for your establishment. You can also choose between perpetual licenses or go for a subscription. In terms of deployment you have the freedom to choose between hosted, on premises, on device or an on demand deployment. This extend of flexibility is not easy to come by.

Industry – This is one of the biggest concerns that SMEs have when it comes to choosing an ERP system to empower their business.SAP has a standing recognition for excellence across 25 major industry verticals. The system boasts of over 1300+ industry specific solutions delivered through co-innovation with partners and customers. It also has one of the most competent built-in best practice supports. In the words of Scott Baker, IT manager, OraSure Technologies “Without the out-of-the-box SAP Best Practices packages and templates for the medical device industry, we wouldn’t have been able to implement our solution so quickly with so little customization.”

Time to value – In today’s competent markets, time is money. SAP solutions focus on helping you start fast and reap the benefits in just weeks. SAP business one is affordable and gives you the best solutions that fulfill all your requirements.  “Our SAP software gave us an out-of-the-box solution that helped us accomplish our business goals at a cost that a start-up could afford.” – Coy Wright, VP of IT, Pacific Drilling Services Inc. Innovative packaging awards customers with best-practice templates, pre-integrated applications and preconfigured processes that enable clients to make the best use of their time and resources. In terms of fast to value SAP ERP can be implemented within 2-12 weeks depending on the complexity and help transfer Business Intelligence in 1 day to 8 weeks.

Insight – Being able to analyze and assess your business proceedings at every step is crucial to making informed decisions. The SAP analytics solutions sorts out all your spreadsheets, reports and databases making this information readily available and easy to understand. In short it provides you with the insight required to back sound business decisions. You would be able to monitor your business closely in a very cost-efficient manner giving you better controls and making it easier to manage your resources.

Innovation - Innovation is the key to sustenance in this highly competitive market. As a leader in Research and Development investment SAP has been in the helm of various software products that empower businesses today. SAP has been constantly inspiring and acquiring companies that deliver innovation thereby giving its clients the best solutions for their business requirements. Over the years it has been co-innovating various solutions and technologies with customers and partners making SAP solutions a comprehensive destination for all your IT needs. To be more specific, current drives focus on mobility, cloud computing, rapid-deployment, analytics, in-memory computing and big data.

Growth – There is a constant need for technology to grow with the changing times. SAP is extremely flexible and is designed to adapt to new challenges as your business grows. The ERP system is highly scalable and has been proven to support as little as 10 users and as large as 1000 users. The system has functionalities that can handle and process transactions ranging from a few hundreds to a million. SAP business one solutions provide plenty options for adding fresh functionalities facilitating businesses to grow internationally by supporting various operational models. It also provides you with flexible configuration options giving you the choice of buying what you want as you need them.

Local – SAP can be used even in remote locations facilitating business owners the freedom to work and operate beyond boundaries. SAP solutions can be designed to meet both local and global business requirements in over 80 countries. With versions in more than 30 languages and 50 country specific versions SAP solutions for small and midsize enterprises are equipped to provide localized solutions with a global presence.

Ecosystem – The SAP ecosystem is designed to give clients the benefit of various choices and maximum resources. With a SAP developer network community that boasts of 2,000,000 members, it can give you the benefit of a rich choice of innovative solutions across multiple market domains. Such an extensive network of partners and customers expands the range of services, products and problem solving capabilities.

Silver touch technologies has been a partner with SAP for over 5 years and have successfully implemented over 90 solutions. We have been able to creatively support our clients across 15 + industry verticals providing them with the latest in technology. We specialize in SAP Business One license procurement, implementation, installation, customization, training & support and integrating add-ons.

To learn more about SAP solutions and how it can transform your business give us a call at +44 – (0) 127-736-4689 or drop us an e-mail at info@silvertouchtech.co.uk

This article originally published at Silver Touch Blog here

Challenges Retailers are Facing into Days Omni-Channel World!

The approach to retail marketing is changing. Success now lies in reaching customers through various channels-whether through stores or through e-Commerce sites. As technology continues to touch every step of the customer journey, retailers are ensuring that their marketing strategies are geared towards enabling customers to convert on any channel. They have realised that a customer who buys from them in-store as well as online, is valuable! The 2015 study by IDC, shows these customers have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who purchase using only one channel.

With customers buying across multiple channels, a seamless, consistent shopping experience has become important; from the way each channel looks, to the technology used to power them. Customers expect every touch point across the shopping experience to be consistent and convenient. But there is a gap between customers’ expectations and retailers’ capabilities. Retailers face a number of challenges in creating a truly omni-channel environment, including technical challenges, organisational silos between channels, and poor operational execution. Below listed are some of the major challenges faced by retailers to becoming an integrated omni-channel company.

Read More : https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk/blog/challenges-retailers-facing-days-omnichannel-world/

Business Management made Simpler with HANA for SAP Business One

SMEs face the problem of getting real-time access to their business information. They don’t have access to interactive reports that can help them and their employees operate in real-time to get updated data and accurate analysis. They are in need of a solution that can help them to make faster decisions and meet analytics needs of their business. SAP HANA caters to the requirements of SMEs, supporting real-time operations, smarter decision making, and better business results.

HANA for SAP Business One is an in-memory database and application platform that has been specifically designed to simplify the IT environment of SMEs. It combines database, application processing, and integration services on a single platform, providing libraries for predictive, planning, text processing, and business analytics. SAP HANA releases the intelligence in the business data and processes, allowing SMEs to accelerate critical decisions and innovate throughout their operations.

This article originally published at Silver Touch Tech Blog Here

Manage and Grow your Business with SAP Business One

Your small and midsized businesses have tremendous potential of growth. You have great ideas for your business and wish to respond promptly to the market demand. But there’s one point to ponder: Does your business solution support your growth or hampers it?

You may be using multiple applications to run your business, which will be failing to deliver its unified view. They make business executives spend more time on operations, rather than providing strategic insights for better decision-making. They also sometimes lead to duplication of work and managing multiple locations and currencies difficult.

This makes it essential for you to opt for a comprehensive and cost-efficient solution. SAP® Business One application has been designed to meet the growing needs of small and midsized businesses. It supports all the processes needed to run your operations, captures important information, stores critical business data and provides users, instant access, from anywhere and at anytime.

It is a complete business solution that can help you to manage all your functions like accounting, sales, CRM, operations, service, inventory, warehousing and more. You get better visibility and control and can run your end-to-end business processes smoothly. It also makes integration with your other systems easier and provides extensive flexibility for future growth and innovation. It is offered as “on-premise”, “on-demand” and also as a mobile app to help you get real-time insights and stay ahead of your competitors. It is highly scalable and helps you to expand, as your business grows.

This article originally published at Silver Touch Tech Blog Here

Bespoke Software Development: Offering Unique Solutions For Unique Requirements

Unlike prefabricated software, bespoke software is tailor-made software. Every organization comes with its different demands and various services. Providing the same software to every organization is not an ideal solution. Bespoke software development offers custom-made software right, according to requirements of the organization. It ensures that the organization will get a tool, which can actually meet its various demands. It helps organizations in registering quick growth by offering unique and better solutions. Many software development companies offer tailored software development services. The buyers discuss their demands and get solutions exact according to their needs.

Read more about Bespoke Software Development Solutions

8 Reasons Businesses Should Adopt Bespoke Development

When you are planning on a software solution for your business, you need to think long time. It is a onetime investment that will evolve with your business. That is why it requires a lot of thought and planning. While implementing an off-the-shelf solution can be regarded as a good decision for your pockets, it may not be as flexible and scalable over a period of time as a bespoke application would be. In this competitive world, you need to be more than just a regular business; differentiation is the key to your success. Why go bespoke? Most businesses seek an answer to this question. So, here are a few reasons why you should opt for bespoke software development.

Click here to know more about Bespoke Development.

SAP B1 Implementation - An Overview into its Advantages

Setting up a business and making it successful needs perseverance and dedication. You also need to be different from the others to set your place in the competitive marketplace. In order to be successful, your business system needs to be properly operational. SAP B1 implementation UK supports your core business processes and extends it in such a manner that it makes your business unique. The purpose of SAP Business One is also to allow your processes to run uniquely without disrupting the rest of the applications.However, the dynamic nature of your business makes the entire SAP B1 implementation process challenging. Not only does the business’s competitive landscape grow but there is also a definitive change in the technology used. Therefore there will be a continuous need for adding extensions after the initial implementation.

Click here for more information about SAP B1 Implementation.

Bespoke Software Development Trends To Watch Out For

The bespoke software development industry is growing with every passing year and its importance is also continuously on the rise. According to a recent survey conducted by Information Technology (IT) Decision Makersreleased by Appian, 87% IT decision-makers believe that custom software will be the driving technology in the near future. Whether the bespoke software is developed by a company’s internal IT team or is made through outsourced development, more and more people are going for custom-made solutions. According to the survey 97% respondents were confident of using custom software while 94% recommended its use to others. One of the primary reasons why bespoke software development UK is seeing such an upsurge is that it lends a competitive edge to a company. 

Click here to Read more about Bespoke Software Development Trends

7 Popular Myths that Surround SAP

SAP, in its few years of existence, has managed to gauge enough popularity, and trust. Businesses have begun to adopt SAP in order to boost their processes, and gain good profits. Despite the popularity, there are some myths surrounding SAP. Businesses which have not adopted SAP yet, feel apprehensive implementing it because of these myths. Let’s have a look at the myths doing rounds, and their reality fixes.

Read More about SAP Implementation.

Bespoke Software vs Off the Shelf: Which is More Appealing?

Comparing two different entities can be best rationalized based on their requirements. In the digital world, establishing the need for a particular method of development is best done when you know what your business needs, and ultimate digital goals are. Whether you would like your tea hot or cold depends entirely on your need. Similarly, whether you want to indulge in bespoke software development or off the shelf software development depends on what you gain from either of the two techniques, and how best they can fulfil your goals.

Read More about Bespoke Software vs Off the Shelf.

Is your Joomla Website Mobile Friendly?

Google has been changing and updating itself to ensure strict evaluation of the websites. This will reduce the spam content on the internet, and bring to life genuine content. In a recent update, Google made a few changes to its search algorithm; mobile friendly sites will be shown as results for mobile based searches. This way, you will not only get a relevant but also a legible site meant for your mobile device. If your website is not mobile friendly, you are not sought by Google when displaying the results. This definitely     affects the mobile sites currently. While most Joomla templates are mobile ready, Joomla as a platform is yet to be mobile friendly. You need to ensure that Joomla does not cause trouble for you, under the loom of this update.

Creating a Mobile Friendly Joomla Website

The robots.txt for distribution in Joomla is ready to block a huge number of directories. Some of the directories that are blocked include images, plugins, templates, etc. In the recent times, you will see that Joomla has intended upon caching images and storing them in the template folder. Let’s have a look at the default robots.txt file.

Read more about Joomla Website Mobile Friendly. 

How to develop your First HTML5 based Mobile App?

While the businesses are busy making money by creating a series of “To do list” apps, here is your first HTML5 based mobile app that will help create a “Not to do list”. There are total of five steps that will help you create this app.

The Mock Design

You will first need to create a mock design. Open the mobjectify editor, where you will see the components that need to be added to your design.

First you need to create a page, and give it a headline (title). You will need to check how your list will actually look like when creating a mock design. So, begin creating a list, and check it in the viewer. In this editor, you will see a generate button, which will help you view the design. You will also need to change the inset setting to full screen, so that you can get a better view of the list. you should include “add a new task” to the list by adding an input section combined with a button. Now, you need to confirm if the tasks mentioned have been done/not done. So, you will need a confirmation page. Click on all the list items, and link it to #confirm. Styling the page and adding headings to your page are essential. The mock design will help you create the structure of the page. You will also need to create two additional pages with the titles done/not done. You will need to link them to the confirmation page. With these design levels added, you have given your app a structure. The app has a structure, but no appeal. You will now need to work on the appeal of the app.

Read More Information about First HTML5 based Mobile App.

8 Tips that Enhance your E-commerce Website

With the world going digital, it is no surprise that shopping has become more of an online affair than offline. You spend hours looking at the good things available online, and shop for them. E-commerce has taken a leap since the start, and has today progressed towards mobile commerce. 80% of the users have at least shopped once online, while 50% of the users are repeat shoppers. 71% of the shoppers believe they will find better deals online as compared to the brick and mortar stores

It is inevitable for you to have an online store in the present times. If you have indulged in Joomla development services to establish your e-commerce store, then you possibly need to boost it in order to improve your sales. Here are 8 tips that will help you boost your sales and further your store.

Form Strategic Relationships

You need to realize that e-commerce websites don’t gain success alone! Your site will always benefit when you form strategic relationships with firms that have an incredible influence on the online audience.  As an e-commerce developer, you need to keep your eyes and ears open to seek opportunities that can help you form such relationships

Targeted Landing Pages to Improve Traffic

Your conversions will gauge if you work towards achieving targeted traffic. Whatever you sell, try pushing the customers from the social pages to targeted landing pages which means they will walk into the conversion funnel thus boosting your sales

Niche Focus

You need to remember that your e-commerce should have a niche focus. It is easy to get carried away with a broad idea, but that will not help you boost the sales. You need to capitalize on a single market. When you are working on Joomla development, you need to carve a niche, research on the potential of the market you have selected, and finally develop your Joomla site to fit the need.

Founding the Site on PPC

While PPC serves to be a good way to get more people to visit your website, founding your website on PPC can put your site at risk. You need to build your brand before you start advertising the details. You should ideally work towards creating a brand identity and follow it up with PPC based work.

Work on Content Strategy
Optimizing your website to maximize your organic leads will need a good content strategy in place. You can create a blog on Joomla; it is quite easy to integrate or start a blog using Joomla platform. Once, you have the blog in place, start working on the articles for the blog and finally share them using the different media channels. This way you are channelizing quality efforts to build your brand.

Optimize Product Listings

Optimizing your website should be your first priority! You will also need to optimize the product listings. You need to work on niche keywords as well as meta descriptions and images to optimize the product listings. This will help you target the correct audience for your website.

Engage Socially

Social media has indeed proven its usefulness in converting visitors to users. You will see that the power and influence of social media on the users is high, and you need to harness this influence to help you improve sales and further your business goals. You need to establish a thorough presence on social media to grow effectively

Split Test
You need to test whatever it is you are offering with your audience to know if it will work or not. Split testing is the ideal way to know the power of your strategies. Right from the headline to the content type to your site elements, you will need to split test them all to understand and evaluate the effectiveness

Conclusion

If e-commerce is the way that you are headed towards using Joomla platform, you will need to consider all these points to establish channelized marketing and improve conversions. You need to target the audience that your brand has been looking out for, and optimize your strategies in tandem with that. Hire a Joomla developers UK to work out a good design for your e-commerce store.

Verify your Joomla Site in Google Webmaster in 3 Ways

When optimizing your website, you will need to verify your site in Google webmaster tools. You are actually proving your ownership on the site by verifying it. In fact, you get access to a wide range of tools when you verify your website. Here are three methods that will confirm your verification on Google webmaster
 

Adding Meta Tag

Meta tag should be your first step when it comes to verifying your website on Google. You get a Meta tag from Google that you will need to paste to your site’s home page. This Meta tag should be pronounced on the <head> section just before the first <body> section. Copy the meta tag from Google webmaster tools page and paste it to the template’s index.php file which is located along the following path /templates/TEMPLATENAME/

Here are a few steps that you will need to follow before you can add Meta tag to your Joomla website
• Take a backup of the index.php file

• Open this file in the html editor, and locate the head section.

• Now, paste the meta tag that you have copied to this section, and then save and upload this file for use

Uploading the HTML File
You can verify your Joomla website by uploading the relevant HTML file. All you need to do is upload the HTML file that Google webmaster offers to the website’s root folder. This is the same folder where your configuration.php is located

Adding the DNS Record

This is the third method to verify Joomla website in Google webmaster. This is one of the advanced methods to perform the verification. You can use this method only if you have a certain idea about the DNS used for the particular domain. The TXT record is the DNS entry that offers information about your domain. You will need to create this TXT record to prove your domain ownership.

You can choose the method most convenient to you, of the three. You will need to click the verify button at the end so as to complete the verification

Conclusion

It has become mandatory in the present times to have your website verified by Google webmaster tools. You will be recognized as the owner of the website, only when you have verified your Joomla website. Three ways have been defined for this purpose; you can use whichever you feel most comfortable with. Hire Joomla developer to give your site an appealing outfit.

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Joomla Development UK. If you are looking to Hire Joomla Developers UK then just get in touch with her.

4 Joomla Extensions that Help Manage your Website

While creating your Joomla requires some basic skills, managing it might need installing some extensions. There are extensions for everything that you may need to perform on the website. Right from attaching documents to your post to social sharing, everything can be done easily with the help of extensions. 

Here are some Joomla extensions that can help you manage the website. They will shoulder half the responsibility of maintaining and managing the website, thus making it easy for you.

JCE Editor

You may require a WYSIWYG editor to manage your Joomla website. In that case you should install the JCE editor, which has been created along the lines of TinyMCE. The recent word processing programs sourced to be an inspiration for the editor’s interface. No wonder, it is usable and popular among Joomla developers. What all is included in the installation? An advanced code editor along with a superior image/media/file handler and a spell checker makes up for the WYSIWYG editor for Joomla. You also get a plug-in support with this extension. While the extension is available for free, you will need to pay for the add-ons that are available with this extension.

Attachments for Contents
So, the content you have just posted does not convey all that you want to communicate? You may need some extra files to fill in the gaps that your content has left out.  What now? You need an extension called attachment for content articles using which you can attach PDF, image and other types of files to your content and complete the gaps that the post has left out. It is an easy to use extension that offers a classic interface, thus enhancing the user experience. It is a recommended extension for all those who want to associate contents to their posts.

Akeeba Backup Core

If you want to create a backup of your Joomla website, or restore the site back to its default settings, this is the extension you need to use. It should ideally be a part of the default Joomla installation, but as it is not included there, you should necessarily download and install this extension to your website. If you have a complex website, this extension is your friend indeed. You can stay assured as this extension archives the files and takes a snapshot of the database.

ProjectFork   

It is one of the competent project management software solutions available for your Joomla website. It helps carry out a project as smoothly as possible. With this extension, you have access to a number of solutions like calendars, task filtering tools, message boards and file management systems which make management easy and expedite the projects to help deliver them on time.

Conclusion
When developing a website with Joomla, these four extensions would help you manage the website with ease. Hire joomla developers UK to offer you customized and unique solutions. With the right developers and perfect extensions, you will be able to extend an excellent interface and incredible experience to your users

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Joomla Development UK. If you are looking to Hire Joomla Developers UK then just get in touch with her.

Magento Features that Remain Unknown

Magento is a highly inspiring platform solution to build e-commerce solutions thus giving your business a boost. You will see that almost all the features available with Magento enrich your store, and help flourish your business. While most of the Magento features are live and accessible, you will see that many features are still unknown. These features will help take care of some of the trivial issues that bother you while working on this platform. Here are some of the lesser known yet very powerful features of Magento

 

Set the Admin Session

Many times while working with the admin panel, you will see that you have been timed out. You were trying to change the product description, but for some reason when you began saving it, you realized you were timed out. You have an option of setting the admin session lifetime to work uninterrupted.

Go to System>Config>Admin>    Security>Session Lifetime (seconds)

You will need to set the value to over 3600 seconds. This is so that your admin session does not get logged out every 60 minutes

Nest Static Blocks
Do you feel the need to make the content more manageable? With the static blocks, you will be able to divide the different content blocks thus simplifying the content. You can reduce the amount of content in the static blocks nest the different static blocks to be called on a single category or product page.

Allow Customer Ratings

Do you want your customers to rate your products on various parameters? You can now add the different parameters.

All you need to do is go to catalog>reviews and ratings>manage rating

You can add the star rating criteria here. All rating parameters are manageable at the store view level

Create Admin Action Log
With this logging functionality, you can log the actions that you want to record. With such a log you can easily diagnose the issues that you encounter. How will you log the admin actions?

Go to System>    Admin Actions Log and check the boxes next the actions you want logged.

Pricing the Items

In case, you want to display a different pricing for multiple quantities of a particular product, you can easily do so using tier pricing. How will you set tier pricing?

Go to Magento Admin>Catalog>Managed Products

Now click on the item that you want to add tier pricing to

Click on pricer>Add Tier

Now, you should enter the quantity for the tier pricing; also add the price per item and then press save. You will see the tier pricing on your e-store

Conclusion

There are many such things which you tend to ignore. But, these things not just grab your customer’s attention, but also helps reach out to more people. In fact, the store’s popularity and performance improves thus increasing footfalls.


Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Magento Development Company UK. She recommends checking out Magento Development Services at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk If you are looking to hire Magento Developer UK then just get in touch with her.

How to Disable Default Newsletters on Magento?

Many of you are not really happy with the default newsletter available with Magento. You tend to use third party mail services to accomplish the email newsletter related tasks. Since, you are using the third party service; you should ideally disable the default newsletter that comes with Magento. Let’s see how to disable default newsletters on Magento. 

Rewrite Core Magento Model

Go to config.xml and begin with rewriting the core model

<newsletter>
    <rewrite>
        <subscriber>Example_Newsletter_Model_Newsletter_Subscriber</subscriber>
    </rewrite>
</newsletter>

When you put it within the config option, you are actually allowing the store owner to decide whether or not they want to keep the config option.

Create System.xml

Your next step is to create system.xml and paste the code given below to it

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<config>
    <tabs>
        <example_tab translate="label">
            <label>Example</label>
            <sort_order>200</sort_order>
        </example_tab>
    </tabs>

    <sections>
        <example_newsletter translate="label">
            <label>Newsletter Configuration</label>
            <tab>example_test_tab</tab>
            <frontend_type>text</frontend_type>
            <sort_order>1</sort_order>
            <show_in_default>1</show_in_default>
            <show_in_website>1</show_in_website>
            <show_in_store>1</show_in_store>
            <groups>
                <newsletter_subscription_transactional_mails>
                    <label>Newsletter Subscription Transactional Mails</label>
                    <frontend_type>text</frontend_type>
                    <show_in_default>1</show_in_default>
                    <show_in_website>1</show_in_website>
                    <show_in_store>1</show_in_store>
                    <sort_order>120</sort_order>
                    <fields>
                        <enabled translate="label">
                            <label>Enable</label>
                            <frontend_type>select</frontend_type>
                            <source_model>adminhtml/system_config_source_yesno</source_model>
                            <sort_order>40</sort_order>
                            <show_in_default>1</show_in_default>
                            <show_in_website>1</show_in_website>
                            <show_in_store>1</show_in_store>
                        </enabled>
                    </fields>
                </newsletter_subscription_transactional_mails>
            </groups>
        </example_newsletter>
    </sections>
</config>   
Add a Path Within Helper Class

Using the code below, you can easily add a path to the helper class

class Example_Newsletter_Helper_Data extends Mage_Core_Helper_Abstract
{
    const XML_PATH_NEWSLETTER_MAILS  = 'example_newsletter/newsletter_subscription_transactional_mails/enabled';

    public function getNewsletterSubscriptionMailEnabled()
    {
        return Mage::getStoreConfig(self::XML_PATH_NEWSLETTER_MAILS);
    }
}
The new class created for this purpose is  Example_Newsletter_Model_Newsletter_Subscriber . you need to extend this class to the core class Mage_Newsletter_Model_Subscriber

Now copy paste three methods from the core class to the new class and make small modifications accordingly

The three minor modifications include

• public function subscribe($email)
• public function subscribeCustomer($customer)
• public function unsubscribe()

Replace the code in subscribe method

if ($isConfirmNeed === true
    && $isOwnSubscribes === false
) {
    $this->sendConfirmationRequestEmail();
} else {
    $this->sendConfirmationSuccessEmail();
}
With
if ((bool) Mage::helper('example_newsletter')->getNewsletterSubscriptionMailEnabled()) {
    if ($isConfirmNeed === true && $isOwnSubscribes === false) {
        $this->sendConfirmationRequestEmail();
    } else {
        $this->sendConfirmationSuccessEmail();
    }
}
Similarly, the following code in subscribecustomer method()
if ($this->getIsStatusChanged() && $status == self::STATUS_UNSUBSCRIBED) {
    $this->sendUnsubscriptionEmail();
} elseif ($this->getIsStatusChanged() && $status == self::STATUS_SUBSCRIBED) {
    $this->sendConfirmationSuccessEmail();
}
Should be replaced with
if ((bool) Mage::helper('example_newsletter')->getNewsletterSubscriptionMailEnabled()) {
    if ($this->getIsStatusChanged() && $status == self::STATUS_UNSUBSCRIBED) {
        $this->sendUnsubscriptionEmail();
    } elseif ($this->getIsStatusChanged() && $status == self::STATUS_SUBSCRIBED) {
        $this->sendConfirmationSuccessEmail();
    }
}
Finally in the unsubscribe method the following code
$this->sendUnsubscriptionEmail();
Should be replaced with
if ((bool) Mage::helper('example_newsletter')->getNewsletterSubscriptionMailEnabled()) {
    $this->sendUnsubscriptionEmail();
}

With this code, you check if the default mails are set to enable/disable mode, and accordingly decide whether to execute the code or not.

Conclusion

When you are already using a third party service for your newsletters, it makes sense to disable the default newsletter that comes with Magento. To disable, you can use the code given in this tutorial. This code checks whether the default newsletter has been enabled/disabled, and accordingly decides whether or not to execute the code.

Note: It is always a good idea to backup the default code before executing a new code.

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Magento Development Company UK. If you are looking to hire Magento Developer UK then just get in touch with her.

Why SAP is Beneficial for your Business?

When you say business, you tend to view it over different verticals. When technology took over business, most verticals within the business became automated. You will see a separate tech system for sales, accounts, finance etc. While these different systems are automated, they lack integration. You will see that most of these systems work on a standalone basis which is why the overall business becomes manual. SAP- Systems, Applications and Products, is a great way of redefining your business and integrating the different verticals. With this technology rooted within your business, you will see that the end-to-end processes are integrated and automated while minimizing the data inconsistencies that erupt within the system.

SAP is known for the different ERP solutions that offer cross functional business solutions thus giving your business growth and profitability. There are several advantages associated with SAP, because of which your business will enhance.

Identifying and Aligning Strategies

How important is it for your business to identify opportunities and devise strategies accordingly? When you are planning to implement SAP, you will need to identify all the issues prevalent within the existing system, and define the short and long term strategies to further your business. With a business information system in place, the strategies defined will be aligned with the processes and operations active within the business. All the gaps between the two states i.e. identification and workable plan will be bridged with a well-aligned SAP system.

Enhances Productivity and Forecasts

With a well integrated business information system introduced to your business, you will see that your business is more productive than ever. Efficient workflow is managed through a productive system. Right from sending internal messages to sending out Emails and SMS alerts, all the operations are made thoroughly efficient. With an intelligent system, forecasting and planning for the future becomes easy. Your business can view growth opportunities in the near future with this system. Reporting is also made easier with this system. In fact, monitoring and measuring the results is also efficient

Enhances Flexibility

A SAP system offers flexibility, standardization as well as efficiency which is why your business is able to manage the capital costs, thus introducing profits. The business is now able to extend its efforts beyond the regular operations and functions.

Mitigates Risk

An intelligent business information system helps reduce the risks that run within a business. It tackles complex business issues, and forecasts the growth path for a business. SAP is a success partner for a business enjoying the different stages of lifecycle.

Optimizes Management

With SAP by your side, you will realize that your business is able to handle all the tasks right from financial management to business analytics with ease. You don’t need to concentrate your efforts on these tasks when the system will take care of that for you. This system saves a lot of time and effort as well as IT spending.

Conclusion

Partnering your business with SAP helps you grow along the right path. You will be offering flexibility and scalability to your business, while mitigating risks. With a predictable system, you can even pave path for opportunities, and grow in the right direction. An intelligent system is the way to a good future. 

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading SAP Consultant UK. She recommends checking out SAP B1 Implementation Services at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk

Why Develop an Android App for your Business?

If you want to be visible on a platform used by your users, you should necessarily have an android app for your business. Here are some interesting statistics that help you realize how popular Android is as a mobile app platform.

• There are more than 6 lakh apps on Google play store at present
• Of the total number of apps on the play store, 67% are free while 32% are paid apps
• 75% of the Q3 smartphones for the past year have been Android units

You can easily judge based on these statistics how popular Android is as a platform for developing your mobile app. Let’s understand why you should develop your business app on android platform.

It’s Customizable

You can easily custom create a mobile app to further you business with Android. You can design the app to suit your needs. There’s a whole range of custom options available with Android which can help you experiment and explore

Cross Platform Development

Cross platform apps, which can be easily used across the different platforms, are more popular among the users as compared to native apps. These cross platform apps work best when you are planning an enterprise app.

Rich in Features

When you set to develop an Android based app for your business, you can stay assured that the app will be rich in features. From calendar, email to QR code reader and GPS, all the basic and absolutely necessary features will be well integrated into your app.

Enhances Productivity

Google app is known to get in apps that offer better revenues, and are meant for the users. With an android app you not only improve productivity but also become more visible among the right target audience.

Easy to Search

It is easy to search for an Android app as compared to other apps. Most android apps have a GPS or mapping functionality that helps the users search for the app, and get it on their phones. You apps will be more visible and will reach out in a better fashion.

Conclusion

Android has definitely gauged up as a popular platform when it comes to delivering mobile apps. You will see that not only does it offer to be a more productive platform for your business, but also helps deliver visibility and efficiency to your business. You can reach out to your target in a more approachable manner.

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Android Development Company UK. She recommends checking out Android App Development Services at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk. If you are looking to hire Android App Developers UK then just get in touch with her.

How to Use Magento Settings to Manage an Extension Settings?

Whenever you want to make small changes within a particular module or extension in Magento, you have to locate the module configuration tab, and make the necessary changes there. Locating, managing, and making the changes is a tedious process, which you can avoid if you transfer the necessary settings to the main Magento settings. So, you just need to make the modifications within the main settings file, and all the changes are registered.

Create System.xml File

Begin the whole process by creating system.xml file in the etc folder of Magento.

<config> 
    <sections> 
        <pos module="pos"> 
            <label>Example Pos Settings</label> 
            <tab>service</tab> 
            <frontend_type>text</frontend_type> 
            <show_in_default>1</show_in_default> 
            <show_in_website>1</show_in_website> 
            <show_in_store>1</show_in_store> 
            <sort_order>10</sort_order> 
            <groups> 
                <settings translate="label"> 
                    <label>example Pos Settings</label> 
                    <frontend_type>text</frontend_type> 
                    <sort_order>10</sort_order> 
                    <show_in_default>1</show_in_default> 
                    <show_in_website>1</show_in_website> 
                    <show_in_store>1</show_in_store> 
                    <fields> 
                        <sanalpos_url translate="label"> 
                            <label>Service Url</label> 
                            <frontend_type>text</frontend_type> 
                            <sort_order>10</sort_order> 
                            <show_in_default>1</show_in_default> 
                            <show_in_website>1</show_in_website> 
                            <show_in_store>1</show_in_store> 
                        </sanalpos_url> 
                        <user_id translate="label"> 
                            <label>User Id</label> 
                            <frontend_type>text</frontend_type> 
                            <sort_order>20</sort_order> 
                            <show_in_default>1</show_in_default> 
                            <show_in_website>1</show_in_website> 
                            <show_in_store>1</show_in_store> 
                        </user_id> 
                    </fields> 
                </settings> 
            </groups> 
        </pos> 
    </sections> 
</config> 

Integrate to Config.xml File

This file contains all the field settings required to modify the extension you have created. While Magento is definitely open source, you don’t want to make all the settings and code public. So, you will need to integrate the individual settings to the core settings page.

Paste the following code to the config.xml file
<config> 
    <!-- some more code here --> 
    <adminhtml> 
        <acl> 
            <resources> 
                <all> 
                    <title>Allow Everything</title> 
                </all> 
                <admin> 
                    <children> 
                        <system> 
                        <children> 
                               <config> 
                                   <children> 
                                       <pos> 
                                            <title>Kartaca Pos Settings</title> 
                                            <sort_order>10</sort_order> 
                                       </pos> 
                                   </children> 
                                </config> 
                            </children> 
                        </system> 
                    </children> 
                </admin> 
            </resources> 
        </acl> 
    </adminhtml> 
    <!-- some more code here... --> 
</config> 

With this long xml code, you would enjoy not having to search through individual files and changing the codes there. Saves a lot of time!

Conclusion
Isn’t having one code file an easier way out, especially when it comes to introducing changes, than having multiple files and searching for the particular file? With this integration code, you can easily integrate the codes for the different extensions into your core file. So, you just need to deal with the core file, whenever you want to initiate small changes. Saves a lot of time and effort!

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Magento Development Company UK. She recommends checking out Magento Development Services at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk. If you are looking to hire Magento developer UK then just get in touch with her.

How to Develop your First Ever Joomla Website

Once you have installed Joomla to your web server, it is time to get started with website development. Creating a website on this platform is a four step process. Let’s get started with the four steps, and introduce how to create a website with Joomla.

Define the Website Structure

It is important to define the structure for your website. You need to make sure that your website is well structured and completely organized, at least on pen and paper. Understand the elements that are important to your website. Include the pages, and sub pages that will be needed by your website. Planning ensures that half the battle is won. The next half is designing and actually creating it.

Adding Content

Once you have defined the different pages that you need for your website, you will need to consider adding the content for the different pages. In Joomla, you will need to add the different content using articles. Before you begin adding content, you need to define the different categories.

Go to Content>Category Manager. Here you can define the categories. In case, you have an article based or news based site, you will need to add categories. Else, you can run your regular pages on default category. Joomla does not offer the category description on front end, so you don’t need to enter the description. But, make sure you have specified the categories that you want displayed on front end perfectly.

Once, you have defined the categories, it is time to add content to those categories. Go to content>articles manager and click on new button. Here, you will need to add the title to your article, select the category and add content to the article. Done with the content for the article, save the article and close the page.

Main Menu

Go to menu>menu manager. Here you will observe a default menu that contains some of the default pages. Here you will need to select the items that you want to display on your main menu. What do you want to be displayed on the home page? If you wish to display a single article, here are the points that will help add the single article

• Go to articles>single article
• Go to settings>select/change button
• Here select the full article that you want displayed on the home page

You can even create some new menu items here. You need to refer to the structure of the website that will help you know which menu items need to be added, and which don’t need to be present on your website.

Where to Place the Main Menu?

Your final step is to define the position of the main menu on your website’s front end. Most joomla templates make use of modules to position the items on the different pages. Go to extensions>module manager>new>menu (from module type popup window). Now, give this menu a title, main menu, and hide the title from the front end.

Now, you will need to position the main menu on the front end. The naming convention for position of the menu differs in every Joomla template. You will need to familiarize yourself with the naming convention used for your template, and work with it accordingly. Choose the position that relates best, save and close.

Now, select where the module, main menu should appear. If you want the module to appear only on home page, then select accordingly.

Conclusion

With these four steps, you are ready to get started with your Joomla website. Now, you can add articles, news or related things whenever there is a need. You have a complete website that can be shared and published to the public. Just optimize it to make sure you are visible.

Author Bio:

Deepa is a passionate blogger associated with Silver Touch Technologies., a leading Offshore Web Development Company in UK. She recommends checking out Joomla Development UK at https://www.silvertouchtech.co.uk. If you are looking to hire Joomla Developers UK then just get in touch with her.