Smart Cards Speed Up Just-in-Time Provisioning

Jimmy LutzIdentity & Access Management, Offerings, Problem Solved, Technical TipsLeave a Comment

A large government organization hosts a common services platform for thousands of users. Their user provisioning process required manual intervention, which took time and was susceptible to error. With hundreds of thousands of users, this time and exposure to error added up. Our team optimized the user provisioning process by designing and implementing a just-in-time (JIT) provisioning solution. However, instead of relying on SSO and SAML assertions, our solution grabs the required information from the user’s two-factor authentication source, their smart card. In this way, users are automatically provisioned to the web applications as they attempt to access them, instead … Read More

Higher Ed Survey: Experience Teaching in Different Formats

Jimmy LutzHigher Education, Industry TrendsLeave a Comment

Survey results for Experience Teaching in Different Formats in Higher Education

In our recent survey on the impact of COVID-19 on higher education, 82% of our respondents had no experience online teaching. How will that impact institutions this fall? Final survey results will be available in late August; keep watching this page and our website for more insights.   Our Higher-Ed experts can help in this difficult period, by implementing the proper tools, migrating applications, assisting faculty in moving classes to your LMS, or delivering appropriate training. Contact us today to see how we can help.

The Sales Reports You Want vs The Sales Reports You Get (video)

Jimmy LutzBig Data & BI, Offerings, Problem Solved, SalesforceLeave a Comment

Leadership at a large media and entertainment company with over 2,500 sales-focused users was receiving standard sales reports through Salesforce. Managers could not easily view data for each user in the same format as the rolled-up reports, and individual users could not see their own data the way their manager could. This meant that there was a constant disconnect between how leadership managed the business and how individual contributors tracked their own results. The popular business intelligence tools oversimplify the data or create basic dashboards, which did not meet the client’s needs. Working closely with our client, we developed a … Read More

Higher Ed Survey: Top Higher Ed Online Teaching Challenges

Jimmy LutzHigher Education, Industry TrendsLeave a Comment

In collaboration with several university professors, we recently conducted a survey on the impact of COVID-19 on higher education. Unsurprisingly, student engagement was identified as a widespread issue. The top identified higher education online teaching challenges from our survey were: Student Engagement: 35% Adjusting Coursework: 21% Technology: 19% Other: 10% Proctoring Exams Remotely: 8% Simulating Clinical Experiences: 7% Final survey results will be available in late August; keep watching our LinkedIn and Higher Education pages for more insights.

Nonprofit Theater Keeps the Film Rolling with Salesforce

Jimmy LutzProblem Solved, Salesforce, SMBLeave a Comment

A non-profit organization that shows classic, foreign, and indie films use Salesforce to track memberships and yearly festival pass purchases. The original configuration struggled to track people and households that passed through their theater, leading to extra manual work. They also needed a better way to track and report on membership and renewal campaigns, to improve business performance. Our team upgraded them to and customized the latest version of the Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack to deliver a comprehensive tracking and reporting system aligned with their business and community needs. The new system more effectively tracks and manages membership, donations, and … Read More

Healthcare Research Firm Uses Enhanced Reporting to Improve Service Delivery

Jimmy LutzProblem Solved, SalesforceLeave a Comment

A healthcare research organization needed to better track invoices from project awardees, along with research metrics from multiple groups. Their manual data collection and analysis were disjointed, prevented the timely allocation of resources, and cost too much time. Out-of-the-box Salesforce reports and tracking were not meeting their needs. Our team built a custom application within Salesforce to track invoices and pull together other key data from across the organization. With their data now being logged within Salesforce, reporting became supercharged. The process that previously required multiple email approvals and attachments, now is automated, making critical financial and research reports readily … Read More

Public Transportation Authority Jump-started with Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack

Jimmy LutzCloud and Virtualization, Problem Solved, SalesforceLeave a Comment

A local transit authority and provider of public transportation needed online capabilities to manage their routes, riders, and inventory. In addition, their eCommerce and shopping cart capabilities needed to integrate with their transportation platform. M&S Consulting was able to help meet their needs through Salesforce, by customizing a solution specifically for their needs. Drivers now have a tablet mounted by their seat to access a Salesforce instance containing route and rider information. This enables drivers to be aware of the passengers riding their buses, including their booking reservations, pickup points, special seat arrangements, and, importantly, when they enter and exit … Read More

Managing a Complex Migration to Oracle Cloud

Jimmy LutzCloud and Virtualization, Identity & Access Management, Oracle, Problem SolvedLeave a Comment

A publicly-traded company dealing with health information planned to migrate their primary business application suite to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), including Fusion Middleware components (SOA, IdAM, EDQ). The initial challenge was the number of interconnections between applications (over 70), each with complex security requirements. If the various components of the migration were not carefully timed and coordinated, the availability of critical business functions could be affected. To make it more challenging, the migration needed to be transparent to the business owners and thousands of users, with minimal downtime during cutover. Our combined team, in close collaboration with the customer, performed … Read More