3 Benefits of Using Customized CRM

By

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May 8, 2023

CRM System Help With Optimization of Your Business

Every business is unique and has different goals. So, their needs will also be unique. To fasten their work, they use multiple software to help them achieve their destinations on time. The software tools they use must align with the company’s needs before their benefits can be seen, and, eventually, the company’s goals become attainable using those tools. Hence, it is vital to have a software tool that increases your company’s productivity and is exclusively tailored to meet its needs. One such tool is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

With the main aim of simplifying the task of organizing, managing, and storing the information of customers and potential customers of your company, CRM tools are essential to understand and maintaining a smooth relationship with your clients and communicating better with them. Again, every business has a different target audience, and their needs will be unique. Thus, to ensure the efficient functioning of CRM, it is vital to get your CRM tools customized to fit your requirements. This will help meet the customers’ exact expectations and build a good repo with them. So, having a customized CRM tool is essential and beneficial for every business. Here are some benefits of using it:

Contents

1 1. Increase Productivity
2 2. Enhanced User Experience
3 3. Integrate into Business Operations
4 Conclusion

1. Increase Productivity

Once you get a customized CRM tool, your workforce and company’s productivity will boost. You can get it designed based on your company’s specific needs. For instance, your employees are familiar with particular data storage and organizing formats, which might differ from those offered in off-the-shelf tools. But if you have customized the CRM to match the design familiar to your staff, it will ease their task of understanding the new software and utilizing it to manage the data. This will reduce the learning time and increase productivity. Similarly, suppose the employees are well equipped with the software tools. In that case, they will be able to produce better results by efficiently communicating with the leads and customers to increase conversion rates and retain the customer base.

2. Enhanced User Experience

CRM tools act as a medium of communication between customers and companies. So they must be user-friendly for both. If the CRM is difficult to access and use, the main goal of using it will be flawed. Instead, if it is designed to fit the customer’s expectations and the company’s needs precisely, it would adequately serve its purpose. Similarly, a customized tool is more accessible and easily accessed using any device or at any time. This will help the employees maintain an up-to-date record of their collected information. But if it has been customized and only has limited features, which are beneficial for the customers and companies, then it will be more user-friendly. You can explore the platform offered by Iterable company to get a customized CRMs. In off-the-shelf CRMs, numerous features are predesigned and come as an entire package, even if they are not helpful for your company. Such extra features will increase the complexity of the tool.

3. Integrate into Business Operations

CRM is one of many software tools companies use to manage and run their business or automate it. Different tools are used to perform various business operations. The management team will use tools to manage the workforce and workload of the company effectively. The business analytics team will have software to gauge the company’s performance. Similarly, each department will have its own software tool to simplify its work. CRM is mainly used by sales and marketing teams. Suppose you have invested in a customized CRM that can be incorporated with all the other tools used across the company. Then, it will be instrumental in maintaining a better relationship with the customers. All the teams will have access to information on the patterns and trends of the customers. Using this data, they can all work together to enhance the company’s productivity and boost sales.

Conclusion

Customized CRM is the perfect assistance you need to boost your business growth. So, investing in a good one is vital. So the next time you plan to get a CRM for your company, instead of sticking to off-the-shelf ones, call a customized version to avail maximum benefits!

MSI Laptops at Risk of Hacking Due to Leaked Software Certification Keys

By

Bhasker Das

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May 7, 2023

MSI laptop users are at risk of being hacked due to a recent data breach by the hacker group Money Message. The hackers gained access to confidential data from MSI’s servers, including authentication keys for MSI laptop software. The stolen data included BIOS keys for 57 of the company’s laptop models, which MSI uses to certify updates to its software. Without these keys, the computer will perceive the software update as unreliable and potentially malicious.

Cybersecurity firm Binarly analyzed the leaked data and confirmed the presence of the BIOS keys for the affected laptop models. The leak of these keys can enable attackers to create malicious firmware updates that can be delivered to a victim’s system through normal BIOS update processes using MSI update tools. Malware can also end up on the user’s computer through fake websites or emails purporting to be from MSI.

The leakage of keys for Intel Boot Guard, which provides hardware-based BIOS boot integrity protection, monitors unauthorized boot blocks and prohibits their execution, is another problem arising from the data breach. The leaked MSI data contains Intel Boot Guard keys for 117 of the company’s products, which affects the entire ecosystem, not just MSI products, and renders this security feature useless.

MSI has advised its users not to download its software from unofficial sources, but experts suggest that the company has a limited choice of possible solutions to this problem. To update the keys to new secure ones, it will be necessary to use old keys that were stolen, making it difficult to simply revoke the compromised keys.

The leak of confidential data and authentication keys is a concerning issue, as it poses a significant threat to the cybersecurity of MSI laptop users. The potential for attackers to infect laptops under the guise of official BIOS while remaining unnoticed highlights the importance of cybersecurity measures and the need for users to be vigilant and cautious when downloading software.

Antivirus systems are not always able to detect viruses, and users should exercise caution when downloading updates or software from unverified sources. It is essential for companies to implement robust cybersecurity protocols to safeguard confidential data and protect their users from potential cyber threats.

How Broadlinc ISP Is Bringing New Job Opportunities to Small Towns In Kentucky

By

Nethra Gupta

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May 7, 2023

For many years, Broadlinc ISP has been providing reliable internet connectivity to homes and businesses in the USA. Since announcing in February 2022 that they were planning to roll out Fixed Wireless Access in Northern Kentucky, barely a year later, they have about 54,000 people connected, enjoying internet speeds of up to 200 mbps.

This unparalleled success has brought about a big ripple effect, mostly creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs. In the past, the small rural towns have not been benefiting from the positive effects of fast internet connectivity. But Broadlinc ISP has changed that.

By connecting even the smallest towns such as Bronston, which has a population of 3,173, Sanders with a population of about 300 people, and Glencoe with a population of 373, you can see that no town is too small for Broadlinc to ignore. This is the ISP that makes all Kentuckians equal.

Contents

1 How Broadlinc is bringing jobs to impoverished parts of Kentucky
2 Job training hubs have increased
3 The Broadlinc impact on small businesses in Kentucky
4 Job search has become easier
5 Conclusion

How Broadlinc is bringing jobs to impoverished parts of Kentucky

Kentucky has some of the most impoverished communities in the USA. Studies carried out in 2016 showed that Kentucky and other states lacked enough broadband internet connectivity. As a result, they missed out on all of the job opportunities that come with the internet.

Broadlinc’s partnership with XtremeLTE in 2022 has helped bring the internet to most unserved and under-served communities in various counties. Many people now have an opportunity to find work. Around 2016, it was almost impossible to find a job in Jackson County in Kentucky. There was a 25% poverty rate.

Most people who held jobs used to work outside the county. Today, internet connection in rural Kentucky is changing lives. As more small businesses and homes get connected to high speed and reliable internet, more families are pulling themselves above the poverty line.

Some of the areas where job opportunities opened up include work from home, as more people joined programs such as Teleworks USA. Telework jobs come in different forms, but the bottom line is that with stable internet connection, they can be done from home.

Job training hubs have increased

Not only have direct internet related jobs increased, you know, such as Broadlinc hiring locally wherever it goes, but programs such as Teleworks have opened training hubs. People train in different internet-based jobs and then look for work.

Since the early 2000s, the job market has been shifting from the traditional office that you could walk or drive to. The remote office is the new trend and the COVID-19 pandemic stamped this properly.

Having access to fast internet makes this possible, and Broadlinc has played a huge role connecting even the remotest of Kentucky communities to fast and reliable internet. Today, most American organizations are looking for marketing assistants, digital marketing managers, digital communications specialists, search engine optimization experts, copywriters, and social media experts.

A search on a job site such as Glass Door will show you this. All of these jobs can be done remotely and the companies will grab you up if you are based in the USA. If you don’t have a proper internet connection, you have to pass such opportunities.

The Broadlinc impact on small businesses in Kentucky

Everywhere Broadlinc goes, it changes the landscape of small businesses and in Kentucky, the effect is the same.

Broadband internet connectivity gives businesses a competitive advantage, because they can offer their products and services online, across counties, states and even globally. With increased work, small businesses that were mostly owner-operated have found the need to hire extra help. Because of the broader internet reach, many people now require the help of digital marketers, social media experts and other content creators.

All of these direct and indirect job opportunities come as a result of internet availability. While the internet does kill a few of the traditional jobs, it creates 3 jobs for each one that it kills.

Job search has become easier

Having fast internet connection makes job search easier all over Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky is one of the places in the USA with the poorest economic status. However, this has been changing since the coming of broadband internet.

The traditional jobs of Kentucky were in the coal industry, hospitality, healthcare and a few other areas. But this has changed a great deal today because the internet has opened up the job market a lot. More young people are looking further than the traditional job markets.

A simple search for jobs in Kentucky on Google brings quite a number of them, with the wage and the details. You can even set email alerts so that every time a job is posted, you will get an email in real-time. Conferencing, Zoom meetings, and video calling are only possible when you have a reliable internet connection. With a Broadlinc connection, you can interview for a job on video.

Conclusion

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most people were only familiar with the traditional work scene. However, since 2022, the Office of Broadband Development has partnered with the government and local companies to take broadband internet connection closer to the people.

Today, with companies like Broadlinc connecting more households, job search has become easier. Also, there has been a proliferation of internet-based jobs that don’t require one to travel to and from the office.

Good internet connectivity also makes people digitally smart, and they are able to lift themselves from an average hourly wage of $15 to up to $49.

NVIDIA Introduces Neural Texture Compression Algorithm to Address Growing Demand for Video Memory

By

Adwaith

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May 6, 2023

NVIDIA Neural Texture Compression Algorithm

NVIDIA has introduced a new texture compression algorithm called Neural Texture Compression (NTC) to address the growing demand for video memory. With modern games requiring high-resolution textures and associated properties to realistically represent materials, the development of more data-efficient algorithms is necessary.

NTC offers 4x higher resolution and 16x more texels than the standard block compression (BC) algorithm. The NTC algorithm uses matrix multiplication techniques performed by modern GPUs, making it more practical and functional and less limited by disk and memory.

Direct access and local access are important features of NTC, making it possible to access compressed textures with low cost and zero latency. The new approach compresses multiple channels and mipmaps (textures of different sizes) together, resulting in better quality and bitrate than JPEG XL and AVIF. Unlike traditional block compression algorithms that require special blocks, NTC compresses textures as tensors, making no assumptions about them.

Continued advances in photorealism in rendering are accompanied by an increase in texture data, resulting in increased storage and memory demands. To address this issue, NVIDIA has proposed a new neural compression technique specifically designed for material textures.

With low bitrate compression, it unlocks two more levels of detail, i.e., 16 times the number of texels, with better image quality than advanced image compression techniques like AVIF and JPEG XL. At the same time, the NTC algorithm enables on-demand real-time decompression with random access similar to block texture compression on GPU.

The key idea of the NTC technique is to compress multiple material textures and their mipmap chains together and decompress them using small neural networks optimized for each material. Finally, a custom training implementation is used to achieve practical compression speeds that exceed the performance of popular frameworks like PyTorch by an order of magnitude.

According to the paper, neural textures can be rendered in real-time with up to 16x more texels compared to the BC approach, with a 4K rendering speed of 1.15 ms (measured on the RTX4090). This new algorithm is expected to revolutionize texture compression, making it more efficient and practical for modern games and applications. The details of the research will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2023 on August 6th.

Kaspersky Lab Finds 11 Malicious Android Apps Secretly Subscribing Users to Paid Services with Over 630,000 Downloads

By

Bhasker Das

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May 6, 2023

Kaspersky Lab has discovered 11 Trojan apps in the Google Play Store that offered photo and wallpaper editing for Android devices and issued paid subscriptions to users.

Although the apps performed their intended functions, they also launched a malicious payload that contacted the attacker’s command and control server. The Trojan then sent codes of the country of residence and mobile operator to the server, which responded with a paid subscription page that opened in the background. The malware tried to issue the subscription by intercepting messages with its confirmation without the user’s knowledge.

The Trojans, known as Fleckpe, downloaded around 630,000 times, mainly targeting users in Asia. The code was tied to Thailand, and most application pages had reviews from Thais, although victims from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Poland have also been found.

The Trojans were available on Google Play Store under the following names –

com.impressionism.prozs.app
com.picture.pictureframe
com.beauty.slimming.pro
com.beauty.camera.plus.photoeditor
com.microclip.vodeoeditor
com.gif.camera.editor
com.apps.camera.photos
com.toolbox.photoeditor
com.hd.h4ks.wallpaper
com.draw.graffiti
com.urox.opixe.nightcamreapro

Although Google has removed all 11 apps from the Play Store, cybersecurity experts warn that hackers may still distribute other unidentified malware. Users are encouraged to exercise caution when installing apps from unknown developers and to only download apps from legitimate app stores such as Google Play.

Users should follow a few simple rules to protect their devices from malicious apps:

Users should download apps only from official app stores.
Before installing the application, they should carefully read the reviews of other users and check the application’s rating.
Users should not give applications access to personal data if it is not required for their work.

By following these rules, users can help protect themselves from malicious apps that may compromise their data.

Apple and Google Partner to Combat Unwanted Tracking by Smart Tags

By

Vishak

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May 6, 2023

Apple and Google are collaborating to address the issue of unwanted tracking by smart tags, a rising worry among privacy activists.

The two tech giants have announced a partnership to propose an industry standard to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth location-tracking devices. The aim is to prevent location tracker “abuse” that puts users at risk of stalking, harassment, and theft. The partnership has garnered interest from other smart tracker makers, including Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee.

To address this problem, Apple and Google have submitted their specifications as Internet Drafts through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a standards body. Other interested parties will be solicited for review and comment over the next three months. Apple and Google will then submit feedback before releasing a production implementation of the standard later this year, which will be supported by future iOS and Android versions.

The draft specification outlines several best practices for creators of Bluetooth tracking devices, including detecting and alerting individuals when trackers are travelling with them and disabling devices. The aim is to provide instructions on detecting unwanted tracking and preventing it from happening. The move has been welcomed by privacy advocates, who have expressed concerns about the safety of devices like Apple’s AirTag.

Apple has already taken measures to solve the problem, strengthening unknown AirTag alerts on iPhones and developing an app for Android that screens for unwanted trackers. The company’s sensing and connectivity vice president, Ron Huang, said in a statement that the new industry specification builds on AirTag’s protection capabilities. The collaboration with Google represents an important step in combating unwanted tracking across iOS and Android.

Google has lagged behind Apple in this area, but the company has been exploring the idea of Bluetooth smart tag detection at the OS level. The move by the two tech giants makes it very likely that this will happen in the coming months. Google is expected to detail its efforts to combat unwanted tracking at I/O next week and is also said to be working on its own Bluetooth smart tag, which could be unveiled at the event.

Google Officially Announced Pixel Fold

By

Vishak

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May 5, 2023

Google has officially announced the launch of its first-ever foldable smartphone, the Pixel Fold, putting an end to the rumours. Though the technical specifications have yet to be announced, a brief video revealing its look has been posted, and a complete announcement is planned at Google I/O next week.

The Google Store page for the Pixel Fold, which was also launched, only states “Coming soon,” with rumours suggesting it will be available in June. Interested buyers can sign up for availability alerts.

The Pixel Fold is expected to have similar features to the Pixel 7 Pro, which includes a triple-lens rear camera (wide, ultra-wide, telephoto), Tensor G2 SoC, ample RAM, large storage space, wireless charging, and more. However, the Pixel Fold is expected to come with a hefty price tag, rumoured to be $1,799, the same as Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4.

While the Pixel Fold’s pricing and specifications are still finalised, all information will be disclosed during the Google I/O event on May 10th. The Pixel Fold signals Google’s entry into the foldable smartphone industry, previously controlled by Samsung and Huawei.

The market for foldable smartphones has been slowly developing over the years, with numerous smartphone makers attempting to capitalise on this trend. The Pixel Fold is expected to offer users a unique smartphone experience with a foldable design that allows for more screen real estate. The folding design also adds mobility and convenience, making it easier to carry around.

As we get closer to the Pixel Fold’s release, it will be interesting to see how it compares to the competition. With its premium features and high price, the Pixel Fold is expected to appeal to a narrow market of consumers ready to pay a premium for cutting-edge technology.

Microsoft to Add Third Party Plugins, Multimodal Support and More to Bing Chat

By

Vishak

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May 5, 2023

Microsoft has announced major updates to its Bing Chat and Edge web browsers, with the aim of enhancing user experience and making searches more efficient. Among the changes is the removal of the Bing search engine waitlist, making it open to anybody with a Microsoft account.

In addition, the company has added an “actions” function that allows users to execute tasks without having to switch between sites. Users may utilize Microsoft’s Bing AI to discover a restaurant reservation time, make reservations, or search for a movie and have it picked and played for them.

Microsoft is additionally working on multimodal support, allowing users to upload photos and search for specific information. The company is also introducing the ability to save Bing chats and pause conversations, with the option to re-enter where the chat was left off. Improved summarization will also be added to Bing, giving it an advantage in compiling PDFs, documents, and long websites.

Microsoft plans to open up Bing Chat to third parties and support plugins, allowing developers to use plugins in Bing Chat. OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha will be joining forces with OpenAI to make this possible. With Bing Chat surpassing 100 million daily active users and 500 million total chats since its launch, Microsoft’s move to add third-party plugins and multimodal support could be a game changer for reinventing search and advancing developer opportunities in search.

The new changes will be available in a few weeks, and Microsoft hopes to provide additional information about them at its Microsoft Build conference later this month. Microsoft expects that by releasing these updates, it will be able to improve its user experience and acquire a competitive advantage in the search engine industry.