IoT, software platforms, cloud infrastructure, and now artificial intelligence are all having a big impact on how productive businesses are and how customers are serviced.

Although not all industries are undergoing digital transformation at the same rate, to remain relevant in a highly competitive market, every company stakeholder, regardless of industry, must take the prospects of digital transformation.

In three important areas, digital transformation is usually a phased endeavor:

1. Automation

Businesses can begin the process of digital transformation by automating manual operations if they are dealing with rising labor costs and inadequate size of manual processes. Automation projects include things like gathering and processing data for cutting-edge insights, taking preventative action, and alerting staff. Stakeholders concentrate on existing processes in this step.

The main goal is to increase the productivity and efficiency of these operations by automating manual tasks and workflows. The total cost of ownership influences the software and infrastructure choices, which typically range from edge devices to on-premise data centers and fully remote cloud implementations. At the enterprise level, individual processes are typically automated with little integration.

2. Digital Expansion

Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the potential for additional productivity benefits as automation becomes more pervasive. Also, external procedures must be automated due to market and customer pressures. Digital initiatives that offer distinctive customer connections can assist businesses in differentiating themselves and gaining a competitive advantage. A new generation of capabilities to support scaling and further growth of the digital model are made possible by ubiquitous connection, hyper-scale infrastructure, and new software applications. The main focus is on integrated systems that link internal and external workflows. Automated shipment tracking, CRM, marketing automation, field service integration, etc. are a few examples of digital expansion initiatives that add value during this stage.

3. Insight Generation

Businesses come across large amounts of information on their business operations, customers, and goods as their digital capabilities increase. This phase is focused on using this data to develop business and customer insights. Key projects that drive further transformation and cost savings usually include the use of advanced application platforms, business telemetry, data analytics, and AI/ML techniques. Innovation in processes and products is driven by data insights. Instant scale is available from digital infrastructure, which can also be quickly modified to meet changing customer or market demands.

This stage makes the new potential for increasing output. Security is increased, customer shopping experiences are improved, product offerings are improved, and revenue and differentiation are increased thanks to AI-assisted image/pattern recognition. In this stage, the focus shifts from offering products and services to focusing on an application-centric value proposition. This phase also makes it easier to change previous value propositions to pay-as-you-go or subscription-based models.

What does this mean, exactly?

Business stakeholders must develop new skill sets and collaborate with an ecosystem of providers because of the scale and complexity of the digital transformation. It takes planning and investment in developing areas of the digital landscape to ensure business agility so that it can adapt to operating dynamically and business conditions. There is a new generation of application services emerging that can support complete business operations and ease the process of going through digital transformation. Stakeholders in business and technology can now increase operational efficiency, security, and agility without expending a lot of resources.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

Every data security strategy must include encryption. A key management system (KMS) enables you to convert data into unreadable cyphertext and manage who can access it in clear text, making encryption simpler. This makes data more resistant to unauthorized access, modification, exfiltration, or destruction.

Although encryption is an excellent tool for protecting data, it has limitations. The keys used to encrypt and decrypt the data must be managed. You must also provide users with timely access to the data.

Key management can sometimes become its own operational and security burden. Utilizing native encryption on a storage device usually necessitates managing hundreds of thousands or even millions of data encryption keys that encrypt data at the row or column level. You should also keep in mind that certain laws and security best practices require that encryption keys be routinely rotated, generated, deleted, and secured.

What Are the Benefits of a Key Management System?

KMS solutions assist clients in

• As a security best practice, keep their data encryption keys off of the encrypted device.
• Automate their many key life cycles, rotations, and other management operations.
• By using a master key to encrypt them, they may protect their data encryption keys. The master key can then be securely kept in the application or an additional hardware security module.

Platform-specific or platform-neutral KMS solutions are also options. Businesses having a wide variety of storage media or self-encrypting media (including storage and non-storage devices) may use a platform-neutral solution.

To support endpoints like a disk or tape library, some solutions employ interoperability protocols (for instance, the Key Management Interoperability Protocol). The same outcome may alternatively be achieved by using different protocols or application programming interfaces.

KMS Helps Keep Encrypted Data Available

Although KMS solutions are crucial for storing and protecting data encryption keys, you must weigh the security they offer against the accessibility of encrypted data. Without the encryption key, encrypted data cannot be decoded. If the application serving the keys is unavailable or disconnected, keys that are stored in a KMS won’t function.

It is important to consider the solution’s possibilities for high availability and redundancy when developing an encryption key management strategy and selecting which providers to work with. You need a solution that is both dependable and secure.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

The password is not disappearing. However, passwordless authentication is gaining popularity. In terms of how businesses choose to log in, it seems to be winning the war. Whether the security sector likes it or not, it will have to deal with both in the future.

But for certain companies and organizations, going password-free is the obvious course of action. For instance, Microsoft has removed the requirement for passwords to access accounts, granting users access to a variety of professional and personal apps and services.

It’s not just Microsoft. Apple stated that the upcoming releases of iOS 16 and macOS Ventura will have passwordless logins at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference. Instead of using passwords, users will have the option to log in to websites and apps with “Passkeys.” The company claims that Passkeys generate new digital keys that utilize Touch ID or Face ID from Apple.

Why is Passwordless Authentication Becoming More Popular?

The main reason for the move is essential that there are too many passwords for us to remember. Users were in charge of around 100 passwords, according to a 2020 Tech.co research. Anything that makes things simpler is appreciated when there are so many things to remember. However, security is sometimes sacrificed in favor of complexity.

This alarming statistic shows that approximately 30% of respondents to a Specops Software poll do not use more than one password for their accounts. They use the same password for all of their accounts, and you read it right. The majority also acknowledged using variations of the same password for all of their accounts.

The point is: Do you feel any safer merely because your company has discarded passwords?

Short answer: not really. There are major big-picture concerns about passwordless authentication.

The Risks

Question: What are the risks of passwordless authentication? 

Grimes: Many password-free choices use single-factor authentication or 1FA. People mistakenly believe they are employing multi-factor authentication only because they see passwordless (MFA). In general, multi-factor is always preferable to single-factor. 2 different forms of authentication are the core concept underpinning MFA.

The prospect of many passwordless systems being readily phished is significantly more worrisome. They can send you an email or a website link, fooling you into visiting a man-in-the-middle website. It deceives you into thinking you’re heading to the desired location and into wanting to use this passwordless authentication. But in reality, you were duped into clicking on the soundalike or similar-looking link that led you to another page.

You then choose the password-free option. But in reality, it’s allowing the man-in-the-middle website’s attacker to hijack your session. They can capture anything. The website will send you back an access control token, which is the text-based cookie, once you successfully log in using a passwordless authentication token.

After you have successfully authenticated, if they manage to capture that, they can place the cookie in their browser and take control of your session.

Remember that many passwordless alternatives, including FIDO, guard against man-in-the-middle attacks of this nature. However, any MFA can be compromised. Most of them—perhaps 90–95 percent of them—are vulnerable to this man-in-the-middle attack, and many passwordless options are too.

You’ve through a great deal of pain to switch from a password to a passwordless system, but still recording it and getting around it just like a password. When MFA or passwordless technology is used, a lot of time, effort, money, and irritation is expended for little to no perceived advantage.

Does going passwordless make you safer? 

Not if you’re utilizing a system that is easily exploited by phishing. You must not apply it.

The main goal of switching people away from passwords is to virtually close the door to phishing. And what have we achieved if I can use your passwordless solution to phish you?

How to Select a Passwordless Authentication Option

How should organizations choose a passwordless option? 

Try to select an MFA option that is resistant to phishing when you go to make your selection. If you’re left with a choice that can be readily compromised, try to persuade the vendor to add security measures that will make it less vulnerable. The correct feature must then occasionally be implemented.

We believe that having general knowledge of all stakeholders is essential:

• People that are selecting MFA
• People that are evaluating MFA
• The implementers
• The operational staff
• The buying staff
• C-level staff
• Users.

They need to be educated about the common threats against their solution type and how to defend against them, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their solution. The absolute minimum is that. It concerns education.

Another point is to realize that FIDO implementation is difficult. But why not do that if you’re going to switch to MFA or passwordless? Why switch from passwords to passwordless when safety is only slightly improved? Why would you do it when you might expend the same effort to go somewhere that is phishing resistant and receive much greater protection?

Other Options for Password Management

What about password manager apps? 

Everyone should use one, in my opinion. The largest password risk is that the average user shares four to seven passwords across all websites. A few of those websites are compromised each year, and the compromised credentials are then utilized against the websites.

Wherever possible, we always advise implementing phishing-resistant MFA. If you can’t, create your username and password using a password manager.

Without much computational power, we have acquaintances that frequently guess and crack 18-character passwords today, every day.

In order to match the maximum length required by the website or service you’re using, a password manager will generate a complex and completely random password. It is impenetrable and uncrackable to all known modern foes.

The password manager poses a serious risk because it is a single point of failure, which is quite dangerous. However, in order to compromise your desktop, which is typically required to compromise your password manager, it’s already too late because they can simply key-log you at that time. Thus, it’s a worry. Another issue would arise if ransomware started to target password managers, but this hasn’t happened yet.

For the ordinary user, the advantages of utilizing a password manager much exceed the risks.

Apple Sets a Unique Precedent

With the Apple announcement, is the password finally dead? 

The proof is in the pudding about new authentication methods. They fully endorse moving past passwords and toward something better.

However, in reality, biometrics aren’t nearly as secure as they claim to be. Your face and fingerprint may be one of a million on Earth, but how those biometric qualities are recorded and used is a lot less distinctive.

Persons who accidentally log in as them via their phone or laptop after their little child walked by them usually email us, and to humans, these two people don’t appear alike.

As we implement biometric solutions, they’re continually astounded by how many [chief information security officers] and others who aren’t familiar with the benefits and drawbacks of these systems believe they are the perfect authentication method. Fewer people who are well-versed in biometrics value them, and the opposite is also true.

Another significant issue with all non-password solutions is that none of them are compatible with even 2% of the websites and services in use today. It’s a significant chicken-and-egg issue. The promise of MFA or passwordless solutions is that we can supposedly have a passwordless solution to replace the absurdly high number of passwords we currently have to generate and use. But the truth is that, in addition to a huge number of passwords, we all now use an increasing number of MFA and passwordless solutions. Even worse than before.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

Data analytics are crucial for improving corporate performance, but they are also important for efficient leadership.

Strong leadership is necessary for all successful organizations, whether it comes from a baseball team captain, military officer, or the founder/CEO of a software business. We have all personally witnessed how ineffective leadership leads to inefficiency, a lack of structure, shoddy teamwork, and a general lack of innovation. All businesses today rely on software and technology, so good IT management may make or break an enterprise.

No matter the project’s size or scope, future-ready CIOs, CTOs, and other IT leaders need specific skill sets to manage teams effectively. Data is important, but so are other soft skills like empathy, compassion, and open communication. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and measuring anything—including the quality of IT leadership—requires data.

Data analysis can be used to measure personal development and make sure managers are qualified and well-trained to lead their teams. Here are five examples of how data may improve the efficiency and process optimization of corporate operations while enhancing the efficacy of IT leaders.

1. Visibility

Data gives IT managers a comprehensive perspective of their teams and the ongoing business operations that happen every day, from cybersecurity to system connections. Organizations can better comprehend what is occurring within their business when they dedicate themselves to data collection and analysis.

By gathering data, you can find any gaps in internal and external business processes, allowing you to direct your teams’ attention to the areas that require it.

For effective IT leadership, data collecting is essential for project management and for fully understanding how businesses operate.

2. Automation

The quick rate of change is one of the biggest problems facing IT leaders. Tasks that take a lot of time and effort slow down many teams. It is important to understand how technology may be used to speed up processes and how data plays a role in this as more employees and enterprises depend on technology to assist them in daily tasks.

Implementing important requirements like automation and machine learning, which speed up internal and external operations, needs data collection. In the past, employees had to spend hours manually sorting through data to analyze it, but automated technologies can now shorten the amount of time needed for these jobs.

By reallocating team resources to higher priority strategic projects and planning, automated technology helps you advance business ambitions.

3. Risk Mitigation

As was mentioned, data collecting gives you a snapshot of how your business is doing every day. It can also be used to comprehend risks and threats better and how they might affect the company.

Threats that can have an impact on the company’s internal and external activities are revealed by large-scale data analysis. Early risk mitigation and understanding of these hazards enable you to develop a strategy to lessen any impact or unfavorable effects.

To ensure that the data and information of their clients are secure, a lot of IT organizations must maintain tight security procedures. By evaluating the data gathered and testing potential breaches against your security systems, you may improve your security measures.

4. Employee sentiment and performance

You may have a better understanding of your employees with the use of data. Utilizing extensive data gathering and analysis, you may spot gaps in employee performance and take early action to resolve weak points and other issues.

Additionally, gathering employee feedback on work-life balance, stress levels, and general relationships with coworkers and management aids in enhancing corporate performance because motivated and happy employees produce more.

5. Diversity, Equity, and Conclusion (DEI) evaluation

Data is a useful tool for assessing employee demographics, just as it can be used to determine staff performance and attitudes toward the company. You can use this information to assess and, if necessary, modify your hiring practices to make sure that you are promoting workplace diversity.

By bringing a wider variety of perspectives to the workplace, diversity enhances corporate performance. Business performance can be greatly enhanced by reviewing the information gathered from employee surveys and putting it to use in the recruitment of a more diverse team.

The secret to effective IT leadership is not just data. IT executives must also comprehend the most effective ways to incorporate data into processes and how this may improve customer satisfaction, business success, efficiency at all levels, and employee experiences. You can promote innovation, increase efficiency, and aid in the success of your business by concentrating data gathering and analysis efforts on the five areas mentioned above.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

Since the installation of the first ATM in 1967 and the introduction of digital trading on the Nasdaq exchange in New York in 1971, the financial services industry has been at the forefront of technical innovation. However, technology remained a back-office function for decades, serving the traders and executives who made the decisions.

Today, however, clients demand flawless digital experiences, and regulators need 24/7 access to market data, pushing technology to the top of financial organizations’ lists of priorities. For insurers, banks, and asset managers alike, the IT leaders and their teams who can achieve these requirements have become some of the most sought-after employees.

“Technology is now [about] how our clients experience the bank, whether it’s through an app or digital service,” says Mike Dargan, group chief digital and information officer and executive board member at UBS. “As a natural consequence, tech is now an integral part of our business—it has a seat at the table and is part of our firm’s strategy.” 

A cloud-based future

Cloud computing is the foundation for the financial services sector’s transformation to an “on-demand” data and services economy, where businesses pay specialized providers for storage and infrastructure as needed. The cloud service divisions of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are usually these experts. Only these tech businesses have the global networks of massive data centers that are necessary to handle the finance industry’s expanding computing needs.

“If you look at all the new requirements coming from central banks, governments, or even investors, financial services companies don’t have the data storage capacity to meet the needs,” says Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud + AI Group.

In the 1970s, when banks first started using technology, they created their infrastructure and commonly installed servers in their data centers. The conventional approach performed well when compute demand was somewhat uniform. However, even if excess capacity was usually unnecessary, banks had to make sure that they maintained expansion during moments of high market volatility when demand for processing power increased.

The idea that if a bank’s demand for computing power surpasses its typical level, its cloud partners can immediately provide additional capacity and only charge for the time it is used is usually discussed, according to Dargan. Because spare capacity is aggregated for the entire industry at the level of the cloud services providers rather than maintained by each enterprise, this not only results in cost savings but also lowers carbon emissions. Because cloud service companies have some data centers that can support one another, reliability and uptime are also increased. With the transition to the cloud, UBS, according to Dargan, achieves above 99.999%, or sixth sigma availability across its estate.

In addition to storage and infrastructure, cloud providers also provide platforms and tools for the creation of apps and services. UBS’s tech teams have switched from utilizing 50 different development tools since Dargan joined the company in 2016 to using UBS DevCloud, a single cloud-based service. UBS software engineers can easily write, test, and release code using a single tool thanks to an open ecosystem that is built on the public cloud. This enables them to produce products quickly and update them often.

In addition to storage and infrastructure, cloud providers also provide platforms and tools for the creation of apps and services. UBS’s tech teams have switched from utilizing 50 different development tools since Dargan joined the company in 2016 to using UBS DevCloud, a single cloud-based service. UBS software engineers can easily write, test, and release code using a single tool thanks to an open ecosystem that is built on the public cloud. This enables them to produce products quickly and update them often. Applying the same in our sector might change everything for our clients, according to Dargan. One of the primary forces behind the financial services industry’s adoption of cloud computing, according to Guthrie, was the desire to enhance customer service, sometimes in the face of competition from new, digital-only competitors. An early cause of movement to the cloud was financial services organizations trying to [offer] mobile or online, digital services to consumers.”

Cultural evolution

Financial services firms’ transition to the cloud represents a substantial, generational change for a sector that led the way in the large-scale deployment of computing through in-house infrastructure. Naturally, that causes some level of caution.

“Finance often has the most sophisticated infrastructure teams of any industry, so the reaction [to transitioning to the cloud] was often ‘I’m sure our on-prem must be better than cloud,’” says Guthrie.

Transitioning gradually is essential for gaining trust. According to Guthrie, when Microsoft assists a customer with cloud migration, the business invests time in creating “guardrails” to make sure security is in place and code may only be deployed in particular domains. “If you spend the time upfront getting it right, then you can go faster every day afterward,” he says.

When Dargan joined UBS in 2016, between ten and five percent of its services were hosted in the cloud. More than 1,000 apps have been switched over, and he and his colleagues have raised that to half. According to him, the goal is to move two-thirds of apps to the cloud.

When adopting agile methods of working, skeleton products are quickly constructed from beginning to end and then distributed to users for feedback that guides future development. For huge financial organizations that typically specified every feature up front and planned multi-year release cycles, access to cloud-based dev-ops tools—a set of practices that mixes software development and IT operations—and automated testing is making such ways of working practices. To assist workers with the change, UBS has created an internal playbook, academy, and mentoring for its 13,000 employees.

Like Guthrie, Dargan advises a smooth shift with a focus on training and sufficient time to get used to new working methods. “Digital transformation has to be an evolution,” he says. “It is not a big bang.”

Staffing the change

Cloud engineers and migration professionals are in high demand due to the quick and widespread adoption of cloud services and the growing significance of technology. Dargan claims that this has led to “a struggle for talent” across all industries, not just in the financial services sector. Due to the dearth of individuals with the required experience, the competition is extremely intense. Guthrie agrees. “Finding someone with 10 years of cloud infrastructure experience is not possible, because some of these areas didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” he says.

Instead of depending solely on external hiring, both cloud service providers and financial service companies have launched internal training initiatives to overcome talent shortages. Technologists can advance through the UBS Distinguished Engineers framework, from “certified” to “fellow,” as they develop their expertise. According to Dargan, these certifications may be more highly valued than promotions or line-management chances because they demonstrate the holder has developed unique and highly marketable skills.

As engineers with cloud knowledge look for opportunities to work in sophisticated environments where they can quickly build and deliver code, the speed at which the cloud is being adopted may be another important recruitment and retention tool.

The desire of fintech to carve out a slice of the financial services revenue pie and client expectations for flawless digital experiences will probably increase the use of technology and cloud-based tools and services. Businesses need to figure out how to develop products quickly in the cloud, reduce infrastructure expenses, and recruit top engineers with cutting-edge working methods if they want to succeed. All of this was accomplished without changing the tools, personnel, or procedures that helped them become digital pioneers in the first place.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

What are the potential risks associated with the shoes we carry?

It’s important to manufacture shoes as cheaply as possible. But if shoes are being returned by dissatisfied buyers, they are neither well-designed nor a well-priced product.

Therefore, we are responsible for conducting the necessary research and providing an early risk analysis.

Any form of upper or shoe lining made of materials including suede, leather, recycled leather, and non-leather falls under our responsibility as the materials manager. We have to make sure that every material is appropriate for the job and won’t have problems like strength or abrasion potential that could lead to returns.

Wear tests and laboratory results for any new materials can be included throughout the course of up to a few months.

Risk in your position

For us, managing risk is making early tests and analyses to reduce any future problems.

According to our operational model, we permit our shoe factories to work with whatever suppliers they choose, provided those suppliers have been approved and audited by Clarks and are capable of producing goods that meet our standards.

So how does risk factor into this? One of the primary problems has to do with material color; when we provide a swatch in the intended shade, there is usually a chance that the supplier won’t match the shade precisely. Human error during the checking procedure runs the danger of affecting stores selling the shoes to customers.

Learnings from Management of Risk (M_o_R 4)

Businesses now face a constant battle to control expenses while maximizing profits. Therefore, learning about and earning a certification in M_o_R 4 gives you access to a variety of risk management approaches.

We have alternatives for teaching those who operate outside our function how to categorize risk and therefore minimize issues later in the production process because my best practice approach is based on industry standards.

Being five steps or more in advance helps to guarantee that the entire pathway is not obstructed and is a better method to manage than having to go back into the procedure and clear the pathway of issues that have already occurred.

Planning to decrease the probability that risk may materialize is the essence of a risk-forward mindset. This entails a trade-off between short-term discomfort and long-term reward.

Dealing with metallic foil materials and how they are applied to shoes is one instance of this in my line of work. These come with inherent hazards that could cause manufacturing processes to run into unexpected circumstances. Therefore, generating a sample in a single color and conducting a wear test is necessary for risk management. As a result, before selecting how to proceed, we can gather information from testing and lab reports for any new materials.

When using a best practice approach to risk management, such as M_o_R 4, there is a component of confidence that we have used all available information and that the choice was the right one. As a result, we can demonstrate that we followed due diligence.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

This training in risk management has caused us to consider how we as a business view risk.

It has altered how we tackle the work, causing us to deliberate more before making choices based on their potential effects and pros and cons. Also, rather than immediately rejecting risk, it should be viewed as a possible good.

Shoes are expensive samples for photoshoots, fitting tests, wear tests, and new product development. Each season is a new undertaking that might cost up to £2 million. To put things in perspective, shipping one pair of shoes costs $20, and we can ship up to 40,000 pairs. In order to balance costs and commercial needs, we are working.

Additionally, creating a new shoe is a lengthy process; we are only beginning for Autumn/Winter 2023. The timings are so delicately balanced, with interdependent processes at every turn of the route, that risk is always present. This includes requesting samples, gathering information on shoe dimensions, and sending updated design specifications to factories.

Buyers then travel from all over the world to inspect the fresh samples during the sales process. A full selection depends on factories sending products successfully, getting payment from buyers, and going to the correct place. Shipments may be delayed by up to two weeks due to external risks, such as China’s Zero Covid policy, which affects workplaces.

When shoes are late for launch dates, other delays may affect bulk deliveries of finished goods.

The actual application of M_o_R 4 best practice

The visual representation of reasonable and intolerable risks is one advantage of learning M_o_R 4; in my work, this has helped us manage a set of risks already related to purchasing orders (POs).

The previous method of creating POs for “goods not for resale” came with some risks, including the inability to detect duplicate invoices, the raising of POs for small amounts, and the time-consuming and expensive administration involving multiple employees and suppliers. We also released the most POs within Clarks.

It was possible to persuade stakeholders, including the CFO, COO, and managers, that the process needed to change and that we were adopting a mature approach toward risk by visually mapping the tolerable and intolerable risks and illustrating what may go right or wrong.

As a result, the process modifications, which included raising one PO per supplier every six months rather than repeatedly, have resulted in a more flexible and appropriate method of handling POs and paying for samples. The budget is now more obvious, and the entire procedure of delivering samples has been enhanced.

In this case, the manner we handled risk had a significant impact, resulting in reduced administration, higher efficiency, and cost savings.

As stated in the M o R 4 guidance, one aspect of this is making sure we conduct retrospectives, which involve reviewing past errors to avoid repeating them in the future. As we learn more from risk management best practices, we believe that it could be ingrained in teams to work on projects that require fixing by applying M_o_R 4 principles on a larger scale.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com

To question outdated ideas and effectively prepare for the future, great transformation introduces new ways of thinking and acting on existing ways of working. As professionals, we must accept and prepare for such change as it occurs. However, we must also be careful about declaring any one manner of working outdated from the start. The introduction of digital reading devices brought with it ominous predictions for the future of books. But did books die? In their prediction for global book publishing 2021-26, IBISWorld states that “increasing internet usage will likely make books more accessible…while rising literacy rates and a concentration on education will likely produce a world full of readers.”

Once a book has been reviewed by some people, it earns credibility as something significant. Similarly, certification following completion of a course of study certifies a person’s knowledge, abilities, and competence. The value of such recognition has not lessened, and the present market demand for a professional workforce with relevant and specialized knowledge drives us to develop and provide exams that are current, valid, and of the best quality. Working with corporate employers to ensure they continue to respect training and certification is central to our mission, and it is why we must defend them as a learning community.

Making preparations for a long-term strategy

Designing and implementing our new commercial policy in February of this year was a significant change to make in such a short amount of time. We would have chosen a longer lead time if we could do it again, but we were forced to act forcefully, proactively, and fast to implement these critical adjustments efficiently. Any major commercial policy move is rarely universally embraced, and we recognize how challenging it has been for many training organizations to implement the essential changes in a unified manner.

Those changes, however, were the result of extensive study and planning with our partners, which resulted in the four core pillars of portfolio excellence: digital-first, simplicity, and community. And, despite the short-term pressures we know some members of the community are feeling, we believe the improvements have established the seeds for long-term success: you and us, growing together.

Moving forward as a global family

The general quantity of support shown by the partner community has taken everyone by surprise in the short time since they introduced the new commercial policy.

Following the pandemic experience, as OLP increased to cover 75% of exam bookings and training partners expanded their businesses through digital classrooms, it became sense to transition to a digital-first strategy for exams and a digital book for every learner. Going digital with tests allows us to manage consistency and ensure quality, which is important. Localization and fighting the grey market are important outcomes. While the introduction of OLP has been a success, we recognize that some markets are still more paper-based than others, and those discussions will continue.

Working with Vital Source has demonstrated that e-books can provide a holistic reading experience, transforming them into actual online tools of value rather than one-dimensional PDFs. And we will keep localizing the books as quickly as possible. We are aware that reducing our price from five to three areas has had a variety of effects on people. While we continue to assist our broader partner network in mitigating the impact of this move, we must recognize the critical role that this decision plays in eliminating previous gaps.

While all of the key adjustments went well when the new commercial strategy went into effect in February, there were some unanticipated difficulties. This entailed performing manual workarounds for specific platforms and systems, which partners often welcomed. Looking back, they believe the biggest win is that three former organizations – Axelos, TSO, and PeopleCert – are now one, allowing us to take a truly unified approach to the material, examinations, and learning experience.

A long-term commitment

The significance of the adjustments we’ve made is in what we can do as a community. A commitment to long-term investment in new certifications is part of it, but so is updating the existing best practice portfolio and continuing with localization projects. We’ve all seen the benefits of updating ITIL 4 in 2019, and other certifications should follow suit.

As a result, we are continuously analyzing what the market wants and will explain the product roadmap as soon as possible. The experiences they’ve had in the nearly year after PeopleCert purchased Axelos have shown us the value of collaborating with our partner community. Whatever they do, they want to collaborate with you well in advance to design our collective world for the future year.

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com