Managed services continue to grow at a steady pace, boosted by remote work and the challenges of staffing an IT team with talent in high demand.

This increasing need for MSPs has created a sizable market. Grand View Research reports that the global MSP market was valued at $239.71 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $267.35 billion this year.

With thousands of MSPs out there, it can be difficult for an organization to find the right MSP to suit their needs. Here we’ll narrow the market to some of the very best managed service providers in the IT space, explain their pros and cons, and give you the tools you need to make the best decision for your business. There are many more good ones out there, however, so consider this list a starting point to help define your needs.

Key MSP Traits to Look for

As when shopping for any product, there are a few traits to look for when choosing the right MSP. These are just a sampling of the factors that may play into a prospective MSP buyers’ decision-making process.

Good Customer Reviews

The first thing to look for is good customer reviews — this includes tapping your peer network too. Online reviews won’t be scientific, of course, and vendors will certainly want to solicit reviews from happy reference customers, but reviews can provide excellent insight into what is and isn’t working in a product. It’s especially good for finding the issues in a product or service, as repeated reports of the same issue by multiple customers makes it likely that the same issue could trouble the prospective buyer as well. If you can’t find any publicly-available customer reviews, we recommend that you ask the MSP for customer references or consult your personal network of contacts for anyone who might have used the MSP in the past. Look for use cases similar to yours of course — the more closely aligned the source is with your needs, the more relevant the feedback will be.

Service Bundles

While enterprise-level businesses might be able to afford to hire specialist MSPs for their specific needs, small-to-midsize businesses will probably want to consider MSPs that offer multiple services or service bundles. This allows them to get similar services at an overall lower price and means they only have to manage one point of contact.

Certifications

Depending on your IT needs, it can be important to check to make sure the MSP is certified in the sort of things you’re looking for. Depending on the service being provided, you might look for ISO, WWWC, 3GPP. IEEE, ECMA, and others. For specific individuals in a company, Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA certifications are also worth looking for. If a service provider’s staff have the right certifications for your needs, they might be one of the best-available MSPs on the market.

Service-Level Agreements

Service-level agreements (SLAs) lay out all the responsibilities you retain and what responsibilities the MSP takes over. SLAs may also offer guarantees for things like response times for open tickets or the amount of uptime for services. For example, a managed security service provider (MSSP) might guarantee a 5-minute response time to all alerts and alarms and will reimburse you for every minute its employees are late. Network downtime might be another issue you’d want an SLA for.

Read More At: Best Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) 2022

Top IT MSPs 2022

Burwood Group

Headquartered in Chicago, the Burwood Group offers digital support for clients nationwide, both virtually and in-person. In 2021, the firm was named a Google Public Sector Partner of the Year for U.S. Education for the second year in a row.

With its 25 years of experience, Burwood provides excellent IT consulting services. Additionally, it can furnish interested customers with 24/7 network management that can support on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Burwood also provides monitoring and event management services for ticket handling, issue tracking, and uptime monitoring. This allows clients to free up any in-house IT staff to work on other essential tasks.

Overall, the Burwood Group is great for organizations looking to deploy new technologies or who need an experienced partner to upgrade their digital strategy. 

Right! Systems

With offices in Washington state, Oregon, and Idaho, Right! Systems provides IT managed services both in the Pacific Northwest in-person and across the nation virtually. Managed services on-offer include cloud services, data center management, security, and project management.

Alongside managed solutions, the firm supplies clients with 24/7 emergency IT and support services.

When a client starts with Right!Systems, they are given a customized technology strategy designed to synergize with their business plans. This allows the client to figure out which products, solutions, and services are right for their organization.

Right! Systems is an excellent choice for groups in the Pacific Northwest looking for hands-on IT management and project management services with options for cloud and data centers as well.

Dataprise

Though headquartered in Maryland, Dataprise has offices around the nation, including in Virginia, Tennessee, California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.

With this wide-ranging number of offices, Dataprise furnishes clients with fully-managed IT services and solutions, as well as managed services for cybersecurity; disaster recovery; detection and response; and infrastructure.

Dataprise also offers both on-site support and a 24/7 help desk based on what its clients need in the moment to keep their organization operating efficiently. Interested customers can pick between individual and bundled services based on their organization’s specific requirements.

Dataprise is recommended for small businesses looking to outsource a variety of managed IT services to save on cost without losing much of the care and attention that in-house IT staff can provide.

NexusTek

As more businesses transition to allowing hybrid and remote work models, service providers like NexusTek are seizing the momentum through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), cloud hosting, and other online services to help transitioning businesses make the changes necessary to facilitate large-scale remote and hybrid work scenarios.

NexusTek provides full management of their cloud hosting services to make sure client companies’ data is efficiently managed and protected. With nearly 20 years of experience as an MSP, NexusTek also provides a number of Microsoft Online services if interested companies are in need of support in that area.

Though based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, NexusTek’s cloud and IT services can be fully managed virtually across the country, much like the remote work these services help make happen.

Overall, NexusTek is recommended to organizations looking to grow their hybrid and remote work options and want an MSP who offers many of the services needed to make that expansion go smoothly.

Read More At: The Best Tools to Successfully Train Remote Employees

Electric

Also known as Electric AI, Electric focuses on offering excellent IT services to small businesses to ensure small business employees are better able to do the job they are paid to do.

Notable services and support on-offer include IT infrastructure development, IT process standardization, and real-time IT support. The company claims this real-time support is deliverable within 10 minutes or less.

On top of its managed services, Electric provides an IT management platform which allows clients to streamline processes like employee onboarding.

While based in New York City, Electric’s network of specialists hit most major American cities including Seattle, Boston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Denver, and Los Angeles. Their services are also provided virtually.

Electric is recommended for small businesses looking to free up company resources by outsourcing IT services.

All Covered

With locations across the US, Mexico, the Caribbean, and more, All Covered offers a diverse suite of managed IT services and solutions. These services include IT helpdesk, application development, IT strategy, cybersecurity, cloud services, infrastructure management, and server backup. 

When they sign up, organizations get a service plan customized for their specific needs which allows them to supplement existing IT staff for either long-term use or on specific projects.

The firm supplies customers with 24/7 phone and live chat support and an easy-to-use client portal through which clients can check the status of support tickets or schedule maintenance visits.

Part of Konica Minolta, All Covered’s solutions are recommended for businesses of any size looking for top-flight bundled services with which to outsource their IT support, software, and hardware duties.

CyberDuo

CyberDuo offers a myriad of managed IT, cloud, and security solutions to businesses around the world. It offers 24/7 support helpdesk for clients in any time zone and, according to their website, guarantees a server request response time of 5 minutes. From its two California offices and one Boston office, CyberDuo offers virtual managed services and solutions all over the country.

CyberDuo’s managed cloud services work especially well for teams looking to transition to Microsoft’s suite of products like Azure, Teams, and Microsoft 365. Managed security services include EDR, endpoint protection, security awareness training, cloud security, and email security.

Overall, CyberDuo is recommended for organizations looking for a technically-skilled MSP who can help them migrate their data to the cloud safely and efficiently.

Read More At: Strategies for Successful Data Migration

1Path

Despite the name, 1Path has two headquarters in the Eastern United States, one in Kennesaw, GA and one in North Andover, MA. From these hubs, the firm provides IT services virtually across the nation. Thanks to its 20 years of experience, 1Path customers can find a whole suite of end-to-end managed solutions custom-fitted to their goals and expectations.

Interested businesses with limited or no IT staff will find a host of fully managed and co-managed solutions able to support them. Key features include process automation, disaster recovery, application development, cloud services, and procurement services.

1Path is recommended for small businesses looking for co-managed or fully managed IT support that can synergize with their current and future goals.  

Choosing the Right MSP for Your Organization

When looking for the MSP that’s best for your organization, the best advice we can offer is “research, research, research.” Make sure you understand both what services and use cases your business needs and what services and use cases an MSP is best at providing. 

We recommend checking for MSPs in your area first. On top of both you and your MSP operating in the same time zone, local MSPs can provide in-person support and services that can be difficult to provide otherwise.

That said, many MSPs offer quality virtual services as well, and it might even be cheaper than an in-person solution. Regardless, it’s best to read customer reviews and insights to see how people with hands-on experience with these MSPs are describing their services. 

If you have other business owners within your network, it can also be good to connect with them to learn about any MSPs they might have used.

At the end of the day however, managed service providers are still service providers, and there’s no replacement for scheduling a meeting with an MSP and seeing if you’re both comfortable working together for the foreseeable future. If you’ve managed to narrow down your list to a few MSPs, be sure to schedule an initial consultation with each to see if they’re the right fit for your organization.

Read More At: Best MSP Software 2022: Managed Service Provider Tools

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“Observability goes beyond traditional monitoring and is especially relevant as infrastructure and application landscapes become more complex,” said Joseph George, Vice President of Product Management, BMC.  “Increased visibility gives stakeholders greater insight into issues and user experience, reducing time spent firefighting, and creating time for more strategic initiatives.”

Observability is an enormous category. It encompasses log analytics, application performance monitoring (APM), and cybersecurity, and the term has been applied in other IT areas like networking. For example, in terms of APM, spending on the technology is expected to hit $6.8 billion by 2024, according to Gartner.

So then, what makes observability unique? And why is it becoming a critical part of the enterprise tech stack? Well, let’s take a look.

Also read: Top Observability Tools & Platforms

How Observability Works

The ultimate goal of observability is to go well beyond traditional monitoring capabilities by giving IT teams the ability to understand the health of a system at a glance.

An observability platform has several important functions. One is to find the root causes of a problem, which could be a security breach or a bug in an application. In some cases, the system will offer a fix. Sometimes an observability platform will make the corrections on its own.

“Observability isn’t a feature you can install or a service you can subscribe to,” said Frank Reno, Senior Product Manager, Humio. “Observability is something you either have, or you don’t. It is only achieved when you have all the data to answer any question about the health of your system, whether predictable or not.”

The traditional approach is to crunch huge amounts of raw telemetry data and analyze it in a central repository. However, this could be difficult to do at the edge, where there is a need for real-time solutions.

“An emerging alternative approach to observability is a ‘small data’ approach, focused on performing real-time analysis on data streams directly at the source and collecting only the valuable information,” said Shannon Weyrick, vice president of research, NS1. “This can provide immediate business insight, tighten the feedback loop while debugging problems, and help identify security weaknesses. It provides consistent analysis regardless of the amount of raw data being analyzed, allowing it to scale with data production.”

Also read: Observability’s Growth to Evolve into Automation Solutions in 2022

The Levers for Observability

The biggest growth factor for observability is the strategic importance of software. It’s become a must-have for most businesses.

“Software has become the foundation for how organizations interact with their customers, manage their supply chain, and are measured against their competition,” said Patrick Lin, VP of Product Management for Observability, Splunk. “Particularly as teams modernize, there are a lot more things they have to monitor and react to — hybrid environments, more frequent software changes, more telemetry data emitted across fragmented tools, and more alerts. Troubleshooting these software systems has never been harder, and the way monitoring has traditionally been done just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

The typical enterprise has dozens of traditional tools for monitoring infrastructure, applications and digital experiences. The result is that there are data silos, which can lessen the effectiveness of those tools. In some cases, it can mean catastrophic failures or outages.

But with observability, the data is centralized. This allows for more visibility across the enterprise.

“You get to root causes quickly,” said Lin. “You understand not just when an issue occurs but what caused it and why. You improve mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to resolution (MTTR) by proactively detecting emerging issues before customers are impacted.”

Also read: Dynatrace vs Splunk: Monitoring Tool Comparison

Observability Challenges

Of course, observability is not a silver bullet. The technology certainly has downsides and risks.  

In fact, one of the nagging issues is the hype factor. This could ultimately harm the category.  “There is a significant amount of observability washing from legacy vendors, driving confusion for end users trying to figure out what observability is and how it can benefit them,” said Nick Heudecker, Senior Director of Market Strategy & Competitive Intelligence, Cribl.

True, this is a problem with any successful technology. But customers definitely need to do the due diligence.

Observability also is not a plug-and-play technology.There is a need for change management. And yes, you must have a highly skilled team to get the max from the technology.

“The biggest downside of observability is that someone – such as an engineer or a person from DevOps or the site reliability engineering (SRE) organization — needs to do the actual observing,” said Gavin Cohen, VP of Product, Zebrium.  “For example, when there is a problem, observability tools are great at providing access and drill-down capabilities to a huge amount of useful information. But it’s up to the engineer to sift through and interpret that information and then decide where to go next in the hunt to determine the root cause. This takes skill, time, patience and experience.”

Although, with the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), this can be addressed. In other words, the next-generation tools can help automate the observer role. “This requires deep intelligence about the systems under observation, such as with sophisticated modeling, granular details and comprehensive AI,” said Kunal Agarwal, founder and CEO, Unravel Data.

Read next: AI and Observability Platforms to Alter DevOps Economics

The post Observability: Why It’s a Red Hot Tech Term appeared first on IT Business Edge.

GRC is software that allows a company to unify the technology they utilize and business goals, manage risk, and ensure compliance with any regulations they might be obligated to meet.

GRC can provide structure and order to what can be a chaotic mess of incongruent objectives, compliance issues, and technology while also providing ways to protect your business from the data breaches that around 63 percent of tech companies have suffered in the last two years, according to Hyperproof.

Unfortunately, finding the right set of tools or software for your GRC needs can be its own chaotic mess, filled with potential pitfalls and promises that don’t deliver. To help you navigate the GRC market, here are some tips and suggestions for getting started, along with a look at some of the top GRC tools.

Why Use GRC?

On top of helping ensure your company is compliant with necessary regulations, there are a number of reasons for using a GRC solution. It can save your business money by reducing instances of unnecessary spending by getting ahead of potential threats to your bottom line, whether that be fines and penalties for non-compliance or unnoticed risks that balloon into big, expensive problems. For example, a well-implemented GRC solution can help prevent breaches of sensitive information like personal data of employees or customers and company financial information or catch them early, saving companies millions of dollars. 

GRC allows for more transparent data-sharing between departments, which can improve efficiency and decrease potential data silos. Finally, a good GRC solution can help ensure your business’s data is more secure in a post-COVID world where so many employees work in remote or hybrid settings.

Also Read: What Is GRC?

Key Features of GRC Software

We’ve given a basic definition of GRC, but what features should you be looking out for? According to Steve Durbin, CEO of the Information Security Forum, you should ensure that the GRC product is supported, and ideally referenced, to an industry-recognized methodology. He recommends considering these basic requirements:

• Ability to conduct assessments at varying levels of detail depending on the criticality of the environment/system being assessed
• The need to host/upload evidence (especially the compliance requirements in the GRC)

• Provide / display outputs in accordance to recognized standards, regulations (ISO, NIST CSF, PCI)
• Predefine a set of attributes to produce a risk analysis in a short space of time, for example, define system criteria, such as internet-facing and processing personally identifying information (PII). This is particularly important for agile environments
• Provide deep analysis on business reporting with an emphasis on how this should be communicated. The reporting needs to consider multiple audiences, such as technical IT teams who typically want to know what controls to implement, the chief information security officer (CISO) for threats, and the business for costs and return on investment (ROI)
• Future proofing of functionality by considering quantitative ways in which to report risk and report the mitigating actions, such as comparing the cost of a possible risk to the cost of implementing controls both operational expenditure (OPEX) and capital expenditure (CAPEX)

Tips for Choosing the GRC Tool That’s Right for You

“Buying the right GRC platform for your organization is all about asking the right questions,” explained Sam Abadir, vice president of Industry Solutions at LockPath, a leading provider of compliance and risk management software. “There are questions to ask about your internal processes, questions to profile vendors, and questions to justify the purchase of a GRC platform. Whether you’re buying a GRC platform or trying to prepare for a mountain climb, asking the right question lowers your risk and increases the favorability of the desired outcome.”

Abadir suggests you ask three questions before buying a platform:

1. What or Who Is Driving the Need for a GRC platform?

Determining what or who prompted the search for GRC platforms can reveal what factors you need to consider before purchasing a GRC platform. From our experience, there are typically three forces at work:

1. The current solution can no longer meet the demand. 
2. An executive or board member requested the search. 
3. Or an incident like a data breach has occurred.

2. How Are You Going to Support Your GRC Platform?

A GRC platform should integrate with your organization’s pre-existing processes. As such, you’ll need to consider how you will support the platform: Will you need an infrastructure team of GRC experts to manage the platform? Will you need to train staff on using the platform? Knowing what is necessary to support each potential GRC platform is critical to success.

3. Where Are You Now and Where Do You Want to Be With Compliance?

To make any progress toward any goal, you first need to determine where you’re starting. Have you purchased a GRC platform before? Are you moving from a point solution like policy management software? Do you have staff with experience using a GRC platform? Check your current proficiency level against your goals to determine what is a “must have” versus a “nice to have.”

Also Read: How to Implement a GRC Strategy

Top 10 GRC Tools in 2022

We analyzed each company’s platforms and solutions and the overall GRC marketplace through major market resources like Gartner, Forrester, and G2 to put together this list of the best GRC solutions available right now. We used the criteria provided by Steve Durbin above to help determine what platforms provided the key features that make a GRC solution worth looking at.

1. Workiva

Workiva is best-suited for organizations in the fields of banking, utilities, government, higher education, insurance, and investments. In addition to a multi-departmental GRC platform, it provides a marketplace where users can find templates and other services related to the platform offered by Workiva itself as well as partner companies like Deloitte, PwC, Oracle, and Namely. The platform can connect to data sources both on-premises and on-cloud and includes, among others, the following solutions:

• ESG Reporting
• Enterprise Risk Management
• Financial Statement Automation
• Policy and Procedure Management
• IT Risk & Compliance
• Board Report Creation

Workiva’s platform is designed to simplify the usually-complex GRC processes and ensure even the less tech-savvy members of a business can utilize its features. For external reporting, it’s excellent, though some users report requiring additional use licenses for services outside that realm.

Workiva was categorized as a Leader in the 2021 Q3 Forrester Wave Governance, Risk, and Compliance Platforms report.

Demo and pricing information are available from Workiva.

2. IBM OpenPages

Tech giant IBM’s GRC platform is powered by their IBM Watson AI and can provide a scalable software solution to medium-to-large organizations in practically any industry. Available solutions and product modules include:

• Operational Risk Management
• Model Risk Governance
• Regulatory Compliance Management
• End-to-End Data Governance
• Internal Audit Management
• IT Governance

Some users criticize the platform for the number of steps needed to set up the platform or perform simple tasks. However, its automation tools and comprehensive out-of-the-box tools are well-regarded. IBM OpenPages was named a Leader in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management. The 2021 Q3 Forrester Wave GRC Platforms report listed it as a Strong Performer.

The platform’s price can range from $48,000 to $207,000. Interested users can find more demo and pricing information on IBM’s website.

3. RSA Archer

With customization options for organizations of all sizes and industries, Archer is a good pick for companies looking for a GRC solution that can adapt to a variety of compliance and risk management needs. Its diverse suite of solutions includes the following:

• Regulatory and Corporate Compliance
• Audit Management
• IT & Security Risk Management
• Third-Party Governance
• Operational Resilience
• ESG Management

Users praise Archer for its comprehensive toolkit and solutions suite, but some have concerns with integration and customization difficulties.

In Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant, Archer was named a Leader in the IT Risk Management and IT Vendor Risk Management Tools categories.

If you’re interested, RSA offers a demo of the platform, as well as pricing information, on the Archer website.

4. LogicManager

LogicManager is usable across a variety of industries, but organizations in education, retail, financial services, government, or healthcare should especially pay attention to this GRC platform. Notable features include:

• Incident Management
• Third-Party Risk Management
• Audit Management
• Financial Reporting Compliance
• IT Governance & Security
• Policy Management

Users praise LogicManager for its ease of use but some aren’t satisfied with the platform’s ability to handle more detailed contracts and documents.

Gartner recognized LogicManager as a Challenger in its 2021 Magic Quadrant in the IT Risk Management category, with the platform scoring the highest in Ability to Execute. Similarly, Forrester listed it as a Strong Performer in its Q3 2021 GRC Wave.

Interested buyers can contact LogicManager for pricing information and a demo.

5. MetricStream

MetricStream is best for organizations with a diverse set of users with distinct needs, such as executives, IT managers, and auditors. It supports industries such as life sciences, energy, telecom, technology, and insurance. It boasts an array of features, including:

• Compliance Management
• Enterprise Risk Management
• Internal Audit Management
• Regulatory Compliance Management
• Third-Party Risk Management
• IT and Cyber Compliance Management

MetricStream’s platform can be delivered on-premises or via the cloud and provides a unique user interface that’s good for less tech-savvy users.

Forrester’s GRC Wave for Q3 2021 named MetricStream a Strong Performer, and the platform was a Leader in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management.

No pricing information is available on MetricStream’s website, but you can contact the company for a demo.

6. OneTrust

With across-the-board versatility, OneTrust is great for organizations who need solutions for employees in multiple departments and roles. It also comes complete with a number of useful solutions, such as:

• Audit Management
• Vendor Risk Management
• Awareness Training
• IT & Security Management
• Enterprise & Operational Risk Management
• Incident Management

OneTrust’s platform boasts over 500 integrations, including Dropbox, G-Suite, Office 365, and GitHub, and can work in a variety of compliance and risk frameworks.

While Gartner named it a Challenger in its 2021 IT Risk Management Magic Quadrant, Forrester recognized OneTrust as a Leader in its Q3 2021 GRC Wave.

Pricing information is available on OneTrust’s website, and interested buyers can also schedule a demo.

7. Fusion Framework System

Built on Salesforce’s Lightning platform, Fusion Framework System is one of the best options for organizations already working with it and other Salesforce tech. Here are some of the features included in the solution:

• Crisis and Incident Management
• Risk Management
• IT & Security Risk Management
• Business Continuity Management
• Operational Resilience
• Third-Party Risk Management

With the Fusion Framework System, users can lay out their entire business with an easy-to-use click-to-configure user interface. Guided workflows help make the platform even more user-friendly, and its impressive integrations list make it a versatile tool for any business.

Although Forrester and Gartner both left Fusion Framework System off their respective 2021 GRC lists, Forrester did name the company a Leader in its 2021 Business Continuity Management Software Wave. The Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI) also awarded it the Product/Service Provider of the Year prize in 2022.

Pricing information is not available on Fusion Framework System’s website, but interested parties can contact the company for a demo.

8. Riskonnect

Riskonnect is a great pick for users in the healthcare, financial services, insurance, retail, and manufacturing industries. It includes a wide array of features such as:

• Internal Audit
• Claims Administration
• ESG Management
• Compliance Management
• Enterprise Risk Management
• Third-Party Risk Management

Customers laud Riskonnect for its ease of use once everything was set up, but some find the product difficult and confusing to implement.

Riskonnect was named a Contender in Forrester’s GRC Wave for Q3 2021, and Gartner named it a Niche Player in its 2021 Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management. 

No pricing information is available on Riskonnect’s website, but interested readers can contact the company for a demo.

9. ServiceNow

With certain industry-specific solutions, ServiceNow is great for organizations working in fields like telecom, education, manufacturing, and government, among others. Its features include:

• Performance Analytics
• Operational Risk Management
• Policy and Compliance Management
• Operational Resilience
• Vendor Risk Management
• Audit Management

Users praise ServiceNow for the ability to coordinate between internal and external teams, as well as its easy-to-implement integrations. That said, some users have spoken about issues with the company’s customer support capabilities as well as an inefficient IT asset management system.

Thanks to its impressive GRC chops, Forrester listed ServiceNow as a Leader in its Q3 2021 GRC Wave. Gartner recognized the company as a Leader in IT Risk Management for its 2021 Magic Quadrant.

Pricing and demo information are available on ServiceNow’s website.

10. Diligent

Through its versatile GRC platform, Diligent seeks to help client companies modernize their governance procedures for the Digital Age. Notable features include:

• ESG Tracking & Reporting
• Policy & Training Management
• IT Risk Management
• Entity & Subsidiary Management
• Regulatory Compliance Management
• Third-Party Risk Management

Users appreciate how feature-rich Diligent’s platform is, especially regarding analytics and big data insights. However, some feel the platform could do with some streamlining, particularly in the areas of setup and implementation.

In its Q3 2021 GRC Wave, Forrester marked Diligent as a Strong Performer. The company was a Leader in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management as well.

Interested readers can request demo and pricing information from Diligent on the company’s website.

GRC vs. IRM

While researching GRC, you will inevitably stumble on the debate between GRC and integrated risk management (IRM) and what the differences are between the two. The claim made by some is that IRM is newer and more effective at risk management than GRC, but the two are very similar.

Notably, many of the same product leaders in GRC found themselves listed as product leaders in IRM when research and consulting firm Gartner coined the IRM term in 2018. It can be helpful to view IRM software as a subgenre of GRC software, one more focused on the R than the G or the C. It’s ultimately up to you to determine whether your business needs IRM or GRC more.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right GRC product for your business isn’t easy, but we hope that the above tips and list will give you a head start on your way to GRC success. These are some of the very best GRC solutions on the market and will give you a sense of what’s available on the market as you evaluate your own needs and budget. An informed decision will help your business tremendously in the long run.

Read Next: Top Data Quality Tools & Software 2022

This post updates a Feb. 20, 2018 article by Sue Poremba.

The post Top GRC Platforms & Tools in 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.

IT service management (ITSM) refers to how IT teams administer the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers. Moreover, it encompasses all the activities and processes necessary to support, deliver, build, and design these services.

The core idea behind ITSM is the delivery of IT as a service. People often misunderstand ITSM as basic IT support. Rather, ITSM teams overlook all forms of workplace technology, ranging from laptops, to servers, to printers and business-critical software applications.

Modern infrastructures are growing more complex by the day, and vital IT systems and services must be completely operational around the clock. Therefore, IT teams are leveraging potent ITSM tools to assist in IT management.

These tools offer a plethora of unique functionalities to support IT teams. Some of the benefits ITSM tools provide include:

• Reducing business inefficiencies
• Ensuring business continuity
• Supporting business operations and efficiency
• Ensuring IT service delivery is continuous

Businesses of all sizes should consider purchasing an ITSM tool to accomplish work and resolve IT issues. Here is what you need to know about two of the top ITSM tools: ServiceNow and Jira.

Also read: Top ITSM Tools & Software

ServiceNow

ServiceNow ITSM is an innovative, single-cloud ITSM tool that enables you to future-proof your IT infrastructure. With ServiceNow ITSM, you can deliver resilient IT services that increase employee productivity and create fascinating customer service experiences.

Key Differentiators

• Utilize built-in best practices to quickly secure dissimilar tools to a solitary system of engagement in the cloud.
• Make use of your shared analytics and data with commended IT service workflows.
• Use artificial intelligence (AI) to hasten the resolution of issues and enhance the efficiency of agents.
• Incidents are automatically assigned to the right resolution team.
• With always-on IT services, shape service experiences for on-premises and remote employees.
• Deliver high-quality IT services at scale and proactively, while continuously improving business processes.
• Obtain complete IT infrastructure visibility with analytics in real-time, built-in dashboards.
• Remove friction across departments with a modern mobile application that runs on a solitary platform.

Pricing: ServiceNow ITSM is available in three packages: ITSM, ITSM Professional, and ITSM Enterprise. Reach out to the ServiceNow sales team to obtain a custom quote.

Jira overview

Jira Service Management by Atlassian is an ITSM tool that empowers business and development and operations (DevOps) teams to collaborate rapidly and efficiently. With Jira Service Management, you can respond to changes and deliver excellent employee and customer service experiences quickly.

Key Differentiators

• Empower each team, from legal to human resources (HR), to set up a service desk speedily and consistently adapt at scale.
• Track work across the IT infrastructure through Jira’s open, collaborative platform.
• Absorb data from other software development tools, and link issues across Jira, so your IT operations and support teams have more contextual information to quickly respond to changes, incidents, and requests.
• Manage risk while delivering more customer impact.
• Deploy changes with ease, accelerate critical development work, and eliminate toil.
• Supercharge Jira Service Management with over 1,000 trusted integrations and applications available on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Pricing: Jira Service Management is available in four packages: Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. At no cost, users can have access to 3 agents and 2GB of storage. The Standard plan offers a limit of up to 5,000 agents and 250GB of file storage at $20 per agent per month, and the Premium plan offers a limit of up to 5,000 agents and unlimited file storage at $45 per agent per month. Those interested in the Enterprise plan will need to contact the sales team for pricing information.

ServiceNow Jira Integration

For wanting to take advantages of the benefits offered by both tools, the integration of Jira with ServiceNow is beneficial for enterprises, enabling them to:

• Make quicker and better decisions;
• Leverage the best of collaboration and functionality in the delivery ecosystem;
• Speed up customer response time;
• Ensure complete traceability of requirements; and
• Obtain full context of customer priorities and requirements.

Choosing ITSM Tools

ITSM tools are most heavily used by IT service delivery functions and IT service desks to support the workflows and tasks for processes such as configuration, knowledge, service-level, change, problem, request, and incident management.

Before purchasing an ITSM tool, we advise you to conduct research of your own. Go through the offerings of ITSM tools in detail and purchase one that best fits the profile of your business.

See more ITSM tool comparisons:

• Zendesk vs Jira
• Ivanti vs ServiceNow
• ServiceNow vs Salesforce
• BMC Helix vs ServiceNow

The post Jira vs. ServiceNow: Features, Pricing, and Comparison appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Therefore, if you’re looking for software solutions that are ideal for managing your support services, you should be able to benefit from ITSM platforms like Zendesk and Jira. These two tools have been designed specifically for companies that need an organized approach to provide their customers with excellent support.

Also read: Top ITSM Tools & Software

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is a customer service and software-as-a-service (SaaS) support solution that manages support issues and tickets from multiple channels. In addition, its self-service portal offers live chat, email, phone, and social media integrations. The platform also allows you to organize your support team into different departments based on their roles within your organization, such as sales, marketing, or technical services.

Key Differentiators

• Zendesk is best suited for end-user communication.
• With Zendesk, you can customize reports and get insights into the metrics, such as your customer base’s health and how it affects your business.
• Zendesk facilitates collaboration. When an issue occurs, agents can exchange information through private comments to help address the problem as quickly as possible.
• The built-in SLA (service-level agreement) in Zendesk allows agents to establish their criteria and use up-to-date measures to track the progress of a particular ticket.
• Zendesk is a multichannel support application that can be accessed by email, social networking sites, chat, phone, message, and SMS.

What is Jira?

Jira is an issue-tracking tool that helps organizations develop software efficiently. Through Jira, you can set up your team’s workflow and prioritize tasks, leading to more efficient development processes and greater productivity.

Jira offers several capabilities, including built-in support for agile development, a complete mobile app suite to keep teams connected on projects, a help desk solution with ticketing functionality, and even a user management system that provides role-based access control. It spans a range of functions and use cases, from service desk to HR services, facilities, operations and more.

Key Differentiators

• With custom SLAs and reporting, Jira allows you to track your team’s response time, resolution data, etc.
• Users can set up automated rules in order to automate repetitive tasks.
• The tool is highly configurable; you may create different directories and procedures for task completion and assign importance to tasks.
• Jira is best suited for project management.
• Jira provides a self-service platform in which your employees can find answers to frequently asked questions.

What are the Similarities Between Zendesk and Jira?

Zendesk and Jira are enterprise-level products designed to address a wide range of needs in one cohesive system. Both tools offer configurability and customization options and are highly scalable. If you’re looking for an all-in-one ticketing solution that can grow with your company over time, either could fit your needs perfectly.

While there are some differences between them, they share much in common—most notably a focus on organization and ease of use. Other similarities include:

• Both offer tools that can help you manage support tickets and communicate with customers on a day-to-day basis.
• They offer add-ons that give you additional functionality.
• Both tools provide knowledge base integration, multichannel support, and SLA reporting.
• They’re both cloud-based SaaS programs.
• Both platforms offer time tracking, ticketing, and integration with other popular apps.

Zendesk vs. Jira: How are They Different?

By providing both project and operational support tools, Jira covers concept to launch, while Zendesk focuses on communication, support, and feedback.

In reality, both are essential to managing your business and processes. IT leaders use Zendesk for maintaining ongoing communication with customers and employees, while project managers use Jira to plan projects and measure outcomes. Jira offers more of a project management focus, but it does have customer service capabilities that allow you to track requests and organize tickets by status.

Zendesk vs. Jira Service Desk: Pricing

How to Choose a Service Desk Platform

Choosing the right service desk platform for your company is often a matter of determining your specific needs and use case. Some companies may need more robust ticketing capabilities than others, while some organizations might want to be able to manage multiple software products from one place.

In addition, some companies may need more extensive reporting features than others. Ultimately, you’ll want to consider your requirements carefully before deciding which platform will work best for you.

We found that, as in-house help desk software, Zendesk is best at making two-way communication easy. You can integrate with tons of different apps and customize it all around your business. So, if you’re looking for in-house help desk software that lets you communicate easily between users and IT departments, go with Zendesk.

Meanwhile, Jira has a good knowledge base, automates many routine tasks, and can adapt to your processes over time. The strength of Jira is robust enterprise-level features like multiple activities feeds at a project, team, issue, user levels, and assessment/reporting tools. If you’re looking to support a large team and need to see exactly who’s doing what at any time with complete visibility into their workflow and issues, then Jira is your best option.

Read next: Best IT Project Management Tools & Software

The post Zendesk vs. Jira: ITSM Software Comparison appeared first on IT Business Edge.

However, data migration is a complicated and often expensive process. You will need the right approach to migrating data without error, including well thought-out strategies and appropriate tools.

Also read: Best Cloud Migration Vendors & Services

What is Data Migration?

Data migration refers to the process of transferring data from one storage system to another. It begins with data selection and preparation, during which extraction and transformation takes place. Following this step, permanent data is moved from the old storage system and loaded onto an appropriate data store. Then, the data migration ends with decommissioning the old storage system.

Data migration typically falls into one of two categories:

• Cloud Migration: Data or applications are migrated from a physical storage system to the cloud or between two cloud environments.
• Data Center Migration: Data is migrated from one on-premises data center to another for upgrading or relocation.

After decide where you’re going to migrate, next you need to determine what you need to migrate:

• Storage Migration: Data is moved from one physical storage solution to another.
• Database Migration: Structured, or database managed, data is moved using a database management system.
• Application Migration: Data is migrated from one computing environment to another to support a change in application software.
• Business Process Migration: Business applications and data related to business processes and metrics are migrated.

Why Do You Need Data Migration?

Organizations opt to upgrade their storage systems and consequentially migrate data for several reasons that ultimately help them gain a competitive advantage. Database migration helps companies overcome storage limitations and can facilitate better data management features and processing speed. On the other hand, storage migration is chiefly focused on upgrading to support new technology.

Other scenarios where you might find the need for data migration include:

• You want to upgrade to a new infrastructure to make up for size constraints.
• You want to optimize the overhead costs of running a data center.
• You need to merge new data following an acquisition.
• You need to relocate your data center.
• You want to implement a disaster recovery solution.
• You want to move an application to the cloud, for reasons ranging from ease of maintenance and access to cost

Strategies and Precursors to Data Migration

Strategizing in advance will help you save on costs and prevent downtime to ensure business continuity. It is essential to consider your limitations and understand the overall scope of your data migration project. There are two key factors that you need to consider before launching a data migration project, namely the size and time.

• Data Size: Most datasets are too big to be simply uploaded to the cloud and will need to be shipped on physical devices. This is primarily because of speed and cost constraints. You can send data below 10TB through standard drives, while larger data in the petabyte range will need specialized devices meant for data migration.
• Time Constraints: Bandwidth, network speed and limitations, and dataset size are key considerations when calculating how much time a data migration will take. If data needs to be shipped on physical devices, that time should also be taken into account.

After considering data size and time constraints, you can formulate your project budget and timeline. You also need to decide on the tools and framework for database migration. This will give you an overview of the entire process of data migration.

In addition, you will also need to decide on the migration approach, i.e., to pick between the big-bang approach and doing it in one go or the trickle approach–where you migrate in phases with both systems operating side-by-side.

Also read: 5 Cloud Migration Strategies

Key Steps to Data Migration

Data migration is one of the most critical projects your company will undertake, requiring careful efforts at every step. The reason behind the complexity is that you do not want to compromise data quality, as data-driven businesses will suffer errors in core operations otherwise.

After planning, there are roughly five more stages to data migration:

1. Data preparation involves some key actions targeted at making the data suitable for the migration. Beginning with auditing, an automated process is run to analyze data quality and inform you about inconsistencies, duplicate entries, or poor health. Next, you back up files and establish access levels.
2. Data mapping involves matching the data field between the source and the new destination.
3. Execution is where data is extracted, processed, and loaded to the destination.
4. Testing is ideally a continuous process in data migration, especially when you are migrating data in phases. Once the entire migration process is complete, you need to run another iteration of automated testing, fix the issues, and proceed to go live.
5. Auditing the data again once it is live is necessary to ensure successful completion. You should also run timely audits and monitor the system’s health.

Tools of Migration

There are numerous tools that can assist you through the migration process. And many cloud providers offer their own set of tools. Other tools, including several free and open-source applications such as Data Loader by Salesforce, are also available. Like the migration types, the migration tools can be self-scripted, on-premises, and cloud-based. Other major tools include Amazon’s AWS Data Pipeline, IBM Informix, and Microsoft Azure CosmosDB.

Also read: Successful Cloud Migration with Automated Discovery Tools

Challenges in Data Migration

Data migration is inherently complex, and there are likely going to be several challenges when carrying out this project in your organization.

• Failing to include concerned parties might disrupt your business activities and the data migration process in general. Keep them updated on a weekly basis about the progress.
• Lack of data governance or clarity about who has access to the data in the source system can create confusion and hamper data quality. A clearly defined data governance framework is essential to overcome this challenge.
• A generic and unproven migration method might do more harm than good. Always look for a reliable testimonial-backed service provider, and pick an experienced team.
• Insufficient skills and inadequate tools can both lead to unexpected delays and cost you valuable time. Give it due to research and ensure that the team assigned with data migration is sufficiently trained and has all the necessary tools.
• Planning is indispensable. It might not be sufficient by itself to guarantee successful migration, but it is necessary.

Ready to Migrate Your Data?

While data migration might not sound too daunting in theory, it is a complex process with many variables that must be figured out beforehand. Therefore, you’ll need a specialized team to execute and monitor the data migration process and treat it like a major project.

You can also take advantage of several premium and open-source applications to help you with your data migration. Like the migration types, migration tools can be self-scripted, on-premises, and cloud-based, giving you plenty of flexibility to proceed with your data migration in a way that’s best for your company.

Although it is a major undertaking, you can proceed without hesitation once you have given it due thought.

Read next: Top 7 Data Management Trends to Watch in 2022

The post Strategies for Successful Data Migration appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Here are the essential elements to include in a business requirements document, plus best practices and scope limitations and considerations.

Also read: Best IT Project Management Tools & Software

Key Elements of a Business Requirements Document

Here are 10 elements to include in a business requirements document that will help assure your team’s success.

Versioning

A business requirements document is a living thing. It is created before a project starts, can change frequently, and may still be edited once everything else is finished.

Because the business requirements document will be referenced time and again, it’s important that all changes are noted within reason. If requirements or dates change, record it; if you fixed a typo, let it slide.

Summary statement

Even though the summary statement tends to appear first in a business requirements document, it’s recommended to be written last. It’s a high-level statement that should outline the project requirements and summarize the rest of the document.

Project objectives

Outline the project goals and objectives, detailing what the work will accomplish. If the project supports business processes or workflows, it should be described here.

Objectives should always be SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Needs statement

The needs statement is intended to be persuasive. It’s the reason for the project. Think of the needs statement as a justification meant to sell stakeholders on the idea and to motivate the project team.

Project scope

Detailing the project scope will help set boundaries for the work to be completed. Depending on your project, goals, team, and environment, it can sometimes be easier to identify items or modules that won’t be updated or included in the project scope instead of defining all the things that are.

Stakeholders

Identify all the stakeholders involved, including their positions. It is helpful to list their position within the organizations involved, but also their roles and responsibilities as they pertain to the current project.

Financial statement and cost-benefit analysis

Not to be thought of as a budget, the financial information included in a business requirements document is intended to indicate the impact of the project on a company’s balance sheet.

Funding sources should be identified here, but don’t forget that any person or organization contributing may also qualify as a stakeholder and should be included in both sections.

Schedule, timeline, and milestones

Depending on the project size, information for the schedule, timeline, and milestones may be combined into a single section or separated out into their own. It’s important to clearly identify expectations and deadlines, being sure to include decision points as well as moments when work needs to be completed.

Track any and all activities, including when you need to have sign-off on project deliverables, when outside vendors need to be engaged, and when hardware has to be in place.

For long-term projects, identifying clear milestones allows the ideal opportunity for interim billing, so vendors and contractors can be paid.

Functional requirements

Functional requirements make up the real bulk of a good business requirements document. The more detailed the requirements, the better the outcome.

Be sure to use clear, concise language free of jargon or slang. Avoid acronyms, even if they feel common. And when possible, add visual elements like screenshots, prototypes, and mock-ups. It’s a great idea to compare current state to future state when business processes or workflows are changing.

Where it makes sense, break large sections into smaller, more accessible pieces. And if requirements are optional or subject to other dependencies, break them down by must have, should have, and nice to have.

Non-functional requirements

Document any reporting, analytics, and integration requirements in this section. Be mindful that some activities, such as security scans, may necessitate revisiting other sections of the business requirements document, and time should be budgeted for accordingly.

Also read: How Project Management Software Increases IT Efficiency

Business Requirements Document Best Practices

There are a number of best practices that can ensure your document – and project – will be a success. Here are 8 to consider as you plan your project.

• Get input and perspective. Subject your business requirements document to peer review.
• Set reasonable deadlines. Double and triple check dates and deadlines to be sure they are achievable—it’s better to estimate high and deliver early than have projects fall behind.
• Include time for research. If contractors or vendors need to be engaged, be certain the time and costs of doing so are included. If researching a needed vendor or third-party product is a part of the project, identify it as a risk to mitigate in case an appropriate solution isn’t found, takes longer than expected, or exceeds the budget allowance.
• Be aware of regulatory requirements. Don’t forget to account for any regulations or legislation that may impact the project.
• Detail needed technology. Include details on the tools and technology that will be used and employed.
• Plan for ongoing support. If your project will require ongoing maintenance and support after implementation, specify a support plan, and list the activities and individuals involved.
• Leave time for documentation. Remember that documentation should be a part of any project. Activities should be included with time allotted to complete documentation and training materials.
• Be flexible. Stay open to identifying and evolving functional requirements, but remain aware of how changes may impact other activities, timelines, or deadlines.

Limitations of Business Requirements Documents

Despite being a source of truth and trusted advisor for a project, business requirements documents do have their limitations. Here are some of the limitations of the document’s scope and how to navigate around them.

• You don’t always need to know how something gets done. Functional requirements should answer questions of what and why but not how. Though the distinction may feel subtle, knowing how a developer will accomplish a particular task is outside the scope of these documents.
• Don’t leave questions unanswered. Business requirements documents should always answer questions, not ask them. If there are questions to be asked, or unknowns to research, do so during the creation of the document, and include the results instead.
• Include all background and details. Each business requirement document should stand alone. Assume that everybody reading it has no idea what has happened in past projects. If there are details that need to be included to offer context, include them, but be sure they are relevant and necessary.
• Plan for delays. Though few business requirements documents include a risk mitigation section, it’s wise to find ways to identify areas where timelines or activities could be impacted and in what way. A rule of thumb is to add a 20% time buffer to manage uncertainties, but adjust this as needed and appropriate.

Business Requirements Documents Inspire Teamwork

When done with care and consideration, a business requirements document fosters trust and transparency among project teams and collaborators. Communications are improved, there are fewer errors and mistakes, ambiguities and uncertainties are reduced or eliminated, and outcomes can be all but guaranteed.

Read next: Choosing Between the Two Approaches to Project Management

The post Tips for Writing the Perfect Business Requirements Document appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Therefore, stakeholders need to learn how to motivate their development teams to encourage both personal and professional development without driving them toward burnout. In the age of the Great Resignation, it’s more important than ever to keep key employees content.

Also read: How to Choose a Software Development Methodology: 6 Approaches

4 Tips for Communicating with Your Dev Team

Communication with your developers involves creating a mutual understanding based on empathy and respect. Just as with any new employee, it’s important to learn how each member of your development team best communicates.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to bridge the communication gap between developers and stakeholders (or anyone else for that matter).

1. Share your expertise without condescension

While some developers may have industry-related experience or education, most come to the team armed only with the requisite technical expertise. Let them know the areas of your business most affected by technology. Explain workflows and business processes in plain but logical terms.

2. Ask for translations

When developers start using words, phrases, or concepts that are confusing to you, ask what they mean. Don’t wait until days or weeks later. Many developers tend to focus on the work being done at that moment, and having context can make it much easier to explain what is meant, both for better communication and to avoid wasting precious dev time.

3. Know what you need to know

While there are times that it’s important to know all the details, it’s not always necessary to know exactly how development is done at a granular level. What matters is that the work gets done according to the specifications provided.

If there are specifics that need to be known, be sure to let developers know ahead of time that they should record the given details and be prepared to share that information.

4. Ask instead of making assumptions

When troubleshooting an issue, it’s not uncommon that developers can’t replicate the error. Rather than assume they don’t believe the error is occurring, be sure to ask how they would like to approach the issue. For example, would they rather receive end-user screenshots of the error, or would they rather shadow the user to see the process being followed?

If you want the developer to fix the issue, let them take the lead and tell you what resources they require to best do that.

Also read: Identifying Software Requirements Using 5 Whys and 5 Hows

5 Tips For Retaining Developers

We covered communications, which can be no small challenge when working with a highly technical team, but that’s only part of the challenge. These next two sections will deal with retaining your dev talent – and keeping them from burning out.

1. Set clear and measurable goals in cooperation with developers

Feel free to set deadlines, but always treat these as collaborative tasks. Projects can be affected by unforeseen events, scope creep, and other external factors. Encourage developers to speak up when something happens that could impact a previously set deadline, and be prepared to ask questions to see what may get things back on track.

2. Provide the support developers actually ask for

Nothing is more frustrating than being given help that doesn’t actually help. Empower developers to ask for the support they need, and listen to their requests.

Hiring extra developers when what’s really needed is training won’t make the project move faster. But, if slow hardware is guilty of stalling development efforts, it won’t matter how much training your team has.

3. Give developers power over their own environments

Every employee is different and has different needs. Moreover, the research varies, but it’s commonly understood that refocusing after being distracted can take 20–30 minutes.

Therefore, you should work together with your developers to design an environment that helps to relieve some of the pressures to be innovative, creative, and productive while supporting your business goals.

4. Provide recognition

Everyone loves to feel appreciated, and developers are no different. Consider ways to celebrate or recognize your developers when they work long hours or put in extra effort to reach project milestones. However, be sure to communicate with your developers their recognition preferences—some may be more receptive to private recognition versus public.

5. Don’t micromanage

It can be hard for non-technical team members to understand, but sometimes developers can go days without producing demonstrable results, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been productive.

It’s okay to ask whether tasks are on track, but avoid making these check-in points spontaneous or too frequent. This can result in reduced productivity since developers will be spending this time defending their progress rather than working toward project milestones.

See also: Using Whiteboards to Streamline Development Team Collaboration

6 Tips for Preventing Developer Burnout

Writing code can be very stressful and demanding work. As such, developers can face overwhelming mental fatigue, putting them at higher risk for burnout.

Support developers and their mental health with these six suggestions for preventing developer burnout:

• Encourage vacations, even when timelines are tight: Being able to clear the mind can be just what is needed for a fresh perspective.
• Provide flexible scheduling: Development work can often rely on inspiration, which doesn’t always happen in an 8-hour, 9–5, workday. Forcing developers to knock off at 5 p.m. and remember what they were doing at 8 a.m. the next morning isn’t always realistic, so be understanding if, for instance, developers are on a roll and choose to work a 10-hour day followed by a shorter day.
• Destigmatize asking for help: Speaking up about signs of burnout should never be met with shaming or suggestions that it is due to personal failure.
• Clearly define team hierarchy, roles, and responsibilities: Don’t make it an exhausting task to get sign-off for completed items. Make it easy to know who will answer specification or requirement questions.
• Allow remote work: Give developers the option to work remotely, even if it isn’t 100% of the time.
• Break large projects into smaller modules: Sometimes being able to celebrate milestones, recognize progress, and move on renews energy and enthusiasm.

Also read: 10 User-Centered Software Design Mistakes to Avoid

Make Your Developers Feel Valued

It doesn’t matter how many clients you gain, how many ideas you brainstorm, or how much analysis you perform if you don’t have the developer talent to bring each project to life. Build teams that understand and accept everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and take the time to mention and celebrate successes. Agile development and DevOps require the management skills to help your team navigate all obstacles, personal and team-related.

Sometimes a task as simple as taking notes when having discussions with developers or learning their acronyms and phrases can go a long way toward making them feel heard.

Happy employees are more productive and perform at a higher level, and they are more likely to stay with the company as it grows.

Read next: Using Swim Lane Diagrams to Improve Software Development

The post Motivating and Retaining Your Development Team appeared first on IT Business Edge.

Why is Data Quality Important?

The success of many businesses today is impacted by the quality of their data, from data collection to analytics. As such, it is important for data to be available in a form that is fit for use to ensure a business is competitive.

Quality data produces insights that can be trusted, reducing the waste of organizational resources and, therefore, impacting the efficiency and profitability of an organization. Maintaining high data quality standards also helps organizations satisfy different local and international regulatory requirements.

How do Data Quality Tools Work?

Data quality tools analyze information to identify obsolete, ambiguous, incomplete, incorrect, or wrongly formatted data. They profile data and then correct or cleanse data using predetermined guidelines with methods for modification, deletion, appending, and more.

Also read: Data Literacy is Key for Successful Digital Transformation

Best Data Quality Tools & Software

DemandTools

DemandTools is a versatile and secure data quality software platform that allows users to speedily clean and maintain customer relationship management (CRM) data. It also provides users with correct report-ready data that boosts the effectiveness of their revenue operations.

Key Differentiators

• Data Quality Assessment: Through the Asses module, DemandTools helps users recognize the degree of strength or weakness of their data to determine where they should focus remediation efforts. Unactionable, Insufficient, Limited, Acceptable, and Validified are five data quality categories which allow users to understand the overall state of their data.
• Duplicate Management: DemandTools helps its customers to discover, remove, and prevent duplicate records from misleading various teams within the organization, thus complicating their customer journeys. Duplicate management happens through modules such as Dedupe, which cleans up existing duplicates; Convert, which keeps lead queues duplicate-free; and DupeBlocker, which is a Salesforce duplicate blocker.
• Data Migration Management: DemandTools ensures the integrity of data is maintained as it enters and exits Salesforce. It uses modules such as Import, Export, Match, Delete, and Undelete.
• Email Verification: Users can verify email addresses in their CRM to ensure they have an effective line of communication with their customers. And lead and contact email addresses can be verified in bulk.

Con: A majority of the tool is designed around Salesforce.

Pricing: Base pricing begins at $10 per CRM license. You can contact the vendor for a personalized quote.

Openprise

Openprise is a no-code platform that empowers users to automate many sales and marketing processes to reap the value of their revenue operations (RevOps) investments. As a data quality tool, Openprise allows users to cleanse and format data, normalize values, carry out deduplication, segment data, and enrich and unify data.

Key Differentiators

• Openprise Data Cleansing and Automation Engine: Openprise ensures data is usable for users’ key systems through aggregation, enrichment, and transformation of data. Openprise’s focus goes beyond sales systems to offer flexibility to their customers. Integration with users’ marketing and sales systems enables Openprise to push clean data and results to these systems to deliver greater value.
• Openprise Bots: Users can deploy automated bots to monitor and clean data in real time to ensure data is always in the best condition.
• Normalized Field Values: Data is normalized to customers’ specifications to smoothen segmentation and reporting. It standardizes company names, phone numbers, and country and state fields among others.
• Deduplication: Users can dedupe contacts, accounts, and leads. It has prebuilt recipes designed involving best practices users can take advantage of. They can also modify dedupe logic to customize the deduplication process to their needs.

Con: The user interface (UI) can be overwhelming, especially to new users.

Pricing: The Professional package starts at $24K per year for up to 250K records. For the Enterprise package and further pricing information, contact Openprise.

RingLead

RingLead is a cloud-based data orchestration platform that takes in data from many sources to enrich, deduplicate, segment, cleanse, normalize, and route. The processes help to enhance data quality, set off automated workflows, and inform go-to-market actions.

Key Differentiators

• RingLead Cleanse: RingLead Cleanse detects and removes duplicates in users’ data through proprietary duplicate merging technology. Users can clean CRM and marketing automation data through deduplication of people, contacts, leads, etc. RingLead Cleanse can also link people to accounts, normalize data structure, segment data into groups, and get rid of bad data.
• RingLead Enrich: The purpose of RingLead Enrich’s data quality workflow engine is to be the central point of users’ sales and marketing technology stack. Users can configure batch and real-time enrichment into their sales and marketing and data operations workflows. They can also integrate their internal systems and data ingestion processes with third-party data sources, optimizing ROI from third-party data enrichment.
• RingLead Route: Users can achieve validation, enhancement, segmentation, normalization, matching, linking, and routing of new leads, accounts, opportunities, contacts, and more in one flow, making RingLead a fast and accurate lead routing solution.

Con: The UI has a learning curve.

Pricing: Contact RingLead for custom pricing information.

Melissa Data Quality Suite

Melissa Data Quality Suite combines address management and data quality to ensure businesses keep their data clean. Melissa’s data quality tools clean, rectify, and verify names, phone numbers, email addresses, and more at their point of entry.

Key Differentiators

• Address Verification: Users can validate, format, and standardize the addresses of over 240 countries and territories in real time to prevent errors such as spelling mistakes, incorrect postal codes and house numbers, and formatting errors.
• Name Verification: Global Name identifies, genderizes, and parses more than 650K ethnically diverse names using intelligent recognition. It can also differentiate between name formats from different languages and countries and can parse full names, handle name strings, and flag vulgar and fake names.
• Phone Verification: Melissa Global Phone can validate callable phone numbers, determine their accuracy for the region, and verify and correct phone numbers at their point of entry to ensure users populate their databases with correct information. It also ensures the numbers are live and identifies the dominant languages in numbers’ regions.
• Email Verification: To prevent blacklisting and high bounce rates and to improve deliverability and response rates, Melissa Global Email Verification carries out email checks to fix and validate domains, spelling, and syntax. It also tests the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to globally validate email addresses.

Cons: Address updates could be more frequent, and address validation can be resource-intensive and time-consuming.

Pricing: Base pricing is at $750 per year for 50K address validations. Contact Melissa for a free quote.

Talend

Talend Data Quality ensures trusted data is available in every type of integration, effectively enhancing performance and bettering sales while reducing costs. It enriches and protects data and ensures data is always available.

Key Differentiators

• Intuitive Interface: Talend Data Quality cleans, profiles, and masks data in real time, using machine learning to support recommendations for handling data quality matters. As a result, its interface is intuitive, convenient, and self-service, making it effective for not only technical but also business users.
• Talend Trust Score: The built-in Talend Trust Score provides users with instant, explainable, and actionable evaluations of confidence to separate cleansed datasets from those that need more cleansing.
• Talend Data Quality Service (DQS): With Talend DQS, organizations with limited data quality skills, talent, and resources can implement data quality best practices up to three times as fast as they would have by themselves. Talend DQS is a managed service that helps users constantly monitor and manage their data at scale as well as track and visualize data quality KPIs (key performance indicators).
• Asset Protection and Compliance: To protect personally identifiable information (PII) from unauthorized individuals, Talend Data Quality allows users to selectively share data with trusted users.

Cons: It can be memory-intensive.

Pricing: Contact Talend Sales for more information on pricing.

WinPure Clean & Match

WinPure Clean & Match carries out data cleansing and data matching to improve the accuracy of consumer or business data. This data quality tool features cleaning, deduplicating, and correcting functions ideal for databases, CRMs, mailing lists and spreadsheets among others.

Key Differentiators

• WinPure CleanMatrix: WinPure CleanMatrix gives users an easy yet sophisticated method to carry out numerous data cleaning processes on their data. It is divided into seven parts, with each part responsible for a data cleansing task.
• One-Click Data Cleaning Mode: Clean & Match has a one-click data cleaning feature that processes all the clean options across various columns simultaneously.
• Data Profiling Tool: The data profiling tool scans each data list and gives more than 30 statistics. It uses red and amber to highlight potential data quality issues like dots, hyphens, and leading or trailing spaces. These issues can be fixed with a single click.

Cons: It has a learning curve.

Pricing: It features a free version, but base pricing starts at $999 per license for one desktop for the Small Business package. For Pro Business and Enterprise packages, contact the vendor.

How the Data Quality Tools Compare

Choosing a Data Quality Tool

Before selecting a data quality tool for your use case, it is important to consider your data challenges. Implementing a solution that partly or barely addresses your data challenges results in ineffective data management initiatives and impacts overall business success.

It is also important to understand the scope and limits of data quality tools to ensure they are effective. You should also consider the differentiators and weaknesses of the tools in consideration and align them with your goals. Finally, use free trials and demos where available for a hands-on experience.

Read next: Top Data Mining Tools for Enterprise

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Business analysts help enterprises make the most of their data by detecting trends and patterns. They may also be called upon to create internal or external reports summarizing findings and communicating insights. 

What is a Business Analyst Certification?

A business analyst certification is a document that shows that an individual has acquired specific knowledge, skills, and abilities in business analysis. Many businesses want to see certifications as part of an employee’s job application; it demonstrates a person’s commitment to their career. These days, there are many options for certifying your business acumen. Not all credentials are created equal—and some are better than others, depending on your goals and experience level. 

Is a Business Analyst Certification Worth It?

As enterprises get larger and more complex and opportunities abound, a business analyst certification may provide a career-launching springboard. It is increasingly difficult to compete with other candidates in today’s job market when trying to find work as a business analyst. To stand out from others who are also vying for jobs in your industry, you should consider gaining one of these valuable certifications recognized throughout all major industries. 

When it comes to working in a highly competitive environment like many tech companies, having some extra credentials can help you prove your worth to employers. After reading our guide on the best business analyst certifications for 2022, you will be able to decide which certification will suit your needs best. 

Also read: Best Data Analytics Tools for Analyzing & Presenting Data

The Benefits of Becoming a Certified Business Analyst

Certification can help you stand out to employers and increase your credibility with your colleagues. A certification shows commitment and dedication to your career. There are several benefits that the right business analyst certification can provide: 

• Employers value recognized credentials from industry-leading organizations. 
• Receive recognition from peers: Many managers rely on their peers’ input when deciding who should be hired or promoted. 
• Increased credibility in front of clients: Achieving one of these certifications doesn’t just give you a certificate—it gives you professional recognition. It adds weight to your CV and opens up opportunities.

Top 10 Best Business Analyst Certifications

There are many different certifications available to business analysts (BA). Deciding which type is right for you depends on your job role, skill set, and career goals.

Check out our list of BA certifications to help you choose which one is best suited to your needs.

Certified Analytics Professional (CAP)

The Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) certification is designed to assess a candidate’s ability to apply analytics tools and techniques to a business problem. The CAP exam questions cover all seven domains of the analytics process, including business problem framing, analytics problem framing, data, methodology selection, model building, deployment, and lifecycle management. 

Earning CAP certification can boost your earning potential—and it only takes about three months to complete all required training courses and pass exams. This makes it one of the most cost-effective certifications on our list; if you’re serious about pursuing a career in analytics, it should be at or near the top of your list.

Requirements

Candidates must meet some specific requirements before applying for the CAP certification. They include:

• 3 years of experience with MA/MS in a related area
• 5 years of experience with BA/BS in a related area
• 7 years of experience with any degree in an unrelated analytics area

Cost: CAP offers two pricing models, one for INFORMS members at $495 and the other for nonmembers at $695.

IIBA Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA)

Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA) covers the foundational knowledge of business analysis according to the BABOK (business analyst body of knowledge) guide. The course is designed for both novice and experienced professionals who want to better understand what it means to be a BA. It will help beginners know what a BA does and how they can add value to their organization. Experienced BAs can use ECBA as a refresher before taking more advanced courses or to prepare for certification exams.

Requirements

• To be eligible for this certification, candidates must complete a minimum of 21 professional development (PD) hours within the last four years.

Cost

IIBA Certification of Capabilities in Business Analysis (CCBA)

Capabilities in business analysis certification is an advanced certification that builds on ECBA. Business analysts with more than two years of experience may benefit from the CCBA’s certification of their capacity to take on larger and more complex project responsibilities.

Requirements

Candidates must meet the following requirements to be eligible to earn the CCBA certification:

• Candidates must have a minimum of 3,750 hours of work experience in business analysis within the last 7 years.
• A minimum of 900 hours must be completed in each of two of the six BABOK guide knowledge areas. Alternatively, a minimum of 500 hours must be completed in each of four of the six BABOK guide knowledge areas within these 3,750 minimum hours required.
• Complete a minimum of 21 hours of PD within the last 4 years. 
• Candidates must provide references.

Cost

IIBA Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)

Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) is one of the most important certificates for business professionals. It is a professional certification program for business analysts. This certification is designed for those who have extensive business knowledge and years of practical company experience. It is the highest competency-based certification for business analysts offered by IIBA, and analysts who have it are among the most senior analysts in the industry.

This certification validates a person’s business analysis abilities and competencies. It is ideal for people who have extensive experience, have the CCBA certification, manage their enterprises, and train their workers. This certification is also suitable for hybrid business analysis professionals such as project managers, testers, quality assurance (QA) professionals, change/transformation managers, and designers.

Requirements

Candidates must meet the following requirements to be eligible to earn the CCBA certification:

• Completing a minimum of 7,500 hours of business analysis work experience in the last 10 years is required. 
• Complete a minimum of 900 hours in 4 of the 6 BABOK guide knowledge areas within this experience, for at least 3,600 of the required 7,500 total. 
• Completed at least 35 hours of professional development in the past four years.
• Requires two references.

Cost

IQBBA Certified Foundation Level Business Analyst (CFLBA)

The Certified Foundation Level Business Analyst (CFLBA) certification offered by the International Qualifications Board for Business Analysts (IQBBA) is a professional accreditation that validates your foundational knowledge of business analysis. 

As one of our best business analyst certifications, it will help you develop and prove your competency in core BA skills. It’s also a great starting point if you’re looking to pursue a career in business analysis. After getting certified, candidates should be able to demonstrate their understanding of: processes within an organization, business goals and objectives, designing business solutions, and working in innovation, requirements gathering techniques, and scope management.

Requirement

IQBBA requires candidates to have a basic experience in solution concept, design, or development.

Best for: 

• Business and system analysts
• Requirements engineers
• Product owners
• Product managers 

Cost: The foundation level exam fee is $229.

PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)

Project Management Institute (PMI) offers this certification. The professional business analyst (PBA) certification is designed for business analysts who work on projects or applications and program managers who use analytics. The certification focuses on hands-on business assessment training and examination of the principles of business evaluation.

Whether you’re a project or program manager who does business analysis as part of your job, the PMI-PBA certification is suitable for you.

Requirement

PMI certification prerequisites are based on your education level.

Secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree) 

• 60 months of business analysis experience
• 35 contact hours of education in business analysis

Bachelor’s degree or the global equivalent

• 36 months of business analysis experience
• 35 contact hours of education in business analysis

Cost: PMI offers separate charges for members and non-members. The exam price is $405 for members and $555 for non-members.

Certification in Business Data Analytics (IIBA-CBDA)

The IIBA-CBDA certification is awarded to professionals with a minimum of two to three years of experience in business analysis who have taken and passed an exam. Candidates should have practical skills in one or more application areas, such as change management, strategy execution, information security risk management, and customer experience management. CBDA certification will let employers know that you are qualified to help their organization manage data analytics initiatives and priorities.

Certification exam knowledge area

• Identify the research questions 
• Source data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret and report results 
• Use results to influence business decision making
• Guide organization-level strategy for business analytics 

Cost

Agile Analysis Certification (IIBA-AAC) 

The IIBA-AAC gives you a look into how agile methodologies are implemented and can set you up for success as a BA in an agile environment. It’s helpful if you’re working with a high-performing team that focuses on completing projects quickly and has to deal with constantly changing objectives and requirements. 

This certification will help you achieve proficiency in agile requirements, analysis, and design. Many business analysts find that Agile Analysis Certification helps them keep their teams organized and focused.

Certification exam knowledge area

The IIBA-AAC exam is structured across four knowledge areas and consists of 85 multiple-choice, scenario-based questions to be completed in two hours. They include:

• Agile Mindset 
• Strategy Horizon 
• Initiative Horizon 
• Delivery Horizon

Cost

Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE) 

The Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE) is a personal certification designed for professionals who work in requirements engineering, business analysis, and testing. The IREB created the certification program, the courses are delivered by independent training providers, and the CPRE exam may be taken at recognized certification bodies. 

CPRE is available at three tiers:

• Foundation Level is where you will be certified in the basics of requirements engineering
• Advanced Level follows and covers three paths: Requirements Elicitation and Consolidation, Requirements Modeling, and Requirements Management. You must wait 12 months after passing the first test to take the advanced level exam. 
• Expert Level certifies you at the “highest level of expert knowledge,” which encompasses your hands-on experience and the skills and capabilities you’ve earned from previous certifications.

Validity: The CPRE certificate has lifetime validity.

Cost: The Certification Bodies set the certification fees, which vary based on the country. Contact the certification bodies directly to inquire about pricing for your country.

SimpliLearn Business Analyst Masters Program

This IIBA-accredited Business Analyst Masters Program is designed for those new to the industry or changing careers. Upon completing the training, you will get 35 IIBA and 25 PMI professional development units. It offers to teach Excel, CBAP, Tableau, Agile ScrumMaster, SQL, CCBA, and Agile Scrum Foundation.  

You will learn to develop interactive dashboards, use statistical tools and concepts, master the agile scrum process, plan and track Scrum projects, understand fundamental business analysis methodology, and use Tableau to analyze data.

Requirement

• Bachelor’s degree in any discipline 
• Basic knowledge of mathematics and statistics

Cost: SimpliLearn charges $1,399 for this course or $116.58/mo with SimpleLearn split-it.

Read next: 6 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from DataOps

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