If you are following GB&SMITH you may have read my previous post a ‘decade of success’, then, you already know a little bit about the story of GB&SMITH. Maybe it is time to focus on our DNA; what fuels us? And what makes us unique? Or simply how we support our clients to continuously trust us and why our prospects should choose us!
From day 1, we decided to deliver our clients invaluable software with first class support and top-notch customer service. Innovation is our DNA. We do what others can’t do… or I should say do not even think to do. That is what I call ‘thinking out of the box’. Prospects have the option to choose 360Suite solution or alternatives. Competition is good but Clients should think twice before choosing the other guys rather than us. For 3 main reasons:
- Innovation
- First Class Quality
- Security, security and security
Let’s start with Innovation: Back in 2006 we were pioneers by developing 360View, an alternative of the Business Objects CMC. One of the main features was to provide Custom Access Level. At that time in the CMC you could only create advanced rights! A nightmare to manage and maintain! Business Objects deliver this in the XI3 CMC in 2008. Another example is the Recycle Bin we provided back in XIR2. SAP partially delivered this in BI4. It pinpoints our ability to innovate and always being the first to do so. The best example is when the USPTO granted us a patent for our security matrix technology and guess what it is about? Security Management! Should I jump to point 3 directly? Security, security and security ….
Next, First Class Quality: Customer support is one of our biggest concerns! Our clients becoming 360Suite ambassadors is solid proof! I can mention Swiss Re, quoting their awesome comment: “It is our utmost concern to thank GB & Smith for several years of tight collaboration and the fastest bug fixing we know”. Swiss Re is probably running hundreds of Software… Watch the video of Dariusz Zyskowski, BI manager in the City of Chicago, explaining how he is leveraging 360Suite for Business Objects upgrades or Business Objects administration. Listen carefully he is starting with the first reason, what it looked like a few years ago at 360suite: BOBJ Peers told him 360Suite has the best support. And he finishes his interview by confirming it. Now, we deliver even better support services since we opened an office in Montreal to support our North American clients!
Here are 4 funny things I want to share:
- I still receive all the support tickets any client in the world is opening! We are a team of 80 but this is still at the top of my daily to-do list.
- We received an email one day from a client regarding maintenance renewal stating: “Our Company has decided to get rid of BOBJ so I am sadly no longer using 360Suite but your support is so awesome, I am going to renew it for one more year!”
- Few statistics: Since January 2016, the turnaround time for the support team to resolve any open ticket worldwide is less than 20 hours. When I say resolve I mean fix the problem or propose a workaround!
- We still support our 360Suite clients that run our solution on Business Objects XIR2!
We have saved the best for last, let us focus now on: Security. That is the reason why we founded GB&SMITH! Providing a new way to manage and document Business Objects security! But since we already discussed this in other blog posts, I want to discuss more generally on how our solution is innovative BUT amongst everything else still secure! We are recommending to our clients 360Bind for automated regression testing. An incredibly valuable solution for ANY client running Business Objects. I know there are generic regression testing solutions on the market but I am talking about a 100% design for SAP BusinessObjects report testing. But there is one more significant thing about 360Bind. To better understand let’s discuss about cybersecurity: Nowadays, organizations are using IT systems like Business Objects to store and process large quantities of sensitive data, which, if disclosed, could be potentially damaging to them. At best, they may be embarrassed by an unauthorized disclosure; at worst, they may lose their competitive stance in the market if the information were a proprietary trade secret, or they may even be sued if it were confidential information from the customer (healthcare or personal data).
Loss of competitive advantage, or even going out of business, is a very grave situation. In the last few years many organizations have experienced ultra-publicized data breaches caused by external hacking, but also internal malpractice and human error. Société Générale, Sony, NSA, Orange, and Target (3 of them being our client) … all have that in common. They resulted in significant brand damage, financial liabilities and loss of customers.
While cyber security threats are often perceived as coming from outsiders (external hacking), recent research has marked internal threats (internal malpractice and human error) as equally dangerous to sensitive data.
According to Verizon’s data breach report, internal data breaches have been growing at a steady rate. Verizon states that 88 percent of insider breaches originate from privilege abuse having inappropriate access.
Not every user should have the right to access every resource. But, if it is the case, nobody will alert the Administrator or anyone on the IT team.
What is the link between internal data leaks and 360Bind? 360Bind allows to automate the comparison of the data displayed within Business Objects reports going down to pixel level! So your best companion, your regression testing tool contain, manage, and display all your sensitive data you are managing with Business Objects! Do you want to be responsible of the next publicized data breach? There is a UNIQUE solution, 360Bind which is offering the ability to secure all those outputs!
360Eyes, our BI on BI flagship solution, is providing unique features allowing to manage Business Objects access certification! And again our clients are our best ambassadors! Wondering which ambassador is the most regulated organization that relies on 360Eyes? The US department of Defense addressing FISMA compliance using 360Eyes. Another example of our security sensibility in 360Eyes is the ability to anonymize the data! We have a lot of Swiss clients where security is a high priority (I should say the highest). It is one of our Swiss Clients whom requested this feature and now it is made available for all of our clients!
You should care about security while you are investing in 3rd party solutions! If not, maybe one day you will be obliged to by law … There are more and more strict regulations like GDPR, SOX, HIPAA or any similar one.
And if you are still hesitating to invest in 360Suite solutions here are 3 last reasons that mitigate your investment risk:
PS: If you are still hesitating between GB&SMITH and other solutions (competitors, in house, or relying on SAP future releases/enhancements) then think about this: It is very easy for us to introduce you to dozens of clients making wrong investments the first time and then coming to us! We even have examples of a double win back. Listen carefully to Jay Riddle, Senior BI Architect, Lockheed Martin – Aeronautics “360Suite provides us additional administrative capabilities – enabling us to consolidate from multiple 3rd party solutions to a single suite and improve our overall ROI. 1000 Man Hours & $120K saved with 360Eyes in the first year alone.”
PPS: We rely on Business Objects security since 360Suite is just a webapp, no extra server nor extra server admins are needed sources of potential security issues! (Listen again to Jay regarding this point in the previous video).
PPPS: Denis Payre joined our Board last year (discover how here). If you are looking at 360Suite that means you own Business Objects. Denis is one of the 2 co-founders! If one of the co-founders of Business Objects trusts us, you should too!
