RBA Blog
RBA’s thought leaders weigh in on various industry topics.
Three Unexpected Ways You Can Outperform Your Competition with CRM
Companies cannot exist without their customers. It’s a business reality. Gone are the days of customers vying for your attention; customers have more intelligent buying power than ever. Rapid...
The Power of CRM for Business Marketers
The following is a summary of an article I wrote for the Business Marketing Association of Minnesota’s blog titled, "How to Boost Customer-Centric Marketing Through CRM" As a business in a...
Focus on Your Applications, Not Your Servers
One of the key responsibilities for any IT department is making sure computer systems are running at peak performance. It means that every server is updated with the latest security patches and OS...
Four Ways the Cloud Can Help Identify and Adapt to Customer Trends
It's no longer good enough for a company to simply have a website. In fact, by 2017, the internet will play a role in 60% of all U.S. retail sales, either as direct e-commerce transactions or as...
Using the Cloud to Service More Customers at Once
Big data has permeated every aspect of our digital lives. As consumers, we don't really recognize big data in practice, but we certainly notice the benefits—the convenience of things like real-time...
The Top Four Must-do’s for Measuring the Success of Your Digital Projects
“Tell me about a successful project you’ve run.” “Tell me about a project you’ve been a part of that was not successful. What happened?” These are two very subjective questions that a Digital...
Use Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Microsoft Power BI for awesome insights (Part 3)
Review Part 1: Overview Review Part 2: Configuring Google Tag Manager Why Power BI? Power BI is an application from Microsoft that allows you to easily create data visualizations from almost any...
Use Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Microsoft Power BI for awesome insights (Part 2)
Use Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Microsoft Power BI for awesome insights (Part 1)
I recently spoke at the Digital Summit* in Minneapolis, and I talked about using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Microsoft Power BI to create a nifty, real-time content performance...
[Tutorial] Addressing Issues with Deleting an Entity in CRM
Are you having difficulties deleting an entity in CRM? The error message you are getting is basic and non-descriptive. This post will discuss a couple of possible culprits and the potential...
No Budget, No Problem – Make the Most of your Data with These Popular and Free Analytics Tools
Note: A detailed tutorial has been published here. Check it out! Measuring and analyzing digital marketing efforts is one of the most important focuses for us at RBA. With this good information, we...
Then and Now – Who Owns and Operates Your Corporate Intranet
Do you remember when an intranet for a company consisted of HTML files that linked to internal documents and websites outside of an organization? In days past, intranets always started within the...
PaaS – The Engine for Agile Innovation
The Internet is an exponential environment. With more technology choices, development strategies, and varied products available than ever before, businesses continue to seek out ways to...
CRM – A Marketer’s Tool for the Evolving Business
If one thing remains true in business, it’s that customers grow and change and your strategy to deliver experiences to them must also evolve. So, to meet tomorrow’s consumer needs, how do you...
SharePoint “No Code” Solutions for Line of Business Teams
Oftentimes, buried deep within an organization and without a significant source of funding, are countless line of business teams that are responsible for processes and content that are critical...
Healthcare Information Technology – the Key to Effective Healthcare Reform
I am often amused, and slightly irritated, when I see a news headline, social media comment, or blog post on the success of Healthcare Reform and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) measured as an...
Moving to the Cloud: Debunking the Illusion of Risk
Even with all of the information available today about the "Cloud," many companies still fear migrating their mission-critical applications to the Cloud, or deploying new ones to the...
Digital Workplace: The Term of the Year
Believe it or not, failed intranets are more common than ever, and one of the biggest mistakes companies make is focusing too much on the technology of a specific platform. Luckily, this is easily...
What’s New in Dynamics CRM
The pace of change in the Dynamics CRM platform and associated products has raced forward over the past year or two. It's likely to continue picking up steam. Knowing what's currently out, what's in...
Five Facts About Digital Workplaces
In a recent conversation with some of my colleagues who work in human resources technology, the question came up about the meaning of a digital workplace. Putting a definition around a digital...
The Role of Wearables in Today’s Digital Workplace
There’s a lot of buzz in the HR Technology industry about “wearables” lately. Are wearables just a passing trend or a staying force in the market? Should wearables be considered as part of an...
Rapid Application Development – Concepts and Practice
I'm looking forward to presenting on Wednesday, December 9, 2015, at 3:30pm with RBA Solution Lead, Nate Tyler, on Rapid Application Development concepts at the Government IT Symposium in St. Paul,...
The Seven Deadly Sins of Digital Transformation
This post covers the topic of digital transformation and how to identify and avoid the “sins,” or mistakes that have plagued different organizations that have either attempted digital initiatives or...
Dynamics CRM and SharePoint – Great Alone, Better Together
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a great tool to manage companies, people, marketing, customer service, and many custom solutions based on relationships. It provides a way to store structured information...
SQL Server 2005 End of Support: Now What?
On April 12, 2016 Microsoft will end extended support for SQL Server 2005. This means no more bug fixes, no patches and no support. On April 13, CIO’s everywhere will come to their DBA’s desk,...