mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software

Author name: Joe Stangarone

Joe Stangarone is a 40+ year veteran of the IT industry and president of mrc—the software company behind the award winning development platform, m-Power. Joe shares his leadership and technology insights through the Cup of Joe Blog, focusing primarily on ways businesses can save time, money, and increase productivity using technology.

Weekly Recap: 3 ways IT still fails itself, developer’s checklist for the cloud, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on 3 ways IT still fails itself, a developer’s checklist for the cloud, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Enterprise software: Win over the staff and you’ll win over the business
With the rise of mobile apps and consumer-focused web services, end users demand more out of their enterprise applications. They expect everything to be as simple and intuitive as the applications they use everyday. This puts added pressure on the IT department to meet the end user’s rising expectations. …

Weekly Recap: 3 ways IT still fails itself, developer’s checklist for the cloud, and more…Read More »

5 ways software vendors try to trick you

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EducationWhile speaking with one of our customers a few years back, he remarked that our software didn’t have any “gotchas”–bad surprises that spring up after the purchase. In dealing with software vendors for many years, he told me that he had come to expect “gotchas” in all software purchases.

In other words, he actually expected that software vendors were trying to trick him. I don’t know about you, but that makes me sad. Should a customer be surprised when software does what it’s supposed to do, and costs what they expect it to cost? Of course not!

Perhaps a better question: How did it get to this point?

I think much of it starts with pricing. Business software licensing models aren’t exactly straightforward. In fact, they’re downright confusing. I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years, and I still run across licensing structures that confuse me.

The problem is, many of the licensing structures are confusing by design. Vendors lure buyers in with cheap price tags, only to sneak in a few “gotchas” when it’s time to buy, or after the purchase.

I’d like to help you avoid these unpleasant surprises. I’ve listed below 5 common vendor tricks to watch out for when buying business software: …

5 ways software vendors try to trick youRead More »

Building an executive dashboard over an aging ERP system

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ProductivityIf your company runs on an aging ERP system or has difficulty connecting disparate data sources, here’s a great success story you’ll want to read. A manufacturing company needed a centralized place to access reports on the web. The challenge: It needed to integrate with their aging ERP system and pull data from 9 separate plants. The additional challenge: No one on their IT staff had any experience building web applications.

The result: They built a custom, web-based executive dashboard that pulled data from their 9 separate plants and integrated with their ERP system…in just 12 weeks. To find out how they did it, you can read the whole story right here.

Weekly recap: 10 things to improve application development, HTML5 tutorials, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on how to improve application development, HTML5 tutorials, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Mobile developers look to cross platform development tools
A recent report highlights the current trends in mobile application development. As it turns out, developers are turning to tools that let them build one application for all platforms, rather than building separate applications for each platform. …

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5 uncommon reporting features that will impress your boss

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EducationWhen your boss (or any other executive in your company) asks for a web report, what do you create? Do you create a standard web report that displays the necessary data, includes some interactive charts and graphs, and lets the user drill down to more details?

Those are all nice features, but they’re fairly standard. What can you do to make that report really stand out? What can you do to make your boss say, “Wow!”?

I have some ideas that might help you. If you want to create reports that really stand out, they should… …

5 uncommon reporting features that will impress your bossRead More »

Turn procedural character based programs into event driven web apps (in 3 minutes)

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Save TimeIs your company still using those outdated character based programs? If so, here’s a short video you’ll want to watch. It explains the limitations of character based programs, a couple of different approaches to modernizing those programs, and even walks you through the process of turning a character based program into a modern web app. All that in under 3 minutes! I hope you find it useful.

Note: This video is best viewed in 720p(HD) resolution at full screen. Click the “gear” icon below the video to change the resolution.

Weekly recap: 2013 IT priorities, why BI is failing businesses, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on why BI is failing business, 2013 IT priorities, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Why business intelligence software is failing business
While the need for business intelligence is growing, many BI solutions don’t adequately meet the company’s needs. Why not? This article highlights a few reasons, like poor usability and a lack of personalized notifications and alerts. BI software should be simple to use and should automatically alert users when certain data thresholds are met. …

Weekly recap: 2013 IT priorities, why BI is failing businesses, and more…Read More »

How to get the most out of a small IT staff

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ProductivityAccording to our 2012 survey of IT professionals and IT management, small IT staffs are one of the biggest barriers to success. In the survey, we asked two questions:
1. What are the biggest problems or challenges that your company deals with?
2. What keeps you from addressing those challenges?

Can you guess some of the most common answers to question #2? Most of them sounded something like this:
– We don’t have enough staff
– No time
– IT staff is too small

While IT department size is a perpetual problem for many companies, it seems to be getting worse. More and more companies point to limited staff as the reason they can’t accomplish what they want to accomplish.

So, if your company is dealing with this problem, what’s the answer? How can you get the most out of your small IT department? To help you out, we posed this question to some people who deal with small IT staffs on a regular basis. I’ve included their advice below, as well as some of my own. I hope you find it useful. …

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More questions to ask before building a mobile business app (Part 2)

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EducationA few weeks ago, I started a two-part article for businesses who are considering building their own mobile apps. As mentioned in that article, smartphones and tablets are spreading faster than any other technology in history. As businesses rush to take advantage of this trend, they often dive into mobile without a proper understanding of their options.

In part one, we focused on 4 essential questions to ask before building a mobile business app. Today, I’d like to finish up this two-part article with 4 more questions your business should ask before building mobile apps, which you can find below: …

More questions to ask before building a mobile business app (Part 2)Read More »

Weekly recap: Tech upgrades that make your business run faster, the first step on legacy code, and more…

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EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the first steps of legacy modernization, tech upgrades to improve your business, and more. I hope you find them useful:

First step on legacy code: Classifying
The difficulty with modernizing legacy applications is understanding which code to keep and which to replace. Some code might be essential to your company, while other code must be replaced ASAP. This article outlines the steps for classifying your legacy code before a modernization project. …

Weekly recap: Tech upgrades that make your business run faster, the first step on legacy code, and more…Read More »