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.

How to create web reports that your executives will love

EducationSummary: As business data explodes at a surprising pace, many companies still struggle with reporting. They create reports that confuse or overwhelm their executives–hampering their ability to make decisions. What do your executives think about their reports? In this article, we explore a few ways to give them reports that they love.

The 3 most important aspects of a business dashboard

analyticsSummary: Business dashboards help organizations get a clear view of their business at a glance. But, some dashboards do a better job of that than others. What’s the difference between the two? What elements must an effective dashboard include? What separates a good dashboard from a worthless dashboard? In this article, we explore the most important aspects of a business dashboard, and explain why each is important.

Remote training classes now available!

I truly hope you are staying safe and healthy as we navigate through this COVID-19 pandemic. It’s certainly a strange and difficult time. Businesses are being forced to adapt on the fly.

Here at mrc, we’ve made the move to a fully remote workforce during this time. How does impact our customer support? Thanks to modern communication tools, our support team can still provide the same level of service you’ve come to expect. If you have a support request, please submit it using the normal channels.

What about training classes? I realize that our normal training classes are held in-person…which aren’t feasible right now. Don’t worry, our support team has created remote training classes that are held via video conference. While you can customize your class, we’ve structured learning options into three tiers:

  1. Beginner – Geared for folks with limited m-Power exposure. These options focus on the essentials, such as: Reporting, menuing, m-Painter, promotion, automation, and debugging.
  2. Intermediate – Designed for users with a few years of m-Power experience. Intermediate options focus on more involved m-Power features, such as: Security, Bootstrap, Workflow Designer, application auditing, and dashboards.
  3. Advanced – Geared for the m-Power expert. These courses involve our most technical concepts, such as: Freemarker, user privileges, session variables, web services, AJAX, custom logic, and clustering.

You can select any topics you want, across any level. These options are designed to be a la carte, and we can cover 3-4 topics per day in a class. I believe these remote learning sessions will help our customers in a few important ways:

  • Simplicity – Remote training gives you all the interaction of an in-person training class, without the travel hassle or expense!
  • Flexible – Interested in just a few concepts? Great! Want to combine topics from different courses? No problem. We will put together a course that meets your needs.
  • Data Familiarity – Remote Learning classes will focus around your data. We’ll introduce a topic over our sample data, then move towards building apps over your data.
  • On-Demand Training – Conventional (in-person) training is usually Monday-Friday in one week. Remote Learning is different–we’ll work around your schedule. Our courses can be scheduled in half-day or full-day increments. So if that means you want to have m-Power remote sessions every other Thursday morning over a given time frame, we can make that happen!

To learn more about our remote learning options, please visit this page. Of course, don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or comments!

Low-code: The catalyst to digital transformation?

EducationSummary: Digital transformation is a priority for many businesses these days. However, studies find that most lack the skills and resources for digital transformation–leading to high failure rates. In this article, we explore how low-code platforms can help businesses avoid many common issues in their digital transformation journey.

7 essential elements of embedded analytics software

EducationSummary: What is embedded analytics and why is it so important? What should you look for in an embedded analytics platform? While the requirements vary by company, I believe that certain elements are essential in a good embedded analytics tool. In this article, we explore 7 essential elements you should look for in any good embedded solution.