Since it was founded in 1999, and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Salesforce has become one of the largest customer management systems in the world. Salesforce is a cloud based company where companies sign up to gain access to their unlimited marketing and customer management tools. Companies that use Salesforce have access to many apps and programs, depending how much they want to spend, where they can allow themselves to manage their new connections, customers and information they gather as they do business. Salesforce continues to attract more companies and offer new features that allow businesses to take the next step up with customer engagement and marketing. Salesforce also allows for a company to optimize its customer base and to ensure to companies are set up for success with their customers.
Posts
3b Questions
Weekly questions to consider when creating your posts. These questions are a jumping off point to asking your own questions, pose new ideas, and provide explanations and examples backed by careful analysis. Apply class concepts, terms, and theories too. Refer to Assignment 12 for additional details.
- What are descriptive and predictive analytics?
- What separates data from big data?
- Why do companies use big data?
- What is business intelligence, and how does it help companies?
- What are the differences between OLTP vs. OLAP, and what are some examples of each?
- What are the types of data?
- What are the sources of data?
- What is supply chain management and how does it affect businesses?
- Why are supply chains fragile?
- What is RFID, and how does it help supply chain management?
2b – Digital Identity
Your digital identity is who you are on the internet, or how others can perceive you online. One can manage this ideally by creating or removing content, but sometimes it cannot be helped, for example if others have taken photos or videos of you without your consent, or if you are featured in a piece of digital media that is not affiliated with you, like a magazine article. It is important to have a good digital identity because, as our world gets increasingly digitized, your online presence will be many’s first impression of you. I consider this issue a lot myself – I want to be a VC, and, especially if you have a solo fund, it is a career in which having a positive digital identity is very helpful. Founders want to be able to get a sense of who you are to decide if they want to raise money with you, and a good digital identity can open up many doors. However, it can be tricky for college kids. For example, I have a moderately popular TikTok account, which would be beneficial, except that I have used it in the past to post content that is less than professional. Now, whenever I am interviewing for internships, I have to carefully private content that might be objectionable, even if it’s popular, so that I don’t run the risk of losing out on opportunities due to my digital identity, which might not accurately represent me or the image that I want to portray.
2a – ERD Symbols
ERD Symbols:
Entity relationship diagrams rely on three main symbols, as well as connecting lines. Rectangles are meant to signify an entity, which is a business object, role, concept, or person. Diamonds represent how entities share information. Similarly, connecting lines show the relationships between entities. Finally, circles signify attributes of an entity, or characteristics of an entity. These symbols are similar to that of a swimlane, although they have different meanings. In a swimlane, a rectangle represents an action, a circle the start and end of a process, and a diamond a decision. It can be difficult to keep these similar shapes straight!
Digital Identity: The Basics
Let’s begin talking about “Digital Identity” and the basic rundown. Digital identity is any information that is generated by online activity. This includes simple things such as online purchases and online friendships to more personal information like passwords, search history, and social security numbers. Having a good digital identity is important because it establishes the person but also on the business side, according to Forbes,” if an organization gets their digital identity right it leads to more efficiency, revenue and transformational benefits with enhanced user experiences.” With digital identity comes many pros and cons. Benefits involved with digital identity include personalized customer experience due to having a better understanding of an individual and it also allows for quicker, on-the-go access to information. On the flip side of the pros, are the scary cons. With a digital identity, you can run into people impersonating you online and also risk being faced with digital identity theft and fraud. To wrap it all up in simple terms your digital identity is an online extension of your physical person, and make sure to protect it by being alert of where you are searching, storing, and posting your information.
Salesforce: What’s it all about?
New to me, but not necessarily new to business, is a platform called Salesforce. This is a cloud-based software company that allows businesses to keep close relations with customers and help to aid in decision-making and overall better performance. Salesforce is a CRM, now what is a CRM? Well, CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management.” This type of software allows companies to analyze data quicker and aid the needs of the customer more efficiently. Within Salesforce, there are dynamic dashboards. 
Dynamic dashboards allow for multiple people to have access to information and data that was once previously accessed by one person. Dynamic dashboards are useful because they give updated data to wide access of people within the business which would once again, allow the business to operate efficiently and make better-informed decisions. I began a new teller job recently, and have been introduced to the basics of Salesforce. The benefits of using Salesforce already shine through. It has allowed me to easily set up referrals to my platform employees while allowing me to easily update the customer’s information and stay on top of products that interest them and what products are no longer a fit for their needs. Salesforce allows our work to flow smoothly and allows us to continue to be the better bank for our customers.
Creating Your Very Own Digital Footprint
Your digital identity is how you choose to portray yourself online. What you like, post, and comment on are all representations of your digital identity. With that being said, it’s important that you take time to really consider how you truly want to be portrayed online. How would you want future employers to view you? We discussed in class about creating our own personal brands, and I truly believe that is important. Whatever we post online is creating a digital footprint, and even though we may delete something, that does not mean that it is necessarily gone off of the internet. So, it’s important that we post things that represent what we believe our personal brand to be. When people search your name online, what do you want to pop up? Personally, I haven’t even really thought of what my personal brand could be until learning how important it is through this week’s reading and class discussion. Whenever I post on social media, I always just ask myself, “Would I want my boss to see this?”. I have heard a lot of stories of people who post things in high school/college that come back to haunt them when they try to enter into a career, and I know that I would not want that to be me. So, we are constantly using the internet nowadays, which means we are constantly creating a digital footprint. With that in mind, it is important that we post things that highlight our personal brand, always keeping in mind that our digital identities can make or break our futures.
Image link: https://mychapterroom.com/blog/3-tips-protect-digital-footprints/
What is an ERD? Why is it Important?
ERDs are a very useful tool for database creation. First, let’s dive into some background information about the diagrams. ERD stands for entity relationship diagram and is a data model visually representing the relationship between entities. There are two notations for ERDs, one being Chen’s database notation. This version consists of symbols representing the different components of an ERD. The entities are rectangles, the attributes are circles, and the relationships are diamonds. The other notation is Crow’s foot. This version has tables with the entity at the top, attributes listed below, and arrows connecting the tables to represent the relationships. So, why are ERDs so important? Why should we care about learning how to create and interpret them?
The entity relationship diagram provides a visual representation of a starting point for database design. It is an organized way to map out key information involving the database that is being created. So, when reviewing components of the database, it is easy to see what worked and what needs to be improved on. It is also easy to add said improvements. Then, since this information is saved into a diagram, creators can refer to it at any point in time, especially when working on other projects. I believe that learning how to create these organized visual diagrams is a useful tool, hence why it’s important to understand the ins and outs of the ERD.
Chen’s database image link: https://www.smartdraw.com/entity-relationship-diagram/
Crow’s foot database image link: https://www.guru99.com/er-diagram-tutorial-dbms.html
ERD Diagram
An ERD is an Entity Relationship Diagram. This type of diagram represents the relationships between different entities. Typically the diagram displays data and uses different conventions to describe the relationship between each data point. The two notations for the Entity relationship diagram are the Entity and the attribute which are typically described using adjectives. The entity in an Entity Relationship diagram is symbolized by a rectangle, the attributes are symbolized by an oval, and the relationship is symbolized by a diamond. The Crow’s foot database is represented using boxes to acknowledge the different entities and the relationship of the entities are placed inside the boxes versus the Chens database notation which is exemplified by a literal diagram which has different directions and ovals to represent the different entities and the relationship between them. The key aspects of an ERD relationship are the notations, the symbols and what the diagram represents.
Digital Identity
My digital identity is how I display and represent myself over the media. Therefore a person’s digital identity is extremely important. Everything that is presented on the media has the potential to stay there forever because once something is posted, anyone can take a picture and repost it or just have the content. When I post on the internet, I am extremely conscientious because I am aware of how dangerous the internet can be if the wrong thing gets posted. A person’s digital identity lies in how they are perceived on the internet which is dependent on what the person posts. Many aspects contribute to a person’s digital identity. Likes and dislikes, your different searches, search engine optimization, personal relationships on social media, credit history, purchase history and more. All of these aspects play a huge role in a person’s digital identity. Therefore it’s important that a person upholds themselves in every aspect on the internet and in real to have the most accurate digital representation of themselves.