Palo Alto, California, October 1, 2020 – 4me, Inc., a leading enterprise service management (ESM) software vendor that enables seamless collaboration between internal and external service providers, is delighted to announce a partnership with VitalityHealth to provide IT Service Management and ESM through 4me in the cloud.

The implementation of 4me significantly reduces software costs, speeds up the transition to ESM and facilitates collaboration with external providers

VitalityHealth, a leading health insurer in the UK, is bringing in the technology to provide a better experience for employees, with greater flexibility and customisation of service delivery. The partnership ensures accountability and consistency of service management to employees looking for enhanced productivity.

The service also integrates with multiple IT suppliers and service providers within Vitality, and systems provided from their parent company, Discovery.

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) is a core function of 4me that enables Vitality to pass requests smoothly between their strategic partners, regardless of their chosen service management solution. With the ability to build consistent processes across providers, any request reassigned by Vitality now remains visible and is tracked to the affected service level agreement. For strategic partner, Tata Consulting Services (TCS), this meant integrating with ServiceNow, and at Discovery, 4me connects to CA Service Manager.

Charles Bresler, Chief Information Officer at Vitality said: “Partnering with 4me allows Vitality to bring together a number of key support services in one place, providing employees with a one-stop-shop for a range of service requests, improving their experience and improving results.”

Several support domains have been set up in 4me for IT and other support functions, such as Facilities Management and HR. 4me also allows secure trusts to be established so these internal service providers can also work together.

“Vitality made this change after looking at what its service management solution was trying to achieve and the improvements they wanted to make,” said Cor Winkler Prins, CEO and co-founder of 4me. “Having a solution that is faster, more user-friendly and easier to maintain frees up the time large enterprises need in order to focus on the quality of service they obtain from their internal and external providers.”

The implementation was undertaken by Revo 4me Services and delivered in 88 days. The consulting and training was provided remotely due to Covid-19, meaning the go-live date went as planned. Vitality switched to 4me with 450 support experts on the same day.

About 4me

4me, Inc. is the provider of 4me, a SaaS service management solution that allows large enterprises to collaborate seamlessly with their managed service providers, while gaining real-time insight into the level of service they receive.

Founded in 2010, 4me is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Visit www.4me.com

About Vitality – positively different health insurance, life insurance and investments Vitality is part of Discovery Limited, a worldwide insurer and investment manager protecting more than eight million members in 18 countries worldwide, across Europe, the United States, Australia, South Africa, Canada and China. 

Vitality pioneered the ‘shared-value’ insurance model, a unique approach based on the scientifically proven principles of behavioural economics. Through this model, Vitality helps members take a more active role in managing their own wellness, encouraging them to develop healthy long-term habits that are good for them, good for the company and good for society. The effect is positive for all stakeholders – members benefit from better health, financial rewards and additional incentives; employers benefit from healthier, more productive, and more engaged employees; and Vitality benefits from a healthier membership base. 

About VitalityHealth

VitalityHealth is one of the UK’s leading private medical insurers. Through applications of the shared value model to health insurance, VitalityHealth incentivises members to get healthy, motivating better lifestyle choices and rewarding them for doing so. All VitalityHealth members receive Core Cover, giving them access to private GP video consultations within 48 hours and a Full Cover Promise (including full cover for eligible in-patient and day-patient consultant’s fees). For more information, visit www.vitalityhealth.co.uk 

ApostleTech, a leader in Salesforce application implementations and consulting, is the developer of HCP, a CRM solution built on the power of Salesforce and designed specifically for home builders. ApostleTech is now collaborating with AtlasRTX to enhance HCP’s marketing capabilities, adding chatbot tools, which allow users to track and engage leads through the sales process. 

AtlasRTX specializes in AI sales and chatbot technology solutions that combine artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and automation to provide a real-time conversational web interface and text messaging that helps homebuilders connect with prospective buyers. HCP by ApostleTech was designed to offer small to mid-size homebuilding companies a more affordable CRM with highly effective and efficient tools for managing sales and marketing operations. 

“We’ve been developing and implementing customized CRM Salesforce-based solutions for more than a decade and during that time we have worked with some of the largest home builders in the U.S. and understand that the goal for homebuilders is to take leads and turn them into buyers,” explains Kyle Aulerich, CEO of ApostleTech. 

Drawing on its experience building robust customized CRM solutions, ApostleTech’s development team configured HCP with front and back end integrations that allow home builders to manage their sales team operations in one system. HCP also provides easy access to reporting and analytics for tracking and managing sales leads and customers throughout the sales process. 

“We saw the need for a more affordable and efficient CRM solution and developed HCP to offer home builders a strong technology foundation to build on as a company grows. Working with AtlasRTX to integrate their AI technology gives HCP more power than ever,” adds Aulerich.

AtlasRTX’s chatbot brings sophisticated AI to homebuilder websites, lead engagement, and model home visit follow-up by engaging customers online and via SMS – all of which now downloads into the HCP CRM. HCP also features a digitized sign-in process for prospects, email communication with pre-built templates for sales associates to send messages directly from the CRM platform, and It also allows managers to create custom lists and to organize and assign upcoming tasks for the sales team. In addition, HCP offers users the ability to maintain complete inventory of all ongoing projects and to create building scenarios for home buyers. 

"AtlasRTX is pleased to provide an out-of-the-box integration with ApostleTech’s new CRM. The opportunity to trigger chatbot engagements with prospects from the CRM and for sales teams to both view and engage the customer both online and over text is what modern buyers expect,” says Bassam Salem, CEO.

HCP is available as a mobile app allowing sales representatives to record information, add new prospects to the system, create mobile visitor cards, log a be-back, send an email SMS text, setup appointments and send follow-up reminders from anywhere at any time.  

Pricing for HCP begins at $55 per user per month. To learn more about HCP by ApostleTech visit https://www.hcpcrm.com. 

About ApostleTech 

ApostleTech was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Chandler, AZ. The company employs a team of experts specializing in implementing and supporting Salesforce solutions. For more information, visit https://apostletech.com. 

Doors shut on many plans during the Covid-19 pandemic. Plans turned to day-by-day approaches, particularly where daily livelihood was concerned and job stability had to navigate mass layoffs and furloughs in some fields.

Bucharest, Romania., October 9, 2020 -- Doors shut on many plans during the Covid-19 pandemic. Plans turned to day-by-day approaches, particularly where daily livelihood was concerned and job stability had to navigate mass layoffs and furloughs in some fields.

Doors shut on many plans during the Covid-19 pandemic. Plans turned to day-by-day approaches, particularly where daily livelihood was concerned and job stability had to navigate mass layoffs and furloughs in some fields.

Yet, despite this rather asperse scenery, the following phenomenon happened: employees turned to learning new skills to keep their leverage on the working market, as well as to garner a new feeling of personal development. Case in point: technology proficiency.

The golden top 3 podium: Python, Java and C++

According to a study that collected data in August 2020 from more than 1,000 people in the United States, which is cited by www.developer-tech.com, around 1 in 4 people spent time learning coding languages during the lockdown.
The most commonly learned programming language were Python, followed by Java and C++.

Millennials, most engaged with new tech trends

70% of the study respondents said their technology skills moderately or greatly improved since the Covid-19 breakout. Breaking it down by generation groups, millennials, at nearly 3 out of 4 respondents, were the most likely to have improved their tech skills with Generation X not far behind.

Baby boomers were considerably less likely to report any tech improvement; still, over half said they were more skilled now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biggest motivation to learn code: career development

The greatest motivations for people setting out to improve their skills were career development (55%), personal development (46%), and improving job search prospects (33%).

Online e-zines, online channels, and mostly freely available content, was the top source of training material for most (66%) people boosting their skills, with 1 in 3 turned to paid resources.

On average, people spent 7,2 hours per week improving their tech skills, the most time learning coding and programming languages, while improving telecommunication proficiency required the least study time.

One other interesting aspect to consider: people who had taken advantage of employee-provided training opportunities were much more inclined to pursue development on their own or through paid resources.

Over one-third of respondents (37%) whose employers didn’t offer technology education opportunities reported wishing their employer would do so.

Overall, close to 1 in 2 respondents believe their new or improved tech skills will be very or extremely beneficial to their career.

Article brought to you by VON Consulting Tech Division. People. Quality. Tech.
VON Consulting Tech Division is a start-up from San Diego, CA, which provides hardware design and verification services, IT support and software development for customers in different industries, mainly in IT, telecom, and networking and semiconductors industries. See more on http://www.vonconsulting.net.

Contact:
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VON Consulting
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New Hamburg, ON, Canada, October 9, 2020 -- An online-only Canadiana & Historic Objects auction highlighted by the outstanding lifetime collections of Dick Withington and Brian Stead will be held on Saturday, October 24th, by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., based in New Hamburg. The 699-lot auction will begin at 9 am Eastern time. Phone and absentee bids will also be accepted.

The auction is packed with Canadiana, clocks, art, pottery and stoneware, art pottery, furniture, folk art, decoys, historical objects, lamps, lighting, rugs and textiles. “This sale is the perfect storm,” said Ethan Miller of Miller & Miller Auctions. “We’re unleashing the rare clocks of a renaissance man, Dick Withington, juxtaposed Brian Stead’s Canadiana furniture and pottery.”

Regarding the Withington collection of scarce American and Canadian clocks, Miller said, “Dick Withington died in 1992, but the family retained his collection until now. In a pre-Internet world, collectors were astonished by what Dick found ‘the old way’. Today they’ll find no duplication.”

American clocks from the Withington collection include a rare, circa 1825 H. Clark shelf clock featuring ivory escutcheons, upper and lower doors and dial marked “H. Clark, Plymouth, Ct.” (est. $2,500-$3,000); and a 20th century Trippensee Mfg. Co. planetarium, manually operated with a wooden pulley driven by a cord, 30 inches long by 19 inches tall (est. $2,500-$3,000).

All prices quoted are in Canadian dollars. Internet bidding will be via LiveAuctioneers.com, Invaluable.com and the Miller & Miller website (www.MillerandMillerAuctions.com).

Also from the Withington collection is a Canadian 1920s Pequegnat Clock Company wall regulator No. 1 in a dark oak case, having a metal dial with Roman numerals, original hands and 8-day time only regulator (est. $2,000-$2,500); and a Seth Thomas double-door ‘peanut’ style clock in rosewood veneer, made in America in the 1870s, having a metal upper dial with Roman numerals and 8-day time and strike round brass spring-driven movement (est. $2,000-$2,500).

Mr. Miller described Brian Stead as “a quiet collector of Canadiana. Authenticity and originality were his foremost criteria. ‘Would be, could be and should be’ would never cut it with Brian.”

Furniture pieces in the Stead collection include a painted pine armoire made in Quebec, Canada in circa the 1850s, having raised panel ends, 72 ½ inches tall (est. $2,000-$3,000); and an 1870s Waterloo County (Canada) painted pine corner cupboard with mahoganized grain painted finish, dry scraped interior and two-piece stacked construction, 82 inches in height (est. $1,500-$2,000).

There are four oil on board paintings in the auction by the noted Canadian artist Homer Ransford Watson (1855-1936), all from the collection of the late Jack Wilfong, Watson’s paper boy. All are framed and signed. Watson has been characterized as a painter who first painted Canada as Canada, rather than as a pastiche of European painting. Works in the sale include the following:

- A 1926 painting titled verso, Spring on a Country Road (but listed as On a Country Road by Muriel Miller in her book, Homer Watson – The Man of Doon). The image area is 12 ½ inches by 16 ½ inches. It’s housed in a nice painted wood frame (est. $2,500-$3,000).

- A work from the 1930s titled Winter Afterglow, contained in a gilt wood frame. Watson incorporated outdoor elements in many of his paintings. Winter was no exception, as this scene gives the viewer a valley vista through an opening in the trees (est. $2,500-$3,000).

- An untitled 1930s painting, framed behind glass, with many key Watson trademarks and drama: the sky giving a premonition of inclement weather, the wind-swept oak tree with cattle fording, a bend in the Grand River in the direction of home (est. $2,500-$3,000).

- An untitled 1930s painting, framed behind glass, 13 inches by 17 inches (sight). Watson liked capturing atmospheric situations; the drama created here, with the partially-blocked sun, pending storm and light reflection on the river, is very effective (est. $2,000-$2,500).

Another noteworthy painting in the auction (and a candidate for top lot of the auction, with an estimate of $4,000-$6,000) is an oil on panel of a horse attributed to Canadian artist John J. Kenyon (1862-1937) titled Craigie from the 1890s. The 13 inch by 10 inch work, in a gilt plaster frame, is expected to spark a bidding war, as paintings by Kenyon are rarely offered at auction.

Two other lots carrying estimates of $4,000-$6,000 are a rare copy of Volume 1 of Philip Miller’s Descriptions of the Figures of Plants (English, 1760), boasting 300 color copper plates (lithographs) and numerous pressed folia between the pages; and an early 19th century example of Newton’s Celestial Library Globe (English), on a Victorian-era cast iron base, with 12 applied engraved gores, a brass meridian and ornate cast tripod base; the globe is 17 inches in diameter.

Also up for bid October 24th will be a Canadian-made Wettlaufer decorated child’s wagon (Oxford County, circa 1890), one of only five masterpiece wagons made for Adam Wettlaufer’s grandchildren, this one built for Clara (est. $3,000-$5,000); and an English cased dueling pistol set made by William Chance & Son (London), in a mahogany case with brass inlay and complete with six tools, percussion caps tin and powder flask, in a velvet-lined case (est. $3,500-$5,500).

Miller & Miller Auctions has a Watches, Jewelry and Decorative Arts auction scheduled for Saturday, November 21st, at 9am Eastern. It will be webcast from the New Hamburg gallery.

To learn more about Miller & Miller Auctions and the firm’s upcoming auctions, visit www.MillerandMillerAuctions.com. Updates posted often.

About Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd.:
Miller & Miller Auctions has introduced new updates to its online auction platform. “We’re committed to delivering a simple, dependable online bidding experience,” company president Ethan Miller said. “We’re continually investing in our digital platform to provide quality service and capability.” Mr. Miller said the most recent update involves an exciting ‘refresh’ to the online platform. “There’s no learning curve or major changes to our operations,” he pointed out. “This update will simply present users with an improved experience as they navigate our online auctions.” Miller & Miller Auctions has also launched a new mobile app for iOS and Android. Bidders can now choose to participate virtually in auctions using a phone or tablet for a convenient, portable experience. They can place bids and receive instant updates and notifications with a few taps. Miller & Miller Auctions is Canada’s trusted seller of high-value collections and is always accepting quality consignments. The firm specializes in watches and jewelry, art, antiques and high-value collectibles. Its mission is to provide collectors with a trusted place to buy and sell. To consign a single piece, an estate or a collection, you may call them at (519) 573-3710; or, e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. To learn more, visit www.MillerandMillerAuctions.com. Updates are posted often.

Media Contact:
Ethan Miller
Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd.
59 Webster Street
New Hamburg, Ontario, CD NeA 1W8
(519) 573-3710
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https://www.millerandmillerauctions.com