Roundtable Transcript: What’s Next in Business Technology? – Business Journal Daily

This edition launches our 2023 Quarterly Roundtable Series, which will appear in print, online and on video. The series is sponsored by iSynergy, a digital marketing agency based in Canfield that provides branding, web design, content marketing and search engine marketing services.

Participants in the Business Technology Roundtable, held Feb. 7 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Canfield, were Steve Cross, president and CEO of iSynergy, Canfield; Tim Petrey, managing partner of HD Davis CPAs, Liberty Township; Robert Merva, owner, president and CEO of Avrem Technologies LLC, Canfield; Jim Rosenberg, president and CEO of NEO3, New Middletown; Dave Galioto, chief information officer of Executive Computer Management Solutions Inc., Struthers; Chris Wheatley, director of IT services at Peak I.T., Boardman; and Ralph Zerbonia, president and CEO of Universe Central Corp., Youngstown.


The Business Journal: Briefly describe your area of expertise as it relates to business technology and applications for business. What services or products does your company provide that incorporates the latest business technology?

Steve Cross, CEO, iSynergy Digital Marketing Agency: When you do marketing well, you integrate. And in today’s world, you have to integrate with a lot of different platforms.

Steve Cross

You’ve got to use APIs [Automation Programming Interfaces]. You’ve got to deal with their ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning software]. You’ve got to deal with some custom software. You’ve got to pipe all that information together.

So how we use technology … it’s data-centric, keeping that data flowing from one silo to another within a company, and making sure on the forefront, when it comes to sales and marketing, that we’re putting all that data together and we’re utilizing it and being able to act on that data.

Tim Petrey

Tim Petrey, CEO, HD Davis CPAs: Our firm utilizes technology everywhere from bookkeeping to our advisory practice. We’re also very data-centric. So we’re working with our clients to help them collect the right kind of information so that they can monitor their financial successes and/or failures and learn and improve from that.

Robert Merva, CEO, Avrem Technologies: Our primary office is in Canfield. We have offices in Cleveland and Columbus as well.

Robert Merva

We’re an IT managed-services provider. So the companies that hire us, hire us to handle 100% usually of their IT, although we have clients where we do co-managed IT services – where they have an internal IT department and we work with them. It stretches across everything.

We do help-desk support. We manage their networks, their computers, their servers, their governance and compliance risks, web development and design, web hosting. We call it “one throat to choke.” So one phone call to make to get everything that you need done.

Jim Rosenberg

Jim Rosenberg, CEO, NEO3: We sell, service, and support Oracle NetSuite ERP cloud solution exclusively. We’re very specialized that way. Oracle NetSuite is pretty much the leader in the industry in cloud ERP. We help our clients become more efficient by using ERP in

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Think like a computer | symmetry journal

In Belle Fourche, South Dakota, science instructor Ann Anderson instructs 100 fifth-quality pupils each and every working day. Not long ago, they had been finding out about issue. 

Her college students were being functioning to obtain out: Is an vacant cup genuinely empty? How do we know atoms have even smaller sub-elements? 

Anderson served students tackle some of these thoughts by fingers-on actions. And soon after every single lesson, she challenged her students to assume through how they approached the problem. “Did you just take many techniques to figure this out?” she asked. “Did you dismiss some things so you could emphasis on the significant points? Did you seem for styles?” 

These concerns are created to assist learners have an understanding of a thought referred to as computational wondering. 

Computational wondering is not quite computer system science. Relatively, it’s a precursor to personal computer science it is the way laptop scientists approach the problems that they want to clear up making use of a laptop or computer.

Anderson’s students—along with the pupils of 11 other fifth-quality lecturers in South Dakota—are taking part in a pilot program made by educators at Black Hills Point out College, Sanford Underground Investigate Facility, and a South Dakota academic resource organization called Technological know-how & Innovation in Schooling. 

The system is funded by a grant as a section of the Nationwide Science Foundation’s “Computer Science for All” initiative, which aims to provide all US students with the opportunity to learn about computer system science and computational pondering as early as preschool. 

“The aim is to assistance younger pupils see computer science as an avenue they could pursue later in daily life,” suggests Ben Sayler, direct investigator on the grant and a bodily science and mathematics professor at BHSU. “If students at the decrease grades are working towards and experiencing it, then when they get to large school and have the possibility of a pc science elective, they are more most likely to come to feel like that is an selection for them.”

Sharing the magic 

Ian Her Several Horses, who along with BHSU’s June Apaza and TIE’s Julie Mathiesen is a co-principal investigator on the grant, is aware of the utility of discovering computing techniques early on.

He designed his to start with website—a tribute to Godzilla—as a substantial college college student in the late 1990s at a public university’s summer season STEM camp about 200 miles from his hometown on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. 

He suggests mastering to make his own web site produced him really feel akin to a pop-tradition “hacker.” “It was just a static website page, but it felt like magic,” Her Lots of Horses claims. “You just style in a spell and instantly improve what transpires on the monitor. That lit the spark in me.” 

When he returned to college, he purchased a reserve titled Study Visible Fundamental in 30 Days, confident a teacher to create an impartial research for him, and taught himself the programming language in a

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Charleston tech organization doubles likely market place obtain with acquisition > Charleston Enterprise Journal

Daniel Island tech large Blackbaud announced that it has bought Washington D.C.-centered EverFi, a like-minded social impression tech company, for $750 million.

The offer was designed for close to $450 million in cash and 3.8 million shares of Blackbaud’s widespread inventory, valued at around $300 million. 

Both equally Blackbaud and EverFi present their customers, which include things like Fortune 500 firms, nonprofits and thousands of K-12 and larger finding out institutions, cloud-based company social obligation applications to assistance maximize their environmental, social and governance aims.

Blackbaud President and CEO Mike Gianoni claimed the acquisition is expected to considerably improve profits development in 2022.

“As firms go on to invest more in environmental, social, and governance and company social duty applications to give back to their communities, they need to have a spouse who can support hook up their philanthropic aims to significant social influence alternatives,” Gianoni said.

The acquisition doubles Blackbaud’s entry to a potential market really worth more than $20 billion and improves its quantity of corporate shoppers, the corporation reported. EverFi clients consist of Kroger, Patagonia, MassMutual Basis and Zelle.

“Over fifty percent of our addressable option will now be in the company sector,” Blackbaud reported in a news launch. “EverFi has an amazing customer list that Blackbaud is enthusiastic to perform with.”

Successful right away, EverFi’s far more than 500 staff will grow to be Blackbaud personnel and will preserve places of work in Washington, D.C., and in the U.K. EverFi’s govt staff and CEO Tom Davidson will sign up for Blackbaud to focus on accelerating expansion initiatives, the company stated.

“EverFi will operate their company as typical and no changes are prepared to products and solutions or expert services. EverFi will continue to provide both equally company clients and K-12 faculties, and the aim will be on increasing the client base even further as we are ready to give far more providers as a single unified organization,” Blackbaud states.

1 of Blackbaud’s major goods that will be presented to EverFi clientele is its two YourCause platforms. A person assists corporations manage grants, such as programs and payments and the other aids firms start and speed up personnel volunteerism.

“EverFi serves some of the world’s premier and most properly-regarded brands. We see considerable synergy and cross-provide option with EverFi and Blackbaud’s YourCause business enterprise. Together, Blackbaud and EverFi will be the main lover to assistance firms generate meaningful social effects throughout a significant span of technologies-enabled software areas, from community education to volunteering to grantmaking to philanthropy,” Blackbaud said.

Blackbaud’s acquisition of like-minded tech firms is element of the company’s long-expression targets.

“We’ve been following EverFi for several years,” Blackbaud reported. “We have a demonstrated historical past of acquiring and deleveraging. The around-phrase target will be on deleveraging, but we will continue being energetic in the (mergers and acquisitions) place and evaluate targets to see if the appropriate deal comes alongside.”

Contact Jenny Peterson at 843-849-3145.

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