Importance of User Design Experience in Software Development

Designing great products that will stand the test of time is challenging in any industry. Nowhere is this more evident than for companies that work in Software Development. Whether developing applications or platforms, focused on end consumers or employees in a company, Software Development companies need to make User Design Experience an integral part of all aspects of the software development lifecycle. If the end-user is a human being, then User Design Experience is essential for the long-term success of any digital product.

Too often Software Development companies focus their time and investments on the technical side of their products – ignoring the importance of User Design Experience until after the product is developed. The risk for anyone who doesn’t take User Design Experience into account every step of the way is that they ignore their target audience – a human.  

There has been a surge in disruptive applications and cutting-edge platforms across industries within the software engineering industry. Today, people interact with dozens of applications every day, but they will only use the ones that deliver the most value. One key aspect of the human psyche in this digital age is if something is too difficult to use, doesn’t deliver the experience we expect, and doesn’t evolve ahead of our needs, we won’t use it. 

Today, companies of all sizes are focused on ROI. One of the challenges for those involved in user design experience has been being able to prove ROI. Many design-focused professionals have only sold the idea of user experience on vague ideas like happy customers or more engaged employees. However, the design-focused experience is much more. If companies want to truly create disruptive technologies, they must take into account user design experience. User design experience is no more a layer that is added at the end of the software development cycle. It needs to be included right from the beginning of the software design process. 

Organizations have the onus to deliver a frictionless and enjoyable user experience. Adopting the best User Design Experience practices can help organizations improve focus on the quality of the user’s interaction. However, it also can reduce the time to market, reduce labor costs, reduce post-launch costs, and drive overall efficiency. According to Forrester’s ROI of Design Thinking study, design thinking can deliver an ROI of 85% or greater. 

Let’s try and understand how a good user experience can benefit software companies.

Reduce Software Development Costs

A certain degree of risk is associated with starting any new business or product. However, since user experience design and design thinking are largely driven by research, analysis, and testing, organizations with a user design focus are well-placed to achieve success. There is a greater awareness about the fact that fixing usability issues or problems at the start is a less expensive exercise than resolving them later with product redesigns or bug amends. 

Good Onboarding Experience

Organizations are striving to deliver an exceptional customer onboarding experience. Onboarding is the stage where customers take a call on whether they stick with a brand or look for an alternate option. A good onboarding experience can help brands deliver a great first impression and set a positive tone for their relationship with clients. Organizations need to ensure their onboarding strategy isn’t overwhelming, confusing, and seamlessly integrates into their clients’ needs.

Intuitive User Design Experience Boosts Performance

Organizations are increasingly adopting a customer-centric approach while developing custom software. The focus should be on building software that can be adjusted to the clients’ needs, refrain from imposing a completely new solution, and tap into the user’s existing knowhow. Such an approach can not only help minimize errors and ensure users are more productive but also enhances the acceptance of the software.

Custom software development is not just about providing a good design but one that works well and makes users feel special. From the functional perspective, the design is imperative in enhancing the efficiency of the custom software that has been developed, which means that the overall User Design Experience is better because of better performance.

Smooth Learning Curve

Organizations need to focus on driving a smoother user learning curve by developing software programs that have a user-friendly look and adhere to existing protocols and requirements. A smooth learning exercise can save costs and time on training and can enable a hassle-free implementation of the new software. This facet has a lot of significance because most users and organizations are reluctant to software changes owing to downtime triggered by learning a new application.

Brand Recognition 

User experience has a lot to offer in enhancing brand recognition for organizations building internal software and consumer applications. A well-designed app can act as a catalyst for customer loyalty, while a User Design Experience failure could mean losing customers altogether. The credibility of a brand means a lot to customers and this is where organizations must look to establish a long-standing relationship with their target customers.

Enhanced Sales

The prime objective of software development companies is to drive more revenue. Central to that is making sure that the product is effective and readily adopted by users. A positive product user experience can go a long way toward driving adoption and ultimately generating revenue. Any custom software with a superb User Design Experience can reduce time to processing customer applications, increase the values of shopping carts, drive more transactions, etc. According to a study conducted by Baymard Institute, 69.2 percent of customers abandon a shopping cart after adding items citing design and checkout flow as the main reasons why they leave without purchasing. Furthermore, a positive user experience subsequently leads those users to share their experience through word of mouth.

Understanding Future Customer Demands

Customer demands will continue to evolve. Delivering a positive user experience can help brands build a strong customer connection, which is critical as brands will be better positioned to understand their future demands and effectively respond to them. 

Conclusion

One reality that cannot be denied is that customers require much more than just a new application or platform – they need the best possible user experience. The evolving market dynamics have prompted leading software engineering companies to identify their core areas of expertise and then invest in partners to outsource the rest. The operating mantra should be to maintain your product focus, understand your customer, and then keep building user experience. This will ensure that organizations are consistently able to deliver a great user experience today and for years to come.

How Organizations are Hopping on DevOps Bandwagon to Accelerate Operational Efficiency

Rising customer expectations and cut-throat competition are creating a strong need for organizations to adopt DevOps practices and tools to accelerate operational efficiency. There’s a great deal of buzz around DevOps as it can integrate the development and operation teams of organizations. DevOps enables formerly siloed roles – development, IT operations, quality engineering, and security to coordinate and collaborate and deliver software products with greater speed and efficiency. 

The growing need for collaboration across IT teams, increasing digitization of organizations to automate business processes, rapid adoption of cloud technologies, and enhanced deployment of agile frameworks will only increase the importance of DevOps in times to come. 

Key Steps to Implementing DevOps

Prepare for a Cultural Shift

Organizations must realize that cultural shift is the backbone of DevOps as it integrates people, processes, and tools. The DevOps movement must start with top management and run through even entry-level staff – development and operation teams must be made aware of the value each brings to the organization. This cultural shift can be expedited by identifying people who can motivate team members and ensure a smooth transition to DevOps. 

Create a Vision Statement

Organizations adopting a DevOps strategy got to ensure their DevOps vision is aligned with their business vision and people are empowered to act on the vision. Some aspects of the vision such as reduced process complexities etc must be ingrained into the organizational culture. 

Build a Continuous Integration & Delivery Platform

In a DevOps setup, it is imperative for organizations to provide accurate, up-to-date information about the production environment to development teams for appropriate deployment planning. This enables developers to adopt a coordinated “build and run” approach, wherein the developer who builds a product or service “owns” that product or service till the production stage. This “ownership” can be extended for a set period to address any major bugs before the handoff. Further, the DevOps team will touch all points of the service lifecycle, right from requirements to planning, deployment, and maintenance. This team will also troubleshoot problems that traditionally fall on ops. 

Build a Continuous Testing Environment

Unlike the traditional software development process which is time-consuming and less reliable, testing is an integral part of development in DevOps, wherein Quality Assurance people are part of the DevOps team. Testing (be it manual or automated) is performed continually throughout the delivery pipeline. In fact, every change is treated as a potential release candidate, and the objective is to ensure the time between check-in and release is as short as possible. 

Putting in Place a Continuous Deployment System

Forming a continuous deployment system can help organizations quickly deliver new features and updates while proactively making product changes. A well-designed delivery pipeline ensures organizations don’t have to sweat over losing control over the code in production. Continuous deployment should be backed by continuous monitoring and feedback. With prompt feedback, developers are aware of what features are useful to end-users, which helps them focus on the features that matter most, thus saving time and effort.

Challenges in Implementing DevOps

Although DevOps promises a lot for the software industry, implementing it has its share of challenges. The biggest challenge lies in getting the development and operations teams on the same page – both teams have their own goals and priorities to focus on and adopting DevOps means that both teams have to focus on a common goal, which is never a smooth exercise. Another challenge is in coping with increasing complexities and security requirements owing to various technologies being leveraged across businesses – integrating DevOps tools from different domains as well as working with outdated systems are some other challenges associated with adopting DevOps. 

Benefits DevOps Brings to the Table for Organizations

Elevated Customer Experience

DevOps can propel customer experience to the next level by helping organizations improve their deployment frequency by 200x, reduce downtime by 24x, and lower change failure rates by 3x. DevOps can help organizations automate their entire delivery pipeline, which ensures the reliability and stability of an application after every new release and eliminates the time-consuming, cumbersome as well as error-prone manual processes. The flawless performance of any application enables organizations to deliver a great customer experience, which will only serve to improve revenue and profits. 

Silos – A Thing of the Past

The changing market dynamics are creating a need for development teams to break down their inter-departmental silos. DevOps will ensure the siloed approach of earlier times is a thing of the past as it facilitates increased interaction across teams comprising developers and operations guys, thus driving a significant amount of transparency across teams. 

DevOps can breach the typical IT barriers and eliminate old linear processes while driving the newer more organized processes. It has been generally observed that working in silos can cause a great deal of resentment as well as misunderstanding across different teams with little transparency on either side. DevOps addresses such concerns and drives swift execution of projects through an agile process and reduces bottlenecks.

Faster Deployment

Taking the DevOps route can help organizations drive a faster and more efficient software development process by its principles of automation, continuous delivery, and prompt feedback. It drives faster deployment because organizations can put new processes, systems, and applications at a rapid pace. DevOps enables organizations to deliver desired results as employees require lesser development and deployment time to complete when they are working together. 

Accelerated Collaboration

Another exciting feature of DevOps is that it drives a collaborative culture of fast-paced, continuous feedback that ensures timely resolution of any technical issues. DevOps drives mutual collaboration, communication, and integration across globally distributed teams that go a long way in improving business agility. It empowers different teams such as development and operations to understand each other’s workflow. At the end of the day, all team members are collectively responsible for meeting the quality and timeliness of deliverables. 

Shorter Software Release Cycles

Adopting a DevOps-based approach can go a long way in assisting organizations to drive shorter software release cycles. Shorter software release cycles help organizations effectively manage the planning and risk management as the progress is incremental, which also reduces the impact on system stability as well as helps in responding to evolving customer needs.

Conclusion

Organizations are fast realizing the importance of DevOps. According to a study by Grand View Research Inc., the global DevOps market size is expected to reach $12.85 billion by 2025, posting an 18.60% CAGR during the forecast period. Organizations taking the DevOps route can better respond to evolving customer needs and achieve business goals faster. Surely, adopting a DevOps strategy holds the key for organizations as their future success depends on it!

How Artificial Intelligence is Empowering Banks to Drive Competitive Advantage!

Banks have accelerated the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to gain competitive advantage, improve operations, enhance customer experience (CX), and drive profitability in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. AI is serving as the enabler for banks to reimagine the way they operate. Banking leaders are waking up to the reality that they can drive strong differentiators by delivering customer experience that is contextual, personalized, and tailored - this is where the deployment of AI can come in exceedingly handy. 

According to a survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit, 77% of bankers believe that the ability to unlock the value of Artificial Intelligence will be the difference between the success or failure of banks. Further, a McKinsey survey revealed that 56% of respondents report AI usage in at least one function of their organizations. According to a study by Accenture, banks can leverage Artificial Intelligence banking tools to increase their transactions by two and half times while deploying the same headcount.

Customers of today (even their most loyal ones) are less tolerant toward any negative customer experience and would quickly switch to their competitors. According to a research study conducted by Emplify, 86% of consumers stated that they would leave a brand they were previously loyal to if they had just two or three bad customer service experiences.

Let us take a deep dive into how harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence can benefit banks.

Taking Customer Service to the Next Level

Meeting customer expectations is a never-ending challenge and by harnessing the power of AI banks can go a long way in delivering customer delight. Banks can make the most of AI-powered chatbots & virtual assistants that analyze customer data to understand their preferences & needs and use this information to deliver more personalized and convenient CX. These chatbots & virtual assistants pave the way for banks to deliver frictionless 24/7 customer support, addressing queries & concerns in real-time, thus leading to reduced customer wait times, improved customer satisfaction as well as reducing the workload of human customer service representatives.

Effectively Detect Fraud & Enable Risk Management

Banks can deploy Artificial Intelligence to effectively detect fraud and enable risk management. AI algorithms can be trained to analyze vast volumes of data in real time as well as identify unusual patterns & transactions, which can help banks detect and prevent fraudulent activity more quickly and accurately than humans, thus saving millions of dollars. Such AI-powered systems are constantly looking for any fraudulent transactions based on previous data and when they detect anything wrong, they sound an alert to banks for any potential security breaches. Banks can also tap into AI to improve the anti-money-laundering process and conduct KYC regulatory checks based on customer feedback and history. 

AI also assists banks in effective risk management - AI algorithms can be trained to analyze large amounts of data including market data, financial statements, and news articles to identify patterns & predict future market movements, which can help banks take more informed investment decisions and manage their risk more effectively. AI algorithms can also assess credit risk, identify potential defaults, and optimize loan decisions - it makes far fewer mistakes (or none) than people do. Using AI enable banks to mitigate all risk factors before taking any vital decision to get most out of their investment. 

Driving Conversational Banking Experience

Banks can deploy the might of Artificial Intelligence at the front end to deliver a seamless customer identification and authentication process, thus speeding up the process and saving time of customers & the bank. AI can provide a conversational banking experience by integrating models with banking applications to provide a single point of contact for users to make transactions, view account information, and receive alerts through the chat or voice interface in multiple languages. AI can simplify the user experience and reduce the complexity of banking operations, making it easier for even non-native speakers to use banking services worldwide.

Improved Compliance & Mitigate Compliance Costs

The heavily regulated nature of the banking industry has created a need for banks to be on their toes, in terms of meeting compliance expectations. Regulations are created to protect customers and markets and banks can find them complex, costly, and challenging. Artificial Intelligence is the enabler for banks to enhance compliance and reduce costs in meeting regulatory compliance According to a study by Deloitte, compliance costs for banks have increased by 60% since the 2008 financial crisis. Another study showed banks end up spending 6-10% of their revenue on compliance. By leveraging AI banks can comply with regulatory requirements such as anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.

AI can eliminate the need for the time-consuming process of collecting, sorting, and understanding these regulatory changes and mapping them to the appropriate business area - AI models help in understanding the regulations and how it can be applied to business processes. AI also helps banks in meeting regulatory reporting - it can quickly parse unstructured regulatory data to define reporting requirements, interpret it based on past rules & situations and produce code to trigger an automated process to access multiple company resources to build the reports. Further, AI can help identify potential compliance issues before they become major problems, allowing banks to take corrective action quickly. 

Improved Loan & Credit Decisioning

Loan and credit decisioning can be a time-consuming process, which can leave customers frustrated. Leveraging AI-based loan & credit decision systems can help banks drive more informed, safer, and profitable loan and credit decisions. Empowered with AI-based systems, banks can eliminate the need for their dependence on credit scores, credit history, customer references and banking transactions to determine an individual or company is creditworthy.

Such AI-based loan & credit decision systems can look at customer behaviors and patterns to determine if a customer with limited credit history might in fact make a good credit customer or find customers whose patterns might increase the possibility of default. Further, they send warnings to banks about specific customer behaviors that may increase default chances. Clearly, AI is changing the future of consumer lending. 

Automating Routine Banking Tasks

Artificial Intelligence can drive enhanced efficiency for banks by automating routine tasks and processes ranging from data entry, account balance inquiries, password resetting, compliance monitoring to processing insurance claims & mortgage applications, which can save time and money for banks & customers. As AI takes care of the mundane workload, banks benefit because it frees up their representatives to focus on complex issues. It also helps reduce costs by providing faster and more accurate customer support 24/7, which effectively means that customers can get help by answering questions, resolving issues outside of regular business hours.

Identifying Market Trends

The power of Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged by banks to process large volumes to predict the latest market trends, currencies, and stocks. AI help banks evaluate market sentiments and suggest investment options. AI also suggests what is the best time to invest in stocks and sends warning in the event of any potential risk. AI’s high data processing capacity also helps speed up the decision-making process and makes trading a seamless decision-making process for both the clients and the customer.

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Improved Investment Evaluation

Banks can capitalize on AI to drive improved investment evaluation. The investment valuation process comprises complex calculations taking place behind closed doors and involves collaboration across multiple teams responsible for different aspects of investment asset management, credit analysts, portfolio managers, and product specialists. These teams must weigh different approaches to investing, such as allocation of funds across various asset classes, diversification among industry sectors and currencies, market timing in terms of when to enter a transaction or liquidate an investment position. AI can process large amounts of data from multiple sources in real-time while learning each analyst’s preferences and biases regarding investments, risk tolerance, and time horizon. Essentially, AI algorithms will determine which options are best based on fundamental and technical evidence instead of relying on human discretion alone. 

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence is the go-to-technology for banks to optimize their business processes, further personalize the customer experience, and make more informed decisions. The future of AI in banking appears bright, with the scope for further integration with other new technologies. Embracing AI would provide banks with a competitive advantage while providing customers with better services, improving efficiency, and increasing profitability.

How Low-Code/No-Code is Shaping the Future of Software Development

For decades, the software development process has been considered complex and a long-drawn-out one. The work was carried out by teams of developers who had time to think about how best to build and deliver applications to their customers. How times have changed. Over the last year, the majority of the world has been grappling with working remotely. This is driving more demand than ever to deliver top-quality as-a-service products. Demand is for applications and platforms for consumers and for business users alike easily integrated across multiple systems. They must be delivered faster and at a lower cost than ever. According to a McKinsey report, the global software industry grew at twice the rate of the overall market over the last decade but the software industry’s profitability fell by half.

SaaS and PaaS companies are now looking for the best ways to meet the needs of their customers. Low-Code/No-Code development holds great potential to simplify and streamline parts of the software development process. It is not a cure for everything facing the as-a-service software industry and it does also present potential challenges. However, they can be powerful tools when wielded effectively.

Differences between Low-Code versus No-Code

Low-Code refers to a form of developing software, applications, or databases through a graphical user interface (GUI) and can be fully customized with a minuscule amount of programming. Low-Code requires the use of a visual integrated development environment (IDE) as the user simply has to leverage visual components to assemble their custom application. Low-Code offers the option to view or edit the source code and is cost-effective.

No-Code development, on the other hand, can be carried out by anyone who desires to tailor an application to his/her needs without any programming knowledge. Unlike Low-Code, No-Code does not offer the option of viewing or editing the source code. The No-Code space brings into play ‘citizen developers’ who build functional but generally limited apps without having to write a line of code. By leveraging a GUI, users can utilize No-Code development platforms by dragging and dropping features straight into their application framework.

However, implementing Low-Code/No-Code development has its share of challenges. Low-Code lacks customization and also has integration issues, especially with legacy systems. More importantly, security and reliability are other concerns using Low-Code as there is a degree of risk involved in working with Low-Code as you don’t have complete control or knowledge of the entire coding process. No-Code also has its challenges.  It is not always a cheaper option. In fact, at times, it can be even more expensive than outsourcing or nearshoring code development. No-Code also has limitations concerning scalability.

However, no matter the challenges of using Low-Code/No-Code, the potential upside makes them necessary for companies to evaluate their fit for their development efforts. Let us take a deep dive into how the Low-Code/No-Code movement is revolutionizing the software industry.

Fast-Paced Software Development

Organizations leveraging Low-Code/No-Code platforms can enable software development within a few days or weeks, unlike traditional application development that can take weeks or even months. This allows for rapid speed-to-market as well as ensure software updates are carried out regularly as anyone can make changes irrespective of their level of coding knowledge. The absence of code writing also frees up software developers to focus on other more critical development tasks or even to focus on improvements to products or new products altogether – driving potential revenue.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

Custom applications largely developed through traditional methods are built for one platform or another, e.g. Android or iOS. Such platforms have limitations owing to the costs involved in developing two different platforms. Certain Low-Code/No-Code development is cross-platform and can be deployed across multiple devices, but these are limited.

Cost-Reduction

Low-Code/No-Code serves as an enabler for building more applications/platforms in less time, which helps organizations reduce development costs. They also eliminate the need for hiring more software developers, thus helping keep a tight rein on staffing costs and improve productivity.

Lower Maintenance Burden

Software maintenance is a big responsibility for organizations. Low-Code reduces the software maintenance burden by reducing the plumbing work from day-to-day development. Since Low-Code ensures components are standardized, pretested and ready-made, organizations have to deal with fewer bugs and integration issues than in the past. It also ensures software developers spend less time on maintenance.

No Need for Training In-House Talent

Organizations can leverage Low-Code/No-Code to reduce time and effort in training their workforce. Such platforms do not need organizations to have developers trained in different programming languages. Often basic HTML knowledge is more than enough, which paves the way for organizations to deploy in-house IT professionals to execute their software development solutions.

Conclusion

Low-Code/No-Code is emerging as a hot topic for all types of companies. According to a Forrester report, the Low-Code market is poised to touch an annual growth rate of 40%, with spending forecasted to hit a whopping $21.2 billion by 2022. These industry disruptors allow companies to build an application or platform without extensive manual coding. By harnessing the power of Low-Code/No-Code, organizations can transform the software development process. It allows for software/platforms to be built faster and easier than ever before driving new revenue while controlling costs. To put it simply, Low-Code/No-Code is a tool that can be leveraged to develop many new applications or platforms.

Key Challenges Confronting the Banking Industry!

Banks are increasingly feeling the pressure to meet or exceed customer expectations. Delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX) has become exceedingly challenging for banks given the increasing customer demands, heightened regulatory scrutiny, rising fintech competition, cyberattacks & data breaches. 

Clearly, banks need to reimagine their business - they can effectively address prevailing industry challenges by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. However, one thing that cannot be overlooked is the fact that the transition from legacy systems to new-age technologies hasn’t been a seamless exercise for banks – having said that, banks must think out a way to surmount the challenges to not just survive but also thrive in the hyper-competitive marketplace.

Top Challenges for Banks

Growing Regulatory Pressure

The heavily regulated nature of the banking industry throws up a multitude of challenges for banks. Keeping up with ‘constantly changing’ regulatory norms is never a comforting thought as banks are required to update their policies & procedures. Frequent regulatory changes also put a lot of pressure on bank staff, in terms of staying updated. According to a PwC study, 40% of business leaders voiced concerns over frequent regulatory changes that increases the risks of organizations not complying with relevant laws and regulations. 

Banks are cognizant of the ramifications of not meeting regulatory standards. Non-compliance cost is very high, and no bank want to attract penalties as non-compliance has the potential to cause severe reputational damage. Banks are also required to earmark a large chunk of their budget for meeting regulatory standards. Clearly, banks must not get bogged down by regulatory pressures and look to strike a balance between keeping pace with rapidly evolving regulatory norms and simultaneously focusing on delivering customer value and reducing operating costs.

Rising Fintech Competition

Banks won’t do any good to themselves if they perceive fintechs as a ‘competitive threat’. Growing customer preference for online banking services has put a greater responsibility on banks to rejig the way they operate and focus more on delivering a digital customer experience, wherein customers can seamlessly carry out transactions and handle other banking activities online. Seamless omnichannel reach can help banks drive a greater degree of personalization and address fast-evolving customer expectations as well. 

Banks can stay competitive despite the surging popularity of fintechs by making the most of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to anticipate customer needs & provide bespoke services, serve customers not just better but also faster (especially when customer demands & expectations are quickly changing), and reduce costs, which in turn, help enhance productivity and improve banking services. Banks can also harness the power of the cloud by evolving their current data systems that would help better manage the vast amount of consumer data they handle, increase data processing speed, and improve legacy system capabilities. Adopting a forward-looking approach is the need of the hour for banks, who should focus on migrating their systems or applications to the cloud. Further, banks must not miss out on immense opportunities that existing by collaborating with fintechs – both can leverage each other’s strengths and come out winners in the market.

Raising the Customer Expectations Bar

Customers are smarter, savvier, and well-informed than ever before – they demand a high degree of personalization & convenience, desire fast services that are tailored to their specific needs. Today, customers are less tolerant toward any negative CX because they have an array of options to choose from and would quicky switch to competitor brands. Banks must empower themselves with new-age technologies in their pursuit of delivering superior omnichannel banking services, which can go a long way in driving happier customers. And for this to happen, banks need to improve their staff digital literacy as well as top management digital expertise.

Banks must not lose sight of the different servicing patterns of customers. Millennials and Gen Z have a penchant for online services while the older generations would still be satisfied with an in-person branch visit. This makes it imperative for banks to adopt a hybrid banking model that integrates digital experiences into traditional bank branches. For instance, a customer visits a self-service station-equipped branch that displays the most cutting-edge smart devices, that customer can use to access their bank’s knowledge base. 

If a customer requires additional assistance, he can use one of those devices to schedule an appointment with a branch’s financial advisors; during the appointment, the advisor will answer any of the customer’s questions as well as set them up with a mobile AI assistant, who can offer additional recommendations based on their behavior. This is where banking is heading in the near future wherein banks meet and exceed rising customer expectations. The future would belong to banks who are not just focusing on meeting customer expectations but also exceeding them.

Social Media: An Absolute Must for Banks

Banks may have been slow to hop on the social media bandwagon, but they are fast realizing how they can leverage the power of social media to deepen customer relationships. According to a recent survey, five out of six respondents expressed their desire to engage with brands through social media. Banks must understand that merely having a social media presence is not enough - they should devise a comprehensive, multi-channel customer engagement strategy that help banks offer customer solutions, build brand awareness, expand customer base, and solidify ongoing personal connect.

The increasing focus of fintechs on offering innovative digital value propositions and their ability to develop a better understanding of customer buying processes by engaging with them via social media has created a compelling reason for banks to rethink their customer relationship strategies. 

Banks can get more people in their doors by engaging in activities such as conducting customer contests, event promotions, deploy staff in running social media campaigns that feature real employees, giveaways, and user-generated content accompanied by a unique hashtag - for example, come up with helpful information on a YouTube channel with tips or advice on a particular topic. Such initiatives can not just communicate bank’s customer-first approach but also stimulate audience engagement.

Security Concerns

Banks have always remained vulnerable to rising risks of cyberattacks that are focused on targeting customer data as well as banks’ core systems, which can result in down-time for websites and apps as well as fund and data theft. The increasing threat of cyberattacks on banks is driving a major focus on cybersecurity. 

The growing focus of banks on adopting a mobile-first approach has left itself susceptible to security breaches. Although banks have capabilities to offer secure authentication for self-service solutions in their physical branches, they need to drive same degree of data security across their mobile platforms, which is critical in instilling customer trust.

Security breach is not just a challenge but a big concern area for banks. The need of the hour for banks is to invest in cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning and predictive analytics ensuring banks and their customers stay protected in the digital age. Leveraging these technologies can empower banks to detect network intrusions, enable secure user authorization, analyze a company’s cybersecurity, and predict hacking. Further, banks can deploy biometric technologies to address security and privacy issues with greater efficiency - this can go a long way in preventing fraud and money laundering. There is no doubt that bad actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated - he more people transact online, the more risk rises. This makes it imperative for banks to stay ahead of cybercriminals and stay cyberattack-free by embracing security initiatives powered by new-age technologies.

Seamless Mobile Banking Experience

Customers of today are accustomed to doing almost everything from their phone - they desire digital banking over in-person branch visits, which presents a huge challenge for banks to deliver a superior mobile banking experience. Not having a digital presence would mean that banks would substantially lag behind. Of course, banks are embracing mobile banking in a big way but merely having a mobile application would count for nothing if an effective mobile banking strategy is not put in place. 

Thus, the onus is on banks to deliver a mobile experience that is fast, intuitive, feature-rich (live chat, voice-enabled digital assistance, etc), secure, and regularly updated, which is crucial in driving happier customers. Some banks have taken their mobile experience a few notches up by rolling out mobile payment functionality thus paving the way for customers to treat their smartphones much like secure digital wallets - instantly transfer money to family and friends.

Banks need to accelerate a streamlined mobile experience if they are to stay relevant in an exceedingly competitive marketplace - they can either develop best-of-breed mobile banking capabilities in-house or collaborate with software experts to design it for them. A well-oiled mobile banking strategy can help banks not just drive profitability but also drive customer satisfaction and retention. 

Data-Rich & Information-Poor (DRIP) - A Missed Opportunity

Banks need to get it right on the Data-Rich & Information-Poor (DRIP) front. Banks have access to unparalleled quantity of data and not leveraging it for meaningful purpose is like a missed opportunity. To cite an interesting statistic, 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the past two years alone. According to Forbes, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated each day and only 10% of banks frequently harness data to drive their marketing. Banks must take cognizance of mining transaction data and converting it into usable intelligence that can help deliver meaningful messages and strengthen customer loyalty.

Growing Popularity of Buy Now, Pay Later

Banks would have reasons to stress over the rising popularity of Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL). BNPL is no doubt attracting increased regulatory attention, but its boom is not lost on anyone. BNPL is becoming a hit with customers as it allows payments to be made in installments over time, without interest and does not impact consumer’s credit score. According to a Lending Tree survey, adoption of BNPL is up. A big cause for concern is increased customer loyalty to their BNPL accounts that is eroding loyalty to their banks.

5G Poised to Fuel Supply Chain Innovation

There is a great deal of hype around the 5G technology and this hype should be taken seriously because 5G is widely believed to be smarter, faster, and more efficient than 4G. Although this much-talked-about technology is a long way away from being widely deployed, it is seen as a potential game-changer across the global marketplace.

5G brings to the table several key differentiators such as ultra-low latency, exponentially faster data speeds, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, more uniform user experience among others. It has the potential to offer speeds up to 100 gigabits per second and is set to be as much as 100 times faster than 4G. No wonder, the technology has generated a lot of excitement among businesses and technology influencers.

5G for Supply Chains

The fifth-generation technology has so much to offer to the supply chain space – its sheer speed and its ability to handle volumes of data will have a profound effect on supply chain management. According to a recent survey conducted by Ericsson, 5G subscriptions are expected to touch 190 million by 2020-end and are predicted to reach 2.8 billion by 2025.

The technology promises to take supply chain innovation to the next level by leveraging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and drones across the supply chain. IoT technologies can help accelerate supply chain management by identifying chips, sensors, communication devices, cloud computing networks, and data analytics engines all working together to drive better decision-making.

5G will help businesses drive better visibility across their supply chains. It will also drive real-time data-sharing among all supply chain parties as well as enable organizations to streamline operations and accelerate production. Further, 5G technology is set to drive substantial cost-savings and ensure peace of mind for various supply chain stakeholders. Logistics companies can richly benefit from the 5G technology as they can leverage this technology to label, track, and record all shipments automatically and effectively address issues such as lost cargo, misplaced items, etc.

The much-hyped technology can also help optimize inventory and warehouse management, wherein its high-speed network ensures a more transparent and efficient process of collection, delivery, and archiving of goods and products. It can also optimize critical processes as well as pave the way for remote maintenance and control.

5G can be also handy in ensuring seamless fleet management operations. This technology owing to reduced latency enables real-time vehicle status updates, collision avoidance, leveraging emergency services in the event of an emergency, etc.

Conclusion

One can understand the keenness of organizations to hop on the 5G bandwagon but they cannot overlook the strong need to reinvent some of their existing data infrastructure and embrace analytics solutions suited to the task ahead. This will ensure that their supply chains are well placed to make the most of the new opportunities.

The power of 5G can transform all facets of supply chain operations. It is critical for businesses to understand the digital technology landscape and its benefits – often considered a key barrier to modernizing the supply chain. Only digital technology-savvy businesses can expect to reap the maximum benefits out of 5G technology.

Given the constantly-evolving market environment, the need of the hour for businesses is to work with all their partners as one virtual organization with shared information, shared processes, and shared decision support. Businesses that adopt such a collaborative approach will emerge as winners over the long-term.

Accelerated Focus on Digital Transformation Shaping the Future of Software-As-A-Service

The growing demand for disruptive applications and platforms across varied industries has reinforced the need for software organizations to deliver products with improved speed-to-market but at a reduced cost without compromising on quality. There is also an increasing customer demand for products that can seamlessly integrate across multiple systems. 

SaaS is no longer a nice-to-have, but a business necessity. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted organizations to fast-track their decisions to shun the legacy IT infrastructure that has inherent challenges and shift to the cloud because it helps organizations achieve their larger objective of enhancing operational efficiency and delivering an elevated customer experience. The growth story of the SaaS market is poised to get only bigger in the years to come. According to a Gartner report, spending on SaaS cloud services is predicted to reach $145.3 billion by 2022. Further, if Gartner’s findings are anything to go by, SaaS is set to be the largest market segment over other cloud service models such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that are predicted to touch $106.8 billion and $71.5 billion by 2022.

Our Customer Experience

At Innover, we are focused on consistently delivering engineering excellence to our customers. We solve customer business problems day in and day out. We helped a technology company by seamlessly building teams with their clients and delivering exceptional software development and support. 

We have forged long-lasting relationships with other customers as well. Our focus has been not just to solve customer problems but also to go beyond the scope of the task and suggest improvements. Our engagements have helped our customers accelerate business growth.

Key Takeaways of SaaS

Low Upfront Cost

A key reason why organizations prefer SaaS over traditional on-premises solutions is its low upfront cost. This cost factor has been instrumental in the rapid shift from on-premises to SaaS. The subscription model of SaaS works well for organizations and significantly reduces the time they would have otherwise spent on customization and implementation. It also eliminates the need to shell out a big software license fee as is the case with on-premises solutions.

Scalability

SaaS provides organizations with enhanced scalability – it also drives seamless integration across multiple systems. SaaS is a huge benefit for organizations that are embarking on an expansion journey (acquiring new companies, product lines/facilities, etc), as they can easily adjust and scale to meet their business needs without having to worry about improving their hardware. The SaaS model is also advantageous for organizations, whose volume production is cyclical in nature. SaaS nips any technical issues in the bud in case of any increased software usage as that responsibility lies with the SaaS vendor. 

Faster Deployment 

SaaS can be deployed at a much faster pace as there is little to no hardware involved, unlike an on-premises solution. It can be deployed across multiple regions, subsidiaries, and divisions – SaaS helps organizations avoid costs associated with those rollouts. Since these solutions do not require additional hardware, it effectively means that organizations do not have to waste time in procuring & installing IT infrastructure and VPN access across multiple sites. 

Ease of Accessibility

Another advantage of SaaS is its accessibility via the internet – it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and across any platform. There’s no need for multiple builds of the same software for functionality across platforms, which effectively means there is no learning curve for cross-platform users.

Hassle-Free Software Upgrades

Software upgrades can be frustrating for organizations in an on-premises setup. Purchasing upgrades and new software versions to access new features and services can be a costly exercise. But with SaaS organizations do not have any such concerns as software upgrades are taken care of by SaaS vendors. Of course, the cost of those services is typically included in the monthly subscription fee but in most cases, these subscription fees are far lesser than frequent full-package upgrades. 

No Maintenance Headache

An exciting feature of SaaS solutions that gets organizations excited is that there is no maintenance burden. Even if there are downtimes they would have a low impact because SaaS vendors have access to a much larger workforce than what most companies have access to, which can restore any failure on track in very little time. This is in stark contrast to an on-premises solution, wherein the IT team has to invest a lot of time and money to maintain an on-premises system and administer regular check-ups to avoid unnecessary downtime and ensure the system is up and running when you need it.

Future SaaS Road

The Covid-19 pandemic may have left a trail of destruction all around but it has accelerated the adoption of cloud-based technologies – among all cloud service models Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is set to gain prominence in the times to come as organizations accord high priority to their digital transformation initiatives. The increasing focus among organizations on scalability, ease of accessibility, and cost reduction will ensure that SaaS remains the most preferred road over traditional on-premises solutions. Yes, SaaS is set for the long haul!