Modern businesses increasingly rely on data to succeed, taking on the “data-centric” tag. As large amounts of data allows companies and their products evolve quickly efficiently to address the demands of customers, the trend will continue to strengthen.

Hence, we created a brief guide about the types of data analysis that explains the 4 types of data analytics, what purpose they serve, and what technology and type of talent they rely on. The guide is also supplied with examples of data analytics from across industries for additional context.

Let’s start exploring the types of analytics below.

Descriptive Analytics

What is descriptive analytics: a preparatory stage in data processing that summarises data from past periods to provide insights and prepare the gathered data for future analysis.

Descriptive Analytics Examples

For instance, a hotel chain would use descriptive analytics to determine the level of demand for new VIP suites in a hotel. Similarly, an insurance company can use descriptive data analytics to see what services are the most popular in a given season, while an online retailer can find out the least popular products from new arrivals.

Descriptive Analysis Steps

1. Determine business metrics against set goals and establish KPIs to monitor progress
2. Gather and prepare the data. When you finished gathering the right data from the enterprise systems, you need to use descriptive analytics techniques to prepare it (for example, deduplication — eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data)
3. Dedicated experts (data analytics, Business Intelligence experts) perform the analysis of the prepared data
4. Visualization/Presentation. The data is displayed to shareholders in various charts, graphs, narratives, or tables 

Diagnostic Analytics

What is diagnostic analytics: a stage where the information gathered during descriptive analysis is compared against other metrics to find out why something happened.

Finding Anomalies with Diagnostic Analysis

Diagnostic analysis allows companies to identify anomalies, for examples sudden spikes in sales on a given day or torrential changes in website traffic. Here, data analysts need to single out the right data sets to help them explain the anomaly. Searching for the answer often involves drawing information from external sources. When the needed data is on the table, the analysts establish causal relationships and use different types of data analytics (probability theory, regression analysis, filtering, and other) to find the answer.

Diagnostic Analytics Examples

With diagnostic analytics, a hotel chain would compare the demand for VIP suites in different regions or hotels in a region, while the insurance company would, for example, get insights into what age group uses dental treatment the most in the target area. Meanwhile, an online retail store might use diagnostic analytics to discern what regions ordered a particular product from new arrivals more.

Predictive Analytics

What is predictive analytics: a data analysis type that allows companies to forecast problems that might occur in future or a trend and how would be unfolding.

Predictive Analytics Examples

With this type of analysis, a hotel could predict how much a new promising guest service would bring in revenue in a given region. A retailer could use in-depth data on their customers and other metrics to forecast a reaction on a new store type.

Predictive analysis involves advanced tools and technologies and should be based on a big amount of solid data (internal and external) to yield a reliable result. Importantly, achieving an effective forecast depends on a wide array of factors, including the level of volatility of the situation. Predictive analytics also require continuous involvement from the data science team.

Predictive Analytics Techniques

• Statistical analysis
• Neural networks
• Machine learning
• Data mining

Today, predictive data analytics heavily rely on technologies like machine learning, as they can process large data sets quickly. Still, for the analysis to succeed, data science teams and software developers need to create predictive data algorithms for the business goal in question. This requires collaboration with key stakeholders and business analysts. Once again, the quality of the data for the analysis is critically important.

Prescriptive Analytics

What is prescriptive analytics: a data analysis type that uses advanced technology heavily to find the best solution based on data provided from predictive analytics. Thus, prescriptive analytics would determine what a company could do with a problem or trend foreseen by predictive analytics. Like predictive analytics, prescriptive analysis needs its own business logic and algorithms. As for prescriptive analytics techniques, machine learning is one of the most common.  

Prescriptive Analytics Examples

From one side, prescriptive analytics techniques can be used to gain highly rich insights in customer behaviour across industries. On the other, machine learning algorithms can be trained to analyse stocks markets and automate human decision making by presenting decisions based on large amounts internal and external data. In any case, prescriptive analytics are a costly investment: the investors need to be confident that the analysis yields substantial benefits.

Types of Data Analytics — Conclusion

Information is one of the most valuable business assets of today. Various types of data analytics allow businesses to improve their operations and customer experiences, providing insights and a clearer picture on the business in general. Relying on extensive experience of top management and their employees, modern companies would mostly rely on descriptive and diagnostic analytics to aid human decision making in the following. Still, as the role of data only grows and the analysis tools evolve, companies that want to be ahead of competition will also use predictive and prescriptive analytics to stay ahead and automate a number of operations.

Intellectsoft can help you create or improve your data strategy further. Schedule a consultation with our IT advisors.

The post Types of Data Analytics | Your 5-Minute Guide appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

That expert is a solutions architect, one of the most significant and client-facing roles in the IT industry, whose importance is nonetheless often overlooked or even completely ignored by companies at both ends. For a software solution to work effectively, scale, and meet the set business needs, it needs to have a well thought out architecture that accounts for numerous technical and customer nuances. Put simply, the long-term success of any IT project relies on the input from a solutions architect, who needs to have wide-ranging technical expertise, business analysis skills, project management skills, and more.

In this post, we will explain what a solutions architect’s role is, what are their responsibilities, take a look at the required skill set, how the role differs from other similar positions, as well as average salary and why having a solutions architect is critical for organizations and projects.

Let’s start. 

What is a Solutions Architect’s Role in a Company?

A solutions architect is responsible for creating a comprehensive architecture for a software solution and providing strategic direction throughout the development process. This person needs to ensure that the new solution fits into the existing enterprise architecture from the technical, business, user, and other perspectives. They cooperate with all the teams involved in the development process and need to know how every product and service works in an architecture. A solutions architect needs all this knowledge to oversee a successful delivery of a quality end product to its end users.

What Does a Solutions Architect Do?

Having a clear vision for the project, and a clear understanding of the client’s business needs, a solutions architect maps out the parts that will constitute the software solution and how they are going to work together. A solutions architect starts very early in the project, laying out what is to come. Their tasks usually begin from choosing the right technology for the business problem(s) and managing architectural concerns to ensure more productive and effective outcomes. A solutions architect is responsible for translating the vision for the project to the development team and plays a pivotal part throughout the entire systems development lifecycle. They are also involved in the future updates to the solution. 

Solution Architect Responsibilities & Detailed Role Explanation

As the job title implies, a solutions architect primarily focuses on solution-level decisions and evaluation of their impact on a client’s overarching business objectives and their outcomes. In most cases, a solution architect’s responsibilities revolve around ensuring that the software solutions aligns with a client company’s resources, risk identification, and planning. Here are some of the main responsibilities of a solutions architect: 

• Creates and leads the process of integrating IT systems for them to meet an organization’s requirements.
• Conducts a system architecture evaluation and collaborates with project management and IT development teams to improve the architecture.
• Evaluates project constraints to find alternatives, alleviate risks, and performs process re-engineering if required.
• Updates stakeholders on the status of product development processes and budget.
• Notifies stakeholders about any issues connected to the architecture. 
• Fixes technical issues as they arise.
• Analyzes the business impact that certain technical choices may have on a client’s business processes.
• Supervises and guides development teams.
• Continuously researches emerging technologies and proposes changes to the existing architecture.

Core Solutions Architect Skills

To successfully design, create, and lead the development of a software solution, a solutions architect needs to have a certain skill set. Let’s take a closer look at the most important skills of a solutions architect below:

• Excellent Communication. Being able to communicate effectively with stakeholders, project managers, developers, and other individuals involved in the software development process is essential for a solutions architect. As the architect has a central role in any project and leads every team on it, ineffective communication can lead to big bottlenecks. So, a solutions architect should be able to clearly explain, understand everyone’s point of view, listen, advise, and influence. 
• Project and Resource Management. Although a solutions architect is not directly involved in project development, they still need to ensure that project resources are being used efficiently and impactfully. They should be business-minded, capable of identifying the most effective solution at every turn, for every part of architecture. It is their responsibility to focus on business goals and understand how to achieve them in the set timeframe and within the given budget.
• In-depth Analysis. A software architecture and systems integrated into it are comprised of numerous details that work together. A solutions architect needs to be very attentive to those details, as overlooking something may hinder the development process, lead to breakdowns, or make the software solution inefficient. They also should be able to understand technical specifications of many different software solutions and hardware and perform analysis of different business layers.
• Risk Identification and Management. A solutions architect must be capable of analyzing and identifying potential short and long term risks that may cause technical issues and impede business operations in the future.
• Technical Skills. Expectedly, the role of a solution architect requires technical education and hands-on experience across all major areas of the software development process as well hardware engineering expertise (for software projects that rely on hardware). Thus, a solutions architect should have at least six to eight years of experience in the following areas:
  • Business analysis
  • IT infrastructure
  • Software architecture design
  • Cloud development
  • DevOps 

Enterprise Architect Vs Technical Architect Vs Solution Architect

There are three different architecture-related roles in the IT industry. Each of these roles is equally essential for the success of a project they are involved in and cannot be replaced by any other positions:

• Enterprise Architect
• Technical Architect
• Solution Architect

Now, let’s learn more about these roles and how they differ from one another:

Enterprise Architect vs Solution Architect Role

An enterprise architect operates is responsible for overseeing a company’s entire enterprise ecosystem. Enterprise architects focus on constructing and managing complex solutions that solve the company’s critical strategic issues. The overarching goal of an enterprise architect is to ensure that the company has smooth development lifecycles and uses available resources for every enterprise application effectively. Meanwhile, a solutions architect has a much more practical role. They take the business requirements and turn them into new software solutions that solve a company’s emerging technology.

Technical Architect vs Solution Architect Role

A technical architect chiefly oversees the software architecture, technical engineering, and implementation technology. Their main task is to provide technical leadership and make decisions regarding the most vital parts of the system that is being developed. They work closely with development teams to communicate IT strategies and outline practices that are meant to be followed throughout the project. The main difference between a technical architect and a solution architect these two roles is that the first focuses primarily on the engineering side. 

Here’s an image that gives a general perspective on how these three roles differ:

Source: Altexsoft

Solutions Architect Salary

According to Career Explorer, the average salary of a solutions architect in the U.S. is 8% hire than the salary for technology-related positions in the IT industry. As of 2018, the average salary of a solutions architect in the United States is nearly $99,769 per year. Their yearly income typically starts from $78,484 and goes up to $196,175.

Source: CareerExplorer

Let’s take a look at the salaries that solutions architects have at the start of their career an as they climb the career ladder:

Source: CareerExplorer

Source: CareerExplorer

Source: CareerExplorer

Source: CareerExplorer

Source: CareerExplorer

Source: CareerExplorer

Importance of Solutions Architect in a Company

One of the main reasons why a company should employ a solutions architect is to successfully design and develop new technology solutions that align with its business needs, as well fill in the communication gap between technical and non-technical experts involved in an IT project. As the process is always heavy on the budget and highly risky, every company should have a solutions architect to implement new solutions and scale them successfully. A solutions architect can be introduced to a company’s enterprise structure through software architecture consulting services.

Conclusion

A solutions architect is responsible for building and implementing IT systems architectures that meet the set business requirements. Their role starts with gathering the requirements, understanding the specifications, evaluating the systems that are in place, and working closely with stakeholders to deliver the right solution. In general, the solutions architect’s role is to explain the business requirements to the development team and lead them in building a product that can solve real business issues effectively. The position is very responsible and requires a wide-ranging IT skill set and knowledge. With companies increasingly relying on software and emerging technologies, the role of a solutions architect will continue to gain weight.

The post What is the Role of a Solutions Architect: Importance, Required Skills, Responsibilities appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

We did not include Headspace and Calm, as these are highly popular and well-advertised applications, instead opting to focus on unique mental health apps recognized across different categories. 

Lets’ start.

BlueIce 

Category: Evidence based mental health apps for youth and kids

BlueIce is aimed at helping teenagers manage their emotions and prevent self-harm with a wide variety of different features. Available for both Apple and Android devices, the application was developed by Paul Stallard from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (Foundation Trusts are NHS’s organizations with a strong local reach). To make it as effective as possible, teenager with lived experience of self-harm took part in the process of creating BlueIce.

Here are the key features:

• Mood checker with notifications
• Simple mood diary
• Mood lifter with a set of proposed activities
• Emergency contact numbers
• Additional protection and privacy layer with PIN
• Personalized sections
• Smart safety checks for self-harm prevention

Now, let’s take a quick look at BlueIce’s biggest features — Mood Checker and Mood Lifter. 

The first relies on a “mood wheel”: a user chooses how they feel from a wide range of options on the wheel, take short notes, and then can identify mood patterns and triggers in the Mood Calendar across long periods of time. 

Meanwhile, the Mood Lifter section offers a comprehensive activity suite aimed at lowering stress. 

Here are its key components:

• Music and photo libraries
• Physical activities
• Mood-changing activities
• Mindfulness and relaxation exercises
• Contact a friend
• Negative thoughts spotting

BlueIce’s trial showed that the app can help teenagers manage their stress levels and self-harm urges alongside traditional face-to-face communication with a mental health professional. This and its comprehensive approach make BlueIce one of the top mental health apps available. The application is free, but prescription-only.

Cove

Category: Music Apps For Mental Health

Not everyone will enjoy writing down their thoughts into a mood journal, looking for other ways to improve well-being. Highly praised by top publications like Wired, The Next Web, and Guardian, the Cove app address that by offering simple music-making tools and eye-pleasing visuals designed for reducing anxiety and stress through self-expression. The process is easy: a user selects one of the six moods and then taps to choose chords, melody, and instruments (more than thirty are available) to create their own songs.

Cove was developed with the help of clinicians and other medical experts as well as tested, evaluated, and trialed in the NHS and other health organizations. Although Cove won’t replace professional treatment, it can be used alongside talking therapy and counselling, or simply to relax for a few minutes and enjoy the process of creating music anywhere you find comfortable.

Users have met Cove with high praise, mentioning its therapeutic effect, that it helps to cope with negative thinking, and has easy-on-the-eye visuals. As for the media, Guardian called it one of the best medical apps, and Wired UK wrote that Cove will upend user expectations when it comes to what a journaling app can be (Cove can be referred to as a music journaling app). 

The app is available for free for iOS devices only. 

Xmed Health

Category: Social Media-like Apps for Mental Health 

Although social media platforms have grown to be stress-inducing for many users, people’s love for socializing online can channeled to alleviate modern stressors and solve other mental health issues. The Xmed app may be the best example of that, offering users a health and lifestyle mobile ecosystem, a social network, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in one package.

Here is how it works: AI asks a series of questions to identify a user’s health issue, juxtaposes that data with available medical data and information provided by other app users, and arrives at a conclusion. The user can then start talking with certified mental health professionals to tackle the problem, as well as discuss it with people who have the same issue in the app’s in-built social media network. 

Apart from its uniqueness and technological capabilities, the Xmed Health also has a well thought out flow, whose primary focus is to help a user solve their issue, beautiful design and animations, and gamification with levelling up and achievements. 

On top of all this, you can use the app to identify other health issues. making Xmed Health not only one of the best mental health apps, but also a solid health app in general.

Xmed Health is available in the Appstore. 

My Possible Self

Categories: Mental health therapy apps, Mental health tracking apps

My Possible Self promises to help its users lower stress and anxiety levels in eight weeks with a range of features backed up by clinically approved content. To deliver on the promise, the app offers over a wide range of learning modules aimed at various stress-inducing situations in life. 

The modules include:

• Stress and overload management
• Fear and anxiety management
• Overcoming loss and big life changes
• Problem solving
• Happiness and well-being management
• Tackling negative thinking
• Returning to pleasant activities
• Improving daily communication

The list does not end there, as the app’s creators continuously update it with different new modules. The first learning module is free, but to access the rest users needs to have a subscription. 

Still, the app has a number of other aspects that make it one of the best mental health apps. There is a comprehensive mood tracking tool/dairy, created with the help of the company’s in-house psychologists. A user can track their mood daily, selecting how they feel and pinpointing activities, people, and places that influence their mood and well-being. 

Working alongside the tracking tool is the Mood History and Insights features that help users detect mood patterns and act accordingly to improve how they feel. The latter displays mood shifts in a comprehensive chart, showing the patterns and proposing potentially suitable lifestyle changes with the help of custom algorithms. What is more, users can add written notes and images to every mood entry — a small but nice touch that enriches the experience.

The content used in My Possible Self is clinically and statistically proven to lower stress and improve well-being in an eight weeks’ time. To ensure that, the creators partnered with a leading non-profit mental health research facility called The Black Dog Institute. 

My Possible Self was warmly received by users and praised by media outlets like London Evening Standard and Buzzfeed. Is is available both in the Appstore and Google Play.

Happify

Categories: Event based mental health apps, Gamified mental health apps

Happify has a lot to offer. The app uses a set of comprehensive features that rely on science-based games and activities to help users fight stress consistently across all life areas. 

At the app’s centre are Tracks, a section with stretches of different simple activities that help users improve their well-being on a daily basis. These include, for example, singling out small moments in your day that made you feel good and choosing a person to be thankful to. Every user has a progression scale for each track as well as six skills they upgrade by completing it: Savor, Thank, Aspire, Give, Empathize, and Revive. There over sixty available tracks for different aspects of life, part of them only through subscription.

For those who want small bits instead of a long progression, there is an Instant Play section. Here, users can complete activities separately for each of the aforementioned skills. 

Other features include: 

• Happify Daily — articles, videos, infographics, and other types of content related to improving emotional well-being
• Community — a minimalist social network users can choose to be part of and share the activities completed for the skills with others
• Negative Knockout — a game where you bring down your negative emotions in style of Angry Birds.

The feature list is bigger still. For example, the app offers a twenty-page character strength report for each user, compiled in partnership with The VIA Institute. Meanwhile, Happify’s approaches were developed by leading scientists and experts in positive psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy, and mindfulness. 

Happify was widely praised by users and media, including reviews in ABC World News and The New York Times. The company also claims that eight-six percent of their regular users report improved well-being in two month since they started using the app. 

Happify is available for iOS and Android. Part of the features are free, while the rest can be accessed by subscribing. 

What Makes Top Mental Health Succeed

There is a pattern to why the aforementioned mental health apps enjoy success — they all tick the same important boxes. Here are the success factors:

• Mental health professionals should be involved in as many stages as possible
• The app should have a diverse set of features for a user to choose from 
• The features should be backed up by scientific research
• The app should have its unique feature, or approach a common feature from a different angle
• Mood journal is an important feature
• Gamification helps to keep the users engaged
• The app should have an appealing design

Now that you have taken a closer look at the top apps for mental health and what makes them so, you can start planning your own unique mobile product for those who want to tackle their mental health issues in a handy, clear, and pleasant way.

Good luck!

If you want to learn more about digital healthcare technologies, see some of our recent articles on the topic:

1. Trends in Connected Health & Wellness Devices
2. The Current State of IoT in Healthcare

If you need a consultation about your mental health app or other healthcare project, get in touch with our experts.

The post The 5 Best Mental Health Apps (& What Makes Them Succeed) appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Before you decide whether you need enterprise software for your business, you should know what it is, how it works, and in what ways it would benefit your business. 

In this guide, we highlight all the key details related to enterprise applications, their development, and how they help enterprises improve their operations.

What Are Enterprise Software Solutions

Enterprise software is a subcategory of application software. Also known as enterprise application software (EAS), it is similar to any other application or software software solution you know at their core. However, EAS has a different focus: solving a problem of an organization instead of an individual user. EAS aims at increasing the efficiency and output of an organization by following, following the set business logic and organization’s overarching strategy.

Organizations that use enterprise application software include commercial companies, educational institutions, charity organizations, government institutions, and other organizations.

As every company has a different approach to business operations, enterprise software solutions are tailor-made to fit their unique business needs. This means that software solutions for procurement, accounting, or product management will differ from company to company. Indeed, there are software-as-as-service (SaaS) companies offering cloud-based enterprise software platforms for different business operations, but they still offer many customization options, so that their platform would fit each company’s unique needs. 

Regardless of the path you choose, each enterprise application will be integrated with your organization’s IT system, becoming its integral part. 

Specific Types Of Enterprise Software

As mentioned before, enterprise software is built to address the needs of an organization related to a business process. Each business processes deals with a different aspect of managing an organization, so different types of EAP exist.  

Here are the common types of enterprise application software.

1. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

An ERP software application usually connects operations of different departments. The main aim of ERP software is to streamline the cooperation between them with simple digital tools for planning, procurement, document management, reporting, and so on. ERP software usually integrates sales, project management, marketing, accounting, and supply chain management operations.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM software focuses on the most important aspect of any business – sales. This type of enterprise software addresses all core issues and challenges related to maintaining an effective sales and marketing workflow. A typical CRM application helps to manage orders, communication, reporting, client status tracking, feedback, as well as automate a number of sales processes. A CRM system’s ultimate goal is to help maintain an effective sales cycle yearly.

3. Accounting

Managing accounting in a large organization is always hard. The biggest challenge is establishing a consistent financial data flow from all departments. Custom enterprise software for accounting helps organizations to solve the issue with tools for data gathering and processing. These tools aid accounting experts in ledger maintenance, project accounting, budgeting, payroll management, billing, tax reporting, and so on.

4. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

EAM software assists in keeping a record of an organization’s physical assets and managing their life cycles. More specifically, EAM systems facilitate planning, optimization, execution, and maintenance of assets to increase their lifespan and help an organization cut costs.

To achieve that, a solid EAM system offers numerous useful features. They include digital tools for asset lifecycle management, inventory management, maintenance management, parts management, warranty management, vehicle maintenance, work order management, and so on. Some EAM tools also offer mobile enterprise asset management features. 

5. Business Intelligence (BI)

Business Intelligence enterprise apps help large organizations in getting a bird’s-eye view of their business operations. The tools in BI software suite primarily help data experts to manage data mining, analysis, visualization, reporting, benchmarking, and other aspects by using existing data sets. As a result, BI software suites make data management easier and quicker for enterprises. With BI apps, an organization’s financial experts and top managers can get a comprehensive overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the business and develop effective long-term strategies for further improvement. 

6. Supply Chain Management (SCM)

SCM tools allows enterprises streamline and automate core supply chain processes, including logistics. Specifically, an SCM system helps companies gather, manage, and store all the supply chain-related data. SCMs are usually built from the ground up for a particular company and aimed at speeding up processes and cutting organizational costs.

7. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

As product life cycle is a long and complex process that involves everything from concept ideation to building the final product, PLM software aims at helping enterprises to effectively manage every step of the cycle. Consequently, PLM software suites help employees at every stage perform their tasks easier and quicker.   

Advantages Of Using Enterprise Software Systems

Here are the common advantages of all enterprise software solutions:

• Improved efficiency across the enterprise
• Increased employee productivity
• Comprehensive enterprise data management
• Impactful data insights 
• Less employee errors
• Higher customer and employee retention rates
• Increased revenue

Enterprise Software Engineering: What to Consider

At its core, the process of enterprise software development does not differ from how other types of software are developed. However, software development teams still should consider a number of important factors.

Interconnectivity

Enterprise systems usually comprise of numerous applications and tools running together and executing many tasks at the same time. Therefore, an enterprise application should have an architecture that allows for integrating it with other applications successfully. For an enterprise suite to work properly, every part should be properly connected.  

Performance and Scalability

Unlike other types of software, enterprise applications should be scalable to enable company growth over time. It should also work well across all needed platforms.

Security

Large organizations have a lot of sensitive information. In case of data breach, a company risks losing customers and leading positions on the market of operation. So, an enterprise application should have multiple security levels to prevent cyberattacks, leaks, and security bugs. 

Cloud Storage

Since enterprise software solutions aim at elevating business operations, these programs should ideally offer cloud storage to enable successful scalability over time.

EAS versus SaaS

Enterprise software can be divided into two categories — custom or SaaS (we already described both above). They differ across a number of parameters.  

Enterprise Software Trends

As modern economies increasingly rely on software, enterprise software trends come and go relatively quickly. Here are the recent ones.

Microservices and Serverless Architecture

This trend involves designing software with individual shortcodes to enable software teams manage separate tasks (microservices). You can then directly deploy the shortcodes to a cloud provider, which frees developers from managing a complex architecture.

Machine Learning

Today, top-of-the-line enterprise software uses these Artificial Intelligence-driven algorithms to automate some process and operation, saving an enterprise and its employees a lot of time.

Blockchain

Since it is decentralized and unhackable, blockchain is a safe storage for enterprise data. Plus, blockchain smart contracts can automate complex solutions that involve many parties, and can be paired with other technologies (like Internet of Things) to create big enterprise systems that elevate core operations, for example supply chain management.

Mobile Applications

Both enterprises’ employees and customers rely on mobile, so if it is possible to make an enterprise software solution available as a native mobile app, it is better to do so. 

Enterprise Software Market

As more and more companies grow into large organizations, the enterprise software development market keeps growing. Owing to the tremendous advantages offered by these tools, there is no sign the market will stop growing in the coming years.

According to the Global Enterprise Software Market Outlook to 2022 report, the enterprise software development market is projected to demonstrate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 5.47 percent in 2016-2022. 

Besides, another report reveals that by 2024 the global enterprise solutions market would exceed $575 billion. Enterprise software solutions will be adopted on a bigger scale. The largest marketplaces in the world would include:

• United States
• Germany
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• China
• India
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• Singapore

Enterprise Software Industry

Considering the ever-changing requirements and continuous growth of enterprises, the key players of enterprise solutions market have to adapt in order to thrive. Interestingly, most of these market leaders share countries of operation.

Prominent leaders of enterprise application industry include:

• Microsoft Corporation (U.S.)
• Oracle Corporation (U.S.)
• IBM Corporation (U.S.)
• Sap Se (Germany)
• Salesforce.Com Inc. (U.S.)
• Amazon.com, Inc. (U.S.)

Enterprise Software Pricing Models

different software development companies have adopted different pricing models for their services. The most commonly employed pricing models for enterprise solutions include:

• Different outsourcing models 
• Package pricing (an organization pays for customized software packages)
• Modular pricing (basic software module delivered for a fixed price with additional charges for updates)
• Per-user licensing/Per-device licensing

Popular Enterprise Software Examples

Here are some of the most popular companies that use enterprise software:

• HootSuite
• Salesforce CRM
• Zoom
• MailChimp
• Google Analytics
• BambooHR

Quick Summary

Enterprise software aims at addressing the core needs of large organizations by providing effective digital tools for different operations. Enterprise software solutions allow for cutting costs, improving employee productivity, acquiring useful insights, improving cooperation and communication between different departments, and offer other big benefits. Enterprise applications have evolved over the years since they emerged, and now use the latest technologies to help companies elevate their operations further still. Although EAS is expensive, its benefits are big and clear, and that is why enterprise software is used and provided by the world’s top companies. 

The post Essentials: What Is Enterprise Software appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

A marketing director of an established brand with a young audience, an aspiring entrepreneur, a digital marketing manager, a senior-level manager at a big organization — everyone will find something interesting in our list.

Let’s start.  

Social Media — WeAre8 

WeAre8 is a unique mobile platform for influencers and micro-influencers that helps them connect with their favorite brands to get paid for sponsorships. Influencers download the WeAre8 mobile app, sync their social media accounts, and can receive sponsorships in a personalized feed. 

There are over thirty vertical feeds available, including fashion and style, technology, visual arts, music, and wellness and sports. 

There are three  ways to get sponsored:

• Share branded content across social media channels
• Watch and respond to videos from brands
• Create unique content

After a user gets paid, they can cash out to a PayPal account, or donate to a charity of their choice.

WeAre8 positions itself as a people’s platform for those who want to have a solid side hustle. The platform partners with over thirty-six charities and donates five percent of brand spend as part of its business model.

Meanwhile, any brand working with WeAre8 has direct access to millions of influencers worldwide, with a combined social following that exceeds 1.2 billion users. 

Mobile — App Platform Mobile Roadie

Launched in 2009, Mobile Roadie is the first Do-it-Yourself (DIY), no-code app builder in the history of software development. Its creators recognized that mobile will become a powerful marketing tool, creating a universal, rich-featured, and intuitive app builder for businesses across industries. Mobile Roadie is still highly popular today, powering ups apps of Madonna, Dallas Mavericks, Wynn Las Vegas, San Diego Zoo, and more. 

The platform uses a drag-and-drop editor and ready-made feature modules to allow businesses to quickly build and customise native iOS and Android apps with unique design. It also includes a comprehensive content management system (CMS), and a data dashboard with insightful app analytics that let business learn more about their customers. 

Mobile Roadie’s pre-made features include:

• Media: music, audio, video, podcasts, photos
• Interactive map
• Events and schedule 
• Chat wall
• In-app ads and purchases
• Push notifications
• Pop-up promos
• Geofenced messages
• Polls
• Rewards,
• Augmented reality
• Beacons, and other features

In sum, a business gets a mobile presence, a set of engagement tools, and means to learn more about their users — faster and at a fraction of the cost as compared to custom software development. If a company wants to go above and beyond with their app, they can hire the Mobile Roadie team to do custom development as part of three different packages aimed at the look, functionality, and business needs.  

Content Marketing — Unsplash

Whether it is an enterprise or a new neighbourhood restaurant in New York City, Unsplash is a real find for marketing efforts in any company. If the inherent mediocrity of the likes of Shutterstock tires you, or producing quality visuals and photos for your content takes more time than your team has, Unsplash provides just the right solution. 

Free of charge to this day, Unsplash started out as a place where professional, amateur and mobile photographers as well as visual artists uploaded their photos, both sharing and promoting their work (the user is always reminded to copyright the author when they download a picture, but it is not obligatory). 

At the start, Unsplash reminded a more slick and elevated version of Instagram without comments and influencers, where you could browse beautiful photos, finding something for a social media page of a small business like a coffee shop. 

While it successfully saved that allure, today’s Unsplash can cover the needs of the vast majority of industries, from embedded software development to building construction to island festivals. 

If you need a crisp, attention-grabbing image, Unsplash is a go-to platform: you can always find something to make your blog or social media post stand out from the crowd. 

Unsplash is also a forward-thinking platform: the like count was removed and the newly introduced monetization is organic, as businesses put advertising in Unsplash-styled photos in an intrusive way. 

Finally, Unsplash is just a pleasure to use wherever you click. 

Voice Advertising — Spotify Ad Studio

In a world that overwhelms your customers with visual information from all sides and screens, voice advertising is having a big moment alongside the enduring popularity of podcasts and music streaming. A properly put together voice ad is not only effective, but less intrusive as compared to different types of visual ads filling the numerous screens of your users. 

Part of Spotify for Brands ad suite, Spotify Ad Studio is a self-service audio ad platform that lets brands create great ads in three easy steps:

1. Creating an ad. You can pass the script to the Spotify team, and they will record a voiceover, mix the music, and produce it at no extra cost. 
2. Audience targeting. You target users based on their age, gender, location, activity, music or podcast taste, as well as choose on what platforms to air it. 
3. Campaign customization. The last thing you need to do to launch the campaign is set a budget and dates. 

Key platforms include mobile tablet, desktop, web. Platforms like gaming console, connected TV, and connected car are available in some markets.  

There are also two advertising options aimed at Spotify Free users. With interest targeting, brands can engage users based on activities and topics they like (determined by their podcast, playlists, and platform preferences). The feature works in three categories — comedy, technology, and cooking. The second one is real-time context targeting, allowing brands to reach users at specific moments during the day, like a morning run or dinner. 

With a twenty-nine million ad-supported users and a set of measurement tools, Spotify Ad Studio may be a fitting choice for your next voice ad campaign. 

Cross Platform Ad Management — Adobe Primetime

Today users watch TV on their mobile devices anywhere they want, as the classic TV experience has become a thing of the past. With advanced data tools and technology available, new advertising opportunities for broadcast and cable networks and other TV providers amount. 

Adobe’s advertising platform Primetime helps TV providers and their partners in a number of ways:

1. Uses data and machine learning to help TV providers know their viewers better, improving ad targeting across platforms. 
2. Creates smooth and personalized ad experiences without buffering and playback errors.
3. Enables the providers to enforce intelligent authentication rules, reducing account sharing and driving revenue.
4. Allows TV providers to operate at scale, ensuring reliable ad insertion at massive live events like the Superbowl.
5. Allows for delivering video across all platforms in a single workflow and ensures consistent ad delivery across all screens.

Adobe Primetime is used by the vast majority of TV companies in North America. 

The post Top 5 Unique Marketing Tools You May Not Know About  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Legaltech emerged as a response to the challenges the industry faced following the financial crisis of 2008. They included in-house lawyers’ greater demands on firms, pressure to cut costs, lack of standardization in client procurement across departments, attracting and charging clients in the competitive market after the recession, as well as competition from new companies that rejected the traditional law model. On top of that, law firms needed to plow through vast amounts of data since email communication has started becoming the new normal in the industry. 

Over the years, legaltech has grown to encompass, on the one hand, the software and technology tools that simplify and streamline law practice for lawyers, and on the other, digital tools that simplify the acquisition and management of law services for clients by reducing or eliminating the need to consult a lawyer (or making it easier to find the right one quickly). 

Technologies & Application Areas

On a higher level, legaltech is the industry’s way of performing digital transformation, that is, using software and technologies to simplify operations, become leaner, cater to modern customers, etc. 

Legaltech encompasses the following software solutions and technologies:

• Workflow software tools
• Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) algorithms
• Analytics & big data software tools
• Customer experience (CX) solutions
• Cloud technology
• Distributed ledger technology (DLT)

Legaltech Areas

• AI/ML document review – data-trained algorithms that analyze legal documents across many areas, from risk management to M&A to compliance cases.
• Document and contract management platforms — tools that streamline or automate creating templates, negotiating clauses, and analyzing content. 
• Workflow tools – systems that allow lawyers to digitalise and automate their workflows.
• Smart contracts – self-executing clauses in legal contracts enabled by DLT, Internet of Things (IoT), and other. 
• E-discovery tools — solutions that simplify and automate e-discovery stages, for example machine learning algorithms that collect and process documents and prepare it for a lawyer to review.
• Legal chatbots – automated rule-based tools enabled by AI/ML that allow users to get answers to basic legal inquiries in a chat or messenger.
• Online marketplaces — digital platforms that help clients find the right lawyer faster.
• Cloud-based databases — data is gathered in a single data warehouse, where it can be accessed by employees across departments.
• Data security — ensuring the highest level of security for legal records with DLT.

Legaltech vs Lawtech — What Is the Difference?

Some experts reckon legaltech and lawtech serve different purposes, with the first referring to software and technologies lawyers use to streamline their work (e-discovery, AI/ML document review), and the second encompassing products for their clients (legal chabots, online marketplaces). Other lawyers reckon lawtech is not a fitting name for the field, as it implies the subject of law in general rather than an industry. In different publications, lawtech and legaltech are used interchangeably, but legaltech more often still. As of now, using both makes equal sense; time will tell which of terms will stick. 

Use Cases: What Legaltech Benefits Firms Can Expect

While legal tech is a nascent field, law firms are already leveraging what it has to offer, digititalizing their workflows, improving customer experiences, helping clients to return virtual money, and more. 

Big Data & Cloud — M&A & Portfolio Management

Looking for a way to review large patent portfolios, lawyers from Bird & Bird have teamed up with their client Nokia (the technology company) and a range of experts from different fields for a solution. Their joint effort resulted in Pattern — a cloud-based big data tool that simplifies M&As and client portfolio management and includes details of every patent ever published. The tool proved efficient and was rolled out to Bird & Bird’s clients in 2017.

Mobile — Workflow & Document Management 

One of our clients, a long-established U.S. law firm, needed to transfer their workflows and document management as well as minimize the heavy paperwork common to a law firm. 

A comprehensive and handy mobile app proved to be the fitting solution. It empowered the firm’s lawyers with the following features: 

• Immediate access to сritical legal documents; files and documents can be securely shared between the firm’s lawyers
• Attorneys can send bills and receive payments easily
• HR center with powerful employee management tools
• Notification center: clients and lawyers are always notified about changes and updates
• White Label solution

Artificial Intelligence Document Analysis

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to free the legal industry from the massive amounts of paperwork. A good example comes from Luminance — an AI platform for due diligence, insurance, contract, and compliance management. The platform uses computer vision, machine learning (ML) algorithms, and probability statistics to analyze documents much quicker than a human. Since it launch in 2015, the AI platform gained wide recognition among law firms. 

Customer Experience Management

CX platforms can make a big difference in a legal firm’s operations. In one of our projects, we helped a U.S. law firm fully digitalize their legal consulting with such a platform. It consists of two parts. Customers use a mobile app to request legal help by creating tickets with basic information and attached documents. On the other side, the firm’s representatives and employees are assigned with tickets in a web-based interface with a simple workflow (in style of JIRA) to manage those requests. If the representative cannot address the issue, it is automatically passed further to the firm’s in-house experts. The platform also gathers data, accumulating a knowledge base to simplify the process of solving similar issues in the future for every representative and in-house lawyer.

Illegal Transactions Tracking with DLT

While the legal industry heavily relies on tradition, it already started leveraging what distributed ledger technology (DLT) has to offer. Josias Dewey, a partner at Holland & Knight and a software engineer, helps the firm’s clients create DLT proof-of-concepts applications. For example, he helped develop a DLT tool that helps track and freeze illegal virtual currency transactions, helping a client to return $500,000 lost as the result of a hack. 

Find out how legaltech can help your firm become more effective. Schedule a consultation with our experts.

The post What Is LegalTech: Overview + Real-Life Use Cases  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

We prepared a comprehensive guide for you that answers these and more questions, providing real-life examples along the way. The guide will cover the following:

1. What Does Customer Experience Mean Today?
2. Why Customer Experience is More Important Than Ever
3. Types of Customer Experience Services:
   1. Full customer services experience development
   2. Enterprise UX services 
   3. Customer mobile experience services
   4. Stand-alone solution for specific touchpoint
   5. UX & UI design services
      1. Can UI & UX design and development services involve the latest technologies?
4. Customer experience examples in services of top brands
5. F. A. Q. 

Let’s start. 

What Does Customer Experience Mean Today?

Customer experience is how an organization interacts with its clients over the course of their relationship, online and offline. Every CX is comprised of touchpoints — moments when a company interacts with a customer. A touchpoint is any type of interaction with a client, whether it is answering a question at a store, a call to confirm delivery details, cash desk service, or an outdoor ad. 

As customers demand more from companies in every industry, the concept of customer experience has expanded beyond commerce. Companies like Google build their campuses approaching employees like retail stores approach customers, that is, aiming at high retention and satisfaction rates. 

Where a retail chain would put up a sale, a tech company company offers its employees entertainment, recreation zones, and other bonuses. In this case, customer experience bears the name “employee experience.” Governmental organizations adapt as well, digitalizing and simplifying governmental services for citizens. As a result, more and more subtypes of CX emerge in different industries, indicating that both commercial and other types of organizations give more attention to catering to their customers than ever before — terms like hotel/guest experience, patient experience, event experience, are now the new normal. 

Why Customer Experience is More Important Than Ever

It’s not just naming for the sake of naming. According to a sweeping report on customer expectations by Salesforce, 67% of customers said their standards for good experiences are higher than ever, with 51% noting that most companies fail short of their expectations for great experiences. 

Salesforce

Every industry is inherently different, so customer experience is different, too. As a result, companies and organizations across industries look at how they interact with clients and improve the experiences based on the nature of the industry, client feedback, and customers’ specific needs. In other words, every industry dedicates more resources to building industry-specific CXs.

For example, hotels do not simply provide a generalised customer experience that rests upon a website, guest services, and a manager who will address guests’ concerns — they think about the big picture, from booking to branded hotel app to new ways to amaze their clients in the face of competition from market disruptors. A generalised customer experience becomes a well thought out hotel experience. 

Creating a solid customer experience brings substantial benefits to any organization:

• Strengthens brand/image of a company/organization
• Increases revenue
• Attracts new customers
• Boosts customer loyalty
• Improves customer retention

Most companies do not build customer experiences on their own, more so if they involve the latest technologies — they enlist digital agencies or software and technology companies who offer customer experience services. As the field of customer experience design has been expanding over the years to address the ever-changing customer demand, more services emerged.

Let’s explore them below. 

Types of Customer Experience Services

Customer experience services can encompass everything from building a next-generation retail store to creating a mobile app that would converge all services in one place. So CX is as much about building an Amazon Go type of experience as it is about mobile app UX and UI design services.

End-to-End CX Design (Full Customer Services Experience Development)

Every company has a customer experience, but if you aim at meeting customer expectations at every touchpoint, you need end-to-end CX design. One of its main goals is creating a seamless connection between a company’s physical and digital experiences. End-to-end CX design usually encompasses everything from creating intuitive websites and mobile apps to connecting all the company’s systems.

Amazon is a great example. Enabled by the decision to make an Amazon account the heart of the experience, everything in the company’s CX is simple. Whether you want to buy a product, read a book on the device of your choice, shop at an Amazon Go store, watch a TV show on Amazon Prime — everything is interconnected, simplified, and only a few clicks away. A user only needs to register an Amazon account and provide basic details. 

Amazon uses virtually every technology available in its CX, from IoT to deep learning to robotics. Still, a comprehensive CX does not have to use everything to achieve solid results, even if it operates on a large scale. For example, a bank can transform its branches with web and mobile, a CRM system, embedded software development, and by redesigning the physical space itself. 

Enterprise UX Services 

If CX in commerce deals with improving the process of buying goods/services from a company for its clients, enterprise UX services focus on enhancing enterprise operations so that the company’s employees would work more efficiently and comfortably. A good example comes from Boeing, whose employees now use AR headsets in the wire assembly process instead of continuously consulting manuals. Results are staggering: assembly speed has risen by 25% while errors are down to nearly zero. 

See the video below:

Customer Mobile Experience Services

This type of services involves creating a mobile-driven CX where a company’s application is front and center, converging all its services in one place. 

For instance, Sweden’s leading insurance provider EuroAccident transferred its insurance process to a simple mobile app. The company’s clients can manage every step easily, from setting appointments to managing insurance for their children. Getting a refund is paperless — a user only needs to make a photo of the check, fill out a few fields, and press a button. The app is also integrated with the country’s most popular booking service, the most widespread banking account authorization system, as well as the company’s IT infrastructure. 

EuroAccident

This is service is often offered as part of mobile UI / UX design services, digital transformation services, or UX/UI design and development services.

Stand-alone Solution for Specific Touchpoint

Say, a retail company has everything covered: mobile and web are interconnected, the company gathers user data to better cater to customers, employees at physical stores can anticipate what shoppers might need, and so on. Still, the company wants to strengthen their image and improve their sales further with something fresh. 

Emerging technologies provide a solution. A company can opt for creating an Augmented Reality (AR) kiosk for the store (we will explore an Under Armour example below) or install beacons that would be connected to a mobile app, delivering personalised offers at the right place and time. 

These services can also be referred to as customer experience IT services, as they involve both software development and sophisticated technology solutions. 

Build a tech-driven CX by leveraging 11+ years of industry-specific design expertise.

Get in touch with us.

UI & UX Design Services

These are typical UI & UX design services you can find on the websites of most software development companies and digital agencies. They include web design, cross-platform design, mobile app design, and so on. 

In the context of customer experience, common UI & UX design services play a secondary role. A company may need them when it already has a solid CX in place, but, for instance, needs to add a new mobile product to it. 

Other UI and UX services might also be useful. Say, a big retail company has built a tablet app for their warehouses themselves, but it does not work properly. Turning to a software development company for UI and UX consulting will provide a solution. 

Can UI & UX design and development services involve the latest technologies?

Yes, common UX and UI services can involve them. A company can create a website with a  virtual reality (VR) feature in mind, or a mobile app with augmented reality. For example, a hotel can set up website-based VR tours of their locations, while an event company can create an AR app allows visitors view immersive AR installations on events’ grounds. 

Customer Experience Examples In Services Of Leading Brands

We briefly explored real-life examples of CXs across industries above, but more of them will give you a better idea of what CX is and what shapes it can take. 

Full Customer Services Experience — Oasis

The U.K. fashion retailer Oasis has merged its website, app, and store experiences into one seamless CX. Whether customers shop on desktop or a smartphone, they can enjoy the same experience, and it extends further, to the brand’s brick-and-mortar stores. The stores’ sales representatives are armed with iPads, enabling them to give customers accurate product information on the spot, as well as use the tablets as cash registers. If an item is out-of-stock at the shop, the sales representative can book it online and order delivery to the customer’s place of choice. The company’s flagship store also incorporates eating, drinking, and beauty areas. 

Oasis’ Flagship Store 

Enterprise UX — AF Gruppen

One of Norway’s biggest construction companies has transformed their core processes with the help of mobile, geofencing technology, and ERP software. As AF Gruppen is often tasked with massive projects like building roads, it often needs to set up the necessary infrastructure in the middle of nowhere. Managing the flow of materials as well as numerous partners is also hard. 

The solution helps to tackle all these issues. With the mobile app, drivers record the process of loading/unloading materials. Geofencing technology helps monitor the movements of the partners’ representatives at a project location, enforcing security, as well as track time of AF Gruppen’s employees. All the data is synced to and consolidated in the company’s project portal, giving it a bird’s-eye-view of any project. 

AF Gruppen 

Stand-alone Solution for Specific Touchpoint — Under Armour 

For one of its stores, Under Armour created an AR kiosk that lets users apply signature objects of sports stars to their photos: Stephen Curry’s mouthguard, The Rock’s headphones and sunglasses, and other. Plus, users pose alongside a 3D animation of the chosen star and can share the photo on social media right away. The solution refreshes the in-store experience as well as helps Under Armour learn more about their shoppers.  

Start building a seamless and engaging CX for your business.

Get in touch with us.

F. A. Q.

What is the difference between customer services and experience design?

A customer service is what  a company offers to customers (insurance policy management, package delivery, etc.), while experience design deals with how a company should offer its products or services to customers at every touchpoint (implementing an AI-driven chatbot in an insurance company’s app for customer support, ensuring managing package delivery on desktop is as simple and quick as possible, etc.).

What are customer experience IT services?

Customer experience IT services help companies cover any software and technology needs related to their CXs. This could be anything from a CRM to tablet app for warehouses to AR storefront.

How can I find a fitting partner for UI / UX design or customer experience services?

If you need UX and UI design services, choose between a digital agency and a software development company. The first option will give you more expertise in marketing, the second in software development. Still, an agency can have solid software developers, and a software development company the required marketing expertise, acquired in completing projects similar to yours. As you will be focusing on expertise and completed projects to select the right partner for UI / UX design services, you can search among both. 

If you need customer experience services, seek out companies that focus on CX, not simply offer it alongside many other services. This could be an IT/software development company or design agency.

Whether you need to find a partner for UI & UX design or customer experience services, you need to carry out a comprehensive research, especially if you plan a major overhaul of your CX — not too many companies offer end-to-end CX design. You can find fitting companies on websites of consulting companies and research firms like Clutch.co, they rate and profile services providers regularly. Asking your business partners or people you know about a potential partner can help you in finding one for UI & UX design or customer experience services as successfully as in any other case where you need a 100% reliable partner. 

The post 360-Degree Guide: Tech-Driven Customer Experience Services appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Our Clients

Leading brands across industries trust our custom software development services:

• Universal
• EY 
• Jaguar Land Rover
• Disney
• Wynn Las Vegas
• Cirrus Insight
• NHS
• Guest Services
• AF Gruppen

	Custom Enterprise Software Development Whether you need a labor management platform, digitalize a workflow effectively, establish fail-safe security, or any other solution to improve your operations, our custom software developers have the expertise to tackle challenges of any scale and complexity. We can also help you modernize legacy systems, consolidate application portfolios, and integrate software into existing IT systems.
	Custom Mobile App Development Simplify your enterprise operations by transferring them to an easy-to-use mobile solution. Surprise your customers with a useful and beautiful applicatication in Retail, Entertainment, and other industries. We can help you build an impactful iOS, Android, or Hybrid app that will make a lasting impression on your target users.
	Custom Software Development with the Latest Tech If you are planning a cutting-edge product or digital transformation, we can help you tackle any technology challenge. Our custom software developers have expertise in most emerging technologies: Internet of Things Augmented & Virtual Reality Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain Cognitive Computing/Artificial Intelligence Customer Experience Design

Need an impactful, industry-specific custom software?

Get in touch with us now.

 

Our Custom Software Development Process

Years of expertise allowed us to create a clear and streamlined process that allows us to deliver the right result within the set timeframe. From stakeholder interviews and requirement gathering to continuous post-deployment maintenance, out custom software development services have you covered on all fronts. 

	Kick-Off Our experts translate your requirements into technical documentation, we assemble a team, and the designer comes up with first design prototypes for your solution.
	Development Our custom software developers create your solution. You review milestones every two weeks. Towards the end, the team carries out User Acceptance Testing, and then deploys your solution.
	Support After the release, we perform continuous server monitoring, allocate experts for bug fixing, and provide general customer support services.

Further Steps. Today, any software is frequently updated with new functionality based on user feedback and quickly changing customer demand. If you plan to evolve and update your solution regularly, we can scale down your team to a small support unit. If you have bigger plans for the future, you can scale back up to the full team when needed. The specifics of further cooperation are usually discussed after the deployment of your solution. 

Custom Software Development Company Trusted By Top Brands

Today, Intellectsoft is more than a custom software development company. Our solutions help the world’s leading enterprises, SMBs, and funded startups across industries solve challenges that emerge during their digital transformation journeys with custom software development and emerging technology. 

#1 — Eurostar

The UK’s pioneering railway company got a set of interconnected solutions from Intellectsoft over the years:

1. Big Data Management. We developed a data-mining system on top of MapReduce and HDFS that allows Eurostar to process the booking system and journey logs weekly. By bringing this data together and having the tools to analyze it, Eurostar can gain insights into passenger behaviour and improve their services and operations. 
2. Customer Experience Management. Here, an iPad app helps Eurostar’s train staff manage critical passenger information and gives them the tools to improve the journey start to finish:

• Manage reservations on a train map
• View passenger data (who travels with kids, who is pregnant, etc.)
• Display and manage detailed reports 
• Collect journey-specific data
• Report an issue in an instant
• Book taxis for passengers beforehand

3. Ticket & Seat Management. A web app that streamlines and improves the ticket selling process by providing employees with simple user and ticket management tools. The solution has an integrated database with important data on trains, timetables, routes, and available seats.  

We also helped Eurostar perform cloud transformation, transferring their operations to AWS in 3 weeks. The transition enables and connects all of the custom software development solutions above.  

#2 — AF Gruppen

One of Norway’s leading construction companies used our custom software development to perform comprehensive digital transformation. Here is what we did for the project:

• Performed legacy back office integration 
• Developed a scheduling and labor management portal with beacon technology
• Created an asset tracking and management framework accompanied by a mobile app
• Designed and implemented a vendor ecosystem with beacon technology
• Set up a compliance solution to prevent illegal activities
• Developed an advanced decision making dashboard based on data analytics
• Implemented real-time reporting system

All solutions are interconnected and form a single system that digitazies the company’s operations. As a result, the company can easily set up projects in the middle of nowhere to carry out Norway’s big infrastructure projects, tracking labor time, assets, and third-party vendors, as well as gathering data to improve future projects.

#3 — Guest Services

This project for a hospitality management services provider with 100+ years of history involved custom development of a rich-featured enterprise web portal for their chefs. With it, they can create comprehensive recipes, weekly menus, and labels with nutrition facts in a matter of minutes. 

As a result, the solution streamlined the company’s catering offering, allowing chefs to meet tight deadlines all the while delivering quality results. 

Intellectsoft’s solution enabled Guest Services to streamline their recipe and menu creation process across the company. The new software has greatly increased company chefs’ ability to quickly and efficiently create new recipes and menus. The ability to retrieve and scale company recipes and create weekly menus has enabled the chefs meet strict client deadlines while ensuring quality results.

Rely on Intellectsoft’s impactful custom software development services.

Get in touch with us now.

Capabilities of Our Custom Software Developers

With over ten years on the IT market, our experts are bringing you wide-ranging expertise in all the areas needed for a reliable software development solution that works across the board.

Enterprise Software Development, Data, Cloud

Web Development

• Symfony
• Ruby
• Python
• PHP
• AngularJS
• JavaScript
• React
• NodeJS
• jQuery

Blockchain Development

• Solidity
• Hyperledger
• Ethereum

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

• TensorFlow
• DL4J
• Spark

AR & VR Development

• Unity 
• Web Assembly

IoT Development 

Build a reliable solution with our expert custom software developers.

Get in touch with us now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are custom software development costs for digital transformation?

A company can perform digital transformation with a only a few technologies (for example, mobile app, cloud, and web) or a set of technologies (several web portals, mobile, IoT, artificial intelligence). So, the cost of custom software development depends on a given project. Digital transformation is not a small-scale overhaul and usually digitalizes a company’s core operations and workflows. Performing it requires time and the right technical talent. As a result, custom development for such projects requires requires solid investments.

How can I make custom software development solutions less heavy on the budget?

Outsourcing development is the best option to cut costs. Software outsourcing market has matured over the years, and today many countries around the globe have big pools of tech talent you can hire from. Eastern European countries like Ukraine and Poland are top options, a lot of the leading outsourcing companies offering custom software development solutions come from there. 

Do Product Engineering and Custom Software Development Differ?

Today, most software projects are referred to as products, so in many cases product engineering is just a fresh term for custom software development service. It can also mean developing software for sale, not internal usage. 

The post Custom Software Development Services appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Web Development Services for Companies Across Industries

Throughout more than 12 years of operation, Intellectsoft has developed solutions for the majority of industries. We can help you create a wide array of solutions, including:

• Labor management web portals
• Workflow management web portals for hospitality operators
• Web portals for Enterprise Resource Planning
• Ecommerce websites
• Patient management portals for healthcare organizations
• Real-estate portals and websites
• Real-estate portals and websites
• Websites for financial organizations
• Websites for luxury goods businesses
• Web-based asset management and other tools

Leverage our expertise and create an industry-specific web solution.

Get in touch with us now.

Types of Web Development Services

From design to integration to maintenance, we offer full-cycle web application development services. We build apps that are secure, scalable, fast, and work well across all devices and platforms.   

	Web application development services From design to integration to maintenance, we offer full-cycle web application development services. We build apps that are secure, scalable, fast, and work well across all devices and platforms.
	Ecommerce web development services Build an online store with seamless and user-friendly experience, the right extensions, and reliable integration with your other processes. Our ecommerce web development services include building full-scale ecommerce platforms.
	Java web development services With over a decade in providing reliable Java web development services, you can trust us to build a comprehensive web solution on Java for your business.
	Magento web development services Use our expertise to create and expand your online store on the Magento platform. Our Magento web development services can also help you transfer your existing store to the platform or add new extensions.
	Drupal web development services From comprehensive module management to building a web solution from scratch, our Drupal web development services will cover your every business need.
	Custom web development services for the Enterprise Build a custom solution for your business from the ground-up. Our wide-ranging custom web development services allow you to create cross-platform solutions for any industry regardless of scale or complexity.

What You Get

Our streamlined development process and experience allow us to deliver top-of-the-line web development services that tick all the boxes.

1. Carefully analyzed requirements
2. Stand-out, easy-to-navigate UI & UX design 
3. Secure and scalable solution that works fast 
4. Responsive design
5. Custom features
6. Rich and engaging visuals 
7. Maintenance and support  

Build an engaging web solution that ticks all the right boxes.

Get in touch with us now.

Our Technologies

Our software engineers have expertise in all the technologies needed to deliver comprehensive web developments services for companies across industries. 

• Symfony
• Ruby
• Python
• PHP
• AngularJS
• React
• JavaScript
• NodeJS
• jQuery

Latest Tech in Web Solutions

As Intellectsoft is a digital transformation-first company, we can help you enhance your web solution with the latest tech in a meaningful way. 

Augmented Reality

Let you users try on your clothing products using their smartphones with AR.

Cloud

Transfer your web solution to a scalable cloud storage of Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.

Virtual Reality

Let your users take virtual tours of a real estate property, resort, or entertainment facility with VR.

Internet of Things 

Make your web solution work and communicate with different smart devices.

How can latest technologies improve your web solution?

Talk to our experts.

 

Our Web Development Process

As we have been delivering web development services for over a decade, our process is clear, effective and enables timely delivery of your web solution. From comprehensive requirement gathering to ensuring continuous operation of your web solution after deployment, we have everything covered for you.

1. Kick-Off Stage. On this stage, our experts translate your business requirements into technical documents for your web solution. We also gather the team, and its designer(s) create a basic design. This stage lays the foundation for the entire project.
2. Development Stage. Our software engineers create your web solution. Intellectsoft uses the Scrum methodology, so you will review results every two weeks. Then, our experts perform User Acceptance Testing and deploy your web solution.
3. Support Stage. After your web solution is released, we perform continuous server monitoring, allocate team members to fix bugs, and provide general customer support.

Further Steps.

To meet the quickly changing customer demand, websites like online stores need to be updated with new features often. We can provide you with a small team to deliver these updates. This type of cooperation is discussed after deployment. 

Starting building an effective and engaging web solution with Intellectsoft.

Get in touch with us now.  

Frequently Asked Questions

I own a small business. Do I need custom web application development services?

That depends on the type and scale of the web solution you plan to build and how small your business really is. If you lead a small team that does not exceed 20 experts in total and you need a simple website, there are enough website builders that may cover your needs. If you need a web solution with sophisticated and stunning visuals, custom animations, and advanced functionality, custom web development services is your option. If you plan to grow your ecommerce business and add new functionality and new Magento modules often, custom web application development services are the answer as well.

How to find a web development services company?

You can find a partner for your web solution with B2B research and ratings firms. Clutch is one of the best, they have a comprehensive, review-driven rating system and concise profiling, so you can find a web development services company quickly. As every business faced the challenge of creating a web solution at some point, you can also ask fellow business managers to recommend a reliable web development services company. This way, you will get a plain, unexaggerated feedback on a company and know what to expect from the partnership when it comes to both downsides and upsides.

I need professional web development services, no less. How can I find a reliable company with sufficient experience?

First and foremost, professional web development services are backed up by many years of experience (look out for companies with at least 8 years in web development) and expertise in a wide range of technologies that are required to build a reliable and long-lasting solution. When you are selecting a partner, see what companies they worked with and explore their case studies. Making a detailed tour of your potential partner’s website is a great way to gauge what they can build for you. Is their site visually appealing and comfortable? From a standpoint of a regular user, are there any evident hurdles in the user experience that should have been eliminated? Is sending the form intuitive? And so on. On top of that, pair this option with the previous one and see what ratings say. 

Web software development services often include progressive web apps. What are those?

This web app type is a combination of a website and a mobile app. It can be accessed by typing in the URL, but has the functionality of an app, for example enabling users to receive notifications or use it offline. In other words, a progressive web app is a native application, but in a browser. This app type will allow you to cut costs and reach a wider audience — not all of your users might have all-powerful smartphones to access the features of the native app, but a progressive web app can deliver a solid, albeit cut experience still. It can be used alongside a native app, or as a standalone application. Creating progressive web apps has lately become one of the popular web software development services.

Why web service development in Java is popular?

Java is a long-established and time-tested programming language, and one of the most popular software development languages of all time. With Java, you can create both simple web services and more complex solutions. Do you need to demand web service development in Java? No, the language your solution will be written in depends on the nature of the solution itself.

The post Web Development Services appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Adero, formerly TrackR, whose shareholders include Amazon, Foundry and Revolution, developed a series of products and software solutions along with Activefield, a platform that can scale across many products, many companies and unlimited use cases.

Adero, being a well-funded startup, has been successfully reinventing itself to stay relevant as it grows together with its addressable market. Like any early stage ventures, one of Adero’s challenges hinged on a need to scale its software development together with its engineering bandwidth, with the required growth vs. available local resources.  

Competing in a rather fragmented market of IoT-based consumer solutions for organizations, Adero aimed high, worked hard, and raced against time to go to market with an offering that would win over millennial and Generation X consumers alike.  

During its quest, Adero partnered with Intellectsoft, which was able to integrate its efforts smoothly into the strides undertaken by Adero’s in-house team. Understanding  IoT technologies, the intricacies of hardware design and embedded software, coupled with an innate understanding of the needs and wants of Adero’s core consumers, Intellectsoft was able to contribute its skills and knowledge to the partnership, resulting in a product that lies at the core of the intelligent, easy and stress-free organization concept of Adero.

Shortly after the product’s release, Fast Company awarded Adero the #10 spot on their list of Most Innovative Companies, alongside tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft.

About Adero & Smart Tagging System

Adero (formerly known as TrackR) is a Santa Barbara, CA-based technology company that provides an intelligent organization system aiming to end the stress and chaos that comes with managing personal things. Converging consumer electronics, hardware, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, software, and wireless in one place, Adero’s Smart Tagging system lets a user’s life essentials manage and keep track of themselves.

1 Smart Tag (parent beacon) and 3 Taglets (smaller beacons) connected to it

No matter how many things you have and the number of bags you use to carry them, Adero is built to ensure you never lose anything in a simple way. The logic behind Adero’s product is the following. The Smart Tagging system consists of small tracking devices, parent trackers, and a custom mobile app. You place the parent beacon (called a Smart Tag) on a bag, the smaller trackers (called Taglets) on the things you usually put in that bag, and then register the bag and its tags in the mobile app. When you leave something from the bag behind, the app sends you a notification after communicating with trackers. You can organise the bags, trackers, and notifications in the app.

How hard was the road to the seamlessly working final product and the customer? And where did Intellectsoft step in to play the part?

Challenges, Challenges, Challenges

At the start, Adero faced fierce competition in the tracking solutions market. The only option was creating a pitch-perfect product that would fully deliver on the premise of keeping track of personal belongings at all times.

The final result needed to be simple, work seamlessly, and stand out among competitors. Adero’s talented team had experience  creating similar products that enjoyed success, including the wireless speaker system from Sonos, XBox from Microsoft and the Tesla.

The accompanying mobile app is an important part of Adero’s product

Adero began working with various development partners focusing on design, firmware, hardware, and software. The two unresolved pieces of the fully-developed product puzzle were: a) ensuring interoperability between all product components and b) simplicity of the solution that would resonate with users of diverse tastes, age groups and abilities.

For those tasks Adero selected Intellectsoft to partner across mobile, cloud, and microservices development.

Building the Team & Getting to Work

While the right expertise and niche skills were critical to the product development success, contracting planned time to market put both companies under significant pressure to perform fast and, most importantly, to deliver robust and superb performance.

For Intellectsoft such a time-pressed environment is actually a modus operandi, as many domestic and foreign enterprise clients come to Intellectsoft “in a pinch.” The company has a well-oiled system of acquiring, training and onboarding the resources with required core domain and technology prowess and compiling an outstanding team within Adero-required deadline.  Intellectsoft has been working with Adero through a combination model from its offshore development centers in Kyiv and Minsk, as well as on-site in a client-facing capacity at Adero’s offices in Santa Barbara.

The project epitomised success of this close collaboration between Intellectsoft and Adero teams that enjoyed great synergies in the process, consisting of knowledge sharing across a wide array of subjects from general technology challenges to particular relevant  intricacies in software development.

Areas of Collaboration:

• iOS app MVP architecture (Swift)
• Android app MVP architecture (Java)
• Custom Bluetooth communication protocol
• Advanced rule validation and notifications engine
• Custom User Interfaces and Motion
• AWS cloud backend solution
• Platform build on Ruby and Node.js
• Advanced platform rollout
• Mobile app development
• Hardware onboarding and communication security
• AWS Cognito for authorisation
• ELK Stack for Logging and Metrics
• Installation of microservice architecture

See how Adero’s product works:

Abundant Payoff Was Commensurate With The Efforts

Intelectsoft’s cooperation with Adero could not have resulted into anything short of an award- winning product that stands out among competition.

Fast Company ranked Adero #10 in their list of Most Innovative Companies of 2019 in the Consumer Electronics segment. Adero stands beside the majority of the tech industry’s giants, including Apple, Google, and IBM. Meanwhile, the customers enjoy Adero’s simple and elegant product that helps manage essentials without leaving behind vital items for all upcoming engagements in an easy and sleek manner.

“Smart devices were supposed to make our lives better.  However, over the past decade we’ve discovered that users are quickly becoming overwhelmed in this overly-connected blue-chip stuffed IoT driven world,” said Adero’s Chief Executive Officer Nate Kelly. “More apps to manage, more devices to keep an eye on, more cords to untangle and remember about—it’s way too much! Adero is giving the users  an opportunity to passively manage and keep track of their essentials in a non-invasive way that allows for confidence and a peace of mind for our customers. ur system of tags, effectively “taking care” of the items,” freeing consumers’ minds to focus on more rewarding matters. Without Intellectsoft’s expertise, getting a product of this quality to market, especially within the outlined time constraints, would have been nearly impossible.”

The post Tech Story: How Adero Created a Stellar Product that Consumers & Top Tech Media Love appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

How are industry-leading companies using the technology? What benefits do they plan to gain by implementing facial recognition? Is the technology regulated?

Join us as we explore these questions below.

1) Facial Recognition in Retail

CaliBurger — Loyalty Program, In-store Experience

The Californian burger company CaliBurger installed kiosks with facial recognition capabilities at one of their restaurants in Pasadena. Linked to CaliBurger’s loyalty program, the kiosks recognize customers when they approach, load their loyalty accounts, and show favorite and past orders. The customers do not need to add any account details or swipe their cards. As a result, Caliburger is able to remove friction from the ordering process almost entirely, speeding it up significantly.

As of now, the kiosks are in the testing mode. Caliburger plans to roll out the technology in other restaurants over time. “Facial recognition is part of our broader strategy,” commented CEO of Cali Group John Miller in a statement.

See the video:

Caliburger’s facial recognition technology works only with prior customer consent, and the company stresses that they do not store the facial images.

7-Eleven — Advanced Facial Recognition in Thailand

In March 2018, 7-Eleven installed facial recognition software into 11,000 stores in Thailand. Coupled with behaviour analytics, the solution is used to track loyalty cardholders, monitor customer traffic and stock levels, suggest products for purchase, as well as recognise the emotions of shoppers.

Thailand’s population reaches almost 69 million people, and 10 million of them go to a 7-Eleven store each day. It is fair to say that the company is planning to get a substantial ROI on the technology, and improve the numbers. The implementation might also be connected to the current rise of facial recognition technology across Asia, especially in China, where people can use it to buy products, withdraw cash from ATMs, as well as get a loan.

Saks Fifth Avenue — Organized Retail Crime Prevention

An early adopter of facial recognition technology, luxury brand Saks installed it into its flagship store in Toronto’s Eaton Centre to fight organized retail crime/loss prevention. The facial recognition algorithms track the store visitors and convert’s photos of suspects into biometric templates, checking them against a database of registered shoplifters. The solution allows for accessing the cameras remotely from Saks’s New York headquarters.  

Here is an example of how facial recognition technology works in crime detection:

Source: Iowa Department of Transportation

Walmart, Samsung, Intel, Home Depot

Home Depot has merged their marketing and security departments for a facial recognition project that would provide insight into shoppers’ in-store product browsing. Michael Weidmann, the consultant for the project, said that no company had ever considered linking the two departments before, but the number has been growing since. With Amazon leading the way with their highly sophisticated and automated Go shops, companies will leverage facial recognition in retail to attract more customers to physical stores in the future.

Meanwhile, Walmart patented a technology with AI facial recognition that enables cameras to capture the facial expressions of shoppers in checkout lines to measure the degree of dissatisfaction with service. The results may help the company improve the in-store experience, including in-store displays, real-time promotions, and other issues.

In general, the use of facial recognition in retail is on the rise. At the National Retail Federation 2018, Samsung and AT&T showed how they plan to use it to get insights into demographics, store traffic customer behaviour patterns, and acquire other data.

Meanwhile, Intel showed a mock-up of a candy store in which a camera recognized recurring shoppers with the help of AI facial recognition, and then informed the store associates about their names, previous purchases, and product recommendations. Properly established, such facial recognition tool could empower the store associates and raise in-store customer satisfaction significantly.

2) Facial Recognition in Hospitality

Accor Hotels — Check-In, Hotel Experience

In 2018, Accor Hotels started trialing facial recognition technology in their Pullman hotel in São Paulo, Brazil to see how it can improve the guest experience. The opportunity was given to selected guest that are part of the loyalty program.

The solution covers key points in Accor’s hotel experience. Guests can use facial recognition to check-in at the desk or an information pillar at the reception as well as use the technology to access their rooms. As a result, the keycards are out of the equation as the guest experience becomes more swift and streamlined.

Accor Hotels lists deeper personalization and standing out from competition as other facial recognition benefits, according to Erwan Le Goff, the company’s vice-president for information technology for South America.

“We realize this technology is a big market differentiator and will be utilized by the sector in the years to come. ” said Mr. Le Goff.

Marriott International — Check-in Kiosks at the Desk

Around the same time in 2018, Marriott announced they are bringing facial recognition to the check-in desk in the form of kiosks. The chain started testing the technology at their two properties in China — Marriott Hangzhou and Marriot Sanya (located on island often referred to as “The Hawaii of China”). The project is also a joint effort with e-commerce giant Alibaba.

“Marriott International has a track record of embracing cutting-edge technology to create memorable experiences for guests,” said Henry Lee, Chief Operations Officer and Managing Director of Marriott International Greater China.

It looks like the chain considers the implementation of facial recognition in hospitality as the next important step for the industry. If the current effort finds its success, Marriott plans to roll out the technology to all of their 6,500 properties — although no definite milestones were set.  

Other Hotel Chains — VIP Identification

When it comes to broad-based usage, facial recognition in the hospitality industry is in its young years. On top of that, it is not properly regulated yet (we will discuss this in a moment). As a result, few companies are willing to voice their efforts, let alone sit down and elaborate on them.

Still, the Guardian reports that a number of high-end hotels in Europe are allegedly using facial recognition to identify VIPs and celebrities for preferred treatment when they enter the front door.   

3) The State of Facial Recognition Technology Regulation

In general, it can be said that the facial recognition technology is not regulated. Only the states of Illinois and Texas in the United States come as exceptions. Still, the gears that facilitate the emergence of corresponding laws are already in motion, and the conversation in general has already started.  

“The technology is in some environments where I’m sure millions of people, in a year, or even in a month, are subjected to it,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, to New York Magazine. “Nobody has any idea that it’s happening, or what data is being collected, or how it’s being stored, or for how long, or who has access to it.”

Ritchie Torres, a New York City Councilman representing Bronx, introduced a bill to move the needle on the issue. It would require a business to start informing the public in case they are using the facial recognition, how long they store the data gathered by it, and who they share this data with. The legislation effort did not get traction yet, and the magazine argues that it will face serious lobbying efforts from the tech industry — citing lack of success with similar laws in Alaska, Connecticut, Montana, New Hampshire, and Washington. Trade groups and tech giants like Google and Facebook are at the forefront of the opposition, the latter being especially aggressive on the issue.

Geoff White, a privacy specialist with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa told The Guardian that companies using facial recognition technology have an obligation to be more transparent.

Pushing tech companies to become more so and hoping to get a resolution should not be viewed as an impossible feat. After all, privacy is paramount today, and those companies that fail to follow through eventually risk losing their clients, while also losing image points along the way.

The post Facial Recognition in Retail & Hospitality: Cases, Benefits, Laws appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.