The onset of globalization has encouraged business operations on an international scale. It offers companies the opportunity to reach new customers in new markets. Exposure to unknown markets and sometimes even known markets can expose businesses to greater competition and greater risk. However, efficient management of the supply chain can do away with many of these risks and put you on the path to success. 

The challenges in the supply chain can include being unsure of the reliability of your suppliers, and their quality, cost, lead time, lot size, and more. Your business will surely profit if you had a way to monitor your supplies and the risks to your business.

Yes, clear visibility is crucial.    

This is where custom software can benefit your business!

Custom software equips you with a way to collect, organize, and monitor the supplier-related information that is most meaningful to your business. This blog discusses which functions of the supply chain can be better managed with custom software and also talks about the benefits this can bring to your business.

Why Is Customized Supply Chain Management Software Important?

Efficient management of the supply chain depends primarily on data gathered at each stage of the supply chain process. The success of the business hinges on the way companies use those insights to make decisions that optimize demand, supply, inventory, and deliveries. 

That is why custom software is essential to managing the supply chain. Custom software can enable organizations to make better use of their data as it gives structure to the information already in their possession. 

Through the use of custom software solutions, companies can identify faults in their supply chain process. Such visibility can help them make better inventory decisions or inform their customers of the shipping status for their confirmed orders. 

Essentially, custom software is instrumental in improving business operations and relationships with both customers and suppliers. 

Read more: Build or Buy Logistic Software: An End To The Prolonged Discussion 

Manage Key Supply Chain Functions with Custom Software

Every business is unique in its functions. A software can address the specific company challenges only when customized and tailor-built after crucially analyzing the workflows and industry pain points.  Here are a few to look into.

• Raw material acquisition: Supply chain management is a journey, and purchasing is at the beginning of that journey. Purchasing includes sourcing raw materials and other resources. Custom software enables smooth coordination with suppliers to deliver the material without any delays requires.
• Planning and forecasting: The operations team must anticipate the possible market demand and the number of units for production. Over-anticipated demand can result in excess inventory costs. If it is underestimated, then the company will not be able to meet its customer demand and thus lose revenue. Custom solutions for planning and forecasting can help the operations team to anticipate demands more accurately. 
• Warehouse arrangement: Supply chain management requires warehouse arrangements till it is shipped for delivery. If the products are delivered outside the country or state limits, there will also be a need for outstation warehouses. Custom software can optimize logistics to reach end-point delivery without any glitches. 

Advantages Of Custom Software in Supply Chain Management

1. Increased transparency throughout the supply chain

Knowing exactly where your item is at any given time is important for all businesses as it allows you to sell the item before it even reaches your warehouse. Custom software can help you sell this way because it can pinpoint the exact location of your item and the time that it will reach your warehouse. 

This will allow you to provide a guarantee to your customer that he will receive the product he purchased. Streamlining the supply chain will help achieve faster response times and increase customer loyalty. 

2. Efficient inventory management

With the help of custom software, you can sell your item while it is on the move or as it is in the making. It can help you estimate how many items you must produce, eliminating excessive production.

3. Supplier management 

You can keep a good relationship with your suppliers with custom software. Real-time data will allow you to know if you are running out of stock or if your tools and equipment need repair or replacement. This data will help you contact your suppliers immediately and thus minimize any potential delays. 

You will also have details such as account receivables and other information at your fingertips when dealing with your suppliers. This will ensure that you are up to date with payments and discounts. As a result, you notice that your communication and cooperation with dealers and vendors improve considerably. 

4. Streamline Processes

Custom software will create highly streamlined processes for supply chain management, especially for businesses that operate from different locations across the globe.

Fully customized software enables companies to accumulate all business data in one centralized location. Employees greatly benefit from this as they can now gain access to the latest versions of data, even if they are accessing it from multiple locations or branches. 

5. Un-bottleneck your supply chain

Bottlenecks in the supply chain are a direct result of the ineffective system in place that does not allow teams in different locations to communicate and align statuses to fulfill overall objectives. Companies that experience such bottlenecks miss opportunities and lose customers because they are unable to provide what their customers want. 

An unsatisfied customer walks out on you and straight into the open arms of your competition. If you are beginning to notice lower satisfaction rates, numerous complaints, or bad reviews from the customers, it is time to explore custom software that can give you a business-targeted approach to customer experience. 

When a business looks to meet or exceed customer demands, they have to rely heavily on its supply chain. Internal bottlenecks can slow down the entire process and risk order fulfillment. To prevent such bottlenecks, a business must understand what causes them and how to prevent them. 

Custom software can help a business identify such bottlenecks and thus help efficiently manage the supply chain.

Save Money, Time, and Your Business!

It is clear that custom software comes with many benefits. It is also obvious that it saves money with time. While off-the-shelf software may come with a lower initial cost, investing in custom software will give more benefits to the supply chain management cycle. It improves sales functions and boosts productivity.

Custom software that is fully optimized to the supply chain will improve business function in a way no off-the-shelf software can. Fully optimizing the supply chain process can be lean and seamless through the use of custom software. If the business growth process is left unchecked by the off-the-shelf software solutions it can become highly chaotic. Custom software gives companies a higher level of control over all supply chain operations while taking control over the growth process.

A company that is digitally driven by custom software automatically enables a more proactive and open business. If this is what you want for your business, give us a call.

Our experts at Fingent thrive on creating custom solutions for our clients. They will be happy to talk through the game plan with you and show you how your business can excel with custom software for your supply chain. 

Every small business requires an array of software to run its operations smoothly and successfully. When starting a new business, it may seem like your off-the-shelf software would suffice all your needs. As your business grows, your business management software should scale to meet your team’s evolving needs, boost the efficiency of your workflows, and be flexible to support new use cases. Custom software or a software application tailor-made to address your specific business requirements helps improve your market competency and realize ROI at a faster pace. 

How will you determine if custom software is the right fit for your small business?

Read on this post to learn more about custom software for small businesses. 

Read more: 5 Reasons Why Custom Software is Important for Your Business

Top Signs Indicating Why Your Small Business Needs Custom Software          

The classic “build vs. buy” decision is a pertinent question that every small business faces when addressing their software needs. Considering the cost, time, energy, and resources dedicated to custom software development, many SMEs adopt packaged software in a haste. Look out for these warning signs before deciding whether to build or buy. 

1. Employee Discontent

Find out if your employees are satisfied with your existing off-the-shelf software. Do they still stick to old-school tricks or find manual methods faster and more convenient? Are your employees forced to discover alternative workarounds to use the software? Do they still rely on spreadsheets and how-to guides for using the software? All these signs indicate that your off-the-shelf software lacks employee approval and can fail your business eventually.

2. Existing Tech Isn’t User-friendly

Rolling out enterprise-wide canned software that commands an advanced level of technical expertise will inflict more harm. It will complicate the processes for your employees and incur heavy training costs. Complex shelf software will fail the very purpose of technological innovation, that is, to simplify human efforts. If only less than 20% of your employees find the software workable, it’s better to build a customized solution.

View Infographic: Custom Software vs. Commercial Off-the-shelf Solutions

3. Wasting Time on Mundane Tasks

Is your software forcing your employees to spend their valuable time on routine activities that don’t require human thought and creativity? If your software isn’t allowing you to leverage the potential of automation, it can minimize your employees’ productivity and workplace efficiency. Automation of mundane tasks with minimal or adequate supervision is a must for small business growth and success.

4. Software Spend Drains Your Wallet     

Adapting a rigid off-the-shelf solution for your small business needs requires you to subscribe to third-party apps and pay multiple licensing fees. Most biz owners end up paying full price for unwanted features. Some companies would want to integrate estranged business applications to increase the usability of their shelf software. All these challenges lead to increased software spending.

5. Unable to Make Data-backed Decisions  

Your business data comes from multiple sources such as your website, emails, social profiles, chat, and conversation histories, helpdesk, and so on. How far is your canned software allowing you to make use of this data? Are your decisions driven by live data? If your dashboards aren’t getting updated in real-time and reports throw only past information, it’s time to consider custom software. Integrating multiple business systems and exporting all the useful data insights onto a centralized, user-friendly platform in real-time will empower small businesses to make rightful decisions.    

Watch Video: Why Your Business Requires Custom Software

How Can Your Small Business Benefit from Custom Software?

Small business competition has intensified in recent years. Thanks to the increasing democratization of digital innovation! Access to technological advancements is no longer limited to large enterprises. With a custom-built software, your small business can stay relevant and competitive.

1. Own Purpose-built Software 

Custom software development guarantees 100% alignment with specific business needs. You can rest assured that no crucial operations are left unsupported and there aren’t any wasted features. Share your unique requirements with a trusted custom software development company like Fingent and get exactly the features you would require on a long-term.

2. Uncompromised Security

Ready-to-use software is highly vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the widespread availability of code and proliferation of users. Owning custom code places your small business under lock and key and keeps your sensitive information hack-proof. Customized solutions offer built-in security with a specialized approach to development. Better compliance and data governance improves your organization’s reputation and trust. 

3. Improve Workflows and Efficiency

Attaining profitability amid stiff competition needs your employees to put in their best performance. Experienced custom software companies like Fingent can help you identify the workflows or business functions that can be improved with the right technology. This makes your business more efficient and maximizes the productivity of your employees.

4. Keep Costs Under Control 

Improved business efficiency transforms to lower operational costs. Technologies like automation enable your employees to complete more tasks in less time, without feeling monotonous. Custom software actually costs lesser than off-the-shelf solutions, considering the extra dollars you would spend on subscriptions, licenses, third-party integrations, software upgrades and maintenance, and other overheads required to make the shelf software workable.

Read more: Know What’s Driving Custom Software Development Costs in 2022

5. Round-the-clock Support 

Modern business might come to a standstill if technology stops working. A typical readymade software provider puts you into a long wait with back-to-back support tickets and repeated calls, whereas a dedicated custom software development partner offers access to a direct line of technical support to resolve your issues immediately.     

Read more: The Dos and Don’ts of Custom Software Development 

Tips to Choose the Right Software Development Partner

Hiring the services of an experienced custom software development agency will help you focus on developing a sustainable business model. How can you identify the right software development partner for your small business? Here’re a few tips we recommend:

• Identify your needs. Decide what you expect the software to do. List out your objectives. Use an application specification template to fill out your needs. This improves your communication with the software development vendor. It helps the vendor understand your expectations clearly. This can go a long way in finalizing the project’s scope. 
• Check the partner’s technical skills, expertise, and experience. Have they handled projects related to your domain? Read up their case studies and analyze their portfolios. Arrange catch-up sessions to learn more about their software development approaches and project management methodologies.  
• Ask for references. It helps you understand their reputation and trustworthiness. Use top B2B review platforms like Clutch and GoodFirms to evaluate their performance. Connect with the company’s past clients for more candid reviews. 
• Cost is as important as the experience and reputation of the software development partner. Bestow your project only if you’re confident of guaranteed ROI. 
• Is your development vendor passionate about your project? Figure it out over the initial meetings before the formal kick-off. Do they come up with unique ideas that improve your application’s value in the future? Make sure that their ideas are backed with convincing use cases or POCs.  
• Choosing a software development partner also depends on the quality of after-sales service and technical support. Do they provide cloud-based updates, software upgrades and maintenance, and other troubleshooting services when you need them? 

Selecting the right custom software development partner is a meticulous job. Check out our earlier post covering these and more crucial tips in detail. 

Also read: How to Choose the Right Custom Software Development Firm

Why Choose Fingent as Your Custom Software Development Partner?

Over the past two decades, Fingent has been serving as a reliable and capable tech partner for many leading global brands, including Fortune 500 companies. With an impeccable track record as a successful custom software development partner, we’ve helped improve cash flow and business efficiency for many clients. If hiring in-house developers is costing you a fortune, extend your development team with our dedicated talent pool at reasonable rates. 

Read more: Top Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development Services

We’re in track of the latest tech development trends and help our clients explore new and emerging tech such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT), 3D Web Configurator, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and so on. If you’re an aspiring small biz owner trying to make the most of technology without burning a deep hole in your pocket, connect with our team and get started. Let’s help you build scalable and robust small business software.     

Healthcare is a vast customer service industry that is trying to improve patient health and healthcare processes. This patient-centric approach has evolved, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual consultations and telemedicine practices have increased rapidly in the last two years. A report by PwC on global healthcare trends reports, 91% of consumers who used virtual clinical care in the past would do so in the future. Additionally, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows an increase of 154% in the use of telehealth in March 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
As patients are demanding much more streamlined and seamless access to healthcare, most organizations are trying to get rid of old conventional systems that limit performance. Today, patients seek personalized treatment. That’s where custom-made software comes into the picture.
Read more: Is Augmented Reality the future of HealthCare?

Custom software is built to cater to the specific needs of the users. They intend to solve unique challenges. Emerging technologies have proved an immense benefit to the healthcare sector. When these technologies are integrated together they bring various benefits to doctors, patients, medical organizations, and the entire healthcare industry.
A few commonly known custom software solutions for healthcare are:

• Electronic Health Record (EHR)
• Hospital Management Systems
• Telemedicine
• Electronic Prescriptions System
• Appointment Scheduling
• Medical Equipment Management
• Medical Research

In this blog, we will further dig into how custom-made software provides superior customer service in the healthcare industry.

How is custom-made software boosting patient care?

1. Improved personalized patient services

Data-driven patient services are adding value to patient care. Data that is recorded, transmitted, and easily available is helping improve doctor-patient interactions. This allows healthcare organizations to personalize their patient services. Additionally, they can manage their interactions with thousands of patients without the need for administrative overhead.

2. Improved communication and organization

With custom-made software, different departments can communicate easily and improve the organizational culture of hospitals. Departments can share information without the need for manual entries and documentation. Also, patients can visit any department without carrying any document along as the information is already available electronically with the hospital.

3. Improved growth

Custom software digitally transforms the traditional medical record maintenance system and makes it paper-free. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) can store data of thousands of patients securely host on the cloud. This decreases operating costs and eventually increases the ROI. Thus, custom software plays a pivotal role in improving business growth.

4. Integrated system

Custom-made software integrates different workflows that your organization requires daily. Custom software can synchronize several simple and complex processes such as finance, OPD, human resources, etc., in a single place. This helps reduce workplace stress and allows healthcare providers to invest more time in patient care.
Read more: Choosing Prescriptive Analytics over Predictive Analytics in Healthcare!

Why is Customer Service a priority in Healthcare?

Health issues can be stressful emotionally as well as financially. When engaging with healthcare organizations, most patients expect personal care in addition to the treatment. Thus, the more personalized the care, treatment, and engagement with patients, the more likely it is to have happy customers.

How can custom-made software improve customer service?

1. Scheduling appointments

Using custom-made software, healthcare organizations can improve the scheduling experience by reducing wait times and the time taken to capture patient data. It can also help provide appointment confirmations and reminders via text message or email prior to the appointment.
Booking appointments is the most elementary feature in most healthcare apps.

2. Service delivery experience

Custom-made software can provide healthcare practitioners with complete access to patient records health history along with diagnostic tools and systems. In addition, healthcare practitioners can use digital tools to record treatment notes, patient recommendations, queries, and diagnosis notes while interacting with the patient. This helps provide patients with tailor-made experiences and improve customer service in general.

3. Post-appointment follow-up

Healthcare practitioners can use auto-trigger feedback forms that allow patients to rate their experience, which will enable them to measure patient satisfaction. Doing so will improve customer engagement and foster a long-term relationship with patients.
Read more: Custom Healthcare Software Development: Why Is It Better To Outsource It?

How Fingent can help your healthcare organization improve patient care?

Whether your healthcare business is small or big, a custom healthcare solution is the only way to move ahead in the game and ensure quality and effective patient care services. Fingent is a trusted partner and has been proving efficiency in custom-made healthcare solutions for years. Here are some of Fingent’s success stories in enabling healthcare organizations to drive unique and streamlined customer experiences.

#1 A Custom Solution To Simplify Patient Care

Miscommunication between doctors, patients, and healthcare providers can turn life-threatening. That’s why it’s highly imperative that communications are streamlined. Although this itself could be a challenge!
That’s why Fingent helped develop a simplified patient-care solution, Encourage, that promotes effective communications amongst the various players in the healthcare ecosystem. A doctor can keep track of patients’ progress, assign tasks, and set reminders and care plans, as part of the patients’ profile. Patients can also get involved and also add selected caretakers to the care plan. The solution not just helps streamline communication, but also helps improve patient engagement and allows to better educate patients and families on various treatments.
Know more on how Encourage turned an apt custom software solution for simplified patient care!

#2 Healthcare Service Platform

Providing the right healthcare guidance, knowledge, or tools to the patients or their families can be time-consuming. Plus, it’s also imperative that the information shared is confidential and extremely accurate.
To streamline and solve such challenges in patient engagement and collaboration, Fingent helped develop an online platform, NovitaCare, that helps engage patients, providers, researchers, and NGOs to collaborate online and facilitate quality care. The solution equips many early-stage healthcare start-ups to streamline their workflow, improve patient-caregiver and caregiver-patient interactions, eliminate wastage, improve accountability and raise patient care quality.
Learn more on how NovitaCare turned into a top-notch solution for healthcare patient management.

#3 Improving Visibility on Hospital Performances with Data Visualization

It is vital for patients to choose the best hospitals and healthcare centers based on their performances. NHS wanted to create a platform that streamlined this search with metrics that compared hospital performances to showcase the best and those with good success rates.
Fingent designed an application that utilized data inputs from NHS to create interactive visuals and graphs to compare hospital performances. The solution drills down the minute of details to analyze hospitals across various parameters to deliver financial, clinical, and geographical insights, highlighting key performance issues and indicators.
Read more on how NHS used Fingent’s data visualization capabilities to identify the best-performing healthcare centers.

#4 Cutting-edge Web Application for Health Insurance Decision-makers

In partnership with Casenet’s ASG, Fingent helped simplify TruCare Insights, a nimble PHM platform that aids healthcare payer organizations.
Casenet’s Advanced solution group wanted to create an application that provides action-oriented dashboards and management ease to healthcare payer organizations. The platform, TrueCare did not provide integrated reporting options, and maintaining reports and reconciling them required excessive manual labor. Thus, Fingent helped the team build a highly scalable web application, with best-in-class UI/UX design, to seamlessly integrate the complex workflows of TrueCare, and manage 10 mn+ data records using custom filters.
Know more on how helping Casenet simplify their platform TrueCare streamlined their workflow and management!
Using our proven strategies, Fingent top software development company has helped many healthcare organizations and non-profit healthcare sectors boost performance and bring innovative ideas to life. Our experts help provide external perspective, agility, and understanding needed for real innovations. With us, you can get access to skilled software development professionals and all the ancillary roles to develop technology solutions that are apt and unique to your challenges. Additionally, we provide the best-in-class support during and after custom software development.
To know more about how we can help you deploy the top technologies for improved healthcare services, connect with us today!

The pandemic is now the biggest and most critical challenge of traditional banking. Some of these challenges are revenue pressure, data security, customer service management, data collection and analysis, risk management, and so on. These are the warning lights and alarm bells that call for caution over emerging risks. AI (Artificial Intelligence) has gained recognition as an effective solution.

AI is empowering the banking industry to provide individualized frictionless customer experiences. It is driving customer loyalty and profitability by automating banking processes.

In this article, we will discuss how AI can resolve banking challenges. We will also discuss some of the common challenges banks might encounter in implementing AI and how a tech partner can help deploy AI better.

How AI Can Resolve Banking Challenges?

AI is the new electricity – Andrew Ng.

Modern technology such as AI can be tailored to the specific needs of the banking sector. The digital age is opening up new opportunities. According to a Business Insider research report, banks are expected to save an estimated $447 billion by 2023 with the help of AI applications. Given that, here is how AI can resolve some challenges.

Read more: Digital Transformation in Financial Services: All You Need to Know

1. AI-enabled conversational interfaces

Chatbots are one of the most popular cases of applying AI in banking. Bots are programmed to communicate with thousands of customers with minimum expense. Insider Intelligence estimates that the adoption of chatbots could save the banking sector $11 billion annually by 2023.

Mobile banking has become the most popular and chatbot services attract users’ attention and create a unique brand identity. AI functionality in mobile apps is helping banks generate more revenue than when customers visit their branches. Banking organizations that leverage AI improve their quality of services and remain competitive despite the crisis.

2. AI-enabled data collection and analysis 

Banks generate an enormous amount of data every day. Collecting and recording this data is an overwhelming task for employees. Besides, all this work may be a wasted effort if there is no proper plan to use this data. Hence banks need to determine the relationship between the collected data. That is another major challenge.

AI-based apps improve the user experience by collecting and analyzing data. The collected data then can be used to grant loans or fraud detection.

3. AI-enabled Risk management

Providing loans is a challenging task for bankers. Extension of credit to a fraudster can get the bank into difficulties. Or a borrowers’ economic downturn can adversely affect the bank. 2020 statistics show that credit card delinquencies in the US alone rose by 1.4% in a duration of six months.

AI-enabled systems can appraise a customer’s credit history more accurately. Additionally, AI-powered mobile banking apps track financial transactions and analyze user data to help banks anticipate the risks associated with the extension of credit.

4. AI-powered data security

Credit card fraud is on the rise. It is the most common type of personal data theft. AI-powered systems can analyze customer behavior, location, and financial habits. So, if it detects any unusual activity, it triggers a security mechanism immediately.

Read more: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: The Cyber Security Heroes Of FinTech

When all these challenges are successfully tackled, how does the AI-powered bank look like? Read on to find out.

How Does The AI-First Bank Look Like?

AI-bank rises to meet customers’ expectations and remain competitive. The AI-powered bank will offer intelligent and personalized propositions and experiences as it understands customers’ past behavior. It can span across multiple devices providing a consistent experience to its customers.

What Are The Common Challenges Banks Might Face In Implementing AI?

Implementing AI technology in banking is not always easy.  You need to ensure you have the right team and expertise. You will also need access to data, resources to invest in the project, and parties that are willing to adopt the new technology.

• Access to data: It is one of the biggest challenges to implementing AI. Additionally, banks might face challenges with training data. It becomes hard to update or improve the AI models if the team does not have the necessary information to use and learn from.

• Localization: Localization is critical to the banking sector as they often need to design models with multiple markets that they serve. Localization can help you properly customize the customer experience. Your data partner can support you with localization as they have skilled linguists to develop aspects such as style guides and voice persona.

• Security and compliance: It is quite challenging to keep all the data confidential and secure. The right data partner can offer a variety of security options. They have security standards to ensure your customers’ data is securely handled.  Look for data partners who have strong data protection with certifications and regulations. They will be able to provide secure annotation. They will also provide onsite service options, private cloud deployment, on-premise deployment, and so on.

• Trust, transparency, and explainability: AI models can only be successful if they can be understood and trusted by customers as they will want to be sure that their personal information is handled and stored securely. Talk to your partner and ask them to explain the model to you. Or you can always go back to the training data that was used to develop the model and extract some explainability.

• Data pipelines: Connecting data pipeline components to use siloed data is not as easy as it seems. To do this effectively, banking institutions must ensure their data is collected and structured correctly. They must also ensure that this information enables ML models to predict according to the business goals. Look for a partner with extensive security offering as their expertise will enable your banking service company to be successful and scale.

Read more: The New Untapped Opportunities for FinTech Companies in the Coming Years

How A Tech Partner Like Fingent Help Deploy AI Better?

Implementing AI into banking is a serious responsibility. It takes in-depth knowledge, an enormous amount of time, and dedication to accuracy. That is what Fingent has. We do not just follow the trends. Instead, we focus on how AI can add value to your particular banking needs.

Fingent top custom software development company, can bring transparency and explainability of AI automated decision making to your banking processes. We can provide an easy-to-use interface through APIs delivered either on-premise, in the cloud, or as a SaaS offering.

By embedding AI and ML into our products, we can accelerate the release of explainable business models that will underpin new AI use cases. These can help create a seamless customer journey and automate manual processes with self-learning capabilities. We are confident that we can help you deploy AI better. Give us a call and let’s get talking.

The global growth outlook remains uncertain. Companies are forced to operate in an environment characterized by unprecedented technological change and evolving consumer demand. The situation demands decisive action! Companies MUST look for new ways to grow and add value if they are to survive. The obvious solution is old business models must evolve and drive innovation. This is the only way businesses can respond to unexpected risks and opportunities. Sustainability plays a vital role here.

Sustainability can reduce the environmental footprint and deliver significant cost savings through cost avoidance. It can offer new growth opportunities and can build brand equity by creating emotional connections and making consumers feel good about embracing sustainable brands. Let’s get right into it and discuss more how you can drive innovation and business success through sustainability.

Let us first understand what innovation really is.

What is Innovation?

According to Merriam-Webster, innovation is “the introduction of something new.” This includes products and services. However, it also includes improvements in business processes or business models.

But sustainable innovation goes a step further. It is boosted and driven by concern for resources and the environment. It involves using concepts and products that were developed as a result of environmentally-aware designs and practices.

Businesses that have integrated sustainability into their innovation processes have framed their discussions around growth and returns. This helped businesses add measurable value for all stakeholders. Proper planning can help industries develop insights for the future. Such planning can guide their sustainability strategy as they develop sustainable innovation goals.

Read more: Prepare for the Future of Digital Innovation with these 10 Services From Fingent

Why Choose Sustainability-Driven Innovation?

Sustainable innovation results in better business models, newer market segments, improved processes, and so on. It caters to consumer demand for greater sustainability.

As a result, businesses can achieve greater economic performance. On the other hand, it also results in a cleaner, healthier, and more stable world – one that propels economic growth! Here are three core reasons why you must choose sustainable innovation over traditional innovation.

1. Contributes to sustainable businesses

Sustainable innovation meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the needs of the future generation. Businesses must actively incorporate issues such as climate change into their innovation processes.

Companies that go beyond seeking immediate profits think long-term. Such companies invest in technologies and people for the future. Compared to their non-sustainable competitors, companies that rely on sustainable innovation bring in better people with personal ethics and thus contribute to sustainable business.

2. Better innovation and more innovation

Sustainability-oriented businesses produce more patents and more impactful patents. These companies think more broadly and learn from different perspectives welcoming insights and solutions from others. This leads to better innovation and more innovation.

3. More resilient

During these turbulent times, it is critical for businesses to remain resilient. Firms that are sustainability-oriented are more likely to experience less share price volatility. They tend to generate more revenues in the long run and thus survive through any crises compared to their competitors.

Read more: Custom Software Solutions: Ideal Way to Build Business Apps

How To Develop A Sustainability Strategy

Sustainability can be a game-changer. It can drive innovation that shapes how key resources are used in products and services. Focusing on reducing waste or finding substitutes can be a powerful driver for sustainable innovative products and operating models.

Companies that combine environmental, societal, and financial priorities to re-imagine their core business models and stay ahead of the competition. A structured innovative strategy reinforces business advantage and the environmental and societal benefits. Here is a four-step strategy that can drive innovation and business success.

Step 1: Endeavor to understand the broader stakeholder ecosystem

Environmental and societal issues and trends might affect the stakeholder ecosystem.  So, explore the potential impacts of ecosystem dynamics. This will help you identify a range of business vulnerabilities and opportunities. These can be excellent starting points to develop a sustainable strategy.

Next, explore scaling up the business. Consider where breaking points arise and how risks and opportunities change.

Step 2: Innovate and develop new aspects

Once you identify opportunity spaces, you can now innovate and develop new aspects.

• Change the production inputs
• Create impact by influencing the product usage cycle from cradle to grave
• Increase the environmental and societal value of your products and services
• Expand the value chain
• Shorten and reconfigure the global value chain to enable accurate and secure data tracking
• Encode, endorse, and monetize the full environmental and societal value of products and services

Step 3: Test, iterate and refine

A business with weak profit margins cannot invest in sustainable innovation to amplify environmental and societal benefits. Continue to assess and re-engineer your business model to improve resilience.

Step 4: Scale the initiative by engaging people in the company and its ecosystems to expand impact and advantage

This can be achieved by leveraging three enablers:

• Partnership with other organizations within or across the sectors
• Digital technology can be leveraged to reach previously unserved or underserved populations
• Develop cultures and leadership values that attract and engage people inside and outside your boundaries
• Keep in mind the future landscape

This four-step sustainability strategy offers companies a way to systematically integrate the social and business value in your business. This strategy will help you take on innovation for both business and social value.

View infographic: What are the advantages of custom software over commercial off-the-shelf solutions?

3 Ps

It is a mistake to look at sustainable innovation as a short-term endeavor. Industry leaders must help their organization develop an effective and reliable strategy for sustainable innovation. The three Ps you will need to know to enable this are as follows:

• Purpose: Have a purpose that goes beyond profit maximization. Such a purpose will guide the sustainable innovation process to success. Industry leaders must weave sustainability into the organization’s DNA. This is only possible when they encourage and nurture out-of-the-box thinking where sustainability becomes an integral part of the business.
• Process: A successful innovation planning process must include specific sustainability requirements and performance targets. Sustainable innovation must be central to the innovation cycle, not just an additional step. Make sure you integrate sustainability into innovation planning.
• Partnership: Build strong external networks. This will bring in fresh innovative ideas. Working collaboratively with your partners can help accelerate existing projects or even kick-start fresh ones.

Fingent, a leading custom software development company, understands that innovation through sustainability is a lasting megatrend. If you’re wondering where to start and how technology can assist you, reach out to us.

The impact of the pandemic on consumers across the globe has dramatically changed their demands, needs, and behavior. Many of these changes have critical implications for businesses in most sectors. To succeed in the next normal, businesses must respond proactively.

COVID-19 jolted consumer demand in a way that sets it apart from past disruptions. As a result, customer loyalty took a hard hit. Executing the four Ps of marketing (optimization of product, price, place, and promotion) became more complex than ever. Businesses must redouble and broaden their efforts toward meeting ever-changing customer demands and behavior.

As with everything else, it is important for an organization to know and understand its customers. If your company is at crossroads with today’s Ecommerce customers’ needs, this article will help you understand how technology can help satisfy these uprising demands quickly and effectively. So then, let’s first understand how customer behavior, needs, and demands change.

Read more: What are 3D Web Configurators? How do they Boost Ecommerce Sales and Drive Customer Satisfaction?

Ecommerce Customers’ Behavior, Demands, and Needs

Customers are like the moving targets. The key to success is to understand their behavior trends and use technology to help satisfy these uprising needs and demands. Linnworks research pointed to five such trends:

• Convenience is the need of the hour: 76% of consumers feel that convenience is the top priority in choosing a retailer. 90% of shoppers focus on using a trouble-free online store.

• The frictionless shopping experience is most valued: It was noted that 58% of consumers abandoned an online store altogether because they were difficult to use.

• Omnichannel shopping is gaining traction: One in three consumers has purchased an item while on social media. 71% of consumers prefer to complete a purchase on a social site without having to exit to the retailer’s site.

• Consumers demand flexible payment options: Four in five shoppers expect the “buy now, pay later” payment option.

• Delivery convenience: 95% of consumers say that fast and reliable delivery methods play a crucial role in their decision-making.

How Can Technology Help Satisfy these Uprising Needs and Demands of Today’s Consumers?

1. Allow your consumers to experience products before they buy

The biggest roadblock facing Ecommerce businesses has been the inability of consumers to experience products before they buy. Everyone likes to try on clothes they like to buy or see how is their new couch looks in their living room.

This is where AR (Augmented Reality) can help your business. AR can help your consumers try on clothes or closely inspect the components of a mobile device. AR market is expected to reach 2.54 billion by 2023.  Online retailers who fail to take full advantage of this technology may likely experience business disruption.

2. Bring your product to life with virtual shopping

Virtual reality shopping can bring your products to life. It helps your customers to have an in-store-like experience, without actually being there. VR technology allows you to tag products so your customers can purchase on the spot. It can instantly connect buyers with customer service executives.

VR can make product recommendations based on customer metrics. It can also cater to both desktop and mobile users. Thus, it provides a better customer experience attracting more customers to your online store.

3. Be omnichannel ready

Todays’ Ecommerce customers like to cross-channel research and purchase. So, they expect smooth interactions across these channels and devices. Technology can help you to provide your customers with what they want, when they want it, and where they want it to. Some of these technologies include video chat, screen sharing, document interaction, e-signature, and more.

Co-browsing is an effective visual engagement system. It can bring your sales executives and customers together on the same page, at the same time. This allows your executive to guide your customers through the complex procedures making their customer journey as smooth as it can be.

Read more: Custom Retail Software Solutions: Everything You Need to Know!

4. Enhance customer communication with chatbots and AI

Artificial Intelligence has a major impact on how we live and work. Voice shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion by 2022, rising from $2 billion today. And 45% of millennials have already been shopping using voice assistants.

Chatbots and AI improve customer experience and boost brand image. These chatbots can be personalized to order food, get recommendations for almost anything, receive details regarding payment or order status, and more.

5. Hassle-free checkout process

Inefficient checkout processes can raise the chances of cart abandonment. However, this problem can be avoided by embracing technology that provides quick and efficient checkout solutions.

Technology enables speedy mobile payment solutions, allows your customers to save card details for repeat purchases. Above all, it proves one-page hassle-free checkouts and offers a range of payment options. All these can alleviate any potential difficulties your customers may face at checkout.

6. Enable m-commerce to enhance Ecommerce

Today many shoppers shop on the go. Hence, mobile platforms have gained greater importance. So much so that m-commerce is emerging as a concept. Given that, providing a mobile-oriented shopping experience will certainly help you win potential customers, maximizing your chances of future success.

Ecommerce mobile apps offer continuous engagement with your brand. It can help them familiarize with new and relevant purchasing opportunities. These apps also allow you to market products relevant to the specific geographical location of your customers.

Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP

How Can Fingent Help Deploy These Evolving Technologies For Ecommerce Businesses?

It is one thing to understand your consumer behavior but another thing entirely to implement technology to satisfy their demands and needs. Fingent is here to help you implement these technologies efficiently. We can help you move the needle and dominate your niche in the Ecommerce industry.

Fingent top software development company, can help you implement those that make sense and put the rest on the back burner. We can aid in the success of your Ecommerce venture by implementing cutting-edge technologies. Our development experts will help you promote your products in new and innovative ways.

Choosing Fingent can help you save a lot of time and money and avoid unnecessary complexity as we can provide all the needed components. Our platforms are easy to manage yet robust enough to house thousands of products. We can handle unique order processes and payment terms for your Ecommerce sales. Let’s get talking.

Digital transformation is pervasive. It is hard but absolutely crucial. Enterprises need to transform their traditional business or risk sure failure. As new players emerge and disrupt established businesses, you will need a fundamental transformation of your core processes to remain competitive.

This may come with its share of worries though. Some of these dilemmas are obvious and quite common. They can be categorized into five major sections: productivity dilemma, value dilemma, ethical dilemma, leadership dilemma, and the human dilemma.

The right approach to these dilemmas is not taking absolute positioning with one of the concepts. Instead, a combination of the two concepts will bring the most value to your business and your clients.

This compromise or combination is not a one size fits all solution. Each organization must figure out where the right compromise is for its business. Wherever you position yourself between the concepts, know that it will have a significant impact on your business.

Given the high stakes involved, digital transformation can be an anxiety-inducing term. Digital transformation can be especially challenging for enterprises with hundreds of employees, assets worth billions, and established business models. In our experience at Fingent, answering these questions greatly increases your organizations’ chances of getting your digital transformation right.

1. What does Digital Transformation really mean?

Digital transformation involves two parts:

• Transforming to digital: This is about using digital technology as a destination. Simply put, it is reorienting your organization to the strategic use of digital technologies. These technologies may include social networks, cloud platforms, products, and so on.
• Transforming digitally: This is about changing how you take the actual digital journey. In other words, this is about using digital technologies to change the nature of your business transformation.

We have found that the organizations that have implemented both aspects are reaping huge rewards than those that are using just one.

Read more: All You Need to Know About Digitization, Digitalization, and Digital Transformation

2. Where should I begin with Digital Transformation?

Because digital transformation affects so many aspects of organizational operations and customer behavior, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Hence, business leaders need to review the core elements of the business affected by the change.

Here is what you can do: Systematically work through the elements and rank each one by its possible impact and feasibility. Doing so will provide a clearer vision of how your business landscape is changing. It also helps you think through the implications of your business.

3. How to identify which customer journey matters the most?

Every business is aware of its own priorities. For most businesses, their first priority is to use digital technologies to connect internal resources to create a more compelling customer experience.

Focusing on individual interactions with your brand helps ground the transformation by optimizing the customer journey. This helps your organization to identify which technology, process, and capability are needed to deliver a great experience.

Here is what you can do: Map out the customer journey from start to finish. Then, focus on how you can make each touchpoint better, faster, and more efficient. This may require adjusting key performance indicators to track and reward progress on customer journeys.

4. What is the biggest impediment to Digital Transformation?

Lack of collective thinking can be a huge barrier that can block your journey to digital transformation. This happens when there is no up-to-date strategic view of who is responsible for progress and how technology should add value to your business.

Here is what you can do: Provide visible CEO support to build momentum. This would require a clear mandate on things to do, sufficient resources to develop a program, and profit-loss accountability.

5. Is it necessary to ‘Test and Learn’?

Successful organizations iterate until they get it right! Constant testing will help them deliver what customers want and understand why they want it. This approach will prevent organizations from getting caught up in overly deterministic specifications, needless market research, and ineffective long planning cycles.

Here is what you can do to ensure that your ‘test and learn’ is effective: Constantly review the actions of your teams. Also, review the investments against data on all areas of customers’ journey. This will help in increasing incremental sales.

Read more: A Detailed Guide to Understanding Digital Business Transformation

6. How do I know what is the right Budgetary Cycle?

An insufficient budgetary cycle can hamper digital transformation efforts. A flexible budgetary cycle will always be the most effective one, so your investment should be linked to progress.

Here is what you can do: You need not hesitate to pull the plug if key performance indicators fail. On the other hand, you must also be ready to quickly pump in more funding if the performance justifies it.

7. What are the benefits of a Challenger Board?

Remember not all ideas are brilliant. A ‘challenger board’ can ensure that a bad idea does not squander all your resources.

Here is what you can do: Choose people who know your business inside out to form your ‘challenger board.’ Based on their experience and outsider perspective, these experts can quickly uncover problems and identify opportunities for business disruption.

As a second option, you could set up a dedicated advisory board. They can help a company guide its organization through digital transformation.

Read more: Future Proof Your Business With 5G, Edge Computing, And Cloud!

How Can Fingent Help In Your Approach To Digital Transformation?

If your primary concern is speed to market and ongoing work agility, rest assured, Fingent top custom software development company, is here to help you. We are experts in AEC, an acronym that stands for Agility, Engagement, and Connectivity.

• Agility: Fingent will enable you to build and implement applications quickly.
• Engagement: Our experts at Fingent can prove appropriate application user experiences for each worker.
• Connectivity: We will make it easy for you to integrate your business with external systems and data sources.

Together with new cloud-based deployment, we at Fingent extend strong support for model-driven organizations. We will help you break through the inevitable barriers and increase your chances of achieving a successful digital transformation. Call us!

2020 has proved beyond doubt that technology partnership is an essential element in the creation of a successful business. Sticking to a DIY strategy may sound good in the wake of economic upheaval. But honestly, no business wants to “just survive.” Every business in every sector wants to thrive and stay relevant despite the challenges.

In recent times, technology keeps changing far too quickly. Missing the first door of opportunity may mean greatly diminished market potential. On the contrary, partnering with a technology company offers the quickest way to ensure an impactful presence in your market segment.

Do you own a business? Or are you an entrepreneur with multiple companies? Is the concept of a “technology partner” too abstract for you? If so, we are here to help you understand why partnering with a reliable tech company is the need of the hour. Here’s also highlighting the benefits of such a partnership.

Read more: Technology Investments: How to gain maximum value?

Why is Partnering with Tech Companies the Need of the Hour?

Most businesses around the world are recovering from pandemic-related economic hardship. Although this has scared many, it is clear that businesses need to become more ‘upheaval-ready.’ Partnering with a tech company can make your business ‘upheaval-ready’ while elevating your business. Let’s now consider specific reasons.

1. Apprehensive about future challenges?

During the pandemic, you may have had to adapt to new ways of doing business. There is a high probability that this change may not end here. The next few years may experience aftershocks due to health and safety standards and economic fallouts.

Thankfully, new technologies and new ways of using old technologies can help you meet your current and future business needs. What do you implement though and how in the world will you go about doing that? This is where partnering with a tech company can be a boon.

2. You need specific talent

Consider this scenario: you have new projects that require a specific skill set that your current team does not possess. On the other hand, it is also not the right time to hire. Plus, you do not have the time or resources to look for such talent.

Additionally, bringing in new talent that would require extensive training can be way more exhausting than it may seem. What is your best option? A tech partner! Your partner will be able to provide the needed skillset. This may prove to be more cost-effective and less exhausting than hiring and training a new candidate.

3. New technology seems painfully elusive

Do you feel that your competitors are pushing ahead with the latest technology while you can’t even begin to wrap your head around it? Are you anxious that your business will suffer if you do not adopt digital transformation immediately?

If so, worry no more! A partnership with a technology company is exactly what you need to give your business that edge that seems so elusive.

Read more: Why Software Development Outsourcing is a Smart Move Now?

Benefits Of Partnering with Technology Company

Collaboration is key to creativity – Walter Isaacson

Collaboration that brings in creativity and spearheads agility is what you need right now. Here are some direct and indirect benefits of tech partnership:

1. Provides a new set of eyes backed with experience

Does your business require multiple levels of testing and repeated proofreading and fact-checking stages? Do you occasionally require external evaluation to identify issues you cannot see immediately? Your tech partner can do all of these for you. Also, they may be able to provide unique solutions for your specific needs.

Allowing a tech partner to take care of these needs can free your time and resources to stay focused on what you do best.

2. Offers skillset and solutions as and when you need

Business suffers when problems go unidentified and unsolved. Partnering with the right tech company can help you identify and solve such issues before they snowball.

The best part of this partnership is that you can hire them on your terms. It can either be short-term or something that you do yearly.

3. Cost and labor savings

Cost and labor are major points of consideration in running a profitable business. Not all businesses can afford the latest tech advancements. There is no arguing however that organizations need the latest technology to run their business efficiently and cost-effectively.

A tech partner can help in managing communication and resource organization by eliminating manual processes. It can reset repetitive and simple data entry tasks that can consume precious time. Time saved is money saved!

4. Reduce risks

No business can afford a technology failure as it can pose a huge risk. A tech partner can insulate your organization from those risks.

5. Increased employee performance

Technology helps employees do their jobs more efficiently. You cannot afford to miss important compatibility and workflow improvement opportunities in this age. Your tech partner can help integrate your network to improve employee performance. This automatically leads to improved business performance.

6. Opportunity to expand your tech expertise

Not all businesses can afford technical expert knowledge in-house. Partnering with a tech company allows you to complement and broaden your organization’s existing technical expertise.

7. The partnership is more cost-effective

Paying employees 24/7, 365 days for IT support is expensive. It is cost-effective to outsource the IT support team. Partnering with a tech company can give you greater access to experienced tech support when you need it.

Read more: Understanding Managed Services for IT: Why it Matters?

Why Fingent Can Be Your Ideal Tech Partner

Fingent brings a wealth of technical expertise coupled with business experience to our partners. We draw on decades of engineering expertise to develop unique solutions for each of our clients.

At Fingent we maximize the potential of your business with tech expertise backed by sound business sense. We can empower you with the benefits that technology can offer to compete in a global arena.

Fingent has both the necessary certifications and experience you need. Our staff is diversified with specific tasks but is kept informed about each level of the project. We stay abreast of all technological advances.

We have worked with a wide range of clients and have the skills needed to partner with new industries. We believe that technology can enhance and enrich all walks of human existence.

Visionaries at Fingent, top custom software development company can help you reimagine the way you work. We can help kickstart your digital transformation journey to bring you into the future – a thriving and stable future. We are confident that you will appreciate all the strategies we create to help you. Give us a call and find out for yourself.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is spiraling at an unexpected speed and is continuously inventing healthcare solutions to drive streamlined operations. Medical organizations are now largely depending on custom healthcare software solutions to maintain medical history, electronic health records, patient’s personal information, and other medical data to provide better patient care and health services. This blog will take you through why your healthcare organization needs to invest in custom healthcare software development, and how it’s beneficial to outsource it!

What is custom healthcare software development?

Today, healthcare is driven by technological innovations such as big data, electronic patient record systems, interoperability, and machine learning. The need for this is to provide better patient experiences and improve health outcomes. To achieve this, there is a need for professionally designed tools and solutions that can help healthcare providers to deliver patient-first and cost-effective care.

Custom healthcare software development is the process of creating web or mobile apps for medical professionals so they can interact with patients better, use medical data analytics, and access patient health records.

Examples of how custom software development has transformed the healthcare industry include;

• Tools such as Hospital Management Systems (HMS) or Hospital Information System (HIS) are comprehensive integrated solutions that handle different aspects of hospital or clinic’s workflow efficiently.
• An Electronic Health Record (EHR) system collects a patient’s data and history and stores it in a digital format that makes sharing across different healthcare systems easy.
• Mobile apps and wearable devices are serving several health aspects.

Read more: Augmented Reality in Healthcare: The Industry Future!

Key benefits of custom healthcare software

1. Tailor-made solution

Software solutions built specifically catering to your organizational needs help deliver better customer services. Especially when it concerns providing patient-care services, it is always recommended to invest in custom or tailormade solutions. An off-the-shelf or packaged solution, in comparison to a custom software solution, may or may not be able to meet your organization’s requirements or even work well within a specific type of facility. A custom software solution will help solve your business-specific complexes and will help meet your business goals.

2. Streamline processes

Undoubtedly, technology enables us to get our work done efficiently and more accurately. A custom software solution can have a far-reaching impact. It frees your staff to allow them to focus on patient care.

3. Personalized care

Today, patients want to understand their health on their own and expect personalized services from their healthcare provider. This is why there is an increasing demand for telemedicine, at-home testing kits, and health apps.

4. Enhanced security

Custom healthcare software solutions are built in compliance with the industry standards and guarantee that personal data stays secure and confidential. An app must comply with Open Web Application Security Project standards and other certifications, to be approved.

When it comes to creating custom healthcare software, organizations can;

• Leverage any open-source platform to create a customizable solution without the need for coding
• Outsource the entire custom software development process to a reliable development agency.

Read more: Why Healthcare Prefers Prescriptive Analytics Over Predictive Analytics

Advantages of outsourcing healthcare software development

1. Economical and effective

By outsourcing to a third-party offshore company, you can save a lot of costs. It helps save largely on the cost of developing application infrastructure, recruiting professionals, training the recruits, and deployment and pre-installation set-up costs. Most service providers use advanced technology that would fit your budget.

2. Experienced team

While some projects require a large pool of software developers others may not. In such cases, it may be difficult to hire software developers and then relieve them after completing the work as it involves a huge cost to hire, set up infrastructure, and team. Therefore, outsourcing custom healthcare software development gives you the leeway to scale up or down resources as per your project requirements.

3. Agile and scalable solutions

In-house healthcare developers are usually burdened with several other tasks which cause them to lose focus and compromise on the delivery of the app. Collaborating with a third-party agency will provide you with the flexibility of managing the resources and whenever you need them. This will also help you include scalable software developers to build an app that is more agile and consistent.

4. Quick time to market

Outsourcing the custom development task will give you access to experts from healthcare domains to develop your applications. This will ensure your app be superior,well-grained, and reach the market faster so patients can be treated faster.

5. Increased productivity

As offshore developers are qualified and talented enough to develop your app, you won’t have to burden them with briefings and preparations. This will allow you to focus on improving the critical and core healthcare services of your organization thus improving the results significantly.

Read more: Healthcare Analytics Reaches New Heights with SAP HANA

Cost of outsourcing custom healthcare software development

When it comes to the healthcare industry, the average cost of an experienced developer is not cheap. That is why 59% of global companies outsource software development. While the costs vary from country to country, you will still save about 40-70% of the total costs. For example, the average hourly cost for a software developer in the US is $65–$130 per hour while the hourly cost of offshore developers in Asia and Africa is $20–45.

Why choose Fingent?

If you need custom healthcare software for your organization, Fingent top custom software development company is your trusted partner.

• We have a pool of experienced and skilled developers who can help you identify the right solution for your business complexities.
• Our agile methodology of development ensures client involvement at every stage so that the solution is scalable, cost-effective, as well as caters to specific client requirements.
• We offer transparent offshore development services in terms of overhead costs and recruitment fees.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for custom healthcare software development cannot be denied. Our developers are not only affordable but can add much value in terms of talent and skill to your organization. Connect with our experts today!