Category: Technology

The Role of Chatbots in Boosting Brand Loyalty and Experience

As social messaging apps are gaining popularity, AI-powered chatbots are one of the best ways to reach out to a broader audience. Soon, several businesses across various verticals will implement AI chatbots that will help them carry out multiple tasks, including customer service and marketing activities.

According to Gartner, by 2021, over 50% of companies will spend more on developing chatbots (intelligent conversational assistants) against traditional mobile app development.

A chatbot is an AI-based program that communicates with humans through text messages or chats. It is a virtual assistant integrated into mobile applications, websites, or instant messengers and enables better engagement with your customers.

Read more: 5 Leading NLP Platforms that Support Chatbot Development

Two common types of chatbot

There are two types of chatbots a business can use: Transactional Chatbot and Conversational chatbot.

• Transactional Chatbot is pre-designed to provide a customer with a fixed set of choices. The customer can select an appropriate option, and the chatbot will then assist them through the whole process by providing more choices till their problem is solved. A transactional chatbot is an excellent choice for banks, online food delivery, restaurants, or businesses that are able to understand and pre-define the solutions/ products that their customers generally seek.
• Conversational Chatbot is designed to understand and respond to a conversation in a more human-like manner. It is equipped with artificial intelligence and has access to knowledge databases and other contextual information.

A conversational chatbot is more suited for businesses with advanced SaaS tools and B2B companies providing enterprise solutions and online social platforms.

Read more: How to Choose the Right Chatbot for Your Business

Five leading chatbot use cases in vogue today

1. Healthcare chatbots

Hospitals, clinics, and patient treatment centers leverage chatbots for booking appointments, sending medical information to refill prescriptions, answering common questions raised by patients or their attenders, checking physicians’ availability, and so on. According to Crunchbase, VCs have invested over 800 million dollars in at least 14 known start-ups like Safedrugbot, Sensely, Cancer Chatbot, and others to own a version of a chatbot with health features. The most significant advantage is that chatbots function silently 24/7 without disrupting anyone and answering questions at any time of the day. 

Browsing through the website of a multispecialty hospital and sifting through the different specialties and doctors can be daunting. Chatbots reduce this strain and help patients book an appointment quickly based on their ailment or health condition. When a patient interacts with the chatbot, it will ask a series of questions to determine which doctor and department the patient should visit.  

Example of a healthcare chatbot

Healthily is an AI-driven chatbot that allows you to input your symptoms and get an appropriate diagnosis. Its machine learning model allows the app to give near accurate or even accurate diagnoses.

Chatbots like Healthily prevent patients from waiting in long queues or relying on phone calls to consult doctors. With the ongoing pandemic, chatbots are making patients feel less anxious about seeking medical care. Chatbots help them get assistance in real-time.

2. HR chatbots

As the traditional office spaces give way to modern workspaces that are mobile, digital, or home, HR (PeopleOps) professionals face the increasing pressure to streamline communications and send instant responses to employees. Chatbots powered by AI free people from low value, tedious, repetitive, and transactional tasks to more high-value, strategic, engaging, and creative work. The inherent value extends to providing consistency and coherence to employee communication and reducing confusion for the end-user while delivering an instant response. HRs get more time to rethink the way they engage with employees and manage their entire cycle of work, including recruitment, onboarding, managing payroll and benefits, training and skills development, performance management, and so on.

Example of an HR chatbot

AskHR is an AI-powered HR chatbot that enables employees to get answers to the most frequently asked questions. AskHR bot natively supports 50+ languages and is hence a globally popular virtual assistant. It offers voice, email, and text support to employees and helps reduce costs, enhances employee engagement, and offers analytics to derive valuable insights. 

Read more: Capitalizing on AI Chatbots Will Redefine Your Business: Here’s How

MUSA, Fingent’s AI virtual assistant

Multi Utility Assistant or MUSA is an AI-powered virtual assistant (a chatbot) integrated with Fingent Hub – Fingent’s internal employee management system. MUSA enables employees to get answers to common queries related to HR and IT DevOps processes at Fingent.

The virtual assistant helps our employees with questions related to their leaves, company policy, hardware or software issues, IT requests, and many more.   

3. E-commerce chatbots

E-commerce chatbots guide customers in their purchase decisions.

Often, customers can get confused while browsing several products online. An E-commerce chatbot helps customers obtain detailed information about the product they are looking for or even helps them land on the right product page. Chatbots also help reduce cart abandonment as they can remind customers about the items left in their cart and prompt them to update their cart or purchase the items. Timely reminders and notifications will nudge the customers to revisit their carts and make a purchase decision, thereby helping businesses generate revenue quickly. 

Example of an E-commerce chatbot

While launching its AirMax Day shoes, Nike increased its average CTR by 12.5 times and the conversions four times with the help of StyleBot- Nike’s chatbot.  

Chatbots play an essential role in providing more reliable and quicker customer support and keeping the customers up-to-date about the delivery status of their purchases.

Read more: 5 Ways Chatbots Can Transform Your Real Estate Business

4. Chatbots in banking and finance

Chatbots are a great addition to any bank or finance institute that prioritizes customer service inclined towards digital interactions.

Chatbots can help users check their account balance, transfer money to other accounts, view the history of transactions, or even locate the closest ATM. In addition, banks are currently using chatbots for marketing activities such as sending customized information about a customer’s savings, investments, etc., and notifying customers about their new products and services.

Example of a BFSI chatbot

In 2018, Bank of America introduced Erica, their AI Chatbot. It helps customers conduct simple actions such as paying bills, receiving credit report updates, view e-statements, and seek financial advice. Recently, Erica’s capabilities have been updated to enable clients to make smarter financial decisions by providing them with personalized insights. Thanks to its budgeting capabilities, Erica users grew to 12.2 million in Q1 2020 compared to 10.3 million in Q4 2019.

5. Hospitality chatbots

The hospitality industry is hugely dependent on customer service, goodwill, reviews, and references. As travelers use multiple channels (website, social media, mobile travel apps, travel aggregator portals, etc.) to look for information, travel and hospitality service providers face stiff competition in disseminating updated content across all media. They need to be available round-the-clock in answering customers or helping with bookings. Chatbots help customers make bookings, gain more information about hotel services, travel packages, and inquire about offers and deals. From check-in to several concierge services such as booking restaurants to activity reservations, chatbots can seamlessly assist customers.

Example of a hospitality chatbot

Quicktext is a popular AI-powered chatbot for hotels that automatically handles 85% of guests in 24 languages and delivers instant response to customer requests across six different channels. In addition, it serves as a messaging hub where hospitality businesses can centrally manage Live Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, SMS, and Booking.com communications.

Read more: Hospitality Technology Trends: Revive The Lost Glory in 2021

How can chatbots help your business?

With the rise of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and wearable technology, chatbots provide industries with new avenues for businesses to engage with their customers.

1. Leverage messaging platforms

While social media engages audiences, messaging platforms enable businesses to have a one-on-one conversation with their customers. So, by integrating chatbots with your messaging platform, you could eliminate the need to build a new app and save time and money.

2. Customer service

Chatbots are a great way to augment customer service. The bots are available 24x7x365, which allows them to initiate the conversation proactively and prevent customers from waiting for long.

3. Customer engagement

Intelligent chatbots allow you to have more in-depth conversations at an individual level with your audiences, freeing them of any irrelevant information. So, a well-designed chatbot can extend the conversation and make the visitor come back for a discussion or a purchase. This can go a long way in establishing your brand loyalty.

4. Cost optimization

Getting a chatbot for your business is far cheaper and faster than developing a cross-function app or hiring additional employees. Chatbots do not need breaks, get tired, or make errors. Also, they can perform repetitive tasks without complaining.

Read more: A Chatbot Story – How We Built a Comprehensive Onboarding Assistant for a Leading Research University

Develop a custom chatbot for your business application

Chatbots are being widely used across different business functions and are augmenting customer experience. With advances in technology, bots will only get more competent and open new avenues to streamline customer communications.

We software development experts build bespoke and personalized chatbots leveraging AI and machine learning that enable your business to generate leads, increase revenue, and enhance user experience. If you are planning to develop a customized chatbot that can compete with the predefined bots in the market, contact us. 

Unlock the value of data analytics and business intelligence with Odoo ERP

From cloud computing to the Internet of Things, the fourth industrial revolution has brought about remarkable technological reforms in most business strategies across industries. Today, businesses strive to face competition with advanced software tools and cutting-edge technologies. Organizations are implementing data-driven methods to improve their product and service offerings and add value to their customers. Techniques like Business Intelligence and Data Analytics help companies survive the cut-throat competition, accelerate speed-to-market, retain customers, and innovate. Data analytics and BI unlock the door to several opportunities, enabling companies to expand, grow and stay relevant in the ever-changing technology landscape.

However, implementing Data Analytics and Business Intelligence features in your existing business model requires careful planning. Intelligent, digital core ERPs like Odoo have come up with specific tools and modules to simplify the entire implementation process and help businesses gain value. 

Read more: How Odoo ERP Enhances Retail Operations Management

Let’s cut to the chase first. Before we see Odoo’s tailored BI and Analytics offerings, it would be good to get the basics right. 

What is the difference between Business Intelligence and Data Analytics?

• Business Intelligence refers to the information required to augment business decision-making activities, while data analytics refers to changing the raw data into a meaningful format.
• Primarily, BI supports decision-making and helps companies grow. On the other hand, data analytics helps build a model, cleanse, predict and modify data based on business needs.
• Business Intelligence can be implemented using various BI tools. However, BI implementation is done only on historical data stored in data warehouses or data marts. Data analytics can be implemented using BI tools. However, the implementation will depend on the strategy designed by the organization.
• BI can be debugged only through the historical data supplied, while data analytics can be debugged through the proposed model to convert the data into a meaningful format.

Read more: How Data Warehousing Adds Value To Data Visualization & Reporting

A brief overview of Odoo ERP

At Fingent, we specialize in custom Odoo ERP implementation, Odoo ERP integration, Odoo ERP migration, upgrade, maintenance, and support. We help you tailor Odoo ERP features to match your specific business requirements. Odoo ERP customization helps enterprises solve complex business challenges, streamline operations and boost overall productivity. When you have all the required business data in one place, with personalized dashboards offering helpful insights, your decision-making and business strategy formulation become seamless. Being an Official Partner of Odoo, Fingent makes it a cakewalk for you. 

Read more: Why Choose Fingent as Your Odoo ERP Partner

With its vast suite comprising over 40 business productivity applications, Odoo provides a smoother and simpler way to run your business. The range of business apps offered by Odoo is highly comprehensive, fully integrated, easy to use, and supports numerous different industries.

Odoo offers over ten dedicated modules to effectively handle diverse business processes such as HRM, finance, CRM, manufacturing, accounting, inventory, and eCommerce. The most significant advantage of Odoo ERP is that you get a free and open-source community version under a general public license. This reduces the overall project cost significantly and so is exceptionally suited for small-to-medium enterprises.

Read more: 5 Salient Features of Odoo that Make it a Reliable ERP for Enterprises

Odoo ERP: Business Intelligence and Data Analytics 

Odoo ERP includes a comprehensive data visualization and analysis software interface that helps companies capitalize on their data sources. It has an in-depth dashboard interface and powerful Business Intelligence capabilities for data mining and secret meaning extraction.

Here the top five BI and Data Analytics features offered by Odoo ERP:

1. Integrated spreadsheets

Introduced by Odoo 14, this feature has been included to preserve the ease and comfort of users working in excel spreadsheets. Previously, users had to download the pivot view of every report initially for editing the excel spreadsheet.

This feature makes it easier to bind and store excel sheets in the ERP itself. While the integrated spreadsheets make it easy to review reports quickly, its dashboard pivot table link helps access live data.

Users can perform all possible acts and input formulas, add and delete columns, apply formatting, and do more like ordinary excel sheets.

2. Sales analysis

Odoo ERP offers an intuitive dashboard GUI that helps monitor sales data and keep sales records for future reference. To retrieve relevant data, all you need to do is apply different filters or divide it into various segments for easy access. You can use bar graphs, pie charts, and line graph analysis to get an organized view of your sales data.

Analyzing sales data helps you gain insights into the purchasing habits of your customers. Additionally, it allows you to refine the sales tactics to reach out and drive them down the sales funnel to the target audience.

Read more: How Odoo ERP Simplifies Sales Management in Your Organization

3. Employee performance tracking

The Odoo dashboards, along with your sales team’s performance, allow you to assess your CRM efforts quickly. This, combined with efficient resource utilization and task scheduling, can help you take adequate steps to improve your sales strategy.

4. Inventory analysis

The Odoo inventory module provides a comprehensive view of the inventory. It is equipped with all the important Business Intelligence tools and analytics features. This feature provides you with reports and insights into the inventory and warehouse data in real-time. Odoo inventory module enables you to monitor your stock movements, stock receipts, average delivery time, turnover of inventory, and valuation.

5. Lead nurturing

The Odoo CRM supports an exceptional and descriptive graphical view for monitoring and evaluating your lead data. You can then group your leads based on factors such as gender, age, location, business type, and several other segments. To retrieve the lead data easily, you can apply filters and set time ranges to compare the new leads with your old leads. Moreover, this enhances your CRM efforts and helps build a stronger relationship with your customers.

Read more: Odoo CRM vs. Salesforce CRM: How To Make The Right Choice

Become a data powerhouse

There’s no denying that BI and data analytics are helping businesses stay relevant and stay ahead of the competition by improving decision-making. BI tools help you analyze your customers’ preferences and buying habits. Powerful BI and analytics features offered by Odoo ERP help refine your marketing strategies at regular intervals.

Fingent top custom software development company, provides end-to-end Odoo ERP consulting and implementation services for businesses across different industries, enabling them to resolve complex business problems. We have the expertise to formulate strategies through Odoo ERP solutions to achieve optimal results.

If you have overwhelming volumes of business data that you want to explore and exploit with advanced BI and data analytics tools, we’re here to help you with the same. Give us a call and discover the best plans to make your business truly data-driven. 

A Comparison of Top 5 NLP Platforms: Select Your Chatbot Development Platform Wisely

The surge of artificial intelligence-based applications and conversational AI have heightened the use of NLP (Natural Language Processing). Each day, businesses collect an enormous amount of structured and unstructured data from their customers and users. Such information is collected through chatbots, intelligent assistants, and so on. Analyzing these data offers businesses insights into crucial operations and enhances their decision-making. However, manually inferring insights from tons of data is a challenging endeavor. This is where NLP platforms plays a vital role. This article will help you evaluate five different NLP platforms you can consider while developing a chatbot for your business support functions. 

How Does NLP Platforms Help Businesses

Gartner and IDC report that more than 80% of the enterprise data generated today is unstructured. Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology helps us derive meaning from the vast labyrinth of online data. NLP refers to applying several computational techniques that enable us to do analysis and synthesis of natural language and speech. According to a report by Intrado GlobeNewswire, the NLP market is expected to be work USD 42.04 billion by 2026.

Chatbots are software applications that help us conduct conversations online via text or text-to-speech instead of directly communicating with a human agent.  

Chatbots provide a better service experience to customers by responding to customer queries promptly, accurately, and most importantly, like humans. AI-powered chatbots can be trained to learn from data to respond in different and diverse scenarios. 

However, picking the right chatbot platform can be a gigantic task. Here’s an analysis of five NLP platforms. Choose your chatbot development platform wisely. 

Read more: Capitalizing on AI Chatbots Will Redefine Your Business: Here’s How

1. IBM Watson Assistant

A pioneer in the chatbot market, IBM’s Watson Assistant has evolved into a holistic customer care product. As the pandemic weighed heavily on businesses, customers and employee services were challenged in unimaginable ways. IBM Watson Assistant is designed to solve customer and employee challenges, so its relevance became even more significant during this time. Using IBM Watson Assistant to create your chatbot helps in the following ways:

First contact resolution

Resolving questions quickly and successfully is one of the biggest priorities of Watson Assistant. One of the critical challenges of first contact is user engagement. If that is your concern, here is how Watson contact can help:

• Allows integration with the phone, SMS, and WhatsApp: As it can integrate with phone and SMS, you can deploy speech services with natural sounding voices created with the help of advanced AI.
• Best intent recognition accuracy: Watson Assistant helps you understand your customers’ questions without always requesting them to rephrase the question.

Open ecosystem

Watson Assistant is designed as an open ecosystem. It, therefore, allows you to connect with your existing tools, systems, and applications. Besides, it gives you the ability to orchestrate the end-to-end experience. 

Scale your assistant to increase complex use cases

Watson Assistant allows you to scale your virtual assistant beyond simplistic FAQ bots. It can be customized easily to fit the specific needs of your business. 

Use cases: Companies such as Botanalytics, Ebix, and SnapEngage use Watson Assistant.

Read more: A Chatbot Story – How We Built a Comprehensive Onboarding Assistant for a Leading Research University

2. Amazon Lex

Amazon Lex allows you to create and embed engaging chatbots into your applications, shielding you from the complexities of NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and speech recognition. Here are some of the top features of Amazon Lex. 

Quicker integration

The capabilities of Amazon Lex are simple and easy to use, allowing you to scale up from ground zero to a fully operational chatbot within a matter of minutes. Using a combination of aliases and versioning, you can roll out your conversational interfaces into multiple environments.

Cost-effective solution

Amazon Lex has no upfront costs. You can pay-as-you-go. 

Fully managed service

It provides all the necessary features to build, deploy, scale, and monitor your chatbot.

Business use cases

• Commerce chatbot: Allows you to order food
• Support chatbot: Provides automated customer support
• Enterprise chatbot: This allows you to connect to enterprise data resources
• Use cases of Companies: Lumeneo.com, Paralect, and CommonBond use Amazon Lex.

3. Rasa

Rasa platform is an open-source framework. It is leading in ML toolkits that help developers create better chatbots with minimal training data. The two major components of the Rasa stack are Rasa NLU and Rasa Core. Rasa core helps create intelligent, conversational chatbots. 

It is best for businesses that are looking to increase subscriber engagement and for those who are interested in marketing automation and personalization.

The benefits of Rasa are:

• You can deploy into your own server by keeping the components in-house
• Highly customizable
• Allows for multiple environments necessary for development, staging, and production
• It helps you send individualized newsletters to each of your subscribers
• It continues to self-learn when it interacts with people
• It allows you to understand your customers better
• It can be integrated with Facebook Messenger, Twilio, Telegram, and more

4. SpaCy

Spacy is an open-source NLP library that is designed for production usage. It helps you build real-world projects and handle large amounts of text data. It is a one-stop operation for most heavy-hitting functions for NLP. 

It is best for companies that are bootstrapping a vast production or for vendors in charge of enterprise solutions. It has proven highly useful for companies that require industry-level solutions and need enhanced language support.

Some of the benefits of SpaCy are:

• It easily allows deep data mining
• It does not weigh down the user with obscure formulas
• It can analyze text quicker than its competitors
• Enables businesses to implement strategies to interact with customers and leads
• It is capable of working with over twenty languages
• Allows you to handle NLP solutions across an international suite of languages. 
• It is a powerhouse for every deep learning algorithm with the tools you need to teach your programs human language.

5. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure bot service helps you develop, deploy and host a chatbot in an uncomplicated manner. It is a managed bot-building platform with an integrated environment. It is purpose-built for bot development. 

Microsoft Azure bot services are best for enterprises and IT companies. 

• It helps run FQAs speedily and consistently reducing customer management issues
• Easy to integrate with various Azure services
• You can build, connect, test, deploy and manage intelligent bots from one place
• Easy to integrate with other chatbot software such as Jabber or Skype

Read more: How to Choose the Right Chatbot for Your Business

Why choose Fingent as your chatbot development partner?

Acquire estimates that nearly 1.4 billion people are willing to talk to chatbots. Did you know that chatbots can handle 80% of routine customer questions? These figures prove that the chatbot platform is the present and future of your business. 

However, it is important to choose a chatbot development partner carefully. We at Fingent software development experts ensure your chatbot platform is easy-to-use even for non-tech employees. A customized and fine-tuned chatbot frees people up from low value, boring, repetitive, and transactional tasks. It enables your employees to focus on high-value, strategic, engaging, and creative work. The business value also lies in that the chatbot provides consistency and coherence to your communication, reduces/ eliminates confusion for the end-user while giving an instant response. It helps your employees get things done fast as they need not worry about the low value, boring, repetitive, and transactional tasks. Thanks to chatbot development! 

We will work with you through all the stages, from requirements identification, technology selection to planning and implementation. We will continue to support you in managing the chatbot after deployment. While you zero down on the chatbot platform, choosing the right partner to help you develop the chatbot according to your specific requirements is essential. Give us a call, and let us get talking.

How Retail Software Solutions Help You Gain A Competitive Advantage

The retail industry has witnessed a tremendous transformation over the past few years. Innovative retail technologies have made the sector fast-paced and highly competitive. The advent of cloud technology has also disrupted the retail industry from the ground up. These technology changes accelerate the need for advanced and bespoke retail software solutions that can effectively automate most routine store operations. 

Why should you adopt custom retail software solutions?  

Fingent helps you develop custom retail software solutions that help you:

• Automate everyday retail store operations,
• Switch to e-commerce quickly,
• Enhance inventory management,
• Streamline payments and invoices tracking, 
• Improve order fulfillment, and
• Serve your customers better and faster. 

Read more: Custom Software Development is the Ideal Way to Build Business Apps in 2021 

As several countries continue with lockdown measures, the digital shopping trend and the shift in consumer behavior are here to stay. Retailers are forced to address the rising consumer expectations with limited resources like transport restrictions, shortage of labor, out-of-stock scenarios, and so on. Contactless shopping has found a better place in today’s business landscape, and retailers need to adopt personalized retail software solutions to stay relevant and competent in the market. 

A few stats that underscore the significance of custom retail software solutions

The following figures suggest why brick-and-mortar stores must adopt retail software solutions and digital transformation to stay ahead of competitors and attract loyal clients.

• 30% of consumers do not wait for more than two minutes to determine if the product they want to buy is in stock.
• 78% of the customers would not use a retailer again after three late or incomplete deliveries.
• 87% of buyers leave the store if the product they are looking for is unavailable and there is no assistant nearby.

Read more: Digital Transformation in Retail: Why it Matters? 

Our custom retail software solutions are perfect for companies of different sizes. We help you build and integrate software tailored to your retail business. We create personalized retail software solutions that are scalable and meet the growing needs of a single shop or even a vast retail chain consisting of several Points of Sale (POS).

Benefits of custom retail software solutions

The most significant features and capabilities of retail software solutions include:

• Managing orders, products, and inventory, 
• Handling financial transactions, 
• Streamlining the supply chain, 
• Helping human resources and marketing campaigns, and
• Managing customer relations.

Here are the benefits of custom retail software solutions.

1. Offers real-time visibility

Retail software solutions allow you to control warehouses and shop floors in online mode and identify if certain products are in or out of stock. Also, it helps you send instant alerts if something is out of order and thus avoid lengthy downtimes.

2. Automates in-store processes

Retail software solutions help automate all major store tasks such as billing, price regulation, inventory auditing, reporting, payroll records, returns processing, and more.

3. Improves customer service

As retail software solutions help automate most store processes, your employees can spend more time engaging with the customers and promoting your new products and latest arrivals. Customer reps will have the historical data in hand while attending a customer service call. This helps them save time, effort, and money, reduce returns and refunds, and direct customers to the optimal solution. Embedded analytics in the software allows your marketing team to send personalized recommendations to your customers based on their shopping history and online behavior. 

Read more: A Comprehensive Guide on Developing Custom Accounting Software for Business 

Different types of retail software solutions

1. Point of Sales (POS) software

The software for shop management, implemented in brick-and-mortar stores, facilitates seamless transactions between customers and the store on the spot. The POS market is projected to grow at an annual rate of 14% from 2016 to 2024. Fingent helps you develop custom Point of Sales software that enables you to manage sales, inventory, and employees with ease. We build custom POS software for your single store or a retail network. It helps boost your customer engagement and revenue. 

2. Inventory management software

We help you develop custom inventory management software for tracking, managing, and organizing product sales, material purchases, and other production processes. Typically, the inventory management software works with wireless tracking, barcodes, and radio-frequency identification to support inventory tracking and control. 

3. Payment processing software

Payment processing software is a secure program that connects eCommerce sites via virtual terminals to other payment systems that acknowledge credit cards and other online payment methods. Payment processing software allows users to add their card or bank details and notifies financial institutions that approve or reject payments. We help integrate payment processing software into your retail software solutions.

4. Retail ERP systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems integrate modules for controlling all stages of business. An ERP system is a perfect software for shop management. ERPs are customizable and support integration with third-party systems. ERPs like Odoo and SAP allow developing specific modules to suit your business needs. For instance, SAP FICO (Finance and Cost controlling module in SAP) and SAP Ariba (sourcing, procurement, and financial supply chain solutions). 

Read more: How SAP Solutions Allow Retailers to Stay Competitive in 2021 

We are an Official Partner of Odoo as well as a Silver Partner of SAP. We are well placed to offer the best ERP consulting, implementation, and maintenance services for your business across these two platforms. 

Read more: How Odoo ERP Enhances Retail Operations Management  

5. e-Commerce software

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the adoption of eCommerce among retailers. That said, retail software platforms are a must today. The software enables online store owners to add and remove products, process payments, fulfill orders, etc. Fingent helps leverage numerous eCommerce development frameworks such as Magento, Odoo, etc., to build B2B and B2C e-commerce software for your business. 

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

You can deploy retail software solutions either in the cloud or on-premise according to your specific requirements:

• On-premise retail software solutions:  An on-premise retail application is installed on your local computers or local servers. However, you may need the expertise of an IT specialist like Fingent to maintain the system and handle updates or fix issues.
• Cloud-based retail software solutions: Cloud-based retail software solutions do not require to be installed on your hardware. If you have a stable and reliable internet connection, you can deploy the retail software as a SaaS solution, which is managed by the providers automatically.

Steps to create custom retail software for your business

1. Choose the right vendor

Selecting the right software provider is crucial as well as challenging. Your choice will determine how positively a future system will impact your business performance. 

2. Plan and budget

Create a detailed plan and discuss the key features your system should include. Whether to have an omnichannel solution, what function it should perform, what third-party system it needs to be integrated with, and the software development budget must be considered. You can opt for custom software development. At Fingent, we provide you with out-of-the-box retail software solutions within your budget.

3. Development and implementation

Here are a few best practices to take advantage of custom software development: 

• Include an internal team of specialists having the needed expertise and experience to participate in the implementation process.
• Provide your team with adequate training to get started and explain the benefits. Your offshore software development partner can help you with this. At Fingent, we help ease your transition to custom software. We offer training and support and provide post-release maintenance and support to our customers. 
• Eliminate inactive accounts and other documents that have not been processed for years to simplify the migration.

4. Testing

The retail software system implementation requires continuous control and testing. Thus, most companies rely on continuous testing to ensure the process will happen simultaneously with the integration.

Additionally, you must be prepared to address several issues. The primary purpose of the final testing is to simulate the lifecycle of your business with go-live processes. Fingent has a dedicated Quality Assurance & Testing team that ensures your application is bug-free, high-performing, and responsive.   

5. Maintenance

After successfully implementing the custom retail software system, it needs support and maintenance that must be provided either by your technical experts or the software provider. As said above, Fingent offers post-launch maintenance support and change enhancement services for the custom software we develop. 

With extensive experience in retail software development and eCommerce systems, we can become your reliable partner and make your company a front-runner in the retail industry.

If you are looking for custom software for shop management or tailored retail software solutions, please drop us a message.

How Organizations Can Embrace Transformation and Expedite Their Growth

From remote working and e-learning to sales and customer service to more critical cloud infrastructure and security, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technology adoption across several key domains. The pandemic has made digital transformation crucial for business growth across various industries. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, puts it that “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” 

That said, companies will have to change their mindsets and adopt new strategies to stay relevant and competitive in future. Here are six ways you can adapt to the new normal and taste business success. 

Read more: How Business Owners and Leaders Can Set up a Successful COVID Exit Strategy 

1. Adapt to change

Change is the only constant and more so today than ever before. Change is happening at a faster pace and is very crucial for small businesses. Today, old and traditional methods of winning clients and serving them do not seem to fit. The list of things you need to change may be long and only growing. Instead of reacting to these changes, the best approach is to embrace them and treat them.

So, when you treat the problem, you employ change to work with you and not against you. People are more likely to accept strategic changes now, especially if the initiatives are focused on improving their lives.

Bring agility and innovation to your business by implementing a quarterly strategic planning and review process. It will allow you to remain focused, actionable, and agile by adopting new learnings.

While you are in the process of adapting to changes, consider a few questions that you need to ask yourself.

• What can disrupt my business and change everything?
• How can I lead that change?
• How can I ensure that my business stays relevant and profitable in the next five years?

Read more: Top 5 Organizational Imperatives for Business Leaders to Become Winners in the New Normal 

2. Customer always comes first

As consumer needs keep evolving, you have to think of ways to meet the new supply and demand to stay relevant and competitive.

Social distancing due to the pandemic has left many businesses struggling—for instance, physical retail stores, manufacturers, automotive, banks, etc. Many product-based companies face significant issues related to manufacturing and distribution. Service-based companies are also suffering due to poor customer demands. In short, business models should be revamped so that they are immune to new challenges.

The pandemic has even changed customers’ needs and preferences.

One of the best ways is to engage in a conversation with your clients to identify opportunities. You could probably start by asking a probing question at the end of the conversation with your client. You may also conduct surveys or quarterly client advisory groups to follow a more formal process.

To stay relevant, you will have to prioritize customers’ needs and problems. It is imperative for future growth and innovation.

View Infographic: Business technologies to boost customer experience and satisfaction 

3. Implement automation wherever possible

Working smarter means hiring and collaborating with the right talent. Encourage teamwork for removing the bottlenecks and hurdles. It will translate to more revenue with the available resources. Effective workplace collaboration will also boost your team’s morale and reduce lay-offs.

Leverage technology and systems to streamline your business and allow it to run smoothly. According to Gartner, by 2024, businesses will see a 30% reduction in their operational costs by combining hyper-automation technologies with redesigned operational processes.

Identify processes that can be automated and evaluate how automation will enhance your customer service and experience.

Read more: What Makes a Business Process Apt for Automation 

Automation of repetitive, routine, and mundane tasks saves your workforce’s productive hours and spares them for more crucial tasks. Automation enhances your organizational efficiency and offsets growth investment.

4. Speed is the key to sustain in 2021

The pandemic has made companies rethink their conventional organizational models and pushed them to adopt new ways of working at speed. Flat structures empowering decision-making are replacing the traditional management-led hierarchies. It enables companies to perform with improved speed and precision. For instance, PepsiCo adopted newer working models to enable fast and easy access to their products during the pandemic. Within 30 days (from concept to execution), the company launched two direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites. 

5. Adopt digital commerce

The pandemic has spurred digital commerce like never before. Deloitte’s 2020 holiday retail survey reports that contactless shopping experiences enjoyed a huge spike in demand during the holiday season last year. Over 73% of shoppers planned to have orders delivered to their doorsteps as against 62% in 2019. 

Read More: Contactless Retail Delivery Software –  How Retailers Can Revive Sales While Adhering To Social Distancing Norms

Companies should accelerate and optimize both B2B and B2C digital commerce channels by developing custom retail software solutions to enjoy the benefits of e-commerce sales and ROI. 

As customers demand efficiency and speed, organizations must give precedence to customer experience to overcome competition.

In 2020, Adidas established itself as a top digital commerce player targeting $4.9 billion in online sales, almost 12% of their overall business. In the future, the company expects it to rise to 25%. Also, they were quick to recover from the pandemic impact with an increase in online sales during the lockdown.

Read more: 5 Transformative Trends Ushered by B2B E-commerce in Healthcare and Life Sciences 

Fingent leverages innovative and emerging technologies to help digital retailers and e-commerce businesses

Fingent custom software development experts helps retailers build custom retail software solutions, e-commerce, and mobile commerce apps that help you deliver exceptional customer service and experience, just like your physical retail store. Fingent helps retailers and e-commerce brands develop Augmented Reality-based solutions that allow their customers to preview objects in 3D. Using AR technology, both online shoppers and in-store buyers can choose their preferred products without the hassle of buying the wrong ones. We enable companies with an e-commerce presence to build AR applications through web platforms (WEB AR), avoiding the need for separate mobile apps. 

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

6. Ensure customer data privacy and protection

Data transparency is imperative. With the rise in going digital, the total amount of data created, captured, and consumed will more than double by 2024 globally. A 2019 Factual survey reveals that more than 50% of the US smartphone users will be ready to share their geolocation details with a service provider only if they are aware of how the information will be used. When customers realize the benefits of sharing personal data, such as online behavior, shopping history, mobile app usage, or geolocation tracking and trust that their data will be protected, they will be more willing to share it. 

Jersey Mike’s Subs, a US sandwich chain, has a transparent privacy policy that lets you know which customer data they collect and how it is stored and used. Approaches like these that give consumers clarity and control over their personal information will define personalization and enhance customer experience.

Consumer data privacy acts such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) aim at ensuring consumer privacy rights and data protection under the respective regional, state, and federal laws. These acts allow consumers in the respective regions to see all the information companies have saved on them and how the data will be protected and used. 

We help ensure smooth business transformation

As we try to recover from the crisis, it is essential to consider what the future looks like for your business. Your organization must adopt new technologies, innovation, and new practices to ensure a smooth business transition. It also helps you meet the growing customer demands.

Reach out to us and let us help you accomplish a seamless business transition through modern technology adoption. 

Reduce your operational costs and unnecessary investments with legacy modernization

Since the pandemic started tightening its grip on the world, businesses have seen an unmistakable acceleration in digital transformation. Legacy application modernization enables enterprises to have the agility and ability to respond to dynamic changes. Software technologies are being enhanced and deployed at an unprecedented scale, and most businesses have noted a high appetite for digital transformation.

Read more: A Detailed Guide to Understanding Digital Business Transformation  

Your business should also have an application modernization strategy to ensure business continuity and growth in a highly volatile market. Modernizing your existing applications or systems is the best way to monetize the current capital and avoid unwanted technology investments.  

Legacy application modernization helps you get rid of accumulating technical debts and business paralysis. This blog discusses how application modernization enables businesses to transform digitally and scale up during the pandemic. 

What is application modernization?

Application modernization involves updating older software for new computing approaches. These updates include new languages, frameworks, and infrastructure platforms. We can compare this update to renovating an older home, enabling it with better safety, structural integrity, ease of use, design, and so forth. This practice is also called legacy modernization. Legacy modernization extends the lifespan of your applications instead of replacing them wholly. Such an approach will allow your business to take advantage of technology innovations. 

Most businesses have thoughtfully invested in their existing application portfolio. Some companies are ready to retire these applications and adopt the latest. However, this can be costly from both a financial and operational standpoint. Hence, “application modernization is the most sensible way to leverage newer platforms, tools, and frameworks.”

Read more: Why modernize your legacy systems? What’s the best approach to legacy systems modernization? 

5 ways application modernization enables businesses to scale up during the pandemic

Owning and operating outdated software can present a variety of challenges during the pandemic. Outdated software can accumulate problems over time, resulting in employee and customer frustration. Here’s how application modernization helps businesses scale up during the pandemic. 

Read more: Six Common Enterprise Software Development Myths Debunked 

1. Application Modernization reduces costs

Because of diminishing resources during the pandemic, “cost“ has been the most important driving factor for application modernization. For example, the more data you accumulate, the more you have to pay for the on-premise data center forcing companies to buy new storage systems more frequently.

It is expensive to own and maintain the infrastructure as they incur extra costs for cooling, space, and electricity. Apart from these expenses, you would need a dedicated IT team to maintain a vast storage system. Therefore, it is reasonable and beneficial to invest in timely application modernization that helps avoid all the costs mentioned above.

Read more: Four Ways to Future-Proof Legacy Applications 

2. Enhances customer experience

With stiff competition, the market has turned into a battleground for businesses that sell similar products and services. In this scenario, customer experience is what will set a company apart. Continued use of an outdated system can hurt your customer experience because they have limited functionality. Legacy software affects efficiency and waiting time. Additionally, the security problems of legacy software can easily compromise your business and customer data, impacting your brand severely.

On the other hand, a customer expects your business to keep up with the latest trends and technology. Application modernization can enhance your customers’ experience by transforming the end-user interface, automating manual processes, and creating new features. Essentially, your business operations will be more efficient with more stable systems, quicker fixes, and better security. All of it together sets your business apart, ensuring your business thrives during the pandemic. 

3. Enables you to create new features and services

You may have invested in software that is perfect for your current needs. However, the pandemic has taught us that change is inevitable. An application that is working well today may not perform so tomorrow. Every new patch, release, or update that is not purpose-built will be a problem for you. It is challenging to meet the changing customer needs during an economic downturn. 

Thankfully, application modernization allows your business to create new features and services that align with your current and future goals. These new features and services can be purpose-built for your business to ensure the legacy application continues to provide value today and into the future.

4. Improves employee productivity

You cannot expect your employee to work with applications and systems that seem to take forever to respond or perform simple operations. Just as businesses expect efficiency from their employees, employees expect their companies to provide high-performance technologies in their offices. 

Working on outdated applications can frustrate your employees, lowering their performance and hindering their success. Legacy and low-performing software can increase work stress resulting in missed deadlines. It can also affect overall productivity as it irritates and demotivates your workforce. 

Application modernization can automate several repetitive tasks and processes, freeing up your employees to concentrate on more intelligent tasks. It will save time and increase the efficiency of your employees. Since modernization minimizes application problems, it allows you to develop more features designed to streamline your operations. 

Watch video: New Technologies for Workforce Management and Optimization 

5. Erases technical debts

Technical debt creates friction between developers and their work. It may increase their job tomorrow, as the situation demands them to take the fastest and shortest approach to deliver the project today. Technical debt includes the implied cost of additional rework that developers have to bear for taking a shortcut today. It is translated into incremental cost and loss of agility because of prior decisions intended to save time or cost. Moreover, technical debt can build up to a point where developers will not be able to do anything to rectify it. Technical debt can result in increased maintenance costs and the inability to add new features. Since each part depends on the other, any attempt to fix one part might cause some damage to another. 

Application modernization can erase technical debt because it eliminates the need to replace your existing systems completely. Thus, your company need not spend resources to maintain an outdated code. It will also reduce overall problems from technical debt. Legacy software modernization fixes your application’s glitches and makes it more robust and healthy.

Modernize your apps without burning a hole in your pocket

Your business can get up to speed with application modernization without investing heavily in all new systems. With application modernization, your business will see increased revenue in the long run. It boosts productivity and enhances the security of your applications. 

Get started on your mission to legacy modernization. We at Fingent software development experts can help you make smart decisions and find the most effective way to modernize your systems without leaving a gaping hole in your company’s resources. Give us a call, and let’s get talking.

How Can Your Business Gain Value from SAP S/4HANA Implementation?

Companies need a digital core to overcome complexity and drive digital transformation. SAP S/4HANA is a digital core ERP that can help companies overcome complexity and thrive in today’s disruptive market.

Businesses are growing by the minute and are moving faster than ever before. Thanks to the innovative developments and improvements of the digital world! 

However, today’s unprecedented disruption calls for more. Businesses need unique ways to emerge stronger from intense challenges that they might never have encountered before. C-level leaders and business owners are looking for ways to become more resilient. They understand that to keep up with ever-changing customer needs, they must invest in automation, analytics, and cloud technologies. The key priority has consequently been the move to SAP S/4HANA. 

S/4 HANA is an intelligent ERP software that helps you reinvent your business model by providing easy access to real-time data.

Read more: SAP S/4HANA: Redefining End-To-End Solution  

C-level leaders and executives need to understand that the journey to SAP S/4HANA is not just an IT exercise. It is an integral part of their broader digital transformation. Business owners need to review their business processes, end-to-end data, and system integrations. Such a review would assist them in developing an overall business value to guide their journey. This blog explores eight practical ways to raise business performance with your SAP S/4HANA journey. 

What makes your SAP S/4HANA journey complicated? 

Before we get into how to get your business booming with SAP S/4HANA, let’s look at why some C-level leaders and executives find this journey challenging. 

Planning and delivering your SAP S/4HANA journey is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for transformation and generates significant investment returns. Today, C-level leaders and executives struggle to answer these three hows:

• How to articulate the business value case to generate substantial returns on investment?
• How to ensure that the program remains business-led?
• How to leverage the power of the cloud?

Leaders and executives must consider creative ways to harness the power of SAP S/4HANA. It includes the design phase, building phase, and running phase. Business value can only rise when new sources are developed that enable the business to react quickly to recover from disruption. 

Read more: 6 Capabilities of SAP S/4HANA That Will Help You Become an Intelligent Enterprise 

8 practical steps to gain business value from SAP S/4HANA journey

Here are eight practical steps that answer the ‘hows’ and more:

1. Articulate the business value case

You may have already set aside a significant amount of resources, both in terms of finances and staffing, to embrace the journey to SAP S/4HANA. Beginning this journey with a holistic, business-led value case will help you realize its full potential and make the best of these resources. Thankfully, there is a distinct and compelling business case for every digital function. What does this mean for C-level leaders and executives? 

It would mean that they must take the time to create a fact-based business value case that can be used as an anchor throughout the SAP S/4HANA journey. Why? Because a well-defined business value case will help you fund all digital transformation efforts, including SAP S/4HANA.

Read more: SAP S/4HANA: Transforming The CFO into a Business Value Creator and Role Model 

2. Avoid a ‘technically configured’ approach

A technology-led approach might not deliver the expected results. Why? In most cases, C-level leaders may find it daunting to understand their role in the digital transformation journey. So they prefer to delegate the responsibility to others. Such delegation instantly turns the digital journey into a secondary priority. Since others may not understand the business as you do, it will become challenging to configure the transformation to be truly business-led.

C-level leaders and executives must realize the potential and take an active role in the transformation. You can then think strategically to create a clear path to a more agile and insight-driven business. 

3. Unleash the power of cloud solutions

To make quick and informed decisions, combine your internal and external data sources. Cloud-based applications and infrastructure will help you create a data strategy to deliver real-time insights. A well-defined cloud strategy will enable you to align the data, identify the best data sources, understand how to measure and maintain quality data, and manage your data. 

Read more: Why It’s Time to Embrace Cloud and Mobility Trends To Recession-Proof Your Business? 

4. Integrate suppliers before it is too late

For specific industries such as automation, supply ecosystems are strategically important. Though it may seem expensive, ensure to integrate your suppliers before SAP S/4HANA is well advanced. Such integration can be less expensive where custom developments are not warranted. 

5. Leverage AI to boost your current and future business models

Businesses worldwide face extraordinary challenges and disruption today. Automation-driven growth will be the only constant during this period of uncertainty. Though SAP may not provide everything you currently need to build your business, it allows you to integrate non-SAP automation for various goods and services. Marrying historically siloed data with AI techniques can thus contribute to demonstrable ROI.

Read more: How SAP Supports Effective Business Continuity Planning 

6. Integrate third-party content into SAP S/4HANA 

SAP S/4HANA has been the backbone of most IT strategies. It provides critical infrastructure to support a variety of use cases. Most organizations know that connecting to third-party content is crucial for their ongoing success and competency. Such integration can help you create unique sector-specific use cases, so do not hesitate to integrate third-party content. 

Read more: Deploying SAP S/4HANA: Methodologies and Tools to Adopt 

7. Use available data to speed up innovation lead time

Intelligent data management can help you break down information silos and provide you with the insight and control necessary to make tactical business decisions. When organizations collaborate to share and manage data, both parties can create tremendous potential value for their businesses. 

However, tapping into the value of data ecosystems can be a challenge. You can overcome this challenge by starting small and scaling later and involving partners early on. SAP S/4HANA allows you to effortlessly harness their data by breaking down your corporate strategy into different streams. Thus, businesses can dramatically lower risk and accelerate implementation.

8. Leverage SAP Cloud Platform

SAP S/4HANA cloud database allows you to make faster decisions. Since you can integrate data from across your enterprise, you can develop applications and tools required to store volatile data. SAP Cloud Platform allows you to avoid repeating failures and minimize cost. 

Manage the change impact

The SAP S/4HANA journey brings in a significant change. Treating this journey as a minor upgrade can lead to missed opportunities to leverage its full potential. This makes it extremely important to partner with the right service provider to guide you.  

As an SAP Silver Partner, Fingent has the expertise and experience required to help you make your SAP S/4HANA journey a success. Let’s talk. 

Smart Contracts to Streamline KYC: A Big Leap in FinTech 

The advent of online transactions has brought in improved convenience, speed, and cost advantages across various aspects of our lives. KYC processes, online shopping, insurance premium payments, internet banking, and a host of financial functions have witnessed a drastic transformation with the adoption of FinTech solutions. 

Read more: Technology in Finance: What to look out for in 2021?

However, these digital advancements have also taught us that a person’s online identity is not always what it appears to be. Identity theft, phishing schemes, and money laundering are just a few examples of digital scams that have wreaked havoc in the finance sector. Shockingly, a report by PwC stated that “in 2020, the average US organization experienced six incidents of fraud in the last 24 months and customer fraud ranks first among them.” The total loss suffered by the US companies from the frauds is close to $6.5B (over the past two years). 

As many of us know, the KYC (know-your-customer) process was designed to eliminate the risk of customer fraud. Various companies use KYC to verify their customers’ credentials with the ultimate aim to confirm that they are not fraudulent or engaged in any criminal activity. However, KYC is a labor-intensive, repetitive process that is prone to human error. This blog explains how smart contracts for KYC can solve problems related to customer fraud and identity theft. Before that, let’s consider what smart contracts are and how they work.

What are smart contracts?

Most industries are eagerly adopting blockchain technology for smart contracts. According to Statista, “in 2021, global spending on blockchain solutions is projected to reach 6.6 billion dollars and is expected to reach 19 billion US dollars by 2024.” 

Investopedia defines a smart contract as a self-executing contract that entails an agreement between the buyer and the seller. A smart contract encodes the agreement/ transaction between two parties and exists across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. Smart contracts eliminate the need for an external party or an intermediary to enforce the contract as defined. The decentralized blockchain network controls the execution of trusted transactions and agreements. All the transactions are trackable, irreversible, and impossible to manipulate because of the immutable audit trails created by blockchain.       

In simple words, smart contracts are programs that run based on predetermined conditions. Participants engaged in a smart contract are sure about the outcome. The unique digital structure of a smart contract makes it super secure and resilient to any kind of data modification. What problems do smart contracts solve, though? Here are a few examples of real-world problems solved by smart contracts.

Read more: Leveraging Blockchain Technology to Transform Supply Chain Industry

How does a smart contract work? 

A smart contract is a blockchain application. Just as a standard legal contract, a smart contract outlines the terms and conditions between two organizations. It works on a condition-based principle, that is: ‘if-when-then.’ Smart contracts allow you to define as many conditions or terms as you would require. Moreover, a smart contract enables both parties to interact in real-time, saving enormous time and resources. Additionally, it allows for anonymity, if needed. 

How smart contracts assist banks and financial institutions to solve KYC-related problems?

1. Identity theft

Clients’ identity includes data on where they live, their passport number, driving license, security number, and so on. These data points are stored in centralized databases. If a criminal gets hold of one of these documents, they can exploit certain security flaws and steal your client’s identity. Cybercriminals can use your customer’s identity to gain some financial advantage or steal money. There have been occasions when a criminal successfully stole a deceased person’s identity to commit crimes. 

Smart contracts on blockchain offer a novel solution that may include a comprehensive electronic signature service. It allows access to a private key and a public key. While a public key provides access to your public records, it offers concrete security as no one has access to change or edit your data. However, a private key allows you to give access to those required. This simple method helps prevent and restrict identity theft. Best-in-class data encryption technology ensures the highest levels of safety standards.

Read more: How Blockchain Enables the Insurance Industry to Tackle Data Challenges

2. Distributed user data collection

Smart contracts enable finance companies to uncomplicate the process of identity verification. It can make data available on a decentralized network. For example, claiming, verifying, and processing insurance has always been a labor-intensive task that frustrates your customers. Smart contracts offer a single source of truth, drastically reducing friction in the business process. 

Here is how smart contracts simplify the process:

• Make data reconciliation easy
• Improve accuracy
• Minimize time spent in uncovering information
• Enhance improvements in speed and accuracy
• Improve customer experience

3. Automation and standardization of operations

Client data is collected daily. Name, address, and social security number are required for almost all transactions. Considering the recent progress achieved on KYC policy standardization, it is now possible to use smart contracts to control operations and execute agreements or transactions. 

You can streamline the procedure across the industry by coding and standardizing the KYC workflow. It will minimize manual oversight and increase the effectiveness of the KYC system. It even allows you to implement multilingual solutions with the help of translation tools and smart contracts. Since smart contracts remove the need for a manual process for each document, decisions can be made quicker.

4. Comprehensive authentication process

It is crucial to verify the identity of individuals for data protection compliance and the prevention of fraud. A cryptographic verification solution is vital here. On the other hand, industries face another major challenge – allowing users to conduct online banking through apps. The glitch is that if a person loses her smart device, she exposes herself and the bank to a greater security risk. 

Fortunately, the blockchain’s decentralized model almost eliminates the security risk by not allowing any edits on the data accessed by the thief or the fraudster. Once a smart contract on blockchain is formed, it remains immutable. 

5. Communication and transparency

The smart contract will allow you to monitor everything from account openings to day-to-day transactions actively. Since the terms and conditions are pre-defined, it is recorded immediately, and remittance is raised automatically. This process avoids laborious approval workflows. 

Since it allows for trust data to be stored on the KYC smart contract platform, banks or financial service providers can eliminate the secondary validation processes and cross-checking. Apart from this, when mistakes occur, they are quickly identified, reported, and solved. While transparency has to be dictated by the parties involved in traditional contracts, smart contracts always remain transparent. Such openness makes tracing transactions less cumbersome and could be traced right from the point of origin. Additionally, it automatically creates fully accessible history. 

Read more: How AI and Machine Learning are Driving Cyber Security in FinTech?

6. Heightened security 

KYC banking processes can go on for weeks, highly increasing the maintenance of regulatory compliance as the industry struggles to dodge financial fraudsters and terrorists. Fortunately, a shared ledger will help adjust and monitor the KYC process for all those involved. This would allow all parties to view any changes or updates made to the clients’ data. Such direct access would save on the time-intensive process of identifying suspicious activity and reporting it.

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

Get smart with smart contracts!

As you can see, Smart Contracts are so much more than just an intelligent way of handling contracts. They are going to become the only way, and it’s time you get ahead of the competition by leveraging this technology. Contact Fingent, a top custom software development company, for all your software needs. 

The Significance of Odoo Migration and How to Do It?

Odoo is an open-source ERP software that comprises an integrated suite of business modules such as eCommerce, accounting, warehouse management, project management, financial management, customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing, and purchasing. These modules ensure seamless and efficient communication with each other to exchange information.

Read more: 5 Salient Features of Odoo that Make it a Reliable ERP for Enterprises

Odoo ERP can be used by businesses of all sizes and is available in both cloud or on-premise versions. Odoo is open source and highly customizable, allowing developers to access the code and make changes in the module based on their business needs. Odoo ERP can be easily integrated with payment processors and external shipping systems such as UPS, eBay, FedEx, Amazon, and QuickBooks.

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

So, if you are new and planning to implement Odoo ERP for your business, you should consider the most recent and latest version of Odoo, that is, Odoo 14.0. 

However, if you are already leveraging Odoo and thinking of migrating to Odoo 14, you need to assimilate the situation before migrating.

Odoo migration involves two parts:

• Data migration 
• Odoo apps migration 

You can migrate both your company data and the apps used in the older version of your ERP. This migration process requires expertise and an experienced Odoo ERP partner to achieve it. Your older data must be optimized for the newer version smoothly and is best done by a professional Odoo ERP implementation partner like Fingent.

Why migrate to the latest version of Odoo ERP?

Undeniably, the latest versions of Odoo include improved features such as security, speed, and stability. Migrating to the latest version indicates that you are ready to update your system and move forward. Moving forward does not mean that you lose your old data and turn to new data. Migration ensures that all the previous data is kept intact while stepping into the new one.

The latest version, Odoo 14 got released in October 2020. As businesses are ever-changing, the new version comes with many added or deleted features as found optimal by Odoo. This is needed to ensure the ERP keeps running at its best performance and also delivers high performance. It is considered to be four times faster than Odoo 13. So, if you are looking for speed, then you can switch to Odoo 14.

Top features of Odoo 14

Some of the features of Odoo 14 are:

1. Improved user experience

Odoo is a great competitor to big names like Oracle, Dynamics, and SAP. Odoo 14 has added more shortcut keys to control the system faster, improving the system speed and more on-click features to help you save time. There are more widgets in the list view that allows you to send messages directly to your colleagues within a single click.

2. Automated CRM

CRM is a powerful tool that provides your company with a better insight and focuses more on clients and not on the data input. The insight helps you forecast sales or find information about the clients easily. In the absence of a CRM, the salespeople can randomly fill the customer’s information, making it difficult for other team members to follow up or get complete sales information.

As Odoo 14 CRM is automated, you can add and search for customer’s data accurately and quickly.

3. Outlook plugins

This feature automates the communication logging and allows you to communicate with the clients automatically in the CRM. It also helps sales managers track the communication of their subordinates.

4. To-do activities list

Odoo 14 helps salespeople focus on selling instead of data input. The to-do activities feature allows the salespeople to quickly check the to-do list, the next activity, and its priority with its impact every day. This feature comes with an improved follow-up section that helps salespeople send an email or SMS to the potential client directly from the CRM.

Points to consider before Odoo migration

1. Performance

Odoo 14 is designed to deliver more both in terms of performance and features. It includes additional features that can benefit new businesses. The new features ensure the business processes are carried out as smoothly as possible. However, you must make sure to understand the purposes and needs of your business before you avail of the updated version. 

2. Deleting a few features 

While the new version includes new features, some of the old features have been revoked by Odoo. So, it would help if you had an idea about what features will be lost in the newer update. This is where an Odoo ERP implementation partner like Fingent can help you. Our Odoo consultants can help you migrate to the latest version of Odoo without losing your crucial company data. 

Read more: 6 Ways Odoo ERP Customization Can Benefit Your Business

3. Downtime

An update would mean that your business operations would be affected in the meantime. So, you must be prepared to overcome this downtime if you opt for migration. You can use the pilot version to run the platform with updates in the background. However, it is not possible in the live environment. You can discuss this in detail with the migration expert at Fingent.

4. Cost

The cost of the migration process may vary depending on your customized business requirements. Understanding the need for the latest update and knowing if the expense is the right investment for your company is essential. You can consult the software development experts at Fingent to get an estimate of the Odoo migration expenses for your business.

While migrating your old Odoo versions to newer and better ones is essential, it is a complex and tedious task. So, it is vital to have a good Odoo migration partner, which is why most businesses entrust us with Odoo ERP migration.

Read more: Why Choose Fingent as Your Odoo ERP Partner

Odoo migration: How to migrate to the newer version?

The Odoo migration process is done in two parts:

Part 1: Data migration

The company data present in the Odoo platform is of utmost importance and cannot be lost under any circumstances. This data requires some adaptation to work in sync with the new version. To make sure your data is suited for migration formulation, your information, such as charts, tables, contacts, etc., will be carried out.

Part 2: Odoo apps migration

The Odoo apps functional in the older version are used for specific needs and cannot be lost or compromised in the process of updating. Necessary changes to the existing applications or developing new ones will need to be done to meet the needs of your business.

The migration of applications and data will enhance the platform’s functionality without losing your company data.

To know more about Odoo migration and how we can help achieve it successfully, please contact us.

Technologies that help optimize revenue and performance of your medical practice

There’s no denying that revenue is essential for any business. Sustained revenue flow keeps the employees paid, leaves the doors open, and the patrons happy. It is the same for medical practice as well. However, it can be challenging to optimize medical practice revenue and increase avenues to bring in more money. It is crucial to find strategies that the medical practice can maintain over time to ensure a steady cash inflow. 

Additionally, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to influence patient behaviors, it is pushing healthcare practices across the globe to re-evaluate their business operations and look for solutions that emphasize clinical efficiencies, improve patient revenue cycle management along with enhanced reporting and analytics tools.

Apart from the challenges related to the patient intake process during the pandemic, healthcare providers also have had to meet the sudden demand for virtual care by embracing digital healthcare technologies. Advanced technology in healthcare helps automate major processes, facilitate patient engagement efforts, and improve financial stability.

In this article, we share tips to optimize the revenue of your medical practice.

1. Robust financial management

Strong finance is the foundation of every business. You must consider what money is going out in the form of overhead costs, payroll, and miscellaneous expenses. Look for ways to cut unnecessary expenditures and save your practice some money.

There are chances that you are spending on something unnecessary at your practice or experiencing a small ROI due to a huge yet incompetent investment. If a service is not bringing you a good ROI, you should remove it. To overcome these issues, ensure you have a robust revenue cycle management system in place.

Custom RCM systems help improve the administrative and clinical functions associated with claims processing payments and revenue generation. The RCM system also facilitates the financial processes of identification, management, and collection between patients and providers. RCM helps you optimize your revenue cycle at all the points of the financial process. This enables you to collect and increase revenue whenever and wherever you should.

2. Leverage healthcare information technology

While the initial cost and ongoing investment may vary based on your practice, most of the following technological investments will help you save money and increase your revenue over time.

Read more: 7 Major Impacts of Technology in Healthcare

Example 1: Telehealth

Technologies like telehealth offer safer alternatives to in-person visits. With the ongoing pandemic, this technology helps provide safe care by connecting via virtual video visits. If your practice can allot for more appointments, then telehealth allows for more visits throughout your day.

Additionally, patient portals, self-check kiosks, and QR codes help reduce the risks of exposure and increase scheduling flexibility and clinical availability. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) helps bring about organizational resilience and stabilizes patient outcomes with better and safer alternatives to in-person visits.

Example 2: Appointment Management Systems

Most medical practices lose revenue due to no-shows, missed appointments, or late cancellations. Appointment management systems ensure that patients are notified well ahead of their appointment times. This will eventually provide your practice with a better chance of fulfilling appointment times and retaining revenue. It will also improve patient trust and credibility and allow your medical staff to stay organized at work. 

Example 3: Practice Management System

This system includes all your appointment scheduling, billing, patient registration, claims processing, clearinghouse integration, and more. So, investing in an intelligent practice management system can bring billing in-house and retain previously claimed revenue from outsourcing.

Read more: Digital Tools For The Future Of Healthcare Providers

3. Intuitive reporting and automation

An Electronic Health Record(EHR) system includes an array of innovative tools that can significantly impact your practice’s productivity and profitability. The EHR technology should also have tools that offer flexible functionality and interactive engagement in addition to simple record keeping so that you can focus more on patient care and waste less time on troubleshooting staff errors or reconfiguring documentation notes.

Additionally, automated workflows, comprehensive reporting features, and insightful productivity metrics help simplify your practice’s workload and streamline task management. Picklists allow you to create templates, line-item defaults and define column choices so that information is readily available and easily accessible.

4. Optimize your medical billing

To maximize your medical practice’s revenue, you must include efficient and personalized medical billing software.  It allows you to optimize the bills according to the prevalent industry standards. Most practices bill patients at allowable lower levels to avoid being audited. While you may not get audited, the practice leaves behind a lot of money. So, when you provide clinical service, make sure to document it properly and bill customers appropriately. Medical billing software makes auditing easy and relieves your admins from revenue management challenges. The software also ensures that your billing and coding staff are not making mistakes, leading to significant claims denial.

If claims denials, coding errors, or any other billing issues keep your practice from optimizing the income, you may consider building customized software to handle your organization’s specific challenges. Fingent specializes in developing customized medical billing software and healthcare application platforms by working closely with your medical practice. It allows you to lower denial rates, reduce errors, and streamline your revenue cycle.

5. Security and compliance

When it comes to healthcare, efficiency matters not just at the surface level but in every single aspect of treatment, including financing, scheduling, and reporting. To ensure your EHR can keep up with the regular system, it should include an educational database that allows providers to quickly train their staff and give the patient access to explanatory articles and videos. Keeping these resources available will help bring about positive outcomes and hassle-free software maintenance. Fingent offers custom software development, testing, implementation, maintenance, and support services for healthcare service providers. We’ve partnered with organizations like NHS to help them improve clinical process management using technology. 

While compliance laws ensure patient health information (PHI) and overall safety of practice operations, you must make cybersecurity a top priority. This is especially true now with the shift to working remotely. Employees are more prone to hacker’s attempts to cease connectivity and steal confidential data. To overcome this, you must use virtual private networks (VPN) and reliable firewall software to safeguard vital business information. Our network security and IT infrastructure management services ensure that your business-critical assets are protected from cyber threats, and your proprietary information is protected 24/7. 

Read more: The Application and Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare

Advanced technology in healthcare has helped providers choose and select a system that benefits their business. For example, medical billing software, revenue cycle management, appointment management, and patient engagement systems are a few solutions that providers should consider when employing an EHR solution. Healthcare technology improves patient resolutions, avoids preventable errors, and expands clinical availability. 

Practice is a step ahead of theory. Our healthcare IT system developers follow this rule of thumb. Connect with our team to learn more about the technologies you can adopt to gain business benefits and significant cost savings.