Tag: Customer Experience

The “cloud” is a part of an evolution in IT services. IT services took the mainframe and turned it into the cloud. In the beginning, the on-premise IT department was the be-all and end-all. Over time, things have changed. There began a shift in service providers, service levels expectations, and experiences.

Businesses that leverage cloud capabilities uncover new possibilities and alternatives to fulfill the everchanging demands of their business. This is the time for businesses to think beyond cloud migration.

Most businesses see cloud adoption as the culmination of the journey. Instead, they must recognize that the cloud is a future-proofing continuum. A technology that provides flexible access to a collection of dynamic, ever-improving services.

The pandemic has hastened the cloud adoption pace so NOW is the opportunity to build on this momentum and continue transforming at this new pace. Why?

Why Do Businesses Need To Think Beyond Cloud Migration?

Soon, any app or infrastructure that is not based on the cloud will be considered a legacy. Cloud is no longer a mere technological approach for delivering applications. It will serve as a foundation for corporate innovation and a sustainable supply chain.

When organizations employ the cloud as a future operating model, they set up a technological base that will assist them today and into the future. The cloud continuum includes various forms of ownership and location. All these are dynamically enabled by next-generation connectivity like 5G.

Cloud continuum helps businesses visualize a path from on-premises to cloud migration. Businesses can apply the continuum concepts throughout their technology stack. This includes everything from infrastructure to network to apps, and beyond.

Read on to find out how cloud continuum strategy can help your business realize its full potential.

Read more: Cloud Security Best Practices | Why is cloud security important?

How Cloud Continuum Strategy Can Help Businesses Realize Their Potential

The cloud continuum is made up of several technologies. Setting clear priorities will support all elements of the business and this will help all in your organization to move together towards your business objectives.

• Achieve best possible results: The cloud continuum strategy enables companies to collect incremental feedback. Such feedback will help businesses adjust their aims to obtain the best possible results. This way they can constantly align their objectives.
• A catalyst to accelerate innovation: The cloud continuum is a readymade strategy. It helps organizations improve decision-making and capitalize on new possibilities to disrupt and distinguish through accelerated innovation. It is a new-age innovation accelerator essential for increased agility and future-ready business advantage.
• Elevate customer experience: Businesses can elevate customer experience to the next level with the cloud continuum.
• Enhanced skill and talent: The cloud continuum strategy will contribute to an efficient and effective work environment. It addresses gaps and continuously adapts to change as a continuum best practice.
• Manage scale awareness: The cloud continuum addresses the challenges an organization faces with regard to computing, performance, and latency limits.
• Improves ecosystem network effect: Improvement of network ecosystem depends on the number of ecosystem personnel and their engagement. The more value drivers you have, the better is quantity and quality of the participants.

Read more: Improve Business Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud!

Keys To Unlocking The Potential Of The Cloud Continuum

Holistic and human-centric cloud continuum strategy depends on speed and change. You need agile techniques that can capitalize on continuous enhancements. Here are four keys that will help you unlock the potential of the cloud continuum:

1. Have a clear vision of your goal

Your cloud continuum strategy must address:

Vision: Establish future goals for a resilient and sustainable business. Also, devise a strategy for technical debt reduction.

Competitive landscape: Every organization has weaknesses and vulnerabilities that a competition seeks to take advantage of. Hence, identify any gaps in the supply chain and competitive ecosystem.

Skills and talents continuum: To achieve your business goals in the future, you need to locate and retain relevant skills and expertise today. The foundation you build today will enable you to define your pathway and help you win the talent war.

2. Establish cloud practices

Be agile and adaptive: Make sure you combine technology adoption with strict discipline. This will allow you to modify your non-technology areas as computational advances. Doing so will help you steer ahead of your competition.

Incorporate mobility into the creation of new processes. This will allow for more flexibility in the future.

3. Deliver extraordinary experiences

Recognize that experience is at the heart of your business: Customer experience and employee experience can be a gamechanger for your business. Hence, ensure to make your investments available and accessible to both your employees and customers.

4. Stick to your cloud continuum strategy

Stay on your business journey by sticking to your strategy: You may face several challenges in helping various departments in your organization to understand and stick to your cloud continuum strategy. However, do not give up on your strategy. Educate and encourage everyone in your organization to comprehend and comply with the strategy.

Do you still feel unsure? Here are some use cases that will help you see how some major organizations were reinvented on the cloud continuum.

Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition

How Organizations Are Being Reinvented On The Cloud Continuum 

3M

During the pandemic, 3M plants struggled to gather, transfer, and use the data from their production systems. The organization then pushed the data from the plant’s on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL Edge. This enabled a faster and more streamlined process. By the end of 2020, 3M was able to double its production of N95 masks.

Sephora

Sephora uses AI and AR to provide extraordinary experiences to all its customers.

Starbucks 

Starbucks is well-positioned in the cloud continuum. It continues to innovate and grow despite socio-economic upheavals. It was able to stay ahead of its competition because it collects feedback and adapts its goals continuously.

It also ensures to provide a personalized experience for 100 million weekly customers by creating AI-driven recommendations.

Are You Ready For The Cloud Continuum?

The past year has been a witness to how fast an organization can pivot in the face of a crisis. Now is the golden opportunity to unlock your business potential with the cloud continuum. You too can stay ahead of your pack by becoming a continuum competitor. Partner with Fingent and see for yourself how your business will be transformed to be faster, more agile, and more successful. Let’s get talking!

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 can help you reimagine the way you work. Fingent 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.

Extended Reality (XR), is an umbrella term that encompasses immersive technologies – AR, VR, and MR that merge the physical and virtual worlds. While XR technologies are still widely used for gaming, social media and entertainment, it is being implemented extensively in industries and supplementing humans in unimaginable ways. Experts believe that the XR market will grow from 33.0 billion dollars in 2021 to 125.2 billion dollars by 2026, at a CAGR of 30.6%. This blog will take you through the top 6 reasons why your business needs to implement the rising capabilities of Extended Reality!

What is Extended Reality?

When put simply, XR is reality tech that covers VR, AR, and MR to extend reality by merging the real and virtual worlds. Here’s a quick look at what VR, AR, and MR are!

• Augmented Reality(AR): AR connects the physical environment with the virtual world through tablets, smartphones, smart lenses, and AR glasses to augment real-life scenarios.
• Virtual Reality (VR): This technology merges the physical environment with the digital one to create a whole new virtual world. Virtual Reality headsets and head-mounted displays help provide immersive experiences of the digital world.
• Mixed Reality(MR): With the help of MR headsets, mixed reality brings together the virtual and the physical environments to deliver unique experiences.

The term Extended Reality first popped up in the 1960s, when Charles Wyckoff filed a patent for his silver-halide XR film. The film was intended for photographing bright light events such as nuclear explosions. More recently, XR has moved into the mainstream with a few enterprises leveraging it to launch applications aimed at extending the customer experience.

Read more: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality Detailed with Real-life Examples

Industries Transformed by Extended Reality

AR, VR, and MR are developing at a rapid rate and transforming the way businesses are operating, communicating, and collaborating. Here are some of the business industries that have undergone a drastic change with these technologies.

• Marketing and advertising
• Healthcare
• Education and training
• Manufacturing and engineering
• Real estate
• Retail
• Gaming
• Art

XR offers endless possibilities and so any field can benefit by leveraging XR into their business processes.

Reasons Why You Need to Leverage XR Technologies for Your Business

1. Cultivates brand awareness

With changing customer demands and fierce competition, it is getting difficult to attract potential customers. Simply launching new products and services is not enough if you want to grow your business.

XR technology helps deliver a unique experience for users, foster consumer loyalty, and build brand awareness. For example, Gucci offers AR-fueled apparel and accessories try-on app that encourages users to try their accessories before buying thereby providing a stand-alone experience for users.

XR technology not only helps capture the attention of your customers but also promotes a positive experience with the brand.

2. Better customer experience

Customer experience is important for the success of any marketing strategy. XR’s ability to deliver immersive experiences will help you connect with your customers better and establish deeper emotional connections. XR helps transport your customers to different places and even attend live events without leaving the comfort of their homes.

L’Oreal leveraged AR technology to help their customers ‘try’ skincare products before buying and saw its conversion rate triple.

3. Increases customer engagement

As per a report by Deloitte, 90% of the companies are implementing AR and VR technology in their business. Another report reveals that 40% of customers are willing to pay more if they can experience it through Augmented Reality technology. Yet another report reveals that 58% of customers are more likely to buy a product if they have tried it out.

These statistics suggest that extended reality technology must be implemented in your business if you want to grow. XR allows customers to get detailed information and visualization about the products and services. It enables them to try out various products in various combinations and even test patterns and colors before purchasing them.

With XR technology, brands can increase engagement rate significantly and attract more customers and also provide them with a positive experience.

Read more: Augmented Reality Vs Virtual Reality – The Future Technology

4. Offers convenience

There’s no denying that online shopping is convenient and now with the pandemic forcing people to stay indoors most of the time, it is only becoming more popular. XR helps brands improve the shopping experience and also makes it less time-consuming. It helps consumers find what they are looking for faster and eliminate uncertainty from purchase decisions.

IKEA, for example, allows consumers to use their Place app and place a piece of furniture in their home using their phone. This improves the level of convenience, delivers a better customer experience, and eliminates any uncertainty before purchase.

5. Smarter Libraries

Data is the key to thrive today’s digital era. XR technologies place data in the context such that users can get better results.

For instance, you can use smart glasses to get a visual walkthrough to understand the true impact of the data collected instead of poring through spreadsheets and dashboard metrics for hours. XR technologies can help you make better and informed business decisions.

6. Create positive associations

Extended Reality provides brands with endless opportunities to create and implement emotional campaigns for their products. Based on the visual cues you include in your brand campaigns, you could encourage consumers to conclude your brand’s qualities.

XR helps connect with your audience in a way that activates their emotions and thus helps build a positive brand association. This will ensure consumers prefer your brand over others and establish loyalty. North Face, for example, launched an immersive VR experience of the Nepal landscape to its customers to identify with the brand’s identity.

Read more: Accelerating AR/VR Adoption Among Customers

Takeaway

Today, customers expect an intuitive experience from their brands and XR is becoming the new form of a conversation between brands and customers. Using immersive technologies, enterprises can nurture a culture of digital transformation and increase efficiency and profitability in the digital space.

Driven by immersive technologies, we at Fingent can help your brand increase awareness, engagement, and conversion. We have systems in place to help support large-scale communication. If you have a project in mind, we can help convert it to reality. Call us today!

Building Ground-breaking Customer Experiences With Augmented Reality

For the unversed, experiential marketing is a unique and effective way to build brand awareness through face-to-face connections with consumers. Unlike traditional or online marketing efforts, experiential marketing engages all the five senses that bring about emotions to form lasting memories and drive brand loyalty. It allows you to connect with your customers in the most relatable way while building brand awareness and loyalty.

So, how can companies effectively incorporate experiential marketing to make their products stand out? The answer is quite simple: by embracing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality technology boosts experiential marketing by allowing consumers to interact with products or services with improved personalization.

Read more: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality Detailed With Real-life Examples 

Benefits Of Using AR In Marketing

As stores closed their doors and people remained indoors, Augmented Reality has received a lot of attention over the last year and will become essential for retailers as stores reopen worldwide.

AR is bringing the in-store buying experience into consumers’ homes. Consumers can now virtually experience how a cute summer dress, a pair of sunglasses, or sneakers will look on them. As a result, AR boosts the customer’s confidence when buying online. AR is also an excellent solution for people who are worried about trying products such as garments or footwear that numerous other hands have touched before them. The technology allows consumers to make decisions safely, without physically touching sample products kept in the shops’ display racks.

Read more: How Top Brands Embrace Augmented Reality For Immersive Customer Experiences 

Sephora, a well-known cosmetic brand, has experienced great success with its Augmented Reality marketing strategy. The brand uses face recognition to help customers try makeup products before buying them in-store with their Virtual Artist app. Another example, Snapchat, which uses AR ads via snap filters.

Augmented Reality enables brands to show their customers what makes their products or services great instead of simply sending out marketing literature and thus allows them to connect with their customers better. This helps brands deliver memorable customer experiences and reduce costly returns.

Benefits Of Using AR In Experiential Marketing

1. Boost Sales

Let’s assume that you decide to re-decor your room. You will probably go through magazines and even visualize the furniture in the desired spaces. However, most often, you end up achieving a completely different outcome than what was intended.

So, that’s where AR comes into the picture. All you need to do is point your smartphone in the desired space, and you will be able to view (virtually) how your room would appear with all the desired items in place. This eliminates all the tedious trials and errors that can often lead to disappointing results. So, isn’t this unique and immersive approach a great way to attract your customers?

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

2. Save Unnecessary Marketing Costs

If you think that the new-age technology of AR and VR would cost you a fortune, you’re wrong. With advances in technology, gadgets and other technology components are becoming cheaper. For instance, AR ads are more affordable than traditional mediums.

AR’s targeted and personalized approach helps save up a lot from your budget compared to the conventional ways of communication. Additionally, it can be used for marketing campaigns as it is a highly efficient tool for advertisers.

3. Overcome Language Barrier

There’s no denying that people are more attracted to visuals than texts. As a result, visual images seem to have a language of their own. Both AR and VR use visualization to their advantage and excel in the process of communicating through moving images. While you may need a language to operate at the base level, users can easily find what they are looking for using the multiple options available.

4. Make Content That Goes Viral In The Social Space

Given the situation we are living in, social media has never been more relevant. It has changed the rules of advertising, and everybody is adapting to it. Advertisers are leaving no stone unturned to ensure their content reaches every potential customer of their brand.

Both Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies have the potential to make your content go viral. It is not only engaging and entertaining but also fascinating. The content is compelling enough to attract people of targeted age groups and helps communicate the brand’s message correctly.

For example, recently, Inphantry, a Boston-based digital ad agency, orchestrated an immersive AR pop-up exhibition in a Houston shopping mall. This was done to promote Nike’s AJXX8 sneaker, its latest addition to the Air Jordan line. Customers were given challenges such as dribbling, jumping, etc., wearing the sneakers and the Jordan branded bracelet with an RFID chip to track their scores.

On completion of the challenge, the high-scorers could experience the Air Jordan pop-up museum and lounge. Additionally, the participants were encouraged to share their pictures (of their experience) on social media. This strategy attracted over 2500 users and created the much-needed buzz around the newly launched sneakers.

5. Conduct Virtual Events

The pandemic has wreaked havoc in our lives both physically as well as emotionally. Most people are still not open to the idea of going out in a crowd, even at the cost of missing something important. In such cases, AR and VR technology comes to the rescue. The immersive technology allows the audience to access desired events virtually. Considering the times we live, immersive technologies are indeed a boon!

AR and VR platforms enable brands to engage and launch their offerings by organizing virtual corporate events, expos, and conferences.

6. Fulfill Training Needs

If any of your products or services requires technical training to understand its aspects, VR technology is what you need. It provides a personalized and interactive experience where the user can understand the product/service virtually. Moreover, this approach is highly effective as it can be re-run multiple times.

Additionally, the user can practice using the VR headset for as long as desired. This reduces any operational risks that the user could experience while using the actual product and helps educate them about it skillfully. That said, using AR/VR technology for training your users is more fun than traditional training sessions.

Read more: How Virtual Reality Improves The Standard of Medical Education and Training

7. Enhance Customer Service

The main goal of any business is to ensure that their customers are satisfied and thus increase sales. AR and VR technology can help educate customers in a fun way and help them make informed decisions. This prevents any conflict of ideas that may arise in the consumer’s mind. Thus, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality help in increasing customer satisfaction and sales.

Scale Your Marketing Efforts With AR

Summing up, it can be said that businesses must earnestly consider using Augmented Reality to boost experiential marketing and create ground-breaking experiences that will set them apart from others.

If you’re looking for a unique and one-of-kind opportunity for marketing and advertising, you can collaborate with Fingent. We offer immersive and interactive experiential marketing solutions using AR and VR. Explore our offerings by simply giving us a call, and we will be delighted to help.

How Sanity.io manifests the value of headless CMS

In our recent white paper, we stated that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator in 2020. We also discussed how the rapid evolution of both customer expectations and CX technologies is a wakeup call for both CX and IT leaders.

So, that’s it! Any business failing to deliver omnichannel customer experiences or remaining inactive across their website, mobile application, voice assistant, email, social media profiles, or online customer support is sure to face peril. This has set in a new level of expectation as to how digital content should be managed. Definitely, this puts the onus on companies to adopt a headless content management system (CMS). 

Now, the question is what’s wrong with the traditional CMS? If WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla allows you to have both the CMS and the website’s design in one place, wouldn’t it be easier to make updates and manage your content seamlessly? Then why did leading brands like Cornerstone, Cloudflare, and Eurostar move to Sanity, one of the top headless CMS platforms? 

Here, we tell you what’s a headless CMS and why many industry leaders have adopted Sanity.io. 

The Headless CMS Movement 

Remember the “pre-CMS era” where you had to update HTML pages manually and upload them on the website via FTP and perform a lot more steps? The birth of popular content management systems like Drupal and Joomla not only gave us relief, also did they tempt us with convenience. However, these legacy platforms often force us to solicit assistance from developers working on a specific CMS and require us to spend more time, resources, and budget for maintenance and enhancements. 

A traditional CMS ideally fits an enterprise-level small business website or a personal website, especially if you do not have to share content with multiple digital devices or platforms. With cross-channel content dissemination at the speed of light becoming the Holy Grail, the monolith, single storage feature offered by traditional CMS is easily giving way to headless CMS.   

Read more: Top 6 Tech Stacks That Reign Software Development in 2020

Decoding Headless CMS 

In simple terms, a headless CMS is a content-first CMS where the content repository (body) is decoupled/separated from the presentation layer (head). It’s a back-end only content management system that makes content accessible to external clients for display through APIs. 

The result: Even a non-developer can create or edit content without getting worried about how the content will be displayed or consumed by the external systems. If you need to publish content on multiple platforms all at once, headless CMS is the best choice. 

The beauty: Headless CMS is front-end agnostic. You can choose the framework or tool you like for displaying content to the end-user. It allows front-end developers to solely focus on the presentation layer without thinking about how the content will be managed. 

5 reasons to go for Sanity, the popular headless CMS

“Build with structured content” is the byword of Sanity. However, the platform makes no assumptions about how your content is structured, created, validated, and presented. This offers you the flexibility to deliver structured content into any digital devices or applications via Sanity’s real-time, cloud-hosted APIs and customizable open-source editing environment.

1. Get started in no time

You can quickly get started with Sanity.io by downloading CLI from npm and use it to launch a new project. Alternatively, you can go to Sanity’s starter projects that will help you get started in minutes with its preconfigured Sanity Studio and a functional front-end with a range of frameworks to choose from, all deployed to Netlify with source code on GitHub.

2. Superior editing features

Sanity’s editor or the Sanity Studio is a flexible, open-source application that allows you to define content models with simple JavaScript. A single-page app built with React.js, Sanity Studio allows you to customize or extend it using your own React.js components. Its advanced features help you modify workflows for your editors. Along with customization, Sanity Studio offers core features like Block Content, Structure Builder, and a Dashboard plugin.

3. Exceptional APIs

The primary reason for choosing a headless CMS is its API-first pattern that allows you to access the content through APIs.

Sanity offers two powerful APIs for reading, writing, querying, and patching documents:

• api.sanity.io which is the live uncached API
• apicdn.sanity.io which is the CDN-distributed, cached API

Sanity also supports deploying GROQ and GraphQL APIs to query your content. The platform’s Data Store resides in the cloud and can be accessed via Sanity API either using Sanity’s client libraries or through the HTTP API directly.

4. Matured technology stack

Sanity is a cloud-hosted CMS with a real-time content studio and hence all the data is synced instantly. The underneath architecture involves mature technologies such as  PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, and JavaScript, and the blazing-fast React. It doesn’t save HTML, XML, or rich text in the database, but in rational object structures. For instance, if you want Alexa to read from your text fields, then you don’t have to parse HTML. Sanity comes packed with its well-maintained JavaScript, HTML, and PHP clients allowing you to be up and running fast with the front-end framework of your choice.

5. User-friendly headless content models

Though you require someone with basic JavaScript knowledge to get started with Sanity, it isn’t hard to find a person who is familiar with the popular web programming language. Sanity enables content editors, visual and interaction designers, and technology professionals to collaborate on building the information architecture. Front-end developers can save their efforts by accessing content fields instantly through APIs.  

Need more reasons to fall for headless CMS? 

To give you an example, Sanity prevents you from getting “locked-in”. Despite being a SaaS platform, Sanity allows you to easily export your content and use it wherever you need. Same with the front-end frameworks that we saw above. Customized editorial experiences, structured content approach, minimal hidden costs, pay-as-you-go pricing model, and a number of stunning features will make you say “Yes” to the headless CMS model.

If you would like to know more about Sanity.io or any other headless CMS platform that you’re currently considering, drop us a line immediately.

Digital Transformation in 2020: A Strategized Guide

Digital transformation refers to employing digital technologies to manage the business processes, company culture, and customer experience, which will help meet the changing industry requirements. It is applied to create new strategies as well as modify the existing approaches to different business roles, such as sales, marketing, and customer service. The digital transformation strategy directly reflects upon how a business engages with its customers in this digitally-advancing era.

Incorporating a digital transformation strategy in a startup or small business is very simple. They can easily future-proof the business by applying a digitally agile method of operation, which will help them grow productively. For an established business though, it may take some reimagining for integrating the right tools and technologies for the best digital strategy and transformation.

Related Reading: What considerations should be part of a company’s digital transformation strategy?

What are the 4 main areas of digital transformation?

A digital transformation roadmap to success should include four key areas – customer engagement, empowering employees, optimizing operations, and transforming business models. Digital transformation is not just about adopting new technology or investing in digital tools, you need to be prepared for the changes, anticipate them, and drive innovation to remain competitive in the market.

1. Customer Engagement

Cultivating good customer relationships is the backbone of every thriving business. Maintaining a healthy connection with customers can be very easy by using digital tools. From addressing grievances quickly to promoting seasonal sales and offers, digital transformation can help improve the brand image through enhanced customer engagement, which will, in turn, lead to superior business results.

2. Empowering Employees

Building a dynamic company culture with digital technologies can lead to high performance and enhanced productivity. Digital collaboration and networking tools, for instance, can allow employees to work easily with different business departments and teams. This helps accelerate delivery, boost quality and efficiency, and drive greater employee satisfaction.

3. Optimizing Operations

A robust operations digitalization strategy can reform the business from inside out. Adopting digital tools for managing human resources, sales, marketing, manufacturing, finance, or any other business operation can give a comprehensive outlook of the current processes. With proper analytics and insights, businesses can easily manage the operations as well as fix the flaws for a better outcome.

4. Transforming Business Models

Digital business transformation strategy cannot be complete without changing how the business functions work. Leveraging technology to find innovative ways to introduce digital products can perfectly complement traditional offerings. In fact, marketing the brand and promoting the products and services digitally is the key to emerge as a flourishing business today.

Related Reading: 4 Questions to Ask When Your Business Goes Digital

How do you develop a digital transformation strategy?

Rapid digital development and evolution can be seen in every industry in the present day. If you want to keep up, you will need to have the right plan to make the best of the digital landscape. A digital transformation strategy framework allows you to understand your current state, identify your goals, and adopt the best measures to achieve those objectives.

Here is a three-step process to create your digital transformation strategy roadmap:

1. Analyze your requirements and align your business objectives

Developing a robust digital transformation strategy roadmap requires you to analyze the market properly. At the same time, you should also focus on your goals and evaluate how it will affect your current business model. Determine your vision for implementing digital transformation and think about how it will improve customer experience and company culture.

2. Plan your budget

You should also secure funding for your digital transformation. It is an ongoing process and usually involves technology-intensive investments. Therefore, you should have an idea of how much resources you can allocate for the initiative. However, the budget should be calculated keeping in mind all the business areas that would benefit from digital transformation. This way, you can structure the best IT transformation strategy by identifying priorities and establishing the scope of the process.

3. Evaluate the present to plan the future

It is also important to recognize your current business state. Simply trying to migrate to digital infrastructure will not work. You need to understand the current organizational structure, culture, business processes, operations, and employee skill sets. This will help you to categorize the pain points or opportunities that should be addressed at the earliest. It will also let you track the achievements in your digital transformation strategy roadmap promptly.

What are some of the best digital transformation examples?

Digital transformation has practical benefits for every business unit or department. Here are a few examples:

In marketing, it can help to find more customers for less capital investment. Digital marketing approaches can generate more leads and connect with potential customers, which results in greater brand awareness.

In sales, digital transformation can allow automation with analytics tracking and data-driven insights. By using the stats, businesses can promote the products/services that a consumer is likely to buy. Besides, the data and analytics can also help understand the effectiveness of current sales techniques and strategies.

As for customer support, digital transformation allows consumers to contact businesses quickly for any grievances related to the product/service. Customer support personnel can share information promptly across digital modes and find the best solution for the customer. When the company addresses their problems in time, it strengthens their relationship with the customer, which in turn leads to better customer retention.

Related Reading: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

Implementing digital tools also facilitates improved collaboration between different teams within the organization. This is a must for streamlined business growth in today’s highly competitive industry. That is why you should employ a reliable digital transformation strategy for your business. It will definitely help you discover new opportunities and make the most of powerful sales channels to increase business revenue. 

Fingent empowers businesses to build a strong foundation for smooth and cost-effective digital transformation that helps them discover new opportunities and revenue streams. Get in touch with our experts to learn more. 

Top 10 Algorithms to Create Functional Machine Learning Projects

From simple day-to-day functions to making computers smarter, Machine Learning algorithms help automate manual tasks for making our lives simpler. The significance of Machine Learning has grown even further, which is why enthusiastic data scientists and engineers look forward to learning different techniques to hone their skills.

Below are the top 10 Machine Learning algorithms that you should know. These will help you to create practical projects, no matter whether you choose Supervised, Unsupervised, or Reinforcement Machine Learning model.

Read our Infographic: What Machine Learning is and why it is important in business

1. Apriori Algorithm

Apriori algorithm is a type of machine learning algorithm, which creates association rules based on a pre-defined dataset. The rules are in the IF_THEN format, which means that if action A happens, then action B will likely occur as well. The algorithm derives such conclusions by analyzing the ratio of action B to action A.

One of the most common examples of the Apriori algorithm can be seen in Google auto-complete. When you type a word, the algorithm automatically suggests associated words that are mostly typed with that.

2. Naive Bayes Classifier Algorithm 

Naive Bayes Classifier algorithm works by presuming that any specific property in a category is not related to the other properties of the group. This helps the algorithm to consider all the features independently as it calculates the outcome. It is very easy to create a Naive Bayes model for huge datasets, and can even do better than many of the complex classification methods.

The best example of the Naive Bayes Classifier algorithm will be email spam filtering. The function automatically classifies different emails as spam or not spam.

3. Linear Regression Algorithm

Linear Regression algorithm determines the correlation between a dependent variable and an independent variable. It helps understand the effect that the independent variable will cause on the dependent variable if the former’s value is changed. The independent variable is also referred to as the explanatory variable, while the dependent variable is termed as the factor of interest.

Generally, the Linear Regression algorithm is used in risk assessment processes, especially in the insurance industry. The model can help to figure out the number of claims as per different age groups and then calculate the risk as per the age of the customer.

Related Reading: Can Machine Learning Predict And Prevent Fraudsters?

4. K-Means Algorithm

K-Means algorithm is commonly used for solving clustering problems. It takes datasets into a specific number of clusters, which is referred to as “K”. The data is categorized in such a way that all the data points in the cluster remain homogenous. At the same time, the data points in one cluster will be different from the data grouped in other clusters.

For instance, when you look for, say, “date”, on the search engine, it could mean a fruit, a particular day, or a romantic night out. The K-Means algorithm groups all the web pages that mention each of the different meanings to give you the best results.

5. Decision Tree Algorithm

Decision Tree algorithm is the most popular Machine Learning algorithms out there today. The model works by classifying problems for both categorical as well as continuous dependent variables. Here, all the possible outcomes are divided into different standardized sets with the most significant independent variables using a tree-branching methodology.

The most common example of the Decision Tree algorithm can be seen in the banking industry. The system helps financial institutions to categorize loan applicants as well as determine the probability of a customer defaulting on his/her loan payments.

Related Reading: How Predictive Algorithms and AI Will Rule Financial Services

6. Support Vector Machine Algorithm

Support Vector Machine algorithm is used to classify data as points in a vast n-dimensional plane. Here, “n” refers to the number of properties in hand, each of which is linked to a specific subset to categorize the data. A common use of the Support Vector Machine algorithm can be seen in the regression of problems. It works by categorizing data into different levels using a particular line or hyper-plane.

For instance, stockbrokers use the Support Vector Machine algorithm to compare the performance of different stocks and listings. This helps them to device the best decisions for investing in the most lucrative stocks and options.

7. Logistic Regression Algorithm

Logistic Regression algorithm helps calculate separate binary values from a cluster of independent variables. It then helps to forecast the likelihood of an outcome by analyzing the data against a logit function. Including interaction terms, eliminating properties, standardizing techniques, and using a non-linear model can also be used to create better logistic regression models.

The probability of the outcome of a specific event in the Logistic Regression algorithm is calculated as per the included variables. It is commonly seen in politics to predict if a candidate will win or lose in the election.

8. K- Nearest Neighbors Algorithm

K Nearest Neighbors or KNN algorithm is used for both the classification as well as regression of different problems. The model saves the data available from several cases, which is referred to as K, and classifies new cases as per the data from the K neighbors based on distance function. The new case is then included in the identified dataset.

K Nearest Neighbors needs a lot of storage space to save all the data from different variables. However, it only functions when needed and can be very reliable in predicting the outcome of an event.

9. Random Forest Algorithm

Random Forest algorithm works by grouping different decision trees based on their attributes. This model can deal with some of the common limitations of the Decision Tree algorithm. It can also be more accurate to predict the outcome when the number of decisions goes higher. The decision trees are mapped here based on the CART or Classification and Regression Trees model.

A common example of the Random Forest algorithm can be seen in the automobile industry. It is seen to be very productive in forecasting the breakdown of a specific automobile part.

10. Gradient Boosting and Adaptive Boosting

Gradient Boosting and Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) algorithms can be used when you need to handle a huge amount of data and predict the outcome with the highest accuracy possible. Boosting algorithms combine the power of different basic learning algorithms to improve the results. It can also merge weak or average predictors to get a strong estimator model.

Gradient boosting is generally used with decision trees, while AdaBoost is typically used to improve binary classification problems. Boosting can also correct the misclassifications found in different base algorithms.

The above-listed Machine Learning algorithms will help you get started with your desired projects right away. These will equip you for understanding the scope of Machine Learning as well as work out complex problems more easily.

Related Reading: How Machine Learning Boosts Customer Experience 

Want to develop machine learning applications that deliver better experiences for your users? Connect with us. 

CX Solution to Improve Retail Growth

Nurturing communities and building loyalties is now more critical than ever for all retail brands. With instant access to the latest trends and technologies, customers demand better experiences in their interactions with retail brands across all touchpoints. Hence, Customer experience (CX) has become the most important facet of the retail marketing strategy. Retailers, therefore, have to focus on improving CX through every channel.

Importance of CX solutions

Companies can leverage authentic data and modern technology to transform customer experiences and positively impact their business’ future. While most organizations do have systems in place to track the performances of their CX strategies, few track the end-to-end customer journey. Using appropriate CX solutions, organizations can bridge the gap between expected and actual experiences. CX solutions help companies measure and understand the impact of their CX management strategies. 

By employing CX solutions, you can manage the interactions that current and potential customers can have with your brand, thus enabling you to meet or exceed their expectations. CX solutions leverage customer interactions to align the brand image according to the customer’s perceptions. This helps you foster strong and long term customer relationships.

Related Reading: 5 Ways to Enrich Customer Experience at Your Retail Store

Top Trends in CX

Staying abreast of the latest technologies and trends in Customer Experience will help you stay ahead of the competition. It’s time to hone your CX strategies by following these latest trends that rule the CX market.

• Omni-channel CX: Customer journeys have become more dynamic than ever. Based on convenience, customers constantly switch mediums. Since the line between physical and digital channels are blurring, customers expect seamless experiences in their interactions across all channels. It’s important for retailers to strike a proper balance between the “traditional” and “online” business models based on their customers’ preferences. Adopting omnichannel customer care strategies will help resolve complex issues quickly.

• Artificial Intelligence: CX enhancement requires comprehending vast amounts of chaotic and complex data in real-time at high speeds. This scenario is most suitable for AI-powered solutions. Using AI, you can replicate human-like engagements (chatbots for example), track customer-behavior and roll out customized campaigns on their preferred channel of operation. Thus you turn your data into valuable customer insights.

• Hyper personalization: Customers expect high levels of personalization and prefer to buy from brands that offer services/products that are fine-tuned according to their requirements. With a hyper-personalized approach, retailers can identify subtle customer traits and deliver highly targeted and relevant services. To develop this level of hyper-personalization, your data and analytics have to be aligned to paint a clear picture of your customers’ choices.   

• AR/VR: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are touted as the “technologies of the future” since they provide highly immersive and engaging customer experiences. AR and VR provide customers with a hands-on experience which helps them make better choices. Many retailers are already reaping the benefits of implementing these futuristic technologies. For instance, Ikea allows customers to check how the furniture would look in their homes before buying using AR. Famous clothing brand Marks and Spencer uses virtual try-on mirrors to boost their store experiences.

• Virtual assistants and chatbots: Virtual assistants and chatbots enable companies to deliver faster and more efficient services at low costs. Some may argue that chatbots lack empathy and hence cannot replace human customer service representatives. However, you should not overlook the fact that advances in AI have given bots the ability to decipher human emotions. By combining the technologies of a virtual assistant and chatbots, you can provide your customers with personalized and empathetic experiences.

Related Reading: Capitalizing on AI Chatbots Will Redefine Your Business: Here’s How

Future of CX

Customer Experience will continue to be crucial for brands to survive in a disruptive business environment. Retailers need to adopt agile models to retain customers and attract new ones. Going forward, CX will also depend on employee experiences. If your employees are empowered, they will in turn care for your customers. Your interactions, both with your customers as well as your employees across all channels need to be more meaningful and effective.

Smart Product Ordering System

Gartner states that 64% of consumers give more importance to their experiences with a brand than to the price of a product or service. Fingent helps you implement the latest technological advancements to make your CX strategies fruitful. Contact us to know more. 

How Extended Reality Is Transforming Business Environments?

Picture yourself diving into crystal-clear Grecian waters or taking a walk on the moon, all the while sitting in the comfort of your home.  As fantastical as this may seem now, Extended Reality is making this possible as we speak. What is Extended reality and what are its powerful real-world applications? Let’s check.

Understanding What Extended Reality Is

Extended Reality is a blanket term that encompasses all virtual and real environments generated by computer technology. This includes components such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality. Extended Reality is poised to completely revamp the way businesses interact with the media and has the potential to allow seamless interaction between the real and virtual worlds allowing its users to have a completely immersive experience. 

Three Remarkable Components of Extended Reality

These components fall under the category of immersive technologies that can affect our perceptions. Here is a little bit about them:

Virtual reality: Virtual reality transposes its users to a different setting through a simulated digital experience. It makes use of a head-mounted display (HMD) to create an immersive experience by simulating as many experiences as possible.  Industries such as healthcare and real estate have started using virtual reality significantly. 

Augmented reality: As the word suggests, augmented reality takes the existing reality and overlays it with various types of information, enhancing the digital experience. It could be categorized as marker-based, marker-less, and location-based. It has proven useful in medical training, design, modeling and numerous other areas.

Mixed reality: Being the most recent advancement among reality technologies, mixed reality is experienced through mixed reality glasses or headsets where you can interact with physical and digital objects in real-time. 

Related Reading: Augmented Reality Vs. Virtual Reality – The Future Technology

The implementation of these technologies through extended reality is enabling businesses to create innovative solutions and increase customer engagement, reduce human error and improve time efficiency. 

5 Powerful Real-World Applications 

“The market for Extended Reality is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of more than 65% during the forecast period of 2019-2024,” says Mordor Intelligence. 

Check out these five real-world applications of extended reality:

1. Entertainment and Gaming

The entertainment and video games industries are the foremost users of Extended Reality. Camera tracking and real-time rendering are combined to create an immersive virtual environment, allowing actors to get the real feel of the scene, thereby improving their performance. The extended reality also allows for multipurpose studio environments, thus reducing the cost of an elaborate movie set.

Video gaming is enhanced by the ability of Extended Reality to create a comprehensive participation effect. This allows users to dive into a completely different reality. Other entertainment events such as exhibitions and live music can also be enhanced by the capabilities of Extended Reality. 

2. Employees and Consumers

• Training: Extended Reality allows employees to be trained and educated in low-risk, virtual environments. Medical students, surgeons, firefighters, pilots, and chemists can closely simulate risky scenarios with minimal risk and less expense. The experience they gain will prove invaluable when they handle real-life situations.
• Information: Replacing physical manuals, Extended Reality can enable technicians to focus on the task without having to flip the pages of a manual. It can even connect an expert remotely to the real-time issue for his expert advice. This would save organizations a whole lot of money, and more importantly save them valuable downtime as they wouldn’t need to wait for experts.
• Improve customer perspective: Simulating virtual experience brought on by specific diseases and impairments can help doctors and caregivers receive empathy training. 

Related Reading: How Top Brands Embrace Augmented Reality for Immersive Customer Experiences

3. Healthcare

Extended Reality is improving healthcare by streamlining medical procedures while enhancing patient care. Allowing surgeons to visualize the complexities of the organs in 3D, it is enabling them to plan each step of a complicated surgery well in advance. Essentially, it is ensuring that surgeons can perform surgeries in a more safe, effective and precise way.

4. Real Estate

Extended Reality makes it easier for real estate agents and managers to close a deal by enabling prospective homebuyers to get a real feel of the property. The layout scenarios that are enabled by Extended Reality enhance customer experience while providing strong business opportunities. 

Related Reading: AR and VR- Game Changers of Real Estate Industry

5. Marketing

Extended Reality enables marketers to give their consumers a ‘try before you buy’ experience. It allows consumers to be transported to a place, immerses them in that world and motivates them to explore it. As an example, Cathay Pacific used a 360◦ video with hotspots to help potential customers experience the brand firsthand. That increased customer awareness by 29% and brand favorability by 25%. 

Face the Future with Extended Reality

There are many more advancements and applications to be discovered with Extended Reality, and it is soon going to be imperative to competitive advantage. Make sure your business isn’t left behind. Talk to our expert today. 

How to Attain More Business Value with AI Implementation

The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being harnessed by businesses to implement automation across several industries and to augment their efforts to provide stellar customer experiences. The incomparable precision, speed, and accuracy of AI-enabled solutions are driving an AI revolution and this blog will discuss five specific ways you can attain business value with AI adoption.

AI: A new approach to customer experience

IBM, one of the leading universal AI champions reveals that 74% of customer experience executives feel that AI will change how customers view their brand. AI provides customers with an experience that appears very similar to human-like interaction. AI-powered apps are highly efficient in enhancing customer interactions. 

Automation of “the customer experience journey” through AI enables your business to personalize your marketing campaigns, which will boost the email opening rate. Among other things, AI provides improved customer insights and better customer satisfaction which results in increased conversion and strengthens brand loyalty. 

Related Reading: How AI is Redefining the Future of Customer Service 

Steps to Gain Business Value with AI Adoption

A study from Market Research Engine estimates that the Artificial Intelligence Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 191 Billion by 2024. The vast growth of information in huge quantities, growth in the adoption of cloud-based applications and services, and an increase in the demand for intelligent virtual/ personal assistants are the major driving factors behind the booming AI market. 

Unfortunately, many are still unsure of how to adopt AI, and how it can be used to yield maximum results. We present you these 5 steps to adopt AI which will help you gain the maximum business advantage. 

1. Map out a clear customer-centric strategy

The best way to do this is to analyze recent customer journeys with your brands such as discovery, presales, sales, and customer service. Such analysis will help you understand the experience your customers are having with your brand. Research director at Gartner, Olive Huang said, “Your business results depend on your brand’s ability to retain and add customers.” Hence it’s important to deliver a highly personalized experience to every one of your customers. Once that strategy is crafted, it can be delivered through AI.

Related Reading: 6 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Driving Decision Making

2. Diagnose the problem

Just as the prudent diagnosis of a disease is crucial to helping a patient improve their health, finding out your specific business problems will help you use AI to improve business value. Organizations need to be clear about what AI can help them accomplish. Once the problem is identified, aligning AI to business priorities becomes easier. The beauty of AI algorithms is that once algorithms are enabled to solve one aspect of the business successfully, it can easily be adapted for use in other aspects of the business too.

3. Establish a governance program for customer experience

Before you begin your journey with customer experience, make sure to establish a governance program. The benefit of having a central team working on the AI project is that you can integrate program oversight with a complete comprehension of AI-related initiatives. This is true even when your customer experience teams are just in the learning process. Build a program to supervise development activities and business implications and set brand guidelines for AI technologies such as NLP. Also, establish standards to gauge the impact of customer experience initiatives and its correlation with ROI.

4. Bring the best onboard

Creating a custom AI solution is recommended over buying it readymade. It is important however that you bring in the best talent. Bringing in a team of dynamic people who can create exciting ways to engage with the customers sends a powerful message to your competitors. It will also put your organization on the radar as a tech-savvy innovator. 

Read our latest white paper: How Could Your Business Use AI to Achieve Higher Profits & Growth

5. Prepare to store

A business that fails to look into the future fails to grow. Gathering relevant data allows organizations to derive greater benefits far into the future. Meaningful data help AI systems in achieving your organization’s objectives. Insufficient data could compromise the accuracy of AI applications, so get your team to build relevant data including cases and codes.

Drive Business Value With AI 

Organizations are adopting AI faster than anticipated. To gain long-term and sustainable business value from Artificial Intelligence, you need to develop a robust implementation approach that takes into its fold, even the minute aspects of your enterprise. Contact us to adopt the power of AI into your business.