Category: Custom software

Can you imagine a day in your life without using any software applications? Yes, that would mean the apps in your phone too, like the calling, messaging, gaming or calendar apps! It will be tough, particularly in this era of technological advancement, when we talk of securely using devices in the Internet of Things, right?! Does it end there? Definitely no, because apart from individual needs, a lot of business-to-business interaction today happens via software applications. A few minutes of downtime in these web applications would bring the global businesses to a halt.
Those myriad overseas businesses, companies outsourcing projects, business partners around the globe, everyone use software applications to communicate, interact, exchange data and accomplish tasks. From simple transferring of funds into bank accounts to deploying global websites updating live pricing information (like e-commerce sites), the adoption of web applications in businesses is very huge. The advent of faster internet, new technologies, connected devices and powerful browsers, have made people depend on web applications and software more than ever.
Ever wondered what are the processes behind developing such smart web applications, which make our day-to-day tasks simply a piece of cake? What ‘behind the screen’ efforts make a perfect Application? Let’s go through these essential phases in the lifecycle of web application development.

The Web Application Architecture
This is the skeleton/ blueprint of your application, giving the overview of what it does, how it does it, who it is for, and the relation between its entities. The most widely used application architecture is three-tier architecture and has 3 tiers, viz., Presentation (User Services), Domain Logic (Business Services) and Data Storage (Data Services).

• Presentation tier: the gateway through which customers interact with the application.
• Domain Logic tier: The tier ranges from web scripting to server side programming, allowing users to do complex actions via a web interface.
• Data Storage tier: Stores, retrieves and updates information at a high level. Few data storage and retrieval devices are file systems, databases and writeable media.

Keeping these tiers in mind, following are the guidelines developers should follow to create a website application:

The feasible project: Choose the right project with respect to the resources, skill-set, publishing capabilities, and budget available.
Planning: Make a wireframe to plan the design of the application you are going to create. The key to a good application is, 50% planning and 50% coding. A properly planned wireframe helps you to envision the app before it’s being built and helps to avoid potential roadblocks. That said, wireframes are just a general structure and layout, and not detailed masterpiece works of art. Use the wireframes to further plan your page layouts and core components in it. But don’t waste time redrawing the components; after all it’s just a depiction of what you are going to create.
Draw out the planned design: Using the good old pen and paper, as opposed to software tools to draw out the ideas in your head actually help put in your raw creative input. It enables you to arrive at better designs in much less time. And you can perfectly translate it into designs.
Forecasting the goals, nature and the direction in which the app development should progress: This is the phase where teams associated with the project, developers, testers, BAs and management get together to discuss the goals that must be achieved through the application. There shall be a clear documentation of what the Application will achieve.
Devising the Plan: How will the application be built? What scripting language should be used, what all features to be included and how long should the development of decided features take? The focus here will be on the Project plan, wherein the timeframe for different tasks and the functional specification which depicts the functionality and flow of the app in detail will be decided.
Development: Once the foundation (project plan and functional specs) are set, the developers can then start coding, testing and publishing. There shall be proper documentation of how the development will progress, and what entities, data variables, and coding procedures will be used throughout the project.
Testing for stability: The phase will test the application for bugs, errors, stability, quality and purpose. There are different approaches for testing, for instance, testing side-by-side with the development is called Test-driven Development.
Staging: is the phase where the release candidate is assembled, tested and reviewed in a website environment similar to the production environment (actual hardware and software in which the application will be used), before moving it to production. This is where the final testing will be performed, adding no new features.
Production: This is the final version of the application presented to the end users. This version of the website application won’t change until its next update is ready after proving to be stable in the staging environment.
Security: Know, design, develop and deploy software with secure features. Many software security vulnerabilities are not coding issues, but are design issues- “Lessons Learned from Five Years of Building More Secure Software”. Security is as crucial as the usability, performance, reliability, or scalability of the application.
Support scheme: Providing support for your application is equally important. Give your clients the ability to contact you, for instance, define procedure call in case of emergencies like application failures, mishaps, or downtime. Ticket tracking system, where requests are identified by unique codes, is a good example of support scheme.

A plenty of smart tools available today help by automating several aspects of website application development mentioned above, making the job much easier than it was before. So, there you have the tools and the wireframe to plan, design and develop your next web application. If you need further help in planning or developing your next software application, be it a website or mobile app, our software experts can help!

The retail industry is one that constantly strives to stick to margins. It’s a live or die scenario for most retail companies these days, with their managers struggling to maintain their costs low and revenues high. That’s a pretty hard thing to maintain, considering the level of competition in the industry. Every retailer is always on the lookout for ways to lure more customers into their nets while at the same time keep their costs in check. And technology has always been a means for them to achieve both these goals.

Technology spending in the global retail sector is predicted to reach $203.6 billion in 2019. Ever-changing customer expectations are forcing retailers to digitally transform their businesses. Customer experience, inventory management, supply chain management and the like are some areas where technology is being used and improvements are being made. For example, wireless technology is something that has played a huge role in transforming the retail industry, by allowing devices and people to communicate with one another from anywhere in the world. Although, its adoption has been limited by a number of factors like security concerns, deployment costs etc.

Considering the race for retail companies to bag the most number of consumers, it is almost inevitable that they make use of technology if they have to stay ahead. It is indeed important to adopt new technologies in retail business, as customers always go for maximum ease and efficiency when it comes to shopping, and if you fall short, you are just going to get phased out.

Just like customer experience and supply chain management, there are various aspects in retail where you can leverage technology to increase productivity and profits. Here we discuss few such areas, where you can make use of technology and streamline your business.

Related Read: Top Tech Trends Every Retailer Must Implement NOW

Point of Sale (POS) AND Payments

The physical location where goods are sold to customers – the point of sale – was traditionally the place where customers used to stand in line for hours to make a purchase. But studies have shown that in long lines, one out of ten customers would leave without making a purchase. Long lines may also cause resentment among customers which makes them less likely to visit the store again.

Using technology can help prevent these issues in several ways. For example, with the help of handheld computers, scanners and printers with integrated credit card readers, the point of sale can be made to be fully mobile and hence a lot faster. During times of high sales, these mobile POS terminals can be used throughout the store at several places so that customers can get their stuff billed at any of those counters quickly.

Moreover, the sales personnel with these handheld POS terminals can also process transactions while moving through checkout lines in order to accelerate the checkout process as well. For customers with lesser products, their transactions can be completed while they are still in their lines. For other customers, their products can be scanned with a barcode scanner while they are in their line and tickets can be printed with prices along with a master barcode for the entire merchandise.

On reaching the counter, only the master bar code needs to be scanned for the total price. This eliminates the need for the checkout clerk to process each item individually, thereby hastening the entire process.

Contactless Payments

Contactless payments are one of the most beneficial technological advancements in the world of payments. These help in making check out processes faster in retail stores as well. Contact payment systems are basically credit cards, debit cards, smart cards or even devices like smartphones and tablets that make use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies to make secure payments. They have an embedded chip and an antenna that allows users to simply wave their card over a reader at the POS terminal, and make their payment.

They don’t even have to sign a receipt or enter passwords or PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) as is the case with normal debit or credit card payments. This eliminates the need for customers to deal with the problems of handling cash or remembering their PINs. Also, speeds up transactions, which makes it one of the most preferred means of making payments for customers.

According to several pieces of market research, it has been found that sales volumes have increased as a result of fast transactions in a number of retail stores. A report by Chase shows that the time spent by customers at the POS is reduced by 30% to 40% and according to an American Express study, contactless transactions have been found to be 63% faster than cash and 53% faster than a traditional credit card transaction.
Hence, it is needless to say, how much of an impact contactless payments can have on improving business.

Customer Service

When it comes to customer service, one of the areas where the most number of issues arise, besides long lines in checkout is regarding the lack of store associates to direct customers or give more information about their product or store. This is where technology comes in handy. Self-help kiosks can be placed in stores, where the customers themselves can access product information, store information, inventory information (both for that particular store as well as other nearby stores in their chain), store directory (so as to locate what product is placed where) and the like.

Many retailers are already using such self-help kiosks instead of additional sales associates, which have helped them save a lot on costs. Some of these also have “get help” buttons, which alert nearby store assistants when pressed, and enable customers to talk to them through their voice-enabled Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Such kiosks allow customers to find answers to their questions on their own without having to look around for store assistants, thereby improving customer service.

E-commerce sites

Another area where technology can be leveraged to improve customer service is online shopping sites. Various improvements such as rotating and interactive product displays and other kinds of personalization are already helping retailers deliver a more delightful shopping experience online. Such personalized online experiences put together with in-store personalization provides customers with the most satisfying experience.

Augmented Reality

Some companies like IKEA, are also providing added services through their catalog, by making use of augmented reality to give customers a virtual view of products such as furniture in a living room and the like, so that they can make better decisions when choosing a product. Augmented reality is one of the best ways to improve customer experience and increase sales.

Customer Feedback

In-store feedback – one of the most effective ways to measure customer satisfaction can be made more effective with technology. Retailers can have wireless tablets and notes placed in their stores that offer easy-to-fill feedback forms for customers. Customers would always be happy to fill feedback forms if offered incentives for it, like gift coupons and discounts.

Related Read: Ways to Leverage Smart IT Solutions for your Retail Business

These are just some of the ways in which technology can be used in the retail business to improve profits. Even though a lot of these technologies are not being adopted by a number of companies due to various reasons, it is pretty clear now how important they are. As a matter of fact, with time a lot of the traditional methods in retail are sure to get phased and you will be left with no option but unfamiliar technology.

Relying on a proficient technology solutions provider like Fingent can help grow your retail business by integrating technology. Get in touch with our consultants today to map out the right technology solutions that provide your retail business a competitive edge.

Inventory Management

Management of inventory, both in-store as well in the warehouse has always been a major area of expense for retailers. Merchandise must be entered into inventory, tracked on movements and removed from inventory, on being sold. Also, real-time inventory information needs to be available in stores so as to plan the purchase of products, as and when they go out of stock. A total inventory management system that is integrated with the POS can put things in order to a large extent.

As the products are sold through the POS, they also get removed from the inventory and are updated across all systems that use such inventory information. A large clothing retailer makes use of hand-held computers or kiosks integrated with the central inventory system, which can be used to place orders to the warehouse. This is to directly deliver a product to a customer’s house because it was not available in-store when the customer asked for it.

In shipping, wireless barcode scanners can be used at the receiving place to enter stock directly into the inventory, as they get delivered, with the warehouse location of the items also being able to be tracked instantly. Many retailers are already using DEX/UCS (Direct Exchange/Uniform Communication Standard) to allow the delivery people to directly enter invoices into a store’s accounting system, thereby simplifying billing as well as accounting.

Price Auditing

Price auditing has always been a time-consuming process for retail companies. Looking up price labels on products and verifying them with the prices charged to the customers is definitely a hard thing to do. With wireless devices like a tablet or a notebook, the store associate can check the price labels of all the products by scanning the shelf labels using a barcode scanner. These devices can be linked to the store’s central database of products which are also linked to the POS terminals in order to track the prices of products being sold. If there are any differences between the POS prices and the database prices or the shelf prices, corrective action can be taken immediately. Hence, accurate pricing can be achieved and a lot of time can be saved, plus it adds to the trust factor for customers as well.

These are just some of the ways in which technology can be used in the retail business to improve profits. Even though a lot of these technologies are not being adopted by a number of companies due to various reasons, it is pretty clear now how important they are. As a matter of fact, with time a lot of the traditional methods in retail are sure to get phased and you will be left with no option but unfamiliar technology. 

Here is a video of the smart malls of the Future:

SAP, which stands for Systems, Applications and Products is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system by SAP AG, world’s largest inter-enterprise software company based in Germany and the fourth-largest independent software supplier in the world. The basic idea of SAP was to enable employees/customers interact with a common corporate database for a broad range of applications used in companies. SAP applications have the ability to store, analyze, retrieve and process the enormous corporate data from production, operations, Human Resources, finance, distribution, and other business processes in the company. In 2015, SAP concentrates on five major market categories: Applications, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and Database & Technology. SAP provides its products and services to more than 296,000 customers distributed in 190 countries that span small businesses to large multinational leaders, like IBM and Microsoft.

Why SAP?

• Medium sized companies face the challenge of limited resources (IT staffs, budget, and skills) and therefore, need to balance between appropriate levels of business value, functionality, support, and costs.
• Gartner forecasts that BI, performance management, and analytics will be widespread by 2020, unfortunately, midsize businesses are still struggling to go beyond fundamental reporting and analysis.
• With their very limited resources, midsized businesses will need an all-encompassing system that is affordable, easy and capable to support the company’s growth and efficacy.
• Increased adoption of mobile, Big Data (increases at over 40% every year), social networking and cloud computing in enterprises have all necessitated the need for change from the traditional technology stack being used in companies.
•  Customers are seen to spend less on hardware and services, and are heading to software-based innovation, social or collaboration technologies in cloud.

SAP adapts all these changes and lessens the weaknesses, making people centric cloud applications that cross the traditional boundaries of enterprises. These enable ubiquitous mobile friendly scenarios that empower new business models in developed and emerging markets. These solutions help to increase visibility into the business via real time notifications, reporting etc., which in turn favors better planning and forecasting of processes. It allows businesses to streamline their business processes through proper standardization, better performance and provides deep insights into their business.

SAP has numerous “run your business” products, for example, SAP Business Suite that is an integrated and diverse set of software modules for running businesses of any size; SAP Business-All-in-One that is a packaged set of software modules pre-configured for small and medium sized businesses with about 450 employees; or SAP Business one, which is a software package for small businesses.
According to CMI analysis, the market opportunity of SAP Business All-in-one is expected to rise up to $65 billion worldwide in 2016, across all its five market categories. SAP Business All-in-One, for instance is a very strong solution that satisfy the requirements of medium sized companies by integrating with their core ERP and innovations (SAP HANA Live, Fiori, Mobile) combined with local expertise and industry best practices. It is an ‘all-inclusive’ solution for medium sized companies that will significantly reduce the need for add-ons, reducing the costs and complexities, and accelerating implementation. It has flexible deployment options to satisfy capital and operating structure needs that includes subscription based hosting and deployment to the cloud.

SAP Pricing
Let’s consider for example, SAP Business Suite, the installation of which primarily requires 2 license models that are offered separately: a software license and its associated maintenance and support services. The software license is paid at the time of purchase. These licenses are perpetual without restrictions. The license fee varies according to the modules installed and the hardware the company currently runs in. The support and maintenance services provided by SAP for its licensed software are done for a recurring fee.
SAP business solutions has base ERP foundation and can be extended with application extensions as required by the industry vertical or line of business processes that are to be supported. Licensed third party products from SAP are generally considered as SAP applications and the maintenance and support of such applications differs from the SAP maintenance and support mentioned in previous paragraph. Third party software license included as a part of SAP products are required to use these applications in association with SAP software.
SAP licenses its software through a combination of Named user licenses and Package licenses. SAP pricing therefore encompasses per application licensing costs and per user licensing costs. Now, Depending on the package being licensed, the application licensing costs can vary depending upon a number of factors like: Application Module, number of employees, number of orders, revenue, Master Data Objects, number of plants or locations, number of customers, flat fee, and number of Users. Any user using the licensed packages needs to have the appropriate Named User license with different costs and capabilities. For instance, the Named user license cost and permissions for a developer will be different from that of a service user.
SAP Business Suite then requires a licensed, SAP compatible database which can be obtained from SAP or other third party vendors (Oracle, Microsoft, etc.). The costs of these databases vary based on factors like its features, size, number of cores, number of current sessions, memory of server and number of users. It should be then configured according to the SAP applications deployed in the business, with necessary server memory, hardware availability and processing power capabilities.

How to calculate Contract Price?

1. Add the list prices of SAV relevant price list items to determine the SAV (SAP Application Value): SAV is determined separately for discounted and non-discounted price list items and excludes all non-SAV items.
2. Apply the correct percentage to SAV to calculate the Database price. Calculate the discounted and non-discounted part of the database price separately.
3. Determine list price for the non-SAV items (items that don’t contribute to the SAV): the list price subtotal for discountable and non-discountable non-SAV items is performed separately.
4. Determine the Total list price: The sum of above three values (which is the sum of discountable and non-discountable part of SAV, database price and the non-SAV value).
5. Based on this total list price, calculate the Standard volume discount percentage.
6. Calculate Contract Price: apply the above discount percentage to discountable part of the total list price and add this result to the non-discountable value of total list price.

For a mid-sized company offering services, having about 250 employees (~100 users), a SAP Business All-in-one solution can cost around $579,700 USD including the SAP software, implementation services and Hardware. This will include modules like, financial accounting, Controlling, Materials Management, Sales, Manufacturing, Research & Development, Services, and Cross Functions and Analytics. Each of these has its own sub-modules, for example, in the Financial Accounting module the submodules covered by SAP All-in-one solution are: General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts payable, Period end closing financial accounting and Asset accounting. Similarly, you can calculate the SAP All-in-one solution estimate for different industries of different size.
What we said above is just a rough estimate; generally the cost of the business management software you opt depends on how you deploy it, covering 5 major areas like: Deployment model (where you can pay upfront), Software Licensing (costs vary according to the number of users and access types required), Implementation (Cost varies according to business requirements), Hardware (depending on your current hardware, you may have to plan budget for upgrades or new equipment), and Maintenance: maintenance and support services, upgrades, new releases cost etc.
At Fingent, we have helped enterprises start, manage and master SAP and non-SAP solutions using solution manager platforms, to improve their operational efficiency and lessen the business challenges. If you wish to automate your IT processes with SAP services, and would like to know the detailed structure, costs of implementation or any related information about it, get advice from our SAP experts.

Image credits: 360b / Shutterstock.com

There have been major changes in the way software and applications are built in software companies. Enterprises have moved beyond the conventional waterfall development model to more flexible Agile development environments. The whole idea of agile development methodology is to manage change incrementally and effectively in software and external functionality, and to speed up the development of quality software. And a major challenge here is to provide quick feedback on the change introduced in the software and the impact of it. The cornerstones of a proper agile approach to software development are early testing, rapid feedback, and effective communication.

Load testing in agile environment
Load testing is feeding the system with largest/ toughest tasks it can operate with, to see if the system can endure the stress. Historically, in waterfall development model, load testing gets pushed to the end of the project, assuming that only minor tweaks will be required to meet the performance criteria. With agile, load testing should be carried out often, and incrementally. But due to lack of adequate, trained and dedicated testing resources, lack of flexibility of load testing tools, lack of proper criteria, or due to infrastructure limitations or the common misconceptions among people around what’s possible with load testing and performance testing, these often get pushed to the end of agile development process.
Unless employees get beyond the following testing myths and delve deeper into the process, and realize what all is possible with today’s performance testing capabilities, we can’t do justice to the fully agile concept. So, here are the common misconceptions that employees should get rid of, to drive their testing initiatives deeper into the agile environment.

Myth #1: Load testing is all about breaking the system, so, unless the system is fully developed, load testing can’t be attempted.
Load testing is like a full-throttle, threshold limit or peak-usage stress test. Thus, in a way, people think of it as forcing the entire system to its breaking point. So, unless the entire system is built, how can you break it? Naturally load testing can’t be fitted into the small, iterative batch of Agile; thinks most of them.
You can help dispel this myth by creating a suite of modular performance test scenarios for common queries and crucial transactions. Performance test can be carried out in individual modules as easily as functional tests are done. Performance tests should work alongside functional tests with every sprint. This will prove that there’s lot more to performance testing than its objective mentioned previously, and will unveil the different ways it can fit into the usual Dev-Test-Ops cycle.

Myth #2: It’s risky
Load testing might sound risky, but, it is always safe to run a controlled test than to let the system fail under scenarios which were easily preventable and thereby avoid putting your reputation, revenue and users in jeopardy because of it.

Myth #3: It takes a long time in Agile
This can be a valid excuse if you push the load testing towards the end of the project, but in agile environment, the process of creating and executing the test at scale needn’t be that complex and time consuming. Think about the requirements upfront and put performance SLAs (Service Level Agreements) on the task board. This will help to automate basic testing processes. In fact small, iterative tests with incremental objectives allow testing in equal or much less time.

Myth #4: Developers needn’t concentrate on Performance until Functionality is complete
One of the key ideas of Agile programming is to find issues early and fix them fast and at lower costs, which is why we find a lot of testers learning to code, and adopting trends like automated tests and test-driven programming. This helps them run tests alongside development. The same is expected from load testing. Isn’t it always better to find errors or issues right when the code is written than to skim through the entire program to find a tiny line of problematic code at the end of development? Many back end interfaces like, Web services or SOAP open up opportunities for testing performance along various application paths even before the app functionality is completed.

Myth #5: Load Testing Doesn’t Involve the Whole Team like in Functional Testing
Earlier, we had a single individual or a group dedicated to conduct specific tests like the performance testing, but in an agile environment, everyone is a Tester (or developer) and all members contribute in every phase of software development to achieve the quality end product. Though there are testing experts and QA specialists, developers are still made to write their own test cases and similarly, operation specialists can identify issues and work to fix them.

Myth #6: Load testing is unnecessary if we do thorough testing in lab
Testing in a lab environment is good for testing the app, but it doesn’t cover the broader infrastructure. Many a times, we have seen serious, unexpected issues cropping up outside of the apps. Load testing in production can’t replace lab testing, but it reveals issues that other tests can’t, like, Database issues, Network bandwidth issues, unbalanced web servers, App server issues, DNS routing problems and Firewall capacity issues.

Myth number #7: The right load test tool will do everything for me
You can’t trust on tools to do every task perfectly, however smart the tool may be. You will have to do certain basic tasks yourselves like, setting up meaningful KPIs, realistic master data, creating valid, repeatable test cases, realistic master data, analyze the results, etc. Eliminating the human involvement completely during the test might reduce the confidence in the code you deliver.

Myth number #8: Load testing is too manual
From the previous point, it’s sure that you have tools to automate certain aspects of Load testing, so that the test isn’t completely manual. There are so many ways you can automate load testing, it’s just about choosing the right processes to automate.

Load testing can reveal functional problems in the code that can’t be otherwise detected using single-user tests. However, unless you make load testing an integrated part of the development process, you can’t completely say that you have an agile development methodology, nor can you extract its benefits.

Ok, so we’re all very well acquainted with our friend, the web browser. It has helped us with so many things in life, answered so many of our questions (well, technically it is Google, but nevertheless), and kept us entertained. It simply became a huge part of our lives. And how?
Through its well-built web applications. Our web browsing experience is influenced a great deal by these two factors, the web application and the web browser. And over the years, we have seen a hell lot of improvements in our browsing. The kind of browsing experience we have now is not something we imagined a few years back. To explain how it has changed, let’s take a quick look at how web apps used to be in the past.

While growing up

Ever since the introduction of the web, browsing worked something like this; when you type in the address for a web page, the browser requests for the page, say for example “Fingent.com”, which causes a server somewhere on the internet to find and create an HTML page and send it back to the browser. Back then, browsers weren’t all that powerful and HTML pages were basically just static and independent documents, so this set up in the back end worked well. Later on, Javascript (the programming language) came to be used, which allowed web pages to be more dynamic. Even then, web pages used nothing more than image slideshows and date picker widgets.
After several years of technological advancements in computing, the web and the web browser have evolved so much that, it has become a platform for fully featured and rich applications. With the introduction of HTML5 standards, put together with fast JavaScript runtimes, developers have been able to create richer apps that used to be possible only with native platforms.

Single page apps

Much later on, developers started building full-fledged applications on the browser using JavaScript and its advanced capabilities. Single page apps (like Gmail for example), were able to react or respond immediately to user actions without having to go to the server to bring up a new page. Such applications used libraries like Backbone.js, Ember.js, and Angular.js, all of which come under the client-side Model View Controller (MVC) architecture model.
In this case, the mass of the application logic (like views, controllers, templates etc.) lies in the client side and communicates with an API for data. The server, which may be in any language like, Ruby or Python, handles the creation and serving of an initial bleak HTML page. Javascript was the basic and traditional language of the web browser, and computations were directly performed on the user’s machine. This was called “client-side processing”.

Such apps were actually very good for the user as all they needed was the initial loading time. Once that was done, then navigation between the pages would become pretty easy and smooth without refreshing the page and it even supported offline browsing if everything was done right. Even for the developer, such apps were perfect, as there was a clear cut division between client and the server and there was not much sharing of logic required between the two (which are often in different programming languages), which facilitated the smooth workflow.

However, there were a few flaws in this perfect approach for web applications:

Trouble for the spiders

An application that works only on the client side is not capable of serving the web spiders or web crawlers. Web spiders are automated programs or scripts that run to search the web in an automated and systematic manner. The process is called web spidering. A lot of search engines and even sites use this process as a way to provide up-to-date data. What they basically do is request the server for a page and interpret the results. If however the result is a blank page or an undefined page, then it is of no use. Now, as such apps cannot support web spidering, their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will be poor or not up to the mark by default.

Slow applications

If the application is requested for by the user, and if the server is unable to provide the full HTML page and hence waits for the JavaScript on the client-side to do so, then it causes a delay in loading the page by a few seconds, which could actually cause huge losses. There are several statistics that prove how drastically sales get affected as a result of a slow web application. Need I say more.

Apart from these, there were several other minor limitations like for example, as there was a clear distinction between the client and server sides, there were chances for duplication of application logic and data, such as formatting of date and the like. Such things were more problematic in case of huge and complex applications.

THE SOLUTION

With all the above-mentioned limitations, there was a need to find a solution that surpassed these issues and yet maintained the efficiency and smoothness of client-side application logic. Thus emerged Isomorphic web applications developed using React.js.
A word about React.js first – It is basically an open source JavaScript library used for creating user interfaces for web applications. It intends to overcome the issues in developing single page applications and is maintained by Facebook, Instagram and similar communities of individual developers.

An Isomorphic application is one that can run on both the client side as well as the server side. The code for an isomorphic application can be used or shared by the front end and the back end. A major difference in such applications that make them much better than other applications is the way they process requests. An initial request made by the web browser is processed by the server and all other subsequent requests are processed by the client side.

Now there are a number of benefits associated with Isomorphic applications due to which they are rising in popularity and becoming a huge hit among developers as well as users. Let’s take a look at some of these benefits:

• Speedy– Isomorphic apps are faster to provide HTML content, as the request is not always handled by the server-side. Only the initial ones reach the server whereas subsequent requests are handled by the client-side. This makes browsing faster and more efficient. Moreover, as opposed to common Single Page Applications, where the first request is used majorly for loading the application and then further steps to gather the required data, Isomorphic apps have fast first page processing and even faster further processing.
• Versatile – New devices, as well as old devices, can browse Isomorphic apps, as they return HTML which is compatible with every device, irrespective of features. Single Page Applications returned tags that contained JavaScript which proved to be a problem with older devices.
• SEO Friendly – Isomorphic apps are supportive of web crawling and hence contribute to better SEO. And from 2014, Google can crawl JavaScript applications as well.
• Less Code – As the code is shared between the client side and the server side, there is much less code required as against Single Page applications. This makes it a lot easier to develop as well.

Another major factor is the fact that Isomorphic apps can be easily maintained. As there is no need for duplication of application logic between the front end and the back end, it makes handling of even complex applications much easier.

A lot of these benefits make Isomorphic apps very popular among developers, as they all point in one direction – that is, making development easier. They also give the expected results, and that put together with less coding, makes it a favorite among developers.

As for the users, speed and efficiency are the essential drivers. If you have an application that loads fast and gives excellent features, what more do you need?

The future

Node.js seems to be becoming mainstream with most organizations around the globe. This means that it is slowly becoming inevitable that web apps share code between the front end and the back end. Isomorphic JavaScript is essentially an array that may start with simple sharing of templates and then go on to even handle an entire application’s logic. Applications that live on the traditional back end can also use Isomorphic JavaScript by creating sensible APIs and making it exist along with Node.js. Thus, “Isomorphism” is slowly but surely taking over browsing and soon, there will be a time when not a single advanced web app exists, that does not make use of some JavaScript running on the server.

Tiny flaws

Just like any application, there happens to be a little flaw with Isomorphic apps as well. It’s just that debugging is a bit of a problem for such apps. There is probably a need to use separate debuggers for the server side and client side of the application. Like for example, for the server side, a node.js debugger would be sufficient while for the client side, maybe the web browser’s debugger would do. It depends on the kind of application as well.
Another possible difficulty could be in managing the settings on both sides. For example, the setting for the server side such as API keys and for the client side like the hostname of resources used such as CouchDB, could vary according to the production environments and it could be quite a task managing them.

Conclusion

Just like any other application, Isomorphic applications have their own share of advantages and disadvantages. In spite of the minor flaws, these apps are definitely increasing in popularity with each passing year because of its ease in development and speed. It is an exciting technology that comes with the option of various isomorphic libraries available, that can be chosen according to the scenario. What do you think about Isomorphic applications? Share with us in the comments below.

Developers and Testers: Two people from two different planets working together to deliver a quality product to an “Alien”! Funny isn’t it?! The story is more or less the same in every software firm. A developer works hard to develop a product, which he handles with so much care and gentleness; a tester works hard to break this code handling it in the worst possible cases and scenarios to test its defects, resistance power, and strength.
So, when a developer finally hands over his much-nurtured sprint to the merciless team of testers, ready to execute the ‘out of the box’ testing, this is what happens:
o User Interface element alignment?                                                      Off!
o Inputting special characters instead of string?                                Unknown result!
o Putting 01 for a range from 1-10?                                                           Crash!
o Entering a date in the past?                                                                    Crash!
o Working with special characters in names like, Neil ’O?                Nope!

And there they silently demolish the code….

Sandpapers scrape and scratch, but to create polished surfaces!
So, there is this formidable wall between developers and testers most of the time, which stops them from having a sustained smooth association. There are many reasons attributed to this silent difference in opinions. For instance, developers are often seen to possess parental attachment to the stuff they create. It’s more like; “I know my kid, he wouldn’t do that”, when the reality is, the kid actually did just that! It might sound silly, but a good programmer should learn to be more objective and accept the fact that they have to do terrible things to their code. Because, if they don’t, others will!

Another problem is, developers have little or no idea how their code is going to be handled at the other end of the boundary wall, and thus they aren’t ready for the million bugs that testers backfire at them. Being in the developing environment, which usually revolves around positive scenarios of how to make things work efficiently, they often lack the ability to switch to ‘what can go wrong’ mind state.
Programmers are pros at breaking down complex scenarios into small programmable chunks; ‘The Computers’! – What can be a better example to support that statement! Can you imagine, the computers do all their work with just 0 & 1, the binary numbers and some operations on these, like OR, AND, NOR, NAND, NOT, XOR and XNOR! On the other hand, testers are experts in finding complex scenarios, where they can probably uncover a glitch to break the system!
Thus, the million justifications, silent cursing, and muted murmurs before finally reaching “The end product”! Though these are the situations, the product keeps gaining value from the combined efforts of programmers and testers. And that is how self-resistant codes are born; after all, testers care for their end product, you see! And it’s for developers to realize how their application can flunk in million ways, any time!

Developers with Testers- the perfect wedding!
Though organizations often make efforts to improve the communication between developers and testers, this is often not enough. If only their thoughts cross these barriers and start thinking somewhat within the same boundaries, can we expect super conflict-free Apps! (Pun intended)
It’s always a good idea for programmers to sit through some training/seminars that test engineers attend. A Developer who has attended such seminars is found to avoid making silly (yet common) errors and is often more vigilant. Moreover, a programmer’s awareness of testing tools, methods and processes goes a long way in enabling smooth and fast testing practices. He learns to stand in tester’s shoes while writing codes, to understand what in his code can probably be a tester’s target, what changes he makes will give testers a tough time and what makes it easy, thus making the entire process productive. For instance, any coder might not find it an issue to change a button label from, say, “Clear” to Reset”, but a developer who has sat through the testers’ seminar/ training can probably understand why this silly button label change affects the testing and how it can be frustrating to his colleagues in Testing.
The developer can thus create applications keeping in mind the worst cases that his code can go through, or gets tested in. He will eventually learn to make discipline around testing (or breaking) his own creation- his own code, which indeed makes him a better programmer. So an out of the box thinking is always good! Also, testers need to understand that everything changes with time, and so are the cases with software development too. It doesn’t make sense to change/ rebuild the code every time there’s a change, but the efficient solution is to encourage programmers to make wise changes in their code than to frequently change it.

One team- One goal
In hybrid agile development environment like ours, we handpick Engineers from departments, to form a dedicated team working together throughout the lifecycle of a particular project, with the single goal- the final release! I say ‘Engineers’ and not testers, designers or Business Analysts (BAs), because everyone in this team is a developer, and contributes to the development. This ensures that there are no separate groups (like developing group, testing group, BA, etc.) coming into play at various stages of developing a product, but a single team dedicated to every phase of the product development- from day 1, Sprint 0 to the Release of the End Product! This practice guarantees that the resources and their time are fully and efficiently utilized at every phase.
For instance, with the beginning of a new project, from day one, that is, the initial product backlog creation stage, you have a team in place, consisting of testers, QA experts, developers, UI designers, DBAs and analysts gathering at every SCRUM meetings, to discuss and contribute to everything they may not be directly involved in. Even before the development of the product starts, that is, at the programming estimation phase, testers start writing test cases, estimations etc. for features that will be developed, BAs do the requirement analysis and stuff, Developers plan and decide on features, and so on. At each SCRUM meeting, the team determines how it shall accomplish the work that needs to be done. This way, not only everyone has tasks throughout the sprint, but also knows and understands the roles, responsibilities, hard work and effort taken by each member. Thus, they learn to respect, understand and get on well together to work as a REAL POWERFUL TEAM!
Ultimately, we know the entire team has one single goal- “A Quality product”! It’s just that the developers and testers take entirely different paths to get there, just as in the much-admired Love stories!

“Quality in a product or service is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it”. – Peter Drucker

I couldn’t think of a better explanation for the importance of service excellence than this, by the renowned business management consultant, Peter Drucker. As rightly put, service excellence is achieved when the customer or the client is most happy or satisfied with your product or service. But then again, how exactly do you achieve it?

Service excellence is an on-going journey. The better you get at what you do or deliver, the higher you will push your bar to get even better at what you do. You keep building on service excellence. I’m talking about building on your customer service excellence here. So how can you go about building on service excellence?

Here are 5 tips:

1. Communication – This is a bit of a cliche when it comes to quality of service. As already mentioned, customers need to be most happy. And one of the major factors to ensure that, is communicating with them. By communication, I don’t just mean after sales service. You need to keep a certain level of constant communication with your customers. In other words, engage with them. It builds trust and thereby loyalty. You can have various ways to engage with your customers like special events, contests and feedback. Feedback is one activity, which not only helps in customer engagement but also helps you in knowing what your customers think of you and work on the areas where you need to improve. The more you communicate with your customers, the clearer your goals become.
2. Closeness – Another aspect of communication is closeness. Yes, the better you know your customers, the better you can serve them. You need to be knowing their needs, interests and expectations more than anyone for that matter. Ideally, you need to exceed customer expectations if you want delighted customers. And to exceed their expectations you need to know them today. If you get close enough, you can even predict their behaviour to some extent and you will be able to serve them proactively. Now, that is a whole new level of service excellence.
3. Transparency – At no cost should you compromise on transparency. Be it in terms of pricing or product or service related information or anything that is relevant to your customers. Basically, you should refrain from doing anything that might cause distrust among customers. If your customers are dissatisfied, it will reflect on your possible prospective customers as well. So, there’s more at stake than meets the eye. Transparency adds to the trust factor and the benefits of that, as you know, are manifold.
4. Value addition – This is an extension of the principle of exceeding expectations or proactive customer service. The idea is to give your customers more than what they asked for, in terms of value. You need to add some value while providing services and for that you need to go that extra mile, pay attention to all the details, give in more than a 100% and ensure complete efficiency. You need to make your customers feel important and valued by serving them better. Following this mission of value addition in all your projects, will take you one step closer to excellence.
5. Standards – You need to have customer driven standards, which are realistic, measurable, attainable and time bound. By customer driven standards, I mean, ones which are determined after careful analysis of the feedback from the customers, as well as of customer behaviour through constant engagement with them. The standards so set should be implemented and measured as well, after which you can take steps to improve on them. Based on your evaluation of standards, you will find areas on which you can improve and hence set new standards.

All these are factors which basically add to the satisfaction of customers which, in turn reflects quality in the service you deliver. On the whole, it is pretty clear that it is the customers that help you achieve the goal of service excellence and the more you engage with them, the more they are satisfied, and the more you achieve.

Field service management software is becoming increasingly popular these days. With it’s advanced features of scheduling and dispatching and of course integration with mobile devices, there is no reason why managers like you would prefer anything else.

Now, mobile integration is one of the main advantages of field service management software. Without it, the whole purpose of the software to make field service management easier and faster for everyone, will not be properly served. Even a system with features like scheduling and reporting, will not prove to be very useful in terms of increased efficiency, if it’s not mobile integrated.

So, what exactly is the need for mobile integration in field service management software?

In the earlier developed, on-premise field service management systems, there was centralization of information and reporting but it required the field agents to re-enter the information they collected from the field through paper documents. Moreover, apart from a mobile phone to call, there was practically no way the managers could reach the agents and vice versa.

All these problems can be solved with mobile integration of field service management software. Here are some other advantages of mobile integration:

Back-end Service Knowledge Access

Technicians or field agents while at their work can look up manuals or diagrams available in the backend through the mobile integrated field service management solution and determine the best procedures for repair or even determine the parts or tools required for the repair. Even though your field agents may be experts, they could use tools and techniques that would help them complete their job in a better way. They could also make use of the history of repairs or warranty information etc. of a particular customer’s asset available with the solution to better help in their work. Moreover, they can access customer accounts for billing functions etc.

Transparency and Communication

Gone are the days when you did not know where your field agents are or what they are working on. With the help of mobile integrated field service management systems, you will be able to get real-time job updates and even location information. They also enable real-time communication between the field agents and the managers so you are always ready with information for your customers, as and when they call.

Efficient Data Collection and Accounting

As mentioned before, field service management systems that were not mobile integrated required the field agents to enter work related information twice. Such redundancy of data led to wastage of time and effort thus decreasing productivity. Mobile integration enables the field agents to enter data directly onto the system thereby saving time. Moreover, some solutions offer advanced features like payment processing which allow your agents to collect payments too. All of these digital records further enable smoother accounting and auditing.

Real-Time Scheduling

Routing and scheduling features are the main highlights of any field service management system. But when you have them integrated with a mobile device, you can allow your agents to view their schedules while they are at their work so that they can plan their work accordingly. Based on the location information of an agent, the routing feature helps to plan an optimized route between all the sites that are pending for a particular agent. That way,work becomes systematic and productivity is increased as more work orders can be attended to per day.

All these features make mobile integration for field service management solutions inevitable if you want to increase productivity. Your field agents are the representatives of your company and they reflect the quality of your service. Hence, if they perform better, your customers will be more satisfied. In order to stand ahead in satisfying your customers, you need to have field service management software with all the mentioned features and mobile integration.

Contact us to develop a field service management solution just for your Business.