In fact, more and more different opportunities appear today in the branch of digital transformation in healthcare industry.

According to a recent survey by Deloitte, around 60% of respondents consider their organizations are only midway through their journeys. However, Accenture has discovered: over 87% of executives agree that the healthcare industry and tech strategies it implements have already become inseparable.

Why digital healthcare is important, what benefits it can bring for the health industry and its consumers, and what future digital trends should we expect there? In this article, we’ll get it covered!

What Is Digital Transformation In Healthcare?

As for the healthcare industry, the term digital transformation means how the organization makes use of technologies, people, and processes for delivering more sustainable value to patients, healthcare professionals, and the medical organization themselves. In other words, that’s more about the employing of innovative approaches and advanced technologies to get the most benefits of the industry.

The recent research by Deloitte demonstrated that around 92% of healthcare units expect to achieve better performance from the patient-centric business development model.

It means enhancing the treatment quality and service approaches, better laboratory analysis, and advanced approaches to medicine selection to cure a specific disease.

With this said, the digital healthcare transformation has forced radical changes in medical services. So, let’s now review the real examples of digital transformation in healthcare.

Main Examples and Use Cases of Digital Healthcare Solutions

So, digital transformation in healthcare makes a detailed overview of how the medical units diagnose, monitor, and manage patient health. Its main goal is to implement innovative healthcare IT solutions to optimize the major workflow processes and compliances, improve patient service while reducing costs.

For this purpose, let’s now take a look at how digital healthcare is already used in medicine.

1. On-Demand Healthcare Solutions

During the past decade, society has become more mobile, which makes more and more organizations keep abreast of cutting-edge technologies, especially those from the healthcare field. Instead of tethering themselves to one company, professionals become more eager to work for multiple medical facilities at a time.

For this purpose, the Nomad Health company has launched a platform that links doctors directly with the healthcare units for short-term work.

It enables physicians to provide the so-called “on-demand” medical services to the patients, and only if it matches their expertise, experience, and working schedule. Thus, the doctors become more flexible in offering medical services, and can effectively adapt to the patient’s evolving needs.

2. Telemedicine & Virtual Visits

One of the most notable changes in healthcare is the growth of virtual doctor visits. It enables meeting the specialists at the most comfortable time and from nearly anywhere, which is much more time and cost-efficient rather than an in-person hospital visit.

Based on the research, around 83% of surveyed patients are ready to use telemedicine, which has become even more popular after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020.

This strategy has been already used in Brigham Health hospital network (Massachusetts, USA), where the patients can use virtual visits on a regular basis.

They can schedule appointments, communicate with doctors via video chats using phones or PCs, receive detailed prescriptions on their emails, and more.

Due to the Brigham Health recent survey, more than 74% of patients feel the virtual visits positively impacted their interaction with their doctors and healthcare institutions as well.

3. Patient Portals

Another great trend the transformation healthcare solutions feature is creating the specific health care platforms where the patients can:

• Review their health records
• Check the prescriptions
• Schedule the appointments with the specialists
• Ask for a consultation or get additional information from their doctors
• Receive the laboratory results
• Share their health data with the healthcare provider

And that’s only a few options available on the healthcare platforms for patients. At the same time, this system enables quicker and more convenient access to electronic health records and significantly reduces the burden for the medical staff.

A great example of patient portal technology use is the FollowMyHealth system. It covers the most essential features we’ve already introduced above and also can be used by the doctors of general medicine and those of more specific healthcare areas.

However, this digital innovation in healthcare is still in its early stages of use. According to the patient surveys, over 40% of participants say that these systems are still too confusing, their interface features are difficult to interpret and use.

4. Health Wearables

At present, people have become more conscious about their health: they’re not visiting a doctor when they get sick, instead, they’re always looking for effective yet convenient ways to track their health metrics.

Basically, that was the main reason why we’ve seen a tremendous increase in the sales of wearable medical devices. The digital transformation in healthcare enables tracking the various health metrics and providing accurate health data in real-time. Some of the common types of health devices include:

• Heart rate trackers
• Exercise & fit (duration, type of activity, distance, calories burnt, etc)
• Sweat meters (for tracking the blood sugar – an essential routine of diabetics)
• Oximeters (for monitoring the oxygen carried in the blood – used for the patients with COPD, asthma, severe cases of COVID-19, and other respiratory illnesses)

One of the most popular wearables introduced on the device market is Apple Watch. The smartwatch was first released on September 9, 2014, and so far can track the heart rate and exercising, reminders about drinking water or washing hands, used for recording the body temperature, weight, and periods. This data, in turn, can be later used by doctors for analyzing the health metrics, diagnosis, and more.

5. Disease History Analysis

Nowadays there are more and more tools that analyze a patient’s disease history in order to give doctors recommendations about the treatment outcomes. An example of such a solution is the company BostonGene. The BostonGene’s algorithm conducts a profound analysis of a patient’s previous conditions and offers a personalized treatment plan that would potentially deem the best results.

Core Advantages of Digital Transformation in Healthcare

In fact, digital healthcare solutions provide plenty of benefits for all the patients involved, as well as the medical institutions they’re been used by.

With these innovations used, the physicians and hospitals can speed up their workflow, get more accurate patient data and health metrics, and build up a more effective treatment in a shorter time. All these factors can significantly impact the outcome, of course, for the better.

After you know the most popular and up-to-date technologies and trends implemented nowadays, it’s time to briefly review what benefits they can bring to the healthcare enterprises and their patients correspondingly.

Advantages of Digital Transformation for Healthcare Organizations

So, what profits can medical institutions get from digital transformation in healthcare?

• Optimized workflow – digital healthcare can eliminate the paperwork, reduce the time needed for the patient examination and enable easier, more convenient access to accurate patient health data.
• Better interaction with clients – provides effective online communication with patients via chats and video calls.
• Reduces the costs – the processes automation allows providing more cost-effective services and cuts off the spendings required in traditional healthcare services.
• Create a secure database for the electronic medical records – the EMH platform enables accessing the encrypted patient health data, as well as its on-demand sharing with other specialists and laboratories.
• Advanced communication with medical staff – used for more accurate patient diagnosis, faster data exchange, and other internal communication.

Advantages of Digital Transformation for Patients

And what patients can get with the digital healthcare solutions implementation?

• Better, more personalized healthcare services – the use of digital healthcare enables more accurate health diagnoses and more effective treatment as well.
• Easier access to personal health records – patients can track and manage personal health data and receive a detailed analysis of their health metrics online.
• More convenient appointment scheduling – enables choosing the most convenient date for visit and planning the time ahead.
• Better communication with doctors online – get the professional health services online via chatting or video calls, receive the detailed prescriptions and treatment strategy on the email or on their personal portal page.
• Tracking the important health metrics in real-time – with the use of digital healthcare wearables.

As you can see, there are plenty of benefits digital healthcare solutions can bring to both healthcare providers and their clients. The only question is when the industry will be able to make the most of healthcare digital transformation?

Finally, since digital health technologies are only starting to evolve, in upcoming decades we’ll probably see even more tech adoptions into healthcare.

Forthcoming Digital Trends in Healthcare Industry

Currently, the medical centers and huge medical enterprises need to review their business strategies and include the new opportunities and innovative solutions provided with digital transformation in healthcare. So, let’s now briefly review which aspects of digital transformation in healthcare providers should consider today:

• Remote workforces utilization. Enables hiring more talents regardless of the distance while also expanding the competition within the health industry.
• Healthcare units collaborations. Effective for sharing the usage statistics, critical health cases, as well as the experience exchange.
• Unified data exchange platforms. Useful for interaction with multiple organizations in the healthcare industry, including laboratories, hospitals, and insurance providers.
• Healthcare chatbots. Critical for improving the interaction with clients, providing the critical information in real-time, and optimizing the internal workflow (automated appointment scheduling, essential data updates, and more. Additionally, the patients can get instant feedback about the most common questions asked, which reduces the workload of medical staff.
• Digital health environments for new startups. Important for accelerating the health digital projects with the advanced use of advanced technical training and business coaching.

These are only a few of the major trends in digital healthcare for the next decade. However, implementing these solutions to the medical enterprises can significantly enhance the entire industry performance!

Final Thoughts

To sum up, digital healthcare technologies are still in their early stages of development but have already shown their perspectives and proven their efficiency.

With the automated transformations healthcare implements, it becomes possible to enhance the performance of healthcare units, improve the productivity of the medical staff and deliver the advanced services to the final consumers – its patients.

The use of innovative solutions and digital technologies in healthcare opens up new opportunities for enhancing this industry in the upcoming years, and shaping a modern, more effective, and automated health service system.

Our team, at Intellectsoft, knows how essential it is to follow and implement the latest digital healthcare trends for the medical units. Thus, we try our best to deliver the most powerful tech solutions that exactly fit the needs and goals of any organization and its workforce.

Are you looking for the best team to bring your new healthcare project into reality?

Talk to our experts now and uncover how your organization can start benefiting from the digital transformation in healthcare today.

The post Digital Transformation in Healthcare [Tendencies and Innovations 2022] appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In 2017, we at Intellectsoft had a customer who asked to make an MVP (“minimum variable product”) on Flutter, a commercial cross-platform app development kit from Google.

The decision to invest in MVP is a common stage in software development, serving as a proof-of-concept and an early app version with the main features included. Our task was to create an MVP to show off to competitors, not accelerate the development process or cut expenses.

Flutter was new to the market, so the app development experienced inevitable challenges. In conversations with the client, we mentioned the rawness of the development language, problems with possible scaling, and lack of tech talents acquainted with this development platform. But the customer still wanted to try.

Unfortunately, all the predicted challenges came to light. The project was hard to scale and lacked the required resources due to low business priority.

For Intellectsoft, the takeaway from this case is straightforward: technology is not an end in itself. The well-built development strategy brings business benefits. And so, the choice between native and cross-platform tools depends on your business aims too.

5 Main Differences of Native vs. Cross-Platform App Development

1. Responsiveness. Since native code accesses the device’s internal resources directly, native apps generally demonstrate better performance.
2. Value-for-money. Cross-platform apps are made faster and cheaper.
3. App stability. In a long run, native apps demonstrate more stability and work well for long-term projects.
4. UI/UX design. Generally, native apps are more attractive and effective in terms of user interface and user experience.
5. Safety. Native app development deals with encrypted and obfuscated infrastructure, while cross-platform apps need extra measures to ensure security.

What Is Native App Development?

This type of app development deals with the platform’s native language and native APIs/frameworks to link to internal functions, meaning Java or Kotlin (with its JDK) for Android and Obj-C or Swift (on its SDK) for iOS.

Thanks to these specifics, native apps provide a better user experience, demonstrate higher performance, and can be personalized. Moreover, access to the devices’ features allows building complex yet stable and secure functionalities.

7 Advantages of Native Development

1. Smooth work. Native technologies connect with the device’s functionality, which makes processing fast and steady.
2. Compatibility. Thanks to seamless integration with hardware, native apps can take photos, track locations, and add events to the calendar.
3. Safety. The minimum of layers and technologies make native apps secure.
4. User experience. In terms of UX design, native apps can have sophisticated layouts, greater personalization, and engaging animations users like.
5. Easy-to-use SDK. For developers, native app building possesses numerous tools that make the process faster and cheaper. In this regard, software development kits are extremely helpful and streamline the development process with up-to-date and mostly ready for implementation parts of code and libraries. In case something is not clear, it’s easy to find and understand the technical guides and official documentation.
6. Optimization. Native apps don’t overload the battery with complex processing, and users can use them longer.
7. Maintenance. Updates like AI, IoT, and adding extra features and easy to implement on native apps.

3 Disadvantages of Native Development

1. Expensive to start. Although native apps possess value-for-money in a long run, the initial cost of their development is high. Each platform requires separate investment, and the development expenses are generally 30-40% higher than going for the cross-platform app development option that covers all the devices at once.
2. Time to market. Native development is complex and requires more attention on each stage, which delays the date when the app is ready to launch.
3. Different codebases. Android and iOS app development are completely different, and the developers need to duplicate each feature by using two separate codebases. Because of this, native app development requires two separate teams at times.

Best Cases of Native Apps

Thanks to its benefits and efficiency indicators, native app development is highly popular these days. You can find native apps among games, messaging platforms, and navigation tools.

Among the loudest examples of native apps, there are:

• Spotify
• Waze
• WhatsApp
• Pokemon Go
• Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg initially invested in a hybrid app, but soon recognized the mistake and build a native version for iOS)

What Is Cross-Platform Development?

You need a single database to build a cross-platform app running on several devices. Due to this advantage of repurposing, the development itself becomes faster and cheaper. The majority of code, meaning 70-95%, can be reused in another platform, which makes building for Android and iOS smooth.

In this regard, React Native, Flutter, Ionic, and Xamarin cover the most tasks for both operating systems. According to Statista, Flutter is the leading framework for cross-platform development, covering 42% of the market. Next is React Native, possessing 38%. The full picture is shown in the table below.

Source: Statista

4 Advantages of Cross-Platform Development

1. Repurposing of code. Cross-platform apps are easy to adapt to multiple devices thanks to 80% of code that can be reused.
2. Cost-effectiveness. Cross-platform development cuts costs and saves time on the development stage, compared to native development.
3. Fewer developers are needed. The development is not complex, so you won’t need to recruit separate teams to build Android and iOS apps.
4. Access to a broader audience. Cross-platform apps are the best option to showcase your app to more people and/or the new market.

4 Disadvantages of Cross-Platform App Development

1. Unstable performance. The general usability of the codebase comes at its cost. The lack of specification sometimes causes delays.
2. Simplified UX. Compared to native apps, some features and layouts are unavailable for cross-platform apps. In this situation, the elaboration on the cross-platform user interface is very important for getting satisfactory results in terms of user experience.
3. Relying on external libraries. As there is almost no support to SDKs, developers can face difficulties in integrating new features.
4. QA is a must. Without several rounds of testing, cross-platform apps are likely to disappoint users with numerous bugs, safety issues, and incompatibilities.

Best Cases of Cross-Platform Apps

Many famous brands go for cross-platform app development when there’s no need to concentrate on a single platform. Among the well-known examples, there are:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• VLC
• Adobe Reader
• OpenOffice

How to Choose between Native and Cross-Platform App Development?

After clarifying the key features and functionality behind each development type, the question of picking the most appropriate one is easier.

Factors to Consider Native Apps:

• Mobile-first service
• Plans to make money with an app
• Strong competitors in the niche
• Your business is big
• Your app is a game
• Your app will have complex features and needs access to the device’s hardware
• You care about top UX

Factors to Consider Cross-Platform Apps:

• Minimal budget for development
• Need to enter both Android and iOS
• Testing ideas
• Quick launch to market
• You are a startup
• You build an MVP with minimum features

The post Native vs. Cross-Platform App Development: How to Pick? appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Another thing companies should consider is a huge tech talent shortage trend that has been fueling the tech industry in recent years. Basically, these are the core factors that enhanced outsourcing the IT services and dedicated developers by various tech companies and IT organizations.

In this article, we’ll talk about the common problems of outsourcing, its main failures, and the most effective practices of how they can be avoided.

It’s time to start!

Why Outsourcing Fails?

Along with implementing the evolving technologies, it becomes more challenging for the companies to develop the whole spectrum of innovative software solutions directly in-house. That is why companies try to build an effective strategy of hiring a dedicated team of developers using the outsourcing approach.

However, it’s not that easy as it seems: according to Deloitte, “outsourcing as a concept is changing from making it run to making the change happen”.

This means you have not only to implement this system but also get the benefits of its performance, as well as successfully resolve the possible issues you will encounter in the process. For instance, the most frequent problems of outsourcing can include:

• insufficient communication between the organization and outsourcing vendors
• the lack of trust with the outsourcing providers
• low expertise in optimizations and improvements
• inadequate risk evaluation and wrong development strategy
• the irresponsibility of outsourced staff

In fact, these are only a few issues that can result in multiple outsourcing failures of any organization. However, if you still think these are only the minor problems of outsourcing that can’t impact the overall situation, the following statistics from Forbes may change your mind: up to 25% of all outsourcing corporations fall within 2 years, and around 50% can fail within 5 years of relationships.

Now, let’s look closer at the potential IT outsourcing failures your company should be aware of to succeed.

Common IT Outsourcing Failures Your Company Might Encounter

After we know why outsourcing fails, it’s time to analyze the potential issues you might face when implementing the outsourcing model into your business. As a part of our discussion, you’ll also learn more from the outsourcing failures examples of the world’s largest companies!

#1 Neglecting the Needs of Your Target Audience

Modern software development is all about delivering the best tech solutions that fully surpass consumer expectations. That is why any sort of product should be customer-centric and provide the most relevant features that resolve specific problems of your target audience. Otherwise, you’re at risk of failing to recoup the financial investments.

One of these outsourcing examples was Subbxi – a tool for generating the subtitles, that has not been published on AppStore after its release. The problem was that the client hasn’t done the research to ensure the app will find its audience.

How to avoid this failure: This IT outsourcing failure can be avoided if the customer-centric basics are strongly baked into the project, always targeted during the planning processes, and clearly outlined in the documentation.

This way you can not only improve the quality and performance of your IT product but also clear out what you expect to get with your product, and why these are important.

#2 Insufficient Communication

The next thing to consider is establishing the communication channels you’ll use to reach the IT outsourcing providers. In fact, the lack of communication can significantly impact the quality of the final software product and cause a list of issues that need additional inputs, which consequently lead to additional expenses on the IT services.

That is why it’s not enough to only implement outsourcing services to your business. More critical is to always track the progress and timely initiate the changes in the process of developing.

How to avoid this failure: To prevent this outsourcing failure, define the communication channels and the frequency of the QA sessions in advance, and also employ the person in charge of the project’s development. The project lead should be the exact mediator between your company and the outsourcing team and be ready to resolve all the issues.

#3 Lack of Clarity

One of the most popular IT outsourcing failures to avoid is the lack of clarity when planning the project and its actual development.

Remember, the outsourcing team will focus on the project documentation when creating the tech product. And, if the outline doesn’t have the clear requirements and instructions of what you expect in the result, you’re likely to get the product that needs further improvements.

How to avoid this failure: To prevent project delays and overpaying for the additional work of your IT outsourcing team, it’s better to state out the clear requirements, goals, and features your product should include. This trick can minimize possible errors and improve the process of software development.

#4 Poor Planning

Another common issue of outsourcing failures you might encounter is insufficient planning – a more global problem if compared with lack of clarity. Poor planning can impact not only the projects your developers are entrusted to create but also the entire process of coworking with your outsourced team.

How to avoid this failure: The detailed analysis of the outsourcing examples has shown that considering the detailed performance of your IT outsourcing team at each stage of the product development is one of the core things to succeed.

For instance, you can start by clearing out the time frames, who and how the progress will be evaluated, as well as the various workflow organization aspects like developing tools, specific requirements, and approaches that are to be used in the process.

#5 Low Quality of Tech Expertise and Inadequate Outsourcing Price

Before the start of any project, it’s essential to find out more about the expertise of your offshore development team. If neglected, this can result in the waste of your time, efforts, and resources needed to get this staff onboarded and when you’ve finally understood that’s not the vendor you want to work with, you need to start all this process all over again.

That’s exactly what happened with the MarketingHelpNet company, which hired an offshore web designer who didn’t possess the required web design skills for creating the functional product, and as a result, the project failed.

How to avoid this failure: Before contracting the vendors, it’s essential to check the references and technical instructions your developers are going to work with. Additionally, to ensure you’ll choose the experienced tech talents for your project, it’s important to research the vendors at a reasonable price and research the case studies before signing the contract.

Guide to Hiring the Best Tech Talents

Having analyzed the major outsourcing failures, let’s now briefly summarize how to find the best talents in the tech industry:

• Build an MVP first to estimate the project value
• Compare different providers, the services they offer, and their prices
• Provide a clear understanding of your product from top to bottom
• Pay attention to the project planning and processes organization
• Set up the realistic deadlines
• Build reliable communication and stay in touch with your developers
• Focus on value over cost, since it may impact the final product performance

With having all these points considered, you’ll certainly succeed in hiring the best IT outsourcing vendors for your business.

Bottom Line

As you can see, analyzing the main IT outsourcing failures is one of the key approaches to succeed for your company or business. Hiring a dedicated development team that features advanced expertise in specific product development, possesses vast experience within the scope, and is ready to contribute to the project success are the must-have options to obtain when considering software service outsourcing.

At Intellectsoft, we completely understand these basics and always look for the most beneficial project optimization opportunities within various industries to make your business out of competition.

Looking for your best team for the next project of yours? Talk to our experts and uncover more insights about IT outsourcing and how you can make the most of it from day one!

The post Tips on How to Avoid IT Outsourcing Failures appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

For the construction supply companies, construction inventory management is simply the must, when it comes to dealing with lumber, flooring, steel, concrete, mortar, or other construction supplies – tracking all these materials can often impact the success of any construction project.

In this article, we’ll go deeper into construction inventory management systems and why it’s important for any business. As a part of our discussion, you’ll also uncover the main benefits and core features to include in the inventory management system to make the most of its performance within the scope you’re working in.

Let’s get it started!

What Is the Inventory Management System?

An inventory management system is the specific type of software that allows tracking the goods throughout the supply chain, from purchasing and production to the final product release. In other words, it governs how you approach inventory management for your business.

Inventory Management System in the Construction Industry

The construction inventory management software is the technology that enables inventory tracking within the construction industry business.

Simply put, it has purposes similar to listing the various building materials in an Excel spreadsheet but is interpreted in a more time-efficient and search-optimized way. For instance, it can generate reports of the construction materials used, alert when the stock is low, supply detailed inventory history, and more.

Thus, the business can quickly experience the enhanced visibility and smart automation of the specific sorts of materials that are in stock or require replenishment.

Main Benefits of Construction Inventory Management System

After we know what an inventory management system is and how it works, it’s now important to uncover the core business benefits of inventory management system within the construction industry. Below you’ll find the main advantages of implementing this technology.

#1 Update Anytime and From Any Device

Inventory tracking on different remote building sites is often challenging: it usually occurs on multiple conditions and in nearly any location, that is usually placed far from the main offices.

With having the inventory management software for construction downloaded, the employees can easily track any kind of inventory, assets, and work tools. All they need is just to scan the barcode labels on the items, no administrator help is needed!

Additionally, this software enables checking the activities of the different teams and provides the most important project updates in real-time.

#2 Track the Equipment and Tools Maintenance

Needless to mention, the tools and equipment for construction are always in heavy use. To track how often each piece of them is applied to the specific process and

how much costs you’ll need to maintain them, managers can also make use of construction material inventory management software.

With the assistance of that type of technology, it becomes easier to schedule upcoming maintenance activities and regularly keep the equipment in good condition.

Furthermore, the proper implementation and use of an inventory management system allow companies to plan the new projects from both logistics and financial points of view, ensuring that all the tools can be used for as long as it’s possible.

#3 Make Reservations and Manage the Tools’ Usage

After the project is finished, construction managers still need to run the internal documentation regarding the tools’ utilization, their conditions, where it is, and who used them. This information is exceptionally important for the detailed planning of the upcoming projects, enhancing the workflow, and identifying the possible bottlenecks.

#4 Keep the Documents Organized

Since the construction managers usually work with various systems when supervising their projects, it’s also important to obtain a united system that provides the access to uploading and managing project documents.

The feature-rich inventory management system for construction company enables keeping all the certifications, permits, sitemaps, etc within a single system.

This feature allows not only optimizing the entire workflow but also significantly reduces the paperwork and eliminates the time needed to move from one site to another within a few clicks.

#5 Simplify the Procurement

As you’ve already figured out, inventory management in construction industry is all about planning, project management, and working with materials. The supply of critical materials and tools that are out of stock is another factor that can result in huge timing delays.

Applying the specific inventory management software for construction can easily resolve this problem, as it allows ensuring all the tools and materials are ready for use. For instance, you can:

• Receive alerts when the inventory goes below the reorder point
• Create the purchase orders
• Auto-populate the inventory with the new items ordered
• Save the specific notes to the tools or materials you’ve supplied earlier and more

Thus, this feature of the construction inventory management system enables automation of the major purchase orders required for your employees. Easy, fast, and stress-free!

The Most Required Features of the Inventory Management System in the Construction

For most businesses, developing customer management software is more cost-effective and beneficial rather than implementing third-party technology. And, when it comes to creating the inventory management software for the construction industry, it’s significantly important to define the main features this system should possess for a convenient yet productive workflow.

Let’s now define what features should you include in the upcoming construction inventory management system for your business:

• Stock alerts and reminders scheduling – for the timely supplies of construction materials and tools
• Check-in/out equipment and supplies with the in-built system scanner – to easily track the inventory, and add the new tools and materials supplied recently
• Multi-user access – for updating the inventory information anytime and within any location
• Activity history tracking – to assign, manage and track the employee performance
• User permissions management – to ensure the employees are authorized to access only the specific sorts of data
• Tracking across multiple locations – to rapidly locate and trace the inventory regardless of its location
• Bulk import of CSV tables – for effective yet quick inventory data import
• File export (using CSV, PDF, and more) – to easily generate the reports and get the documents ready for the further work
• Adding tags and notes – for the advanced inventory management (for instance, to add the critical information regarding the supplier or material, specific equipment utilization notes, and more)
• Cross-platform interface – to access the system from different devices

All these features allow creating a powerful construction inventory management system that can significantly enhance the core processes of construction inventory management, from the material and tools tracking to its further utilization and additional supply.

Get Your Custom Feature-Rich Solution from Intellectsoft

The developers from Intellectsoft are aware of the latest trends in the construction industry and are always ready to provide you with the best technological approaches.

The ideal inventory management system software must not only include the main construction inventory management features but also provide a user-friendly interface, feature-rich toolbar and be easily employed in the key workflow processes of your organization.

Are you ready to create one for your business? Our experts are here to deliver the best IT solutions for you!

Conclusion

Now that you know that construction software development is simply the must-have technology for any business within the building industry. The inventory management software for construction allows optimizing the workflow, getting the most updated inventory information, and keeping all your documents organized within a single system.

Our professional team of dedicated developers at Intellectsoft knows how essential it is to create powerful software solutions that will enhance the construction inventory management of any business.

Are you planning to develop custom software for your organization? Talk to our experts today and uncover the best software solutions that ideally fit your business goals!

The post All About Inventory Management System in Construction appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Disaster Recovery

Cloud Provider Infrastructure

Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure have these features inside:

• Availability Zone (AZ) — the physical location of the data center and its physical location. The high level of accessibility comes as the result of deployment in different availability zones. The distance between availability zones should be 100 km max.
• Region — the clusters of neighboring data centers with high-speed connectivity. Again, high availability comes as the result of this feature. The distance between regions should be 300 km min.

Because of regions’ peculiarities, the chance of simultaneous outages is minimal. They also have unique identifiers. For example, it can be westeurope (signalizing the West of Europe location) or eastus2 (which means it’s in the east of the U.S.). In terms of the blue-green deployment, “blue” and “green” examples have different region identifiers, which ensures their isolation from each other.

For more details on the features of cloud providers, please read the official documentation.

Azure Front Door

Traffic routing is the key stage of the failover process and blue-green deployment. Frequently, the developers use an option to adjust DNS records for the new users’ needs. But the risk of having a broken instance after the record adjustment remains unsolved in this scenario, increasing the downtime anyway.

Numerous cloud offerings can solve this problem, introducing the abstraction concept between front-facing URLs and backend services. With them, client apps will address the front-facing URLs in any traffic routing scenario. Microsoft Azure is such a solution. For more information, read its official documentation.

Why we chose Azure Front Door (FD) for the solution:

• HTTPS traffic and application-level routing for traffic come right to the API and the asset storage.
• It deals with failover scenarios
• It serves the needs of a global service perfectly.

Here are the FD rules:

• “Blue” and “green” instances are accessed directly
• The system is accessed generically, pointing to “blue” or “green” instances after deployment. This configuration can be changed, enabling routing to the problematic instance in case of disaster recovery.

Here are the ways to route the users during deployment or disaster recovery.

Data Replication

Changing applications and their data require different approaches during deployments and failovers. An app upgrade usually happens by replacing old files with new ones within its set.

But changing data requires a more sophisticated approach, as it’s generated by users on top of the existing application. In case of introducing a new file format to the app, you’ll need to conduct data migration during the deployment.

When it comes to failovers, you need to ensure reliable storage for the existing data. In case of traffic redirection to another app in a different region, you need such storage in both regions at once so that the data serving remains stable in a new region and the system remains up and running after the first region becomes totally down.

The data types used in the system:

• structured data (Azure SQL Database)
• assets (Azure Blob Storage).

To reside data in two regions in parallel, we recommend adopting the replication approach, where changes in the primary location get an automatic reflection in the new one. To get more information on databases, read the official documentation. Also, it’s useful to check out the guide on Azure Blob Storage here.

Failover Switches:

• Primary and secondary instances of Azure Blob Storage and Azure SQL Database
• System’s connection strings to the database and assets storage to include the information to the new primary instances
• The Azure Front Door rule for another instance.

During outrages, the Powershell script is the tool that enables the sequence of these actions. If the system’s lifetime is around a year, no records on outrage occurrences are available. That’s why having a working and well-tested failover procedure is the key mission-critical element for the system.

Security

Azure Active Directory

Modern systems frequently face user credentials storage problems, and their third-party solutions are sophisticated and costly (like introducing passwordless login, multi-factor authentication, etc). However, they introduce the Single-Sign-On scenario, which works well for a one-entry user experience of logging in once and getting access to the entire systems set.

Azure Active Directory is such a set of systems that can be leveraged by a sole Azure Portal. Besides, it doesn’t keep any user’s credentials, as admin access manages this information too.

Secrets Management

Secret is the apps’ compilation of sensitive information for getting access to external API, database, or any other credentials-storing service. Using Vaults helps here: the system with Microsoft Azure hosting can adopt Azure Key Vault service for satisfactory data security.

In the beginning, the system doesn’t store sensitive information in the repository but simply reads it from the Key Vault. Only selected people have permission to read and write secrets after proving to the client the need to request some keys from the third-party services. For more details on how Azure Key Vault works, read its official documentation.

Managed Service Identity

After Key Vault setup, the system can access its secrets. In case several users get permission to get the API key from the repository, they will have the same access levels to Secrets Management by default. For identity “personalization,” Microsoft Azure has an option to create the Managed Service Identity. Read more about this feature in the official documentation.

As for the next steps, you can assign the Azure App Service identity so that the system gets full access to the secrets, with no need for storing extra credentials in the code repository anymore.

Web Application Firewall

The remaining security element to review is Azure WAF. Same as for the previous elements, adopting ready-made systems is the best practice in this case. The greatest advantage is stable defense in front of the most frequent cyber-attacks — and with the real value-for-money.

In technical terms, a pre-configured WAF instance analyzes the system traffic that comes through the Azure Front Door. It checks and automatically blocks suspicious requests, without the need for extra coding. The service possesses a set of rules that follow the security standards (like OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities), upon which you can build your own custom rules for certain patterns.

A blocked request comes as the result of WAF-verification failure. In this case, a user sees a 403 error, which prevents the system overload and minimizes the possible damage in the case of an emergency. For more information about Azure WAF, check out the official documentation.

Business Advantages

With all the above-mentioned technical enhancements, the company gets the working tools to quickly react to the market changes and remain stable.

New entries and data processing operations we’ve described significantly facilitate data management and analysis, providing you with the needed level of control over your IT infrastructure. The data inputs come quickly, the updates happen automatically, and notifications to all the stakeholders are sent instantly.

In a long run, this investment enables establishing a proactive approach to serving clients and improving the quality of your data-driven decisions. And all this comes for fewer man-hours and with the real enhancements in the bottom line!

The post How to Create Custom Software for Financial Analytics: Intellectsoft Experience (Part 2) appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

That’s the challenge Intellectsoft accepted to build a tailor-made software solution. For a leading world’s investment fund, we’ve made an Infrastructure as a Code platform with financial analytics tools like blue-green deployment and constant delivery.

While building a solution for financial data analytics, software providers should recognize the uniqueness of each tech task, ensuring the presence of required functionality and security features. In this financial analytics solution challenge, we had to include disaster recovery, information replication, managed service identity, web app firewall, along with other features.

Among other factors, the platform type affects the number of features, and we adopted the appearance of the solution to Microsoft Azure Cloud in this case.

Obviously, this platform is not the only option to deliver the required functionality — Google Cloud also works for disaster recovery, for example — but Microsoft Azure Cloud, as a fully managed cloud, worked better to address the existing business performance challenges, safety requirements, and compliance needs.

This choice was also good for our developers, helping them to accelerate the deployment, hosting, and scaling of the system and its functionalities and APIs.

What’s Inside the App Box?

The financial analytics app we’ve built addresses the need for accessible data analytics that works with information from multiple sources. The solution visualizes the results in an easy-to-use way, meaning generating various graphs, diagrams, tables, and images. Also, the app enables sharing reports with stakeholders as Excel files.

The software takes over numerous tasks analysts struggle with once do them manually. The list includes working with files, filling spreadsheets, unifying the results, and drawing actionable insights. The machine supports all these processes to facilitate the work for specialists.

Even more, the custom app automates the majority of data processing after its development completion. This way, the owner got the opportunity to save time and nerves on managing the project, as employees can see the assigned tasks and distribute the key data in the Excel file format right in the system.

The inclusion of historical records also enabled conducting truly in-depth research, taking into account the variety of users and responsible roles, along with data consistency.

Challenges

Intellectsoft considers the specifics of existing IT infrastructure while building digital solutions. For this financial data analytics challenge, we conducted all-around research for accurate project scope determination. We chose Microsoft Azure Cloud as the platform that facilitates hosting for upcoming integrations, especially over the long haul.

Services Included:

• Azure App Service (API hosting)
• Azure SQL Databases (data structure)
• Azure Storage (assets storage)
• Azure Storage (static website hosting that works for web apps based on the SPA approach and React.js technology)
• Security services, routing, and other functionalities (more details below).

Azure Pipelines

For the inclusion of the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) concept, Azure Pipelines work the best. Being an integral part DevOps system, these platforms provide the space for numerous exceptional features and utilities, making data analytics in finance usable, efficient, and truly reliable.

For instance, Azure Pipelines support several pipelines and manual approvals, eliminating the great number of human errors. The platforms enable maximum automation for all the processes and operations  — wherever possible.

Hosting & Data Storage

Frequently, software systems struggle with network bandwidth and poor app performance. In this regard, the ability to access files in Azure Blob Storage directly, thanks to the presence of the shared access signatures (SAS), creates the basis for reliable file storage. Check out all the technical details in the official documentation — or review our overview of the essence of this approach below:

• The file is a must for client application
• To download this file, the client application needs to send the request to the API
• In its turn, API validates the request, considering permissions and other relevant perspectives
• Once approved, API creates the SAS and sends the direct URL with the SAS back in a file
• The client application uses the URL, enters Azure Blob Storage, and downloads the file

(Software) Engineering

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery Concept

The essence of the CI/CD concept is “built once and deployed everywhere,” which means that it’s possible to use various environments to deploy the revisions from every single VCS branch.

The greatest advantage of this approach is the development process acceleration. What’s more, the project becomes more predictable, as each building process generates an immutable artifact that is ready for deployment in development, testing, UAT, and production environments. The artifact contains all the needed information (like built code, dependencies, assets, etc) inside.

Once the artifact passes the deployment process (CD), it experiences changes in its environment-specific configuration settings. With the new configuration values, it enters the cloud right away, without extra verifications of the system.

It’s possible since the unification of environments eliminates the need for top-level checks. Because of this, everything works even if a developer decides to download the artifact on a local PC. Simply put, there is no “works on machine” problem, and the app version will be the same in any environment.

Infrastructure as a Code

Making a financial analytics app requires developing an infrastructure. As the system evolves, its infrastructural elements and configurations change but the codebase remains the same. In this process, missing or wrong configurations are quite common, causing problems for the system’s performance in the live environment.

Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) is the solution to these development and deployment problems. In this infrastructure type, cloud resources get code descriptions and storage place in VCS — as if they are the parts of a system code. When the time for deployment comes, the deployment pipeline conducts the needed changes and creates code for additional cloud resources that appeared during the development stage.

Then, the app is moved to the new resource, following the same scenario for deleted resources or renewed configurations. Everything unnecessary automatically goes to the bin, and everything important will be reconfigured. IaC is stored in the VCS, which means preserving version records and code reviews.

IaC adopts various technologies: Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Pulumi, Terraform. In this list, Terraform serves the system requirements most accurately, gaining popularity thanks to multi-cloud (and beyond-cloud) support.

The presence of Terraform code both in the VCS and the deployment pipeline lets the developers work without the production infrastructure itself. Even more, the common problems, drawbacks, and troubleshooting processes won’t bother.

Blue-Green Deployment

Having everything automated doesn’t eliminate the possibility to make a mistake completely. This app code can cause severe problems to the business — especially if they appear in the core system components.

That’s why we supported the release with the Blue-Green approach to deployment. For this, we created two distinct app versions that run simultaneously in two instances (the production itself and the production candidate). This is how the development itself happened under this scenario:

• Production candidate environment gets a new version for deployment
• We checking the production candidate for issues
• Routing traffic (real users) is reverted from the production itself to the production candidate
• Changing the environments for the production itself and the production candidate.
• After shifting the roles, the next deployment stage starts.

In practice, people don’t use “production itself” and “production candidate” terms, but simply call them “blue” (for production one) and “green” (for production candidate). After the new deployment stage, the titles will change: “green” will become the “production one”, and “blue” turns into the “production candidate.”

There is one more reason behind working in two environments, referring to the recovery process and failover from the Azure outages. We’ll describe the details in the next part of this article.

The post How to Create Custom Software for Financial Analytics: Intellectsoft Experience (Part 1) appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In 2021, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) in their annual ranking of the world’s best outsourcing companies has named eleven tech companies based in Ukraine, considering customer reviews, certifications and awards, solutions approach, and the basic social responsibility projects of each.

Being listed in these and lots of other international rankings, Ukraine is now one of the most attractive yet prospective outsourcing destinations for the world’s largest and most renowned corporations. The level of proficiency and comprehensive list of tech skills obtained by its developers makes more and more companies switch to Ukraine software outsourcing.

The latest analysis by the State of European Tech has shown that Ukrainian tech raised around $571 million of investments in 2020, and due to the increasing demand in digital transformation, these numbers will only rise further.

In this article, we will uncover why IT outsourcing in Ukraine is so beneficial to businesses, what scopes the Ukraine developers are best for and how to find a reliable outsourcing vendor and hire the best software developers in Ukraine.

Let’s get it started!

The Emerging Popularity of Ukrainian Outsourcing: International Rankings

As we mentioned before, Ukraine has been recognized as one of the world’s best IT outsourcing centers.

By 2025, the overall number of Ukraine developers will reach 250,000, with an overall IT market value of $8,4 billion.

At present, the country had gained compelling positions in numerous international tech-related rankings, including:

• 20th position in the AT Kearney Global Services Location Index
• 2nd rank in the 2020 Global Innovation Index by Wipo
• 1st position for Science & Technology in the Good Country Index
• 1st position for Innovation Input to Output Performance in Global Innovation Index 2020 

These are only a few software development outsourcing Ukraine statistics that justify the tremendous popularity of its professional specialists on the global IT market.

Main Services to Consider for Outsourcing Software Development in Ukraine

Before we’ll dive into the pricing of outsourcing software development in Ukraine, it’s critical to investigate whether or not its developers can fully correspond to all the needs of your company, organization, or business.

Needless to say, it’s no use hiring developers that are experienced in creating the software for the hospitality industry for your eCommerce business. Furthermore, bad hires like choosing the wrong software vendors can result not only in time or progress loss but also can cost millions of dollars for contracting authority!

So, what basic projects can Ukraine developers be hired for?

Custom Software Development

First of all, the strong side of IT outsourcing in Ukraine is developing powerful software solutions for nearly any business from any industry. Do you need the proof? Then, you might check out the famous startups like Petcube, Grammarly, DepositPhotos, and more – originally created in Ukraine, these software solutions are now widely known all over the world.

Whatever project you’re planning to launch, with Ukrainian software developers you’ll surely get the stablest, feature-rich yet effective applications you’ve paid for.

Internet of Things

Any type of IoT device always implies the usage of personal data, which traditionally needs comprehensive protection to minimize the possible threats. Unlike the other outsourcing vendors, Ukraine developers are more competitive in the global outsourcing market because of their extensive experience in working with the personal data of EU, UK, and North American citizens.

Along with governmental personal data regulations of Ukraine (ISO), each company tracks the regulations of the client’s country, ranging from GDPR (EU), PIPEDA (Canada), and HIPAA (USA). At the same time, clients can also initiate the additional data protection requirements: how it’s collected, stored, accessed, and transferred.

One of the well-known IoT projects of Ukraine developers is Ajax System, an IoT security ecosystem that provides wireless security equipment for private and business use.

AI Technology

In 2020, Ukraine has become one of the leading countries by the number of Artificial Intelligence providers in Europe. According to Clutch, at present, there are over 150 organizations targeted on Artificial Intelligence development, which precedes the number of AI companies in most technologically advanced EU countries like Poland, Estonia, Belarus, Germany, and more.

So far, there are over 30,000 software developers in Ukraine specializing in AI & ML development. The Ukrainian software developers have a strong knowledge of Scala, Hadoop and Python technologies, which are considered to be an integral part of Data Science and Machine Learning.

Mobile App Development

If you’re looking for good, experienced app developers, outsourcing software developers in Ukraine may be the right option for you. These programmers perform exceptionally well in creating solid, feature-rich yet functional mobile apps according to all the requirements and your business needs.

Besides, these services are delivered at comparatively low prices: with the average hourly rate starting from $20 to $60, the cost of making an app with the basic features starts from $5,000. In contrast, the same in the USA will cost you from $10,000 – 20,000 and around $18,000 – 20,000 in Great Britain and Western Europe.

Additionally, Ukrainian software developers feature the best ratio of quality and price, provide flexibility in communication and cooperation, and offer innovative solutions that exactly fit your business needs and goals.

Blockchain

At present, blockchain is a comparatively new and innovative technology that requires building solid and functional solutions and is now used in a wide range of fields: financial industry, supply chains, government, healthcare, retail, and more.

However, if choosing a non-experienced vendor for the project in any scope, companies can fail in blockchain technology implementation and get a serious loss of the investments and even the critical data as well.

Hiring blockchain software developers in Ukraine can enhance the security of any type of data, as they have:

• the in-depth knowledge of the major blockchain services
• vast experiences in working with different platforms, such as Bitcoin, Etherum, HyperLedger Fabric (for private corporate networks), and EOS (introduced by Smart Contracts)
• blockchain development language skills, including Go, Rust, Python, C++, and Solidity

With this technology implemented, your business will get more transparency and enhanced traceability for your data, reduce costs and eliminate transaction speed.

Rates for Outsourcing Software Development in Ukraine

Being one of the leading IT outsourcing centers in Eastern Europe, hiring Ukrainian software developers can be a winning strategy for a variety of businesses from different industry scopes. The most popular industries they are involved in include insurance, healthcare, hospitality, finance, eCommerce, construction, and more.

Another great plus of the Ukraine developer is the solid software knowledge, fluent English proficiency, and reasonable price for the IT services. For instance, the average offshore development rates for this region range from $30 to $60 per hour.

However, the overall software development outsourcing Ukraine rates may vary according to the work experience of a certain candidate:

• Hourly rate for Junior Software Engineer: $19 – $25
• Hourly rate for Middle Software Engineer: $26 – $38
• Hourly rate for Senior Software Engineer: $39 – $60

Compared to the rates of countries based in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, you’ll get top-of-the-line innovative software solutions at an affordable price.

Additionally, Ukraine is a home country for over 200,000 professionals, and their number increases with more than 36,000 graduates within this scope annually. These factors make it one of the most attractive options for starting outsourcing software development in Ukraine.

Main Reasons to Hire Ukrainian Software Developers

After you know the overall information about IT outsourcing in Ukraine, let’s now discuss why you should consider hiring Ukrainian developers.

#1 Largest IT outsourcing Market in CEE

Ukraine is the 2nd largest tech hub in Central Eastern Europe, with over 200,000 programmers located in the 5 biggest cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro, and Odessa. Furthermore, compared to Poland, it offers more attractive outsourcing rates at the same or even higher quality.

Additionally, it takes 11th position in the rating of top software development outsourcing countries in the world. According to recent research, over 90% of IT services in Ukraine are outsourced, while the remaining 10% develop their own programming products.

#2 Solid Educational Background of Developers

There are around 450 technical universities and colleges with advanced programming courses, and over 36,000 new graduates annually enroll in the IT market. Most of them start practicing their programming skills after the 2nd or 3rd course of their bachelor’s degree, which makes it even more beneficial to be hired after graduation.

Furthermore, nearly all the Ukrainian developers can fluently speak English at the Intermediate (more than 37%), Upper-intermediate (over 35%), or even Advanced levels (around 13%).

This ensures smooth communication yet more productive cooperation between the certain organization and outsourced team of Ukrainian software developers.

These are only a few qualities that significantly stimulate the demand for outsourcing talented Ukrainian developers.

#3 Plenty of IT Service Outsourcing Companies

Most IT outsourcing companies in Ukraine offer Flexible cooperation models within only 1-2 hours away from most European countries. At present, there are over 1,600 companies that provide the core web technologies for software development, including JavaScript, Java, C#, Python, PHP, C++, TypeScript, and more.

Most of these tech companies are founded by entrepreneurs with a global mindset, such organizations are mostly focused on delivering the best results to their contractors and facilitating their success as well.

#4 Impressive Value/Cost Rates

By offering the most beneficial yet attractive prices for the services, Ukraine has already become one of the best IT outsourcing hubs in Europe. It features lower average rates for the services provided and has much more programming specialists within any industry. So, it’s more than possible to hire:

• Junior-level programmer for $570 for 1 month
• Middle-level Ukraine developer for $1800 per month
• Senior-level specialist for around $3000 for one month of work

And, we can reassure you, the software products developed have not only the same quality as those created in other CEE countries. Ofter, Ukrainian software developers provide even better technological solutions for specific cases than can be offered in most international leading IT hubs!

#5 Convenient Location and Time Zone

The geographic proximity makes Ukraine one of the most attractive locations for both nearshoring and offshoring. Placed in just 2-3 hours of flight time from most of the European countries, it allows sharing 7 of 9 business hours with the majority of them.

Additionally, there are always direct flights from Ukraine to the most popular European tech hubs including Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and more. And, the flight ticket can be purchased for as little as $15 – 19.

#6 More Working Hours Per Week

An average full-time developer works around 33 hours per week, in the UK these numbers can barely reach 36 hours, which is not too far from the US workers (37.5 hours per week).

In Ukraine, the majority of developers in tech-related outsourcing companies spend between 40 to 60 hours at work per week. Furthermore, your company can benefit from the public holidays too: there are only 11 paid public holidays in Ukraine, which is 2-7 days less compared to most EU countries.

Of course, that might not be too notable at first, but such a slight working hour difference can enhance up to several months in certain cases of project completion.

How to Find the Reliable Outsourcing Vendor in Ukraine

For sure, when it comes to IT outsourcing, Ukrainian software developers are one of the most beneficial options to choose. At the same time, it’s still critical to learn the most important aspects to consider when choosing the software developing company for hire.

This can prevent the loss of time, efforts, and investments for your organization, and ensures you won’t need to start the outsourcing organization research from scratch.

So, what are the core things to pay attention to when choosing the right IT outsourcing vendor in Ukraine?

• Uncover the local IT industry landscape and the top vendors you can hire Ukraine developers from
• Ask for the portfolio and existing case studies of your potential candidate, explore the major scopes/industries and companies the IT company cooperated earlier with. Remember, you should look not for the company that features the best technological solutions, you should find the one that can provide the exact software products your business or company needs
• Analyze the awards, certificates, and compliances to define whether or not this software vendor can be trusted. As a rule, the outsourcing companies have certifications from the leading tech providers within the same scope (if you’re looking for cloud solutions development, you should probably look for AWS or Google Cloud partnership). Other great certifications to look for are ISO 27001:2013, ISO 9001:2015, PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, and more.
• Define the strong sides of your potential IT outsourcing vendor and why it’s better than other competitors. You should also pay attention to the price/value rate to avoid low-quality outcomes. Additionally, browse the official website, corporate blogs, and social media of the outsourcing company to get a more concrete idea of what types of projects they have already done and what was the quality of their final results.
• Contact the software vendor and estimate whether or not they’re open for communication. For instance, the modern outsourcing companies in Ukraine like Intellecsoft invite for an expert consultation regarding the project or problem you have to get the overall idea about it and whether or not they can help you with the exact services you need.

Of course, that’s only a general list of what should be checked when choosing the best IT outsourcing vendors in Ukraine. Nevertheless, with having all these aspects checked, you can be more than certain about getting the best software solutions for your business.

Conclusion

To sum up, onboarding software developers in Ukraine is one of the most beneficial ways for companies and businesses to obtain innovative technological solutions and approaches at a reasonable price.

The outsourcing companies in Ukraine cover nearly all the scopes within any industry and are able to effectively perform different tasks and provide cost-effective strategies that can not only be identical to the ones offered by local developers but also provide more valuable benefits for your business.

And, you can be sure that with the experienced dedicated development team every new project for your business will surely help it to improve and develop beyond the competition.

At Intellectsoft, our best IT experts empower various companies and their workforces with the latest solutions and innovative approaches. Are you interested in outsourcing software development Ukraine?

Talk to our experts and uncover basic insights regarding any topic of your interest and how your business can benefit from it today!

The post Outsourcing Software Development to Ukraine – A Complete Guide appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

These brand-new institutions successfully deal with several key demands for the industry players, including having a robust strategy for building the computing infrastructure, establishing omnichannel experiences for clients, having a modern and scalable platform for data and analytics, and being cloud-based, configurable, and secure.

Thanks to these capabilities, AI banks are going to shape the digital transformation for the banking sector in the near future.

In the given circumstances, loan management systems are essential for building an effective financial business. Being specified on making loans faster, more accurately, and easier, this technology addresses the current demand for a leading-edge operational model that enables smart servicing and experience.

In this overview, we’ll explain how the systems for loan management work and what they are good for.

What Is LMS (Loan Management System)?

The software is a digital banking enhancement that facilitates the loan lifecycle as a whole. In particular, the technology is capable of:

• assisting in processing client data
• creating new loans
• generating accurate statements and reports for lenders
• managing interest rates
• serving collection automation.

In addition to these features, an important capability of loan management solutions is scalability. They not only facilitate processing for separate tasks but also automate the entire process.

Loan management software is an end-to-end service that covers key processes in cash and liquidity management, lending for commercial, consumer, mortgage, and syndicated needs, loan origination, and collateral management.

This way, the solution opens the door for new business opportunities as you can create a more comprehensive corporate environment and deepen the relationships with customers.

How Loan Systems Improves The Lending Experience

Having a seamless digital solution for loan management facilitates all your business processes and establishes a great borrower experience for your clients.

Loan management digitalization helps to get rid of manual work and papers. Thanks to the toolkit incorporated, you can transform the way your institution operates. With Big Data and analytics, businesses get the effective instrument to automate loans and establish a machine-ruled procedure for account opening.

Combined with machine learning capabilities, these technologies can leverage even large investments, including student loans and trading. Altogether, these enhancements enable identifying new growth opportunities, managing back-office data more effectively, and structuring the existing loans from present software and papers.

Improving customer experience is critical for business success. With loan management solutions, it’s possible to introduce a customer-centric service and address the growing demand for self-servicing portals.

The system can speed up customer onboarding through automated tools and digital document management and provides your managers with the necessary client data to increase the accuracy of offerings.

4 Key Benefits of a Loan Management System

Investing in a loan management solution brings substantial advantages for businesses of any size. Startups can rely on this technology for dealing with the existing loans faster and more accurately, which is the necessary prerequisite for future growth.

Mid-sized companies can invest in the system for improving the customer experience, which significantly improves the retention rate and assists in scaling. For large enterprises, the key benefits include increased security and streamlining the workflow.

Notwithstanding the company size, loan management systems will improve the organization in 4 key dimensions:

• Customer satisfaction
• Corporate processes
• Risk management
• Opportunity for innovation

Let’s review the perks of each of these enhancements.

#1 Boosting Customer Satisfaction

Contemporary consumers have become digital-savvy, and each business should address their new demands to the maximum today. With the tool that collects all the key information about clients and possesses the capabilities to establish a self-serving portal, your abilities to satisfy your customers increase.

It’s important to address the need accurately, though. The easier your digital solution, the greater your chances of maintaining existing clients and attracting new ones.

In this context, loan management software stores all the relevant information about your clients and makes it possible to draw insights from the data. As a result, your employees will offer the most accurate services to customers, based on their preferences and loan history that the technology has carefully collected and accurately processed.

#2 Optimizing Corporate Processes

These days, many companies suffer from miscommunication, lack of structure, and duplicated tasks. Organizations dealing with loan management are not an exception to this rule. But with the software specially designed for managing loans, your enterprise gets the chance to get rid of these problems.

The unified platform will organize all the existing loan-related processes. This way, your workers can easily access the most accurate information about all the loans and collaborate on the data in real-time.

#3 Mitigating Risks and Errors

Financial services suffer from human errors, and the cost of the mistake can become catastrophic. That’s why automating the processes is a must-have step for the industry.

When it comes to the loan management system, the software deals with billing inaccuracies and payment tracking as the most common areas for making mistakes. By taking over these routine tasks, the technology lets your workers concentrate on working on data rather than dealing with the tedious work of filling spreadsheets and inputting the client information.

Even more, the communication platform in-built in the software lets your workers react on the recently updated information only, which significantly reduces the frequency of miscommunication in your office.

#4 Fueling Innovation

Even though the loan management system mainly deals with optimizing the existing processes, this solution also helps businesses innovate.

By being a cloud-based digital end-to-end solution, this software addresses the growing demand for connected banking and takes over the entire loan lifecycle, freeing your people’s time to conduct more strategic and creative tasks.

In particular, the solution provides and organizes all the relevant loan-related information, and your workers have the key data prepared. They can concentrate on detecting patterns, justifying the logic, and finding new opportunities and more accurate services for clients.

Most Common Loan Types that Can Be Managed with Loan Management Systems

1. Personal loans, or loans for non-commercial use. In this loan category, the software will categorize secured and unsecured loans and store the credit history previously checked for easy access.
2. Student loans, or costs to cover educational needs. The system will select the date, amount, and interest rate (if relevant).
3. Commercial loans for businesses. Here, the software will assist in document management and automatically process the required data from these papers.
4. Syndicated loans for multiple lenders. With the software for loan management, the middleman in the transaction can process this loan type faster and easier.
5. Mortgage loans for real estate purchases. The system will take care of deadlines in this long-term loan and manage the needed documents,
6. Short-term and high-interest payday loans. With the loan management system, your workers won’t lose this loan and won’t miss its deadline.

7 Essential Features of Loan Management Software

Once you invest in a custom loan management solution, check your tech provider can include these critical features in it:

• Loan origination. The machine should be able to check the risks and assist in the decision-making process when processing a loan application.
• Loan servicing. This feature of a loan management system deals with the complexity of loans, classifying them by interest rates, payment deadlines, and other critical criteria.
• Funds collection. The service should have a digital wallet module to enable payments. The data privacy for this feature is essential, and each online solution builder should invest in a secure payment getaway.
• Debt management. The in-app notifications should assist in controlling the schedule, fulfillment, and fee calculations for repayments.
• Communication platform. The system should store all the information in the same place and update it in real-time so that your employees have accurate and fresh data to act upon.
• In-app analytics. The loan system should process the data algorithmically to establish connections between separate data points.
• Reporting module. Data visualization is critical to control the business performance and keep track of cash flow.

Ask Intellectsoft for Help in Building the Software for Loan Management

If you’re looking for a loan management system that possesses all the above-mentioned benefits and features and blends well with your existing processes, you can refer to Intellectsoft.

With decades of expertise in the IT market, we can build a custom solution with all the necessary features for your business benefit. Among our financial software development capabilities, you can request as main or extra features these services:

• Online Banking with the solutions including custom platforms, mobile apps, security, UI/UX, and system integration.
• Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies with an ICO launch support, transaction operations, smart contracts, and identity management.
• Digital Wallet, or an app that enables P2P payments, digital money transfers, and in-app currency creation.
• AI and ML technologies for predictive and recommendation systems, natural language processing, computer vision, and data mining and analytics.
• Trading and Securities services that include securities trading, digital brokerage, blockchain ledgers, and AI automation.
• RPA, or Robotic Process Automation for account reconciliation, automated mailers, monthly account reviews, and regular reporting.

Talk to our experts and request a custom financial software development solution that will fully meet your business needs! Transform your business today with Intellectsoft as your reliable technology partner!

The post How a Loan Management System Serves the Business and Customer Benefit appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In essence, such systems contribute to the business success by increasing ROI through advanced tracking instruments for small equipment. The software introduces a centralized approach to equipment management, letting you get control over and simplify management.

Simply put, you get an easy-to-access location for all the essential historical data relevant for your small equipment and key assets.

The innovative equipment management instrument not only assists in managing operations but also provides the needed information for prevention and scheduling.

Because of this, it’s possible to apply this solution to the different spheres of your equipment management. For example, you can:

• Create and manage profiles for each equipment type and corporate asset;
• Check the current condition of small equipment with photos, videos, and certificates attached;
• Use automation tools to schedule and plan typical operations and processes.

Simply put, equipment management solutions are the custom platforms that provide a required setup for asset administration and serve as a background for business profitability. Given the strong advantages they promise, the services are applicable to many business sectors, including the construction industry.

How Are  Equipment Management Solutions Used in the Construction Industry?

Maintenance of construction equipment is easier with the software. That’s why the key application of construction equipment management software these days is to monitor the entire operations, streamlining all the maintenance management system processes.

The exact list of actions includes scheduling, preventive management operations, task assignment, work progress, and asset management. This way, the software carefully records all equipment-specific details and provides the platform for making accurate decisions over the data.

What Are the Possible Benefits of Such Software Type?

In general, equipment management systems can be applied to numerous sectors, and their list of pros is huge, involving fleet performance improvement and coping with the bottle line. Other distinct advantages of such software type include:

• Fueling team participation through various procedures and tools
• Getting a document management system
• Mastering scheduling instruments
• Introducing employee engagement platforms
• Enhanced asset tracking

In this section, we’ve gathered several striking software benefits that are relevant for the construction industry specifically.

Managing Small Equipment

Traditionally, the construction sector deals with numerous types of equipment and vehicles, and taking an eye on everything can be overwhelming, especially in crises. In this regard, the equipment management system can take over tracking and notify about relevant changes in small equipment in real-time.

Storing Information

Being a cloud-based solution, the equipment management system keeps all the small equipment data in one place. This makes the life of decision makers easier: you can react fast and monitor changes timely with an organized data set. Correspondingly, the accuracy, safety, and performance of your decisions increase.

Digital Inspections

As a separate solution, inspection management software provides better planning, process accuracy, training platforms for inspectors, and accelerated operations for the construction industry.

With construction equipment management software, you can also free your time from handling inspections manually. This technology effectively copes with equipment issues, and you can get instant notifications, see the exact location, and take the action needed fast.

We recommend going for custom equipment management technology solutions. In this case, you’ll get an even more accurate instrument for your industry- and company-specific inspection management, designed for your corporate needs particularly.

Better Collaboration

With software for construction equipment management, your company gets the platform that significantly facilitates communication within teams. This task management instrument lets project managers assign and control order progress and get instant feedback from the performers.

Even more, solutions for construction equipment management contain the function of preventive maintenance scheduling that allows taking a proactive approach in assigning tasks and relying on automated reminders.

All these features address the main challenges for construction project management, given that most construction projects fail due to miscommunication, which leads to violated deadlines and the need for an extended budget.

What Are the Most Required Features of the Construction Equipment Management Solutions?

Building an effective equipment management solution always depends on the exact business needs because it considers the enormous impact of the solution application on business performance and profitability. However, there are some minor technological features and must-have modules that each construction equipment management program should have.

Here they are:

1. Budgeting tools. Construction equipment management deals with controlling and monitoring costs on a daily basis. That’s why your software solution should have high-level metrics and configurable reports, at least, to address this need.
2. Maintenance manager. This module is needed to manage work orders, meaning planning, assignment, and checking the progress.
3. Inspection tool. Mobile inspections should include all the necessary checklists, an auditing suite, and assignment tools.
4. Equipment tracker. The construction equipment management software should let you track and manage assets relevant to your corporate product life cycle.
5. Maintenance tickets. This feature means an ability to create integrated digital tickets for each equipment and asset piece.
6. Notifications. Managers and team members should be able to send alerts for more effective communication. In this regard, notifications can be automatic (or instant) and escalated (scheduled for future actions).
7. Reports. This feature in equipment management solutions is essential for a real understanding of what’s going on in your construction company and accurate decision-making.

How Can Intellectsoft Develop Your Custom Feature-Rich Construction Equipment Management Solution?

Intellectsoft experts are experienced in building customized solutions for companies that address their exact business needs. And our construction management equipment services are not an exception.

In a tailored solution, you can request any feature you find relevant for your construction company, and our developers will enrich your list of business requirements with an enhanced set of technologies and features.

For example, suppose your business lacks inspection scheduling. In this case, we can make an online form for your inspectors to set tasks, link them to the specific equipment types, determine completion frequency, and pick the specialists who will perform the task.

Alternatively, a construction equipment fleet management tool will have more features, providing relevant technologies and online forms on each product lifecycle stage.

The choice is all yours!

From Intellectsoft, you can order different customized services for construction software development, including:

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for centralization and management of the construction project’s lifecycle as a whole.
• Project Management, or an advanced project management system for planning and streamlining operations at all levels.
• Inspection Management as the module for conducting, assigning, tracking, and completing inspections.
• Customer Portal & Partner Portal that lets you strengthen your customer and partner relations in an equipment management solution.
• Construction Integrations that work with third-data sources for better decision accuracy.
• Analytics & Reporting that harmonizes various data points for business results improvement.
• Project Onboarding and Training that lets you simplify the onboarding process and training activities.

Any of these technologies and modules can become an integral part of your construction equipment management solution. All you need is to contact us now and discuss the details!

The post Why Each Construction Site Needs Equipment Management Solutions appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

According to PwC, the emerging technologies with the greatest perspectives for the insurance industry include AI, robotics, blockchain, the Internet of Things, and more. And that’s not a surprise, since the insurtech possesses all the potential to improve and automate the traditional system with innovative technologies and renovated solutions.

The insurance policy management software is kind of a prime example in this respect. Simply put, that’s a technology that handles the major human assessments related to manual and repetitive insurance operations.

In this article, you’ll find out a detailed guide to this type of insurance policy software, its main features, and great advantages. At the end of our discussion, you’ll see what’s better: adopting pre-made software solutions or developing your own insurance technology from scratch.

What Is Insurance Policy Management Software?

In the insurance industry, policy management is a cross-functional process of the insurance service operating. Basically, it handles the key business processes of any company within the industry scope, including:

• Quoting
• Underwriting
• Claims processing and management
• Proposal generation
• Policy issuance, renewal, and cancellation
• Compliance checking
• Fraud detection
• Reporting and analytics

With the help of an insurance policy management system, companies can greatly boost the quality of their services, as well as enhance the speed and efficiency of the core processes.

Furthermore, implementing this type of insurtech solution is one of the most effective and popular methods of saving the company’s costs and resources at present.

All these factors have become extremely important for the insurance companies at present: since the pandemic outbreak, there’s a great demand for innovative insurtech solutions that can automate the core insurance processes and enhance their workflow.

Key Benefits of Implementing an Insurance Policy Management System

According to the BCG recent report, the pandemic has greatly pushed the insurtech funding to an all-time high: the entire insurtech ecosystem grew by about 35% in 2020. And, needless to mention, that the lion’s share of the industry market share refers to developing advanced policy management solutions.

Why is insurance policy management software so important for various organizations within the scope? This can be easily explained with the advantages of this technology:

#1 Improves the Company’s Efficiency

Just like any other insurtech solution, the core idea of insurance policy software is to optimize the various policy management tasks that were traditionally handled manually. By changing the paperwork to more efficient electronic document management, you can:

• reduce the employee workload
• organize and secure any kind of data
• optimize the core service processes and more

#2 Develops the Customer Service

The advanced company efficiency results in higher customer service quality. With insurance policy management system implementation, you will be able to provide timely and more accurate responses for any requests at shorter timeframes. Not only does it enhances customer service but also makes your company more competitive in the industry market.

In other words, that’s an important factor for any institution within the scope: from a small agency to a large insurance corporation.

#3 Automates the Compliance Monitoring

Instead of spending tons of time and effort on a manual compliance check, it’s more efficient to entrust this to your insurance policy administration software. This will not only reduce the workload but also impacts the financial spendings, since the software:

• minimizes the breaches
• reduces the human error
• enhances the employee productivity

#4 Reduces the Company’s Costs

Having analyzed the previous three concepts, it becomes clear: by investing once, your company benefits for years. Basically, that’s the core idea of developing insurance policy administration systems!

The workflow computerization can greatly optimize labor expenses. Compliance automation reduces critical company spendings and minimizes the cost losses. Advanced customer service leads to better client conversion and loyalty that naturally results in better income.

In other words, all the advantages of insurance policy management systems lead to great performance improvements and significant cost reduction, which any innovative insurance company should make use of.

6 Essential Insurance Policy Management System Features

Instead of looking for the number of features in your insurance policy management software, you should better evaluate their efficiency. After all, the main purpose of this insurtech is to simplify and optimize the workflow! Below we have reviewed the most valuable features to look for in policy admin systems for insurance.

Policy-Related Tasks

Three simple points: issuance, updating, and cancellation. With these simple features, your workers can:

• Generate various kinds of documents
• Make the changes and automatically save the updates to your internal system
• Analyze the change requests from different sources including web forms, call transcripts, emails, and more.

The modern Robotic Process Automation technology can effortlessly handle all these tasks at a time, saving up tons of time, resources, and money.

Underwriting Feature

With this option, insurance workers no longer need to mine different sorts of applicants’ data from different resources: all this is already uploaded to the single insurance policy administration system. Additionally, intelligent automation can generate the reporting, make predictions and automate the processing a lot, which results in significant workflow optimization and productivity improvement.

Quoting Option

The advanced insurance policy management solution should also incorporate quote estimates, that eliminates the necessity of a phone or face-to-face interaction. Furthermore, this feature allows providing more accurate, timely responses to your clients, which impacts the customer service rate. Successful insurance companies are always targeted at their clients.

Tracking the Renewals

Another great feature of developing a customer-centric business model is the insurance policy renewal handling. That’s an essential feature that helps retain the customers and avoid their possible churn. With the timely, stress-free yet professional process organization, clients can manually update only the needed fields and approve the renewal in just a few minutes.

Claims Processing

One of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks of the insurance industry is claims processing: insurance workers need to quickly:

• assign the claims
• evaluate frauds
• issue the payments
• generate the reports

… all these are required for EACH claim individually! Needless to say, this process optimization can significantly optimize the time and efforts for claim handling and reduce the workload of your company workers.

Regulatory Compliance

Not to mention that various laws and regulations have their specific peculiarities, all of which can be also changed at times. To avoid breaches and financial losses, it’s critical for the insurance policy management software to track the important changes and manage all the regulation-related tasks with effective policy processing tools.

Developing New or Employing Pre-made Policy Management Solutions: Which One is Better?

Though most companies tend to adapt their workforces to ready-to-go insurance policy management solutions, it’s cheaper and much more effective to develop the insurance system for your company from scratch. The major benefits insurance company gets with creating the individual insurtech system are:

• The ability to incorporate all the essential and additional features requires for the workflow
• Advanced support for onboarding and maintenance
• Detailed software testing and issue-resolving
• Improved security to minimize the data breaches and protect the system from any threats
• Accessible, allowing to easily interact with policies from multiple devices
• Timely updated to effectively track the policy renovation
• Functional, enabling to interact with any kinds of documents and services within a single system

These are only a few qualities you can get along with in insurance policy management software development. Unlike in the pre-made software, they can be changed or complemented depending on the company’s requirements, needs and strategies.

Conclusion

After you know the basics of insurance policy management systems and how to make the most of their use, it’s time to implement the changes to your company.

With the powerful custom insurance software development services, you’re sure to create an effective, feature-rich policy administration system that will benefit your organization for years!

We, at Intellectsoft, understand the importance of delivering the most quality IT products for enhancing the performance of any insurance organization. Every day, our team of experts empowers different companies with innovative approaches and powerful solutions.

If your company needs professional assistance of any kind, talk to our experts and get all the answers regarding insurance policy management right away!

The post Is Insurance Policy Management Software Worth It?   appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.