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30.10.2019

7

min read

Face recognition technologies is one of the top IT concepts of the now. The concept as a whole was introduced back at the beginning of the 90s when Joseph Atick - a pioneer in software biometric solutions - suggested employing static analysis to process templates that help scan particular facial features: eyes, nose, corners of the mouth, etc.

Initially, several quite primitive software pieces were built which, still, could identify people with some standing-out precision. All because two people almost never have the same distances and ratios between their facial physiological elements. 

Nowadays, advanced face recognition systems need minimum user input to work. Thus, artificial intelligence capabilities gradually become able to accept more and more autonomous responsibilities. But let’s get a bit deeper into the subject of the facial recognition software pros and cons, its role in solving humanity’s common issues, and its nature as a whole.  


7 Face Recognition Facts & Trends

These are the 7 facts and trends to help you get in the know as to what is going on and what will happen in the niche of face recognition software in a few upcoming years. 

Top Face Recognition App technologies & providers

Among the top FR-based software providers are Amazon, Apple, and Snapchat. These powerhouses have introduced a bunch of highly commercially successful products, such as Amazon Rekognition, iPhone XR, as well as numerous face-recognizing photo filters. As for the technological aspect, Biometric Technology Rally is showing the most prominent precision in recognizing faces as of yet. 

Machine Learning makes FR solutions better

How about this one peculiar fact - according to the NIST report, in the last four years, the Machine Learning capacities helped boost the precision of FR technologies by 20 times. Such ultimate success could be a good reason alone to launch your own AI-based face recognition startup.

2019-2024 FR software market

Expert predictions claim that we can expect the global market of FR solutions to reach US$7 billion in value by 2024. Again, this seems like a great motivation to try and get into the league of successful FR startuppers. 


Face recognition in different countries

The most fruitful and promising location for implementing and outsourcing FR solutions is considered to be Central Asia. Firstly, people there accept technological innovations with great enthusiasm. Secondly, there is a huge population to provide some good audience reach for your product. Lastly, Asian countries don’t fall under the notorious GDPR which takes FR-powered projects quite ambiguously. 

What to choose: privacy or security?

There are certain facial recognition privacy concerns that, obviously, don’t allow considering the software from this category completely safe. On the other hand, some solutions are focused solely on reinforcing the user data security - like the FR-based screen lock in your smartphone. In any case, to stay utterly competent in security matters, you can always come back to the GDPR regulations for insightful notes on attentiveness.

Latest hacks in FR solutions

Here’s how people explore the technology even deeper by identifying its weak points and flaws, and penetrating them:

  • Adam Harvey from Berlin presented CV Dazzle - a piece of software that allows creating a virtual makeup you can use to cheat facial recognition app;  
  • In 2017, Vietnamese developers created a mask that helped third parties successfully get around the main Face ID algorithm; 
  • German developers identified a flaw in Windows 10 Hello that also allows any interested stranger to authorize in the system at will. 

These are some more reasons why FR solutions cannot be considered fully secure, however. 

Combining tech for advanced protection

A relatively young concept - biometrix - combines facial recognition technologies with advanced methods of IP address, password, and other data identification in order to utterly reinforce user data privacy. We can already say that with the gradual popularization of the biometrix, the public will see a new wave of software in this category with a boosted security level. 

Facial Recognition Software in Retail

The FR concept had its time to get used pretty widely. For one thing, it’s already made its contribution to the niche of retail and sales. In particular, the FR software brings very useful tech advancements to the following aspects.

Theft & fraud control

As the years go by, efficient security measures need to evolve and become all the more sophisticated. A strong password alone used to be efficient a hundred years ago. Currently, however, advanced user data protection methods make wonders. 

In the mass market, for instance, the artificial intelligence capabilities combined with facial recognition solutions allow for retailers to present newer, more reliable and secure models of digital-powered devices - smartphones, smart cars, smart home systems, etc.

Improving customer experience

Many of you have probably seen a spectacular presentation of yet another Apple smartphone - iPhone XR - which features the Face ID technology. The feature made quite an impact, despite the massive, long-standing regular use of numerous advanced concepts, like AR, VR, AI, etc. That’s a great indication of a modern average consumer welcoming highly-advanced data protection features. 

In terms of the retail business, you can employ FR in various ways that will surely help you boost engagement and improve customer interaction. For instance, you can implement interactive smart panels - when a regular customer approaches the stand with ads in your physical store, their face can be automatically recognized via camera and processed through the facial recognition search engine to offer the most relevant products based on their history of purchase. 

Conclusion

As you can see, FR solutions are only looking to become more popular and universal worldwide in the nearest future. If you have a business and wish to create authentic facial recognition software for Android and iOS, contact us. We build turnkey solutions of any complexity with the well-adjusted workflow and compliance with your particular requirements in mind.  

The State of Facial Recognition App Software in 2019

Let’s get a bit deeper into the subject of the facial recognition software's pros and cons, its role in solving humanity’s common issues, and its nature as a whole.

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27.11.2019

7

min read

It seems there is no such thing as a normal business day nowadays. The demands are high, companies do their best to meet all the requirements of the modern world and their customers and, besides, tech advances are continuous. To go with the tides, a business should keep up with them.

Unfortunately, lots of businesses often fail to service their corporate software and face service outages, dissatisfactions of customers as well as financial losses. To avoid the failures of corporate software and applications, serving your business functional testing is not enough. To avoid pitfalls performance testing is essential.

We are going to speak about it further and the main aspect to consider is the effectiveness of the cloud-based service and the advantages they offer. In short, cloud-based services are able to diagnose the performance problems set in and help to detect the nature and location of the potential problems. It is a good method to find out the demands to the server infrastructure, providing end-to-end transparency, in combination with a performance monitor on-site.

Cloud-based software performance testing

What is cloud based performance testing?

The checking performed to the software with the help of the cloud infrastructure is called cloud testing. You do not need to install locally any hard- or software, the cloud facilitates the simple creation of the testing environment. So, time and cost are saved due to simulating users from all over the world.


How does cloud performance testing work?

To run a test in the cloud you should first of all design the test case and the environment for this. You should choose and adjust the required testing tools, set the bandwidth, fine-tune hardware and software. The other parameters to carefully look upon are security, quality, reliability, etc. 

As soon as the setup is finished, the cloud server parameters should be finalized. Further on the cloudload should be generated and other factors simulated according to the strategy and the requirements of the tests performed. As a rule, the servers generate web traffic from all over the world and that ensures complete and proper testing of the software. 

In fact, everything is quite simple you must only provide a simple script to the tool in the cloud and set the necessary parameters, the cloud then will take care of everything. After (or sometimes during) the test, you should accurately monitor and analyze the results.

Benefits of cloud testing

It’s no brainer that cloud operations have manifold benefits and the main of them are the following: 

Testing scalability support

No ideal conditions, but real-life checking of all important features is performed. Cloud-based procedures allow testing in production environs. Besides, the nodes can either be segmented or bundled into groups, for instance, according to the device and OS type. You can alter the variables, and save certain parameters’ sets if you want to repeat the testing later. More than that, such kind of testing supports scalability because it can be performed with a variable number of users who come directly from the Internet to keep to the realistic conditions.

Geographical testing backing

You can perform testing from any locale, where your product is going to be used. The platforms in the cloud can imitate user load from different regions around the globe and the testers can get an overview of how the software will perform in the situation when numerous devices from various localities access it all together. So worldwide testing is possible for the products intended for global usage.

Reduced overall cost

With a cloud as a platform, you do not need to install, setup and support the hardware and software for the purpose. Besides, you do not need to hire support specialists for the testing lab. Usually, the payments are realized on the pay-as-you-use or pay-as-you-go principles, so the cost is sensitively reduced.

Load testing vs performance testing

While the benefits of cloud testing are more or less obvious, let’s proceed to the test types you should run and the difference between the load tests and the others.

Performance testing

It’s checking the system behavior along with the examination of reliability, responsiveness,  speed, stability, scalability, and software and infrastructure resource utilizing. The types of such tests may be different depending on the data you want to verify and the business goals you set. 

Performance testing allows you to analyze various KPIs: number of users, hits per second, response time, errors in a certain period of time and correlations between all these parameters. So you can spot the bottlenecks, errors, and bugs of your project and figure out the way to improve product performance.

Load testing

It allows checking how the system operates under a great number of virtual users making simultaneous actions in a definite time period. This testing helps to determine how a product handles heavy loads and the number of users it is able to serve at a time. Different system parts and sections can be trialed: for instance, you can check the maximum load handled by a checkout page of your app or site. Besides, it’s possible to determine how the load builds and behaves.

Conclusion

Any software and app require performance testing, it ensures its smooth and flawless operation. Cloud technologies have simplified the process to a great extent, however, some concerns should be kept in mind. Any result is subject to the provider’s network condition and resources used. 

To make sure your testing was run in a proper way, turn to the professional service providers and analysts, who are able to tell proper results from the miscarried procedure.  Axisbits is ready to give you a helping hand in this aspect or advise how to do it most proficiently.

Cloud Performance Testing of Your Software. How to avoid pitfalls with a new project?

We are going to speak about it further and the main aspect to consider is the effectiveness of the cloud-based service and the advantages they offer.

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13.11.2019

7

min read

Did you know that 45% of employers had to go through some significant difficulties recruiting new workers and filling required positions? This is just another indication that there is still a lot to work on in terms of contemporary hiring methods. Even despite the utterly accessible recruiting procedures via advanced web technologies. 

Let’s discuss that as well as how to hire the right applicant via tracking systems, which are about to transform the whole recruiting niche.

Applicant Tracking System: What is It?

There may be a colossal number of potential candidates for a certain position. Finding “the one”, however, is a thing of 9 out of 10 times - quite a difficult task. This is mostly based on the inability to objectively juxtapose the soft and hard skills highlighted in dozens of CVs. 

That’s exactly why people came up with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) - a type of computer programs for resume processing, search, sorting, and filtering of work candidate CVs, comparing all the data with the position requirements issued by an employer. The applicant tracking system’s job is to help recruiters and staffing company agents monitor the career progress of a particular candidate stage-by-stage. All in all, you can efficiently hire the right applicant via tracking systems.


ATS Benefits

Currently, practically every other successful company uses ATS. And here are a bunch of benefits they get from doing so:

  • Accelerated staff expansion. With a dedicated ATS, companies manage to fill positions faster. Such efforts are accelerated due to the workflow process automation and the enhanced performance of in-house recruiters. For instance, instead of having to contact every potential candidate manually, a universal template can be developed to then be included in the mass newsletter for all potential candidates;
  • Better chances to find prominent experts. An ATS, with its filtering and sorting capacities, allows for efficiently selecting the best candidates out of the whole pool of applicants. Thus, you can simply define the necessary applicant tracking system job criteria and start by inviting the most fitting candidates to the interview;
  • Third-party software integration. Usually, applicant tracking systems for recruiters and hiring managers support seamless integration with third-party office solutions, such as email, calendar, CRM, etc; 
  • Boosted quality of applicant interaction. Your in-house recruiters can use applicant interaction templates, making the communication more formal and prejudice-free, which is to affect the status of your company most positively as a whole;
  • Boosted productiveness of the staffing department. The essential goal of any ATS is to provide thorough workflow process automation for the staffing department employees. This means that they can reassign a part of routine tasks to the software and take up more responsible tasks that require a more creative approach.

What Does an ATS Usually Feature?

An average ATS, usually, includes in the following set of capabilities:

  • Basic recruiter tasks’ automation. An ATS is a multipurpose tool for posting position descriptions online; collecting, filtering, and processing job applications; interacting with applicants, and much more; 
  • AI-based capacities. Some computer programs for resume processing can boast candidate search powered by artificial intelligence, which provides a precise selection of requirements-fitting applicants. ATS creators also often create AI-based template editors. This allows recruiters to spend a minimum amount of time communicating with candidates initially;
  • Integration with professional social media & online boards. Integrating an ATS with professional social networks and online boards for CV posting, recruiters can form a database of fitting potential candidates in no time. I.e., there is no need to “hunt down” applicants manually, which can take several workdays at times;
  • Score cards & correspondence levels for potential employees. With the help of an ATS, staffing department experts can create the so-called score cards - the system literally assigns such cards to user profiles and checks how much they meet the requirements specified in the position description autonomously; 
  • Analytics & reporting. Surely, a good ATS will necessarily feature reporting and performance monitoring capabilities for keeping in tune with the overall success of the staffing department.

How Can ATS Transform the Recruiting Niche?

In terms of renovations to strike the employee hiring niche, computer programs for resume are able to practically autonomously form potential candidates databases by positions, using an initially provided text template, implement newsletter with position descriptions and interview offers (or, e.g., test task offers). 

As for the performance boost, an automated approach to hiring new employees increases the speed of every other action involved in the process dramatically. Recruiters simply don’t need to take up a lot of manual efforts. 

Last but not least, this approach maximizes the objectivity of candidate selection - it’s becomes physically difficult to go through another hundred CVs with the same attention you went through a couple of first ones.

Conclusion

ATS products have great chances of becoming a standard for medium- and large-scale companies, taking up a good part of responsibilities for supporting the corporate image in the eyes of potential employees. A single standard of applicant interaction may also become a thing. 

The software of such kind, as a whole, can continue boosting the staffing department performance further. All in all, that alone is enough to realize the great use of applicant tracking systems for recruiters and hiring managers in practically any sort of business organization. 

If you are interested in creating your own, authentic computer programs for resume, contact us and we’ll build you a reliable, scalable solution made to fit your particular business needs, offering a more than reasonable applicant tracking system pricing. 

Applicant Tracking System-Transforming Hiring Norms

Let’s check how to hire the right applicant via tracking systems, which are about to transform the whole recruiting niche and how to create such a system

Read More

31.10.2019

7

min read

Axisbits is excited to announce our newest award: Top Web Designer in Ukraine! We are a small development firm located in Kharkiv that specializes in web development, web design, and custom software development. Did you know it only takes 0.05 seconds for a visitor to make a decision about your website? Don’t lose potential leads, partner with a proven web designer today.

Clutch is a B2B platform that provides authentic ratings of service firms across 400 industries. Using verified client reviews, Clutch analysts are able to determine the best design firms in Kharkiv by evaluating a firm’s ability to deliver and expertise in their field. Based on these criteria, Axisbits has been awarded a perfect 5-star rating!

We would like to thank our clients for leaving reviews. Specifically, we would like to thank SimplePin for their most recent review. SimplePin is a FinTech company that contracted Axisbits to develop a front-facing website. In his review, Alexei Prosvirine, the CTO for SimplePin praised our impressive results and dedication to the project. 

“I’m really pleased with the quality. Normally, we’d see about 100 bugs in a project of this size. With Axisbits, I had five issues in total. They helped me eliminate potential issues from the start of the project, and it was all done quickly.

Thank you to Alexei Provisirine and SimplePin! Take a look at another review below: 


If you’re interested in learning more about Axisbits, take a look at The Manifest and Visual Objects, two additional B2B platforms. The Manifest is a business educational site that offers short-lists of top-performing firms across a variety of industries, such as web designers in Kharkiv. Visual Objects also provides information, such as website building resources and also features portfolios for creative firms to showcase their past projects. 

We would like to thank Clutch for their recognition of our work and we look forward to welcoming more clients! Contact us today to get started! 



Axisbits Recognized as Top Web Designer in Ukraine

Axisbits is excited to announce Clutch's newest award: Top Web Designer in Ukraine. Based on the platform criteria, our company has been honored with a perfect 5-star rating!

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16.10.2019

7

min read

Choosing a software vendor is a responsible task for any company out there. Doesn’t matter the scale of your business - in any case, you’d probably want to get a reliable, accessible, and intuitive product reinforced by some good tech maintenance for your money. Let’s take a look at the four crucial stages of efficiently selecting a software vendor that would make a truly trustful business partner.

Seeking a reliable software vendor - top 4 tips

In order to find out not simply a good software vendor but one of the best in the business, try to focus on the following points.

Conversations, not checklists

Usually, a company looking for a software vendor starts with composing a checklist that includes all the major requirements for future solutions. This is utterly wrong. Remember, you’re not looking for a readymade product. You are looking for experts that would create it for you. 

This means that with a checklist only, you, basically, hire people that showed you a CV, but wouldn’t go through a private interview. Try to always dedicate at least 15-20 minutes to a bit of personal communication with your employment candidates (there are numerous apps just for that purpose like Skype, Hangouts, and others). Otherwise, after some time cooperating with a vendor, you may start experiencing difficulties in finding a compromise. 

Evaluate the people, not just the product

We’d like to emphasize once again the importance of realizing the fact that you’re about to work with real, live people. Most probably, in a long-term perspective. This means that you need to build professional relationships with everybody designing, building, testing, launching into release, maintaining, and updating your future solution. 

Always go for a separate live interview with a general project manager. This is the person you will be interacting with most of the time. If initially, you see that not all your points are clarified and taken to attention, further on, deadlines can be undermined and other risks may appear. Moreover, we’d strongly recommend forming an elaborate list of software vendor interview questions to help you understand whether your potential partner gets what you want from the get-go. 

Probe their expertise

Despite the fact that the vast majority of modern software development companies have presentable, promotion-heavy websites, many embellish the reality. Some overdo their portfolios with loads of non-existent or irrelevant content, some deceivingly claim to have prominent companies among their partners. Thus, as they say, trust, but verify. 

Before making a final choice, contact a few representatives of establishments included in the list of your potential contractor and ask about their cooperative experience. You can find most of them through LinkedIn. Be ready for some bitter surprises, though, which will surely indicate how much you can trust a certain vendor.  

Moreover, if your business niche stands out in that it requires in-depth expertise (e.g., you operate in the Insurtech niche), then it’d be reasonable to seek software vendors that specialize in the development of solutions in that niche specifically.

Ensure that vendor understands your goals

As you may already know, many large IT companies have a particular vision of workflow and focus on the projects of a certain format. Such companies may be quite renowned among clients in the market, however, don’t be fast to go for them at once. 

The thing is, many such organizations specifically target large-scale projects and startups, which may bring them some good popularity on top of the sole income. And if your project can be deemed ordinary to some extent and not featuring any technological innovations, it can be taken as a minor cooperation opportunity. Therefore, figure out in all details what both you and your contractor company strive for in the long run if you want to build efficient, long-term cooperative relationships.

Conclusion

As you can see, selecting the right software vendor who can really be trusted may be somewhat challenging. Nevertheless, if you go by the above-mentioned recommendations from our “criteria of choosing a reliable software vendor list”, you’ll boost your chances of final success dramatically. 

If you don’t wish to spend either time or money for such purposes, contact us. Our software dev aces have been building highly-reliable, scalable, and accessible custom business solutions for years. We’ll be glad to fruitfully cooperate with you!

4 Keys to Selecting the Right Software Vendor for Your Business

Choosing a software vendor is a responsible task for any company out there. Let’s take a look at the four crucial stages of efficiently selecting a software vendor that would make a truly trustful business partner.

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18.9.2019

7

min read

The commercial space of the modern world has been and continues being daily refurbished by technological and digital innovation. It helps entrepreneurs to gain a competitive edge. Having various forms, the novelties help to improve the existing products, to streamline the manufacturing processes, to provide new solutions for meeting customer demand better or to completely change the business models, marketing strategies, operating processes, and supply chain logic. More than that further technology integration helps to continuously create value in every industry. 

Potential welfares and risks of digital innovation

However, it should be born in mind thatlack of strategy and management around innovation can significantly increase the risks of it. Still, lets first discuss the potential benefits of digital innovation.

Better productivity and lower costs

It’s no brainer that much of the process improvements are aimed at product cost reduction either through advanced manufacturing capacity or optimized and more flexible business procedures.

Increased competitiveness through enhanced quality of goods and services

Manufacturing the product of better quality or offering more effective service due to the digital business innovation implemented, a company will inevitably witness higher revenues. It will just be a natural result of the increased demand and sales of the goods, which meet the needs of the customers.

Wider product range

The technological advance helps companies create state of art models, benefit from robust design solutions and manufacturing engineering capabilities. Thus the range of any product can be expanded and specifications diversified for different models. It results in increased sales and consequently profit.

More added value and better brand awareness

Due to the increased possibilities of wider product range, a company gets the opportunity to create a USP - unique selling proposition to the existing and potential customers, to offer them something special, they are ready to pay more for. It will also result in differentiating from the competitors and consequently better brand recognition.

Legal and ecological issues handling

Not only digital innovation ideas facilitate the upgrading of a product, but also the optimization of manufacturing processes to comply with the environmental regulations and legal norms. At times businesses have to modernize to meet the changing requirements even though it was not planned.

Improved staff retaining, motivation, and easier employment

It should, probably, be mentioned as a side effect. Perfect product quality reached through innovation often brings a company a corresponding reputation. Pioneering businesses are well-known for being inspiring their stuff for better achievements and thinking out of the box. It attracts and motivates employees who are eager to develop.

New partnerships and relationships

A partnership is often an effective way of meeting business objectives. In case you innovate, you’ll become interesting to other businesses for the purposes of cooperation and achieving even better results in bringing innovative technologies faster to the market. Besides, pooling monetary, human and infrastructure resources can reduce operational costs and overall expenses. Thus the end value of a product decreases even more.

Any novelty comes with some pitfalls and the risks of innovation also exist. The main three to mention are competition, uncertain returns, and accessibility of finance.

Competition

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to protect innovative processes and products, even though the system of patents was established as an attempt to offer a legal shelter to those who introduce pioneering solutions. At times the competitors can be revealed only after the investments have been made and a great deal of research made. That’s where we come to the next point.

Uncertain returns

A great deal of research is often purely hypothetical. Nobody can offer a 100% guarantee that there will be revenue and profits in the future. The risk increases proportionally to the development timescale. The longer the research lasts, the higher are the chances that the competitive companies can overtake it as well. 

Accessibility of means

Businesses often have limited financial resources for research and design purposes. That’s why lots of entrepreneurs and startupers dealing with innovations frequently face the lack-of-means-challenge. It’s important to realize here that the returns of innovation are often long-term and the investment policy of the company should align with its long-term goals. At the same time, the risk management of digital innovation should be carefully mapped out. 

How to mitigate the risk and cost of innovation

No matter what sphere your business and innovation are, whether it’s a digital innovation in banking sector, of the industrial process or the product or service you offer optimization, the technology should not be undervalued. A value-based pricing strategy is an effective way of risk mitigation. 

1. Take a team approach

To release a really advanced solution that will be of demand you need a profound understanding of your clients’ needs and pains. So the engineering, research, and design teams should work in close cooperation with the marketing and sales departments. 

Capturing market insights will help figure out what a consumer is eager to pay for and what product features or elements should be implemented to add it value. Such aspects are commonly not asked before the product is transferred to the commercial department and it often becomes the reason for failures. 

2. Determine the economic value of the innovation and adopt a value-based pricing strategy

It’s at times difficult to define the fair share of the financial value, which was created due to the new-fangled digital solution. That’s why a great many businesses tend to use the old good cost-plus pricing equation. This strategy is simple and seems good enough. However, it does not address the value side of the price calculation and the technology is often underestimated. 

A value-based approach is essential then to avoid putting too small a price on the innovation introduced. Otherwise, your consumers or partners will attain more than the fair share of the value.

3. Overcome legacy pricing pitfalls

In the process of a value-based pricing structure formation, other confusing issues will be discovered. Lots of technologies, like hard- and software or industrial equipment, for instance, have their own pricing. Managed by various business units inside the company they may create obstacles to the consistent cost equation.

4. Create a pricing structure for long-term success

It’s reasonable not only to finance digital novelties but also to adjust proper business procedures and a considerate pricing structure, to curtail the risk of underpricing. It will as well make the most of the acceptance of the new product in the market.

Conclusion

Often bright and promising digital innovation ideas lack proper technical realization. To generate profit, one should get a deep insight into the technologies which drive innovation, and the concerns of the market which govern the success. 

No matter if you develop a new product, refresh some strategy or look for a new original way to fight off the competitors, your approach to innovation will be determined by your business specifics and experts you turn to. Partnering with companies, like Axisbits, which are ready to help you in crafting both a pioneering and a future-proof solution is a key to success. 

How to reduce the risk and cost of digital innovation in business

In this piece of content, we'll review how technology integration helps to continuously create value in every industry.

Read More

2.10.2019

7

min read

The banking industry gets more and more focused strategically and advanced technically. It’s no surprise that the main emphasis is being now put on business processes digitizing and structural reconsideration. The competition is great and everyone realizes that the future of banking is digital. 

Modern banks have already started to adopt the practices, which were earlier introduced by fin-tech startups, more extensively use data and analytics and progressively go mobile. 

The Riksbank investigation has revealed that the proportion of cash transactions has recently hit a record low of 13 percent in some states and eMarketer predicts that by 2022, almost 80% of the millennials in America will be digital banking users. 

That’s why we decided to analyze the mobile banking trends which are likely to change our life in the nearest years. 

Six popular trends that will define banking the next 3 years

Voice payments

At present, the voice search can be already called a norm. It allows to use voice assistants on the go and find the staff we need, even on the move. Some banks have already taken the advantage and introduced the voice technology for payment authorization as a part of the two-step authentication. Besides, it's possible to access private banking through voice commands to Siri and Alexa. Certain institutions even now let their clients make monetary transfers, inquiries about operations and status of complaint, or report lost cards with just a voice.

Voice over Internet Protocol progressively makes modern services more accessible and secure. However, it’s not anymore enough to simply optimize products for sound-driven search. The contemporary banks get more and more concerned with Voice User Interface which can bring a vast improvement to customer engagement, insights and consequently conversions.

Phygital delivery

The contemporary banking system is based on a branch network, but the cost of its maintenance is quite high. That’s why one of the following trends worth our attention is moving the transactions to the digital domain. Digital-only banking entities can expect higher ROI, being at the same time able to collect deposits, offer loans, realize investing and offer special services. Besides, such banks will enjoy the decreased costs of payment funding. 

The main concerns here should be groundbreaking customer experiences and enhanced value for the clients. It can be achieved through big data combined with advanced analytics for a more personalized customer approach. However, it’s vital to determine the right balance between physical and digital, because innovative delivery models should still meet the clients’ expectations. Their own costs in their turn redefine the whole structure of the present-day banking industry.

Machine learning and smart bots

According to Business Insider, more than 60% of consumers admit they would switch the bank if the service is bad. Personalization is the key to keep the client at present. More than that, it should be a real-time experience. Both can nowadays be achieved through the technology of machine learning, predictive analytics, and smart bot solutions. Combined with intellectual communication these technologies are able to assist the customers at all steps of any transaction performed. Chatbots are believed to be able to make estimations better and to take smarter decisions than humans.

Artificial intelligence: banking on the future

AI seems to be the most exciting innovation in banking in the coming days. Some institutions have already started their way to predictive banking and verbal advice, but they have to struggle with the table stakes of digital assistance for it not to sound scolding. 

At present all the external and internal data of the clients can already be consolidated, analyzed and predictive client profiles formed in real-time, thus recommendations can be provided. However, the boosted customer experience along with improved security and efficiency is expected in the nearest future in the financial sphere due to more wide utilizing of robo-advisors and bots driven by AI. 

Besides, these capabilities can be integrated with the open banking expanded services and connected devices to proactively change the customers’ behavior, with figures and insights received. This may facilitate the elimination of old-fashioned financial products, like credits, checks, payments, since the innovative solutions will be universal and able to offer integrated services.

Computing cloud

Just a year ago bankers debated about moving to the cloud, now they discuss how to effectively operate there. It’s vital to combine the information in the cloud with effective analytical tools. Such a strategy may help to avoid integration problems with systems and products from various vendors. Besides, cloud technology allows to set the common standard through all distribution channels and in such a way to improve UX. 

Cloud computing facilitates the more rapid operation of self-service channels due to the immediate access to the necessary data, requires lower costs and allows SRM services scalability. 

Most likely banking institutions will receive common opportunities in cloud computing and technology integration, however, he would win, who will manage to craft something of real value. 

Mobile services and open banking

The growing number of governing bodies require that banks enable clients to share their data with 3rd parties, thus making open banking one of the most popular mobile banking trends. The main aim is to escalate competition and launch new financial services. Improved customer value is nowadays a winning approach. 

Open banking APIs chase mobile banking and facilitate the expansion of the ecosystem through innovation and collaboration. It’s now easy to build a net, which is easy to access from a single point of control. Having access to the financial operations and data through API a user has more freedom to control the interaction with service providers. Having several accounts in different banks, a consumer receives an opportunity to access and operate them all through a centralized hub with a single, all-inclusive dashboard. 

Besides, it makes the customer a central figure of the system and the strategy. However, security and regulatory issues make this trend slow to be implemented.

Conclusion

Though the banking system is known to be resistant to change, at present, the traditional entities face the necessity to keep up with the growing demands for personalization, self-service, and instant assistance on part of consumers. This results in a greater demand for the development of banking apps and solutions based on wearables. 

Axisbits is eager to provide assistance to banking entities and craft unconventional IT products for the exclusive UX, along with unconditional convenience.

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11.9.2019

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Implementation of innovative products in the fields of technological and software developments require a special approach. That goes for the stages of both initial production and following promotion.

How Does Product Development Strategy Help Companies Acquire Leading Positions?

We can define various schemes of products and companies achieving success in the market if we analyze how large companies focused on innovative production operate. In terms of the market giants, at a certain point, their brand becomes a decisive factor in getting high consumer demand. It’s only reasonable to tackle innovation development when you have good credit of interest among potential or existing users. 

Large companies tend to employ aggressive marketing to successfully distribute even the products that don’t fully meet user demand. This doesn’t mean, however, that any successful company reaches a point where it can afford to neglect consumer desires, going strictly for aggressive marketing methods. 

There are different types of strategies that can be employed. For instance, you can:

  • Introduce to the market not one but several innovative solutions simultaneously or subsequently. This is a good way to ‘hit a target with several shots at once’ and cover several customer categories at the same time.  
  • Implement a major product that corresponds to all the most relevant market tendencies of the moment and is filled with innovations to the brim. I.e., emphasize the novel, diverse nature of your product instead of simply offering a single solution to one particular issue. 
  • Focus on the outspoken conceptual uniqueness of the brand and all solutions launched under it. For instance, tech innovations bring better results if they are based on an advanced, novel concept, yet are accessible and interesting to a wide scope of consumers. 

A product implementation strategy should be a combination of efficient development and marketing tactics. The main goal of the project/product/company leads is to paint a big picture of the concept and plan out each innovative aspect of it.

Major Cheat Sheet Items for Innovative Product Development Success

No matter the type and size of your company or products you offer, developers should always work in well correspondence with the market tendencies, constantly analyzing them and juxtaposing potential concepts with TA needs. This is a necessary condition of achieving success in practically any field. The following couple of field practice-based guidelines will serve as great shortcuts for you as a striving product lead. 

Focus on new technologies that offer the most impact

Efficient product development obliges developers to constantly stay in tune with the technologies that can help guarantee a product’s demand. In the IT market, there are always certain tendencies, trends focused on certain kinds of innovations - when these are met, chances of ultimate success rise dramatically. 

Anything that can be described as breakthrough certainly should be considered. Take such tech concepts as augmented or virtual reality, artificial intelligence, voice recognition, etc., which provided some incredible capabilities for many innovative products and paved the way for their ultimate success.

Concentrate on what the user wants

Users crave for new things, no matter the field or even the sphere of life. The market, however, is also influenced by somewhat conservative tendencies of consumers, which is based on the fact that we are slow at getting used to new things and switching from one innovation to another.  

When you get to the basic definition of your product development process, you should analyze how certain products become outdated for most users and how other solutions stay relevant for years and decades. You can borrow certain features from both categories, implementing well-tried-and-tested aspects as well as bringing back some nostalgic feats.

Use data to manage profit and loss

User behavior is crucial to thoroughly analyze if you want to get as much profit as possible out of your solution. Try to find out which pricing policy can best motivate your TA to make purchases and to provide individual pain-solving products for several categories of users, satisfying narrow scopes of consumers while simultaneously expanding your reach further. 

Maintain data security & compliance for customer loyalty & trust

Private data security is crucial in terms of any product. Risks of user data being compromised significantly lowers the level of trust along with the basic interest towards your product and brand. Cybersecurity is something you shouldn’t neglect in any case. 

Keep in mind that users usually employ a great variety of software in conjunction - integrations, plugins, payment systems, social media, messengers, etc. If one thing is out of sync in terms of data security, this whole interlinked complex of solutions and services gets undermined.  

Conclusion

The main factor of the hi-tech, novel product development success is how timely and fast you track the most demanded innovations and adapt them in terms of your own solution. A truly good product is interesting to contemporary consumers and offers a high quality of interaction, performance, and problem-solving. 

Keep in tune with the latest tech, market, and competition tendencies, and you’ll have all the chances to repeat the success of some industry giants.  

Innovative Product Development: The Product Leader’s Cheat Sheet

The following practice-based guidelines will serve for you and your company as great shortcuts for your innovative product development and your company growth.

Read More

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