The decisions you make today have a strong bearing on the operations of your business in the future. In order to make sound decisions, your enterprise needs to have the latest operational intelligence information. This is where ‘Business Intelligence’ (BI) comes in and a qualified BI consultant will be able to track your company’s status and operational data very quickly and efficiently. The global market for BI platforms is witnessing a constant rise that has made it rank among the fastest growing enterprise software industries. As per Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics platform from earlier this year, this growth is expected to take place at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 8.7% through to 2018. Source: Gartner (February 2015) Martin Butler, an industry expert, commented on the importance of BI by saying that “an organisation without Business Intelligence bears a striking resemblance to a ship without a rudder” in his latest report. So in this article, we will look at the reasons your organisation needs a Business Intelligence consultant, along with some tips to find the right BI consultants and hire them at the right time. Tasks Performed by BI Consultants An ideal BI consultant for your business will have sound knowledge of the underlying data system, along with programs and tools that create the data. The primary job involves carrying out constant monitoring of the business data and generates timely reports that can be shared with your company’s management on a frequent basis. One of the most important yet ignored tasks performed by any BI consultant is finding and listing down requirements. The consultant can devise relevant strategies...
Any guesses as to what has been named as the ‘sexiest job of the twenty-first century’? According to the Harvard Business Review, it is the job of a data scientist. Surprised? With the amount of data we are generating coupled with the rapid increase in technology, it is no surprise that we need an expert to make sense of all this data and do much more. A data scientist is soon going to become a basic need for most companies. So what exactly does a data scientist do? Who is a Data Scientist? The basic job of a data scientist is to analyse data. He does this himself, but he also builds automated systems that do so. Statistics and machines play a big part in the process. A data scientist needs to needs to be good with numbers, but also needs to have a scientific bent of mind. The job of a data scientist is required today than ever before. Think of the Internet – think how much data is generated there. The number of YouTube videos uploaded each minute, the number of Facebook posts liked every minute, the number of products bought online every minute; and this does not even cover a tenth of the activity that is conducted on the Internet. This kind of data can give invaluable insight and information to a company, depending on what they are looking for. But how do you look for what you want in such a complicated maze and so much sheer volume? This is what a data scientist does. Data scientists can also make predictions. These predictions are based...
According to Statista, an online statistics portal, Apple claims that the number of iOS apps downloaded from the Apple store has crossed the 100 billion mark in June 2015 (from July 2008). Now that’s a staggering figure, isn’t it? Source: Statista The regular mobile apps that you find on any app store are the ones developed to directly target consumers around the world. They are based on some simple tasks, like learning English and simple mathematical formulas, to complex tasks, like managing expenses and maintaining calendar appointments. But, enterprise mobile apps are those that are dedicated specifically for teams within an organization and enterprise customers instead of for just direct consumers These business apps are made for companies of different sizes and are more data-centric . Developing these apps involve fulfilling stringent requirements with regard to company security, administration and maintenance. According to Apple, around 98% of the Fortune 500 companies have an iOS application which clearly shows that enterprises are keen on investing wisely in business apps from a long-term point of view. Let’s check out the best practices for developing iOS apps for enterprises. Hire Qualified iOS App Developers Would you trust an individual app developer, who has made some regular apps, to develop an enterprise app for your company just to save costs? Of course not! Right? When the stakes are high, you need well-trained and qualified developers who have significant knowledge of iOS app development for businesses. Being an experienced app development team ourselves, we realise the importance of getting the enterprise app development process streamlined from the start. And a key component to this is...
Smartphones have changed our world. A decade or two ago, mobiles were just portable landlines – used primarily for calls and the occasional text. Today, it is an unforgettable part of our lives, something that helps us do everything from waking up in the morning to remembering appointments to playing games to burning calories to listening to music to keeping a track of pregnancy cycles. All of this is made possible by mobile applications. What does your organization do to leverage ahead? Statistics suggest that 32% of UK customers make a purchase on their phone. Add to that the fact that you can find an application for almost any task you might want to do – from learning a foreign language to waking up a stranger across the world with a song. Mobile users are expected to reach more than 43 million in the UK by 2017 and people are increasingly using their phones to access everything from search engines to shopping websites. Mobile solutions are needed for everything. Developing App For Your Business You need have an app for your business. Whether it be to improve organizational productivity or market your own app, you need a good app strategy. You have two options – you either hire a freelancer or a company. The best decision would be outsourcing to a company. Why? A freelancer may be great in a specific area but won’t have as much experience as a gamut of experts that a company has. A good company will also have acquired its reputation and grown by working for different kinds of businesses. The Steps Involved So...
There was a time when people used to run applications and software downloaded to their own devices or servers. This meant increased threats of data loss and less flexible systems – you actually needed data to be in the system to be able to complete the work. With cloud hosting, people can now access all the application through the internet, no matter what the location is. The solution has become popular over the years, especially among small and medium enterprises, that run on a modest budget. Companies can look at increased collaboration with cloud, enabling employees to share and work on data seamlessly, and individuals to pick up their work from any machine that has access to the cloud. Cloud services have also opened a world for businesses and users to interact. You can save your word files in cloud or just use a cloud invoicing system. There are different cloud host providers offering you space to store data online and collaborate easily but the development of SaaS has been the most significant. According to the latest statistics issued by Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), 84 percent of all the companies in the United Kingdom have adopted at least one cloud service. The research also shows that about 78 percent companies in the country adopt two or more cloud services. In fact, this technology has evolved in phases, starting from utility and grid computing, application service provision (ASP) and the latest Software as a Service (SaaS). Why Cloud Hosting? There are different reasons that have owed to the remarkable success of cloud hosting: Flexibility: Need more bandwidth or storage space...
The last few years have been a whirlwind period for enterprises, as work cultures ruffled up and finally settled for new ways of doing business with enterprise mobility. It has made businesses realise the potential of mobile devices supplied by them to their employees and how it can create a positive impact on their business in terms of enhanced communication, increased productivity and improved efficiency. According to a study by Salesforce, 60% of British workers use mobile apps for work-related productivity and around 21% use department-specific enterprise apps. It has also been found that enterprise apps boost employee productivity by 34%! While enterprise mobility is focused on solving the business needs, normal mobile apps are mostly fun-orientated and specifically focused on the consumers. Additionally, developing enterprise mobile apps is much more complex and expensive, demands reliable security features to prevent any breaches of confidential business transactions and requires highly-skilled resources. So, what lies ahead for enterprise mobility? Is it going to evolve more this year? Although half of 2015 is already gone, we can expect to see more improvements in the remaining months. So let’s see what’s in store. More Devices for Greater Enterprise Mobility Forrester states that about 20% of all tablets sold today are used in enterprise mobility. This all started with the Blackberry in 2000 and the pace increased with smartphones in 2007 and again with tablets in 2010. Besides this, a heterogeneous world of devices is emerging as “internet of things,” connecting all possible devices together. You need to keep up with the pace of the ever-changing world of digital devices where the success mantra is to provide an...
While browsing through a website with an extremely easy user interface (UI), our mind inadvertently goes back to the times when just loading a web page was an enduring task. Moving from the mouse-driven computers to smartphones and tablets, web pages have adapted themselves seamlessly over the years. The year 2015 and beyond will witness some benchmark transformations in front-end technologies. Internet users will traverse this wave of change, enjoying speedier and more appealing web pages. Moving along this technological wave, we are hooked on providing the best web solutions today. Based on our expertise, here is an in-depth view of the current and future trends in front-end development. The User’s Perspective Front-end development is the face of the application. As users, we want web pages to be friendly and appealing. Here are some aspects of front-end technologies which users are most interested in: Compatibility: The ability to adapt to different internet browsers. Usability: This attribute signifies the easy-to-use aspect of the website. Complexity: This specifies the back-end of the web application, which controls the speed and security of the data. Whatever the style and time may be, engaging these aspects remains unchanged. Recent Trends in Web Development Web technologies have taken a major leap with the changing requirements. The applications that go well on a laptop screen are now also compatible with mobile phones. There are some important parameters that have implemented these changes, so let’s take a look of these: Responsive Web Design For any website, the response of users is the most imperative factor. A responsive web design (RWD) allows users to browse the website from...
While building a multifaceted and interactive web application, architects and developers are usually met with the challenge of performance, maintainability and modularity and are in constant need of a set of frameworks that can act like a backbone to their project and help them knock-out all the glitches in the process. JavaScript, a programming language that was designed to give easy access to pre-built components that serve as building blocks for a webpage, thus entered the field. Gone are the days when web development was all about uploading static HTML, CSS and JavaScript files to an HTTP server. Modern web applications are much larger and more complex than earlier and require a framework of language that provides structure, quality and maintainability all at the same time. JavaScript frameworks were created to address the need of building a stable foundation for a web application. What are JavaScript Frameworks? JavaScript frameworks are libraries of pre-written JavaScript that allow easier development of JS-based applications by providing a layer of abstraction on top of the core language. These frameworks provide a multitude of functions and help make it easier and more achievable for developers to create responsive, fluid and maintainable interfaces for web apps. JavaScript frameworks are open-sourced, released under the permissive MIT license and aim to resolve the problem of single page web apps using an MVC or MV* design pattern. Top JavaScript Frameworks There has been a great surge in MV* frameworks over the past few years and the list of new and stable frameworks continues to grow each year. Developers usually find themselves lost in choice as to which framework...
Most organizations receive chunks of information. Some come from the customer service, some from their IT department and some from their market research team. This information might be random, anything from having a person’s name to his bill details. This random sets of information can start to make sense if organizations can organize this information correctly. Companies can do well to interlink data that are similar – to be able to strategize better and understand their customers in a better way – a thing we commonly refer to as Big data. What are we talking about, what is BIG data? Organizations store data under different heads. Some relate to customer details, some relate to customer mail ID, and some relate to customer needs. Every bit of data is important, but it is useless until it is organized, processed and reduced to simpler forms so to make a sense out of it. This data can be in the form of text, images, audio, videos – anything imaginable. Most of it would not make sense individually. However, put together in a certain way, they offer useful insights that can offer a detailed knowledge about the observed aspect. Combine your customers birth date with his personal taste and you might just understand how you can help him more with your products or services. The term BIG DATA refers to large sets of data that are enormously large to be processed by the conventional methods of sorting and thus requires a smarter system to analyze, collect, share, store and simplify. A system needs to process this data. It is this need that brought...
Gone are the days when websites were developed for large screens of desktop computers or laptops. Today, everything has to be scaled down to fit smaller screens of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. With Google’s mobile-friendly update for websites as released on April 21, 2015, it has now become apparent for every webmaster or blogger to apply a mobile-first strategy for website development. Developers now focus on mobile-optimised websites that work great on mobile phones and tablets, and then scale up perfectly for larger computer or laptop screens. Let’s take a look at what mobile first web-design means, and its importance for websites, and how to start development of mobile-friendly websites. What Does Mobile-First Approach Mean? The ‘mobile first’ strategy for website development involves designing an online experience first for mobile devices and then optimizing it for scaling up to desktop and laptop computers. It does not mean designing a website that works well on desktop computers and then adjusting it to be compatible with mobile phones or tablets. The mobile-first process is to design online websites specifically for mobile customers, keeping their dynamic behaviour, context and needs in perspective. The user interface should suit mobile devices with easily readable text and easy navigation to the different sections of the site. Why Go Mobile-First? The number of mobile users has increased manifold and easily outnumbers the number of people that access websites on PCs or laptops. According to a ComScore report, mobile devices generate more than 60% of the online traffic to websites. This percentage keeps on increasing with every passing quarter, and that has fuelled the need for every business to have mobile-friendly websites. Source: ComScore So, if you haven’t optimised your website yet, you need...
