Customer Experience – Two words that could make or break your business.

Today, customers expect businesses to provide nothing short of an excellent customer experience whenever and however they shop. This is going to be the main differentiator between you and your competitors. The race to own customer experience is on!

Some businesses are learning this the hard way, but you don’t have to. The solution is right here – Technology. Through this article, we want to help you understand how technology can improve customer experience. We will also discuss top technology trends to help your brand beat the competition.

But first, let us explain why customer experience matters.

Does Customer Experience Matter?

Did you know that 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations?

Gone are the days when an unhappy customer used to complain directly to the brand. Today, they choose to complain to the rest of the world through social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more. Creating a powerful and memorable customer experience is more complicated than ever in such a scenario.

While that is true, it is also true that these customers share positive customer experiences on these platforms as well. 71% of customers recommend a product or service just because they received a “great” customer experience.

As a brand, you may define your brand’s promises. However, the customer decides whether or not your brand delivers on its promises. According to market research by Gartner, customer experience drives over 60% of brand loyalty.

To satisfy customers, most businesses hire and train good people. But that is not sufficient. They need tools that will help them deliver a top-notch customer experience and make them want to come back to you. Using technology for customer experience can build your brand through satisfied customers.

That takes us to the next intriguing question: How does technology improve customer experience?

How Does Technology Improve Customer Experience?

Technology for customer experience gives customers unlimited access to information, allowing them to demand products and services whenever they want. As the speed of technology to enhance customer experience accelerates, businesses must evolve quickly. Brands that use technology to enhance customer experience will thrive, but you can be sure that those that are slow to react will not survive.

Here are three key ways in which technology enhances customer experience:

1. Increased opportunities 

Using smartphones, customers can research products, raise queries, and purchase products or services no matter where they are and what they are doing. A study revealed that consumers in the UK spend over 22.8 billion pounds per year on online shopping while using public transport.

With consumers becoming hyper-connected, businesses need to leverage increasing opportunities to engage new and existing customers. Technology can help companies integrate all marketing channels to deliver a cohesive customer experience irrespective of their channel. Technology can help you use customer data effectively to deliver seamless experiences.

2. Reach every audience segment

According to a Google report, 90% of online shoppers use more than one device to shop. A shopper may use one device to search for a product and another to check the pricing and complete the purchase.

Businesses need to be available with the right messaging at the right time. Technology for customer experience will help you reach your customers on any device. Technology can enable you to provide contextually relevant experiences that engage customers in the right place, at the right time, and with the right message.

3. Communicate better

Most customers switch brands because the purchasing process is too difficult. Technology offers solutions to reach customer demands. AI-powered chatbots enable your brand to communicate better with your customers.

Since chatbots provide detailed records of conversations with customers, you can use that data to analyze to reveal insights on consumer pain points. You can use these insights to improve products and services.

Top Technology Trends That Improve Customer Experience

1. AI chatbot

AI chatbot is restructuring the way brands communicate with their customers. These conversational AI chatbots are responsible for creating a personalized customer experience, making sentiment analyses, and more. Consider a use case:

Fingent helped one of the oldest state universities to develop an AI-driven ecosystem that allows students to interact with an AI chatbot (teaching assistant). These are built to be trained and allow instructors to upload the content that students need. These chatbots can manage student queries and allow for keyword and tag searches of teaching material.

2. Virtual reality

Virtual reality is a game-changer enabling customers to educate themselves about your company. Plus, VR redefines how your sales reps understand customers, increasing their empathy and enabling them to suggest better solutions to their issues.

Fingent recently built a highly interactive visual medium to enable medical students to quickly gain efficiency in stand medical procedures.

3. Augmented reality and 3D configuration

Augmented reality is considered a boon to improving the digital customer experience. It gives customers a clear picture of your product, helping in quicker purchasing decisions.

Fingent helps build interactive mobile apps that enable 3D purchase decisions. It also develops agnostic web solutions for eCommerce to better use AR capabilities.

Watch more: Take a look at how Fingent helps leading businesses thrive with 3d Web Configurator and other AR/VR capabilities.

Fingent- A Perfect Partner to Create Custom Technology Solutions To Enhance Customer Experience.

The impact of technology is a powerful catalyst for change, and the speed of that change is getting faster and faster. Fingent can help you identify technology trends and capitalize before it is too late.

You must acknowledge and meet consumer demands for your business to increase market share and stay relevant. Marrying customer service and technology can drive customer delight.

Fingent brings you deep expertise in experience strategy and design, harnessing best-in-class solutions. We can help you drive transformation across the customer lifecycle, sales, marketing, and more.

Fingent top custom software development company is equipped to provide support across channels. Our quick and easy setup allows you to cut time and lower costs. With the help of AI and automation, we can route your tickets to the right agent and boost customer satisfaction. Find out more about us and chat with our experts to see how this can be done.

Manufacturing has long been a driver of global prosperity and economic growth. We all see astounding growth as the manufacturing industry evolves and keeps up with changing consumer needs.

This has led industry leaders to shift their focus from traditional to smart factory technology. A smart factory offers many benefits to operators, managers, and executives of companies in this industry. And yet, a few companies hesitate to start their journey the ‘smart way.’ If you are one of those companies, this article will help you with details and show you how a smart factory can bring its business operations and customer satisfaction to a new level.

Let us begin by understanding what a smart factory is.

What Is a Smart Factory?

Take a manufacturing facility and completely digitize it – that is what a smart factory is. The smart factory is a digitized manufacturing facility that uses digitized manufacturing methods, devices, and systems to continuously collect and share data. This data is used to make informed decisions that improve processes and address manufacturing challenges. The smart factory is a new industrial revolution phase focusing on real-time data, connectivity, automation, and Machine Language.

A smart factory uses the best digital and physical worlds to monitor the entire production line, from supply chain management to manufacturing tools. It can even monitor the work of an individual operator on the factory floor.

Why Is It Smart to Embrace the Smart Factory Movement?

According to a press release by Marketsandmarket, the smart manufacturing market was projected to reach USD 228.2 billion by 2027. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5% from 2022 to 2027. Then, most businesses consider smart factories highly beneficial and crucial across industries and sectors. Here are some of those significant benefits:

• Measure key performance indicators: A smart factory provides managers with automated data that is accurate. This data gives them the ability to measure key performance indicators more efficiently.
• Think ahead better and faster: Smarter predictive maintenance allows managers to predict and resolve maintenance issues better and faster.
• Efficient demand management: It can forecast more accurately and thus reduce waste enabling efficient demand management.
• Boosted productivity:  Managers boost productivity as it can provide seamless data on machine maintenance and potential bottlenecks.

Read more: A Look Into The Future Of Manufacturing Industry: The Challenges, The Opportunities, and The Technologies That Will Help Revolutionize

Key Elements of a Smart Factory

There are a few elements that make the smart factory what it is. Understanding these elements will help you see how it fits into your business.

1. Robotics

Robotics is a crucial element of a smart factory. Robotics enables smart material handling and adaptive operations. Besides, robots come with flexible infrastructure that can scale depending on business needs.

2. Big data and IoT

The Smart factory provides augmented access to large amounts of data obtained through the cloud and connected devices. This can empower manufacturers to identify patterns and insights, thus enabling them to make more informed decisions to optimize operations and improve productivity in the long run.

3. Cloud-based management

Cloud-based management includes a suite of professional software architecture that can be developed to empower highly efficient business operations. This can offer market reactivity and scalability. It can also provide real-time visibility into a business’s inventory and manage supply chain operations from the manufacturing to the end customer.

4. Virtual reality

Manufacturers have been using virtual reality for some time now. It uses computer-generated visuals that help improve the experience of the user. It trains engineers to handle complex virtual processes, maintenance systems, and troubleshooting.

5. Cybersecurity

Smart factories tend to increase cyber security threats. Thankfully, smart factory technologies are equipped to streamline cyber threats. For example, AI-powered bots act as guards 24/7, ensuring data security.

6. Additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is used for rapid prototyping, on-site manufacturing, and more. It saves time and costs spent on production and tool replacements. Quick reproduction, reconfiguration, and validation can also enable reverse engineering.

Read more: ERP Systems for Manufacturing: How it Improves Business Process

A Look into The Future of Smart Factories

Manufacturers that leverage smart factory technologies will unlock game-changing flexibility and agility. Emerging imperatives for the manufacturing industry include supply chain resilience, enhanced productivity, flexibility, and sustainability. In simple terms, only those manufacturing systems that enable a demand-driven and dynamically optimized value chain will survive and thrive.

1. Increasing demands

In the coming years, factories will face more stringent regulatory and compliance requirements ever. Such demands also merge with global trends toward adopting digitization. Given their ability to drive exponential productivity and sustainability benefits, digital technologies are at the heart of these changes.

2. Automation and beyond

Across the world, manufacturers began their digital transformation with automation to minimize manual operations and maximize output. But technological advances are enabling manufacturers to empower operators to understand operational data. Furthermore, newer platforms and integration technologies are driving down the cost of digital transformation.

3. Transformational gains

By implementing an integrated automation system, manufacturers can accelerate their sustainable manufacturing vision. Driven by the unrelenting need for agility and resilience, manufacturers can empower their workforce by adopting smart factories. By building future smart factories, they can unlock value benefits for all stakeholders along the way.

Creating a Smarter Future for Manufacturing with Fingent!

A smart factory is a direct way for manufacturers to excel in a competitive and dynamic marketplace. Partnering with the right app development company could mean make or break for you. Manufacturers need the right partner to help them implement solutions correctly. Fingent has been a consulting partner to several manufacturing companies and proved its mettle. Have a look at our Case Studies:

With the right partner, upgrading a traditional factory to a smart factory is much simpler than most imagine. Fingent builds custom solutions to integrate factories with smart solutions. Through our experience, we have already helped many businesses transform their traditional factories into smart factories.

Our experts at Fingent can help retrofit most existing manufacturing equipment and set up a centralized hub that can receive data from all the sensors. A cloud service could be set up to monitor and analyze from offsite. What is more, these solutions are upgradeable.

This allows established factories to upgrade at their own pace while keeping the upgrade cost low. Do you have a traditional factory that needs to become smart? Contact Fingent today!

The ongoing digital revolution is forever reshaping how businesses interact with their customers.

Modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, chatbots, machine learning software, and other solutions have allowed businesses to break away from traditional phone-based support models in favor of an omnichannel approach.

Countless businesses now allow customers to connect with support agents across multiple mediums, such as email, messenger applications, SMS, and on-site chat apps. However, far too many are still neglecting a core component of the service experience — self-service.

Whether your organization operates within the business-to-consumer (B2C) space or the business-to-business (B2B) space, you must offer customers self-service

options. We explore the role that self-service plays in the modern support experience.

When businesses understand the benefits of offering self-service, which technologies enable them to provide this type of support, and how to leverage ambitious custom software development services, it is easy to transform the high-value customer support vision into a reality.

Read more: Why Your Business Needs a Customized Order Management System

Why Customer Self-Service Experiences are Invaluable in the Digital Age

Consumer expectations are evolving as technology becomes increasingly ingrained in our daily lives. Smartphones allow consumers to access virtually limitless information on a whim.

When most individuals encounter a problem or want to acquire new information, they typically break out their smartphones, conduct a quick internet search, and select the most relevant results.

“How does this apply to customer service?” you ask. Simply, consumers have become much more self-reliant when encountering an issue with a product or service. The majority of your customers would much rather troubleshoot a product independently without having to

connect with a service agent. It’s also true when they want to purchase products or services.

Therefore, your organization must offer self-service support options if you want to meet the expectations of current consumers. By doing so, you can mitigate consumer frustration, expedite the resolution process, and demonstrate that your company is responsive to the needs and wants of your target audience.

That said, creating a self-service experience on your website can be a challenging and tedious process. That is why many companies turn to experienced digital transformation companies when they need a custom technology solution.

What Technologies Facilitate Self-Service?

When businesses partner with a software development team to provide custom services, a broad range of technologies is available that provide clients with a competitive advantage. Some of these technologies include:

1. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence technologies are essential for creating dynamic self-service experiences. Without these technologies, self-service tools would be rigid and provide minimal assistance to your clients. Fortunately, AI allows developers to create innovative solutions unlike any off-the-shelf option.

2. Machine Learning

When used in conjunction with AI, machine learning software offers an immersive self-service experience. Over time, machine learning technologies can provide curated assistance based on past interactions with customers.

3. Chatbots

While chatbot technology is often used for lead generation, it can also be deployed to enhance the self-service experience. For instance, a consumer could provide information about their problem to a chatbot, and the program could connect them with resources to resolve the issue.

This approach will prevent the consumer from searching through your support page or reading your entire FAQs section to find the necessary information.

Read more: Prepare for the Future of Digital Innovation with these 10 Services From Fingent!

Top Ways Self-Service Enhances Customer Experiences

Self-service is rapidly becoming one of the most popular methods of customer support, and for a good reason. Reliable self-service enhances great customer experience in several distinct ways.

1. Reduces the Workload on Staff

If service tools handled even 20% of your customer support requests, then your staff would experience a significant decrease in their daily workload. Naturally, a lighter workload would improve morale and employee retention. Ultimately, this will reduce your hiring and recruiting costs.

In addition, reducing the workload on your staff directly impacts the quality of service they can provide your customers. Your team will have more time to devote to your customers because they will not be in a rush to handle the next service call.

2. Empowers Customers

They feel empowered when you provide customers and clients with user-friendly self-service options. They are no longer at the mercy of your support staff and can freely take matters into their own hands to resolve frustrating product issues.

Self-service can also minimize any product issue’s negative impact on brand loyalty. If a consumer experience only minor inconveniences when a problem occurs, they will be more willing to continue doing business with your company.

3. Reduces Costs

Performing support tasks manually is labor-intensive and time-consuming. As a result, you must maintain a fully-staffed support center to handle incoming customer service requests. The overhead associated with this can be excessive.

While self-service solutions will not eliminate the need to employ support staff, you can reduce the size of your support department. Each team member can work more efficiently and focus on handling complex product issues. Self-service will address the majority of minor problems.

4. Expedites the Delivery of Service

Few things negatively impact a customer’s brand perception than excessive hold times. By partnering with software development experts to deploy self-service solutions, you can significantly reduce wait times and expedite support delivery to your clients.

This approach will boost customer satisfaction and optimize the average lifetime value of each client.

How a Software Development Partner Can Help

When you partner with an innovative team of cloud-native software development professionals, you can expect cutting-edge solutions that leverage the latest self-service technologies.

In addition to custom software development services, your partner should offer business technology consulting. With proper consultation, you can refine your vision with timely advice that will improve your approach, incorporate more suitable technology, or align with your budgetary constraints.

If you would like to work with a passionate software development company dedicated to helping you shatter growth barriers with dynamic tech, let’s chat today.

The strategic significance of advanced technologies as a critical business component is recognized by enterprises like never before. Besides business modernization and cost reduction, advanced technologies allow you to compensate for labor shortages, improve brand value and competency, and expedite research and innovation processes. However, several companies jump onto the bandwagon without properly understanding the practical applications and benefits of advanced technology in their business. Only 23% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide can invest in and grow with new digital tools, indicates the World Economic Forum. This data proves why companies should analyze advanced business technology examples before adopting digital tools.

Read more: Using technology to build customer trust: Your business plan for 2022

To simplify your understanding, here’s a quick rundown of five advanced business technologies we believe will help you cope with the new business and economic environment. 

• Simplifying Workflows With Cloud
• Low-code Applications
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Document Data Extraction
• AI Assistants

As these business technologies become more affordable and handy, businesses are ardently pursuing them to automate customer service, streamline workflows, differentiate products and services, and reach new markets. Depending on your budget, implementation timeline, priorities, and unique business requirements, our team at Fingent helps you build the roadmap for technology adoption. 

Let’s take a closer look at the five inevitable technologies for business transformation today:

Read more: How to gain maximum value from your technology investments?

1. Simplifying Workflows with Cloud

Workflow management is a highly overlooked enterprise strategy that directly impacts productivity. Managing different stakeholders, heaps of confidential data, and a series of preset and conditional tasks manually can lead to several errors such as employees missing key steps, policy violations, compliance issues, and monetary losses. By taking your workflows online, cloud-based workflow management applications increase your productivity. 

Cloud-powered workflows or workflow management tools:

• Are scalable, centralized, customizable to your needs, easy to integrate, secure, reliable, and hassle-free. 
• Offer a seamless and unified collaboration interface by preventing users from toggling between different messaging apps or communication channels.
• Reduce your dependency on in-house IT team by passing on the software maintenance responsibilities to the third-party software vendor. 
• Can be accessed via any authorized network (with approved access credentials), on any device, from anywhere, 24/7. This has been a huge game-changer for several companies that switched to remote operations during the pandemic. 

Example of a Cloud-based Workflow Tool

Finding a cloud workflow management tool that can be customized to your company’s requirements is daunting. The platform should integrate well with your organizational processes without disrupting your existing workflow. This is where digital workplace applications like InfinCE make the difference. 

With InfinCE Digital Workplace, Fingent has improved its productivity by 20% through real-time, effective, and easy collaboration. Data-powered dashboards, dedicated servers, collaboration apps, productivity tools, virtual desktops, private mobile apps, and a host of exceptional business management features enabled us to achieve a significant operational breakthrough in streamlining workflows. 

Read the full case study here.   

2. Low-code Applications

Gartner estimates that by 2025, 70% of enterprise applications will use low-code or no-code technologies. Digital business transformation requires pushing custom software solutions to the market at lightning speed. This demand has given rise to low-code applications that will break the technological and organizational silos of application development, automation, integration, and governance. Low-code development enables business users to bring innovative ideas to life by just dragging and dropping low-code elements through a graphical user interface. 

In simple words, low-code development enables “citizen” developers or non-tech users (such as business analysts or marketers) to build dashboards and survey or contact forms faster. Professional developers, on the other hand, can leverage low-code techniques to perform more efficient tasks such as legacy application modernization or back-end integrations with improved agility and velocity.

Use Cases for Low-code Applications

• Customer engagement applications and portals
• Mission-critical applications such as ERP software, payments manager, etc.
• Data analysis applications, BI dashboards, and data management software
• Mobile apps for customer engagement
• Order processing, inventory, order fulfillment, supply chain, and accounting apps

Salesforce Lightning, Microsoft Power Apps, and Zoho Creator are some of the leading low-code applications today. SAP users can leverage the unified low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to rapidly build and extend applications, and automate tasks and processes.

3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), often referred to as software robotics, is an easy-to-use software technology that allows anyone to automate digital tasks within their business processes. RPA allows users to create software robots or “bots” that can learn, emulate, and then execute rules-based business processes. According to Forrester Research, RPA software revenue is expected to reach $6.5 billion by 2025, while RPA-related services revenue could hit $16 billion in the same year. 

Potential Use Cases for RPA 

We offer free proof of concepts to help you understand how RPA can improve your business efficiency and customer experience. Some of our top use cases include:

• Automating discharge protocols and data management to increase HR productivity in healthcare.
• Daily retail process automation such as order processing, inventory and warehouse management, etc. to save time and resources.
• Reducing customer wait times through RPA-enabled chatbots that answer customer queries in real-time. 
• Error-free, automated billing and invoices to keep your financial systems and reports up-to-date.
• HR teams can automate the maintenance of personnel data and records, streamline onboarding, and manage payroll seamlessly. 

Download our white paper to learn more about how Robotic Process Automation can simplify your business operations

4. Document Data Extraction

Extracting quality data out of unstructured or poorly structured data sources and documents for further processing, migration, and storing has been a biggest obstacle in automating back office operations. If you are entering structured invoices to a robust ERP tool like SAP, your payments can be automated and system records can be generated automatically. Due to the high costs of data extraction, several businesses extract only critical information fields, for example, the payment field within an invoice. Businesses are compelled to manually extract data from other important fields, such as validating the invoice’s compliance with VAT.  

AI-integrated OCR Software for Document Extraction

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an affordable, game-changing technology that automatically extracts data from the digital images (photos) of large files, scanned documents, and sub-titles or captions superimposed on an image. It reduces the time spent in manual data entry and extraction by automatically converting typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-readable text. AI-powered automated data extraction tools like DocuSign, Docsumo, Kofax Capture, and Amazon Textract leverage OCR technology to reduce the chaos involved in document data extraction and enable businesses to create an efficient workplace. 

Our team helps customize document data extraction software that can save your time and money by eliminating transcription and transposing mistakes.

5. AI Assistants

One of the most common examples of small business automation today is the use of AI-powered virtual assistants. They can save your employees’ productivity by automating the most repeatable customer interactions, such as technical support, appointment scheduling, lead qualification, and order management. AI virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa can understand and act according to your voice commands and customize responses to your queries. Understanding customer intent through natural language processing and recognition allows AI assistants to maintain a human-like conversation.

Chatbots are a popular category of AI assistants that are designed specifically for text-based channels like SMS, email, and live chat. Recent years have witnessed a rise in chatbot adoption among several business verticals, product and service lines, websites, mobile apps, customer portals, and so on. Data shows that 58% of B2B companies and 42% of B2C websites are using chatbots to make their websites and mobile apps more interactive. More than 56% of businesses believe chatbots to be driving digital disruption in their industry. 

Case Study: AI Virtual Assistant for HR     

Fingent’s HR team was pressed to transform their service delivery model as routine, transactional tasks affected their performance and efficiency. To solve their struggle, Fingent developed MUSA, an AI-powered virtual assistant (a chatbot) and integrated it with Fingent Hub, Fingent’s internal employee management system. MUSA is short for Multi Utility Assistant. Employees can ask MUSA any queries related to HR and IT DevOps processes at Fingent, and they’ll get answered instantly. MUSA has improved our HR team’s response time by minimizing their workload and allowing them to focus on areas requiring more attention.     

Read the full case study here.

Business and Technology Are Inseparable

Gartner writes that businesses leading with technology employ advanced tech to boost their customer experience and revenue growth, have a clear understanding of their priorities, goals, and strategies, and invest in solutions tailored to their needs. Technology allows businesses to lower the walls within and between their organizations, customers, providers, suppliers, and so on. Organizations perceiving technology as a key business consideration will be able to match the pace of business change and stay relevant and competitive. 

How can your company embrace growth in a new era of transformation and business technology trends? If you feel you’re getting caught in the technology maze, take a quick break to contact us.

Our consultants can simplify your technology adoption strategy based on your priorities, customer needs, financial resources, and technical requirements. 

Technology is not a choice but a fundamental business strategy in the current world. Enterprises will need to accelerate their digital initiatives to support emerging technologies. To remain competitive in 2022 and beyond, businesses MUST invest in new technologies to ensure future innovation and growth. Business opportunities wait for those who successfully tackle their technology challenges. Efficiently dealing with these challenges can set a business apart from its competition.

This blog will assist you in facing the biggest technology challenges of 2022. It outlines how different technologies can help your business. And how you can ensure successful digital transformation.

How Technologies Help Businesses Achieve Success?

Digital transformation is one of the driving forces behind the growth and success of any business. It can enable better collaboration within and between organizations. Today’s business leaders must focus on projects that prepare their organizations for the future. Here are a few ways technologies help businesses stay ahead of the competition.

• Online collaboration: With a big upturn in remote working, it is fortunate that we no longer have to try to make do with cobbled-together services. Collaboration is key to efficiency and productivity. Remote workers need tools that can help them collaborate in real-time allowing them to go on with their projects rather than battling with those tools.

• Automated inventory system: The biggest benefit of an inventory system is automation. It can automate manual tasks and increase efficiency and productivity. It can also reduce overhead costs and increase customer satisfaction.

• Mobile apps: Mobile apps or customer-facing business apps improve how a business interacts with its customers. 

• Digital data storage: Digital data storage has reduced common data management tasks to mere seconds. It can store or retrieve data at any time from almost anywhere.

• Project management software: This software enables project managers to assign specific tasks to their employees. Also, it enables them to monitor the workflow to see if employees can accomplish their tasks on time. 

Watch more: Should your business invest in custom-built software or off-the-shelf software?

Biggest Technology Challenges Companies Face In 2022 

Businesses can benefit more from emerging technologies when they successfully tackle technology challenges. Here are some of those challenges:

1. Data security

Data security threats are causing havoc in organizations. Attackers constantly develop new techniques and vulnerabilities. Some of the most significant information security challenges include:

• Surface attack vulnerabilities
• Cloud threats
• Misuse of credentials
•  Digital supply chain risk
• Vertical specialized threats
• Conventional attacks

Preparedness is the key to stopping attacks before they stop you. Security leaders must look beyond traditional approaches to monitor, detect, and respond to manage a wider set of risks. In the case of supply chain risk, security leaders need to partner with other departments to prioritize digital supply chain risk. Businesses often choose to hire outsourced cybersecurity firms to help them strengthen their security and ward off any data security threats.

2. Automation

Automation has become a necessity in the digital world. Effective automation can boost productivity. It is an overall system quality enhancer in the long run. With proper automation, businesses can reduce maintenance costs. Manufacturers can also use automation to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the speed of time to market. 

But, finding the right automation tools and introducing them into the business workflow can create complications. Hence, a business must prepare for all the hurdles and mitigate the risk of automation failure. The success of automation largely depends on the execution of the test strategy. 

3. Remote work support or hybrid workforce

2022 is an important year for the hybrid workforce model. Integration between cloud-based solutions and mobile apps is crucial to ensure consistent hybrid or remote work engagement. The key is finding the best way to care for the needs of each user and department. Plus, an enterprise must find ways to optimize its IT support to assist remote employees with their computer problems.

4. Digital transformation

Digital transformation paves the way towards more efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability. However, implementing these technologies into business is a challenging process. These challenges are:

• Talent shortage
• Employee pushback
• Limited funds 
• Challenge of agile transformation

Enterprises with limited resources can assign projects to third-party organizations. A business can reduce pushback when implementing high-code or no-code solutions based on employees’ requirements. Taking a more mindful approach to digital transformation is crucial for ensuring a smooth transition. 

5. Focus on mobility

The usage of mobile apps worldwide has greatly increased in the past decade. Business owners use mobile apps to deliver services and goods to their customers. They also use these apps to boost their Return on Investment. These apps allow employers to give their employees tools that help them collaborate efficiently even when they work remotely.

However, providing a consistent mobile app experience can be challenging. 

6. Integrations

There are three major integration challenges enterprises face today.

• First challenge: Enterprises may have mission-critical systems and applications that they wish to transform and modernize to future-proof their business. 
• Second challenge: Connecting information from mission-critical systems to new applications. How to integrate information from point A to point B to bring everything together.
• Third challenge: Providing low code and no code tools to combat the shortage of skill and labor.

An effective IT management plan can help minimize or even cut the risk factors associated with integration.

Watch more: How Fingent helped a leading Real Estate firm in the US to streamline their operations and gain efficiency through seamless integration!

7. AI & ML

Businesses are often pursuing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for their business problems. Another major focus of enterprises is learning how to complete specific tasks without human intervention.

Each company is different, so it takes a unique algorithm for a particular business process. Finding the right AI and ML algorithm can be challenging.

Connect With Future Technologies and Stay Ahead

There is no end to the ever-changing trends businesses must adapt to, to thrive in this highly competitive market. Hence, businesses must forge ahead to connect with future technologies, or they may find competing with other businesses in their sector harder. Whereas businesses that adapt to digital transformation are much more successful in the market. However, analyzing tech opportunities or deciding which technology best fits your business operations is not always easy. That is why Fingent top custom software development company helps companies realize tech capabilities and build, implement and adapt to the right digital tools.

It is the best time to move the digital transformation from your priority checklist to the “right now” list. Connect with our experts to know how we can help your company transform digitally!

It apparently took 20,000 to 30,000 men to lay 2.3 million blocks to build the pyramid of Cheops, and it would have taken approximately 20 years to complete if the stones were laid at the rate of one every two minutes. Manual labor – tedious and time-consuming! Thanks to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology, most businesses can now be liberated from arduous work and improve their business process to gain increased profit. 

Robotic Process Automation technology is bolstering businesses across industries. Software robots do repetitive and lower-value work and advanced robots can even perform cognitive tasks like interpreting the text, understanding unstructured data, and plying advanced ML models to make complex decisions. 

Are you a business leader considering whether to move to RPA or not move to RPA? This blog can clarify any doubts you may have about RPA.

But what exactly is RPA?

What is RPA?

Robotic Process Automation is a software technology that is capable of imitating human actions while interacting with digital systems and software. Like us, it can understand what is on the screen and perform a wide range of defined actions. The only difference between us and RPA is that software robots can accomplish tasks faster and more consistently than we can ever do. Plus, they don’t need to stretch or go for a coffee break. 

How RPA Is Impacting Today’s Businesses

Robotic Process Automation is a clear and viable way to maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance productivity. Though RPA is fairly new, it is gaining rapid traction across industries. Businesses are turning to RPA to minimize human effort.

According to a Deloitte RPA survey, 53% of respondents have begun their RPA journey by 2020, and this is expected to increase to 72% in the next couple of years. Why are so many companies adopting RPA? Here are a few reasons:

• Employees spend 10%-25% of their time on repetitive tasks. Implementing RPA will save that time for more productive work.
• Typical rule-based processes can be automated by 70% – 80%.
• IT departments of an organization spend 30% of their time on basic low-level tasks. Obviously, RPA adoption can save precious time for the IT department, which can be better used elsewhere.

Why Your Business Needs RPA? 

RPA is a user-friendly and cost-effective tool. The advantages it can provide are drawing interest from organizations from various sectors globally. Here are some business benefits for your consideration:

• Easy implementation: RPA implementation does not require programming skills. Non-technical staff can teach the bot how to perform an automated task with the help of a process recorder feature. 
• Less prone to make mistakes: RPA bots are extremely accurate and consistent. They are less prone to typo errors than a human worker. This feature is extremely beneficial in tasks such as setting up or removing user accounts, onboarding and offboarding employees or filling out information from another system. 
• Meet strict compliance standards: Once configured, RPA bots strictly follow the step and provide an audit trail for each step. This controlled nature is well suited for companies that want to automate their processes end-to-end while meeting regulatory compliance standards. 
• Work with existing systems: RPA doesn’t require any changes to your current system. It can be included as part of your automated business process. 
• Increased productivity: RPA improves process cycles and completes them faster when compared to manual processes.

Read more: Is It the Right Time for Your Business to Invest in Robotic Processing Automation?

Now that you know why your business needs Robotic Process Automation, would you like to know what some potential areas of your business that can effectively implement RPA are?

Potential Business Areas to Implement RPA Effectively

Here are some sectors that use Robotic Process Automation effectively:

1. Report Generation: Report generation is a time-consuming and tedious task as data must be collected from multiple sources and collated accurately. RPA takes care of this task allowing employees to directly get to drawing actionable insights from the collated information.

2. Customer Service: RPA can be set up to quickly handle the first two or three customer interactions before reaching a human executive. 

3. Accounting: RPA helps increase the speed of accounting, such as on-time invoicing and quicker fund release. You can fine-tune it to ask the vendor for relevant documents in case of any complexity.

4. Fraud detection: RPA enables banks to detect any anomalies in transactions and flag them against a fraudulent customer. It can reduce the time taken for fraud detection and investigation.

5. Data exchange: Data exchange is often time-consuming and error-prone. RPA can maximize productivity by reducing transaction times from hours to minutes. It can also minimize errors and maintain clean and organized data for business compliance results. 

6. Reduce cost and manual labor: RPA limits your labor expenses and increases productivity. This contributes to consistent work. It also reduces errors at work, which prevents time wasted on correcting errors and redoing the work. Thus, it is more cost-effective while minimizing manual labor. 

Top Sectors That Can Benefit From RPA

• Property management: Real estate businesses can use RPA to generate invoices automatically regarding property management. It can also reduce the turnaround time, leading to reduced operational costs. 
• Retail: These businesses can use Robotic Process Automation to monitor inventory and email sales. It allows retail businesses to monitor competitors’ websites to gain insights on products or customer service. 
• Finance: Finance companies can use RPS to manage customer accounts, data migration within accounts, sending and receiving payments, and more. 
• Healthcare: Manually recording patient data and updating it can take enormous time. You can automate this process through RPA to reduce workforce concentration. Also, you can leverage these insights to provide more personalized healthcare services.

Read more: Deploying RPA for Finance, Healthcare & IT Operations

Tips To Choose The Right RPA Partner

Once you have your strategy in place, consider these points in choosing the right RPA partner:

• Skills: What skills or certifications matter to you most?
• Bots: What kind of bots do you need for your strategy?
• Capabilities: Do these bots have the cognitive capabilities to handle unstructured data sources?
• Recorders: Does your provider have tools to record workflow?
• Scalability: Can your partner scale as per your requirement?
• Solutions: Are their solutions reliable?
• Reusability: Does your partner follow a modular automation approach?
• Process designer: Can your partner provide you process designer approach that suits your business?
• Cost: Find out upfront if the cost includes licensing, ongoing maintenance, and support.

Read more: Robotic Process Automation: Choosing The Right Solution For Your Business

Ready to Transform Your Business With RPA?

Given the apparent advantages of Robotic Process Automation is one of the best tools to adopt in the current business world. However, selecting the right RPA partner can be a demanding process. Do your due diligence, speak with our experts and see what exactly you need to be looking for and if we are a good fit for you. 

Once implemented, you can be confident that your business will benefit from better results and improved efficiency, which translates into higher revenues. 

Businesses are unique, like fingerprints! Their external and internal processes make them unique even in their sector. This makes it important to work on customizable solutions. After all, why would a customer come to you if you offer the same products and solutions as others? An end-to-end custom software solution will help you deliver unique customer experiences so that they are drawn to your business over other market leaders. Now is the time to take steps to start investing in end-to-end custom software that can offer you a competitive edge. 

Whether to gain greater connectivity for IoT devices or to develop your own software, there is a horde of reasons why buyers and sellers gravitate toward end-to-end custom software solutions. Here is what you must know about end-to-end software and the impact it can have on your business growth and scalability. 

What Is an End-To-End Custom Software Solution?

As the name suggests, an end-to-end custom software solution is a tool that has all the features necessary to execute the workflow from the very first step to the last one. This solution allows you to use an entire range of tools that you need to support and grow your business without using any third-party platforms. 

Read more: Custom software development weighed against pre-packaged commercial software

Why And When Must You Think of Investing in A Customized End-To-End Solution?

End-to-end custom software solution serves specific needs and day-to-day requirements of your business. More importantly, it can automate your organization’s manual tasks and business activities. Being flexible to your business needs, these custom solutions can be more productive and have a positive influence on your business. It is easy to work with it. And it can even suggest which professionals could execute a task if the operating person leaves. 

Here is when you must invest in an end-to-end custom software solution:

1. Do you need to juggle between software systems?

If so, an end-to-end custom software solution makes connecting different functionalities effortlessly. Even other software systems can operate in sync through an end-to-end custom software solution.

2. Do you need to automate daily activities?

The end-to-end custom software solution is an excellent resource for performing automation with utmost ease. 

3. Are you looking for ways to streamline your business methodologies?

For business productivity, you need streamlined and effective methods. And that is exactly what end-to-end custom software solutions can help you generate. Also, it can aid the structured collection and storage of all data.

4. Are you struggling to optimize business services and improve business efficiency?

An end-to-end custom technology can optimize business services by saving time and effort. Besides, since it supports the business processes, you will ensure to satisfy your clients and earn their loyalty.

5. Are you struggling to enable workforce productivity?

Most custom software comes with templates that allow you to customize the entire process, from start to finish. This solution enables email automation, marketing automation, and content management. These elements enable workforce productivity. 

6. Do you want to keep tabs on your business growth and maturity?

Since end-to-end technology works for multiple stakeholders, you will be able to keep tabs on income sources. This improves your brand identity.

Read more: 5 reasons why custom software development is important to your business

Top 6 Benefits of Implementing End-To-End Technology

All businesses across various industries can truly benefit from end-to-end custom software solutions. Here are the top 6 benefits for your consideration:

1. The ability to unify various processes in one concise format

Custom software provides an all-in-one cloud-based system that can correspond with your business goals, operations, and users. This system can unify hundreds of various processes into one concise format. This all-in-one tool allows you to streamline the payment process, optimize sales, and enhance logistics. It also allows you to monitor daily operations and take care of accounting. Above all, it smoothens the onboarding process.

2. Faster data migration

Transferring data from one source or tool to another is time consuming and tedious task. Implementing an end-to-end custom software solution smooths the data flow and enables easier and faster data migration from one source to another. This way, you have a complete overview of your prominent KPIs, metrics, and more within one platform. 

3. No need to overpay

One of the most important benefits of investing in an end-to-end custom software solution is its cost-effectiveness. You will have to overpay if you have multiple systems from multiple vendors. Though the initial cost of off-the-shelf may seem lower, you are expected to take care of licenses, support packages, and other expenses that increase your initial cost. 

Investing in end-to-end custom technology will cut your expenses significantly. On the flip side, you will also save money because of reduced errors, enhanced communication, improved productivity, and a simplified onboarding process. 

4. Improved efficiency 

Dealing with several vendors can lead to confusion. However, working with one vendor can help you optimize and automate your business. A custom solution can enhance overall efficiency and productivity. Minimized errors, improved security, optimized performance, and more lead to increased efficiency.

5. Grow and change along with your business needs

In business, change is inevitable. Changing an off-the-shelf software can be too expensive as you will have to buy additional licensing and add-on packages. With end-to-end custom technology, the developers can build it to scale as needed. This will allow you to keep up with the changing workflows, tasks, and integrations. 

Additionally, custom software technology allows you to easily add new technologies and solutions, thus helping you stay on top of the latest innovations. Such a solution can bring your ideas to life and meet your specific business goals and requirements. 

6. Competitive advantage

Off-the-shelf software is publicly available, and every other business uses it. How can using the same software will help you stand apart? Using the same software is like using a uniform; you cannot see the difference. To stay above the competition, you need an end-to-end custom software solution with unique features and functions configured solely for your business. 

Watch more: How your business can stay Compliant, Smart, and Reliant with Custom Software!

Not an Expense but an Investment! 

An end-to-end custom software solution will cover your basic business needs and empower your company to accomplish more. An end-to-end custom software solution is an investment rather than an expense. Fingent has worked with many leading businesses to create innovative and cost -effective custom software solutions that gained leverage and a competitive edge. We can help you too take your business to new heights! Give us a call, and let’s get started!

Custom software tackles the specific needs of users more comprehensively than traditional off-the-shelf packages. Efficiency, scalability, lower integration cost, uniquely tailored features, functions, profitability, and independence are a few of its major benefits. In simple words, custom software creates a more customer-centric approach to your business, which translates to more business.

Globalization has pressured companies to take bold steps in expanding their horizon and potential. The rapid increase in market trends, technological innovations, and increasing competitor growth has changed and raised customer expectations. Deploying custom software development solutions in your business can be a strong weapon in this vicious battle. This blog will show you why and also help you see if this might be the right time to implement it for your business.

Why Is There a Need For A Custom Software Solution?

Evolving times have made it necessary for businesses worldwide to step up to the challenge of being bold, unique, and versatile. “Be different or be forgotten” has never before been more relevant than today. Custom software gives you the tools you need to satisfy your customers.

Here are some more reasons why custom software development is the current need for businesses on a global scale:

1. High Security

Security nowadays is a prime preference provided by most companies. Getting hacked by cyberpunks is a nasty affair that not only compromises your company’s data and security but also ruins the reputation of your business. Compared to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Software, customized business software is better in terms of security and competence in saving data.

Mobile app formulating corporations exemplify this feature by merging features like two-way authentication and data encryption.

2. Efficiency

Custom Software is purpose-built to support unique operations and workflows promptly and productively. It refines the workflow by removing unnecessary factors and automating monotonous and tedious manual jobs. This way, it fulfills the fundamental goal of improving your company’s and its employees’ operational efficiency and productivity.

Read more: How Fingent helped Impact XM improve their marketing management capabilities and enhance their business performance with a custom software solution!

3. Scalability 

Since customized software is created based on the unique needs of a business, it can easily be modified and embellished depending on the growing needs and requirements of the company. Scalability is one of the greatest significant advantages of custom software. It allows you to construct relatable software based on your business requirements. It can also cut costs associated with purchasing extra licenses and subscriptions to commercial software.

4. Cost-Effective

COTS software generally fails to work with existing and legacy applications. Businesses must invest further to ensure the software works well with their existing infrastructure. On the contrary, custom software can be built to adapt easily to an organization’s needs and integrate with any environment. Custom cloud software development goes one step further and enables you to build cloud-native applications at a much lesser cost.

Read more: Know What’s Driving Custom Software Development Cost This 2022!

5. Independence 

Deploying custom software means freedom from the clutches of a commercial software vendor. You can avoid incessant price hikes for licensing and support. You will also remain unaffected when packaged software goes out of business, or a vendor terminates a product. With custom-developed software, you are in charge of creating and maintaining the software, which means you can update and modify it as regularly as you need.

These are just a few reasons for the increasing need for custom software solutions. It can effectively meet the demands of businesses irrespective of the company’s size. Technically progressive solutions can give you a stepping stone over opponents.

Using custom applications reports a 77% reduction in manual data entry! Learn more about why choosing custom software works over commercial off-the-shelf solutions. Scroll through our Infographic now!

Does Your Business Need Custom Software Solution Right Now? 

Now that you know the benefits of custom software, the question is: do you need to implement it right now, or can you put it off for a while? Here is a checklist of symptoms. If you tick any of these boxes, it might just be time to get that ball rolling on a custom software solution:

1. Lack Of Efficiency 

Are your employees struggling with mundane manual work? Is it resulting in delays, lower productivity, and errors?

Custom business software developed according to your requirements will empower your business to tackle these challenges by providing an all-in-one environment for employees to plan and execute the workflow, communicate effortlessly, and procure data anytime. By enabling automation and AI in the software, you will be able to eliminate the element of human error and conserve your human resources for more focused tasks.

2. Data Management Issues

Do you often struggle to access and track crucial data? Does it take ages to make sense of the data and put it to good use? Are you struggling with the threat of data leaks?

Data is probably the essential asset of any business. It is usually challenging to store, analyze and track crucial information, and keep the data secure from theft to maintain the data integrity in your industry.

A custom software solution can be built to include Business Intelligence (BI) solutions that can help you convert data into actionable insights. This will help you make intelligent data-driven decisions for your business. You can also customize security layers for your software to address the particular security risks associated with your business.

3. Low Customer Satisfaction

Have you been receiving more customer complaints lately? Are they dissatisfied with their interaction with your business?

Nobody knows your customers as you do. Integrating this knowledge into your software can be priceless in ensuring customer satisfaction. Custom software allows you to do just that. You can work with your developers to integrate insights from your customer base and market analysis and provide features that your customers will be happy with, which can lead to a seamless customer experience.

4. Business Expansion

Is your business expanding? Do you need to grow technologically?

Expansion and development are two constants in a business owner’s mind. Whether your business is expanding in terms of location, the number of employees, or customers, you unquestionably need to grow technologically.

You don’t want to add technological issues to the chaos of a quickly expanding business. Looking for new software solutions every time a component of your business grows will be a real challenge. With custom software, you can easily build on the existing software and add features as you scale.

Read more: Choosing the Right Software Development Vendor

How To Get Started?

As you can see, custom software can play an integral part in the operation and success of your business by improving productivity and increasing efficiency. It is an excellent investment in time-saving, cost-effectiveness, and risk reduction.

The first step is hiring a professional technical team to help you develop custom software. Fingent, a leading custom software development company, excels in crafting tailored software solutions for clients, perfectly aligned with their unique requirements. We can help you too.

Give us a call, and let’s discuss your requirements.

It is getting more competitive than ever before for businesses today! Every company wants to lead in the market as quickly as possible. How can you get there first?

Software development can be your answer. But can outsourcing software development make a difference?

Outsourcing has been one of the most talked-about digital transformation strategies, especially if you want to launch your products quickly into the market. Outsourcing software development nurtures your business goals by saving time and cost. You ensure effective and innovative product delivery when you allow top professionals to work on your project. The benefits are not just limited to that.

This blog will explain the pros and cons of outsourcing software development and how you can select the right company so that you are well prepared the next time you plan to outsource your software development!

Why Outsource Software Development?

Organizations outsource software development to save costs and resources, nourish business growth, remain competitive in their sector, and more. By outsourcing, businesses enable their in-house team to focus on their expertise rather than be jack-of-all-trades. This kind of freedom allows your team to improve their performance in their field instead of doing routine tasks that consume precious time. Here are some more benefits:

1. Control business expenditure

The biggest driver of outsourcing software development is cost reduction. This frees up more funds to channel into other crucial business areas.

The question is, how does it reduce cost?

When you outsource software development, you are only paying for their services. You save common expenses associated with in-house staff like hardware and software, rent, training, etc. Besides, it is much easier and cheaper to outsource as you can find software development teams within a few clicks.

2. Gain access to the world’s best outsourcing specialists

Outsourcing software development goes beyond physical boundaries, empowering you to connect with the world’s best talent. The best part is that this collaboration could be for all projects or just a one-off project with no further obligation.

3. Saves time on onboarding specialized talent

Looking for a software developer with a diverse skill set is a complicated and time-consuming process. Plus, training a developer incurs more delays and costs. Conversely, outsourcing software development is far simpler while saving time, effort, and money.

4. Flexibility and speed 

Outsourcing software development gives you the simplicity of scaling your project. An outsourcing company allows you to choose the right cooperation model that matches your business needs.  This allows you to respond to changes as they occur and take action to address them with a quick turnaround.

5. Forge ahead with the latest technology

A good software outsourcing company uses the latest languages and development tools to build effective and innovative products at minimum cost. You can benefit from this and trust that the best tools will be used for your requirements.

6. Get exceptional support

Since the outsourcing firm may already have experts with immense knowledge in their field, they become your business partners. If you face any crisis, you can count on them to solve your problem as soon as possible.

Now that you understand why you should outsource software development let us clarify the difference between offshore and nearshore outsourcing.

Read more: Why Software Development Outsourcing Is A Smart Move Now?

Offshore Vs Nearshore Outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing is sourcing company operations outside your country in a different time zone. Nearshore outsourcing is sourcing company operations within your country.

Benefits of offshore outsourcing include cost savings, access to specialized expertise, and 24/7 support. Benefits of nearshore outsourcing include shared time zones, similarities in cultural background, better control, and better security.

Software development doesn’t need an in-house team, so you can choose either near or far outsourcing companies to build your ideal dedicated team.

Pros And Cons of Outsourcing

As for any solution, there are always pros and cons. Let us look at both, so you can make an informed decision for your business.

Pros of Outsourcing

1. Timing: While every business needs to go through a procurement phase, that time will be much reduced if you don’t have to spend onboarding the right talent. Besides, if your idea is still in the formative stage, you will not be able to attract the right talent. This makes outsourcing the best option.

2. Business goal: If validating your idea is your primary business goal, the earlier you begin to do this, the better. Outsourcing frees you to concentrate on business goals and build the foundation of your business viability.

3. Access to proven workflows: Because the outsourcing firm likely worked with many organizations similar to your business, you can be confident that it will implement proven workflows and processes.

4. Speed to market: Speed to market increases as the outsourcing firm can manage and optimize workflows.

5. Access to a larger talent pool: Outsourcing companies can access industry experts who can be reached whenever you need to consult them for a solution.

Cons Of Outsourcing

1. Risk of failure: Business failure is risky if you cannot manage your outsourcing company effectively.

2. Communication challenges: Some offshore firms with different cultures may pose communication challenges.

3. Lack of motivation: An outsourcing firm may not share your motivation to see a project through to successful completion.

4. Limited control: If the outsourcing firm uses freelancers, the hiring company may have only limited control over the actual work.

Digital transformation is an investment that has to be made to stay relevant. However, whether to hire in-house or outsource will ultimately make the business more successful and profitable.

Read more: A Detailed Software Development Outsourcing Guide For CEOs!

How To Select the Right Outsourcing Company?

Once you have decided to outsource your software development, evaluating and selecting the right vendor to complete the work that meets the best standards is crucial.

Here are some tips that can help you find the right outsourcing company:

• Research and list all potential partners who can provide the required services. Also, find out from others to see if they have any recommendations.
• Good communication is of utmost importance. Request a meeting to help you understand their communication style.
• Ask for references, read their case studies, and do your research to determine whether they have the needed experience and expertise to see your project through.
• Be cautious about any outsourcing company that offers cheap rates. Instead, enquire about their success in the past.
• Verify a vendor’s security policies, certifications, and accreditation.
• Ensure the vendor has professional liability insurance.
• Find out if the vendor can support all of the programming languages you need for your software development projects.

We at Fingent would love for you to come and test us out. Meanwhile, here is a look at what our clients have to say, some of our case studies, and a look at what we excel in!

Are You Ready to Outsource Your Software Development?

The choice is entirely yours. Make sure you consider all the pros and cons and make an informed decision. First, look at your business needs. Then, find out if the vendor is compatible culturally and financially. This will ensure a higher probability of success. We would be happy to discuss your needs and help you decide. Please feel free to reach out to our experts.

The world of programming has come very far, and it continues to evolve. What this gives you is – options. Out of the many ways to fabricate these programs, the two most common ways are functional programming and microservices. This blog gives you an in-depth view of both of them.

To understand the similarities and differences between these two, we must first understand how they work individually.

What Is Functional Programming?

Functional Programming (also called FP) is a programming paradigm in which everything is bound together by using pure mathematical functions. Its programming style is declarative because it focuses on “what to solve” instead of “how to solve.”

FP is mainly based on the ancient Lambda Calculus developed in 1930. It is famously known as the smallest programming language in the world, and it defines what is computable. Functional programming languages are classified into Pure Functional Languages and Impure Functional Languages. A few examples of Programming Languages that support functional programming are – Haskell, JavaScript, and Python.

Read more: Enhance Your Small Business Growth & Success with Custom Software Solution!

What Are Microservices?

Microservice architecture, or simply Microservices, is a modern perspective on software whereby application code is conveyed distinctively in small, manageable pieces. It mainly focuses on building small, self-contained, and ready-to-run applications that can bring great pliability and added resilience to a code.

Each service functions independently in its own process, making microservices a service-oriented architecture where applications are built as a collection of divergent smaller services rather than one whole monolithic app. The programming languages that support microservices development are – Java, Golang, Python, .Net, and Node JS.

Read more: Is Microservice Architecture The Next Best Move For Businesses?

How Are Functional Programming And Microservices Similar? 

Although Functional Programming and Microservices are very different, a few similarities can be noted between them.

• They have a shared goal of deployed elasticity
• Both functional programming and microservices are formulated to scale and load-balance simultaneously with any increase in demands
• They are also designed to replace faulty instances
• They both share a concept of encapsulation and clear separation
• Both functional programmes and microservices are small, which means they both carry the minimum amount of logic
• When using microservices or functional programmes, utmost discretion is advised since the major quality of experience problems could develop.
• The most significant point of similarity between the two is that neither functional programming nor microservices should store data within a component.

With the help of transport independence and pattern matching, services can be edited from your system, letting you reposition the topology with each deployment. If you look closer, this benefit emerges from the similarities between microservices and functions from functional programming.

How Is Functional Programming Different From Microservices? 

Although often associated together, microservices and functional programming are fundamentally quite different, especially regarding software design and development. A few of these differences are listed and explained below:

• Reasons for small size – Microservices are small to facilitate better generalization, which capacitates developers to contrive applications from a collection of small functional units. Whereas functional programmes are small to perform limited tasks. Functional programs cannot be composed into applications; instead, they are linked with events.
• Functional programming concepts aggressively exercise stateless behavior. It emphasizes mostly on generating the same outputs from the same inputs. While microservices usually exhibit stateful behavior because they conserve state throughout a database, which is also called back-end state control.
• Functional programming performs on asynchronous outside triggers cited as event flows. Alternatively, microservices are called by other software when they are required to be part of a workflow.
• At a specific point during processing, you’re probably calling a microservice if you want to call an individual component. Still, if you want to respond to something external, that’s generally pursuant to functional programming.
• Organized functions have sequences in place of workflows, and every step in the processing of an event is likely set on by the step before it. On the contrary, all activations of your software associated with microservices are explicit calls, so you don’t have to worry about figuring out how to keep the steps in sequence.
• Exploring how they will sequence the steps in their scheduled functions is imperative for functional programming, but concurrency is the key with microservices.
• Since microservices are called by other software, you can control how they are called, so you can control concurrency. Alternatively, you can expect event-driven functions to be concurrent.

Under What Circumstances Are Functional Programming And Microservices Best Employed? 

Functional Programming:

Typically it is used for mathematical operations, AI, and pattern matching; generically, anything that can be broken down into a set of rules that must be utilized to get a solution.

Some of FPs advantages that make it better employed are –

• It helps solve problems effectively in an easy way.
• It increases modularity.
• It allows the implementation of lambda calculus in programmes to solve complex problems.
• Some programming languages endorse nested functions which improve the tenability of the code.
• It improves the productivity of the developer.
• It helps debug any code briskly.

Microservices:

Microservices have quintessentially changed the way server-side engines are fabricated. Making the most of microservices is a unique science and requires discipline.

A few of their advantages that make them better employed are –

• Each microservice, as needed, can evolve independently, enabling constant improvement and faster app updates.
• Resources can individually be increased to the most needed microservices rather than scaling an entire app. Therefore scaling is faster and usually more cost-efficient as well.
• If a particular microservice fails, you can prevent cascading failures that would cause the app to crash by simply isolating the failure to that single service.
• Its smaller codebase allows teams to understand the code more easily, making it simpler to maintain.
• Microservices boost agility by reducing the time to market and speeding up your CI/CD pipeline.

Read more: Breaking Down The Enterprise Software Monoliths!

Make the Best of These Programming languages for Your Business

Deciding which programming language is best for you is a critical decision.

Speak to our tech experts at Fingent top custom software development company to see which one is right for you and how you can implement it for your business.