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

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

It’s time to start!

Why Outsourcing Fails?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Common IT Outsourcing Failures Your Company Might Encounter

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

#1 Neglecting the Needs of Your Target Audience

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

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

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

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

#2 Insufficient Communication

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

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

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

#3 Lack of Clarity

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

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

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

#4 Poor Planning

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

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

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

#5 Low Quality of Tech Expertise and Inadequate Outsourcing Price

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

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

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

Guide to Hiring the Best Tech Talents

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

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

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

Bottom Line

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

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

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

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

Mainly, this growth is caused by the global rise of the wholesale vertical, including eCommerce and retail, especially after the pandemic hit in 2020 when nearly all the eCommerce businesses have experienced a huge rise in sales and revenue.

At present, it becomes even more obvious: the industry requires more and more innovative digital solutions targeted at business automation and further sales increase.

One of the newest efficient solutions for eCommerce is implementing order management software. This technology not only allows automating the core online business processes but also reduces the manual options for order management.

In this article, we’ll explain what order management software is, its essential features and benefits, and how it can improve your business performance from day one. Let’s get started!

What Is an Order Management System in eCommerce and Retail?

In eCommerce, the order management system (OMS) refers to the software for securely processing client orders across every step of their journeys in an efficient yet cost-effective manner. In other words, it allows delivering the perfect customer services across the brand’s various sales funnels.

With this technology, operators can effectively manage the orders coming from multiple eCommerce channels at a time and use the advanced sale order processing technologies for online orders fulfillment.

For instance, it covers the processes of order routing, shipping label printing, order returns, subscription management, and more – all those that used to be handled via manual updating.

In general, eCommerce order management is responsible for effective product delivery from the time customers add it to the shopping cart till they have received the delivery. Though this process is adapted individually to the specific business needs, the common steps of eCommerce order management process flow consists of the following steps:

• eCommerce company receives the order receipt from a customer
• The company sales manager enters the order details into the system
• The customer gets a notification regarding the order processing
• The order is transferred to the eCommerce warehouse/order fulfillment center
• The products are packed and prepared for the shipping
• The order is shipped according to the information on the shipping labels
• The customer receives the order status notification: shipped
• The order is delivered due to the preferable address or postal service

Instead of handling all these steps in a separate system and manually filling in the order status data, the order management system allows unifying these processes within a single order fulfillment system to ensure efficient order processing and product delivery.

Does an eCommerce Business Really Need Order Management Software?

The eCommerce order management software is a must-have technology for both small retail businesses and large eCommerce companies.

First of all, it facilitates the order fulfillment process by making it much more streamlined, cost-efficient yet automated. This software minimizes the time needed to prepare the order for shipping.

Besides, it optimizes the overall time needed to deliver the order to your customer, which has a direct impact on the customer experience.

At the same time, the final consumers get up-to-date information about the order status, are less likely to ask for any order information in customer support service, and are way more loyal towards the service: it has a transparent order processing system that clearly states the order delivery info.

For businesses, implementing the order management system allows them to automate and upgrade the key order completion processes. Some types of OMS software even enable tracking the order shipping by integrating with the carrier’s system like FedEx or DHL until the order is delivered.

Main Advantages of Order Management Solutions Implementation

Now that you know what the eCommerce order management software is and whether it’s worth using for retail businesses. Here, we’ll uncover the core benefits of this technology implementation, and whether or not it corresponds to your business developing strategy.

Improves the Delivery Speed

The most critical benefit of the eCommerce order management software is the faster order delivery, which can have a huge impact on the overall customer experience.

According to McKinsey, in recent times the speed of delivery has become equally important to the product price, which makes it an important aspect of building the business competitiveness. In times of a same-day or two-day delivery, consumers simply don’t want to go back to weeks and months of waiting.

That’s where the order management system for eCommerce comes into play: a single order management system can significantly eliminate the time needed for order processing and delivery.

Eliminates the Human Error

With having multiple order management systems for different stages of order fulfilment, it often happens that the worker filled in the wrong data or has chosen a wrong product article when processing the large orders, or else — didn’t send the order invoice to the client. As a result, the eCommerce platform has a poor customer experience and low customer loyalty rate.

The Salesforce research has shown that around 89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience.

The eCommerce order management solutions allow eliminating human errors with automated order processing. In other words, the lesser the workload, the fewer steps a manager needs to fulfill, the better quality of the services the business will perform as a result.

Enhances the Business Scalability

The eCommerce order management can grow and develop along with your business, and result in a feature-rich omnichannel system. Such management software can be successfully used for multiple platforms and different products and is able to keep the pace and scale along with your business growth.

Enables the Multichannel Management Opportunities

Last but not least, to stay competitive in any eCommerce scope, it’s important to develop an online presence at different sales platforms. For instance, it’s a great opportunity to enhance the business performance with the eCommerce website, popular retail platforms, and social media.

At the same time, with having the orders flow from Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Amazon, it becomes more challenging to track the orders and fulfill them in time.

eCommerce order management software is the right technology for ensuring high-grade customer service for any sales channel yet tracking all the orders within a single system. With the developed order management system, you can also generate the reporting and analyze the sales trends to build a strong and effective business strategy.

Core Features of eCommerce Order Management Software

Setting up the powerful order management in eCommerce implies also the deep analysis of your business goals, pains, and needs. It’s essential to find the most suitable technology that works best for your specific eCommerce project type and is able to optimize its existing performance.

Instead of trying to adapt your eCommerce workflow to the existing software solutions, it’s more efficient for the business owners to develop the brand new eCommerce order management software that will include all the features needed for this type of software. The main features to include in this system are:

• Order automation – to facilitate the verification and processing, as well as eliminate the need for manual data entry.
• Pre-made templates for the specific order forms – to minimize the time needed to fill in the customer data, preferable delivery methods, order details, and more.
• Electronic data archiving and management – to reduce the paperwork and optimize the time needed for the hard copies of invoices, order reports, and receipts.
• Inventory management – to keep the sales team always informed about the products in and out of stock, this feature is simply a must for an eCommerce order management system. It also benefits the correct goods reservation and effective stock levels update.
• Customer support  – to effectively track the order processing incidents, inform the managers about the specific order issues that need checking and create a powerful algorithm for their effective resolving (for instance, the use of chatbots can benefit in automatically tracking the orders, checking the order details and redirect customers to the specific manager according to the type of problem they’ve experienced).
• Multiple payment gateways and fraud checks – to block the fraud accidents, abort the suspicious transactions and minimize the cost losses. At the same time, you’ll attract more clients with the various payment methods and safe transaction processing.
• Reporting and analytics – to define the customer preferences, seasonal trends, and popular products, as well as track the employee’s KPIs and define the weak points and possible improvement strategies of the order management process.

Other great functions to consider when developing the order management system for eCommerce are:

• Order tracking – to let consumers personally track the status of their order without the need to address customer support or the shipping team. For the advanced eCommerce businesses, it would be also great to include real-time shipment tracking, which will not only reduce the order management team workload but also will be a great bonus for customer service.
• Contact database – to store and use the important clients’ data, and automatically fill it in for the next orders of your clients.
• Automated order status notifications – often ignored or forgotten to handle by order managers manually, it takes only a few seconds to complete using the eCommerce order management software. This feature can easily inform customers about the order details, send the shipping status updates, and remind them about the abandoned shopping cart using any suitable channel: using SMS reminders, app notifications, or classic emails.
• Shopping platform integration – to ensure quick yet effective data import and export, it’s essential to build a flexible OMS system that works well with multiple shopping platforms and ensures simple yet smooth performance.

Summing It Up

To sum up, eCommerce order management software is a must for businesses looking for order fulfillment optimization and automation.

By employing these retail applications and software, the eCommerce companies of different sizes and product types can enhance the significantly minimize the time needed for the order processing and preparing for delivery, manage multichannel and omnichannel sales across different platforms and marketplaces yet increase the quality of customer service and boost the clients’ loyalty.

Intellectsoft knows how important it is to develop the right software with advanced technologies that perfectly fit your business goals and needs. We’re empowering numerous businesses with premium yet effective solutions to improve their performance and enhance their workflow.

Talk to our experts to get the expert consultation regarding order management solutions development and whether or not this technology matches your business strategy right now!

The post Order Management Software: Benefits for eCommerce and Main Features appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In the hospitality industry, that resulted in a huge need in implementing the best practices and innovative solutions to enhance client services. One of such is incorporating the front desk management systems in hotel institutions operating.

According to Transparency Market research, the market share of help desk software in different industries is going to reach $11 billion by 2023, and the numbers will only grow further.

The potential of key processes optimization with the software cannot be underestimated, but what exactly hospitality businesses should consider when implementing the hotel front desk management system? Are there any essential features to include? And, finally, is hotel front desk software really beneficial for the industry?

In this article, you’ll find these answers!

What Is Front Desk Management Software for Hotels?

A hotel front desk management system is a solution that facilitates managing all the front desk work within a single platform.

Thus, the hotel staff can easily input, quickly update and operatively manage the key processes of the hospitality unit using the unified system. Depending on the features the front desk system includes, this kind of software can cover nearly every front office function, including:

• Apartment reservations
• Room allocation
• Check-in and check-out
• Billing and accounting
• Guest history and critical client information

The front desk software for hotel is the right solution for optimizing the resources invested for smooth yet professional hotel management, which will not only benefit the hotel business performance but also enhance customer services as well.

According to Deloitte’s recent report, the future-focused businesses are now ready to invest into transforming the product- or service-focused center into a customer-focused driver of value. And that’s no surprise since over 84% of customers are ready to spend more for receiving better customer service (Gladly, 2020).

Benefits of Front Desk Management Software for Hotels

Before we dive into the essential features to include in the hotel front desk software, it’s essential to understand what this technology can provide to your business.

In fact, by incorporating the innovative technology solution for the front desk at the hotel, you can significantly increase the business income.

Here are the essential benefits you’ll get using the front desk software for hotel:

Reduce the Front Desk Workload

One of the core ideas of the front desk at a hotel is to provide high-quality services for the customers. The front desk staff is responsible for check-ins and check-outs, room management, customer service, and other important hotel staff information updates. The huge workload caused by these and plenty of other factors could directly impact the quality of the customer service.

The front desk software for hotels allows automating the key processes of the hotel management and effectively performing the time- and labor-consuming tasks, thus providing more opportunities for improving the customer service.

Enhance the Teamwork

When managing a large hospitality institution, it becomes more challenging to operate the hotel staff, keep them informed about the updates and assign new tasks or duties. With the hotel front desk software solution, all the employees can access their profile, review and prioritize all the tasks, and effectively run their duties.

Furthermore, this technology allows creating a single communication system that saves up hours of time needed for arranging the meetings or individually informing the hotel staff on demand: reach any of the hotel workers online!

Get a Clearer Improvement Strategy

Another great thing about the front desk software for hotels is the ability to get accurate data regarding the hospitality business performance, define the strong sides and weak points for further hotel service improvement.

The detailed analytics and multiple research tools allow getting the full information regarding the most popular hotel services (restaurant, gym, spa, cleaning or travel guides, breakfast, cleaning, transportation, etc), the most favorable booking dates (holiday seasons, weekends, or celebrations) and more.

It also helps to define the most common client pains and which services should be improved or removed (especially the unprofitable ones), which can certainly improve the overall hotel performance.

Improve the Guests’ Experience

Multiple investigations in client service have shown that leveraging hotel front desk software big data can save up to 670 working hours per year! By reducing the workload of the hotel’s front desk (calls and guests requests automation, online reservations, and advanced hotel staff management), your employees have more time and resources for interaction with your clients and providing better services.

At present, clients highly pay attention to the service quality, so it becomes even easier to turn the one-time visitors into loyal guests of your hotel.

Increase the Business Profitability

Last but not least, the hotel front desk management system is a perfect software that allows enhancing business profitability by automating key management processes.

You’ll save up on labor and improve the individual KPI of your hotel staff, optimize the key front desk tasks and boost the customer experience, which consequently results in higher revenue rates. So, what exact features do you need to look for in the best front desk software for your hotel?

Main Features to Include in a Front Desk Management Software

Hotel front desk software is much more than a simple management tool, as it includes all the necessary features needed to automate and optimize the key management processes of any hospitality unit.

Developing this type of management system is one of the best approaches to incorporate the most critical features your business requires for workflow automation and services improvement.

Let’s now uncover the most essential features a hotel unit certainly should include in its front desk management solution.

Reservation and Booking Management

The front desk system accumulates all the booking information from different channels and conducts a real-time checking of these channels to ensure the proper reservation tracking.

This software can accurately inform about the total number of apartments booked and ready to move in, calculates the most popular booking dates, and provides a detailed overview of the visitors’ reservation trends.

At the same time, it allows users to process the deposits and check the reservation status in real-time, thus optimizing the workload of the reception desk.

Check-in and Check-out Control

The other feature that reduces the hotel staff workload and enhances hotel management is the automated check-in and check-out system. With this option, the front desk employees can quickly process the customer flow and update the apartment information within a single tool.

Hotel guests can feel the difference in the service speed: their visits will be processed up to 5 times quicker than using the standard system. Additionally, hotel staff can effortlessly track room service, prioritize the tasks, and fulfill all the clients’ requests according to the front desk data input.

Automated Guest ID Registration

To guarantee the clients’ privacy yet optimize the registration speed, it’s a great option to allow users to manually upload the ID documents for their quick and safe processing. The guests’ ID, as well as all the other important information, can be stored in the hotel database and retrieved later on-demand (mostly, when it’s needed to process the booking requests from the same client).

Automated Communication Methods

In the digital era, nearly all the interaction between the clients and the service vendors comes through online services: chatbots, emails, specific notifications, and more.

It’s much more convenient, faster, and doesn’t require direct communication with the front desk staff. According to several pieces of research, people mostly prefer texting methods of communication, and less use the direct interactions (which is exceptionally important in the post-pandemic times): it’s quicker and more convenient.

By including multiple methods of communication, you can not only enhance the time needed to process the clients’ requests but also reduce the front desk workload as well.

Hotel Services Management

If your hospitality unit offers different types of services for the clients’ use, it’s a great idea to include these services management into your front desk at a hotel.

This way, front desk workers can easily update the price and availability information for each service, add the discounts and promo codes, and even analyze the trends of the hotel service use. This data gives additional directories on how to improve the existing hotel features as well as the general guests’ preferences: restaurants, cleaning, sports, and more.

Room Cleaning and Housekeeping

It’s also critical to create a single system that every staff member can make use of, especially the housekeepers. By accessing the front desk management system, they can quickly review and update the information regarding the room and its supplies, as well as the room availability status for the next booking.

Other Great Tools for Front Desk Hotel Software

To make the most of your front desk at the hotel, it’s also important to include:

• Tracking calendars – allows checking the up-to-date reservation information and avoid double bookings
• Reporting tools – assists in analyzing the occupancy level, hotel inventory, and sales to provide the critical insights needed for the profitability improvement
• Notification systems – the different channels created for both hotel staff and guests enable quick yet effective updating of the room service status, check-in or check-out information, upcoming events that might be useful for guests, and more.
• Team management – allows administrating, assigning, and supervising different tasks and track their status within a single software system.
• Guests’ service – enables automatically informing about the balance and expenses, generate receipts, and sending the critical updates (reservation, housekeeping reports, post-stay emails, and more)

Bottom Line

To conclude, the use of front desk management software is a must-have for all the hospitality units that need to enhance business performance by improving customer service.

The configured front desk system allows reducing the paperwork, operates nearly all the tasks within a single technology, and significantly optimizes the critical management processes that can impact the customer service.

Furthermore, with the custom software development for travel and hospitality you and your business can implement innovative technologies that perfectly fit the business goals and needs at a reasonable price!

Our best team of developers at Intellectsoft are aware of the latest trends in hospitality business optimization and automation. We empower hospitality companies and their workforces with the most effective technologies and innovative approaches.

Are you looking for the experts to develop your next business project? Talk to our experts right now to uncover more about front desk software development and how your business can benefit from it today!

The post Hotel Front Desk Management Software 101: Everything You Should Know About This Solution appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In the given circumstances, project managers are in constant search of effective tools that will provide the needed level of optimization and accuracy and help them achieve both tactical and strategic construction goals.

Among various technologies, construction industry practitioners can choose the system designed for their particular needs. Project managers have such a system too.

Here, we’ll elaborate on the key features and challenges for developing construction project management software, one of the most effective technologies that help project managers work efficiently.

Project Management in Construction: Main Challenges

The main problems for project managers working in the construction industry are related to time and money.

According to McKinsey, almost every construction project exceeds its initial budget, and more than two-thirds of them come later as expected. In the given circumstances, each tiny obstacle on the way leads to the great failure of the whole project.

The specific list of challenges includes these issues:

• Disregard of short-term risks. In practice, most delays come as a result of inadequate risk management. Usually, they are caused by over-optimistic subcontractor expectations and unexpected twists in stakeholders’ tastes.
• Lack of clear targeting. Most construction projects suffer from unstable structuring, meaning poor goal setting and/or weak performance management. As a result, most projects lose on the way because handle with numerous unimportant tactical aims that lack a strategic understanding.
• Miscommunication. The more people are involved, the easier it is to lose track of the project. Also, the lack of a unified communication platform causes the situation when the pieces of critical information are dispersed among various chats, and some people remain uninformed and make poor decisions that affect the project delivery.
• Poor forecasting. Project managers tend to set too high expectations, as well as clients and key stakeholders. As a result, people involved in the project set unachievable goals that are bound to fail. Moreover, it’s not always possible to consider extra factors and harmonize the opposing view within the project, which is also bad for the project’s effectiveness.
• Cash flow delays. When the project needs new money inputs, it is not that easy to find investment. But even if you have an extra budget, it’s likely you won’t get it on time due to complicated accounting and outdated invoicing.
• Hazard management. Construction is the sphere connected with numerous safety threats, and not every project provides accurate site-specific safety management plans to address this problem.

What Is Construction Project Management Software?

As a type of construction management software, a construction project management system offers a set of tools to facilitate routine activities for project managers working in the industry.

In particular, it enables next-level collaboration within the construction project, providing a unified platform for communication between clients, architects, subcontractors, and internal team members.

The highest aim of this software type is to facilitate all the construction management processes. In practice, it means taking care of all the documentation, communication, and available resources for the project.

The technology enables getting the expected results on schedule and on budget, connecting your teams and project information in one place, and all that lets your make better project management decisions.

How This Type of Software Can Address The Main Challenge in Construction Project Management?

The residential construction project management software copes with numerous tasks connected with projects and personnel, assisting in accounting, calculating job costs, service management, and scheduling. Mainly, it solves most of the problems related to time and money in project management:

• Carefully tracks all the potential project risks, both in short-term and long-term perspectives
• Provides a unified platform for communication and collaboration between all the stakeholders
• Assigns job and sets clear targets everyone can see and control
• Takes care of accounting and invoicing, shortening the delivery time to the maximum
• Lets you create detailed safety plans and control the working conditions and performance of each employee.

Benefits of Construction Project Management Software

• Timely project delivery. By providing visibility and flexibility, landscape construction project management software enables completing the most sophisticated tasks by sticking to the deadline.
• A systematic approach to project management. The program designed for the construction project management needs helps make this job easier. It collects all the valuable information in one place and provides the knowledge base for creating professional RFIs, transmittals, business letters, and change requests. What’s more, the stakeholders will see these activities right away in the software.
• Greater collaboration between stakeholders. A useful feature of project management software for contractors is in viewing their business more clearly and collaborate better.
• Easy information sharing. Project management consists of task setting and talk handling. And so, getting the tool for document control with open access significantly facilitates working on the project.
• Better costs control. When your employees have access to the project management software, they can leave notes on the budget status so no money request is lost on the way. Moreover, it makes it easy to spot and prevent project cost overrun and huge unnecessary spending from happening.

Main Features of Commercial Construction Project Management Software

1. Planning modules. Construction project management scheduling software should support assigning jobs and management of the resource, material, and equipment schedules. The feature includes creating timelines for the internal team and subcontractors, increasing the efficiency of collaboration, and keeping all the stakeholders up-to-date on the project status.
2. Inventory management. The project management software helps to deal with numerous resources for the projects. In this context, it takes over the accounting, maintenance, and distribution of equipment, letting project managers concentrate on communication and more complex business tasks.
3. Financial management tools. Construction project management software needs advanced tools for budget control. In particular, it should let your team and subcontractors submit several bids. Beyond this functionality, the system needs to track associated financial information, including payroll, invoices, and overall budget status.
4. Document management. The software should replace extensive paperwork for the project, meaning financial documents, RFPs, submittals, contracts, etc. With a cloud-based document management system, project managers should save time, money, and nerves.
5. Communication platform. The system should provide a unified and easy-to-use platform that eliminates the need for using emails, chats, and phone calls. In this regard, the software should have an appealing and efficient UI/UX and provide all the information on the project status needed for discussion. Going for a custom solution will increase the accuracy of this module to the maximum, as your development team will adjust the program functionality to your particular team of stakeholders.
6. Feedback collection. For civil construction project management software, the ability to quickly access designs and evaluate them is essential. In this context, an in-built customer relationship management system is essential to ensure that you and your team are doing everything right and the project is truly successful.
7. Mobile compatibility. Your team should be able to access the project management software from any device. For this, we recommend building a cloud-based program that will work in any location. Also, investing in a mobile app or a mobile responsive design is the working decision to achieve the needed reach and engagement with the software.

How Does Software Development Outsourcing Can Help Your Company Create Construction Project Management Software?

Outsourcing is generally the best option for software development, possessing outstanding cost-effectiveness and the ability to get a fresh perspective on your enterprise operations. In general, this decision lets businesses concentrate on business-critical tasks and creative problems. That’s why we highly recommend outsourcing software development to a reliable tech partner.

For the construction industry specifically, the decision to go for outsourcing lets you optimize your budget, get access to time-proven expertise and establish collaboration with a reliable and professional service provider.

In the case of construction ERP software development, you can get a construction project management module along with CRM and reporting systems, which increases the business impact of this move as a whole.

For effective cooperation with our outsourcing tech vendor, we highly recommend elaborating metrics and KPIs for the project progress control. In the case of developing construction project management software, they can include lead time, active days, production, MTBF, and security (check the full list of top 13 metrics here).

This way, you can ensure going for more effective project management and planning, accurate priority setting, and timely bottlenecks spotting.

Ask Intellectsoft for Help

If you decide to introduce project management software for construction, don’t hesitate to ask for our help! We, at Intellectsoft, offer a wide range of construction software development services, including:

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Project Management
• Inspection Management
• Customer Portal and Partner Portal
• Construction Integrations
• Analytics and Reporting
• Project Onboarding and Training

Our construction project management software is an advanced system that facilitates and streamlines operations processing both onsite and offsite.

With this program, you can oversee the planning, design, and construction of the whole project lifecycles and reach accurate results. The areas we address include risk and asset management, activity planning, task assignment, team collaboration, and many more.

Contact our experts to get the software development project started! We’re ready to dedicate all our knowledge and skills to increase the effectiveness of your construction project management activities.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Software for the Construction Industry appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Check this rating of the 10 best software companies in Miami and make an informed decision for picking your new tech partner.

The Full List of Top Software Companies in Miami:

1. CINQ Technologies
2. Mercury Development
3. Intellectsoft
4. Koombea
5. SOLTECH
6. Zoondia
7. Concepta
8. Solo Media Group
9. Ardan Labs
10. Ateliware

Below, you can find the descriptions for each of these first-class software development companies in Miami.

#1 CINQ Technologies

The Leader among Software Companies in Miami

CINQ Technologies is among the most innovative nearshore custom software development companies in Miami. The vendor offers a wide set of solutions for accelerating digital business growth. In particular, the team capabilities include design, Agile development, data agility, and digital growth.

The Extended List of Services from CINQ Technologies:

• Co-creation of the best project strategy to connect clients’ needs with business aims
• Design-thinking methods
• User-experience best practices
• Agile methods
• Tech expertise in mobile and web development, front-end and back-end, AI, blockchain, IoT, and cloud
• Existing data evaluation
• Data analytics
• Customer and market trends research

The trait that helps CINQ Technologies stand out among other software companies in Miami: Nearshore specialization. CINQ Technologies guarantees timezone proximity and cultural similarities.

#2 Mercury Development

An Awarded Representative of IT Companies in Miami

Mercury Development specializes in end-to-end development services, meaning the ability to deliver projects from ideation to deployment and support. The main verticals include staff augmentation, healthcare, fitness and wellness, automotive, sales, and entertainment. What’s more, this IT company in Miami adopts cutting-edge technologies, including Bluetooth Low Energy, iBeacon, SDK, Smart TV, wearable devices, and Apple TV.

The Extended List of Services from Mercury Development:

• Mobile development
• Web development
• Desktop development
• Staff augmentation
• IoT/emerging tech

The trait that helps Mercury Development stand out among other software companies in Miami: The portfolio. The list of clients includes Kensington, HSBC Global Technology, SAP, HP Invent — and even Google!

#3 Intellectsoft

The Only Member in the List of Software Companies in Florida Offering Consultancy and Development Services

Intellectsoft is a digital transformation consultancy and software development vendor assisting Fortune 500 companies, startups, and mid-sized companies alike. Its list of clients includes Guinness, EY, Jaguar, Eurostar, Harley-Davidson, and Cirrus Insight. The key technologies are IoT, blockchain, and customer services applicable to numerous industries — including construction, healthcare, insurance, FinTech, logistics, travel, hospitality, retail, and eCommerce.

The Extended List of Services from Intellectsoft:

• Dedicated teams
• Product strategy
• Product engineering
• Architecture
• UX/UI design
• App developers
• QA and testing
• Cyber security
• Web development
• Custom software development
• Outsourcing software development service

The trait that helps Intellectsoft stand out among other software companies in Miami: Global representation. Intellectsoft has offices in Miami, New York, Kyiv (Ukraine), London (UK), and Oslo (Norway).

#4 Koombea

App Development for Innovative Companies

Koombea deserved its place among top software companies in Miami thanks to its ability to apply the Agile development method to sophisticated mobile and web app ideas. Thanks to its end-to-end application development capabilities turned, Koombea has become a reliable tech partner for Flight Logger, Payix, LINC, Luna, and Do It Center. The main industries it serves are EdTech, FinTech, MedTech, HiTech, retail, and IoT.

The Extended List of Services from Koombea:

• Product discovery, ideation, and design
• MVP development
• Custom app development
• Shopify and WooCommerce custom designs
• Project management
• Quality Assurance
• DevOps
• Machine Learning
• IT staff augmentation
• Web development

The trait that helps Koombea stand out among other software companies in Miami: Web and mobile app services specialization. Also, the company has 4 offices in the USA and an office in Colombia.

#5  SOLTECH

Atlanta’s Premiere Custom Software Development Company

SOLTECH assists in building software applications. The quality of its services makes it overcome the competition with other IT companies in Miami. The list of SOLTECH’s software partners includes SalesForce, Microsoft, Fullstory, and Jitterbit. Because of this, the company delivers high-tech and efficient solutions for its clients.

The Extended List of Services from SOLTECH:

• Technical recruiting
• Staff augmentation
• Software design
• Mobile app development
• Web development
• SalesForce implementation
• User experience design
• Support and project rescue

The trait that helps SOLTECH stand out among other software companies in Miami: Vast experience. SOLTECH is for 22 years in business. It has collected over 500 clients, over 1,200 projects, and over 1,500 consultants placed.

#6 Zoondia

An IT Company in Miami Specialized in Custom Software Development

Zoondia translates ideas into software, breathing life to brands. For this aim, the vendor offers assistance in digital transformation and digital marketing alike, using Microsoft, JAVA, open-source, Frontend, databases, IoT, Big Data, and cloud. The list of clients includes SAP, Emirates, shiftMD, 3M, Samsung, and the Government of Dubai.

The Extended List of Services from Zoondia:

• Big Data analytics
• Digital marketing
• Quality Assurance
• UI/UX design

The trait that helps Zoondia stand out among other software companies in Miami: Access to the Asian workforce. Zoondia’s head office is in India, and it has representatives in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar.

#7 Concepta

Orlando Mobile App and Web Development Company

Concepta specializes in making app development simple. The tech company is capable of building apps that will drive the next disruption in various industries, turning business capabilities into autonomous services, mastering automation of different complexity, and getting a complete X-ray of businesses. Due to this, Concepta is known as a forward-thinking vendor by brand-conscious clients.

The Extended List of Services from Concepta:

• Mobile app development
• Web and API development
• Process and workflow automation
• Business Intelligence and reports

The trait that helps Cocepta stand out among other software development companies in Florida: Assistance package for startups. Concepta can deliver experienced leadership, proven startup success practices, and even find an on-demand CTO.

#8 Solo Media Group

Helping Creative Teams Bring Ideas to Life

The key capability of Solo Media Group is web development. Within this specialization, the digital team can bring sophisticated business ideas to life, ensuring clean code and amazing UI/UX. Creativity is the main value for Solo Media Group. That’s why they tend to cooperate with creatives, design teams, and established brands interested in ‘pixel-perfect’ projects.

The Extended List of Services from Solo Media Group:

• Increasing efficiency of processes and standards
• Access to skilled design and development talents
• Guaranteed work continuation

The trait that helps Solo Media Group stand out among other top software companies in Florida: Design capabilities. Even the website from Solo Media Group demonstrates outstanding UI/UX!

#9 Ardan Labs

Go (Golang) Consulting, Development, and Training

Ardan Labs helps companies in building something new, updating existing solutions, and team training. It specializes in high-performance software development, staffing, and training. As for development services, Ardan Labs assists in migration to Go, distributed systems, DevOps, mobile and web apps, and IoT development.

The Extended List of Services from Ardan Labs:

• Corporate training
• Building, maintaining, and deploying production quality software
• Staffing
• DevOps

The special trait that helps Ardan Labs stand out among other software companies in Florida: Training services. Ardan Labs offers various packages and specifications in this regard, including team, instructor-led, and customized training, along with online self-paced learning with on-demand videos.

#10 Ateliware

A Brazil-based Software Development Company

The vendor assists businesses to transform, foster innovation, and unlock growth. Ateliware works with the web, desktop, and mobile app development (including both hybrid and native) and has already helped Amazon, Santander, Skeat, and Pipefy. All in all, the company’s passion is building digital products with purpose.

The Extended List of Services from Ateliware:

• Product discovery
• Product concept
• Building apps (front-end and back-end development, system integrations)
• Launch

The special trait that helps Ardan Labs stand out among other IT companies in Florida: Custom services. Unlike other IT companies in Miami, Ateliware positions itself as a software atelier that develops bespoke digital products and handmade solutions.

Bottom line

All the companies in this list offer exceptional services, be that ready-made or custom software development. Miami is a great place for finding tech talents, and we wish you fruitful cooperation with digital teams from this rating!

The post Top 10 Software Development Companies in Miami  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Before, we were confident that it was possible to outsource everything except the product team. But after a time we began to wonder, why can’t product teams be remote too?

This article will discuss whether remote product management and development are realistic and consider both the pros and cons of each.

Common Reasons for Outsourcing

Every month at Intellectsoft, we speak with dozens of companies that are considering remote development. Most often, they fall into one of several categories:

1. Small to medium businesses that digitize a business model with proven offline results. In this case, the company has a working knowledge of how an online business should work. They simply bring existing business processes online.
2. Companies that scale up existing business processes. This case includes all those who have built successful MVPs but are now thinking about scaling their success by adding more functionality to reach a larger audience.
3. Companies that are working on a one-time addition to existing functionality. In such cases, it makes no sense to hire someone from the outside due to the irregular nature of the development work.
4. Businesses that plan to develop a solution from scratch. Usually, these include companies that need a specific business solution and then long-term support. They do not intend to periodically change the product, conduct dozens of AB tests, and so on. Just building, deploying, and using is their purpose.

Recently, due to COVID-19, more and more companies are doing what was previously considered impossible. They are transitioning product and marketing development to remote.

Why Product Management Is Moving to Remote

Both well-developed businesses and young startups have been resorting to outsourcing for product management. Some of the most common reasons for this include:

• Lack of qualified human resources. Often, teams don’t have enough in-house resources to test new products or research a new segment of users and do it right. This is where remote teams come in handy.
• They need new products or features urgently, and deadlines are on fire. Imagine you’re a face mask production and the pandemic strikes. Now you want to quickly scale production and customer acquisition channels but don’t have enough workforce to do so. That’s when you don’t have time to hire and onboard new staff and need someone who can ship things right away.
• Need solid product expertise for good money. A company has no experience working with developers and product managers. They cannot spend a year and a half on acquiring expertise, hiring personnel, and developing it. In this case, it is better to turn to those who have sufficient expertise.
• The current team is failing and product development needs to be accelerated. If a company is willing to try a product-led growth model, the product manager has to be a seasoned professional. The current team may not be the best fit for the product-led growth philosophy or meet the new requirements for development speed.

The Critical Role of the Product Manager

The position of a product manager has only been around for a short time. There are plenty of definitions of what a PM is. But for all of them, there is one that we can stick to. The product manager is the person responsible for creating and bringing a new product to market.

Suppose you look through hundreds of PM vacancies and conduct an in-depth analysis. Soon, it becomes clear that a product manager is a specialist who works at the intersection of business, marketing, and programming.

At every stage, they control the work on a new product, interact with investors and users, and develop their brainchild after the technical implementation.

As mentioned earlier, the main task is to develop new products in line with trends and the needs of users. Beyond this, there are plenty of other responsibilities and fields of expertise for a PM:

• Collecting information
• Deriving product requirements
• Creating a work plan and distributing roles among staff
• Promoting and selling the product

Product manager’s top skills:

• market research and market analysis to determine the basic needs of customers
• implementation of product lines and testing new ideas
• conducting competitive analysis, comparing similar products through numerous characteristics
• development of marketing communications
• liaising with the sales director to create a sales strategy
• working with clients and the sales department to assess the results of implementation
• formation of long-term and short-term sales forecasts, providing analytics to management
• introducing new products to the market, analyzing profitability (ROI)
• creating a marketing strategy with the marketers
• pricing based on market research, production costs, and expected demand
• scheduling and defining operational requirements

This is a crucial role for any project. So why would a big company’s CEO outsource a product manager or an entire product team?

Reasons for Outsourcing the Product Manager and Product Team

Well, there are a couple of reasons to do so. First, you get world-class experts working on your product. These professionals usually take jobs for a limited period of time tied directly to KPIs or a set of other mission-critical objectives like:

• The number of conversions and sign-ups compared to the current performance.
• Marginality. The actual sales are compared with the planned figures.
• Active users. Evaluate how many people are using the product daily.
• Customer Retention Rate (CRR). The retention rate of new users, which in most cases is even more critical than the acquisition.
• ROI. An indicator of the return on income tied to the cost of advertising. It shows whether the investment has paid off or not.

Delivering these KPIs means that the remote project manager and their development team are responsible for more than just releasing new functionality. They are entirely responsible for achieving specific business goals.

Leading product development experts often command high salaries. Thus, hiring them as full-time in-house staff can be incredibly expensive.

Additionally, product design and prototyping equipment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, not including the costs of maintenance and repair. Outsourced product development is often much less expensive than in-house design.

And in the end, you are not responsible for your outsourced product team. This is very useful if you are testing a product MVP based on market hypotheses. You can quickly terminate cooperation if the test was unsuccessful and the product-market fit was not found. Most outsourced product teams agree on that with their clients in advance.

What Is the Future of Product Team Outsourcing?

At Intellectsoft, we see a roughly 25% increase in clients wanting to include product managers and analysts as part of their outsourced teams.

Agile development methodology allows for one product specialist to work on 1-3 projects simultaneously, alternating the planning, prototyping, development, and analysis phases among themselves.

The only requirement for organizing a high-performing team of this level is the willingness of stakeholders to adhere to the process and agreed priorities. Remote product teams are capable of quick pivots, but only within extended sprints.

We anticipate that product management and analyst outsourcing will become more mainstream over the next three years in the wake of traditional marketing and development outsourcing.

As skilled specialist shortages and prices grow, availability and affordable prices will become critical factors in attracting these teams to an increasing number of players in the market.

The post Product Team On-Demand: Forget Everything You Know About Software Outsourcing  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

At the same time, meeting the tendency requires careful consideration. According to Deloitte 2021 Retail Industry Outlook, only 23% of consumers think the industry is trustworthy in terms of safety, and only 5% ranked it as a top-three one for data privacy. That means the importance of finding a reliable tech partner and using safe technologies for digitalization.

What’s more, eCommerce customers prefer to interact with online shops via smartphones. The mobile traffic surpasses all other types, reaching 54.8% of global website traffic in the first quarter of 2021. This situation calls for investing in mobile apps, but the cost of this type of app development isn’t affordable for any eCommerce business.

That’s why industry players have started searching for reliable technology to address the industry and customer demands. In this regard, progressive web apps attract wide attention.

These affordable platforms combine the latest web functionality with a native app-like experience, letting businesses take the desired advantage of the service.

In this overview, we’ll describe what good brings this type of eCommerce web development and explain why it’s worth a try.

What Is Progressive Web App (PWA)?

A progressive web app is a technology that unites the best parts of mobile apps and mobile websites. In practice, it lets customers open your app in a web browser and interact with it as if it’s a native app installed on their smartphones.

By resembling mobile apps as so, these platforms don’t require such a heavy investment and numerous complicated development stages.

Google introduced the progressive web app technology in 2015. These days, the search engine giant still supports PWA web pages. It lets your clients access the Google web page and install the icon app on their phones’ home screen.

That’s why the technology possesses several SEO benefits, including website loading speed improvement.

Besides, progressive apps are a great digital marketing tool. In this regard, the platform possesses several visibility opportunities. Because of that, progressive web app development includes access to smartphone features to improve the user experience.

For example, your eCommerce marketing can benefit from the technology by sending push-notifications and providing offline support to your clients.

Why Does your eCommerce Business Need Progressive Web App Development?

The greatest benefit that progressive web apps bring to eCommerce is the ability to have an app without heavy investment in native mobile app development.

You won’t need to adjust your app to fit different requirements and receive app store approvals, a must-have stage for publishing Android, iOS, and Windows apps. Moreover, you won’t need to invest in app store optimization (ASO). Progressive web apps are SEO-friendly, and your clients will use them without entering app stores.

Your PWA will look like a mobile version of your website, but the cloud-based technology behind it will create a native-like experience for users. This is the shortest way to achieve the needed extent of digital acceleration by maintaining high safety standards and meeting your customers in their smartphones.

Even if your business already has a native app (or any other eCommerce web application), going for a progressive web app will improve the key engagement metrics.

As for the main indicators, businesses investing in the technology get the best results in terms of app size, loading speed, conversion rate, bounce rate, and reaching areas with poor Internet connectivity.

For instance, Twitter decreased its app size by 97%, which resulted in a 20% reduction in bounce rate. In their turn, Starbucks has doubled its number of daily active users with an app that became 99.84% smaller than its already existing mobile iOS app.

5 Key Benefits of Progressive Web App to eCommerce

1. Safety and efficiency. Progressive web apps rely on HTTPS communication protocol, which lets your customers process their payments without the need to switch between a mobile app and a desktop. Skipping this obstacle will have a positive effect on the key elements of your sales funnel, including retention rate, conversion rate, and the number of returning visitors. What’s more, it addresses the current concerns of retail customers.
2. Lightweight. Progressive web apps are lighter than native apps, which results in faster loading speed, automatic refreshments, and a greater user experience. It’s easy to find and quick to download, free of lagging, and can work offline. Most businesses using this technology have reduced their app size by 80-99% of the initial mobile app size.
3. Cost-effective cross-device nature. A progressive web app is compatible with various operating systems and fits the screen size of different devices. This feature is useful for developing an omnichannel business strategy. Given the need to invest in native app development for each separate platform and device, eCommerce using progressive web apps makes the decision with true value-for-money.
4. Attracts web traffic. Progressive web apps have their own URLs, are available in search engine results, and let your SEO specialists work with their performance. Thanks to this, it’s an effective solution for eCommerce web development. Also, it cuts the app maintenance cost, eliminating the need for creating a separate budget for ASO activities.
5. Browser-based fully functional app. A progressive web app looks like a native app but is easy to reach as if it’s a mobile web page. At the same time, this feature doesn’t need technical complexity to deliver a satisfactory user experience. Progressive apps don’t use much data and can work even in areas with poor Internet connectivity.

4 Main Attributes of a PWA for eCommerce

Even though progressive web apps look like mobile web pages, they should possess extra native-like functionality to guarantee the required quality level for user experience.

For example, push notifications and app installation are must-have features, while GEO fencing is an optional one. In this section, we’ve collected the key attributes of these apps for guidance if you decide to invest in eCommerce web application development of this type.

Low Development Cost

With a progressive web app, eCommerce should significantly save on app development. At least, because this tool doesn’t need separate creation, maintenance, and promotion for various app stores and platforms. Your web app can use your website as a basis.

Nevertheless, the cost-effective solution should link your website and mobile experience in an elegant manner. The new platform shouldn’t look like a poor-quality version of your mobile website.

The aim of PWA development is to provide a unified platform for several channels a sole team can work with. This means uniting key native app features in a single platform that works smoothly on any device and operating system and is in compliance with your current SEO.

And, of course, the platform should be safe to enter and process mobile payments like a great retail app.

What’s more, your clients should enjoy the user experience they appreciate the most. At least, this low-cost solution should still look nice to you and to them.

This way, you’ll get a cheaper solution for the same quality of service your competitors normally invest thousands of dollars.

Main Screen Installation

Your users should have an option to install the app on their phones. Otherwise, there’s no need to invest in eCommerce web application development.

Generally, people don’t like to download apps from app stores. Especially if they don’t see the true value right away. That’s why progressive web apps should possess all the needed attributes to actually make an installation happen.

The needed button should be easy to find and work smoothly. The aim is to provide your clients with an opportunity to window shop your eCommerce store in their browser as they like and then download your app to proceed with purchase smoothly and conveniently.

Ability to Send Push Notifications

The best thing your eCommerce business can benefit from native app-like traits of web apps is push notifications. You can use this tool for sending discounts, special offers, and promotions.

Even better, you can customize the messages to address the need for eCommerce personalization, the crucial tool for your company to stay competitive, increase revenue, and enhance the services.

For example, you can generate product offers, content, and specific suggestions based on a user’s browsing experience — and notify them in a push notification via an app installed on their home screens.

With push notifications, you can reach users who browse your web anonymously and without leaving any contact details. Web apps don’t require any other actions but to install them on a home screen in a couple of clicks.

Fast Loading Speed for SEO Optimization

You should guarantee your users an exceptionally fast experience. With an appropriate eCommerce web development approach, you can create an app that can load with a second only.

This is possible when you combine the speed advantages of websites and enable caching from their side, making a mobile web page look like a native app.

Another trick behind speed acceleration is the lightweight of a progressive app. By occupying less disk space, it needs less data to load and fills less storage space. Compared to native iOS and Android apps, it’s dozens of times smaller.

Web basis of progressive apps enables their discoverability in search engines. And their great speed characteristics.

Contact Intellectsoft for eCommerce Web Development Services

Our team stays tuned for more news in the retail industry, and we’ll be glad to create a web app for your business with the highest standards in secure payment gateway integration.

From our extended list of retail applications and software services, you can get:

• Marketing automation. Update your app on the fly with geolocation and navigation, gamification, content management, push notifications, and social networking.
• Mobile users engagement. Let your customers shop online and enjoy an offline-like experience with augmented reality, geofenced messaging, in-store navigation, recipe shopping, and other custom features.
• Turning data into revenue. Get a comprehensive software solution that includes POS, smart design, IoT, Big Data analytics, and training.

Interested in getting the details? Contact the Intellectsoft team! Let’s choose and build together the software solution that perfectly fits your exact eCommerce business needs.

The post Progressive Web App Development in Ecommerce appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

And that’s not surprising, as this sphere involves the employment of various IT-service providers, application services, and infrastructure solutions for enhancing the core business processes.

Why do companies outsource? Well, the major reasons for this are to reduce and control the hiring costs, enhance the core business processes and improve the company’s focus, boost the KPI and perform more tasks at tight time frames, etc.

However, before the business gets the outsourcing benefits, it needs to resolve its main challenge — to establish efficient remote team communication.

In this article, we’ll uncover the main business challenges of remote teams communication and also the best practices of enhancing team communication while outsourcing software development.

Collaborating With Remote Software Developers: Main Challenges

First of all, let’s analyze the potential challenges and communication issues companies can encounter when hiring a remote development team.

Having covered the majority of these, it becomes much easier to develop an effective yet efficient business strategy to resolve the existing problems and prevent the issues that might occur further.

Miscommunication Problems

Communication is one of the core factors that have a huge impact on the employees’ well-being and productivity. According to McKinsey’s recent research, the teams who feel engaged in detailed remote communications are nearly 5 times more likely to enhance their KPIs.

Furthermore, the post-COVID-19 realities uncovered that only 32% of employees have experienced the great communication set up from their organizations, which means a vast majority of businesses nowadays still have vague remote team communication.

The miscommunication can not only impact the workflow and employees’ well-being but also result in serious losses for the organizations themselves.

This means great delays in the project development, as well as spending tons of time, costs, and effort for correcting the issues and troubleshooting.

Disconnection Issues

The other huge drawback of the poor remote team communication is that the workers are isolated from the traditional working environment, and need much more time for clarifying the issues and troubleshooting.

Not to mention how the lack of connection impacts the remote team management: it becomes harder to build effective communication with remote teams and regularly control their performance as well.

The thing is the team-bonding moments always happen, especially when working at a large organization since you have some off-work interactions like a common lunch or small talk by a water cooler.

The peculiarities of telework only compound the problem: you need to consider the schedule of each member and find the right tools for team-building opportunities.

Disunion Challenges

The lack of collaboration is another important issue when onboarding a remote development team. It often occurs because of the absence of teamwork, low motivation, and a minor input into the common cause.

As a result, everyone minds only their own business and avoids sharing important ideas and feedback because of that feeling of undervaluation and also the burnout — common issue team members might feel because of the lack of collaborative work.

In fact, by helping employees understand how their work connects to the goals of the company you can improve the company’s performance by up to 10%, according to Gartner. That is why, one of the most essential points while developing the business performance is to improve team communication.

Alienation Feeling

With poor team communication, employees may also feel like a sore thumb because of the lack of live communication and interaction with each other. The stressful feeling caused by the so-called alienation results in increased employee anxiety.

The researches have shown that this issue can greatly decrease working performance, reduce job satisfaction and even lead to resignation. For the global economy poor mental health, caused by insufficient remote team communication, can cost up to $1 trillion per year.

Management Issues

The last and most significant problem of remote communications for business performance is the remote control issues. For the project managers, it becomes even more challenging to organize and control the working performance of each employee, track their progress and define the most effective strategies for the KPI improvement.

As a result, the team members feel uncertain about their work, and cannot interact comfortably with each other — they just try to avoid talking with anyone, even if that impacts the quality of their work.

Strategies to Improve Communication with Your Remote Software Development Team

After you know the main challenges of setting up effective remote team communication, let’s review the ways you can resolve these problems.

Basically, the 3 core factors will matter here: the correct team-building techniques, managers with high leadership skills, and professional software. To lift up the lid for you: the last one turns out to be the most essential for developing the best remote communications.

Use the Right Team-Building Techniques

One of the first things to consider when developing remote teams’ communication is to apply the most effective team-building strategies that can emphasize the importance of each member’s input. For example, it’s essential to:

• Listen to the employee’s feedback or suggestions and encourage them to voice their opinions;
• Brainstorm the ideas of how to improve the workflow and increase the employee’s performance;
• Set up the small talks and engage the team members in the off-work interactions to prevent burnout;
• Organize informal events to encourage better interactions between the team members and managers so no one feels left out.

These simple yet effective techniques can be modified or complemented depending on your organization’s goals and needs. However, the application of even one of these strategies can significantly enhance the productivity of your remote employees and improve business performance.

Develop the Leadership Skills of Your Remote Team

The other method of developing remote communications is hiring a professional manager that features vast experience in remote work optimization.

This person is aware of the most effective team-building tactics and can analyze which of them will provide you with the best performance results and enhance your company’s KPI.

Additionally, the professional manager can guide you in employing the pre-made or creating the fully-customized software for remote communication, a perfect option to establish the production workflow for the telework or outsourcing. Still uncertain about its efficiency? Discover the essential benefits it can bring to your business below!

Employ the Effective Team Communication Software

One of the core options that define the success of the remote team interaction improvement is choosing the right communication software. Such software opens up a lot of perspectives for productive remote work, as it:

• Allows reaching the team members anytime and from anywhere;
• Enables creating multiple working chats (formal and informal) to communicate, share the news and updates, ideas, and suggestions regarding different topics;
• Enhances the time-management with the in-built calendar for the task scheduling;
• Improves the employee management and control (for instance, by showing the current status — online, offline, at the meeting, etc);
• Speeds up the entire working process and improves its quality, so that the projects are always completed in time and are less likely to contain human errors and other issues;
• Prevents leakage of business-related data that can happen if personal challenges are used for corporate communication.

Of course, if some of the features your business needs are not covered by the premade communication software for remote teams, it’s a great idea to launch the custom software solutions.

They will not simply meet all the essential requirements, needs, and business goals, but are also great because of the advanced personalization, painless integration, high security, and cost-effectiveness.

Created by the professional team of developers, such software won’t require the additional costs with licenses or the constant changes, as it can much easier adjust to your business and be used in the long run.

Additionally, the custom communication software can be integrated with other software allowing the remote employees to increase their working performance and productivity as well.

Why Is Team Communication Important?

Setting up the right remote development team communication allows your departments to effectively interact with each other, saving tons of effort, costs, and, which is more important – the time needed for troubleshooting, clarification, optimization, and other pivotal business processes.

For the outsourced remote teams, setting up the is even more critical, as the written communication becomes the main information channel remote team uses to perform various business tasks.

If this outsourcing factor is neglected, the businesses can’t get any benefits from the remote employees at best. At worst, this will lead to an enormous loss of resources, including the time and costs spent on employee onboarding.

Conclusion

Knowing the best practices of how to improve communication with a remote team, businesses can make the most of their employee outsourcing.

The right team-building tactics, professional and experienced leaders, and, of course, the key option — innovative software for remote team communication — are the best methods of how your organization can boost the interaction with remote employees. And, the only thing you need to create professional communication software is to find a dedicated development team for your business project.

Due to the years of experience in the outsourcing industry, Intellectsoft knows how to ensure flawless communication with remote teams. Feel free to contact us if you want to benefit from the best remote team communication tools and set your project up for success.

The post How to Streamline Communication With Your Remote Development Team  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

The financial accounting software is not an exception, as it helps to increase the business efficiency mostly by tracking the accounting transactions, managing the accounts of business (including the account payables, account receivables, business payroll, general ledger, etc).

Consequently, the growing market for accounting software solutions has significantly influenced its further development: in 2020 the total value of the accounting software market was estimated at $12.01 billion and, at a CAGR of 8.5% within the next 5 years, is expected to reach $19.59 billion by 2026.

The main reasons for the increasing demand in accounting software development are mostly related to the brilliant perspectives and numerous workflow improvements it can bring to the different businesses.

In this article, we’ll discuss what financial accounting software is, its main types, and the key benefits it can provide to the companies after the implementation.

Main Functions of Financial Accounting Software

Financial accounting software refers to the software that performs numerous accounting and bookkeeping tasks. This software is mainly targeted for streamlining the processes, reducing operational complexity, and optimizing the technology used for the core finance processes.

As a result, businesses can get a huge increase in the main KPIs, improved tasks’ efficiency, control, and quality.

Additionally, the accounting software solutions are cost-efficient and effective options for businesses to boost their competitiveness and enhance the performance for the successful partnership and fruitful collaboration.

According to PwC, the financial accounting software can also assist in accelerating the numerous decision-making processes using the finance process intelligence and cash intelligence features. For instance, this type of financial software can:

• Integrate different types of business data in a centralized hub
• Generate numerous cost-efficient business decisions via the scenario planning
• Display the suite of various KPIs and metrics using the specific dashboards and multimedia solutions
• Leverage the agile “what-if” solutions to analyze the future cash flow scenarios
• Provide businesses with dynamic data and advanced performance analytics

Thus, by implementing accounting software development, businesses can significantly improve their performance, uncover the effective options of accounting automation, gain valuable insights about the further dynamics of development and its enhancement as well.

The Main Types of Accounting Software

Needless to say, the types of accounting software are determined according to the specific financial operations the business employs. At present, we can classify the 3 basic categories of financial accounting software.

Invoicing / Billing Software

The financial accounting software that handles the invoicing/billing operations is traditionally responsible for the basic billing activities of the company. Additionally, they cover the daily accounting tasks of a business that includes cheque issuing, various payment notifications for customers, etc.

Payroll Management System

These accounting software systems cover the basic payroll registers, calculation of the employees’ salaries, cutting deductions, depositing the salaries directly into the staff member’s bank accounts, producing tax forms, and plenty of other different tasks.

Enterprise Resource Planning System

Also known as an ERP system, that type of accounting software solution is in charge of the entire operating system that covers product planning, material buying costs, inventory management, distribution and accounting, marketing, HR, finance, and more. Basically, that’s a huge system that handles the entire business performance from a financial aspect.

Benefits of Financial Accounting Software

No matter which type of software a business has intended to apply, any of these operates with strong potential and numerous benefits for the organization from any industry. Here, you’ll find the basic features of accounting software that companies would like to make use of.

Enhances and Simplifies the Accounting Processes

One of the major reasons why companies apply accounting software development is its availability for the non-accounting audience. The financial accounting software benefits the various accounting processes by automatically performing the key tasks and providing a clear explanation to each operation.

Saves Lots of Costs

With its automation feature, the accounting software can greatly enhance the numerous calculations and administrative procedures. However, it also enables the control of the companies’ revenue, which means the businesses become less dependent on the finance management experts outsourcing.

Provides the Transparency of Complex Processes

Another great benefit of using financial accounting software is that it can provide cost-efficient business solutions and prevent recurring human errors. For instance, this software can effectively calculate the accurate totals or provide the reporting data in time, which is essential for the successful performance of any business.

Assists With the Tax Laws Compliance

Good accounting software automatically contains the taxation laws compliance in its internal structure. With this feature included, the businesses can easily avoid the penalties and some other serious tax laws issues that can be detrimental to the company’s performance.

Improves the Customer Service

The current accounting software systems can significantly enhance customer relationships as well. Now, businesses can manage the billing and invoicing, reduce possible delays and prevent miscommunications as well.

Additionally, the accounting systems can send notifications and business emails, reminders of outstanding dues, and different types of notes, which increases the business’s credibility.

Therefore, the companies will boost customer retention and customer loyalty via the features applied in the process of accounting software development.

Thus, having spent some time and resources on software training, the accounting software systems allow the business owners to complete the basic accounting operations and comply with legal standards with ease and simplicity.

Tips to Develop an Outstanding Finance Accounting Software and the Core Features to Include

Accounting software development implies not only advanced knowledge in programming but also a deep understanding of the financial accounting processes. That is why finance management experts recommend including the following features of accounting software:

• Cash flow tracking
• Accounting analysis automation
• Transaction processing and management
• Payroll processing
• Auditing
• Tax laws reporting
• Invoice processing
• Budget management
• Smart prediction
• Data encryption

In order to save the accounting software cost, the companies tend to use the free accounting software or purchase ready-made options with specific configurations that can hardly be changed.

Consequently, the companies end up with the need of creating their own financial accounting software that will fully correspond to all the business goals and would provide the maximum data protection.

And that’s where the Intellectsoft development team works best: we’ve created the detailed step-by-step strategy for creating the feature-rich, cost-effective, and easy-to-use software solution that is directly targeted at your company or business. The essential steps for accounting software development should cover the following:

Research the Problem

Talking about the first step of any type of software development, it’s important to make detailed research regarding the main goals, specific needs, and pain points of a business the software should either resolve or enhance. According to PwC best practices, the preliminary project stage consists of:

• Conceptual formulation of ideas and alternatives;
• Determination of the key performance requirements and essential features to include, and also estimate the total cost of accounting software development;
• Presenting the demonstrational sample of the software, its concept, and how this can fulfill all the business needs;
• Research for the alternative methods of the development of the specific features, if available;
• Set up the performance requirements needed to comply with the business goals;
• Select the person in charge of the accounting software development process, who will run the final testing and make the adjustments.

Develop the Prototype

Before the development team goes directly into the coding, it’s essential to design the product prototype. By creating a model of the financial accounting software for a specific business, the clients can provide clear ideas of what they expect to see in the final software version.

Additionally, at this stage, it becomes much easier to determine all the features that should and shouldn’t be included in the accounting software as a result.

Start the Software Development

After the prototype is ready, the developers start working on the custom accounting software creation. At this stage, the team writes the code, performs the testing and debugging, adapts the software to the changes, and prepares the product for the general release.

Testing and Release

When the software is presented, it’s essential to monitor the financial software system for any failure indicators and security vulnerabilities, and adapt the product to the emerging industry trends. The professional team of developers will be also able to maintain the system and keep it up to date according to the basic business requirements.

Summing It Up

Accounting software development has become an essential yet efficient part of business improvement within any industry. Its implementation can provide numerous benefits for the small and large business units, including processes automation, informative performance insights, and smart development scenarios, which can assist in optimizing financial management.

Creating feature-rich accounting software solutions requires a deep knowledge of financial software development and detailed research of the specific needs of your business.

Cooperating with a dedicated team of developers, in this case, is the most effective option to get the best financial software that perfectly fits all your needs.

Intellectsoft has years of experience creating innovative solutions for the financial industry, so we are well-aware of the modern market trends and the needs of end-users. We treat the client’s business as our own, so we deeply immerse ourselves in the project in order to offer the best-fitting technological solution.

Are you looking for a reliable development vendor to create high-quality accounting software that would help to take your business to the next level? Then, contact Intellectsoft, and let’s transform the industry together!

The post Financial Accounting Software Development — Cost, Features and Security Measures appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

And no matter what category of claims companies need to process, they certainly need to utilize an ongoing solution for any case that will fit the pandemic, natural or man-made catastrophe, product recall, and other claims.

For the insurance industry, having a standalone system of claims structuring and processing is exceptionally important.

That is why, the winning solution for these organizations is to implement the insurance claims management software — a functional, time- and resource-effective option that helps to handle and resolve different insurance cases of various clients with lower costs and better customer experience.

This article will provide you with the essential information to know about the claims management software, its benefits for the insurance industry, and the easiest ways of its implementation into the insurance company.

What Is Claims Management Software in Insurance?

The claims management software is a computer-based solution that allows companies to complete the customer-focused, cost-effective and adaptable claim processing operations.

In the insurance industry, this type of software enables eliminating the operational inefficacies and legacy issues, also reduces maintenance and training costs, and, of course, enhances the customer experience.

Companies start applying the insurance claims management software for improving and automating the traditional client service with the latest computer-based solutions.

The end result of its implementation is the system that enables creating the end-to-end claim processing system that is intelligent, agile, perspective, and ready to deliver the ROI.

At the same time, such a system will help to boost the workflow and information processing, thus allowing better services for the clients and increasing the company’s income.

According to the Gartner forecasts, the global IT spending within insurance will grow by 5.2% in 2021 thus reaching over $210 billion U.S. dollars.

By 2025, long-term spending is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.4% to $271 billion, which is mainly driven by IT services and software growth. For sure, a notable part of these costs will be spent on developing the essential software for insurance, including the insurance claims management systems.

The Main Advantages of Insurance Claims Management Software

Because of their feature-rich structure and effective task performance, the claims management systems for insurance are now widely used by various companies.

There are plenty of reasons why companies choose insurance claims management software as their main priority — productivity increasing, cost-reducing, customer satisfaction, etc. At the same time, these reasons are also the main upsides of this software and can be summarized in the following:

Boost the Productivity

The claims management software is an efficient option for the insurance companies to quickly receive and analyze the client claims, especially when compared to the traditional employee claim processing.

The automated system not only enhances the claim processing procedures but also benefits to reducing the paperwork and minimizing the administrative errors caused by the human factor.

In addition to that, it speeds up the process of claim review and eliminates the need for numerous manual actions in insurance.

Standardize the Processes

Another important milestone that requires deep analysis for insurance companies is process standardization.

The insurance claims management software helps organizations create a standalone system of claim review that each team member can follow to quickly and effectively perform the essential work, including task assignment and managing, projects running, and their effective tracking, as well as training the new hires.

Reduce the Costs

One of the main benefits of insurance claims software implementation for companies is the ability to reduce the costs needed for a company’s successful performance.

According to the recent research by BCG, with building up the feature-rich digital system for insurance, the companies can expect a 30% to 50% reduction in full-time employees who support underwriting, onboarding, claims, and policy management.

As a result, instead of being focused on the process analysis, insurers can better focus on customer interaction and client engagement. With the automated technologies implementation, companies will be able to scale up the new services and establish much stronger customer services using the most cost-effective software solutions.

Enhance the Customer Service

By automating the insurance claims management environment, the insurance companies will be able to also boost their customer service and increase the number of their loyal clients as well.

According to Deloitte Global, the future of insurance will influence client satisfaction and trust by enabling the feature of browsing the options available and file the claims anytime and from anywhere.

Furthermore, the insurance claims management software application can significantly speed up claim processing, which is paramount for improving customer loyalty.

At the same time, the insurance claims processing software will benefit the companies by minimizing the fraud and enhancing the service quality as well. Needless to say, the better services a company can provide, the more likely it will boost the client conversion.

Another important reason why claims management solutions can enhance customer service, according to PwC, is that now customers become mainly focused on the value the insurance company can provide to them rather than just price.

Over 71% of consumers need detailed information about their policies, as they’re willing to pay for what they actually need.

Thus, both the customers and the insurers need an all-in-one effective claims management solution to access any information and easily interact with each other within one system.

Easy to Apply & Use

Unlike most of the other new systems applied by the insurance companies for workflow improvement, the insurance claims management software doesn’t require too much time, effort and training to be applied to the new working environment.

These systems are easy to learn and use since their interface and features are designed to be used by different companies of any size.

10 Core Insurance Claims Management Software Features

The most effective way of how the insurance companies can implement the insurance claims management software is to develop their own system with all the features needed for workflow improvement.

However, to create any type of software, it’s essential to define the main features developers need to include in this system. Here are the most important ones insurance companies should consider for their claims management solutions:

• Advanced reporting and deep analysis
• UX features (for example, autofill reports and password managing)
• Invoice generation and structuring
• Professional customer support (using live chats, emails, call, chatbots)
• Multichannel notifications
• Risk assessments and fraud detection
• Automated claim processing
• Tracking system for claims progress
• Automated reminders and informative notifications
• Centralized database with the easy-to-use search system

With all these features included, companies can launch an effective high-end insurance claims management system that will assist in the basic processes automation, workflow optimization, and advanced customer service.

How Intellectsoft Can Help Your Company Develop This System

Before starting the development process itself, we profoundly analyze the market, its top players, the needs of end-users, and your long-term business goals. Based on the information collected we define software features and architecture that would be able to serve the users to the fullest extent.

Our dedicated team consists of experienced developers, designers, QA engineers, business analysts, and project managers all of them working together to create a high-quality final product.

Bottom Line

The process of developing the most effective insurance claims management system certainly requires deep knowledge of the claim processing system.

However, it’s also crucial to conduct detailed research of the most important features the insurance company needs and learn how to make this software beneficial exactly for your case. Custom insurance software development services are the right option to apply for launching a feature-rich and effective claims management solution for your business.

Do you have a great business idea for claim software and need an experienced development vendor? Feel free to contact Intellectsoft and let’s innovate together!

The post Claims Management Software Development in Insurance appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.