July 2019 - Ninestars Digitization Services

Media Intelligence in today’s Digital Age

Do you know what your customers are talking about your brand? Can you find out their hidden needs easily? Have you successfully integrated your media monitoring functions with your business strategies? If you answered ‘yes’ to all the above questions then congratulations your organization is on the right path of exploiting media intelligence.

For all those who were unable to answer the questions above, it calls for the need to expose your enterprise to media intelligence. Media intelligence, a term often confused with media monitoring, is gaining huge importance in the current business scenario..

What exactly is Media Intelligence?

Media intelligence involves gaining insights from data captured by monitoring media and using it in driving strategic decisions, for example, product development, market releases, targeted marketing campaigns etc. Media intelligence helps you understand not only what your customers are talking about your business but also understand what is the buzz around your competitors.

A good media intelligence strategy helps you gain the competitive edge in providing solutions for your customers’ needs and helps you gain higher value.

Media intelligence detects the anomalies across data gathered for example, social media, and search engine marketing. These anomalies equip your organization to changes outside the company and increase the predictability of future happenings.

Media monitoring = Media intelligence?

Media monitoring forms an integral part of MI as it assists you in understanding the tonality, trending themes, and media mention spikes around your own brand. It also lets you know about other players in your market segment. When looking at media monitoring from a perspective of gaining quality insights it is essential that you know the following,

Share of voice: The amount of mentions you have received as compared to your competitors. (Including print, outdoor and online media.)
Trending themes: What are the keywords used in the discussions? (Look for the negative trends too as this will help you understand the most common complaints faced by the customers)
Sentiment Analysis: What is the tone of the conversations? Is it positive or negative? How is it with respect to your competitors?
Media Exposure: How is the brand awareness across segments being affected?
However, MI is much more than just monitoring responses gained across platforms and using natural language processing programs. Having a good media monitoring strategy does not guarantee quality MI.

What more do you need?

Let us have a look at what all can be done to gain effective consumer insights:

Integrating geo-location with coverage: Doing this can help you understand consumer discussions real time and help curb the negative feedbacks before it blasts out on media. (how this happens i.e help curb… is to be pointed out)

Fast redressals: Replying to online discussions revolving around your brand is essential, this can now be facilitated by use of various chatbots providing the human touch therein too. It’s important that companies understand that people talking with them are equally important when compared to the people talking about them. By developing a habit of fast replies on the web ensures that the consumer is involved with you throughout the conversation which helps you stay in control of how the situation evolves rather than losing the customer and resorting to damage control later. This provides you with unique inputs about your respective products and services, which serve as important takeaways when looking at changes.

Tracking referral traffic: For those who want to understand which channels for example, press releases, landing pages, blogs etc. are driving most of the earned coverage referral traffic is an essential element. The data obtained via this can be used to formulate your content strategy and make necessary changes, based on the consumer preference of language and themes. This can also help gain direction with respect to where you want the content to be published or which pages will give you maximum hits when used as landing pages.

Media Intelligence to Business Intelligence

Business intelligence comes into the picture when there is strategic decision making that takes place due to quality MI. Hence, it bridges the gap of just obtaining insights to actually implementing them effective for better value creation as compared to the other market players. Business may use the data gathered and so it’s necessary that you keep the metrics and the reporting format standard. As major media intelligence players dive into consulting we see MI turning into BI in the near future, calling for organizations to take cognizance of this and invest in quality media intelligence resources accordingly.

For a complimentary, no-obligation discussion around ideas on how to leverage Media Intelligence to understand your consumers better, contact us now!

How Internet of Things (IoT) is Going To Impact Your Business?

Technology is constantly evolving at a lightening pace that we can hardly keep up with. The old sci-fi movies wherein everything could be controlled with a press of a button no longer remains a realm of fiction, it has become a reality. A decade ago, words like “smart-fridges” and “self-driving cars” which could only be considered a part of stretched imaginative mind-set have now become an intrinsic part of our vernacular. Considered technical jargon a few years ago, ‘Internet of things’ or ‘IoT’ no longer remains a buzzword. For the uninitiated, IoT is a network of everyday objects that makes life easier, from wearable devices, medical sensors, etc., allowing network connectivity to collect and exchange data.

Is IoT (Internet of Things) a new Concept?

No! The term was coined way back in 1985 by Peter T. Lewis. Although the phrase of “Internet of Things” has a fuzzy description, it basically aims to redefine our digital experiences by adding internet connectivity to anything to collect data that can provide value. And providing value is the key element here. We are entering into a semantic era, which is poised to be more intelligent, connected, and personalized and IoT is driving it.

How to make sense of it?

According to a Gartner’s report, IoT is estimated to account for over 25 billion devices by 2020 with a significant impact on the way we live and interact. It is important to note that IoT is not just a network of objects but it is about building experiences. For a business to capitalize on all that Internet of Things has to offer, it needs to understand how it can provide meaningful value and useful experience to its customers before plunging into the nitty-gritty of technology interface. Knowing how to make the most of the torrent of data pouring out of IoT platforms and using it to provide valuable business insights is the real business game.

How your business gets affected by IoT?

If you are someone who still thinks IoT doesn’t affect your business, it is time to wake up! For a company, a wake of any unfamiliar technology can be overwhelming especially an entity like ‘Internet of Things’ whose definition is still ambiguous. IoT is ushering a new era of digital revolution and if businesses are to survive for long term, they need to start implementing IoT technologies.

How Ninestars can help?

Our strategy at Ninestars operates at the juncture of technology and business by bringing together our capabilities and years of experience to help our clients execute industry-specific strategies for B2B, B2C, and B2B2C to gain sustainable profits, efficiency, and growth. Our innovative products and services help us visualize, seize, and lead the market. We do not follow the market trends but create them! With over 18 years in the industry, Ninestars Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has been instrumental in revolutionizing the media industry with innovative projects in newspaper archive digitization and contributing to the digital transformation journey of more than 150 organizations worldwide.

Ninestars is a forward-thinking, agile company that has evolved with the digital content industry, responding to market requirements and innovating consistently. We continue to sustain long-term engagements and exclusive partnerships as well as successfully deliver projects across the world.

At Ninestars, we specialize in harnessing the power of technology to drive greater customer value. We offer custom-built AI solutions that learn and think like humans. Our AI solutions connect our customers with their day-to-day work and empower their growth by providing unique insights, innovation and growth and better business outcomes.

Digitization and Microfilming of Archival Records of Delhi Archives

New Delhi, India, – 3rd August 2017 – Ninestars today announced their collaboration with Delhi Archives to help restore and digitize their 4 crores documents. For the first time, these historically valuable text and images will be preserved and made accessible online. The materials will be digitized over a period of five years, preserving them for future generations and making them accessible to the public through website.

The records to be digitized include rich documents collections like the trial of last Mughal emperor, photos of freedom fighters, old heritage buildings, content about how the British government establishment infrastructure, the establishment and expansion of railway, establishment of electricity and telephone departments, growth of education. It also include records of major heritage buildings in Delhi such as the Legislative Assembly, Metcalfe House, Ludlow Castle, and Commissioners Office (now known as L.G building), several maps and plans of Delhi, etc. Other treasures of the Archives include 300-400 years old manuscripts on Ayurveda, medicine and religion.

Mr. Gokul, co-Founder, Managing Director, Ninestars, said, “We feel honored to be a part of such prestigious project. Digitization of Delhi Archive is a significant aspect of history preservation and a huge step towards transforming India into a digitally empowered Nation. We are excited to contribute towards this initiative and are committed towards excellence in all the segments of all our projects.”

About Ninestars

Founded in 1999, Ninestars is an IP-driven Digital transformation industry leader. Ninestars helps Media, Publishing, Communication & PR, Government, BFSI and Publishing industries to redefine consumer experiences, strengthen their digital core, embrace digital transformation, and realize the full potential of their content. With over 18 years in the industry, Ninestars Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has been instrumental in revolutionizing the media industry with innovative projects in newspaper archive digitization and contributing to the digital transformation journey of more than 150 organizations worldwide. Ninestars partner with some of the most effective organizations in the world like ProQuest, IBM, Jastec, IISc, Abbyy, Hewlett Packard, Quark and Adobe InDesign to help achieve their shared values.

Digitization vs. Digitalization

Digitization

The term digitization refers to the process of conversion of a variety of information formats like audio, images, videos, drawings, text into a digital format. In digitization, information is organized into single binary codes. Digitization process facilitates quick transmission, processing and easy storage. Digitization can be done either by scanning from a two dimensional analog like photos, hand-written documents, photos or directly through a digital camera or CAT scanner, etc. The most important benefit of digitization is that it liberates the document from the constraint of a traditional access methods.

Digitizing doesn’t mean replacing the original document, image, sound, etc. Sometimes it gets destroyed (after having digitized a paper document you can destroy it or keep it, depending on, for instance, legal requirements), sometimes it disappears anyway (if we capture the sound and ‘motion( of your presentation at an event, the digital format continues to exist while your voice and physical presentation are gone during that presentation are gone forever) and sometimes it is transformed but that’s not that much about digitization in the strictest sense (if you take a picture of a building you have a digitally born representation of the building but the building is not digitized or you might have an analog picture which you scan so it is digitized).

Digitization is the automation of existing manual and paper-based processes, enabled by the digitization of information; from an analog to a digital format. Digitization plays a huge role in the ultra-paced modern life, where communication takes place on a variety of virtual platforms through mobiles, computers, and laptops. This dynamic lifestyle necessitates the importance of fast availability of data. Digitized data assures better security, better accessibility and better preservation.

What is Digitalization?

Although often used interchangeably with digitization, digitalization is much more than just extended automation. It is about creating and delivering new values to customers not just improving the current offerings. Even though the word implies, digitalization does not actually focus on technology but rather on providing value through improved processes and productivity. It makes the use of digital technologies to transform business processes, improve overall business and generate revenues.

Digitalization is the strategy of adopting recent technologies in IT to make the most of the digital resources available in the enterprise. Some of the benefits to adopt this strategy are:

Evolve business models to improve businesses, customer experience, more productivity etc.
Automation and Factory of the future
Ease of doing business
Growth; Stay in the race and edge ahead of others.

What is the difference between digitization and digitalization?

Digitizing has increased the efficiency of our processes; digitalization means that business now uses technology to engage with people to precisely address their particular needs.”

It requires digitization of information but it means more and at the very center of it is data. While digitization is more about systems of record and, increasingly systems of engagement, digitalization is about systems of engagement and systems of insight, leveraging digitized data and processes.

Looking for Digitization or Digitalization? Look no further; we’ve got you covered. We at Ninestars, have been a part of this digital shift since 1999, starting with milestone projects in newspaper archive digitization and over the years contributing to the digital transformation initiatives of more than 150 organizations worldwide.

Unlocking the hidden value of archives

What is archiving?

Archiving is a process where inactive data, in any format, is securely stored and preserved for long period of time. Such information may – or may not be used in the future, but nonetheless should be stored for as long as possible.

It should be emphasized that archived, inactive data can be made active again, as the proposition of not being able to access stored information after a certain period of time sometimes dissuades organizations from archiving their records. However, archived data can be stored in a number of ways and on a variety of devices.

What is an Archive?

An archive is an accumulation of unique records or the physical places they are located. Individuals and institutions warrant permanent preservation because of the value to their legal, administrative or fiscal purposes or to researchers because of their potential research value.

The majority of archived material is paper-based but archives also include:

Parchments
Photographs
Maps, plans and drawings
Audio and visual material
Electronic formats

Why are archives important?

Archives are the raw material of history; they are primary sources that provide evidence of activities and information about individuals and community, thereby increasing our sense of orientation.

They ensure justice, as records aren’t generally created for future historical research and often provide a less biased account of events.

They are:

Invaluable tools for historians
A sign of transparency

There are multiple reasons how archives benefits our lives and the growing organizations

1. Prevents data loss

Information can be lost forever if it isn’t archived on a secure repository. With archived material, the risk of accidentally deleting, misplacing a file is covered. Archived data allows individuals to retrieve backup information independently without having to rely on the expertise of third parties.

2. Increases security

Many organizations accidentally dispose of documents that they legally should be keeping. Archives play as the main backup especially at a time when cyber attacks and data breaches are becoming more common-place.

3. Protection of records

Archives not only protect the object but also protect the interrelatedness, impartiality, authenticity and uniqueness of the object/document.

Archives today

In the 21st century an overwhelming majority of newly created information is digital. The digital compilation of collecting institutions such as archives, libraries and repositories consist of either digitized or ‘born digital’ content.

The existing belief that digital objects can be managed using the same techniques and methodologies that were developed and used over years for physical objects is misconstrued. With digitization, objects are easier to copy, transfer and package.

Our personal documents and files are important to us as they record the details of our lives and define us. But increasingly, our possessions are no longer material: they’re digital. Digital files are encoded to represent text, images, audio, video and more. We can preserve our digital possessions and keep them safe and accessible for years to come, but we have to archive them and actively manage them.

Physical vs. Digital archiving

What are physical archives?

Physical archiving is a traditional method and usually refers to the process of archiving paper documents. Archiving important information like records, legal documents, customer files or conference paper in paper may not be a good idea. Multiple factors like moisture, mishandling or passage of time can all end up ruining important data.

There isn’t any guarantee that physical archives can even survive for a short time period. Although microforms were invented in the eighties, and are more durable than paper; they can be easily damaged because of their small size and further require bulky equipment to view the information

What is digital archiving?

With the invention of scanner, digital archiving came into being. Scanners are used to capture a digital image of a document that can be easily preserved and stored on a hard drive or a server. The biggest advantage of digital archiving is that your data cannot be tampered with. By opting for digital preservation, one can eliminate the need of bulky physical storage space as only virtual space is used in the process.

Mobile friendly apps such as CamScanner, Scanner Pro or Adobe scan have made digital archiving much easier in recent times. A scanned document can be saved in various formats, such as PDF, JPEG, TIFF or BMP. In addition to this, PDFs can be compressed to a very small size and made text searchable, which makes it easier to retrieve any information at any given time. Hence, organizations will never need to worry about finding any archived information.

Great reasons to go digital with your data

If document archiving is not one of your core competencies, you need not worry. Outsourcing document archiving to a service provider is simpler than ever. Outsourcing is not only cost-effective, but can also efficiently save your time and effort, which can be invested in your core business venture.

Here are the best benefits of outsourcing document archiving:

Get cost-effective, time saving and accurate document archiving services
Save on making investments in digital archiving technology or infrastructure
Focus on your core business venture, by outsourcing document archiving to experts
Get your archived information in any format of your choice- JPEG, TIFF, PDF or BMP

Conclusion

Notions of authenticity, originals and origins remain significant in the proficient practices of many communities. Archiving practices have evolved to ensure evidential value of records, however a clear understanding of the value and storage options will ensure that archives continue to convey context and communicate its importance to an ever-expanding audience for archived materials.

Archives are vital as much from the past as for our future.

Do you or your organization use any kind of preservation technology to preserve your archive collection? Do let us know.

Digital preservation- A time travel for historical newspapers

Over the years, people store and preserve various old newspapers or clipping that mark events they experienced, were involved in or events that were of some significant historical importance.

Some might keep a copy of the newspaper that published the day World War II ended, or the day the Great Migration happened, or perhaps a bit less monumental, a clipping from when someone changed their name or the opening of a shop announced in the local news. Preserving old newspapers and clippings is a timeless way to preserve important incidents that transformed the world into what we see it as today.

Yet these same newspapers and clippings are very fragile artifacts, and they deteriorate over time if not properly stored. The best way however, to store historical newspapers is by converting them into digital format. Since the advent of digital media, many institutions across the world have begun to digitize them and make the digital files publicly available.

Here are some of the reasons why digitization of historical newspapers is critical:

1. Excellent source of education

Newspapers contain very diverse information in topics such as politics, technology, scientific research and cultural disciplines and hence, act as an excellent source of education.

As newspapers do not demand an overly substantial historical knowledge and are chronologically structured, these considerably are the best materials for an investigation or a research project. Besides documenting the history of knowledge and information delivery, reading newspaper is also an efficient training for information competence.

2. Easily readable material

Today’s readers are more acquainted to consuming the short texts of articles because of our contemporary reading habits. Newspapers are an easy-to-read material for the broader public, although readers and researchers today are more capable of dealing with various topics and a multitude of information in succinct pieces of text.

Thus, digitizing them actually benefits users across the globe to access and learn about different events.

3. Linguistic projects

Vocabulary of a specific community can always be traced from the newspapers of their times thus leading way to bigger linguistic projects to understand the language from a specific period which makes them very representative for the written language used in the respective time period.

4. Consideration of a digital future

Digital preservation structures are considered by the needs and constraints of storage spaces with little consideration for the requirements of current and future users of digital scholarly resources.

5. To avoid degradation over time

The low quality material of the newspaper contains acids that cause the fibers to break down over time. In turn, the paper yellows and hardens, and the inks often fade and at times acidic ink destroys the material. Even in this day and age most newsprint papers are still made this way, with an expected lifespan of only 50 years or less. It is no exaggeration that handwritten medieval documents will be longer preserved than 19th century printed newspapers due to their material quality.

Summary

The collections of newspaper archives are very valuable, leading to a growing need to preserve them. Therefore, newspaper digitization can be seen as a contribution to cultural preservation and not only as a service for researchers, newsmongers, and the historically interested public.

Is your organization looking for digitization? We can help! Get in touch with us to see how we can help you in digitizing your assets.

Impacts of digitization

Today, the size of a business doesn’t matter, its agility and the capability to re-invent is that gives companies a sustainable advantage to compete in a digitalized world. So, here arrives a question: Has digitization ultimately been good or bad for the society? The question has been debated on since digitization is on attack.

There are multiple ways in which digitization has been a blessing for the evolving digital era: increased productivity, less need of a dedicated workspace, increased mobility and new innovative tools. The world is witnessing an accelerated pace in digitization — the mass adoption of smart and connected ICT by consumers, businesses, and governments. Digitization has helped enhance the world and society in general through flexible and greater work-life integration.

Although blurring the lines between private and work life works wonders on employee and corporate performance, but the implications on family life and health leans on the negative side.

Here are the most significant trends triggered by impacts of digitization:

Digitization of the processes is not a new phenomenon, but it has reached a new tipping point. The connection between Big Data and robotisation evolves a new economy and hence a new world of work.
There are two principal features of this phenomenon: one is the revolution of the platform-based economy with a “winners take all” philosophy, and the other is peer-to-peer exchanges.
Digitization can also be considered as the fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution was that of the steam engine, the second of electrification and mass production, and the third that of the computer. Digitization impacts consist of developments in IT, automation of workflows and processes, robotisation, internet and in field of defence and fight against terrorism.
Digitization can create new types of jobs, new sectors, new products and new services (data architects, data developers, data analyst and application developers)
Digitization could also accelerate fundamental changes in working practices. New forms of workers, machine-integration and process can bring out new kinds of jobs.
Digitization might also lead to job-risks owing to automation of work process, computerization and robotisation. While there is no consensus of how many jobs will be lost, certainty is that the numbers will be very high.
Digitization is likely to create an increasingly polarized economy characterized by gaping the inequality between “winner-takes-all superstars” and the masses of losers.

Here’s a list of different impacts digitization is creating over different aspects-

Strengths

Connected world, open systems, knowledgeable economy
Networks, exchange, sharing and collaboration, with access based on functionality rather than ownership
Integration of industries and services: intelligent factories, energy systems, mobility, transport and cities and optimized governance
Automation, robotisation, learning machines
Productivity, efficiency and profitability gains
Zero marginal cost economy
Innovative products and services, proliferation of mobile apps to make life easier.
New auto production capacities, micro factories

Weaknesses

Jobless growth, jobless future
Emergence of super powerful oligopolies, new world data masters
Concentration of power and wealth in value chains (equivalent losses for other companies, sectors and countries)
Protection of personal data exposed to intrinsic risks
Under- investment and under-utilization of digital tools for the social emancipation of low-income sections of society

Opportunities

New jobs (computer engineers and scientists, network experts, etc.)
More ‘agile’ work organization; new forms of more flexible and more autonomous work
Abolition of repetitive and routine tasks
Better performance of heavy and complex tasks; Better ergonomics
New forms of collaboration and cooperation among workers

Threats

Massive destruction of medium skilled jobs
Intensification of ‘anytime anywhere’ work; blurring of the boundary between private and working life leading to stress and burnout
Loss of control by workers of their own expertise and know-how and free will
Digital management, risk of mutual loss of trust between employees and management

Reference: Jobs in the digital economy, Christophe Degryse in “Digitalisation of the economy and its impact on labour markets.”

The Benefits of Digitization

Digitization is the process of converting analog information formats like audio, images, videos, drawings, text, etc., into a digital format. Digitization doesn’t necessarily have to replace the original documents, audio, images but it can complement or replace the original analog format. For instance, sometimes the original document may get destroyed pertaining to legal requirements and sometimes it may disappear by itself (For example, the sound and motion in a presentation capture). Basically, digitization is the electronic representation of the source which could be later accessed through computers or other digital devices.

In digitization information is stored in binary codes and the process can either be managed through scanning or with digital cameras. It is the automation of paper-based or manual processes.

Advantages of Digitization

Perhaps the most important advantage of digitization is that it frees the document from conventional access limitations.
Digitization ensures better preservation, better security and better availability.
Unlike the traditional storage limitations, for digital data there is no physical limits for storage.
Digitized data could be accessed through the Internet which ensures a 24/7 availability.
It is also a great preservation tool. At Ninestars, we have digitized fragile documents from 1600s ensuring their longevity and historic value by providing repair to the original documents and by preserving digital copies for future usage.
Digitization also helps save space. We have worked with numerous libraries around the world for digitization projects saving enormous space and preserving and archiving old books, texts and manuscripts.
Instead of going through hundreds of books to find what one is looking for, information could be easily retrieved from digital copies using keywords. We at Ninestars specialize in adding indexing and descriptive metadata through our state-of-the-art digitization process.
Digital files could be accessed by many people at once which wouldn’t be possible with a non-digital copy. Digitization also allows you resource sharing and linking possibilities.
With digitization, the digital copy can be reproduced with same exactness any number of times.

Tactical Advantages of Digitization

The rapid technological development has brought about an accelerated pace of innovation which requires every business to have optimum efficiency. Digitization can help organizations improve core business efficiencies. Some of the tactical benefits of digitization are:

Digitization helps in eliminating transcription errors.
It helps in improving accessibility to information thus minimizing informational silos.

Ninestars is proud to be a digitization partner of Trove (through NLA)

Chennai, India, – January 31, 2018 – Trove is an online search platform that helps find and use resources relating to Australia. It is collaboration between the National Library, Australia’s State and Territory libraries, and research institutions around Australia.

Trove’s origins can be traced back to a project launched by the National Library of Australia in August 2008 aimed to build a portal for all of the Library’s online discovery services. As a partner of National Library of Australia, Ninestars was instrumental in contributing more than 10 million pages of digitized Newspaper to Trove platform. Apart from English content, Ninestars also digitized the Australian Chinese Newspaper, a maiden attempt by NLA which was a huge success prompting NLA to go for more Chinese content digitization.

“It’s amazing the volume of work we have accomplished together, and it’s an absolute pleasure working with you,” stated Wan Wong, Director of National Library of Australia, ANDP project about Ninestars ’s contribution.

About Ninestars

Top 10 Digital Transformation Trends to Watch Out in 2018 – Part 2

We are talking about the digital transformations to watch out for in 2018 and discussed 5 of them in the last blog. If you have not read the previous blog you can read it here…

Moving on, let’s look at some of the other important digital technologies, which will move towards the peak this year and make a mark on the business landscape.

Augmented reality

AR is a digital trend to definitely bet on. Googles AR core, Snapchat Lens Studio, and Apples AR kit are proving that investing in AR today will open up new revenue streams tomorrow. These platforms are also providing people an opportunity to create their own augmented reality applications. AR is easily accessible and can be exploited via smartphones, thus providing a ready market. Various analysts project that mobile based augmented reality will act pivotal in adoption and usage of augmented reality, providing sustainable revenues. From Headsets to now smart contact lenses, AR is not limited to just visualizing things but also provides flexibility of creating things that can be harnessed by dynamic programming.

As we are talking about AR we also need to throw a light on Mixed Reality, which is basically a combination of VR and AR. MR or Mixed Reality is still on early research phases but holds considerable promise in business landscape.

Low code platforms

The need of extensive resources required to build application quality user experience applications across mobile, web and desktop development is not feasible for every organizations. This is because UX services with intensive coding are expensive, especially for small and medium sized enterprises.

Low code platforms have tapped into this space and provided accessibility to creation of advanced multi format applications faster. Traditionally it takes at least six to nine months to develop a custom application or a mobile app, which can be substantially lessened by use of low code platforms and can be done by an internal team simultaneously with other tasks.

Considering the increasing volatility in markets and ever changing customer demand patterns, having a quicker and affordable option towards building successful and updated applications is the need of the hour. Major giants like Google coming up with low code platforms only stresses on the fact that this tech holds potential to turn big.

5th Generation Cell Processing

As discussed in our previous blog, IoT and emerging trends like AI require higher speed and seamless connectivity prompting the need for speedy development of 5G wireless standards. Looking at the current progress in research to introduce 5G we can see that it suffices all the 3 major needs, more number of connections, reduced latency (up to 40 times less than 4G) and increased throughput (transmission capacity to billions of bits)

Key players in the telecommunications industry like Verizon, AT&T, Samsung and Vodafone have already forecasted that 5G will be introduced soon and are gearing up to be equipped with compatible gadgets and infrastructure when 5G is commercially introduced. Although we can’t say for sure that 5G will be a thing of 2018, we can definitely say that it’s not too late before 5G will be the new essential.

Hybrid APIs

We think it’s safe to say that we are all in the API economy, and so choosing the right API connection for your organizations or project needs is important. As the API management platform market is maturing, enterprises are formulating holistic API strategies. All that said 2018 will be the year when people look at the APIs from the user perspective. 2017 was the year when we saw many large vendors acquire individual software vendors focused on API management for eg, Google’s acquisition of Apigee, pointing towards the need of hybrid cloud integration platforms. This can help organizations incorporate data and applications across varied and diverse cloud infrastructures.

This year organizations will be seen automating API frameworks which can be a systematic approach from creation to retirement of applications bringing the Life Cycle API management platforms into the limelight too. Moving away from the current approach we can expect organizations to use same tools and practices for managing their public and private APIs cohesively.

Apart from the above, the Open API initiative can also be seen gaining traction and opening up new business avenues.

CX-Optimization

Investing money in customer experience has been looked upon as a gamble since a long time as the returns might not happen right away. For the past decade we have been observing steady intervention of top-level management in creating value for the customers and raising the level of customer experience. Forrester reported this year that the top three challenges for a customer experience program include organizational culture (54%), organizational structures (45%), and processes (41%), which can only be solved with C level cognizance. The other important thing observed is that customers no longer want to watch long ads, disclaimer video, infomercials etc. instead want answers personalized to their background, and they want it quick. We can see machine learning stepping in here, as it can leverage the real time information it receives from the end user.

Customer experience is seen to get a data makeover, as the data generated is limitless and when leveraged efficiently can achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction and reduce the churn rate.