The digital commerce industry has come a long way since its inception in the 1970s with Electronic Data Interchange and teleshopping. From Amazon being one of the first B2C eCommerce platforms in the US to sell products online in 1991 to market studies suggesting $3.5 trillion in global eCommerce sales in 2019- a smooth 4% rise from the previous year, the B2C eCommerce landscape has grown by leaps and bounds. There was a time when people were afraid to buy products online at the expense of inputting their personal information or financial details. Cut to the 21st century, everything- from groceries to diamonds and enterprise product solutions can be purchased online in the blink of an eye.

It won’t be wrong to say that the digital commerce market is driven by a singular key aspect- ‘Change is the only constant.’ This profitable business segment has not only successfully navigated the waters of dynamism, constantly shifting market trends, and the changing B2C eCommerce customer behaviour but has emerged as the goliath in today’s fast-paced and agile IT industry.

True that the pandemic accelerated the shift towards the digital world at an unprecedented level leading to $82.5 billion in eCommerce transactions by May 2020- a sharp 77% increase from 2019; however, this growth and expansion certainly wasn’t a new trend. In fact, eCommerce sales experienced an average growth rate of 25.6% from 2014-2017, much before the pandemic. And that’s proof that eCommerce is thriving, and it has been for a while.

However, at present, merchants and retailers face the grave reality that consumers have moved online to make purchases typically made in physical stores and are in no mood to reverse back to their old brick-and-mortar buying habits. Even after governments worldwide relaxed restrictions and allowed physical stores to reopen, many customers continued to use convenient and comfortable online storefronts. The fact that they were already embracing online retailers like Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart with open arms has made this transition considerably more effortless.

Digital Commerce: Driving the change for the retail industry

The initial promises of B2C eCommerce for enterprises involved expanding customer reach from immediate surroundings to anywhere in the world. However, its early years of growth were slow and stagnant, clouded with concerns over the safety of online shopping. In addition, accessing these digital stores demanded reliable internet connectivity, which was a rare occurrence back then.

Despite all that, the retail and digital commerce landscape has undergone a tremendous evolution in the past decade, from thriving physical stores to fewer brick-and-mortar abodes and then a complete switch to digital commerce. This transition could be realized with the growth in the number of online shoppers over the past few years. In 2021 itself, there were 900 million more digital buyers than there were in 2020- a 4.4% year-over-year increase. Moreover, with rapid internet penetration around the world, online shopping becomes increasingly convenient, paving the way for a higher number of shoppers than before. Given the rising trend, the potential for a digital store is enormous. A deeper look into eCommerce statistics will throw some light on its exponential growth:

The global eCommerce sales will surpass $650 billion by 2021-end
By 2021, the total number of digital buyers will spike to 2.14 billion- 27.6% of the worldwide population
More than one out of every four people is an online shopper
Consumers spend close to 36% of their budget on online shopping

These staggering numbers detail the very fact that the changing customer behavior primarily drives the D2C and B2C eCommerce markets. As more shoppers look for their preferred physical retail outlets online, it becomes imperative for retailers to double-down on their B2C eCommerce platforms efforts at a rapid pace and fulfill consumer demands to survive and thrive in this competitive digital landscape.

Opening the floodgates: How Covid-19 triggered the B2C eCommerce turning point

In the coming time, we will look back at 2020 as the year that changed everything. No industry has ever witnessed such an unprecedented and unforeseen growth as the digital commerce sector amidst the Covid-19 crisis. Even with the stagnant economic activity and closed retail quarters, the eCommerce industry experienced a surge in demand and fulfillment, accelerating digital transformation.

As per the UNCTAD experts, the eCommerce sector saw a dramatic rise in its retail sales share- from 14% in 2019 to 19% in 2020. Not that this growth and expansion would not have occurred eventually, but looking at the year-over-year increase, it would have taken 4-6 years to reach that number. But all it took for businesses to realize the importance of ‘going digital’ and achieve this feat was the pandemic.

The thing is, customers, before the conundrum, were skeptical of purchasing products online. They preferred the try-and-buy approach, the idea of being treated by retail specialists, and the fact that they could look at a product in real-time and judge its quality before making a purchasing decision. However, when traditional shopping became difficult or impossible due to the nationwide lockdown, they had no other choice but to move online. From panic buying to placing bulk orders, consumers had a greater instinct to over, rather than under prepare for what lay ahead. This change in eCommerce customer behaviour resulted in an additional $174.87 billion in eCommerce revenue in 2020, says Digital Commerce 360. If it weren’t for the bump in the online sales from the pandemic, the $861.12 billion in eCommerce sales wouldn’t have been reached until 2022.

Addressing the challenges of B2C eCommerce online store

For businesses everywhere, it is time to address the long-term implications of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, for B2C and D2C brands, it is undoubtedly critical to evaluate their current stand on digital commerce and the associated challenges as it will play a game-changing role moving forward.

Changes in B2C eCommerce customer behaviour will become even more ingrained:

The average 21st-century human was already embracing B2C eCommerce platforms, but then the pandemic made them digitally savvy. However, apart from being exceedingly active on digital channels, customers have become pretty clever regarding their research-and-buy approach, which has led to a vast variance in consumer behavior who are now well aware of their importance for a brand and expect an inspiring omnichannel experience always.

Although shopping in physical stores will remain a possibility, with B2C eCommerce in the picture, shopping via mobile and desktop for everything- from pantry staples to impulse buying, panic shopping, and purchasing products out of sheer boredom will become a thing. Home deliveries or Amazon’s famous one-day delivery, free shipping, in-store pickup, buy now- pay later, and so on, will become the new shopping norms for an average customer in urban and suburban communities. For businesses without an effective B2C eCommerce platform, this lack of ‘going with the flow’ will now become an evident crisis.

Changing market trends place retailers in distress:

Retailers are in trouble, and it’s only because of the pandemic. Over the last two decades, retailers have spent time, money, and resources building their physical footprint, whose performance was already lagging much before the COVID-19 crisis, thanks to eCommerce giants like Amazon, Walmart, Rakuten, and Alibaba. The pandemic, however, decreased the footfall altogether, with retailers hitting rock-bottom much earlier than anticipated.

The distressing sound you hear is the halting wheels of every retail house, except groceries and medicines. Many retailers do not have an effective digital commerce channel in place, let alone implement omnichannel capabilities like BOPIS solutions.

And to add fuel to the fire, the virus disrupted supply chains and logistics, which unfortunately led several retailers to declare bankruptcy or close their doors for an indefinite time. All of these havocs together drag the economy down and towards recession or stagnation.

Agile B2C eCommerce trends and behaviors:

For the 21st century, shopping is not just a necessity; it’s entertainment. Customers today don’t just buy products because they have to, but because they like being the center of attention in a retail store. They like the fun part of shopping more than a product’s utility. And this is what retailers need to understand. Several critical surveys define customer satisfaction comparable with the shopping experience offered by a merchant. And this goes true for both online and offline stores.

We no longer live in a product-as-a-service economy. We’ve moved to an experience-as-a-service market, which ultimately puts pressure on retailers to invest more in novel digital innovations and creative B2C eCommerce platforms like social buying and alternative shopping streams. Merchants need to experiment with the popular B2C eCommerce trends and customer demands and judge how it improves their customer experience. Until you test certain strategies, you’ll find it difficult to fill the void created by your lack of transformative capabilities.

Dealing with vendors for end-to-end operations:

Surely, opening an online store is easy, thanks to B2C eCommerce platforms with their ready-to-use templates. But running a successful B2C eCommerce business is not a cakewalk. With so many things behind the curtain, you need to build a scalable, flexible, and engaging B2C online store that can manage multiple storefronts for different geographies or products and launch innovative marketing campaigns to boost sales. However, this doesn’t satisfy even half of the mountain you’ll have to climb to accomplish these goals.

What about providing customers with different payment options?

What about shipping products to different locations or even countries?

How will you manage different vendors for your end-to-end operations?

Offering omnichannel experiences at all times and costs:

Modern shoppers transition between online and offline stores and are open to retailers who best facilitate this movement. While most customers do shop online, when frolicking around retail outlets, they don’t mind getting in, trying a few pieces out, and even buying them. So, if you really want to reverse all the sales and revenue losses experienced during the pandemic, having either of them won’t do the trick, but together they will.

However, retailers don’t believe in ‘the more the stores, the merrier’; instead ‘the more the stores, the more the hassle.’ And, let’s be honest, they are, in fact, right. An online store can take several forms: social store, web store, mobile store, mobile web store, etc. Managing all these stores along with your physical outlet (omnichannel retailing) and ensuring that you offer a second-to-none customer experience across all B2C eCommerce platforms seems like a monumental task.

Therefore, an omnichannel B2C eCommerce strategy should cater to different consumer shopping habits:

Physical in-store shopping
Inspect products physically but purchasing online
Placing online orders but shipping them to a local store for pickup
Buy online and enjoy doorstep deliveries

Where to from here: More answers lay ahead

While nobody can deny the growing potential of B2C eCommerce platforms, one has to prioritize offerings that align with business goals. As for us customers, we now appreciate the convenience of online shopping more than ever before. While the pandemic did make it more appealing, it was a long time coming. Retailers should see digital commerce as an opportunistic move- a chance to offer transparent, flexible, and convenient omnichannel solutions that customers desire.

But our story doesn’t end here. We’ve understood the conflict with eCommerce- now it’s time for resolution. Access our next resource in this series eCommerce in 2021 and learn how to solve your common eCommerce bottlenecks and emerge as a victorious brand.

Get your business online in weeks not months.

Our eCommerce accelerators launch your online stores in 4 weeks.

One of the largest global tech conferences in the world, Dreamforce reunites all Salesforce stakeholders on one platform and empowers them to connect and collaborate. In the pre-covid days, it would take place in San Francisco and would attract 170,000+ visitors worldwide. In this quick guide, we take you through the significance and agenda of Dreamforce 2021 and prepare you to derive maximum value from it.

So, without further delay, let’s begin by discussing what Salesforce Dreamforce 2021 is –

What is Dreamforce?

Cited as a “global family reunion” by Salesforce, Dreamforce is an event that all the Salesforce enthusiasts look forward to every year.

It is usually spread over a period of 4-days and consists of impactful Dreamforce keynote speeches delivered by world-renowned speakers, exchange of success stories, and wonderful conversations around emerging developments in the Salesforce community.

Due to the pandemic, Salesforce conducted Dreamforce virtually in 2020. However, Dreamforce 2021 is going to be a mix of in-person and online experiences.

Here are the details related to it.

When and where is Dreamforce 2021 taking place?

Dreamforce 2021 is going to take place on September 20-23. So, save the dates, trailblazers!

And to ensure global participation, it will be held simultaneously in various Salesforce Dreamforce international hubs – London, New York, San Francisco, and Paris – along with an exclusive streaming platform developed exclusively for the trailblazers called Salesforce+.

Although Salesforce has taken this step to restart the in-person experience, its team has left no stone unturned, ensuring maximum safety and medical supervision during these unprecedented times.

All those planning to attend Dreamforce 2021 in the US must be fully vaccinated and comply with local guidelines in all other global hubs, including Dreamforce UK and France.

Salesforce has also partnered with prominent leaders in the medical community, including Dr. Larry Brilliant, a famous epidemiologist, to ensure full compliance with the Covid protocols.

Is there any information about the exact venue of Dreamforce 2021?

Here is what we know about where the Dreamforce event will be held in the following global hubs –

Dreamforce San Francisco: Somewhere in Downtown San Francisco in one of the all-time Salesforce favorites like Yerba Buena Terrace, the Moscone Center, the St. Regis hotel, and Howard Str.
Dreamforce New York: Bryant Park (outdoor only)
Dreamforce UK: Tobacco Dock, London (outdoor only)
Dreamforce Paris: Porte de Versailles, Hall 4 (outdoor only)
Dreamforce virtual: Salesforce+, from anywhere and everywhere.

Who can attend Dreamforce?

Dreamforce 2021 is going to be one-of-a-kind. For the first time, Salesforce has decided to turn its most significant annual event into a global conference. It is open for all – from a Salesforce trailblazer at the beginner level to an experienced Salesforce professional and technology partner, every stakeholder can access it from anywhere and everywhere.

Why attend Dreamforce 2021?

The 3-day long Dreamforce event will consist of 100+ hours of on-demand content, 4 live broadcast channels, and an opportunity to interact and connect with your fellow Salesforce trailblazers.

You will also get an opportunity to tune into memorable Dreamforce keynotes speeches by renowned industry leaders, indulge in insights on product innovation, receive exclusive product demos from Salesforce experts, and access exclusive episodes curated specifically for literally every role, industry, and topic possible under the Salesforce ecosystem.

How to attend Dreamforce?

Due to Covid protocols, Dreamforce 2021 will be an invite-only event, and the number of attendees is capped to 6,000 throughout all Dreamforce global hubs.

About 50% of these invitations will be sent to key customers/prospects, 20% to Salesforce employees, 15% to Salesforce MVPs, 8% to sponsors, and 7% to speakers at Dreamforce.

But we have already shared the good news with you – Dreamforce 2021 is also going virtual this time. So, if you are planning to attend Dreamforce online, you can register at this link.

Will there be a Dreamforce Dreamfest at the 2021 event?

What is the Dreamforce conference without its happening parties!

The afterparties during the Dreamforce event are known for their vibrancies, and the fun trailblazers have at them.

It’s true when they say that the actual networking takes place at dreamfests. However, 2021 is all about safety and social distance. So, you might not be able to experience the same nightlife if you’re attending it in person.

But, the fun and camaraderie between the trailblazers will be the same as ever!

What can I expect from Dreamforce 2021?

Some topics which are expected to be covered during Dreamforce 2021 are as follows:

Hyperforce is expected to be a hot topic during the Dreamforce event as Covid-19 has led to data surges and cloud-first organizations. It is a complete re-architecture of Salesforce that promises rapid scalability with enhanced data security.
Salesforce with slack is also going to be a significant conversation starter at the Dreamforce conference. The takeover was announced last year, and all the stakeholders are excited to learn more about its developments.
The emergence of the new world post-pandemic will also be on top of the discussion ladder. The importance of cloud computing and the role of Salesforce in managing the new work setup is expected to be discussed.
Dreamforce 2021 will also be the first of many inclusive Salesforce events where trailblazers from all over the world will be able to participate just like those who are lucky enough to get in-person invites. It will be interesting to see the dynamics this setup will establish.

Are you ready for Dreamforce 2021, then?

Up till now, the Dreamforce event has been surpassing everybody’s expectations every year with its trademark fun, amazing events, and seamless networking opportunities.

Dreamforce 2021 will be no different!

We will be there discussing Salesforce, learning about new trends, and forging new friendships. We hope to see you, too, on the D-day and in the days that follow!

Meanwhile, you can learn more about our Salesforce services or explore our resources.

Have you checked out our Salesforce offerings yet?

Ranosys, an APAC-based Shopify Plus Services Partner, is excited to announce the launch of its Shopify Plus eCommerce accelerator program, Plover.

The Plover solution is a quick-to-market eCommerce accelerator program built exclusively by Ranosys on the Shopify Plus platform. It is a pre-integrated online eCommerce and content accelerator optimized for varied industrial verticals. It includes pre-coded data-design templates with guided selling and embedded customer support solutions. In addition, it allows merchants to seamlessly integrate preferred payment gateway, ERP, CMS, marketing platforms, and local shipping solutions. Empowered by multi-site, SEO, and conversion-oriented capabilities, Plover attends to customers’ and businesses’ unique needs from different geographies and offers localized experiences on a low budget and a quick turnaround, while maintaining peak performance and quality.

“The continuous innovation of our core digital commerce offerings is the key to client success. We are thrilled to announce the launch of our Shopify Plus accelerator solution, Plover, built for a new generation of retailers eagerly looking for a fast and cost-effective way to launch engaging online retail sites with all the rich functionalities required to drive business growth and be successful. The crux of our Shopify Plus accelerator, Plover, is to speed up digital adoption and allow brands to innovate, scale and achieve remarkable business results.” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys.

Plover’s holistic platform not only provides world-class online buying experiences to shoppers but empowers enterprises to practice cross-border selling, automate marketing strategies, and enforce a multichannel approach that reaches customers at every touchpoint and channel. As a flexible enterprise eCommerce solution, Plover decreases cart abandonment rates and increases average order volume, giving retailers the freedom to focus on building their brand while it creates the best possible experience for its customers.

Discussing this launch, Umashankar Arora, VP-Engineering, Ranosys, exclaimed, “Ranosys has always been at the forefront of disruptive digital commerce solutions. With Plover, we’ve raised the bar for thousands of leading retailers that depend on the Shopify Plus platform and its immersive eCommerce experience. Plover has been in the works for quite some time, and we’re happy to be launching it at a time when the entire digital market is looking for intuitive, useful, accessible, and quick eCommerce solutions that accelerate their development of online stores and lay the foundation of enterprise-led digital growth.”

Leveraging the power of the Shopify Plus platform, Plover will empower enterprises looking to reap scalability and growth as a result of the solution’s unique benefits and steadily evolve in the competitive digital landscape. With its accelerated eCommerce program, Plover, Ranosys is now well-situated to satiate the needs of retailers and customers alike and create an effortless eCommerce experience that dramatically increases business value and fast-forwards ROI.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a CMMI Level 3 global digital consulting company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

International eCommerce (or global eCommerce) is the future of business expansion strategy, and we have statistics to back it up. According to estimates, the worldwide eCommerce sale will reach $5 trillion by 2022, and by 2024, international retail sales via eCommerce will show an increase of 21.8%.

If a business wants to go borderless in today’s times, it needs to have a robust global eCommerce strategy in place, and the first step towards achieving that is choosing the right eCommerce platform.

In the past decade, Adobe Commerce (formerly known as Magento) has not only powered multiple digital commerce businesses across the globe but supported their growth in international markets with its distinct features.

In this blog, we deep dive into the concept of international or global eCommerce and how Magento can help your business achieve it with its capabilities.

Let’s begin by discussing its definition.

What is international eCommerce?

To put it simply, international or global eCommerce is nothing but selling your products/services in countries other than your country of origin, which is usually the place where a company is founded and incorporated.

However, this definition leaves many people confused. Many of us aspire to have a digital commerce business to start selling internationally and believe that having an online presence equates to having a foolproof international business expansion plan.

Then, how does international eCommerce differ from its local counterpart? Why do businesses need to strategize in detail to launch global eCommerce?

The answer to these questions lies in different laws of the land and how customer preferences change even within a radius of a few kilometers. Let’s unpack these reasons in detail.

How is international eCommerce different?

The world and its culture are not uniform. In fact, people living in different cities of the same country exhibit contradictory consumer preferences and tastes. Naturally, people in different countries, too, have specific likes and dislikes; and, if a business wants to create a place for itself in any particular geographical area, it needs to adapt to its local culture and taste.

As discussed above, businesses needed first to establish a physical store in another country if they had a business plan for international expansion and then move on to localization.

With the rise of digital commerce, you can start your business worldwide without a brick-and-mortar outlet, but you still need to cater to its local culture.

This need to customize eCommerce solutions per local specifications makes international eCommerce different; this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Every country has different trade rules and regulations that eCommerce businesses must follow for smooth operations. To give you a gist about what they are, given below is a brief list of factors that affect a global eCommerce business –

Important factors that impact international eCommerce

Target market: You need to analyze and understand your target market in every location. If you’re thinking of going international with your online food business, you need to customize the dishes per that country’s local cuisine.

For example – brands like McDonald’s and Dominos had to include more vegetarian options when they ventured into India. Every food company had to avoid pork when they expanded their business in the Middle East.

Duties, taxes, and tariffs: If you’re planning not to have a warehouse at every location at the initial stage and go ahead with international shipping, you must understand every duty, tax, and tariff involved.

Furthermore, you need to clarify these to your customers and not spring up surprises at the checkout page. (By the way, this is a golden tip for reducing cart abandonment rate, too!)

International payment options: We live in the era of digital payments, and there are different payment gateways in every country. Furthermore, some countries prefer digital transactions while others rely more on the COD (cash on delivery) option.

An ideal eCommerce solution for global customers would take all these details into account and include as many payment options as possible with a simple process.

An eCommerce solution meant for global customers needs to have all the possible payment options backed by a simple process.

Pro tip: Include local banks in your localized eCommerce stores so that customers can enable eCommerce transactions on their debit/credit cards. Also, ensure that PayPal is integrated as a digital wallet as it is one of the safest and preferred payment options worldwide.

Shipping options: To ensure an impeccable customer experience, it is crucial to figure out the right shipping strategy for your global digital commerce business. Some courier services might be popular in one place but may have bad networks in another.

Before entering a new geographical location, research thoroughly about the popular shipping partners operating in that region. For instance, Royal Mail covers more than 50% of the UK’s shipping network, followed by Hermes.

Pro tip: Before including a shipping partner, try their services, make an estimate about their additional cost, and include it in the final international shipping cost. You could also offer free shipping for orders above a specific price.

Local language: Although English is well-accepted worldwide, having your global eCommerce site optimized with local languages can have a significant impact on your conversion rates.

A report indicates that 76% of intent users like to read the product description in their native language, and 75% of them are more likely to repeat a purchase if the after-sales care is in their local language. So, it’s essential to embrace local languages when starting an international eCommerce business.

Local currencies: Last but not least, ensure that your customers can check the prices in their local currency. Having to convert dollars into pound sterlings for every product can make your prospective customers run in another direction.

Achieve more with international eCommerce

Adobe Commerce (Magento) – the perfect fit for international eCommerce

World famous English football team Liverpool has chosen Magento 2 for taking their official merchandise to their fans around the globe.

Trusted by major brands worldwide, Magento or Adobe Commerce is one of the leading eCommerce platforms at present. It was explicitly conceptualized for supporting digital commerce, and thus, it has unique features that help an online business grow steadily.

Backed by a strong community, Magento is flexible, scalable, and has practical tools that help in cross-selling and upselling products. However, an international launch requires a platform that assures top-notch data security, unified customer experience, and quick time-to-market.

Luckily, Magento fits the bill of a perfect platform for international eCommerce for more reasons than one. Let’s have a look at the main Magento features that set it apart –

What features make Magento the best eCommerce platform for international expansion?

Magento’s multi-site feature enables admin to run multiple websites from a single codebase. Backed by this feature, you can have a separate domain for every country you plan to expand your business in and localize each website as per local laws, taxation, shipping partners, and payment mechanism. For example, countries in the EU require a mandatory cookie policy. Magento multi-site ensures that the EU cookie policy appears in the domain of only those countries.

Magento is also a multi-store eCommerce platform. With this feature, you can take country-specific localization to the next level. At the store level of Magento commerce, you can introduce local currencies, translated text, and even local SEO for multiple locations.

An international business expansion plan would ultimately require you to have multiple warehouses in different countries. With Magento multi-warehouse, you can create numerous warehouses for each location and manage them from a single source. It helps increase operational efficiency, betters inventory management at the global level, and improves resource management.

Final take:

Magento internalization can be a tremendous support system in building a global eCommerce business. Powered by features like multi-language support and multi warehouses, Magento enables you to streamline eCommerce operations and create room for localized customer experiences at every level.

Today, a business needs more than an offline and online store; every region, customer group, and target market has unique demands and choices. If any business plans to expand its reach, it must tailor its offerings and eCommerce platform accordingly.

And Magento (Adobe Commerce) can be your ticket to a successful international eCommerce strategy. So, if the international market is on your checklist, then it’s time to look for an experienced Magento implementation and support partner and start your global journey today.

All the best!

Wondering how Magento fits in your B2B plans?

Discover its potential.

You might have heard of the phrase, ‘the customer is always right.’ And brands and companies have made a run for better customer experience every so often. Before the internet evolution, every customer interaction started and ended in a physical store. However, in today’s experience-driven digital age, brands and customers exist in an open-ended loop where any interaction can happen any time and any place- a digital store, web portal, mobile app, a contact center, or a brick-and-mortar store. As the number of digital touchpoints increases, so does the tediousness of offering consistently superior customer services across every touchpoint regardless of the device and or interaction channel- via a call center agent, chatbot, or field agent. This ongoing business-customer dynamics is called customer experience (CX), and it is of vital importance for organizations.

Since the pandemic, customer experience has garnered unprecedented significance in achieving enterprise digital transformation goals. In fact, in the latest 2020 Gartner survey, over 91% of organizations regard the positive CX as one of the primary goals of their digital transformation efforts. Even leading low-code platforms like OutSystems include customer experience transformation as one of their digital transformation priorities: workplace innovation, process automation, and application modernization. However, to transform or renew CX, organizations need to evaluate their existing customer encounters and how much it needs to change.

This article discusses customer experience transformation and how organizations can use novel low-code development platforms like OutSystems to achieve this feat.

What is customer experience?

Beyond countless products and service offerings lies a key differentiator, and that is experience. CX has the power to create brand loyalty that never existed before with fewer resources and decreased budgets. But what is customer experience?

Customer experience addresses the ongoing relationship between a customer and a company. It relates to a perception or the emotion a customer is left with after interacting with your organization. As there are multiple channels and touchpoints where brand-customer interactions happen, CX is calculated as the total of all those interactions and the lasting impression you leave on them. Yet, customer experience is often confused with user experience and used interchangeably.

User experience refers to the experience a user feels when interacting with a specific digital product or service, or system. On the contrary, omnichannel customer experience encompasses all the interactions a user has with an organization, physical or digital. Undoubtedly, user experience is a subset of CX.

Why does customer experience matter?

Quite honestly, we’ve moved from product-as-a-service to experience-as-a-service economy. Industries spent tremendous amounts of resources, time, and money on bettering customer experiences. In fact, CX is crucial in brand differentiation. But why is customer experience significant?

As per a PwC report, customers are willing to pay a 16% premium for good experiences. Moreover, companies in the US dedicatedly investing in Customer Experience outperform companies identified as CX laggards. In fact, these companies enjoy 3X higher returns than their competitors. It is where the precedence of superior omnichannel customer experience lies- delivering high-end financial benefits to business models.

For businesses, CX moves the business perspective from product USPs and profits to the one that caters to customer needs, wants, and goals. This shift requires enterprises to align their investments and services accordingly and ensure that their solutions solve customer woes. For customers, CX is essential to the choice of and loyalty to a brand. They like to interact with enterprises that offer impressive experiences consistently and make them feel welcomed. Even so, 43% of consumers would pay more for greater convenience and a friendly experience. But that’s not about it. Positive customer experiences challenge businesses to evaluate and maintain two highly critical metrics.

What is customer experience transformation?

Customer experience transformation involves strategies and practices that optimize customer interactions with a brand by streamlining and simplifying operations to better customer satisfaction. Consistent and successful CX transformation leads to multiple business benefits, including positive changes in organizational performance, adaptability, retention, and efficiency.

The challenges of positive customer experience

While brands might think that once they triumph the mountain called delightful customer experience and be done with it, well, you won’t. In this new paradigm, the importance of customer experience cannot be overstated. Now more than ever, it will become a decisive factor in spearheading an organization’s race to contain and grow its customer base. Moving towards the future, a critical contrast between winning and losing brands will undoubtedly be a customer’s brand experience.

However, there are two vital metrics that enterprises will need to surveil and supervise when wanting to get to the healthy bottom line.

Improving customer retention:
Positive customer experience not only encompasses new customers but existing ones too. Consumers are armed with overwhelming and readily available information and are just a click away from switching service providers. It means service/ product/ solution satisfaction is the only way customers will keep coming back and buying more from you. A lost customer is not just a lost sales or revenue portion but an increased cost to compensate for that loss. Let’s not forget that retaining customers is five times cheaper than onboarding new ones.
Decreasing customer acquisition cost:
Great customer experience also impacts your skills in acquiring new customers. A happy and satisfied customer functions as your brand advocate- they refer you to their friends and family without being asked. In the digital era, when people no longer trust advertisements and where 20-50% of purchasing decisions are based on reviews, comments, and word-of-mouth, customer advocacy is a life-saving tool that increases marketing effectiveness and decreases the cost of acquiring new customers by as much as 54%.

Companies are prioritizing customer experience, and so should you

When organizations talk about achieving actual digital transformation goals and prioritizing efforts to achieve them, customer experience optimization constantly forms an integral component. It is why over 91% of organizations have upgraded customer experience in their digital transformation efforts. In fact, over 60% of companies are also increasing their budgets to support the customer experience. However, it is easier said than done.

Despite the tremendous efforts and practices, there is a considerable delivery gap between what companies understand by a great customer experience and what customers expect to be a great experience. In fact, this ratio is 10:1 (10 companies believing they’re offering spectacular experiences and only one customer agreeing on it). Bringing a change in the custom of digital transformation is what futuristic platforms do, and Outsystems fits right in.

OutSystems: Doing things differently but achieving the goal

What’s OutSystems secret to positive and reaffirming customer experience? It’s the omnichannel digital transformation. OutSystems empowers enterprises to create impressive applications 10X faster than traditional development methods, saving time, money, and resources during the process. Its pre-built software embarks upon a less coding and more innovation journey while creating perfect-fit customer experiences that fulfill business goals scaled to the future and exceed customer expectations.

In a time when omnichannel customer experience has achieved significant traction, to compete with level-headed CX leaders, you need to speed up business transformation across all touchpoints in a matter of weeks. With OutSystems’ visual development approach, enterprises can use a single platform to create all application layers- the user interface, business logic, data, and integrations for web, mobile, voice assistants, AR/VR, or IoT devices, meeting customer demands.

Every application created with OutSystems agrees with your brand’s identity and is brilliantly packed by engaging UI/UX that ensures a consistent and high-quality customer-expected experience across all channels. It makes creating solutions from the ground up easy and exact as per your needs. With OutSystems, there is no limit to what you can create.

To achieve complete customer experience transformation, enterprises need to connect systems, processes, and data with the under-construction application. Then comes integrations. From CMS, CRM, analytics, billing system, or any other third-party API, you can achieve a 360-degree view of your customers and connect with them throughout their omnichannel customer journeys. And if you want to analyze real-time customer data and sentiment, adding AI, ML, and IoT capabilities to your applications is super easy. Enterprises can proactively respond to customers patterns, code next-gen experiences, and win over visitors before they become customers.

Lastly, OutSystems helps deliver applications of size or complexity fulfilling security and compliance standards. Since customer experience transformation is not a one department undertaking, OutSystems helps run multi-team development initiatives with centralized administration of data, services, and experiences.

Adapt with OutSystems or Perish without it

The pandemic has already stressed organizations beyond their abilities to ensure adaptation. There is no other option than to become customer-centric. You must ask yourselves, have you removed silos to ensure friction-less operations? Have you diagnosed the problems your customers face with every enterprise touchpoint? Have you tried minimizing friction from your digital processes? Are you taking note of your customers’ expectations? Are you aware of the current and future market dynamics? If not, then you might find yourself vulnerable in the months and years ahead.

Survival depends on extending positive omnichannel customer experiences. The better you serve your customers and adapt to the changing market needs, the easier it will be to accomplish customer experience transformation goals. And just like that, OutSystems helps you become the agile digital enterprise of tomorrow today.

Less coding. More Innovation.

OutSystems drives transformative enterprise applications.

The past decade has witnessed multiple transformations in consumer behavior and the way the retail market operates. The food and beverage industry, too, hasn’t remained unaffected. A study suggests that online orders will make up for 15-20% of the overall sales in the food and beverage market by 2025 – and that is ten times more than what it was in 2016.

From getting food delivered only from trusted restaurants to depending on online marketplaces for groceries, digital technology has revamped consumer’s perception towards online eCommerce stores in the f&b sector.

But, what brought about this change, and what does the future hold for online food and beverage stores? What are the significant challenges that a food startup may face in the f&b industry? We discuss all of this and a lot more in this detailed blog. Let’s begin by discussing the role that online stores play in the market –

Online eCommerce stores: The future of food and beverage industry

Currently, there are 3.8 billion smartphone users globally, and their number is only expected to rise. As a result, the world is increasingly dependent on mobile devices and online eCommerce stores for their day-to-day needs.

In the past few years, people have adopted the use of online food delivery worldwide. The impact of digitization has already been spreading to the remaining sectors of the food and beverage industry.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption and doubled the expected growth rate in just a few months.

In a virtual event held by The Food Business News, it was concluded that the use of online eCommerce stores in the f&b industry has leaped by five years since the pandemic hit us. It reasoned that only 19% of Americans purchased their groceries online till early 2020 but the number shot up to 40% by May 2020.

Instacart, a US-based platform for grocery delivery and pick-up, registered an increase of 8.32 million orders between February and April. In fact, nearly one-third of the American households ordered groceries online.

Similarly, the world of food delivery wasn’t left too far behind. Many restaurants avoided working with online food delivery apps earlier to protect their exclusivity. However, they had no other option but to resort to them to keep their business running.

Four major food delivery companies – DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub, and Postmates – made a combined revenue of $5.5 billion from April till September 2020, double than the previous year.

The customer’s belief and dependency on these apps have encouraged them to expand their functions on multiple fronts – a lot of them now offer services to pick up items and parcel gifts on behalf of their customers.

The sudden boom in the online food and beverage industry has been attributed to the pandemic; however, it is not likely to fizzle out once the worst is over. People will get back to eating out and buying groceries on their own, but the convenience of getting things delivered in your footstep will keep the online eCommerce stores flourishing.

The last 2 years have also resulted in some significant transformational trends in the food and beverage industry that are here to stay. Let’s find out what these are in our next segment-

Latest trends in the food and beverage industry

Direct-to-consumer eCommerce (D2C): One of the biggest trends to emerge in the food and beverage industry has been direct-to-consumer eCommerce. Leading brands like PepsiCo launched D2C portals within a few months into the Coronavirus pandemic.

The benefits of D2C eCommerce are immense for f&b brands. An exclusive D2C website helps them gather critical insights about consumer behavior, create a personalized user experience, and develop exciting offers like customized meal kits, meal-prep boxes, and bulk buying. Not only does D2C commerce benefit merchants, but it also enables consumers to remain in touch with their favorite brands even without offline outlets.

Plant-based products: Gen Z cares a lot more about the climate than its previous counterparts. Thus, it is not surprising that they prefer organic, plant-based products. Right after the pandemic went into full swing during the first half of 2020, the sale of meat alternatives went up to 129%.

In fact, the global plant-based food market is expected to grow at 11.9% and reach $74.2 billion by 2027.

Transparency: Similarly, today’s consumers are also conscious about what exactly goes into their food and carefully read the labels of the products they purchase.

Your products are more likely to be accepted if you’ve built a brand that stands for trust and ethics. From now on, establishing a socially responsible brand image will be as important as inventing new flavors and mixes for your customers.
Sustainability: To add to the previous point, modern consumers are equally conscious about associating with those f&b brands that prioritize sustainable practices.

From replacing plastic packaging to sourcing organic raw materials, consumers are mindful of sustainability and authenticity at every stage of their buying journeys.

Health and immunity-boosting products: Owing to the pandemic and its after-effects, people are now opting for healthier alternatives when it comes to their food. Research conducted by FMCG Gurus in 2020 indicated that 81% of consumers plan to eat healthier in 2021.

From replacing plastic packaging to sourcing organic raw materials, consumers are mindful of sustainability and authenticity at every stage of their buying journeys.

Health and immunity-boosting products: Owing to the pandemic and its after-effects, people are now opting for healthier alternatives when it comes to their food.

In fact, the Innova consumer survey concluded that 6 out of 10 global consumers are looking for food and beverages that boost immunity.

Despite new trends and challenges, this is a booming era for online eCommerce stores in the f&b industry. The following section discusses the significant challenges that an online store in the industry may face and what businesses can do to overcome them.

Notable challenges of online food and beverage industry and their solutions

Supply chain management and inventory control: With an increase in the number of regulations, demand for shipping traceability, and poor communication with suppliers, inventory and supply chain management persists to be a significant roadblock for online merchants in the food and beverage industry. Adding to the mix is covid-19, which has resulted in unexpected lockdowns and delays in shipments.

Solution: Get your digital commerce solution integrated with an ERP, preferably with Microsoft Dynamic 365 Business Central. With an ERP in place, you can have a real-time view of inventory movement on a centralized platform, which, in turn, will simplify inventory control and help you in estimating, forecasting, and communicating the proper demand to your suppliers.

Pro tip: Due to the Covid-19 situation, you must always inform the customer about the expected delays in the order fulfillment process.

You could do it with a message on the homepage, after the checkout process, or even through the order confirmation eMail!

Change in demand and consumption level: “What consumers want” – this question follows the retailers of the F & B industry every day, and its answer is constantly changing. From instant food to organic ingredients, the consumers keep on evolving with time.

During this worldwide crisis, the consumer now focuses on healthier options, as we have discussed earlier. For example, the sale of vitamin C supplements and related products skyrocketed after the pandemic. At the same time, the poultry sector has severely been hit due to the persistent fear among the consumers.

In such a scenario, the onus of tracking and providing for consumer demand falls on the online retailers.

Solution: In today’s times, it is essential to have a good CRM integrated with your online eCommerce store. In fact, you could always think about migrating to Magento (now known as Adobe Commerce) or choosing SFCC as a platform so that you could keep track of consumer insights with real-time analytics.

Acing multichannel commerce: Your potential customers navigate through multiple channels in the course of their buying journey. They may come across your product on a YouTube cooking channel or an influencer’s post on Instagram, read reviews on Google, and then place an order on your online f&b store. Thus, it is crucial to establish a presence on multiple channels.

Solutions: Do not limit your digital commerce strategy to a single website. Integrate social selling and leverage your Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest following.

New-age platforms like Shopify Plus are powered with features that simplify multichannel commerce and help you manage every channel from a single admin panel in a unified manner.

Nurturing a strong sales funnel: With increasing competition, changing customer preferences, and shorter attention spans, it is essential to remain in touch with your customers. However, managing the logistics of an f&b business and taking care of the marketing operation is not an easy task. Often, food and beverage companies invest in new product lines without a proper marketing or lead generation strategy. As a result, their offerings, no matter how good they are, fail to reach the right market.

Solutions: Invest in marketing automation software like Adobe Marketo, which helps in reducing time spent on communication and campaign creations, enhancing lead generation, nurturing, and scoring strategies, and establishing a single source of truth for all your marketing efforts.

Final Take

Digital commerce has slowly but steadily made a place for itself in the last decade, and the pandemic has only reaffirmed its importance in the customer psyche. As the customers become more concerned about their health and wellness, eating the right food procured from suitable sources has become their priority.

Whether it’s creating a dine-in experience at home by getting gourmet delivered or learning to cook with ready-to-use ingredients, the lockdown has opened up various opportunities to experiment in the online food and beverage industry.

Suppose you are unsure about how to launch or optimize your online f&b eCommerce store. In that case, you could always collaborate with a digital consulting agency with a rich portfolio in food and beverage IT solutions.

Until then, keep delivering happiness to your customers via delicious food and beverages!

Build your presence in the world of digital commerce.

eCommerce product recommendations, as we all know, have become an integral part of any ecommerce website. Initially preconfigured recommendations like related products were suggested to the customers to show similar things they might be interested in, while browsing. But now-a-days, most of the brands have understood that for increasing cart sizes, checkout numbers and boosting sales, the recommendations need to be personalized and tailored for an individual customer.

There are different factors that drive rich, relevant and personalized eCommerce recommendations: analyzing the relevance of the items that are needed to be recommended to the customers and ensuring that recommendations are timely amongst a few. Simply put, the crux is to build an eCommerce store that simplifies the customer’s search of products/content and narrows it, so the customer can focus only on those products which they are really interested in. As easy as it seems, to achieve this effortlessness, a robust AI and ML technology needs to be employed.

And one of the leading and advanced AI technologies is Sensei, Adobe’s AI & ML technology for its Magento performance optimization platform. Recapping from my previous blog, personalized recommendations, powered by Adobe Sensei, brings machine-learning power to this process for providing recommendations based on the customer’s past eCommerce buying behavior along with the behavior of other shoppers with similar characteristics.

In this blog, we will explore Magento product recommendations engine along with the types of eCommerce product recommendations that can be employed in an online store.

eCommerce product recommendations with Magento

Product recommendations in Magento are deployed as a SaaS service. As you can see in the architecture diagram, the Magento product recommendation engine contains the Magento storefront and backend. The Magento storefront includes the event collector and recommendations display template, whereas the Magento backend includes the data services, SaaS export module, and the admin UI. Once the recommendation modules are installed and configured, the storefront starts collecting behavioral data. Adobe Sensei processes the collected behavioral data along with the catalog data and evaluates the associated products that are leveraged by the recommendations service.

Personalized Recommendations recipe provides suggestions tailored to an individual customer’s needs and interests. The Magento performance optimization prediction model provides insights on what products the customer’s may be interested in based on the purchase history of a customer. The eCommerce product recommendation recipe uses machine learning to analyze an individual customer’s interaction with the products in the past and create relevant and personalized product recommendations quickly and effortlessly. This creates a seamless eCommerce customer experience for the customers and also improves a customer’s overall purchasing experience, which leads to a higher engagement, stronger brand loyalty and better sales.

Adobe Sensei-led product recommendation engine uses a different combination of algorithms to showcase personalized eCommerce recommendations to an individual customer. Some of them are: content-based similarity algorithms, collaborative filtering, popularity-based algorithms, etc. The results based on these algorithms are very effective since the customers are shown the content/products that they’re really interested in, which improves their experience, leading to higher conversions and more revenue.

Types of eCommerce Product Recommendations Available

There are different types of eCommerce recommendations provided to the merchant. The admin can place the recommendations at either bottom of main content or top of main content. The bottom of main content is enabled by default and showcases the recommendations below the main content area and before any other content blocks on the page. Whereas the top of main content showcases the recommendations above the main content area just below the top navigation bar.

The following types of recommendations are provided by Magento product recommendation engine:

Most viewed – The customer’s are recommended the items that have been most viewed by the shoppers in the span of the last seven days.
Most purchased – The customer’s are recommended the items that are most purchased by the shoppers in the span of the last seven days.
Most added to cart – The customer’s are recommended the items that are most frequently added to carts by the shoppers in the span of the last seven days.
Recommended for you – The customer’s are recommended the items that are based on the individual customer’s current and previous on site behavior.
Viewed this, viewed that – The customer’s are recommended the items that are most often viewed by shoppers who have viewed the specific item.
Viewed this, bought that – The customer’s are recommended the items that are most often purchased by shoppers who have viewed the specific item.
Bought this, bought that – The customer’s are recommended the items that are most often purchased by shoppers who purchased the specific item.
More like this – The customer’s are recommended the items based on the similar content and attributes.
Trending- The customer’s are recommended the items based on the current trends of product’s popularity.

Magento also provides backup eCommerce recommendations to fill items for which there is not sufficient input data to provide the requested recommendation. The most viewed recommendations will be shown to the customer incase if there is not sufficient input data collected for the following recommendation types:

Trending
Recommended for you
Bought this, bought that
Viewed this, bought that
Viewed this, viewed that

Default filters are defined in Magento for the most popular, trending, and recommended for you recommendation types, by using these filters Magento provides more relevant results. Admin is also provided the option to enable/disable the display out-of-stock products option, if the display out-of-stock products option is set to No, out-of-stock products will not be recommended to the customers.

Summing Up

In this blog, we have explored and covered different facets of the product recommendations with Adobe Sensei. The advantages that Adobe Sensei brings to business are undeniable. It is one of the powerful technologies that Adobe Commerce eCommerce platform offers to its users and equips brands to target their audience with effective strategies and achieve their commerce goals. Merchants can easily leverage product recommendations in their Magento store and fine-tune the type of recommendations they prefer for their store.

If you are looking to implement Adobe Sensei recommendations into your Magento eCommerce store, or need help in developing an ecommerce store from scratch, contact us!

Ayushi Gupta

Business Analyst

Ayushi has around 4 years of experience in the IT industry and is currently working as an eCommerce Business Analyst with Ranosys. She possess strong expertise in identifying business needs, gathering and defining the requirements for facilitating the project execution for successful delivery.

The eCommerce industry has been expanding and transforming for the past decade or so, shifting from product-as-a-service to experience-as-a-service economy. There is a visible alteration in consumer buying behavior and the expected online shopping experience, fueling the necessity of eCommerce API-led strategies. Customers today access a brand site using several platforms and channels like the mobile, web, tablets, or connected devices, making it difficult for brands to fulfill customer expectations and deliver personalized shopping moments at every touchpoint.

As a result, businesses try to reinvent themselves, adapt to modern enterprise models, and keep pace with changing customer buying trends. Although a boost in conversions, sales, and revenue depends on continuous advancements and business innovation, all of this commands speed and adaptability. Disjointed systems or inadequately integrated systems don’t serve the customers or brands well. It is why microservices architecture, headless commerce, and eCommerce APIs gain tremendous popularity in the modern market.

Exposing eCommerce functionality with APIs allow the platform to provide core functionalities and allow consumers to consume them using various technologies and provide options to utilize the technology stack as per their needs. APIs provide flexible communication options between systems and ensure a smooth and seamless integration across several elements of an eCommerce architecture. They are the key to a successful digital transformation.

In this article, we talk about eCommerce APIs, their role in the digital commerce industry, and their excellent benefits for an online business.

What is an API?

Let’s first understand the basic definition of an API before we proceed to an eCommerce API.

API stands for Application Programming Interface that allows softwares to talk with each other. With the help of API, business logic can be decoupled from UI logic and allow each other to communicate based on standard protocols. This helps in dividing large and complex systems into smaller modules that can be developed independently without much dependency. It also allows multiple systems to interact with each other while each system can focus on a specific business function. For example, ERP can interact with an online eCommerce store via API where ERP can focus on Resource Management and eCommerce can be developed to deliver core eCommerce functionality.

If the APIs were to be removed from the system, a developer would have to write thousands of code lines to achieve the required interaction. Not only will it be a time-consuming process, but you would need to hire resources to write such code for a particular user interaction, eventually increasing the project cost. APIs tend to save from such time and cost mishaps. Developers can easily employ third-party APIs to facilitate the interaction without doing anything from scratch. And that makes APIs a must for every online business.

What is an eCommerce API?

An eCommerce API is a set of interactive eCommerce functionalities brought to life via an API, like product listing, checkout, cart building, pricing information, order management, etc. When that application exposes all these features via APIs the combined set of these APIs are known as eCommerce APIs. The user can select any technology for it’s frontend and interact with these APIs to achieve eCommerce functionalities. In a headless commerce setup, an eCommerce API is a connecting bridge between the independently functioning frontend and backend of a website.

What can eCommerce APIs do for a digital commerce architecture?

The API economy is significant for online eCommerce stores because it turns them from a store into a platform that other businesses or customers can easily access. It allows eCommerce developers to store and integrate features they don’t necessarily own or develop via APIs received as a service from API providers.

This further enhances a brand’s capability to seamlessly offer functionalities habitually demanded by the customers or earn profits from its extended services through the API. This relationship between APIs, API providers, and API customers reaping benefits and deriving value is what makes up an API economy.

Through APIs, brands can meet customer expectations and adapt to their changing behavior patterns efficiently and cost-effectively. It is why APIs have become an integral part of a thriving eCommerce architecture. Now let’s have a look at some advantages of integrating APIs into the eCommerce models.

Reduces functionality implementation cost:

As mentioned before, APIs eliminate all the code legwork that a developer would have to take up to implement a functionality had APIs not been in the picture. That means you don’t need to get a developer on board to write another set of codes that may or may not work. APIs standardize this process by establishing synergy between the interacting elements.

Since there are multiple API providers in the market building-specific APIs for use, online eCommerce stores can simply integrate an API to their platform at a much-reduced cost than before.

Better Performance:

APIs help achieve successful digital transformation from the monolithic to the microservices architecture in the eCommerce market. Unlike in a monolithic architecture where the entire system is built as one using a single codebase, in a microservices model it is broken down into small independent modules based on specific functionality. This disparate structure results in improved performance, higher accountability, and easier issue resolutions.

Better and faster upgrades:

Since APIs remove all the legwork of creating functionality from scratch, you can easily add new features and upgrades by exploring the required third-party solution and integrating it into your platform. It eventually improves the frequency of new updates.

Easy integrations with other platforms:

eCommerce has progressed from just being an online store to hosting a wide array of services with different functionalities and platform collaborations. Every website is now connected to social platforms like Google or Facebook, or other similar channels. It allows customers to comprehensively view and access a brand, their product catalogs, service portfolios, etc., from a single location, i.e., their website.

From single clicks to social platforms to product reviews and descriptions showcased, APIs enable integrations and collaboration that make the exchange of goods and services easy and straightforward.

Deliver omnichannel customer experiences:

The word ‘Omnichannel’ is exceedingly associated with the eCommerce market.

Customers today interact with an online eCommerce store through different devices such as smartphones, desktops, tablets, or other connected platforms. People can now place their grocery orders by simply commanding their smart refrigerator to do so. It is why customers expect a seamless and smooth product and service delivery across every channel and platform.

APIs help make it possible. It empowers websites to extend their capabilities to other devices and platforms; hence, achieving the seamless shopping experience milestone. APIs enable brands to consistently assist a user throughout their buying journeys at every touchpoint and offer a similar shopping experience everywhere.

Lead the competition:

Although several eCommerce businesses have already embraced the API culture, some others are still running on the monolithic architecture. In this digitally-led market, brands need to either stay ahead of the competition or suffer a loss in sales, conversion, and revenue.

It is why enterprises must integrate their website to other extended eCommerce platforms and marketplaces via APIs. Such native functionalities interest a prospect and grab their attention. Eventually, it helps you build a steady customer base and win over customers from your competitors.

Top 10 eCommerce APIs that improve customer experience

When you implement API-led integration, you enhance the manner in which customers interact and engage with your brand today and even during technology shifts. That said, eCommerce APIs perform multiple tasks from marketing to order management, transactions, checkouts, and shipping. Below we list the top 10 eCommerce APIs that improve customer experience of your online store.

Catalog APIs: This API helps you create, edit, and manage your product catalog. It allows you to update thousands of products instantly and integrate with other critical systems like inventory management, order management, etc in a hassle-free way.

Checkout APIs: This API customizes the checkout experience for a customer. It modifies the user design to make it look more appealing and boost conversion rates. These APIs improve the checkout functionality and provide a personalized experience like in the case of a headless storefront or a mobile-compatible store.

Shipping APIs: This API tracks shipments, employs multiple carriers, confirms customer addresses, generates product labels, and performs similar functionalities. They automate the entire process from the sale of a product to customer delivery, resulting in an error-free, cheaper and faster product delivery. In addition, this API allows you to partner with notable shipping providers as per a customer’s location to deliver the product at the earliest.

Payment APIs: With more than thousands of payment options available, from credit cards, debit cards to cryptocurrencies and cash on delivery, you need to integrate all of them to allow your customers to choose their preferred payment method and offer an effortless payment experience. Payment APIs integrate multiple payment options and payment gateways to your online store.

Shopping Cart APIs: This API allows users to control their cart data and customize items as per their needs. Incorporating such APIs reduces car abandonment rates and boosts sales as users are allowed to customize and individualize their orders depending on their demands. Moreover, shopping cart APIs allow you to deliver personalized offers and discounts based on customers’ buying patterns and motivate them to complete a purchase. It ensures an omnichannel customer experience for every shopper across all the channels.

Sales Tax APIs: Sales tax varies from state to state and country to country. So, if your business deals with a customer base spread across several geographies, you might want to implement sales tax APIs. They readily calculate the correct tax rate based on a user’s region, preventing any discrepancies in order payments.

Login APIs: This API manages customer data and identities. It allows users to log in to an online store even when using different systems and channels.

Social proof APIs: This API uses product reviews from similar websites, highlights the product’s popularity, and builds your site’s reputation. They work better than word-of-mouth marketing and make sure customers see your brand in the best light. It collects social proof from different websites and channels and either displays them on your website or uses it to boost brand image.

Marketing automation APIs: This API automates your marketing strategies, segment customers based on their product preferences, and offer personalized solutions to every shopper. They can also add shoppers to a specific email list based on their purchase history and browsing patterns. With automated and personalized marketing strategies, a brand can connect with their customers better, pitch them products that they might be interested in, and improve conversion rates in the process.

Anti-fraud APIs: As the eCommerce industry grows, so do the hacking and security threats. These APIs protect your store from cybercriminals and establish a secure login, payment, and checkout across multiple checkpoints. It allows you to verify email addresses, validate financial information, and perform tasks that keep your transactions safe and your customer’s data secure.

Conclusion

Apart from making things easy for developers and saving a lot of time, APIs help enterprises maintain their pace in the fast-moving and ever-changing digital landscape. The API economy helps fine-tune your digital commerce strategies and fulfill game-changing customer demands. It allows you to explore opportunities without affecting data security and the present operational infrastructure value. With APIs, you can create an authentic omnichannel customer experience- one that builds brand loyalty and increases business profitability.

Stay atop of changing customer demands.

Our experts help you choose the right eCommerce platform.

During these unprecedented times, most of us have been shopping online and each one of us wants that, everything that we are looking for is showcased to us on our homepage or feeds. We want our browsing experience to be super easy and prefer a one-on-one shopping experience. For us, every single touchpoint should be relevant, engaging, and personalized.

In simple words, we want to be catered with a tailored customer experience and in this blog, we explore how eCommerce personalization can be achieved with Adobe Sensei.

Though most of the brands out there are focused on creating a seamless and intuitive buying experience for their customers, only a few of them deliver personalized content, products, or services as per individual customer preferences. And in today’s era, one of the best ways to make a customer feel special and important is through eCommerce personalization.

And it’s not just about recommending a related product or item on a page. It is about understanding and anticipating your customer’s needs and preferences and then offering them relevant products.

Many big companies across different industries are going the extra mile to provide customized product recommendations to customers including big giants like Netflix and Spotify. They are making sure to learn about their users’ preferences and tastes to provide them with relevant recommendations.

Moreover, there is no denying that when a customer feels a connection with the brand, not only the engagement increases but also repeat purchases, sales, and conversion also rise simultaneously.

So, let’s explore how you can transform your eCommerce business with advanced personalization leveraging AI-powered Adobe Sensei. But before we dive into more details, let us first understand its definition:

“Ecommerce Personalization refers to the practice of creating personal experiences and interactions for the customers by dynamically showing content, media, or product recommendations based on the customer’s browsing behavior, purchase history data, demographics, and psychographics.”

But it all comes to one question, how to create such rich, deep, and personalized experiences?

Though many eCommerce platforms in the market provide brands with the tools required for building a feature-rich website, only a few of them can personalize the online shopping experience. This is because creating a real-time personalized eCommerce customer experience is quite difficult.

Now, you may ask us why? Let us explain with facts and details.

Different factors like data issues, implementation of decision logic, and faster data results pose difficulty in implementing eCommerce personalization.

Thus, setting up an effective personalized eCommerce experience can be a tricky and complex proposition, but with the right set of tools at hand, it is much easier to achieve.

And for acing the personalization game, one of the best tools in the market is Adobe Sensei.

What is Adobe Sensei?

Launched in 2016, Adobe Sensei is an AI & ML-based tool, offering intelligent features for assisting brands to simplify creating and delivering personalized shopping experiences to their customers. It leverages machine learning to make decisions based on individual actions across their entire experience.

It specializes in predicting customer behavior using aggregate data (data based on customer’s buying patterns and behavior) and allows brands to tailor their recommendations to their customers’ needs. In addition to this, it also provides insights about different other aspects like advertising strategies of an organization and forecasting impacts.

Through Adobe Sensei, both small and large brands/businesses can leverage cutting-edge technology at an affordable cost. Once installed and configured, the storefront will begin gathering the behavioral data. Sensei processes the collected behavioral data along with the catalog data and further calculates the products that can be associated with a particular recommendation type. The merchants can further create, deploy and manage product recommendations to the storefront directly from the Admin panel.

For Adobe Commerce users, these AI-fueled recommendations can be easily employed on their websites through the Product Recommendations extension at no additional cost.

Personalized product recommendation with Adobe Sensei and its benefits

Adobe Sensei features capabilities that help in gaining deep insights, augmenting tasks and workflows, simplify making informed real-time decisions, and supplement the ability to create and deliver personalized eCommerce experiences to the customers.

Ai-driven retail

Adobe Sensei AI automatically evaluates the behaviour of the shoppers by harnessing the power of machine learning algorithms and lets you abstract maximum value out of it. Once implemented, Adobe Sensei takes over the customer data analysis by creating customer profiles based on the customer’s interaction with the website and its products. Based on the collated data it provides the right set of recommendations whether products, content, videos that any particular customer should see at any given moment.

Different recommendations types

Sensei offers around 9 different types of recommendations that the merchant can choose from such as trending, more like this, customers also viewed, most purchased, recommended for you, and more. These recommendations are derived through artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms which perform a deep analysis of the aggregated shopper data. This data, when combined with the catalog, results in engaging, relevant, and personalized experiences for the shoppers.

Embedded admin based merchant experience

The merchants can easily create, manage and deploy product recommendations from the Adobe Commerce admin panel which helps in increasing the revenue and boosts up the sales. The charts of impressions, views, clicks and revenue are also very helpful.

Streamlined workflow

Adobe has defined a streamlined workflow that simplifies creating product recommendations. Once the feature is activated, merchants can recommend the products to the customers immediately. Integrating this with the product recommendation feature assists the merchants to become more competent in enhancing the overall shopping experience of customers. This not only is a time-saving process for merchants but also helps the merchants to provide a relevant and seamless digital shopping experience.

Auto page tagging and catalog sync

With the AI-powered recommendations, the storefronts are tagged right away with no additional coding or custom development. Everything is deployed without errors, accurately, and with minimal effort from the merchant’s end. To unload the hosting processing, the product catalog can be automatically synced to a dedicated cloud service.

Final words

Though there are no definitive marketing strategies or methodologies for driving better results, a personalized recommendation is a powerful marketing tool that can unquestionably help your brand to deliver a relevant and rich experience to your customers thereafter increasing conversions, boosting revenue, and stimulating shopper engagement.

Ecommerce stores can get immense benefits from personalization and can stimulate customer engagement. If you’re looking to launch your business online or rebuild your eCommerce website, you should consider integrating Adobe Sensei with your webstore, preferably with Adobe Commerce.

If you would like to discuss Adobe Sensei features or would like to introduce eCommerce personalization to your business, we are right here for you!

Embrace digital transformation with Adobe.

Ayushi Gupta

Business Analyst

We all strive to do what we love, where there is a possibility to evolve and grow both professionally and personally and be recognized and complimented for our work. It gets to a point where we wonder if that is really happening. Regardless of the path we walk, technology always presents us with exciting opportunities and options ready to act upon or grab.

With the IT world constantly changing and innovating, developers, both new and experienced, need to stay progressive with their knowledge, explore technologies that have a promising future, practice-relevant solutions that motivate them, and play a critical role redefining or driving business growth forward.

For countless reasons, OutSystems proves to be an excellent option amongst the available enterprise web & mobile apps development platforms. It adopts low-code technology, which, as per Gartner, is the future of application development. In addition, OutSystems presents experienced and new developers with an opportunity to explore a platform that could be used excessively to build enterprise applications fast, right, and for the future. As a developer, if you learn the OutSystems’ low-code development platform today, by the time other professionals or companies adopt this platform, you will have gained rich expertise and experience to mentor budding OutSystems enthusiasts.

This article guides you about why you must invest time and energy into journeying to OutSystems.

OutSystems- The #1 low-code development platform

OutSystems is a modern enterprise application platform designed to accelerate the development of critical business applications and accomplish digital transformation goals.

But, this is not what you need to know about OutSystems. You want to know ‘Why amongst the ocean of low-code development platforms should I invest my time and energy in learning OutSystems? How relevant is OutSystems to my career and my future?’

Think of OutSystems as a developer’s dream platform. Why, you ask?

Let’s understand this with a story. There are two types of developers- professionals who have been coding software solutions for a long time and growing developers who are new to the software development industry and are waiting to add innovative IT products to their name. However, both these developers dread the long coding, deploying, and debugging hours. Both of them wished there was a platform or a solution that could code an entire application on their behalf, and all they had to do was sit back, relax, or maintain it. And if this platform were in any way in high demand by big-shot enterprises, they would love to learn this platform and make a career out of it.

Well, OutSystems is that dreamy platform for developers. Not only is it increasingly being adopted by iconic and ambitious enterprises, but it reduces the need to hand-code innovative software solutions. It consists of a full suite of features, a single tool that does your Data Structures, Methods, User Interface, Libraries, DB Access, Integrations and APIs, a drag-and-drop interface to build apps visually, a marketplace to choose pre-built templates from, and everything else that adds to the comfort of a developer. All you have to do is visual programming with data flows for the functionalities that you want to add to your application and be able to extend with external integration for specific features . Sounds interesting, right?

OutSystems careers is equally opportunistic for professional developers with coding experience, budding developers or fresh graduates, or non-technical individuals who wish to make a career in application development and help companies achieve legacy modernization. The below are other compelling reasons why you must learn OutSystems:

Become an OutSystems Expert: Being relatively new to the market, there is a massive demand for professional and citizen OutSystems developers.
Accelerated Career Evolution: An OutSystems developer can earn up to 40k/month at the start of their career and expect promotion to a team lead position within a year.
The future of development is low-code: Gone are the days when developers would spend months and years coding a single app. Now you can launch an app in days or weeks.
A rich demand in the digital world: With several enterprises focussing on achieving digital innovation, low-code development as a general and technological movement will grow significantly.
A simple yet powerful platform: OutSystems is the only platform that combines the simplicity and power of low-code development to develop transformative business solutions.

How to get OutSystems certified?

An OutSystems career isn’t only about dragging-and-dropping functionalities to build a software application; it’s also about low-code programming and enterprise solution development at a speed the business demands. OutSystems certification program consists of two independent paths- developer and support engineer. Here we will discuss the scope of OutSystems certifications for developers.

There are three levels of OutSystems career certification, each involving mastering OutSystems technology in conjunction with modern software development practices to design and develop enterprise-grade web applications.

OutSystems Associate Developer: This exam is for individuals with little or no project experience. Developers learn how to code simple reactive web and mobile apps under the supervision of a professional developer. All you need is an open mind and a learning attitude to earn this certification. A candidate needs to pay the certification exam fee ($200) and pass the Associate Developer exam if they score a minimum of 70%.

OutSystems Professional Developer: This exam is for individuals with a minimum of 6 months of project experience as an Associate Developer who wants to build mission-critical business applications. The exam focuses on advanced development concepts like integration, architecture, and performance. A candidate needs to pay the certification exam fee ($300) and pass the Professional Developer exam if they score a minimum of 70%.

OutSystems Expert Developer: This exam is for experienced individuals who have worked as a Professional OutSystems Developer. The exam targets web developers who can design and architect high-quality software solutions. A candidate needs to pay the certification exam fee ($400) and pass the Expert Developer exam if they score a minimum of 70%.

OutSystems Mobile Developer Specialist: This specialization focuses on mobile app development topics and addresses Associate Reactive developers that wish to learn beyond the said fundamentals of developing native mobile apps with offline capabilities. A candidate needs to pay the certification exam fee ($100) and pass the Mobile Developer specialization exam if they score a minimum of 70%.

Recertification and certification validity

OutSystems Platform professionals must recertify to keep up with the current trends and best practices. To keep the certifications updated, professionals must recertify by either moving to the next level in their certification or recertifying the current level.

All certifications are valid for two years. Once the certificate expires, it will be suspended for 12 months. Individuals are advised not to use their certification designation until they renew it.

Why should you attend the Get OutSystems Certified DevCamp in the first place?

The OutSystems certification exams consist of multiple-choice questions and check a developer’s practical approach when faced with different coding scenarios to validate knowledge and experience level. Every certification exam lasts for two hours and has only one acceptable answer. Right answers are awarded whereas wrong answers do not carry any negative marks.

For students, freshers, and professionals eager to learn about new low-code development platforms like OutSystems, our free Get OutSystems Certified DevCamp is the perfect opportunity to understand more about Outsystems career, the exam pattern, the type of questions asked, and how to clear the certification exam in your first attempt. Our OutSystems Champion, Manish Gupta, leads this DevCamp and will help you achieve success in the OutSystems’ Associate Developer certification exam. His vast experience in preparing for these certification exams and clearing all levels will come in handy to you. He will discuss strategies and tactics to answer all the questions in time along with some sample practice papers to help you analyze your preparation level, weak points, and key focus areas. With his insightful knowledge about the OutSystems certification exam, you will be one step closer to becoming a successful OutSystems Developer.

What you’ll learn:

The OutSystems Certified DevCamp covers:

An introduction to OutSystems
Explore the various career paths associated with OutSystems
Discuss Reactive Web Development & its prospects
Hands-on training to help you get familiar with the platform
Discuss the certification process, related topics & how to prepare for the exam
Provide study materials to prepare for the OutSystems certification successfully
Discuss details about the revision sessions to help you with the final preparation

Our Speaker:

Manish Gupta is a dynamic young IT Professional whose strength lies in his rich exposure to working closely with several B2B enterprises across varied verticals. As an OutSystems Champion, he has successfully addressed the digital transformation goals of various clients and employed his business consulting & program management skills to help them accomplish their goals. Having cleared both the Reactive and Traditional Developer Certifications, he understands the greater possibilities associated with OutSystems and its potential in turning youngsters of today into tech leaders of tomorrow.

Post the DevCamp; you’ll be able to prepare efficiently for the Associate Developer certification exam, know the focus topics, receive study materials to deep dive into a conceptual and practical understanding of OutSystems and stay confident throughout the preparatory stage. In case of any doubts or questions, you can connect with our OutSystems Champion, Manish, via email (manish.gupta@ranosys.com). If you’re looking for career opportunities that secure your future and have a passion for building innovative web and mobile enterprise applications, this DevCamp is for you. With OutSystems, you become one amongst a few developers charting the course of their future in the present.

Join us on 7 Aug 2021 at 10:00 AM (IST) to know everything an OutSystems certification can do for your career.

Book your free slot here: https://bit.ly/36ObD67

See you at the DevCamp!

Build a successful OutSystems career with us.

When you decide to buy a product, do you end up buying from a single source? Or, do you first research about it online, compare its features and prices, check it out in a physical store, and then finally decide to purchase it?

If you happen to be in the latter category, you’re not alone.

A study conducted by HBR on 46,000 shoppers concluded that 73% of customers use multiple channels during their entire shopping journey. As the number of retail channels increases, so does the complexity of the customer journey.

And to ensure that your products reach effectively to the customers at every channel, you need a robust multichannel commerce strategy along with a platform that can help you leverage the benefits of every avenue of retail.

Lately, Shopify Plus has emerged as one of the most powerful platforms for enterprise eCommerce with features that not only support multichannel selling but also boost it with flexibility and ease. In this article, we explore multichannel eCommerce strategy in-depth and how Shopify Plus features can help businesses ace it.

Let’s begin by understanding what it means to achieve multichannel success in the world of digital commerce.

What is multichannel retailing/commerce?

Simply put, multichannel commerce is the practice of retail that involves selling at different platforms and channels – be it online marketplaces, exclusive eCommerce websites, social media platforms, mobile applications, or physical stores.

As per a survey conducted in 2018, half of the online purchases start with online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, where consumers explore different brands and products. Similarly, another research by Global Web Index shows that 37% of internet users depend on social media for their product research.

In fact, the thin line between online and offline shopping has also been constantly blurring since the dawn of the mobile internet. A st0udy concluded that most shoppers check prices online even when they are in a physical store, and around 45% of global shoppers buy online and then pick up in a physical store.

Indeed, the customer of today is omnipresent, and it is a business’s responsibility to reach them everywhere and make them take notice of its products and offerings.

How will multichannel commerce benefit my business?

It is true that today’s customers are smart and are everywhere. However, they have also raised the bar of their expectations. Customers have a shorter attention span and shift quickly to another brand if they are not happy with the service or if your products are unavailable at their preferred platform.

Thus, businesses need to ensure that their footprints are at every place their customers scroll upon, and multichannel commerce can make it happen. Here’s a quick look at what multichannel commerce can do for your business:

You can reach customers at every stage of their journey: Today, shopping is no longer a linear process. A customer’s journey begins long before they land on your product page. For example, a customer may find you on Instagram or during a Google search. With multichannel commerce, you can ensure that your presence is felt at every possible touchpoint.
You understand customer demands better: Customer preference and expectations are not just ever-changing but are also spread across various channels. If an eCommerce business plans its inventory based on the data collected from only one channel, it is bound to go wrong. A multichannel commerce strategy helps keep a tab on the demands on every channel and provides an accurate representation of customer demand.
You can lower sales risks with multichannel commerce: In today’s time, it is not wise to rely on only one sales channel to gain momentum. With multichannel commerce, you can leverage different marketplaces, channels, and platforms to increase your sales and conversion rate.
You can reach a wider target market: Similarly, selling your products on multiple channels helps penetrate new markets and reach new customers. For example, building a brand on eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon or eBay can help you create a name internationally, which wouldn’t be possible with a single channel.

How does Shopify Plus features help in achieving multi channel success?

Enables hyper-personalization in the customer experience: The customer groups in multichannel commerce are never uniform – be it geographically, age-wise, or by their buying behavior.

Some of them might come across your product through tier social media channels, while others may have reached you through a marketplace. Similarly, some customers might have bought from you more than twice, while some of them may be making their first purchase.

Your key to delighting all these customer segments lies in understanding their customer journey and pain points in their user experience. Backed by powerful insights and data analytics, Shopify Plus can help you dive deep into the unique customer behavior of every group.

You can find out the platforms they found you on, how much time they spent on the product page, and the geographical region customers belong to. Further, you can use this information to implement customer segmentation and curate a personalized user experience for them.

In fact, Shopify Plus supports high-end personalization in many ways. Let’s take a quick look at them –

Shopify Plus enables complete customization of the checkout process for tagged customers – from exclusive discounts to payment options, you can provide different facilities to different customer segments.
Furthermore, Shopify Plus also allows the admin to personalize the homepage for different customers. A repeat customer will get product recommendations based on past purchases, while a new customer may receive a first-buy discount.

Simplifies managing multiple storefronts: The essence of multichannel commerce lies in building a sales presence in numerous regions, channels, and platforms. However, managing various storefronts with the same efficiency and ensuring a unified commerce experience is not easy.

This is where Shopify Plus comes in!

It has features curated especially for sellers who operate on various platforms and support their business with automation and ease. Here’s a quick look at some Shopify Plus features that streamline the management of multiple storefronts –

Different stores for different countries: You can create up to 9 storefronts other than your main store with Shopify Plus for different regions. In fact, Shopify Plus also supports a large number of local payment options, an automatic currency conversion to enable internationalization, and a customized admin dashboard in regional languages for easy supervision.
Social selling: From buyable pins to Instagram shopping, digital commerce has now reached the brimming platform of social media and is only growing day by day. With Shopify Plus and its built-in tools, you can integrate platforms like Facebook messenger and Pinterest and even build custom integrations for any social channel that you would like to sell on.
Online marketplaces: Shopify Plus also consists of features that allow admin to integrate with Amazon and eBay with a few simple steps and manage their stores from one single admin panel.
Product information management (PIM): Shopify Plus facilitates centralization of all the product information, including pictures, videos, and listing, so that you don’t have to spend time replicating the information at every channel.

Streamline supply chain and inventory management: Managing inventory in a multichannel commerce setup is more challenging than you might think. With Shopify Plus, you can get real-time updates about stock at every channel so that you avoid both overstocking and out-of-stock situations. Furthermore, Shopify Plus allows the addition of up to 20 inventory locations to ensure that you get a unified view of overall inventory at a single source of truth.

Final take

Besides the advantages of Shopify Plus discussed above, there are many different ways through which Shopify Plus supports multichannel commerce. With features like Launchpad, you can schedule and automate major events on multiple platforms. Moreover, it supports bulk ordering, volume-based pricing, and automated reordering based on past data.

An enterprise eCommerce platform built primarily to support expansion plans of the business, Shopify Plus ensures that you have everything that it takes to launch your business in the global market and reach diverse target markets.

What you would need in this journey are a trusted Shopify Plus Partner and a plan that saves time and effort. If you are still on the lookout for them, you could explore more about our Shopify Plus services and our exclusive accelerator plan.

Until then, happy selling!

OutSystems, the world’s leading low-code platform, announced its global champions for 2021, and three OutSystems experts from Ranosys have been recognized for their active contribution to the ecosystem.

A pioneer in the low-code industry, OutSystems has transformed the delivery of enterprise applications with a modern, low-code platform. Today, OutSystems is recognized as a world leader in low-code development with a worldwide network of partners, community members, and customers across industries.

Ranosys, a leading global digital consulting firm, has been a thriving OutSystems partner since its inception and has created a niche with quality delivery and consistent innovation. With a growing team of certified professionals, the OutSystems practice of Ranosys has been at the helm of multiple digital transformation initiatives powered by low-code technology.

In a recent announcement, OutSystems revealed the names of the latest champions, and three OutSystems professionals from Ranosys have been recognized for their contribution and efforts in growing the ecosystem

The OutSystems Champions program annually identifies and rewards community members who nurture local ecosystems, mentor budding OutSystems enthusiasts, and take the initiative to impart knowledge amongst their peers.

“We are thrilled to know that Vineet, Manish, and Rahul from our team have been chosen as the OutSystems Champions 2021”, says Sushma Vyas, COO of Ranosys. “What’s even more exciting is the fact that out of the 4 OutSystems champions from India, 3 are associated with us. This recognition bears witness to our team’s commitment to learning, excellence, and innovation,” she continued.

The chosen champions are given exclusive access to certifications, coaching sessions, and communication opportunities and are further bestowed with the responsibility to help their local OutSystems communities grow.

In its statement of the announcement, OutSystems has lauded Vineet Swami for his mentoring efforts, Manish Gupta for sharing his technical expertise, and Rahul Kumar for his active participation in the community.

In high spirits after the recognition, the entire team of Ranosys, along with the 3 new champions, are ready to achieve new milestones in the field of low-code by creating consistent value and exploring path breaking solutions.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a global digital consulting company founded in 2008 in Singapore with offices in the USA, UK, Middle East, and APAC regions. It leverages the power of platform partnerships, experience design, and cutting-edge software technologies to drive digital transformation, eCommerce, and product engineering initiatives. Ranosys addresses the various milestones in a company’s digital transformation roadmap, identifying, designing, developing, deploying, and measuring their digital skills. Their experienced and expert workforce renders solutions that secure their client’s lead in the digital community.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About OutSystems

OutSystems is a modern application platform developed with a vision to transform enterprise application development with unprecedented levels of flexibility, efficiency and speed. With more than 435,000 community members, 350 partners, and thousands of active customers in 87 countries and across 22 industries, OutSystems is recognized as a world leader in low-code development and helps organizations build enterprise-grade applications at an accelerated pace.

There is nothing more important than creating a customer experience that makes them fall in love with the brand. It might sound easy, but that is the trickiest and most challenging part of all. Customers today are overwhelmed with numerous resources from several prospective brands.

So, how to gather the much-needed customer attention?

One way to create a successful conversation funnel is to leave the repetitive and complicated tasks to a marketing automation tool and turn your focus to the core activities of your business.

Now, when we say marketing automation tool, you need something that adds efficiency and scalability to your business. It should include features that help generate tons of organic traffic, nurture and track customer behavior and facilitate personalized conversions. It must bridge the gap between business productivity and your sales and marketing teams. A tool that places customers at the top is an ideal fit for any business.

That said, all tools possess certain features, but there are integrations and other added plugins that will make it the best marketing automation tool for your business.

The top features you need in marketing automation tool

Marketing automation has become a core element of marketing operations from small businesses to large enterprises. It can lead to significant improvements in your sales and marketing goals across multiple channels only when used correctly.

To help with the selection process, the following is the marketing automation checklist to include all the necessary features and requirements.

Feature #1: Advanced Lead Management

Every website has anonymous visitors. The idea is to convert them into leads and make them enter the marketing funnel. Now, most brands would think of adding long lead forms; however, the truth is they intimidate your visitors. Instead, you can use short forms and social sign-ups to trigger conversions and save time.

A marketing automation tool must have advanced lead management features like:

Marketing lead database: In simpler terms, a lead database consists of lead contact information. However, it goes way beyond a CRM system. It includes a rich view of all your marketing interactions between prospects and your business, including email clicks, data updates, website visits, scoring chances in the lead status, and so on.

Segmentation: A successful marketing campaign is when you can micro-segment your database, target the convertible leads, and pursue only those. The filters would include demographic information, behavioral attributes, and CRM information. The high-score leads would be the region where your website has ranked top in the recent or all the active opportunities.

Multi-touch campaigns: Popularly called the drip marketing technique, this lead nurturing campaign sends messages to leads based on their previous history and behaviors. Such workflows not only deepen relationships with your prospects over time but help let you connect with them at the right moment.

Online lead behavior tracking: Using such tools, you can track which prospects open the emails or clicks, the web pages visited, what search keywords they use, which channel you use, do they access you on social networks, and so on. You can also check the products or services they access and where they are in their buying journey.

Lead scoring & grading: You can score leads based on the demographic information, qualify them, specify the prospect behavior, and gather a comprehensive view of lead interest and engagement. You can give your leads scores and connect with them as per the lead stage.

Automate sales alerts and tasks: Create tasks automatically and provide real-time sales alerts over email, SMS, pop-up notifications, and more. It allows you to facilitate connection with your prospects and act in a timely fashion.

CRM integration: Every marketing tool comes with CRM integration. Some systems work on contact information and sync in real-time or add custom boxes to it. You can change it as per your needs.

Lead lifecycle workflows: You can integrate your workflow engine with the CRM system and create a complete lead management workflow. This way, you can automate data field updates, manage lists, and assign lead rules. Also, you can follow up with the sales team directly from the CRM, reassign leads, and convert them into opportunities.

Sales intelligence: Connect with the hottest leads and opportunities at the time when they need you. You can also allow marketers to create campaigns that sales can add prospects to the sales funnel.

Feature #2: Email Marketing

Emails are the virtual communication channel for any brand. It garners potential leads, supports your brand’s customer engagement numbers, and is the best method for customer outreach. Using marketing automation, you can send automated emails in a customized manner, test your email content, create beautiful email templates that match product specifications, preview emails for different devices and platforms, and perform advanced email marketing analytics.

Incorporating email functionality into marketing automation expands your horizon to customize content interactions with possible prospects via logic workflows. It means you can automate emails but still make them personalized for your leads. So, the automation marketing tool you choose must have email capabilities like triggered emails, scheduled messages, prioritizing email groups, tracking email campaigns, studying the success of email campaigns, and personalizing content.

Feature #3: Social Media Marketing

Social media is an integral part of a marketing automation strategy. Although you can practice it independently, it is also rewardable to combine social media marketing and lead nurturing workflows.

So, look for a marketing automation tool that keeps your social accounts active, ensures a prompt customer queries reply, track performance on social media campaigns, keep tabs on several social media channels at the same time, schedule posts, gather feedback and track mentions via social listening, and build targeted social media advertisements. You can also broaden your marketing campaign’s scope and draw data and leads from it.

Feature #4: Campaign Management

At the core, marketing is incomplete without campaigns. When you’re concerned with sending your customers the correct information, at the right channel, at the right time, campaigns can help you achieve your goals. It is why a marketing automation tool should come with campaign management that allows planning, execution, track, and analysis of all the current, past, and future campaigns. It means every step of a campaign launch takes place within the same interface and isn’t categorized between systems. Marketers should be allowed to create multiple campaigns for different products or services through an all-in-one marketing automation tool.

Campaign management should support your sales and marketing goals. They must also nurture leads along the sales cycle. That way, you can send personalized and direct emails to a large number of people without giving out an automated or robotic feeling. It should support both inbound marketing and outbound campaigns as well. All in all, it should lead to practical and highly converting campaigns that facilitate collaboration and communication.

Feature #5: Visitor Tracking

Long before marketing automation came into the picture, it allowed you to track the visitors by IP, identify their activities on your site. The modern visitor monitoring element of web analytics does the same tasks but gives more exciting results.

It monitors visitor behavior, including which pages they click, how they access the website, what keywords they type in on Google, and how much time they spend on your website. Several other marketing tools deliver real-time alerts to sales representatives when a lead or prospect visits the website. It can also segment your visitor database based on their tracking activities, demographic status, and the industrial genre; the most searched pages, the web pages visitors read the most, and others.

You can set up user browser fingerprint technology, including chatbots, and track anonymous visitors. You can then plan retargeting campaigns to convert sales to leads based on user source and behavior. You can request basic information like name and email address.

Feature #6: Reporting and Analytics

The best part of having a marketing automation tool is its reporting and analytics profile. It is crucial for any business. The process of collecting and analyzing data is what leads to actionable insights and visualizations. Business Intelligence helps managers be more informed and make more data-driven decisions that boost sales and ROI funnels.

However, several tools in the market lack the robust and detailed reporting nature that modern organizations and needs require. So, verify all the reporting and analytics abilities like comprehensive data collection, customized reporting, facilitating data-driven decisions, monitoring campaigns, measuring performances, and tweaking campaigns to suit business needs and boost ROIs.

Feature #7: Multichannel & Omnichannel experience

There was a time when you didn’t have accessible leads, but they aren’t anymore. There are leads available on several platforms. You can target them anywhere. So, adjust your marketing automation tool to include a multichannel approach and create an omnichannel experience.

Multichannel means you can connect with your customers on several platforms like emails, landing pages, social media, web, mobile, push notifications, and more. Omnichannel marketing keeps your customers at the center and ensures a consistent, engaging, and similar experience across all platforms, devices, channels, and mediums.

Feature #8: Security and Support

When you work with a marketing automation tool, you need to consider its impact on data security. Customer information and corporate data are susceptible and must be protected from virus and malicious attacks. Generally, there are two options- on-premise or in the cloud. So, first assess your current security measures before deploying the marketing automation tool. Cloud solutions are more secure and scalable; however, almost all modern and popular solutions are cloud-based.

In terms of support, you must be sure of the tool you want to adopt. They must provide onboarding support, free introductory sessions, pricing tiers and need continuous assistance 24/7. Even a short downtime can incur heavy business losses. So, look for a secure and supportive marketing automation tool.

Feature #9: CRM Integration

Truth be told, a marketing automation tool without CRM is like going hiking without shoes. Marketing campaigns not just capture customer information; they study the entire customer lifecycle.

Besides collecting personal data, demographic information, and other details, they also include multiple digital touchpoints across various marketing platforms. It helps you identify if and when a lead moves towards the end of the funnel. CRM does everything for you- store information, study behavioral traits, review conversational history, and more. You can integrate tools and CRM bidirectionally to smoothen your lead database and link your CRM to the automation tool’s in-built CRM.

Conclusion

When you’re investing in a marketing automation tool, you must do so after studying its features and the ones you need to support your business. Depending on your criteria and requirements, you can opt for the right marketing tool. Just look for all the solutions you need for your marketing, sales, and services automation. And you’re good to go.

Make the most of Adobe Marketo Engage.

From marketing automation to impact analysis, discover what Marketo can do for you.

With an aim to enhance its offerings, Ranosys has integrated Microsoft Business Central in its flagship Adobe Commerce Accelerator Solution – Falcon.

Built with the power of Adobe Commerce and the expertise of eCommerce consultants, Falcon consists of ready-to-go enterprise-grade features, powerful integrations and industry-specific UX templates to help merchants kickstart their digital commerce journey in a quick, efficient and cost-effective manner.

The decision to integrate Microsoft Business Central was taken to further assist online merchants in establishing a robust digital commerce business integrated with ERP to unify their business process, help them achieve business continuity and deliver faster, better results.

Be it increasing financial visibility, boosting sales, improving supply chain management or delivering projects on time, Microsoft Business Central helps businesses streamline and optimize overall operations.

A part of Dynamic 365 suite, Microsoft Business Central facilitates quick migration to Cloud and helps businesses achieve high operational speed and improved performance. It is a comprehensive Cloud solution that connects people, processes, and analytics so that every aspect of an organization remains in sync, knowledge transfer is consistent and the business has a single source of truth.

As a part of Falcon, Microsoft Business Central is all set to simplify business management and support growth strategies of online merchants.

“Falcon was conceptualized to reduce the time-to-market of eCommerce solutions and help businesses launch their online presence with powerful features effectively,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “By integrating Microsoft Business central in Falcon, we are furthering our motive of strengthening our clients’ business proposition and helping them stay ahead of the competition”, he continued.

Since the time it was introduced, Falcon has given wings to multiple digital commerce dreams by assisting merchants kick start their online business in the shortest possible period with best-in-class features. With the integration of Business Central, it will now enrich their solution with Microsoft capabilities along with the timeless reliability of Adobe Commerce and Ranosys’ expertise.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

About Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, is a leading provider of cloud commerce innovation to merchants and brands across B2C and B2B industries and was recently named a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. In addition to its flagship digital commerce platform, Magento Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based omnichannel solutions that empower merchants to successfully integrate digital and physical shopping experiences.

About Microsoft Business Central

Microsoft Business Central is a comprehensive business management suite that ensures business continuity with a cloud solution that connects sales, service, finance, and operations teams to help them adapt faster and deliver results. As a part of Microsoft Dynamic 365, it empowers organizations to deliver operational excellence and serve their customers.

Falcon, an Adobe Commerce accelerator, is now powered with Microsoft Business Central.

“LEX transition looks like a roller coaster ride at the start, but once done, you will have fun and enjoyment at your plate”- Are you up for the game?

Salesforce customers still on the Classic version are missing a plethora of features that are offered by Salesforce Lightning. This article talks about why and how one should smoothly migrate to Salesforce Lightning experience and boost user adoption.

Salesforce Lightning migration doesn’t mean that Classic cannot be accessed; users can easily switch back to it with a simple click.

Why migrate to Salesforce LEX?

Wondering what makes Salesforce LEX better than the Salesforce Classic version? Let’s evaluate the ultimate benefits of Salesforce Lightning experience.

Lightning Transition Benefits:

Lightning platform allows fast and easy app development with its ready-to-install Appexchange ecosystem. In addition, as per a Salesforce survey, the customers who switched to Lightning noticed productivity improvements; however, it varies for every customer:

Increase in sale’s team productivity by 41%
Increase in collaboration by 40%
Increase in win rates by 21%
Increase in conversion rate by 22%

Salesforce’s roadmap:

As we are aware that Salesforce provides releases 3 times a year and this time, it’s focus and all the innovation is on Lightning features only. However, there may be a time when Salesforce completely turns off the Classic and we don’t want the sudden change for our customers and then transition can become complex. Appexchange products are also updating and focusing on releases which are compatible with Lightning. There are many features which are available out of the box (standard) in Lightning and we might have them customized for Classic. The sooner you migrate to Lightning the better will be the user experience.

Lightning App Builder:

Using the Lightning builder, pages for Lightning experience and the Salesforce Mobile App can be created with clicks instead of code. Developers can drag and drop the Lightning components to build desktop and mobile apps. It also enables the users to sync Gmail and Outlook calendars with Salesforce actions.

Improved Analytics:

Creating reports and dashboards in Lightning is much easier, intuitive and provides a great experience to the top executives and the users of the organization. The report run page is easy to read and filter, Animated and interactive charts bring data to life. Einstein Analytics also comes with many new features like Widget editing right on the dashboard, so if you are still on Classic, you are losing on a lot of features provided by Salesforce.

Salesforce Mobile:

Salesforce mobile app is built on top of the Lightning platform. Any development on the desktop application is rendered on the mobile app.

Salesforce LEX: Key Lightning Features

Here’s an overview of the core Salesforce Lightning features.

Path and Kanban View: Sales Path provides a visual and guides the sales reps working on an opportunity and helps close it while updating the various stages based on the calls and progress. Using Salesforce Lightning, reps can take action on the opportunities more quickly and accurately. Sales representatives can manage the opportunities in Kanban view where they can drag and move between different stages of opportunities depending on the progress with the prospect. As soon as the opportunities are dragged, they move in the pipeline and calculations are done automatically.

Activity Timeline: Open tasks, plan meetings, quickly log calls, create tasks, and send emails efficiently.

Experience Cloud: Customers and Partners can collaborate and offer an awesome experience to their customers. Lightning communities provide a good user experience and branding, themes for the portal can be incorporated per the requirements.

The Assistant: An awesome feature to guide you and provide insights which are the top priority and progressing deals, hence increasing the conversion rate.

Homepage: A new and intelligent homepage and standard components like news widget, recent records, top deals and these components can be moved around based on the requirements.

Search: Find the right records faster and act on search results by enabling AI-powered Einstein Search.

Search results include instant results, top results, and recent records.

Salesforce Flows: Automating the process by point and click and guiding the users through multi-step processes without code, this is the real power of automation by clicks.

Email: Send email through Office 365 or gmail accounts with Salesforce email. Using this, customers can quickly log calls, create tasks and send emails without handling too many systems.

Here is the complete list of Key Lightning Features that makes it so special.

Here is the detailed Comparison of Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

How to migrate to Salesforce LEX

For Salesforce Lightning migration, we have to be sure of including the stakeholders i.e. Executive Sponsor, Sales Manager, Admin and Salesforce Champion as it affects everyone and needs to work as one team.

Salesforce Lightning migration is a 3-phased approach:

Discover Phase
- Learn about Salesforce Lightning- What’s better in Lightning, how does the experience looks like
- Evaluate Lightning Experience (LEX) benefits and Readiness- check Lightning readiness and consult with experts
- Plan your rollout- Create a rollout and change management strategy
- Align with executives and stakeholders- get approvals

Rollout Phase
- Prepare users for Lightning Experience- kick off change management activities
- Implement Lightning Experience features- setup path, Kanban view and exclusive Lightning features
- Adjust existing customizations- Learn about the transition tools like experience configurator, convert attachments, documents and notes, move classic knowledge base to Lightning Knowledge
- Launch Lightning Experience- make it default interface

Optimize Phase
- Measure success metrics- track Lightning experience adoption via app
- Motivate users to work with Lightning Experience- learn why users will want to switch to Classic, provide users the contextual guidance
- Iterate on the rollout plan- run Salesforce Optimizer to check on the improvements that can be done
- Turn Off Salesforce classic in the org

Below are the reports and approach that needs to be accessed for LEX transition:

Lightning Readiness Report:

From the Salesforce instance (production org) , one can generate the Readiness report specific to it that provides the direction, what considerations need to be taken while migrating to Lightning.

Please note that the report will give recommendations and a high level view of what needs to be fixed when migrating to Lightning i.e. it sets you a path and gives an indication of what needs to be done. A complete picture will be attained by doing the analysis of the org by an Implementation partner or the Salesforce experts.

Lightning Experience Configuration Converter:

This is an awesome tool provided by Salesforce and wants all their partners and customers to get the maximum benefit from Lightning experience. This tool helps to make the transition as smooth and as declarative as possible.

Below is the snapshot of the tool which you get once you enter Salesforce credentials and this will give you the list of different components that can be scanned and the conversions which can be done declaratively by click of a button while some of the changes needs to be done manually.

Visualforce Pages Assessment Report:

This is one of the most important aspects of Lightning Transition and most of the efforts are taken here to analyze whether the page can be made Lightning compatible or has to be redeveloped as Lightning Component.

To run this report, use Lightning Experience Configurator and click scan on Visualforce pages tab, this will generate the report and will be sent via email to the user in a CSV format.

This report needs to be analyzed and based on the type and number of errors, it will be mutually decided whether this page is of much importance and shall be made compatible or redeveloped.

The efforts provided in the Lightning Readiness report is just an indication of the complexity of Transition, below are the efforts which are not considered but are of high importance

Visualforce page conversion to Lightning compatible or redevelop as Lightning component by manually scanning the pages and analyzing the errors
Configuration of exclusive Lightning features like Sales Path, Kanban View, Lightning Knowledge, Highlight Panel
Data migration efforts that will account for migration of attachments and documents to Files and notes to Enhanced notes, migrating Knowledge articles to Lightning Knowledge
Guiding the users on Appexchange products whether to switch to Classic if Lightning version is not available or installing the Lightning compatible Appexchange product or can the functionality be achieved by the available Lightning features
Project Governance efforts

Salesforce Lightning migration rollout strategies

A migration can only be considered successful when the users adopt it and use it in their daily lives.

It is very important to choose a rollout strategy suitable for your organization- big bang approach or phased approach.

Big Bang Approach: The entire org will be migrated to Lightning at once and all users will be moved to the Lightning experience.

Phased Approach: Few groups are migrated to Lightning and consecutively other groups migrate to Lightning in a phased manner. This requires more planning and discussion with executives whether it’s done first for pilot users, sales users, service reps or by geography.

Here are some of the high-level pointers to consider which can evaluate for which strategy to consider:

Complexity of the org i.e. different products being used and customizations done in the org
How many and big are the user groups
Which Appexchange products are being leveraged

Focus areas for a successful Salesforce Lightning migration

End user training and communication is critical for a successful migration and user adoption.

Lightning Transition should not be considered just a lift and shift but it shall be taken as an opportunity to interact with the users that are facing any challenges in using the application and which processes need to be optimized or automated. Removing manual processes wherever possible and removing the Technical debt in the org which might have been created like unassigned profiles, unassigned page layout, or VF pages which are not in use, customizations being done, usage of Appexchange products. Now with Lightning, this can be achieved via OOB ( standard) functionalities offered by Salesforce and the Appexchange Lightning products for the configurable solutions.

We believe each and every Salesforce customer should be on Lightning experience to take maximum benefits of functionalities provided by Salesforce, automating the processes and be as declarative as possible and increase the user adoption. If you are on Classic yet, it’s time to revisit the strategy and switch to Lightning experience as soon as possible and set your path towards success.

Grow your customers. And business.

With SFCC, your business can achieve it all.

Varun Agrawal

Lead Solution Architect, Salesforce

Varun Agrawal has over 9 years of experience and is currently playing the role of a Lead Solution Architect in Ranosys for Salesforce competency. He is known for his innovative approach, understanding business needs, and strategic thinking that helps to achieve business goals with the most feasible solution for the customers. Reach him out for any queries regarding Salesforce Order Management on LinkedIn.

When Coronavirus impacted the world in 2019, it impacted our lifestyle in more ways than we could imagine. From graduating online to embracing remote work, we retracted to the safety of our homes. In this article, we discuss how remote work is definitely the new normal and how certain tools like Microsoft SharePoint can help you navigate it better.

Remote work is not a new concept. A large chunk of corporate employees was working remotely before the pandemic hit us but it was neither a norm nor a long-term strategy.

After the Covid-19 outbreak, however, the corporate world woke up to the benefits of remote work and its possibility of being a long-term alternative to traditional office spaces. Many companies like Shopify and Fujitsu have already declared themselves to be remote-first while others like Twitter and Hitachi have opted for partial remote work.

Remote work – a beneficial proposition and digitization accelerator

While the sudden shift to WFH happened due to the pandemic, it opened up avenues for organizations to realize the many benefits of remote work. Be it tapping into a global talent or providing flexible work hours to the existing workforce, remote work enables multiple benefits that were not easy to reap earlier.

As per a survey conducted by PwC which reflects the view of 669 CEOs leading private companies and public businesses, there has been a considerable shift towards remote teams, virtual collaboration, automation and low-density workplaces.

In fact, the acceptance of remote work culture has also accelerated digitization in many industries and countries which were earlier reluctant about working remotely. When the pandemic started to impact the work culture, many top leaders realized that their resilience and performance during these times would depend majorly on their digital capabilities.

During the survey , a CEO from a construction company admitted to have changed their mindset to adapt to the changing work environment and have also observed that employees and customers are now more open to working with digital platforms than before.

“[We have] changed the ways we work, from [styles] we thought were inviolate to radically different structures and processes. This is supported through the greater use of digital and technological solutions and adopting a more flexible and trusting mentality.” — Engineering & construction CEO, UK

Similarly, the need to serve customers uninterruptedly has also sped the automation process in organizations across the globe. There has been an increased focus on meaningful work rather than carrying out routine tasks during the pandemic and this stress on automation is most likely to continue.

Remote work and the rise of online collaboration tools

remote work frome home jobs

In the pre-pandemic era, Microsoft Teams had about 32 million active users which later touched 75 million as people started working from home. As the situation persisted and people realized the need for online collaboration tools, the number of users too grew and has reached up to 145 million in 2021.

And Microsoft Teams is not the only solution to have witnessed projectile growth during this period. Other collaboration tools like Zoom, Jira, Slack and Asana too have bloomed during the pandemic and became a necessity for organizations.

Similarly, Intranet is now an even more crucial part of the operational process. Tools like SharePoint had always been useful but they emerged as a saviour during these tough times. From centralizing organizational data, setting up organization-wide communication to enabling smoother communication within distributed teams, the intranet has proven to be the unsung hero of the corporate world.

How SharePoint enables remote work collaboration

Backed by the power of Cloud technology, Microsoft SharePoint has helped remote teams stay on the same page and collaborate without any hassles. Just like Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, too, has shown tremendous growth last year.

As per a report, 57.3% of organizations completed a SharePoint or Microsoft 365 migration in 2020—and 83.6% of that group said their migration project either proceeded on schedule or was accelerated due to Covid-19.

As workplaces disintegrated into remote teams, it was digital solutions like SharePoint intranet that enabled them to sustain and even flourish during these times.

The City of Victoria Municipal Government consists of over 1,000 employees who ensure that the beautiful city is managed well. Since 2014, it has been using a legacy system for sharing information amongst employees.

However, when the pandemic hit and the team started to work from home, the Government realized that its team needed more. Hence, the officials decided to build a dynamic intranet based on SharePoint which helps them keep their records safe, circulates the latest news and updates, enables employees to share and celebrate their achievements with their colleagues.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the CIO’s intranet has been a central source of information and its team has responded well – the adoption rate is proof!

So, what is it that makes SharePoint different from other platforms? What are those SharePoint features that make managing remote employees simpler? Will it be as effective in a small or mid-sized company as it would be in a large enterprise?

We break these reasons down for you in our next section and help you decide if your remote employees can benefit from SharePoint

5 benefits of SharePoint that transforms remote working

SharePoint Intranet enables transparency and clarity

Imagine having an exclusive website where you can upload company-wide announcements on the homepage, create different departments and roles and have access to an exclusive dashboard for every employee?

That’s what SharePoint Intranet does for your company.

Many organizations depend on eMails and other methodologies to keep their employees updated and in touch. But, sending an eMail or a group chat ping for every small issue is a time-taking process that could be avoided with a SharePoint intranet. In fact, it lessens any chance of confusion as the workflow remains documented and one can track the progress of the tasks easily.

SharePoint allows employees to freely exchange ideas, clear their doubts and always focus on the larger picture. Unlike eMails and group chats, SharePoint provides a secure space where a team can work remotely but still stay attuned to the company culture.

Especially during remote work, employees tend to feel isolated and alone. Having an exclusive platform meant only for your organization brings a sense of shared space and identity amongst remote employees.

SharePoint transforms the way a team collaborates

Whether you have a remote team or you’re back at the office, you would always need a digital workspace.

A digital workspace is a technology framework that centralizes an organization’s data and resources which its team can access from anywhere and any device. It boosts productivity and virtual collaboration while ensuring data protection.

And what could be a better alternative than Microsoft-powered SharePoint to establish your digital workspace?

With a modern document management system that allows hundreds of people to collaborate on a single file to the ease of checking the pending and completed tasks, SharePoint features ensure that your team, whether remote or otherwise, has all the tools to collaborate virtually.

SharePoint minimizes the need for physical togetherness to ensure productivity and effectiveness. It simplifies the process of managing remote employees with clear delegation and accountability. It fosters collaboration with centralized management and transparent access.

SharePoint merges analytics and business intelligence with business operation

There’s more to SharePoint than file sharing, version control, and holiday announcements. It is a part of the Microsoft Suite and leverages its features to make a company’s intranet insightful and supportive.

What this means is that your intranet could not only keep historical data safe but use it to help you make better estimates and formulate better strategies. You can integrate SharePoint with Power BI to leverage the power of AI and real-time data analytics.

SharePoint helps in process automation

SharePoint features like workflows help in automating routine tasks and streamlining everyday operations at a workplace. From getting approvals to requesting feedback and digital signatures, an organization can customize these built-in workflows according to their specific requirements.

With the inclusion of tools like Power Automate and Power App in SharePoint, an organization can easily create automated workflows between different applications and synchronize data sharing and knowledge management.

SharePoint can easily integrate with third-party applications

Today, the functions of an organization depend on multiple applications. Your organization may already be working with certain applications before you decide on SharePoint implementation or you may come across an app that you would like to leverage in your operations.

With SharePoint, you do not have to worry about any restraints or limitations when it comes to third-party applications and plug-ins. A good SharePoint consulting partner can help you integrate your legacy applications with SharePoint.

Final Takeaway

Whether you plan to continue remote work or move to a hybrid work culture or get back to the office as soon as the situation improves, investing in SharePoint will benefit your organization in the long run.

In today’s global environment, it’s important for organizations to fully embrace digitization and empower their employees with tools that can help them collaborate on the go. A SharePoint intranet is much more than that – it makes working in teams simpler while protecting the company’s data and streamlining processes simultaneously.

Trusted by hundreds of leading brands across the globe and powered by Microsoft, SharePoint can bring in much-needed orderliness and professionalism to the way your organization operates.

Finally, we would like to conclude by stating that Microsoft SharePoint is bound to boost your productivity – be it with remote teams or otherwise.

Verdict
It will be a great decision if you migrate from Magento 1.x to Magento 2.x as it’ll help you get lucrative returns on your investment. Magento will support Magento 1.x until November 2018. Since the entire workforce of Magento is focusing on the growth and development of Magento 2.x, no new features or improvements for Magento 1.x are anticipated. Magento 2.x is certainly going to be a huge platform for Magento Developers as well as merchants. Features like multi-warehouse support, usability enhancements for Admin Panel, new search capability, better preview functionality, and performance and scalability updates make the future of Magento 2.x promising.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your online business is not easy, especially when you’re faced with an overwhelming number of eCommerce platforms.

The eCommerce space has witnessed massive growth in online selling and customer acquisition over the last decade. This evolution invites a new generation of online buyers- one that is governed by customer buying experiences rather than product descriptions, changing the fundamental dynamics for the eCommerce market.

With the global eCommerce retail sales said to peak at 4.4 billion US dollars by 2021, business owners not only have to pick the right platform to support their cause, but they have to do so, keeping the rapid changes in customer buying patterns and behavior in mind. Also, finalizing an eCommerce platform means you will at least employ it for the next few years until you decide to migrate to a new platform. It is why you must consider the characteristics, features, benefits, limitations, architecture, price, flexibility, and functionality of each platform before making a final decision.

In this article, we discuss two significant types of eCommerce platforms: SaaS and open-source, their pros and cons, along with some of the best open-source eCommerce and SaaS eCommerce platform examples.

What is Open-source eCommerce?

Let’s understand open-source eCommerce with a metaphor example.

Suppose you want to buy a house. So, you decide to purchase land and then construct a house as per your needs, knocking down bricks and partitions that don’t look pleasing enough.

An open-source eCommerce platform is just like that.

An open-source eCommerce software allows complete, unobstructed access of the source code to its users (developers). It means they can quickly adapt, customize, and change it to meet their business needs. It also means that if there is missing functionality, users can build one themselves. These platforms allow developers to create custom tools without relying on pre-existing ones.

A business owner prefers an open-source eCommerce platform when they require tailor-made customizations and flexibility without any coding restrictions. Generally, there are dedicated communities that support the individual platforms. However, to enjoy its full benefits, you might want to hire certified developers with expertise in particular open-source eCommerce platform development.

Examples of open-source eCommerce include Adobe Commerce (Magento), WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Shopware.

What is SaaS eCommerce?

In the above example, instead of buying a house, suppose you’re leasing it. However, since you don’t own it, you obviously can’t change or alter its appearance, knock over portions and construct new ones.

A SaaS eCommerce platform is similar to that.

Unlike open-source eCommerce, a SaaS eCommerce software doesn’t allow users to modify its source code or add customized features. A user has to rely on the available readymade tools and features in the software. A SaaS eCommerce platform cannot be bought or downloaded by a user since the SaaS provider hosts them. So, users can subscribe to the platform on a monthly or yearly subscription basis. Then, the SaaS provider does all the hosting, maintenance, and security of the platform on their servers.

A business owner prefers SaaS eCommerce when they want to quickly start selling products online and not spend too much time and resources on its maintenance and upkeep.

Examples of SaaS eCommerce platforms include, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify Plus and BigCommerce.

Comparing SaaS eCommerce and Open-Source eCommerce platform features

More than anything, you must compare and contrast both the eCommerce platforms before you choose one. The following differences will help you understand the basics of both eCommerce platforms.

Cost and Expenses

Open-Source eCommerce: True that open-source eCommerce software is generally free, but when you add up the costs of hosting, development, customizations, integrations & security, it will cost up to several thousands of dollars every year. However, considering that you’re funding your digital commerce goal, this expense doesn’t seem like much when you look at the customizations and flexibility it offers.

SaaS eCommerce: SaaS eCommerce software follows a subscription-based model, meaning your business can pick on a monthly or yearly fixed payment plan. This SaaS eCommerce model is entirely scalable, and you can upgrade or downgrade your plan as and when you like depending on your business requirements.

Technical Aspects

Open-Source eCommerce: An open-source code can be customized or personalized, but such technicalities require a lot of time. So, you need to hire full-time certified developers to get the work done. Then, you need to address technical guidance and monitoring-related concerns to cover its hosting, installations, PCI security compliant & software updates, interface maintenance, etc.

SaaS eCommerce: On this platform, all such technical considerations are managed by the SaaS provider. Once you’ve made up your mind to launch your SaaS eCommerce store, you don’t have to worry about its hosting, maintenance, updates, security, setup, etc. Its design and readily available features and tools make the managing of the online store easy and seamless.

Store setup and installation

Open-Source eCommerce: Setting up and installing an eCommerce store based on the open-source eCommerce software is easy. More so, you can install the open-source eCommerce software at no extra cost. However, when you’re setting up an eCommerce store for the first time, you have to do everything from the basics. So, that can be pretty tedious and time-consuming.

SaaS eCommerce: When opting for a SaaS platform, you can request a free trial and then pay for the subscription. And, you don’t have to start everything from scratch. All you have to do is work on the readymade templates, pre-designed themes, plugins, tools, features, third-party libraries, etc., that suit your business needs.

Design, Customization, and Control

Open-Source eCommerce: These platforms offer impeccable design and customized features and encourage developers to modify and alter themes, colors, layouts, typography, or other elements as and when needed by your store. That means you can build as many customizations as you want, change code, add features, or remove them. Also, there are several plugins and libraries available, so you can pick functionalities from there.

SaaS eCommerce: As already explained, you cannot edit themes, layouts, or customizations in SaaS eCommerce software. However, you can access its extensive set of libraries, extensions, and features; however, you cannot perform significant modifications and only edit some layout templates. So, you don’t need much time in readying your SaaS-based online store.

Integration and Flexibility

Open-Source eCommerce: Modern eCommerce businesses access multiple platforms and systems in addition to their eCommerce site simultaneously. They might have an ERP, inventory management system, PIM, POS, 3PL, etc. Using an open-source eCommerce software allows you to integrate the platform with such extensions and resources and ensure seamless and hassle-free data sharing.

SaaS eCommerce: In this model, you can add external integration to your monthly subscription package. So, a developer can employ APIs to connect your site to the respective platforms. This way, you can maximize your site’s potential and boost revenue and conversion numbers.

Maintenance and support

Open-Source eCommerce: When you adopt this platform, it means you have to handle all the maintenance and support needs. You have to take care of the entire infrastructure or administration of the platform. Also, you need to stay updated with the software upgrades and updates related to your eCommerce platform. Also, if you encounter any issues with your site, a developer will have to perform upgrades and updates themselves.

SaaS eCommerce: With a SaaS platform, you receive full support from the SaaS service provider for upgrades & security patches. Also, you will get notifications about system updates from the host as and when required by your business. It also removes performance lag or system crashes issues since your site will be kept up-to-date at all times.

Pros and Cons of an Open-Source eCommerce platform

The advantages and disadvantages of open-source eCommerce software are:

PROS	CONS
Fully customizable since you have complete control over the source code.	High maintenance and upkeep required.
A vast community available for support.	It is a costly procedure, especially if you wish to add several features and customizations to your site.
A preferred option for businesses that want to add high-end customizations to their website and improve the consumer experience.	Since the site owner handles all the security and maintenance, it might experience some vulnerabilities.
Complete control and flexibility over development, maintenance, upgrade, and support to the site owner.	Modification in the source code might complicate it, eventually affecting the eCommerce site.

Pros and Cons of a SaaS eCommerce platform

The advantages and disadvantages of SaaS eCommerce software are:

PROS	CONS
It is a fast and straightforward setup, especially for brands who want to get to market quickly.	If you wish to customize your store, there are limitations..
They are easy to use due to their user-friendly and simple interface.	Alteration or customization of source code is not possible.
These platforms are highly scalable. It means you can upgrade and downgrade your plan as and when you like.	The store might not be able to provide personalized buying experiences to its customers.
You can find all the dedicated support you need from the provider.

The future of retailing is digital.

Learn about the best digital commerce platforms for your business.

There comes a time in every successful organization’s existence when they transition from a world driven by manual labor and repetition to one governed by innovation and transformation. Although this move is not an easy one, it is a much-needed or demanded one.

In 2019, enterprises were spending over 40% of their technology investment on digital transformation practices. And, this number is set to increase further in the years to come. But, as businesses realize that market sustenance and a competitive edge isn’t a possibility until they go fully digital, they will also comprehend that there is no one solution or approach to help achieve their digital transformation goals. Instead, it requires several innovative technologies and a wide range of agile, futuristic, and disruptive techniques to help enterprises adapt to the digital economy.

Unfortunately, traditional software development cannot keep up with the speed and scale of digital transformation. Most organizations don’t even have the staff and skills required to support such initiatives. They still rely on the heavily coded backend, manual operations, and siloed data to achieve the speed, flexibility, scalability, and agility required by modern business models. It is where low-code development tools and platforms like OutSystems come into play and address those needs.

What is digital transformation? Why do organizations need it?

There has been too much talk about ‘digital’ and how important it is for organizations to achieve it. We hear about digital technologies, digital data, digital media, digital transformation, digital marketing. Of course, everyone was to go digital. But what is it and which way to go?

Going digital means discovering new ways and possibilities of replacing an existing service and ultimately delivering a better experience to your customers. Digital transformation is what propels your business to move forward, explore new opportunities, adapt to the current market trends, optimize data analytics, stay relevant and competitive, and facilitate a better connection with your customers. There is no one definition to going digital, but it is a compilation of several individual methods.

Organizations embark upon their digital transformation journeys for several reasons: to identify business opportunities, adopt data-driven insights and behaviors, explore emerging trends and technologies, streamline data workflows, or personalize customer experiences. Irrespective of why organizations need digital transformation, it typically involves:

Developing new applications, capabilities, or integrations
Modernize legacy architecture for the cloud
Build mission-critical business applications
Automate manual workflows or processes
Allow seamless integrations
Enhance customer experience and engagement
Improve business productivity
Better process efficiency

Digital transformation allows enterprises to stay relevant and competitive in the market. It is an employee, customer, and enterprise-friendly solution that elevates business productivity and efficiency. Being a digital-first business is the need of the hour. Fortunately, organizations have access to a plethora of low-code processes and tools that can help them develop, deliver, and deploy change applications against the backdrop of rapidly evolving market models and drive accurate business results with guaranteed ROIs.

What digital transformation challenges do organizations face?

A few years back, enterprises focussed all their efforts on improving operational efficiency. However, that focus has moved to enhance customer interactions via modern digital core systems. We all know that organizations need digital transformation to survive and thrive. So, what stops them from achieving it?

Suppose you’ve ever planned a digital transformation roadmap. In that case, you’d know that there are some challenges that every enterprise faces—lack of expertise, too much reliance on legacy systems, and limited budget, to name a few. However, as you progress on your journey to achieve complete digital transformation, you keep clearing these roadblocks and moving ahead. These obstacles might slow down your pace but can’t stop you from reaching your destination.

That said, meet the top 6 challenges that lead to an organizational digital deadlock:

Scarce resources: Most enterprises lack the required talent and find it hard to hire digitally capable professionals that could bring value to their processes, systems, and consumers.
Legacy system debt: As per research, legacy-led operations account for 70-80% of IT budgets. Inefficient back-office systems, deficient APIs, and weak integrations complicate digital adoption or delay the delivery of new apps.
Massive IT backlogs: Most organizations have more work for their IT team than they can deliver. Reports say, over 65% of respondents complained about application backlogs, and only 32% of them have improved over a year.
Silos of innovation: When an enterprise plans its digitization, they consider it separate from their traditional IT setup. It prevents the singularization of both the technological structures, ultimately creating data silos that hamper complete transformation.
Non-flexible organizational architecture: Legacy processes like agile and waterfall continue to slow down the digital evolution of organizations from legacy systems to digital systems to digital disruptors.
Lack of patience: Genuine innovation is time-consuming, which is why organizations aren’t ready to replace their traditional systems and embrace the uncertainty of digital transformation. Most organizations might commence their journeys to go wholly digital, but due to lack of time or urgency of application deliverance fail to follow it judiciously, resulting in partial evolution. It complicates things more than solving them.

These challenges are faced more by established enterprises than startups or digital disruptors. According to McKinsey, several prestigious firms “are losing as much as half of their revenue growth and one-third of earnings growth” to the more digitally savvy competition. And, these are not all the only challenges that leading organizations face.

They need to maintain the current on-premise monolithic systems like the ERP to keep their business running,
Adopt new technologies, deconstruct the legacy systems and innovate operations to achieve more excellent business value
Restructure a strategy that offers a delightful customer experience and redefines their competitive advantage

Everything has to go together and in sync to meet business requirements, modernize legacy systems, and become a digital disruptor. Digital innovation is a tedious and expensive process; however, it is a necessary one. No organization can achieve the same productivity, performance, and results as a digitally transformed organization with its legacy systems. Fortunately, it is not too late for enterprises to reengineer their strategies, take a more profitable growth path, invest more than their peers, control the existing operations, and develop a new business model. To do all this, such enterprises need to wisely choose a platform that elevates current performance levels and explore opportunities to derive more value from the industry chains.

Digital transformation and low-code: The connection

In a connected world, the demand for business applications is more than ever. Customers have higher expectations from technology, which ultimately puts tremendous pressure on the IT leaders. As per a McKinsey report, over 70% of digital transformations fail. Everyone hears about digital evolution and how important it is and rushes towards it. They fail to understand that the only way an enterprise can achieve accurate and genuine innovation is via a successful digital transformation strategy that involves identifying business challenges and finding the right technology that solves these challenges.

It is where low-code comes into play. Disruptive technologies like low-code empower companies with flexibility and agility to adapt their existing infrastructure to the ever-changing industry demands while dramatically increasing the application delivery speed and time to market with the minimum upfront investment in setup, training, and deployment. The pre-coded templates make it easy to build innovative applications, and the widely available third-party integrations allow adding extra functionality and features to it instead of hand-coding. Low-code accomplishes five digital transformation priorities:

Allow process innovation to reinvent competitive advantage
Adopt a scalable and agile methodology to go fully digital
Employ DevOps practices for consistent and continuous application delivery
Recruit or train development resources for modern methodologies
Speed up visual modeling of responsive web user interfaces to better user experience

Low-code’s high productivity platform as a service (hpaPaaS) helps enterprises to stay competent and competitive in the ever-changing digital dynamics. However, to reap the full benefits of the low-code, picking the right platform matters.

Enable transformation and business productivity with OutSystems

When we talk about low-code technology, it always gets floundered on one question: which low-code platform should I pick? With a plethora of options to choose from, a low-code platform should fulfill every digital transformation priority and make application development simpler, smarter, and more streamlined.

OutSystems, a leading low-code application development platform that empowers a new generation of coders called citizen developers, expanding the talent pool for such technologies and taking advantage of its unrivaled platform features. From customer experience transformation to application modernization, process automation, and workplace innovation, OutSystems supports all business goals. Although many low-code platform providers are out in the market, several vital distinguishing features place OutSystems at the forefront.

Unlike the other platforms, which partially or inefficiently address the application development lifecycle, OutSystems provides a full-stack visual development platform capable of developing enterprise mobile and web applications. Moreover, these apps attend to three major digital transformation use cases:

Digital Operations: These applications replace the traditional, inefficient, time-consuming, and tedious internal business operations with intelligent and automated processes. They include rapid development of mobile and web applications, structuring forms and workflows, speedy integration, quick changes and deployment, and built-in dashboards for productivity insights to be used by managers.

Digital Experiences: Improving customer experiences digitally has always been on a marketer’s mind. With rapidly prototyped visual development and powerful tools that manage, maintain, and deploy pixel-perfect user experience, OutSystems help secure digital moments across all touchpoints via responsive web and mobile apps.

Digital Core: Core systems lack the speed, agility, and flexibility demanded by modern businesses. OutSystems’ advanced features empower enterprises to take up the charge of replacing their large core systems and modernize legacy solutions. This transformation includes ERP systems, clinical trial management systems, etc.

OutSystems framework of enterprise change and innovation

Digital evolution is a massive undertaking for an organization. OutSystems follows a STEP (Structure, Talent, Ecosystem, and Process) framework to address such requirements. From laying the foundation of digital evolution to forming a center of excellence to oversee the actions and becoming a complete digital enterprise, OutSystems support you at every stage.

Structure: It involves structuring an executive team for successful low-code development and delivery. It includes team size, team roles, governance & testing.
Talent: Using OutSystems, organizations can build sophisticated solutions without the need for highly specialized resources. The platform allows you to train and recruit talented citizen developers.
Ecosystem: you can integrate your OutSystems platform with other systems for high productivity and performance.
Process: For change management to work efficiently, it is essential to know how different parts of the system would work, where low-code works, and how traditional and IT systems should interact with the modern platform.

OutSystems intuitive drag and drop functionality simplifies enterprise application building procedures. Developers can access the generated code, optimize it per requirements, and place it in the core systems. Furthermore, it allows developers to code apps for all industrial verticals and caters to the needs of employees, vendors, partners, and customers. Such versatility negates any IT dependency, thus streamlining the application development process.

OutSystems helps organizations and business leaders rapidly build new, scalable, secure, adaptable to business shifts, and reliable applications from the ground up. From updates to workflows, user experience, backend integration, support for new mobile devices, or new infrastructure technology – OutSystems helps developers adapt solutions to meet their organizations’ latest challenges with unprecedented speed. In addition, it alerts developers in case of bugs or broken code to be fixed. It temporarily pauses publishing functions until the fix is made. Said to be a developer-friendly platform, it empowers them to control every aspect of app development using its visual modeling interface and custom coding features.

OutSystems empowers developers, customers, and enterprises

Through OutSystems, anybody can build applications or dashboards to improve business productivity. It allows teams to build end-to-end solutions and integrate them with the core ERP or CRM system that steadily accomplish all digital transformation goals.

Since it is a true enterprise-grade platform, it supports all levels of business performance and boosts operational efficiency. It allows enterprises to start from a certain level and scale from there with continuous improvements. Users can deploy the solution on-premise, or the cloud, as per their business needs.

To conclude, OutSystems is a crucial enabler of digital transformation initiatives worldwide. With reputed companies like Schneider Electric, AXA, Randstad, etc., adopting the low-code platform, OutSystems is the right path for enterprises who wish to achieve complete and productive digital evolution.

Business Transformation starts here.

Ready your business for the new normal with OutSystems.

The digital world revolves around customer experiences.

According to a Walker study, customer experience will supersede price and product as the key brand differentiator in the coming years. For new-age customers, a personalized online experience is more important than paying a product price. Thus, a business needs to prioritize agility, scalability, and rapid development of digital solutions to ensure that it can keep up with changing customer needs.

Typically, a traditional software development cycle takes at least 4-9 months to complete. As a result, it becomes difficult to respond to new market trends and consumer demands immediately. By the time you update a digital solution, customers have already moved on to another feature.

And this is where low-code development comes in!

With low-code technology like OutSystems, you could reduce development time and quickly adapt to online behavioural changes, thus boosting customer engagement. It empowers brands to build customer-centric solutions that deliver personalized experiences.

So, if you’re looking for a technology that could keep up with the pace of changing customer needs, then OutSystems is your answer.

In this article, we discover the potential role that low-code platforms like OutSystems could play in ensuring memorable customer experiences in the age of ever-changing consumer needs.

Let’s begin by looking at factors that influence customer experience and how low-code impacts them.

What Is Digital Customer Experience?

In simple words, customer experience refers to the overall perception of your brand or business in the customers’ psyche. From visiting your store or website to interacting with your representative, everything comes together to define customer experience.

But thanks to the internet and digitization, the world has now gone beyond physical stores and in-person discussions. As per reports, the number of internet users worldwide has reached 4.72 billion, more than 60% of the world’s total population.

Here’s what this rise in digitization means for businesses:

Your products can now cross geographical boundaries, reach wider target markets and, in turn, bring more revenue.
Studies suggest that 89% of consumers admit that they are more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social media. That means you no longer have to wait for a prospective customer to walk into a store to create an impression – you can now interact and reach them at the comfort of their homes via digital media.
Customer service is not time-bound anymore. You can remain available to your customers round the clock with virtual chatbots and social media handles. In fact, most customers now prefer self-service by going through company FAQs, social media groups, and quick tutorials.

With the onset of digital transformation, the opportunities for a business have increased manifold. However, it also leads to a complex customer journey and adds more layers to the customer experience. As digitization adds to the mix, here’s how customer experience evolves:

1. Multiple touch points: There’re many ways through which a customer can reach you now, i.e., social media, search engine, emails, company websites, mobile apps, and online customer service portals.
  Action Item for Businesses: Create an omnichannel digital strategy that covers every digital touchpoint.
2. Quick Response: This is an era of instant gratification. Whether it’s getting a quick reply on social media or exploring the latest eCommerce features, customers now expect immediate fulfilment of their demands.
  Action Item for Businesses: Keep track of the latest trends and ensure that they’re incorporated into your digital solutions at the earliest. Make agility and innovation your best friends!
3. Omnichannel Experience: Whether they’re visiting your store or scrolling your website, consumers now expect to have a consistent experience at every interaction.
  Action Item for Businesses: Ensure that all your processes are integrated at every level so that you’re able to provide a clear, accurate, and consistent experience across all channels.

Today, an Indian homegrown brand could easily be discovered by a teen from California, USA. At the same time, someone from the Philippines could order high-end cosmetics from a store in the UK.

While digitization opens up various doors for businesses, it also poses the challenge of maintaining and optimizing customer experience in a highly dynamic environment.

You need to be alert, agile, and super-quick – everything that low-code technology can achieve.

Low-code technology can reduce the turnaround time by 90% and empowers citizen developers to bring their viewpoint in application development. With low-code, you can innovate, adapt and scale at a quick pace.

3 Ways To Improve Customer Experience With Low-Code

If you’re still in a dilemma about the role of low-code in enhancing customer experience, the following examples will clarify it for you.

Deploy omnichannel commerce in lesser time

Christelijke Mutualiteiten (CM) is Belgium’s largest health insurance fund that serves 4.5 million customers and acts as the country’s biggest patient representative.

For years, it relied on its network of 500 branches to serve its ever-increasing number of customers. However, they decided to transform their business model with changing times and resort to a digital customer experience solution to serve their clientele better.

An omnichannel digital suite would take their services to the customers making the overall experience more convenient and user-friendly. They wanted to choose a technology that could deploy faster and focus on customer experience for their digital transformation.

Keeping these priorities in mind, they developed their digital solutions with OutSystems.

Backed by the power of low-code, they launched a mobile app and a web portal in only 9 months! With visual development capabilities and a library of responsive visual templates, their digital solution adapts quickly to user feedback and ensures a better user experience.

Their decision to choose low-code technology for their milestone project and its success proves that it can simplify omnichannel solutions and empower business operations with consistency and integration.

And this is the need of the hour!

With traditional software development, this entire process would take quite a long time. Low-code technology, however, reduces the time-to-market with a rich library of pre-set themes and pre-coded templates.

Create consistent and connected experience across all channels

Sam is a regular at your brick-and-mortar store and wins a coupon at a lucky draw in one of your outlets. He tries to use the coupon at your online store, but to his surprise, your eCommerce website doesn’t accept it.

Do you think Sam would remain as loyal to your brand? The answer is, unfortunately, no.

According to a study, 9 out of 10 customers expect a consistent experience across all channels from a brand. And to do so, you need to have seamless integration across processes and distributed teams.

If a customer interacts and shares information with your store representative in London, your email marketing specialist working from Dubai must be able to access the same data. This transparency reduces confusion, accelerates delivery time, and enables hassle-free customer service.

However, the process of enterprise-level integration is time-consuming and complex with traditional development methods. Technologies like low-code help build a single source of truth for all your organizational needs – in lesser time and with more simplicity.

For example, Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) Group, UK’s third-largest building society, adopted OutSystems to develop a fast consumer-friendly application with a new online mortgage calculator and a savings account. At present, the app provides service to customers at 40% faster rate than their legacy system.

Understand and solve customer pain points in real-time

Low-code technology has given rise to a new crop of developers – those who are not well-versed with traditional coding but have a deep understanding of what the end customers need. They’re called citizen developers.

Low-code features like visual development based on the drag-and-drop model empower non-IT team members to leverage their insights and contribute to application development. As a result, an organization has more resources to rely on and a fresh perspective towards solution effectiveness.

Since citizen developers think from a customer’s point of view, their approach is usually more client-focused, pragmatic, and agile. They act as a bridge between an organization’s technical expertise and business acumen.

By leveraging the capabilities of citizen developers, an organization can save time and costs while maximizing business productivity and customer satisfaction.

Final Takeaway

Low-code technology ramps up the development time by at least 51%, shows a 2X increase in delivery speed and provides more breathing space to your IT team.

The agile delivery and customer-facing approach propagated by low-code technology ensure that the application development process puts the end customer first. When it comes to creating customer experiences, nothing matters more than the needs of your target market, and low-code development ensures that you’re able to put it on the top of your priority list!

With low-code capabilities, your business could build clear, easy-to-follow, and immersive customer journeys.

There is no doubt that online retail has taken the world by storm. By the end of 2021, there will be more than 2.6 billion online shoppers worldwide- a staggering 1/3th of the entire world’s population. Considering the growing online customer base and the rapid development of the eCommerce market, more and more retailers require solutions that help them stay ahead of customer expectations, maintain a fast pace with the changing eCommerce sector, and deliver a personalized experience at all times.

SFCC Salesforce Commerce Cloud fulfills all such demands. This highly scalable cloud-based SaaS eCommerce platform helps retailers access the best-in-class features and user-centric functionalities to provide customers with a seamless customer service experience online and in stores. In addition, it allows you to scale your business, explore new markets, expand beyond geographical boundaries, and present your brand in the best light on a global level. In all its simplicity, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and its innovative attributes not just help retailers to flourish and thrive but take their business to the next level.

What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

Known as Demandware before its acquisition, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) is a software-as-a-service or SaaS eCommerce platform that unifies the way retailers engage with their customers across any channel and device- social, web, store, and mobile. Its suite of features, helpful tools, and eCommerce solutions revolutionizes how brands connect with their customers at every stage of their buying journey. And not just that, it creates a seamless transitioning experience from one channel to the other so that a brand is supported across every medium and engagement touchpoints.

All in all, Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform transforms brand-customer relationships by streamlining user purchasing processes, personalizing shopping experiences, and creating on-the-go mobile buying moments.

With the rapid shifts in a consumer’s buying habits and behavior along with the technology used to make new purchases, brands are in desperate need of a one-size-fits-it-all platform with an omnichannel familiarity that helps them establish a superior control over a customer’s buying decisions via prompt customer service and data analytics. And Salesforce Commerce Cloud helps achieve such goals.

Using Salesforce’s cloud-based SaaS eCommerce platform, retailers can incorporate multiple channels and touchpoints to their sales and marketing distribution to stay competitive, offer comfortable and easy mobile shopping eCommerce solutions, and pitch products to a global audience.

What are SFCC Salesforce Commerce Cloud Features?

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a Salesforce Digital 360 component, offers a plethora of features and functionality for managing a physical and online business, delivering personalized omnichannel shopping experiences, and allowing merchants to make predictive analysis-driven business decisions.

The SFCC platform provides open commerce API (OCAPI) consisting of three components:

Shop API: Enables frontend website interactions like browsing products or completing purchases
Data API: It is used to access backend system resources like customer lists or product inventory
Meta API: Allows access to details about the resources and documents provided by open commerce API like the custom attributes

The following are the main features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform:

Commerce Cloud Digital:

It includes several out-of-the-box tools, frameworks, and features required to develop responsive eCommerce solutions for social, web, mobile, online, and store. Commerce Cloud Digital allows you to launch your online store on social media for your vast audience, build optimized and conversion-oriented mobile stores that reduce cart abandonment rates, and code branded apps for your customers.

Storefront architecture:

Quickly build user-friendly SaaS eCommerce solutions within no time using Commerce Cloud’s advanced framework. You can employ the pre-designed wireframes, available tools, and performance-driven integrations to customize, scale, and maintain your online store as per your business needs.

Salesforce Einstein AI:

Salesforce-embedded Einstein AI collects user data throughout their journey, analyzes it against a pre-established set of parameters, builds various data models for testing, and trains the system on huge data sets. Augmenting the power of artificial intelligence, NLP, predictive analysis, and machine learning, Einstein AI provides predictions and recommendations based on the previous customer behavior like browsed products, frequent user search queries, and buying interests. Features like search directories, predictive sort, product recommendations, and commerce insights help merchants to forge conversion-driven marketing strategies and serve their customers with relevant cloud-based eCommerce solutions.

Endless Aisle and Order Management:

As per its ‘buy, service, and fulfill anywhere’ ideology, Commerce Cloud allows you to manage customer orders, both physical, web, app, or social, right from the time they’re placed to the time they’re delivered. In addition, it helps brands fulfill order requests from global customers, automate payment processes, and manage returns and cancellations.

Endless Aisle allows physical retail owners to offer infinite product choices and integrate digital commerce in their stores. Customers can access an entire product inventory across several channels and locations digitally, which ultimately, encourages frequent user purchases and eliminates product sales due to no stock availability.

Content Management:

Build long-term relationships with your customers by delivering engaging content suited to the product buying phenomenon. Using Commerce Cloud, you can provide your customers with relevant learning materials at every stage of their buying journey.

Commerce Cloud integrations:

Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s LINK technology allows merchants to leverage certified third-party integrations. As a result, they can choose from hundreds of easily integrated pre-built innovations like payment gateway, virtual fitting rooms, email marketing, tax calculation based on region, etc., without depending much on the IT team. Employing these unique customizations, brands can deliver personalized shopping experiences across several geographies.

A multi-tenant cloud-based eCommerce platform:

SFCC or Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a centrally scalable, easily maintainable, heavily reliable cloud-based eCommerce platform with a single codebase. This cloud architecture allows multiple users to share resources in their allocated space resulting in fewer bug fixes, a stable software structure, minor service operation disruptions, and better data security. In addition, this model allows retailers to deliver and implement new features seamlessly, accelerate growth, and maintain pace with the changing retail shopping environment.

A highly customizable eCommerce platform:

It boasts various design templates, open-source commerce APIs, and development tools to allow developers with little to no coding experience code highly engaging customer-friendly eCommerce websites. In addition, since Commerce Cloud is now a part of Salesforce, merchants can integrate CRM and marketing-based SaaS services to your solution set. Also, they can merge customer data across all digital channels at a single location to derive valuable insights about customers at one platform.

A full-fledged Salesforce ecosystem:

World’ #1 CRM, Salesforce assists customers across marketing, sales, customer service, commerce, etc., sectors. It partners with premier business software platforms like Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud, all of which integrate seamlessly with Commerce Cloud to power customer journeys right from brand awareness to customer retention.

What are Salesforce Commerce Cloud benefits?

Commerce Cloud offers some of the most exceptional features for brands that wish to create, orchestrate, and deliver personalized digital experiences across several channels, including web, mobile, social, and in-store.

Drive sales with Commerce Cloud’s innovative technology:

Every online business wants a website that can support its growing customer base and scale as per the requirements. Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s powerful technology bridges the gap between brands and consumers. The platform’s scalable and agile capabilities support over half a billion individual shopping site visits each month globally. An offering from the world’s #1 eCommerce platform Salesforce, Commerce Cloud’s limitless versatility and flexibility suit the business needs of both B2B and B2C retailers.

Empowered with predictive intelligence, the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform navigates a user’s actions, collects information, and rapidly analyzes it to derive actionable insights. When you know your customers better, you are bound to make more customer-centric decisions. Commerce Cloud, along with its Einstein Artificial Intelligence, help brands gain valuable insights about their customer, assist them throughout their customer journeys, extend personalized experiences that are seamlessly and effortlessly integrated across all channels and platforms.

Einstein performs some of the most predictive tasks for brands, like product recommendations based on browsing history, generate personalized suggestions for every consumer in real-time, employ data-driven insights to boost site conversions, and automate merchandising tasks to save time and effort.

Enhanced B2B eCommerce capabilities:

Commerce Cloud can extend a B2C shopping experience to a B2B brand. The omnichannel platform allows retailers to share product information, images, videos, and content across several channels, sites, and categories. Commerce Cloud then breaks it down as per user geography- a deviation from the previously prevalent B2B eCommerce setup. Using its tools, retailers can distribute similar content to their users belonging to different regions while customizing currencies, tax calculations, and page language as per their location. Therefore, Commerce Cloud removes all the insignificant barriers and complexity, bringing brands and customers together on a single eCommerce platform.

Top of the line unified customer service and experience:

Since Commerce Cloud branches from Salesforce, the world’s leading CRM platform, it supports customer journeys across commerce, marketing, sales, communities, customer service, and more. More so, the Salesforce Commerce Cloud homes several premier enterprise software platforms like the Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Sales Cloud- all of which form a seamlessly integrated architecture to empower websites with every assistance they need through a customer’s eCommerce journey. From awareness and interest to action and retention, Commerce Cloud provides a unified customer experience. Such a powerful SaaS eCommerce platform not just sets up, manages, maintains, and grows your online business but supports your social and brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Even so, it allows retail stores to connect with mobile shoppers, offer discounts, sell in-store products to online customers, unify the in-store and digital inventory, and ship products to customers in real-time from any location to every location around the world.

A focus on a mobile-optimized store:

There is a rapid transition from shopping for products on our computers to browsing stores via mobile. More than 60% of retail visits worldwide are made through mobiles, which is why having a responsive mobile-optimized store is the need of the hour.

Commerce Cloud takes a mobile-first approach. From selling in-store to running a successful online store, it helps throughout the process. It optimizes your retail store for social and mobile selling, digitally manages product inventory for all the channels on a single cloud-based eCommerce solution, and ensures a seamless and hassle-free product experience for retailers and customers alike.

Endless Customizations:

Using Commerce Cloud, you can use the pre-defined templates to create a unique brand experience for your customers. For example, you can implement infinite customizations to your store from product pages and payment options to the checkout process. In addition, Salesforce is one of the first digital commerce solutions to include Apple Play for online purchases. Such specific Salesforce Commerce Cloud features create streamlined, straightforward, and effortless checkout moments for the customers.

An all-in-one marketing platform:

From content creation to marketing, launching campaigns, running promotions, and testing them for optimized conversions without any technical assistance, Commerce Cloud can do it all.

The eCommerce platform allows you to optimize conversions as per a customer’s search intent. This way, you can recommend a user the most searched products or ones they browse the most; hence, increasing product sales and profitability margins.

Along with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud handles all your marketing efforts-from paid advertising to email campaigns, and social media marketing for every touchpoint and channel.

Conclusion

With customer satisfaction becoming an utmost priority for merchants, there is a severe need for eCommerce solutions that fulfill such demands, fosters positive brand-customer relationship, and secures a lead in the competitive eCommerce landscape.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform is everything your retail business needs, and what it lacks or misses is accomplished with its seamless integration to the Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud. Manage multiple brand sites, explore new markets, open new eCommerce stores, and extend a unified customer experience with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. All you have to do is look for a trusted Salesforce Commerce Cloud partner who is well versed with the platform’s capabilities and can help you make the most out of it.

Want to know more about what Salesforce Commerce Cloud can do for your brand?

With SFCC in action, your band stays ahead of the curve, always.

Ranosys, a global OutSystems Implementation Partner, is organizing a free career webinar- Journey to OutSystems on 30 June 2021 at 4:30 pm (IST). It is led by Vineet Swami, Delivery Manager-OutSystems, and Sayona Purohit, Marketing Executive-OutSystems from Ranosys.

This webinar approaches the growing prominence of low-code technology for building enterprise-grade applications, the growth prospects in this field, and how one can build a successful career in this field backed by OutSystems- the world’s leading low-code platform.

So, why do you need this webinar in the first place?

The IT industry is the most dynamic and agile industrial segment globally, one that is under constant experimentation and observation. Over the last few years, several tools and technologies have helped organizations to operate in complex environments and manage heterogeneous stacks. As enterprises diversified, new tools came into being, new goals were set, and new milestones were strived to be achieved, which made the traditional programming environments obsolete.

Unlike the earlier days, when legacy systems could support a business’ needs, their lack of digital agility, slower application delivery speed, and reduced time to value demanded by the modern software development industry makes them inefficient and unfit in the modern market. Companies today know the importance of digital transformation and how necessary it is to leverage technology that modernizes and improves the efficiency of the existing business model and embraces innovation to change or respond to changes that affect enterprise productivity. All of these reasons, coupled with hyper-automation that integrates functional and process silos to automate and augment business processes with advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and offer customers with relevant products and services at every touchpoint, necessitated the need for low-code solutions like OutSystems.

Low-code technology reduces hand-coding requirements for applications by providing building blocks to create innovative workflows. These pre-coded cartlidges remove the need to code actions and commands, allowing even non-IT enthusiasts to create enterprise-grade applications with utmost flexibility and scalability. One such leading low-code solution provider is OutSystems- a modern application platform designed to accelerate the development of the most mission-critical applications while ensuring limitless flexibility and efficiency. OutSystems’ low-code platform fulfills all modern enterprise demands and adapts the current legacy infrastructure to the modern software development capabilities. From customer experience transformation to application modernization, process automation, or workplace innovation, OutSystems supports and accomplishes all business objectives.

However, the advantages of OutSystems aren’t limited to this. Its low-code platform sparks the emergence of a new group of developers called citizen developers. Also called citizen admins, these developers are not skilled in software development but know how to solve a business challenge and are keen to do it. Since OutSystems’ platform already has abstract block codes ready, citizen developers can build innovative applications and workflows fast, deploy them in the market faster and rapidly solve all customer and enterprise demands. For IT enthusiasts and professional developers who wish to learn low-code development and build enterprise-grade software solutions, there is no better career opportunity than OutSystems. As more and more organizations embrace the low-code power of OutSystems and increasingly employ it to accomplish their digital transformation goals, non-IT candidates can chart a rewarding career path in the same field and become an inspiration for many.

If you’re interested in becoming an enterprise software developer, then there has been no better time than now to build a successful career in this field, backed by OutSystems.

What you’ll learn:

What is low-code technology, and why is it the future of software development? Low-code development offers speed, agility, decreases coding time, offers higher productivity, improves customer experience, and allows seamless modifications- all of which make it easy for enterprises to develop flexible apps and get specific tasks done.
What makes OutSystems’ low-code platform a great career option? While OutSystems allows enterprises to leverage new technologies and keep up with the market’s changing needs, is it a good career option for developers? What makes OutSystems the best career choice?
The career prospects of being an OutSystems developer. Why should you pick this low-code development platform? What makes it different from the other similar platforms?
Discuss the OutSystems-related growth opportunities. What does the future look like for an OutSystems developer? What will be your career trajectory if you choose a profession as an OutSystems developer?
How Ranosys can help you succeed as an OutSystems developer. Ranosys, a global OutSystems Implementation Partner, is one of the few companies to popularize the idea of low-code development and build enterprise-level solutions for renowned clients like Adani. Their immense expertise and experience in building low-code applications for ambitious brands is one reason why they are the best solution provider in this field.

Our Speakers:

Vineet Swami is a low-code enthusiast and an OutSystems Evangelist. He’s been associated with OutSystems’s low-code development platform for the last 5 years and has overseen some of the most critical enterprise-grade app development and deployment. In his free time, you’ll find him speaking at events and webinars- teaching professional and prospective developers about the benefits of OutSystems and how it transformed his career.

Sayona Purohit is an avid OutSystems Marketing Executive who loves to study and research the platform’s innovative technology and employ her expert insights to help clients achieve a competitive edge.

Post the webinar; you’ll have a better understanding of the low-code technology, its growth prospects, and how you can leverage OutSystems to build a successful career as a developer. You’ll know why low-code is the future of enterprise application development, how you should forge a successful low-code developer career, the benefits of learning OutSystems’ low-code platform, the job opportunities in this field, and its future. As per Gartner, the low-code development market will reach $13.8 billion in 2021. So, if you want to build a rewarding career in the same field using OutSystems, this webinar is for you.

Join us on 30 June 2021 at 4:30 pm (IST) to learn more about this career opportunity.

Book your free slot here: https://bit.ly/3vxV7Rr.

See you at the webinar!

Want to learn what’s next in enterprise application development?

Ranosys, an award-winning Adobe Solutions Partner, organizes a free webinar- Acquire and convert B2B clients with Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo on June 24, 2021, at 11:00 AM (BST). It is led by Maurizio Stella, Director of Commerce, and Praneet Kaur, Marketo Consultant from Ranosys.

This webinar discusses the key challenges faced by modern marketers in today’s complex B2B ecosystem, how Magento Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo’s combined potential can remedy those challenges and improve B2B client acquisition and conversion efforts.

So, why do you need this webinar in the first place?

A customer’s online journey consists of several stages: awareness, interest, desire, action, and retention. First, a customer becomes aware of your brand. Second, they show an interest in your offerings. Third, they express a desire to purchase your offerings. Fourth, they complete their purchases, turning from prospects to customers. And fifth, is when your marketing strategies are able to retain a customer and encourage them to repeat their purchases.

Throughout this journey, a customer comes in contact with a brand several times, at different stages of the marketing funnel for different reasons. However, the tedious thing for brands and marketers is to know a customer’s stage in the journey before pitching them with relevant content, services, and products. Even if you can decipher a customer’s current stage, figuring out how to nurture them in their present stage while engaging and encouraging them to move to the next stage is a monumental task.

Customers know their worth, and they also know what they want. So, unless you’re aware of their interests, desires, behavior, demographic information, and other similar details that play a part in bringing customers to a marketing funnel and pushing them into it, you need a more robust marketing approach than a simple traditional lead nurturing campaign. You need to customize every customer conversation and offer a seamless product experience at every touchpoint and stage of a customer’s online journey. The lack of proper customer engagement strategies and personalized communications leads to incomplete purchases or cart abandonment, ultimately hampering your B2B sales, conversion rates, ROI figures, and B2B client engagement strategies.

But that’s not it- the modern B2B buyers are so inspired by the sleek B2C online buying experiences that it has become imperative for brands to optimize their B2B online buying process and offer something similar on the lines.

That said, the big question that brands and marketers have is: how do we bring back those prospects to the marketing funnel and convert them into customers?

For starters, brands need a marketing strategy that considers the existing customers and their needs along with the prospects who could have turned into customers had they not left their carts astray. The lost interest of a prospect becomes even more challenging for a B2B business that already deals with a very compact client base. Since offering seamless and engaging B2B end-to-end customer experience is always a top priority for marketers, the only way to achieve such goals is to combine lead nurturing campaigns with the power of marketing automation to automate and personalize customer engagements.

As a B2B brand marketer, you need to assess your professional buyer’s current and future needs and advise them on how you meet them. Buyers today don’t just buy products; they buy experiences. And positive product experiences lead to an increase in customer satisfaction, boost your chances of being selected as a vendor, and future-proof your business, all while unlocking the additional benefits of digital commerce.

Brands can achieve all these goals and more by connecting the potential of their commerce and marketing automation platforms. Even if you have achieved excellent B2B results from Magento Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo platforms individually, together, they have the power to deliver the right content, at the right time, on the right channel, to the right customer every time, ultimately leading to higher conversions and better ROIs.

What you’ll learn:

In this webinar, the speakers address:

A B2B customer’s online buying journey: awareness, interest, desire, action & retention stages. Every stage is governed by some set rules and activities to ensure a customer stays immersed in the marketing funnel. A marketer’s goal is to encourage them to move to the next stage of the B2B buying process.

The key challenges faced by marketers in today’s digital complex B2B ecosystem. No enterprise can afford to lose a customer’s interest. This section discusses the various aspects of an online customer experience that interests a B2B buyer: easier and faster checkout process, auto-repeat ordering, quicker delivery, tracking option, relevant resources, and more.

How Adobe Commerce and Marketo Engage can remedy those challenges. The unique features of both these platforms together creates a robust B2B client acquisition and conversion strategy that brings your customers through the buying journey seamlessly.
How to acquire and convert more B2B clients using these platforms together. When your enterprise employs both Magento Adobe Commerce and Marketo Engage together, you can track every customer throughout their buying journey and create nurturing campaigns that are more customizable and relatable.

Our Speakers:

Maurizio Stella is known for his innovative and customer-centric eCommerce approach. His motto in life: to help companies define, develop, maintain and grow enterprise eCommerce solutions.

Praneet Kaur Bhasin, an avid Marketo Consultant, helps enterprises reap benefits from the marketing automation platform. She offers the best-practice advice, hands-on assistance and strategic guidance you need.

Post the webinar; you’ll have a better understanding of a B2B customer’s online journey, B2B marketing automation, and how to offer a practical B2B on-site customer experience with Magento Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo Engage. As a result, you’ll finally be able to crack the bottlenecks in your B2B client acquisition and conversion strategy and overcome them.

With B2B buyers’ growing familiarity with digital commerce channels for online purchases, it is only a matter of time before all B2B purchases happen via an eCommerce platform. It is both a lucrative and tedious opportunity for a brand, depending on how you see it. Even if you’re happy with your B2B eCommerce sales, there is always room for improvement. Digital commerce combined with marketing automation only betters your connection with your customers and ensures that they remain brand loyal always. So, don’t miss out on an insightful learning opportunity!

Join our webinar where we walk you through the combined potential of Magento Adobe Commerce and Adobe Marketo Engage, and how it enhances your B2B client acquisition strategies and conversion approach.

Book your free slot here: https://bit.ly/3gtgWNR.

See you there!

Discover what Adobe Commerce and Marketo combined can do for your business.

Harness the true power of digital commerce and marketing automation.

Ranosys, a global Salesforce Implementation Partner, is organizing a free career webinar- How to build a rockstar career with Salesforce Commerce Cloud on June 26, 2021, at 4:00 PM (IST). It invites prominent speakers like Umashankar Arora, VP-Engineering, and Varun Agrawal, Lead Solution Architect from Ranosys.

This webinar approaches the rising prominence of digital commerce development in the IT sector, the growth opportunities in this division, and how budding or professional developers can follow it as a career path backed by an eCommerce offering from the world’s #1 CRM platform- Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

So, why do you need this webinar in the first place?

2020 has been an accelerant for the IT industry, especially the eCommerce sector, expected to reach 4.89 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021-end. Undoubtedly, this figure will grow over the next few years as more online retailers practice borderless eCommerce solutions.

Even before the pandemic, the eCommerce industry was already on a growth and expansion track. However, the global-wide lockdowns acted as a catalyst for its adoption. With more and more people staying and working from homes and shopping online for goods and services, enterprises witnessed a massive surge in their product demand by as much as five years. As a result, even organizations that were not thinking of going online saw profits in the digital market and sped up their digital commerce efforts.

As an increased number of shoppers accessed the internet to buy things, brands faced an apparent need to modernize their traditional systems and adopt platforms that could fulfill consumer demands and offer a fantastic shopping experience simultaneously. These aspects, coupled with the rise of mobile commerce, cross-border selling, and eCommerce market expansion, led to rapid growth in the eCommerce industry.

With more brands starting to look for eCommerce platforms that can replicate their brick and mortar stores, sell beyond geographical boundaries, and offer a seamless product experience to their customers, there is an obvious need for developers and IT professionals who could support this business expansion and cater to their ever-increasing customer base. One such popular eCommerce platform that helps grow online business and build meaningful customer relationships is Salesforce Commerce Cloud. An offering from the world’s No.1 CRM platform, Salesforce- Commerce Cloud delivers convenient commerce solutions that turn leads into customers to repeat customers.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a highly scalable cloud-based SaaS or software-as-a-service platform that allows developers to build personalized commerce experiences for their customers. Boasting an online community of developers all over the world, Salesforce Commerce Cloud enables them to learn, engage and help each other build what’s next in commerce. Features like order management, AI-enabled predictive analytics for better product recommendations to the customers, engaging commerce experiences, and personalized campaigns exceed brand goals and customer expectations. It is why renowned brands like Coca-Cola, Boggi, Cargill, Stonewall Kitchen, and Univar Solutions adopt the SFCC platform to stay competitive, fulfill customer interests, and create seamless eCommerce moments that inspire and convert today’s connected shoppers.

However, there is a vast gap between the platform and its practitioners, a lucrative career opportunity for talented professionals who wish to learn the SFCC platform and forge a successful Salesforce career. As more and more brands adopt the powerful and flexible SFCC platform, there will be an increase in demand for developers who can build solutions that personalize customer relationships, grow an in-store and online business, and adapt it to modern customer needs. If you’re interested in the prospect of having a Salesforce career path, then there has been no better time than now to build a successful career in this field, backed by Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

What you’ll learn:

In this webinar, the speakers address:

What makes eCommerce development a perfect career choice. The growing prominence of the eCommerce sector due to its flexible, scalable, and easy way to connect with customers and offer them a meaningful experience has led several brands, big and small, to employ eCommerce platforms and launch their online stores.
What is Salesforce, and how world’s #1 CRM accelerates your professional growth? Salesforce is a proven leader in the digital commerce arenas. Its powerful eCommerce platform backed by AI-based analytics, data integration, automated delivery and payment process, endless aisle management, etc., allows brands to seamlessly manage their customers across expansive geographical boundaries, turn customers into loyalists, and offer personalized shopping experiences.
Why choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud development as a career path? What makes SFCC the best career choice for you? The speakers answer questions pertaining to the SFCC platform and why it is the best career opportunity for you.
How to fast-track the learning and become an SFCC expert? This section discusses your career trajectory as an SFCC professional and how to become a lead solution architect.
The growth opportunities surrounding Salesforce Commerce Cloud. What are the learning prospects in this field, and what does the future look like as an SFCC expert?

Our Speakers:

Umashankar Arora is known for his two decade long knowledge regarding Salesforce, OutSystems, Microsoft, and other core technologies. With 18 years of experience in product management, agile scrum development, application architecture in IT solutions, and application development, Umashankar coaches and trains developers who wish to career in the eCommerce sector.

Varun Agrawal has over 9 years of experience as a Principal Solution Architect in Salesforce. He is known for his innovative approach, eCommerce competency, and strategic thinking that helps to solve eCommerce bottlenecks and issues with platform migration.

Post the webinar; you’ll have better insights into the eCommerce industry, its growth opportunities, and how you can leverage Salesforce Commerce Cloud to build a rewarding career for yourself. You’ll know where to start from, how to get a Salesforce job, what to expect from SFCC, and how to make yourself known in this profession. If you’re staring in the 4.8 trillion U.S. dollars barrel and wondering how you can make a long-term career in it, this webinar will clarify all questions and doubts for you. There is always a need for innovative developers who could implement the solutions their customers need, and you can be one of them.

Join us on June 26, 2021, at 4:00 PM (IST) to learn more about this lucrative Salesforce career opportunity.

Book your free slot here: https://bit.ly/3vxRET7.

See you there!

Want to make a career in Salesforce?

As per research, an average person has 80+ apps installed on their mobile phones and uses at least 9 of them every day. In fact, the need for software applications extends beyond your leisure time. Studies suggest that a modern worker uses 9.39 enterprise apps daily at their workplace too.

Truly, if the world had to have a renewed axis in 2021, it would be built on an app.

However, where does it leave the app developers? As the business world increasingly grows dependent on mobile apps, there is a dire need for rapid application development to enable seamless workflow in an organization. The traditional app development process, however, takes at least 3 to 9 months on average.

As a result, traditional practices make the application development process longer and thus, unfavorable to the demands of the modern business world. What we need today is a platform that brings together quicker deployment, a short development cycle and an easy-to-learn methodology.

And low-code development platforms like Microsoft PowerApps fit the bill perfectly!

Backed by the capabilities of Microsoft and the power of low code technology, PowerApps empower non-technical users to contribute to the process of enterprise app development and helps in speeding up the process by 2X.

In recent years, Microsoft PowerApps has emerged as a major catalyst in modern workplaces by accelerating digital transformation processes and facilitating intra-organizational transparency.

In this article, we discuss what sets PowerApps apart from its competitors in the field of enterprise apps and how it can be a gamechanger at work.

But, first, let’s find out more about PowerApps.

What is PowerApps?

Originally launched in 2015, MS PowerApps is a PaaS or Platform-as-a-service solution that enables quick development of professional-grade apps leveraging low-code technology. It is a part of the Microsoft Power Platform suite that also comprises Power BI, Power Automate and now Power Virtual Agents; however, they function equally well as a standalone entity.

With PowerApps, you can create mobile-first and user-centric enterprise applications that run on every device – be it iOS, Android, Microsoft or even your on-premise solutions. Using prebuilt templates and AI components along with a simple drag and drop feature, your organization can now be on its road to digitization with lower cost and quick deployment time.

PowerApps also enable your non-technical team members to participate in the development process – they are now known as citizen developers and their growing number vouches for their unique expertise.

Let’s find out who they are!

Citizen Developers – The PowerApp Revolutionaries

Thanks to PowerApps, organizations no longer have to rely on their IT department and professional coders to automate and digitize their business processes. They can now build an app development team of business users who have no prior coding or IT experience.

They’re called citizen developers and they have been successfully contributing to the development process backed by low-code and no-code capabilities. In recent times, new reports have emerged that prove that 60% of all custom apps are built outside the IT department with the help of low-code platforms and 80% of the firms agree that it’s a good practice.

Citizen developers reduce operational costs and provide much-needed breathing space to core developers so that they can focus on critical aspects. Moreover, they also bring in the business perspective in the process and prioritize end-user experience.

Using PowerApps, citizen developers can ramp up your digital transformation journey and streamline all your internal operations leveraging low-code capabilities.

This is the era of a hands-on approach and citizen developers allow non-technical users to get down and dirty in the otherwise restricted world of programming.

However, are the skills of citizen developers confined to PowerApps? Or they can leverage other low-code platforms for development?

The answer to this question is what you had expected – citizen developers can use any low-code platform. Then, what makes us stress on PowerApps for enterprise application development? Are there any specific advantages that MS PowerApps hold over other low-code platforms?

In the section below, we address these queries and explore how PowerApps is ideal for enterprise app development. Let’s begin.

Microsoft PowerApps – A New Game-Changer at Work

Co-established by famous songwriter Johnny Mercer in 1942, Capitol Music Group(CMG) has been the backbone behind the rise of pop culture and has promoted legendary artists like The Beatles, Katy Perry and Sam Smith over 75 years.

They managed world-class talent and their internal operation on a business-critical application built on InfoPath until they concluded that they require a sleek, automated and streamlined digital solution to thrive in the modern entertainment industry.

Finally, they migrated to MS Power Platform capabilities and achieved better collaboration, transparency, quick processes and a single source of truth for all their projects.

With PowerApps, they unlocked their true potential at work. Many such examples prove that MS PowerApps is the right choice for enterprise apps and we’ve curated a list of top reasons explaining its significance. Here are a few of them –

PowerApps is backed by Microsoft Capabilities

Microsoft needs no introduction in the business world and every workplace utilizes at least one Microsoft tool to perform their everyday task. From preparing spreadsheets to communicating with Outlook, our workday begins with Microsoft.

In such a scenario, it is only beneficial that the enterprise apps are built on a Microsoft platform like PowerApps. It makes their integration with other organizational tools like Microsoft Dynamic CRM, office 365 and Azure easier.

PowerApps makes third-party integration easier

PowerApps also has easy connectors for third-party applications like Salesforce, DropBox, Slack, OneDrive and popular apps like Twitter. Similarly, seamless integration with on-premise database systems such as SharePoint, Oracle, SAP and SQL is also quicker and simpler.

As a result, you spend less time unifying your business processes and more time on reaping the many benefits of having a digitized workplace.

PowerApps follow a mobile-first approach

One of the biggest reasons why enterprise applications are not yet at par with customer apps is that they’re not built with responsiveness and are limited to on-premise solutions and desktops.

Even though many organizations have rolled out mobile apps for their employees, they are rarely optimized for mobile screens and face major integration challenges with other digital processes of the organization.

Let’s admit – many organizations still depend on open-source legacy resources and their replicas for their day-to-day operations. Only a platform like PowerApps with Microsoft capabilities and integrations can eliminate these chaos and bring coherence to business operations with a responsive solution.

Moreover, PowerApps is developed with a mobile-first approach. First, it ensures that your enterprise apps are responsive on all devices and platforms and then, focus on desktop apps.

PowerApps break down data silos and enable collaboration

Today, data runs the world and it is spread across various platforms and devices. Your business-critical data may be stored in dynamic 365 or your account details may be recorded in a spreadsheet.

Often, enterprise applications fail to take the presence of cluttered data into account and thus, end up being less useful than they set out to be. With PowerApps, you can overcome this drawback and develop applications that enable seamless connectivity and collaboration.

For example, a sales executive on the field can depend on the customer data stored on Dynamic 365 with the help of their mobile app. Similarly, an accountant can utilize her spreadsheets to build an app and automate her tasks.

PowerApps bring together the people, processes and data of an organization under one umbrella with ease. Whether it’s a database system or a single archived on your organizational email, PowerApps ensure that no silo comes in between your business and digitization.

Conclusion

PowerApps enable end-users to create applications that would benefit them in the long run. It encourages innovation at all levels, promotes cross-team collaboration and transforms productivity for the better – all of this without compromising on the performance.

For an organization, it results in a win-win situation where they not only save time and costs but also enable knowledge exchange between departments, breakdown of technical barriers and establish a healthy work culture.

PowerApps merge the power of low-code with the reliability of Microsoft – a combination that promises agility, scalability and future-ready performance!

So, if you have been looking for a platform that helps you build enterprise applications at scale, then, PowerApps is your answer.

Meanwhile, if you would like detailed consultation with a Microsoft partner who can help you derive the maximum value from PowerApps, feel free to reach out to us.

Ranosys, a leading digital commerce agency, is now the latest Shopify Plus Services Partner in the Asia-Pacific.

Ranosys is a global software development company headquartered in Singapore with offices in the US, UK, UAE, and 3 India-based delivery centers. Ranosys’ core business is providing scalable, reliable, and affordable eCommerce, Digital Transformation, and Software Product Engineering to clients worldwide. Since 2008, the flexible delivery approaches and experienced consultants of Ranosys have delivered projects on time and on budget enabling them to become the technology partner of choice for many organizations across Asia, Europe, the US, and the Middle East.

As a Shopify Plus Services Partner, Ranosys will be able to offer businesses scalable, world-class eCommerce solutions that will transform a merchant’s digital capabilities, place them ahead of customer demands, and deliver impressive experiences to fast-forward ROIs. Ranosys is set to provide best-in-class solutions to emerging brands and high-end businesses looking for a robust enterprise commerce platform built for speed and flexibility.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys, said, “We are thrilled to officially become a Shopify Plus partner. We have always focused on adopting a customer-centric approach, and becoming a certified Shopify Plus Partner will help us to offer end-to-end integrated digital commerce solutions to our clients with a limitless, reliable, and intuitive platform like Shopify Plus.”

With over a decade of experience in delivering comprehensive commerce solutions to leading brands in the fashion & apparel, consumer retail, and food & beverage sectors, Ranosys will be able to support Shopify Plus merchants looking to scale their business with a wide array of services including designing commerce strategy, mobile commerce, customization, integration and managed support services.

“Shopify Plus powers commerce for the world’s fastest growing and most innovative brands like Allbirds, Secret Lab, Gymshark, ONE Championship and JB HiFi with the tools they need for a seamless omni-channel experience,” said Neel Bhatt, Head of Partnerships, SEA at Shopify Plus. “We are delighted to welcome Ranosys as the newest APAC Shopify Plus partner, which will give our merchants access to its digital commerce expertise.”

The innovative digital commerce solutions of Ranosys have assisted several globally renowned brands to achieve their digital transformation goals, place a well-integrated unified digital ecosystem, and implement technologies of tomorrow. Leveraging the power of the Shopify Plus platform, Ranosys is now well-positioned to revolutionize both retailer and customer journeys by curating a digital commerce solution that helps brands accelerate revenue growth.

About Ranosys

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com/

Or, fill the form and shoot us an email at sales@ranosys.com

For any organization, their sales numbers depict their longevity and survival in the market. If sales don’t bring in more clients, leads, or customers, your business will be as good as closed as open. However, when it comes to B2B lead generation strategies, there are massive hits and massive failures. With the cut-throat competition, it isn’t as easy to retain old clients than to bring in new ones.

So, how can you boost your lead numbers?

The trick is to work smarter, not harder.

And that smart decision for your business, especially for lead generation, is investing in a marketing automation tool.

Marketing automation is a technology that helps you automate, streamline, measure, and analyze your goals, tasks, and workflows. By embracing the intelligence of marketing automation, you spend less time and effort in tediously managing your lead generation campaigns and more time focusing on how to turn your prospects into customers.

With marketing automation doing the heavy lifting for you, you’ll achieve much more than quality leads- a steady clientele.

How marketing automation impacts lead generation?

In a marketing funnel, lead generation is related to lead nurturing- a step that requires you to nurture leads and maintain positive relations with them until they are ready to turn into an actual customer.

This is where marketing automation comes in.

It allows you to personalize your lead management and nurturing campaigns, convert website visitors into prospects, increase sales, and make the brand look more customer-friendly.

From a visitor landing on your website to structuring email campaigns to nurture them for sales and eventually converting them to customers- a marketing automation tool supports you throughout the lead generation process.

Want to know more about how marketing automation impacts lead generation?

Improves lead effectiveness:

The best part of using a marketing automation tool is that it allows you to personalize your interactions with your leads based on their personal information and the current stage in the marketing funnel. This personalization makes the lead generation process more targeted and appropriate. Then, you can design campaigns using marketing automation for the relevant customer base, making the lead generation workflow incredibly powerful. The automation part of the process takes over all the repetitive tasks, keeping your leads engaged and active during the entire sales cycle.

Know your visitors better:

Marketing automation allows you to gather online customer behavior, actions, and interests. Using all these details, brands can gain deep insights into a customer’s demographic, their background, and preferences and facilitate their connection with them.

What is their preferred channel?

What is their preferred content type?

How frequently do they open their emails?

What type of marketing message should you pitch?

At what point in the marketing funnel do they convert?

You can answer all such questions and more using the customer information collected by an automation tool. Ultimately, marketing automation helps you learn more about your customers than you ever could before.

Test copies before pitching them:

Marketing automation includes A/B testing and multivariate testing solutions to optimize content copies and garner conversion-oriented responses from the audience. Such testing takes into account an email’s design, subject line, headline, CTAs, offers, discounts, and content flow. It allows you to personalize and tweak your emails so that they address the pain points of your customers. With more responsive emails, brands not only boosts their engagement rates but improves campaign results monumentally.

Using a marketing automation tool, marketers can restructure their previous lead generation campaigns to derive better and improved results.

Improve the connection between marketing and sales:

To generate efficient and effective leads, you need a proper mix of sales and marketing, from sharing data to executing strategies. With the correct customer data, your marketing campaigns can quickly turn leads into sales. In addition, marketing automation prevents data duplication between the sales and marketing teams by aligning their goals for lead conversions and ROI improvements.

With better alignment between the sales and marketing departments, prospects can be nurtured by the marketing team until the time they are ready to convert, at which point, they will be sent to the sales team and vice versa. This results in deeper customer insights and accelerated visitors to customers conversion.

How to Automate Lead Generation Strategies Using Marketing Automation?

The following are the top practices that boost lead generation via marketing automation.

Way #1: Dynamic Landing Pages

Dynamic landing pages are a great way to turn leads into customers without first capturing them as a lead. This way, you get to connect with prospects interested in your products or services.

Using marketing automation, you can design landing pages specific to an audience group or a particular consumer. These dynamic pages showcase different content, website designs, messages, or CTAs for other users based on their preferences, interests, and online behavior.

Personalized landing pages help PPC campaigns more than organic searches since the variables are small, and the campaigns are precise. It allows you to address customer pain points and show them exactly what they want.

Way #2: Automated email campaigns

When it comes to lead generation, email campaigns are the most powerful. However, there are two different types of emails you can automate:

Trigger emails: These include event-based emails that you’ll send out on special occasions. Gradually, it becomes an industry standard to follow up those emails. Over time, customers expect such emails to derive useful information, which eventually improves brand-customer relationships.

Drip emails: These emails are the ones that turn subscribers into actual leads. They are pre-programmed and designed to be sent during a stipulated time frame, like after a visitor lands on your website page and subscribes to your services. Throughout the lead nurturing process, marketers engage in drip emails to share details about their business or materials that they might be interested in. The idea is to establish a personal connection via emails and address every single customer.

Once you’ve nurtured a visitor/lead, they might feel more interested in buying your products or services. In fact, marketers have witnessed an increase of 20% in sales when implementing personalized solutions to their lead generation campaigns.

Way #3: Script dynamic content

Over 50% of customers read 3-5 content pieces before they connect with the sales department. Consistently, over 95% of B2B customers like interacting with thoughtful and high-impact content forms that result in a thought provoking action.

Statistics aside, every organization knows that customers today buy experiences and not products. The content that engages your potential leads is what will encourage them to convert and become your customers. That is why you must personalize every content piece you share to make it more marketable and relatable. Set up dynamic landing pages or write user-friendly emails using all the details you’ve gathered about your customers. Remember, mass emailing doesn’t reap high-growth business results in the modern landscape.

Way #4: A/B Testing

So, you’ve designed your landing pages and set your lead generation campaigns in action, so what to do now? You need to test whether your strategies and campaigns are working or not. A/B testing of your landing pages and emails allows you to review the content, headline, or images to provide the best customer experiences. Once you have the data you need, you can customize any lead generation campaign you want. The more you know about your audience, the more relatable content you can share with them, and the more likely they are to turn from leads into customers.

Way #5: Automate with Chatbots

Organizations can use chatbots for marketing, sales, lead generation, customer service solutions, and more. And customers find it appealing too. These robots restrain any friction that might arise from a lousy customer-business interaction.

Since the time businesses employed chatbots, they’ve experienced increased lead flow and improved customer engagement and revenue growth. They are great at collecting customer information, which marketers can use later to personalize lead generation experiences. Chatbots would do all the repetitive tasks round-the-clock- creating, optimizing, and automating emails and landing pages for potential customers.

Conclusion

When the going gets tough, the smart start automating!

Leads, conversions, and ROIs are the indicators of how successful your business is and can be. The more the number of leads, the better is your conversion rates and higher is the return on investment. Introducing marketing automation to your lead generation efforts makes lead targeting easy, quick, and efficient. With a marketing automation tool in action, you connect with customers quicker and earn better business results that drive your business towards digital transformation and future innovation.

Want to measure the success of your marketing automation strategy?

Get a free consultation today.

If you run an eCommerce business, you probably know that a killer product is the only thing you need to survive and thrive in the market. True, products have a monumental impact on the success and future of your business, but that alone doesn’t guarantee customer traction, engagement, and loyalty.

In fact, product quality is no longer a standard for any brand. Customers don’t just buy products now; they buy experiences.

That said, enterprises need to deliver more than just the product-the overall customer experience. Only then can you turn visitors into customers to loyalists. Now more than ever, customers value relationships they built with brands, and in return, brands must take note of rapidly changing customer demands and still deliver unique and personalized solutions.

With eCommerce sales shooting to $4.5 trillion in 2021, brands need to comprehend the massive shift from traditional retail and forge buying experiences that make your customers worship your products and services.

In this article, we look at the best practices you must follow so as to deliver a user-centric experience that leads to more sales, revenue, and ROIs.

What is eCommerce customer experience?

eCommerce customer experience (ECX) is everything a brand makes a customer feel at every touchpoint, platform, and marketing funnel stage. So, from the time a customer hears about your brand to the moment they decide to do business with you- every interaction a brand has with a customer constitutes as eCommerce customer experience (ECX).

Why positive customer experience matters?

Simply put, Happy Customers leads to

More Sales
More Revenue
More Referrals
More Conversions
Better Publicity
Better Browsing Experience
More Followers on social media
Increased Customer Loyalty
Better Customer Retention
Better Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

And more!

We all know that retaining old customers is always better than getting new ones. All product improvements and new launches go in vain if you’re unable to keep your customers. With online browsing, you have the potential to inspire current and prospective customers to make more purchases than the traditional retail method. And, customer experience (CX) plays a critical role in capturing these opportunities and converting them. It is precisely why a positive customer experience is the crown jewel for any eCommerce business.

The top ways to improve your ecommerce customer experience

As mentioned before, there is no one way to go around making improvements to your eCommerce customer experience strategy. However, when you need to optimize ECX for modern customers and their rapidly changing needs, there are some ways you can explore.

The following are some opportunities that will assist you in improving your customer experience without breaking a sweat.

Tip #1: Build a fast, easy-to-navigate site that communicates your value proposition well

In the online space, your website is your flagship- your flag-bearer. It is where your customers interact with your products and services, where you make sales, expand the product portfolio, judge for imperfections, study buying patterns, analyze customer behavior, and implement a customer-friendly marketing strategy.

Even for first-timers, you need to make an impeccable impact, one that adjusts to the modern customer demands, is easily navigable, and loads speedily. So, if you’re thinking of launching an eCommerce store, you can explore SaaS eCommerce, open-source eCommerce, and headless commerce technologies. All of them allow you to extend personalized shopping experiences to your customers and build a long-term relationship with them.

This brand (Hush Puppies) developed an intuitive and advanced website to ensure visitors can navigate the site with ease and seamlessness. It involves strategically categorizing the product catalog and its accompanying web pages and making the other parts of the site- a simple access.

Tip #2: Measure site speed and navigation

Consumers today are more impatient than ever. They will leave your site if it loads slowly or shows disoriented content that doesn’t look too good or appealing to them.

As per statistics, successful eCommerce sites load within 0.5 seconds. So, if you want your store to achieve this number, you need to:

Avoid uploading images that have high resolution. Resize your images to the correct size before uploading.
Avoid using pictures that are not optimized for the web. Use formats like GIF, JPEG, or PNG for images.

To optimize your website’s loading times, you can check its loading time at GTmetrix, analyze your clickthrough rates, and check your website’s bounce rate on Google Analytics.

Tip #3: Adapt your digital store for intelligent search

For an eCommerce store optimization, intelligent search is a great way to help customers build their carts, look whether the products they want to buy are in stock or not, explore all the relevant suggestions, receive accurate product information, and browse through items based on their product characteristics.

Unfortunately, most eCommerce sites hurt themselves more than help by focusing on keyword-driven searches instead of understanding the real intent behind the searched words- a perfect recipe for a bad customer experience. And, this is the difference between dumb search and intelligent search.

A site should focus more on the WHY of the search than treating them like keywords. If a user searches for budget black boots, they are looking for black boots within their budget. By comparison, an intelligent semantic search treats words like any actual sales representative would and provide relevant and apt solutions. So, empower your sites with intuitive and tailored search capabilities than judging every word like a keyword.

Tip #4: Optimize your site for mobile and web apps

Do you know, mobile eCommerce sales will account for 54% of the total eCommerce sales by the end of 2021! That’s the significance of mobile commerce or adapting your eCommerce store for mobile devices.

Optimizing your eCommerce store for mobile can result in a massive spike in your sales and conversion numbers- failure to which will make you lose more than half of your potential customers. Here are some tips to optimize your store for mobile:

Improve your site’s mobile loading speed. Research shows users bounce back if it’s more than 3s.
Choose an eCommerce platform that supports mobile-friendly development.
Avoid heavy content.
Make font legible and balance the whitespace.
Don’t make your mobile website version visibly different than your desktop version.
Enable autofill feature on forms for both Android & iOS.

Tip #5: Personalize customer experiences

You need to make your customers feel a connection when they land on your digital storefront. The key is to immerse your customers in your brand’s digital experience, appeal to their physical senses, and impact their emotions. And there are several ways to do so.

Integrate your online stores with augmented reality and virtual reality and bring the digital real-life experience in front of your customers. Let them try products before purchasing and give them a chance to experience trial rooms virtually.

Deliver tailored content, products, or services as per individual customer preferences throughout their buying journey. Address them by their names and provide them with recommendations after studying their buying patterns and behavior.

Tip #6: Marketing automation to cover all stages of the customer conversion funnel

Marketing automation is an all-in-one tool for your online business. It can assist with products, sales, conversions, marketing, customer outreach, analytics, campaigns, and insights- it practically does everything for you, which is why you must invest in buying one.

A marketing automation tool plays an incredible role in creating memorable customer experiences and maintaining those experiences over time. It helps with email marketing- allowing brands to connect with customers from their first interaction and purchase to post-sales assistance and retargeting. Using marketing automation, you can personalize those emails or campaigns to transform customer experiences from mediocre to memorable. Also, you can design landing pages and forms associated with leads, demand generation, or campaigns.

Marketing automation assists with omnichannel content strategy to make sure you send the right content to the right customer at the right time and all touchpoints. You can even analyze whether your customers are satisfied with your services or not, your best-selling products, track your inventory, study customer buying patterns, interests, study customer demographics, and more.

All in all, marketing automation supports your needs through the marketing funnel- awareness, interest, desire, action, and retention, which is why your digital business must have one.

Tip #7: Streamline your checkout process

Truth be told, a complicated checkout process leads to cart abandonment.

eCommerce Sites that include a long checkout form, slow loading webpage, disappearing ‘Buy Now’ button or a complex buying process are left midway or astray.

So, save yourself and your customers from this stress and simplify the checkout process- from the point they land on your site until they complete a purchase.

Add several payment options, including debit/credit card, UPI, net banking, or bitcoin. Survey all the product and payment pages to ensure that you deliver the right message.

Tip #8: Provide post-sales support

Your relationship with your customer doesn’t end after they purchase your product. The recipe for a successful digital commerce business is that you stay connected with your customers even after their purchase, make sure they’re satisfied with your product, provide troubleshooting options, and pitch new products or related products that they might be interested in. Everything described in the above sentences forms the core of customer retention.

Happy customers hold an incredible value for your business. If they loved the product, they might become your brand’s advocates or influencers. On the other hand, unhappy customers hold the power to destroy your online business with their negative reviews. But, the only way you’ll know whether your customers liked your product or not is when you contact them.

So, connect with your customers post-sales, offer them every assistance they need, address their issues, and push them to the last stage of the online buying funnel- retention. Remember, retaining customers is seven times easier than onboarding new ones.

Conclusion

Businesses and customers go hand-in-hand- each prospers because of the other. However, as times and technology change, so do customers and their expectations. As mentioned before, modern customers don’t buy products or services; they buy experiences. And it’s up to you, the kind of experience you want to extend. A positive online experience will ensure a steady customer influx and business continuity, while negative ones will turn your digital commerce business to dust.

Now is the time to focus on the essence of customer experience and build strong relationships with them. Create a unique, immersive, and inspiring buying experience for them, and you’ll enjoy its positive impact on your sales, revenue, and conversions.

Want to know your digital experience score?

Speak to our experts and get a free consultation today.

Ranosys, a renowned global digital consulting firm, has partnered with Workato, a leading Integration-led Automation Platform. This alliance will help Ranosys offer enterprise solutions that accelerate digital transformation initiatives, allow dynamic integrations and ensure faster process automation without compromising on security and execution.

In its journey of over a decade, Ranosys has been a catalyst in the digital transformation process of various organisations spanning across different industry verticals and international boundaries. With this partnership, Ranosys has taken a major step towards serving its global clientele with a technology that seamlessly integrates and automates an organization’s unique ecosystem of apps and databases and ultimately enhances its operational efficiency.

Trusted by industry leaders like Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, OutSystems and NetSuite as a partner, Ranosys has curated various flagship accelerator programs for eCommerce businesses, namely Phoenix, Falcon, mobiChannel and comprehensive digital solutions to streamline operations, like Business 360. Harnessing the power of the Workato platform, Ranosys will be able to implement these programs with speed, scalability, and agility.

“We are excited to begin our journey as Workato partners at this juncture. We are known for delivering digital solutions to our clients which help them in staying innovative, unique and always a step ahead. This partnership has further strengthened our resolve to outdo our previous success stories,” says Ramehswar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

Ranosys takes pride in its comprehensive portfolio and has been a driving force behind the success of many eCommerce businesses across the globe. The eCommerce experts at Ranosys believe in the power of unified commerce and its relevance in the coming years. The partnership with Workato, along with the support of NetSuite and Salesforce, will enable Ranosys to fulfil its vision of empowering its eCommerce solutions with effortless integration and business process automation.

“As a Workato partner, we will be well-equipped to further assist our clients in truly thriving in the digital ecosystem by enabling pervasive connectivity backed by Workato’s enterprise-level automation and integration functionalities,” Vyas further commented.

Leading the digital transformation wave, Ranosys has continuously been setting new benchmarks for ever-evolving digital solutions with its offices located in Singapore, India, US, UK and the UAE. The partnership with Workato is symbolic of a new era of integration and automation solutions at Ranosys and its growing list of clients. The combined synergies of Ranosys’s expertise and Workato’s capabilities will usher in an innovative approach towards engineering digital offerings and raise the bar for excellence.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a digital technology systems integrator with offices in the US, UK and Singapore and 3 India delivery centers. Our core business is providing scalable, reliable and affordable eCommerce, product engineering and digital transformation solutions to clients worldwide. Since 2008, our flexible delivery approaches, strategic technology relationships and experienced consultants have delivered projects on time and on budget enabling Ranosys to become the technology partner of choice for many leading organizations. Learn more.

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There is a rapid transformation in the eCommerce industry so much so that legacy digital commerce solutions struggle to maintain pace with it.

As more shoppers connect with brand products outside of traditional websites like mobile, social, or IoT, traditional eCommerce platforms aren’t strong enough to adapt to these new touchpoints in a reasonable interval. In simpler words, customers are readily embracing the new tech-era even when retailers aren’t (or haven’t yet).

While some eCommerce brands incorporate all such modern trends, others are still brainstorming as to how they can get into action without inventing an IoT device or backend coding solutions from scratch. Well, there is undoubtedly one way you can do it.

And the answer is via headless content management and, by obvious extension, headless commerce.

Organizations that rely on digital commerce as a significant component of their business model need to adapt to solutions like headless commerce to maintain a competitive edge, nurture customers, and move towards a smooth and seamless digital delivery.

What is headless commerce?

Unlike in a traditional eCommerce site where the frontend and backend are connected and interdependent, in a headless commerce website, the frontend and backend exist separately and operate independently, communicating only via APIs to each other. Headless commerce allows developers to initiate change in the frontend so that it doesn’t affect the backend and vice versa. The good thing about a headless commerce platform is that it removes any IT dependency, allowing frontend developers and backend developers to handle their respective ends efficiently and enforce customer-friendly changes.

Modern customers access your online store using different mediums- desktops, phones, laptops, tablets, and other connected devices. In the coming years, these mediums will only multiply in number. Headless commerce allows you to accommodate such needs and that of a customer’s changing buying preferences.

In a traditional eCommerce setup, any changes in the frontend would require updates in the backend. However, in a headless commerce model, developers can review, modify, and publish changes in the frontend without applying code changes in the backend. Similarly, if you wish to improve user experience, you can integrate infrastructure points like ERPs, PIMs, OMS, and POS to the backend without uploading the modifications in the frontend. As long as the API calls the right code, the frontend and backend are connected seamlessly and effortlessly.

In a headless commerce platform, the frontend part (popularly called the head) is removed, leaving only the backend. So, developers can use APIs to code products, blogs, or customer reviews for any screen or device, while the frontend developers can represent it in any framework they want.

Since user interfaces, social commerce, and digital marketplaces are no longer governed by a rigid frontend, enterprises can follow a relaxed approach to create a unique experience for their visitors. They can select and customize features and functionalities based on user traction. When developers have the freedom to code and design anything for any screen, they can create the best-in-class retail experience without any restrictions to specific touchpoints.

How headless commerce functions & why is it so popular?

To understand the buzz, you need to know how headless commerce works.

First is the presentation layer that includes your fast-loading website with its user-friendly design, mobile or kiosk application- depending on your business needs. This presentation layer or frontend is the interface customers use to interact with your brand. That means your website is your frontend.

Then you have a backend layer that stores all the data and carries out processes like billing, reporting, analytics, content management, order fulfillment, etc.

Between these two layers lies the API or application programming interface that carries user requests from the frontend to the backend and respective updates or information from the backend to the frontend. Any software system can use the API to communicate with another software without knowing how that other software system function

Suppose a user wants information about a placed/purchased order via the order detail page. Now an eCommerce frontend only needs to know what API to call to the backend and get information about this order placed. As long as the frontend communicates with the backend through the API, it doesn’t have to know anything about the backend or its complexity.

In fact, in a headless commerce site, since the frontend is decoupled from the backend, the entire backend system can be replaced or modified any number of times without breaking or obstructing its functionality or communication with the frontend as long as the new backend system provides the correct response to the API call.

All in all, in a headless commerce site, a user interacts with the frontend of your eCommerce store via the website and requests information which is communicated to the backend by the API. In return, the backend supplies the requested information via the API, which is then displayed as information on the frontend to a user.

By decoupling the frontend and backend, you can make the latter more generic that can interact with anything and is willing to send the right API requests. Also, you can make any number (for mobile, web, kiosk, smart devices, web apps, etc) and type of unique frontends since it doesn’t have to deal with any processing, only displaying information to the user.

Coming back to the second part of the question; headless commerce is gaining tremendous popularity mainly because of two factors-

First, when eCommerce came into being, the idea was to make it desktop-friendly since customers were new at online shopping and most traffic came from desktops. As a result, all eCommerce solutions developed during that time were full-stack, inclusive of frontend and backend.

As the technology evolved, so did the purchasing patterns, including mobile traffic and other complex metrics like flexibility, scalability, and easy-to-navigate solutions- making the execution of the coupled frontend and backend systems tedious. Headless commerce allows brands to develop a frontend and backend for their commerce site independently. A front-end developer can make any change they like while only understanding the backend interface- the APIs- and the backend developers can enable new functionalities by supporting the new APIs. It makes the development of an eCommerce site quicker and more agile.

Second, eCommerce has become a soft spot for industries, and every brand wants to expand in the online selling domain. It is easier to build a commerce engine from an implementation standpoint and link it with a CMS than creating a new website and migrating old content to it.

In the wake of such factors, headless eCommerce is the perfect solution to supplement modern needs, fulfill consumer demands, and maximize profitability.

Headless commerce vs. traditional commerce: what’s the difference?

Still wondering what makes it different from traditional commerce? Well, here’s a comparison between headless commerce and traditional commerce that’ll make your brain juices go running.

Frontend and backend development:

Traditional commerce: You might think that the overall design process might be manageable via a standard commerce platform; however, the reality is the opposite. Developers encounter several constraints when coding websites using traditional commerce. To change any functionality, you have to spend so much time editing data in the model, the code, and the frontend platform. To upgrade to future versions, they might have to go through the same lengthy process again.

Headless commerce: Once the frontend is removed, developers can create a user experience from scratch, which fits their core business values. Developers can freely modify databases in the backend while on the frontend; all they have to do is make a simple API call. In simpler words, developers are free from the limitations suffered during traditional commerce development.

However, headless commerce is not one without its drawbacks. Since there is no frontend presentation layer, marketers have to build everything from the start, be it product pages, landing pages, or more. So, developing an eCommerce web design becomes an even more daunting task, which is why developers prefer the decoupled solution to the headless commerce one.

Personalization & customization:

Traditional commerce: Such websites have a predefined user experience that mostly is difficult to personalize for each visitor. That said, these platforms have little to no room for customization and personalization. As a brand, if you’re happy with extending that type of experience to your visitors, then go with it; otherwise, opt for headless commerce.

Headless commerce: Unlike traditional commerce, where there is a set architecture for what passes as a positive user experience, headless commerce platforms act pretty contrary to it. There is no front end in a headless eCommerce platform, which means developers can create any experience they like. Also, such prospects give developers better control over the look and feel of the eCommerce platform and by extension, establish authority over admin user and consumer experience.

Flexibility & adaptability:

Traditional commerce: In such a setup, the frontend couples with the backend in a somewhat friendly manner. Hence, it leaves no space to implement desired customizations. Even if you could do it, you will have to edit multiple layers of coding between frontend and backend via the database to let it reflect on the eCommerce platform.

Headless commerce: Since there is no link between frontend and backend, it empowers developers with endless possibilities for whatever customization they want. You can make changes, big or small, by implementing a new field to the database layer and execute the command in a headless commerce architecture.

Content delivery:

Traditional Commerce: In a conventional eCommerce platform, a developer codes the frontend to pull the content needed every time, as and when needed, increasing the number of API calls. Since the resources aren’t shared, coupled eCommerce platforms slow down during peak traffic times.

Headless Commerce: The lack of a frontend makes API calls easier. These APIs calls are used to pull data, and since it is not restricted or dependent on other processes or code, it makes the overall system faster, which works great, especially during peak traffic times.

Improved security:

Traditional Commerce: In such a networked environment, the business systems are combined with the access control lists (ACLs). It means the database is entirely visible to all the other systems and users. It creates havoc and weakens security systems.

Headless Commerce: In the headless commerce atmosphere, all the systems rely on each other for reliable final output. Also, the business systems stay separate but consistent with the access control units (ACL) to limit access to other systems and users. In the long run, it eliminates the possibility of a compromised account and weak security.

Headless commerce: the top benefits

Want a big shot headless commerce website example?

Amazon!

The top eCommerce platform doesn’t stay constrained by the bounds of a traditional system. Even so, over 60% of online streamers prefer Amazon Prime-like service that you can’t achieve with a conventional commerce setup.

All in all, headless commerce is a boon for brands who want to extend personalized and customized services but don’t know how to do it. As for other brands who still haven’t figured out the utter need for headless commerce platforms, the following reasons will indeed persuade you.

Go fully Omnichannel:

If you wish your content to have the same look and feel anywhere and everywhere, then go for a headless content management system. For an eCommerce brand, an omnichannel experience will correspond to delivering products, product videos, or blog posts to any channel prevalent in today’s world or ones that emerge in the future.

Lead the competition:

The most irritating thing about developing a platform in traditional commerce is that developers will have to change the frontend and backend whenever an update needs implementation. So, as an eCommerce store, if you wish to speed up adopting consumer technology, you can’t do it easily and quickly with a traditional commerce solution.

However, a headless commerce platform functions oppositely. It enables you to deploy rapid updates without impacting the backend. More so, you can easily make changes to your frontend without spending too much time on it. Considering the rapidity at which technology modernizes, headless eCommerce is the only solution if you need to keep pace.

Then again, major commerce brands deploy new updates every few weeks, while Amazon does it every 11.7 seconds. And we know now why it leads the race.

Works best for agile marketing:

Headless commerce solutions are technology-friendly; it supports it as and when it comes. It is perfect for brands when designing new consumer experiences. Also, it places your marketing team back in the game where they can roll out multiple sites across different brands, geographies, portfolios, and divisions.

Owing to the flexibility of headless commerce solutions, marketing teams can set up sites in days and weeks and not months and years, reducing the overall campaign launch hours.

Making customers feel connected to the brand:

Indeed, customers demand changes at lightspeed; however, their objective remains the same- to achieve a personal and consistent experience across all devices and channels.

Customers like buying more from headless commerce stores only because it understands their needs. A developer can use the backend data regarding customer preferences and use this to power personalization engines on the CMS, mobile apps, and social channels.

Allow seamless integrations:

By superiority, headless commerce platforms must have an API that makes it easier to integrate and communicate with different channels. It must be compatible with any new or old device to reach more customers, find more opportunities, and grow your brand. More so, it should not take months to allow for such integrations, rather hours

And headless commerce stands true to all that.

Better conversion optimization rates:

Using headless commerce platforms, you can test different templates, strategies, and approaches to work for your brand. It allows brands to run several tests and optimization cycles to understand their customers better and improve their conversion rates. You can even work on the different backends while running the same frontend architecture. Since you employ solutions to boost positive customer experiences, it easily betters your conversion rates.

Quickens time-to-market:

If you wish to create a multi-channel, or multi-location, or omnichannel retail experience, you can’t think of doing the same with a traditional eCommerce platform. Your competition will be far ahead of you before you are thoroughly done with the scaling and the optimization.

As for headless commerce solutions, it enables the brand to focus on building a user-centric frontend on different devices and touchpoints; meanwhile, you house the products and content centrally, delivering results via an API call as and when required. In time, it facilitates a faster time-to-market metric, especially when adopting new channels, exploring new locales, and expanding into new customer markets.

Headless commerce: the drawbacks

Headless Commerce platforms like Magento are not one without their cons. And some issues need addressing.

Building a frontend from scratch is time-consuming & costly:

While headless commerce solutions do not come with a frontend, developers need to develop a bespoke experience for every device, and touchpoint from scratch, which is exciting but building those templates and user experiences is tedious and costly. Plus, developers will have to troubleshoot their frontend, leading to an overall increase in the cost.

A huge dependence for the marketing team:

On the other hand, the marketing team highly depends on the developers to launch landing pages and content to different devices because a headless commerce platform offers no frontend.

It restricts the freedom of marketers to ideate, create, approve, preview, and publish content without relying on another department. So, it might be a developer-friendly environment, but it isn’t so much marketer-friendly.

The road ahead

Let’s agree on one thing: the future of commerce is headless.

Headless commerce platforms solve several problems with their decoupled frontend. It is the perfect alternative to traditional commerce that no longer meets the needs of modern shoppers. It allows brands to gain greater control over the design of the eCommerce store and customer experiences. It will enable easy and quick updates, seamless integrations with plugins or platforms, and saves a lot of money in the long run.

As a brand, if you’re just starting into the eCommerce market, go headless.

And for those already neck-deep into the eCommerce maze, it’s time for you to go headless.

Checkout what Headless Salesforce Composable Storefront do to your business.

The journey of a B2B customer isn’t limited to the rusty marketing funnels of learning about a company, product, or service. Unlike the traditional days when B2B buyers took a linear approach to sell and marketing products because customers had limited choices, little to no product information, and no influence whatsoever, the situation is a complete reverse today.

B2B companies aren’t only struggling to expand their customer pool but even with retaining their existing crowd. Where B2B marketers previously did not give customer retention much importance, it is now an integral part of B2B marketing strategies. Moreover, its prominence has grown by a mile in the past years, especially with shrinking budgets and shortened attention spans. After all, keeping current customers is seven times cheaper than onboarding new ones.

The result is, B2B organizations are forced to explore newer ways to keep their customers engaged and entertaining.

As for B2B marketers, accepting this new generation of customers doesn’t require letting go of the traditional marketing funnels. Instead, it requires a better understanding of the customer journey and what is valuable to them at its specific lifecycle stages.

With B2B marketers including customer retention as a core component in a marketing strategy, the focus now shifts to customer lifecycle automation.

What does B2B customer lifecycle mean?

B2B customer lifecycle is all about forging long-term brand-customer relationships. When marketers indulge with a B2B customer lifecycle, they don’t just do so until a consumer completes their purchase but retargets them as a part of the retention strategy. It means re-approaching the existing customers and placing them into the funnel via upselling, cross-selling, or subscription-based awareness campaigns.

For the B2B customer lifecycle, B2B marketers follow the AIDA model to study customer experiences through all stages and transitions of the cycle, thereby improving revenue, efficiency, and customer retention.

What does customer lifecycle automation mean?

A study by Demand Metric reveals that marketers spend twice as much on acquisition as they do on retention, even though existing customers account for a massive margin of earned revenue. The research also determined that there is an evident absence of a customer retention strategy.

That said, B2B inbound marketing can only work when you have a solid and mature customer retention plan in mind. Successful B2B companies know that the key to generating a steady flow of qualified leads during this highly competitive space is via B2B customer lifecycle automation.

Marketing Automation ensures a consistent flow of customers through the cycle to generate efficient ROI-proficient pipelines of quantifiable leads. However, before planning on implementing marketing automation, you must know which stage is your customer at.

In a nutshell, if your concern lies in the lead generation prospects, then you must employ the marketing automation platform for customer retention.

The anatomy of the B2B customer lifecycle

Modern marketers can base their B2B inbound marketing on the AIDA model; however, adding retention at its end.

In a customer lifecycle, each stage deciphers the relationship a customer (lead) has with a brand.

There are different marketing strategies and approaches that optimize the process and carry your lead to another stage.

Stage #1: Awareness

A stage where your lead becomes aware of your brand.

At this stage, a potential customer has just come across your business and wishes to learn more. Irrespective of the medium employed- social media, cold emailing, content marketing, or Google, now is the time when you introduce your brand in the best possible light.

At this phase, customers have no apparent intention of what they want to do- initiate a purchase or browse around and learn more about your products or services. However, you must grab their attention and spark some interest to push them further down the funnel.

Here is how you must encourage your prospect:

Introduce your brand: You must communicate your USPs to the new lead, probably when they’re browsing your website. At this point, they might be connecting with your competitors as well. So, outline facts and strengths that help you gain an edge over the competition.

Gather customer preference data: It is essential that while you focus on developing a brand image, you must learn as much as you can about your potential lead. Generate customer records for all your visitors and keep them updated. Collect information without feeling too intrusive.

Be clear with your expectations: A lead must always know what they can expect from a brand. So, let your prospects know what they can expect from you, and tailor a relationship with them. It will help you move this visitor onto the next stage faster.

Turning leads into profitable leads: Generating awareness and collecting data is great, but it will only take you so far. You need to make sure your customers look at you at all times. So, once your lead magnet is ready, the following are some ways you can connect with your visitors.

Pop-ups: When rightly used and placed, pop-ups can generate tons of leads.
Gated content: You might have visited websites that display only some part of the article and keep the rest of it gated or locked to either leave an email address or pay to gain access.
Chatbots: AI-bots feel less invasive, more creative, and reliable than standard pop-ups.
Campaigns: Run campaigns to target new prospects and build brand awareness. You can run these ads on social media or Google and drive back opportunities to your website.

Stage #2: Interest

A stage where you educate a curious prospect about your products and services.

At this stage, your visitors aren’t entirely acceptable to your brand. They are still in the learning phase, browsing through your products and services and gathering all the information they can. So, as a B2B marketer, your focus should be on educating and nurturing them.

Here is how you must encourage your prospect:

Newsletters: Newsletters are the golden geese for email marketing campaigns. They possess infinite power and can boost conversions if appropriately used. With content like case studies, infographics, blogs, eBooks, and articles- newsletters direct your readers to your website, where they can continue their conversion journey. It provides them with industry insights that’ll come in handy and establish your supremacy for the said product or service. However, don’t try to spam your subscribers because otherwise, they would unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Events & Webinars: Are you conducting an online event or webinar that your prospects might be interested in? Well, then all you have to do is send them an email regarding the same and ask to book a slot. Events and webinars that include sessions from prominent speakers are a great way to indicate your service value.

Lead Nurturing Campaigns: Such campaigns should focus on creating a personalized connection with prospects. They should add weightage to a reader’s knowledge base and make them aware of your brand. You can send automated customized emails to a particular region. Try not to forward emails that make them unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Stage #3: Desire

A stage where you have an exciting prospect ready to convert, and all you have to give them is an opportunity to do so.

This stage represents your last winning seconds just before you’re about to cross the line. So, you’ve charmed your prospects. You’ve got them engaged and interested in your products and services. Now you have to open the doors of conversion for them.

Here is how you must encourage your prospect:

Lead triggering campaigns: Unlike the previous campaigns when you were worried about how to get them interested in your brand, here you need to look out for signs that show prospect conversion intentions. Price inquiries, free trial sign-ins, demo requests, free sample requests, and cart building and abandoning are some actions that specify that the prospect is ready to convert.

To enjoy the fruits of your labor, you can create automated emails regarding demos and sample requests, and abandoned carts. Now, remember, you need to add authoritative content like social proofs, ratings, awards, or reviews to seal the deal.

Customer service-led chats: Although you might have let your chatbot answer initial customer queries, this critical stage requires your customer service team. By automating conversations, you can be sure that all questions directly reach the right customer service team.

Stage #4: Action

A stage where your prospect is ready to become your customer via a completed purchase.

It is a stage that brings money into your pockets. It is where prospects finally act, which is usually represented by a purchase. However, you need to make this transition from prospect to customer smooth, easy, seamless, and enjoyable.

Here are some strategies that will help you convince your leads to purchase something finally.

Send engaging order confirmation emails: Remember this, out of the tens and thousands of brands out there, a customer has chosen your services. So, you need to make sure that they feel positive about this purchasing experience and never turn back to your competitors. These order confirmation emails, although automated, need to forge that special long-term bond with your customers.

You can create a theme copy for all order confirmations using a marketing automation platform. Moreover, you can add some additional products or services that you think might come in handy to your customers in this email to let them know that you can supply these as well.

Enforce Customer Welcome Programs: Such kits are a great way to connect with your new customers, understand their expectations, give them a clear picture of your processes, and ensure a smooth transaction. You can designate a team that’ll check in with them every once in a while; you can educate them about the resources available for a particular product or service and smoothen the entire customer onboarding process.

After some time, ask for a review or feedback: Once a customer has started using your product or service, you can always ask them to review it. If they’ve had a delighted experience, they will love to do it. Alternatively, you can also request them for feedback on how their product journey has been and recommend it to their peers. Such information builds your credibility in the market and boosts conversion ratio for new prospects in the future. They serve as social proof for your business and help you earn the vote of confidence.

Stage #5: Retention

A stage where you can turn your customers into your brand advocates.

This stage corresponds to both the ending and the beginning of a B2B customer lifecycle. You have satisfied customers who’ve thoroughly enjoyed your services, but you need to prevent them from trying out your competitors. So, you must do everything in your power to deliver impressive customer experiences and keep them associated with you.

Loyalty Programs: These plans celebrate customer loyalty, and it is a great way to appreciate their contribution. You can upsell your products and services in such programs and give them a reduced price for a better package. You can introduce referral bonuses and reward your customers depending on the referral numbers.

Renewal discounts or alerts: You can send your customers automated emails regarding their ending subscription to show that they are always on your mind. You can give renewal discounts as well to entice them into a re-purchase of a service or product.

Early Access or VIP Content: You can forward automated messages regarding some market insights that you know will be helpful for your customers. You can make them feel exclusive for their association with you and show that you care about them. You can also send emails for VIP content regarding product launches or service extensions.

The future of B2B customer lifecycle automation

Irrespective of your B2B business genre, the customer lifecycle is one blueprint that you’ll always need. So, the only way you can engage better with your leads using the right content and at the right time is via marketing automation.

Your customers mean more than just money-making individuals; they are your assets. Therefore, building a long-term relationship with them should be your #1 priority. However, with the rapidly changing customer demands, it might become impossible for you to meet all their needs and deliver unique experiences. And that is why you must automate your B2B customer lifecycle marketing. This way, you can drive better results and boost business growth.

Need help automating your marketing strategies?

We can help prioritize your marketing automation needs using the right tools.

The ever-changing logistics industry serves as the backbone of every industry like healthcare, hospitality, eCommerce, retail, etc. In the past few years, this industry has faced some major challenges such as failure to deliver goods on time due to redundant processes, complex processes across the supply chain, lack of performance measurement, low productivity, poor customer service, and reduced efficiency due to manual processes. However, with the integration of enterprise mobility solutions, the entire landscape of the logistics industry has changed and a positive impact has been observed in the workflow and processes – be it warehousing, transportation, freight documentation, and distribution.

This article highlights some mobility solutions that are helping the logistics industry in bringing a significant transformation in real-time routing, order deliveries, dispatch management, and customer services.

Mobile Fleet Management Solutions
With mobile fleet management solutions, you can keep track of individual driver’s log times and behavior, route planning and deviations, and delivery schedules of each vehicle. Moreover, based on the current job status of the employees, you can update their tasks and track them in real-time. The real-time visibility improves efficiency, productivity, and business performance.
Mobile Asset Tracking Solutions
Mobile asset tracking solutions use advanced identification and geo-positioning technology that provides you a comprehensive visibility of the entire operations and enables you to optimally utilize your resources, schedule deliveries as per requirements, and accurately monitor your shipments. You can keep a track of inventory moving in and out at any point in time.
Door Delivery Mobile Solutions
Doorstep pickup and delivery is really a challenging task and mobility solutions can play an impactful role in improving customer services. Your employees can scan the item, input delivery details, create a label and invoice – all at customer’s doorstep, with the help of a custom mobile app. This way; the speed of product delivery can be increased and shipment can be directly transferred to the export facility, thus reducing the use of warehouse space.
Mobile Warehouse Management Solutions
Mobility solutions help you identify and prevent inaccuracies in shipment and loading. These solutions also provide you a greater visibility of the warehouse so that you can use the entire space optimally and prepare for different real-time situations like changes in orders, emergency shipments, decrease and increase in inventory.
Customer Servicing Solutions
Customers can order any product, track the shipments, and submit their feedback on the go – all from their mobile, with customer servicing apps. Mobility solutions help logistics company deliver shipments in a timely manner. Moreover, you can reduce the hassles of processing return goods by ensuring that the customer is available to receive the delivery.

Integrating mobility solutions in your growth strategy is the need of the hour. If you are still using the manual processes, you are at a great risk of losing business to your competitors. So, be proactive and partner with a mobile app development agency to overcome your logistics challenges.

Redefine Business Outreach through our Enterprise Mobility Solutions.

Want to know more about our enterprise development process?

Wondering what’s the purpose of mobile apps and how do apps help businesses? Read on!

Gone are the days when mobile apps were meant solely for big brands. Nowadays, mobile applications have become an integral part of businesses of all sizes and domains to drive engagement and create relevant experience for customers. A well-crafted app not only helps you gain traction but also adds to the overall value of your business.

Let’s take a look at why mobile apps are important for a business.

Advantages of Mobile Apps Over Websites

There are manifold mobile app development benefits for businesses – be it small business owners or large enterprises. Take a look at the impact of mobile apps on business over web development.

According to a study, mobile users spend more time on apps than mobile websites.
Usually, mobile apps are 1.5 times faster than mobile websites.
In comparison to websites, it’s easy to deliver personalized experiences via mobile apps.
Some mobile apps allow users to access the basic functionality and content even if they are offline. Websites lack this feature.
You can code an app to leverage the features of a mobile device such as Camera, GPS, etc. It helps improve customer engagement and increase sales.
The one-click buy and easy sharing features of mobile apps let your customers share the images of products to their friends which, in turn, improves your conversion rate.

If you are still not sure whether your brand needs a mobile app or not, read on this blog. Here, we have highlighted some signs that will help you understand why mobile apps are important in the modern business environment and decide if you must get a mobile application built for your business.

1. Does your competitor have a mobile app?

Perform a thorough competitive analysis to find out if your competitor possesses an app or not. If your competitor has an app, ascertain what features they are offering and how consumers are responding to their app. You can get the first-mover advantage by offering an app with improved and advanced functionalities that are missing in your competitor’s app.

On the contrary, if your competitor doesn’t have a mobile app, you can take the big leap by offering one.

2. Can an app helps you achieve your business goals?

A mobile app can bring in significant benefits if your core business objectives are – reduce costs, increase productivity, boost sales or improve brand awareness. Here is how a mobile application can help you attain major goals:

Acquisition – You can get the contact information of the potential customers in exchange for the useful functionality provided in your app.
Engagement – A mobile app lets you provide an omnichannel experience, in-app promotions and offers, and connect with your customers anytime and anywhere, thus driving customer engagement. In addition, you can build and fortify customer loyalty via mobile apps.
Conversion – App uses real-time data of the customers and enable you to offer product suggestions and personalized promotions.

3. Will your app address the pain points of your customers?

Think of the pain points of the customers and if you can resolve them through a mobile app. In simpler words, it is good to have a mobile app if it can serve as a solution to the problems of your customers. Your mobile app is likely to get more downloads if it offers additional functionality to your mobile-optimized website.

4. Are your customers a younger demographic?

Know your audience before arriving at any decision. If your targeted audience is a younger demographics, you must get a mobile app for your business. As per a survey by Statista, in June 2016, users aged 25 to 34 years accessed mobile applications via smartphone for an average of 85.6 hours. Likewise, users aged 35 to 44 years accessed mobile applications via smartphone for an average of 78.8 hours.

Your mobile app is likely to get more installs and visibility in Google SERPs if it is designed keeping the demographics (location, gender, age, etc.) and personas of potential users in mind.

5. Do you want to create a direct marketing channel?

The major challenges of direct marketing are – finding new customers and re-engaging the existing ones, choosing the right channel to reach the maximum audience, and generating leads. A mobile app helps you overcome all these channels and gives a boost to your direct marketing campaign.

Mobile apps come with various functionalities such as news feeds, search features, push notifications, etc. that help you interact with your customers in the way they want. Moreover, you can track user behavior through the app and customize your offerings accordingly.

If your answer to any of the above questions is ‘yes’, it’s high time to partner with a dedicated mobile app development agency and get a feature-rich app developed for your brand. Working with dedicated and experienced app developers is indeed a worthy investment to create a more strengthened and unified identity for your business.

Hope you got the answer to the question “why do we need mobile apps for business?” Do like and share the article and tell us your thoughts.

A mobile app that is compatible with all platforms?

Yes, it’s possible with hybrid applications.

Ranosys, a global OutSystems Partner, is organizing a free webinar- ‘Digital Transformation through Legacy Modernization’ on 19th May at 1:00 PM (ET). It invites prominent speakers like Rob Davis, Director- Growth and Alliances for North America, Ranosys, and Tony Ollivier, Product Marketing Manager, OutSystems.

The Webinar approaches the issues surrounding legacy systems, the ability of legacy modernization to transform your business structure without disrupting its critical architecture, and how enterprises, in the modern age, can do so through a simple, powerful, and affordable platform- OutSystems.

So, why do you need this webinar in the first place?

Digital transformation guides a new era of products, services, and experiences. It is why 93% of organizations plan to pursue digital business transformation, and 59% of organizations are already in Stages 2 and 3.

However, organizations are still dependent on outdated and aging legacy systems that are expensive to maintain and slow to change. Traditional legacy systems and applications hamper the ability to deliver innovative products and services. Still, IT has to provide new apps to customers or partners. But they can’t do so with their legacy systems consuming a massive amount of time, budget, and resources.

Several reasons make legacy modernization a must:

Legacy gridlock slows down app development for IT organizations by 60%.
They require high maintenance, as much as 70-80% of development efforts rather than innovating new apps and features.
They add to doubt, uncertainty and require lots of support data. Over 14% of IT projects fail due to their legacy background.
There is a rapid decrease in the talent required to maintain legacy systems.

Organizations need to measure the potential drawbacks of legacy systems to understand why modernization is imperative. But how can they overhaul core systems with all their associated apps and services and still maintain business consistency?

The low code enterprise-grade power of OutSystems makes legacy modernization, digital re-platforming, and critical application development easier, faster, and future-oriented. It lets you experience the best of both worlds- build what you need, how you need it, and use the latest architectures and features for its development.

What you’ll learn

In this Webinar, the speakers address:

The importance of legacy systems and how the legacy transformation will help boost conversions across all platforms without disrupting critical business systems
Introduction to OutSystems: its low-code capabilities, service-oriented architecture, impact on team agility, and why it is the best full-stack development platform for legacy systems-related woes
The process and benefits of migrating from legacy systems using OutSystems
Explore areas where you can apply legacy modernization concepts
Examples of how other organizations have achieved their digital transformation agenda with legacy modernization

Tony Ollivier is known for his product storytelling abilities, one that transforms technical benefits into clear business value. As a Product Marketing Manager at OutSystems, he plays an integral role in driving the success of OutSystems products and services in the global market. A key speaker in this webinar, Tony, explains how companies can upgrade their legacy systems using the low-code abilities of OutSystems’ to achieve better security and a positive user experience.

Rob is known for executing strategies that have helped establish Ranosys’ lead in the eCommerce and Digital Transformation arenas, especially using low-code applications like OutSystems. His expertise has helped several organizations solve complex legacy challenges with low-code solutions while driving down development costs and accelerating development speed. It is his vision that has strengthened our strategic presence in the North American, APAC, and Europe region. His technical expertise about OutSystems and legacy modernization will come in handy to all the attendees who wish to improvise their legacy systems but don’t know how to approach that equation.

Post the Webinar; the OutSystems experts at Ranosys can help define the scope of your legacy modernization, create an implementation roadmap based on your priorities, and leverage the low-code OutSystems capabilities. Our gradual, low-risk approach focuses on innovating the legacy system to ensure future stability.

For enterprises to sustain and thrive in this competitive market, learning the basic survival skills is an utmost necessity. This Webinar educates you on how to achieve the much-needed legacy transformation while keeping your business architecture intact. So, don’t miss out on an elaborative learning opportunity.

Join us in this event and explore OutSystems’ limitless potential for legacy modernization and how it fulfills your digital transformation goals.

Book your free slot here: https://bit.ly/2Ptrods

We’ll be waiting!

Let’s Talk Legacy Modernization

Business transformation begins here.

Singapore – April 28, 2021 — To fulfill its objective of delivering wide offerings and comprehensive digital solutions, Ranosys has announced its partnership with Atome, Asia’s leading “buy now, pay later” brand that divides bills into three easy payments over time with zero interest and fee.

With this partnership, Ranosys aims to add another feather to its cap of existing offerings with the inclusion of a flexible payment option that seamlessly integrates with its eCommerce solutions.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Atome which is all set to make digital payments hassle-free and convenient with its seamless and consumer-centric approach”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

Ranosys is a growing name when it comes to quality delivery, high-performing digital solutions and memorable user experiences. This strategic partnership with Atome brings in the power of flexible payments and focus on customer needs.

“Our portfolio consists of enriching eCommerce solutions that assist our clients in penetrating a wider market and delight their valued customers. With our partnership with Atome, we hope to make the online shopping experience even more exciting and fulfilling”, Mr Vyas further added.

Headquartered in Singapore, Ranosys has been a driving force in the international market and has consistently been taking strides in the digital world.

Atome, a leading technology company headquartered in Singapore, has grown to become Asia’s leading buy now pay later brand since its launch in December 2019. Atome partners over 3,000 online and offline retailers in nine markets (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and mainland China). Key merchant partners include Sephora, Zalora, Agoda, SHEIN, ZARA, Marks & Spencer, Charles & Keith, Aldo, Furla and Pandora in verticals such as beauty, fashion, travel, homeware and lifestyle.

David Chen, CEO of Atome, said: “We’re excited to partner with digital systems integration leader Ranosys to expand buy now pay later acceptance across online and offline merchant checkouts across Asia. Consumers today expect security, transparency and flexibility in their payment experience. This partnership will support businesses in enabling a fast, safe and seamless checkout experience that will accelerate post-Covid19 business growth and sales.”

Atome is available on the App Store and on Google Play.

About Ranosys

About Atome

Atome is a leading buy now pay later brand in Asia, partnering online and offline retailers to increase conversions and grow average orders and customer segments. For consumers, Atome offers choice, convenience and flexibility in how they choose to shop and pay. Atome currently partners over 3,000 online and offline retailers in nine markets (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and mainland China). Atome is part of Advance Intelligence Group, a Series-C technology company in Asia-Pacific. Founded in 2016, it leverages innovative technology and partnerships to build an ecosystem of products and services serving consumers, enterprises and merchants. The Group is headquartered in Singapore and has presence across Southeast Asia, India and Greater China.

Ranosys is thrilled to announce the onboarding of Mr Soven Roy as its Delivery Unit Head – eCommerce. As one of the prominent leaders in the Digital Commerce domain, Ranosys vouches for even stronger customer relationships, team leadership and success strategies with Soven’s onboarding.

Soven brings along a professional experience and leadership of about 17 years and a journey full of high-profile deliveries, delighted customers and motivated teams. The rich corporate experience from companies like IBM and Tech Mahindra; and that fine Digital Commerce experience from Cybage and Born Group that Soven carries is going to benefit us at large, and this handshake has happened just at the right time when Ranosys is expanding aggressively across the globe.

“I am truly excited to be a part of Ranosys at this juncture of their upward journey, and where my technical acumen and management experience can accelerate the growth multifolds”, says Soven. He has built a successful career with hard work and commitments throughout, and believes in a value-driven ecosystem. “I have learnt the art and science of deliveries and relationships pretty well; and believed early in my career that success is not a destination but a beautiful journey travelled well, together .”

This collaboration goes well with Ranosys rebranded tagline of ‘Tomorrow. Today’ where the stage is well set aiming that futuristic vision and high-profile growth. “We are elated with Soven’s onboarding and have immense faith in his talent and leadership abilities. Our organisation is committed to delivering unparalleled quality to our clients and Soven’s experience will strengthen our vision of setting new standards for customer service and helping them fulfil their dreams”, says Sushma Vyas, the Chief Operating Officer at Ranosys.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With partnership with world’s leading eCommerce platforms like Adobe, Salesforce, Shopify and Bigcommerce, Ranosys focuses on the mid-market to enterprise segment for eCommerce, digital transformation and product engineering services.
With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

So, which is the right platform for your B2B eCommerce business?

A million-dollar question, right!

When it comes to deciding the right B2B eCommerce platform for your business, you cannot rush through it. Your website is the foundation of your business. Not only is it an effective tool to generate leads, but it reflects your vision and values.

Choosing an old platform will not help your 93% B2B buyers enjoy a rich, seamless, and intuitive buying experience. Adobe Magento Commerce, on the other hand, suffices your B2B business needs. Its powerful and flexible features make it a perfect choice for B2B eCommerce businesses.

Moreover, Adobe Magento Commerce boasts some significant advantages that secure its lead over other platforms like native B2B functionality, open-source nature, customizations, and easy integrations with backend systems.

For long, Adobe Magento Commerce has been a favorite for B2B sellers- big or small. The PHP-based eCommerce platform accounts for over 12% of eCommerce stores worldwide. It is one of the most famous Content Management Systems (CMS) and supports over 250,000 active sites.

But before we dive right into what makes Adobe Magento Commerce the perfect choice, let’s understand the several ways that’ll help you decide on one eCommerce platform.

How to choose the right Digital Commerce platform?

For any business- B2C or B2B, what matters the most is its CX value.

Delightful customer experience has become a must for modern B2B buyers. So, if you want to acquire a more significant B2B market share, your eCommerce store must be a compiled reflection of the following factors.

Identify what customers and what they need

For online brick-and-mortar stores, just like the physical ones, customers mean everything.

However, unlike B2C enterprises, B2B brands have a far smaller customer base with particular needs. So, knowing your ideal buyers, where they come from, where they dwell, and how you can best serve them becomes a dire necessity.

B2B manufacturing brands must perform preliminary market research to learn more about:

The prevalent online competition
Analyze the online shopping experience they provide
Discover the right sales and marketing channels
Explore the standard industrial cycles of operation
Identify the critical steps in a customer lifecycle
Map out the must-follow steps in the sales cycle
Outline the key platforms your target audience uses
Analyze the pain points of your target consumers at every stage
Brainstorm means to alleviate these issues via its products

Finalize all the products you will be selling online

While you cannot sell all B2B products online, some are excellent inclusions to your online product catalog. So, you can sell two types of products online: those that are available for instant ordering and the others sold only via sales reps.

For the first category of products, you can create a B2C experience by listing the product online, allow easy filtering, instant pricing, and detailed product descriptions, including images. You must create an online landing page for all the sellable products, adding CTAs.

Build your eCommerce store

Several B2B eCommerce platforms offer varied features to help you create dedicated landing pages with exhaustive product information and online comparison tools. With such tools, you don’t have to start the development process from scratch. Instead, you can instantly use its features like visual designs, plugins, integrations, and customizations for a website’s landing page. Using such popular channels, you can assemble your online store within no time, save money, reduce the go-to-market time, and launch your store in days and weeks instead of months and years.

Depending on the platform features and your business needs, you can pick up one that leads you to the right digital transformation journey.

Structure an eCommerce support team for ongoing assistance

Unlike B2C customers who don’t require a sales rep for every purchase, B2B buyers would require such assistance. So, ensure you have a backend staff ready to solve any technical glitches or order processing issues. Assist them with custom quotes and large-volume negotiations.

Adobe Magento Commerce Platform: An Introduction

Now that you’re ready to take your first step into B2B eCommerce manufacturing transformation, it’s time to figure out which enterprise solution you need. Your business needs a customizable, scalable, and flexible platform that can handle high traffic volumes.

So, which B2B eCommerce solution should you choose?

The answer is the Adobe Magento Commerce platform.

Adobe Magento Commerce is a global force in the eCommerce industry. It has generated over $189B in GMV, rated as the top platform for an eCommerce solution by Digital Commerce 360, and known as the most prominent eCommerce ecosystem. It supports a wide range of eCommerce scenarios from transactional to physical models.

This feature-rich solution fastens the go-to-market process, provides unique and personalized customer buying experiences, places your business at the forefront of innovation, delivers end-to-end omnichannel experiences, and reserves space for scalability, growth, and expansion.

Staggering statistics prove the potential of Adobe Magento Commerce

Adobe Magento Commerce enables companies to achieve their digital goals. It readies organizations for the future, offering unprecedented scale, performance, and business growth prospects.

The following numbers will help you understand more about the Adobe Magento Commerce power.

2X faster performance
boosts sales by +159%
+2.5X higher account registration
+110% increase in repeat purchases
Ordering time reduced by 71%
Site traffic improved by 25%
Conversion rates enhanced by 16%
Shopping cart abandonment reduced rate by 6%
New content creation costs reduced by 61%
Site downtime lessened by 93%

Moreover, Adobe Magento platform and its comprehensive commerce capabilities empower your business solutions with integrations, extensions, and features that’ll help you design impeccable experiences for your customers, across touchpoints.

Adobe Magento Commerce: Is it the right choice for my business?

Well, some might argue that since Adobe Magento Commerce was initially developed for B2C, it’s not profitable enough for B2B. However, that’s not the case!

True that Adobe Magento platform was developed for B2C, it has grown into a popular B2B eCommerce platform since the release of a separate software package in 2016. Today’s Adobe Magento 2.3 version possesses many advantages and core capabilities that make it a powerful tool for B2B businesses.

These include:

Native B2B functionality

Adobe Magento Commerce offers personalized experiences to B2B customers like client-centric catalogs, customized price lists, and customer-targeted content and promos.

Its B2B self-service tools let you handle company accounts, buyer roles and permissions granted, workflow approvals, client credits, order and quote tracking, and account history.

All in all, Adobe Magento Commerce streamlines purchasing experiences through fast reordering, assisted selling, quote workflow, requesting, order by SKU/CSV uploads, and requisition lists.

Forge powerful and efficient buying experiences

The best part about Adobe Magento Commerce is that it creates resilient and effortless buying experiences. Its page builder CMS, headless commerce, segmentation and targeting, multi-site support, and reference themes create engaging and functional website designs.

Moreover, users can discover products using Adobe Magento-powered intelligent searches, layered navigation and filtering, and AI-driven product recommendations based on previous buying history.

Using the Adobe Magento platform, you can boost conversion ratios through its drag-and-drop merchandising, automated sorting rules, promotions & coupons, rich product pages, and product availability information.

Manage client-based catalogs with a wide range of products

Adobe Magento Commerce allows you to manage 1M+ products and thousands of categories on a single dashboard. You can even create new customers and segment-specific catalogs per your choice. The Adobe Magento platform allow for third-party PIM integrations like Akeneq, InRiver, Jasper, and more.

Reach your customers anywhere and everywhere

A Adobe Magento solution allows you to reach customers throughout the world with mobile responsive designs and email templates. You can sell on several channels like Amazon using eProcurement systems and marketing automation. More so, you can communicate with your customers using real-time online chat, assisting them with the required information.

Receive orders from anywhere and optimize fulfillments on all channels

Adobe Magento Commerce helps you with:

Inventory management, allowing you to manage and allocate your global inventory from one location centrally
Intelligent sourcing to enable order processing from across channels
Omnichannel fulfillment, facilitating pick-up from a store, ship to ship, and ship from store options

Enforce new business models

Adobe Magento Commerce boosts your online selling processes and revenue funnels using subscription, digital goods, marketplaces, and virtual goods models.

Fuel business growth with actionable insights

The Adobe Magento platform enables data analytics through its powerful report-building and visualization tools. You can integrate these with multiple data sources, dive deeper, derive actionable insights, and allow accessible data sharing across teams. You can use the pre-built custom reports to design your files seamlessly and smoothly.

Future-proof operations with scalable and secure Adobe Magento cloud commerce

With faster time to market services, higher performance, optimizing IT costs, and full-fledged security, adopt the Adobe Magento cloud commerce solutions and ready your business for the future. This way, you can structure your business as per your growing needs and demands and row safely into the eCommerce industry.

Expand your store capabilities using Marketplace extensions and connect with ease to any 3rd party system like Salesforce, Oracle, Manhattan, Informatica, InRiver, etc.

A one-stop-shop

Adobe Magento Commerce has everything you would need for an online store. You can run multiple brands’ accounts through channel partners and seamlessly manage all brands simultaneously. More so, you can quickly live your Adobe Magento Commerce store online and integrate it with your ERP and CRM solution.

B2B brands can leverage their self-service facility to track quotes, view detailed order histories, manage multiple clients, and credit online. Such prospects boost your business’s efficiency, offering a consistent experience to your B2B customers across several brands and geographies through a single platform.

The Road Ahead

The manufacturing industry is in a tedious position today. So, you can either stick with the old way of doing things. Or, you can take things into your hands, adopt a digital model, and rapidly pace your digitization across markets. The decision is yours!

Given the current B2B eCommerce climate and the anticipated future growth, B2B manufacturers today need to build a stronger rapport with their targeted buyers, including the future ones. This way, you can collect customer data, understand their evolving preferences, and apply those insights towards product development.

Not only is this a sound plan ensuring higher profits, but it also future-proofs your business for any or all changes.

Take your eCommerce business to the next level

Our rich Adobe Commerce feature set can help you get there.

Industrial transformation is always driven by changing customer preferences. Prior to the digital eCommerce setup, manufacturers served their clients via phone, fax, or email. They tried to strengthen frontiers with the limited but extensively used mediums without losing customer loyalty, especially when the world experienced the fourth wave of the industrial revolution: digital commerce.

Historically, the manufacturing sector wasn’t the first vertical to jump on this bandwagon.

But when a visionary decided to challenge this status quo, they ignited a B2B digital eCommerce revolution. In the arenas of B2B manufacturing, this rampant change was brought upon by Amazon and its fantastic ideology of accumulating all the B2B manufacturers on one online portal.

It wasn’t like the traditional manufacturing sector enjoyed a good reputation. It was already fighting competition from all sides- online distributors and marketplaces, large retailers, group purchasing organizations, manufacturers, and national distributions. However, the entry of Amazon into this tense industrial genre just escalated and accelerated strategy implementation that would otherwise have taken a decade for market adoption.

And with that, modern B2B consumers changed as well. They no longer dwell on a single sales channel, online or offline. Surrounded by an array of options, a dynamic set of needs, and increased time pressure, it has become mandatory for B2B manufacturers not just to witness the eCommerce digital commerce revolution but be a part of it.

If you want to ace B2B manufacturing, this guide dives deep into its nuances- from new customer expectations to essential steps for running digital commerce operations.

Why did manufacturers need an eCommerce solution in the first place?

Over 41% of B2B eCommerce buyers complete a purchase at least once a week.

Over 58% of B2B buyers purchase 25% or more of their products online.

And lastly, eCommerce sales growth is 1.7x faster than the overall growth rate for all distributor sales.

See where we’re getting at?

Today’s B2B eCommerce customers want to control their experiences online. They need self-serving capabilities and a transactional website. And when they engage with your web store, these customers need accurate information, be it inventory-related, product details, order history, etc. They should be able to receive such knowledge as and when required.

A B2B eCommerce platform solves a myriad of purchasing issues faced by the consumers, such as:

unavailability of products
insufficient or inaccurate information
lengthy purchase cycles
lack of personalized content
lack of proper customer service channels
inability to ship to multiple locations
lack of customer-friendly purchasing options

These are just some bottlenecks, a cause of suffrage for the B2B manufacturing industry. A digital commerce platform not only reforms the manufacturing unit but also readies it for future movements. With eCommerce’s innate capability and your B2B manufactured product’s power, you can fulfill modern consumer needs and lead the digital race.

There is a drastic change in the B2B buyers too!

Industrial metamorphosis transpires due to the ever-changing needs of customers. However, in this case, there was one more stimulant- the pandemic.

The global pandemic cast a heavy toll on the B2B manufacturing companies, with over 35.5% facing supply chain disruptions.

Such adverse situations prompted manufacturers to explore new procuring, purchasing, and selling ways. In particular, it required them to dive deep into digital commerce.

In 2020, the global manufacturing and distributing sales grew only 1.5%, to $17.5 trillion. However, the B2B digital sales grew by an unbelievable 10.9%, $9 trillion. That’s a massive gap between the B2B and B2B digital sales.

And it makes sense considering that a good part of current B2B buyers are tech-savvy millennials. Since the B2C has already enriched their user experience with smooth and seamless online transactions, they expect the same from B2B manufacturers and suppliers.

Millennial or not, online websites are not enough to woo the B2B buyers. They lack the X-factor that defines a user’s buying journey. And that something is personalization. Most B2B buyers want to engage with manufacturers and suppliers offering user-friendly services, comprehensive B2B capabilities, flexible solutions, exceptional experiences, scalable performances, and personalized pricing. They want information regarding quote estimation and other customization opportunities across multiple channels 24/7.

In fact, 64% say that they might immediately switch to a buyer offering such prospects.

Such demands require an integrated eCommerce solution available whenever and wherever customers need them. Thus, a B2B eCommerce platform is the best bet manufacturers have to survive and thrive through this paradigm shift.

How B2B eCommerce benefits the manufacturing industry?

As per studies, by 2051, over 41% of revenue garnered by B2B manufacturers will be from digital commerce solutions, be it a business selling to other business consumers or directly to the end customers. Further researchers

predict B2B eCommerce to reach $1.8 trillion by 2023.

It is a staggering number for manufacturers to embrace, particularly when there are thousands yet to find the right web solution, let alone delve into digital commerce’s deep waters. However, one aspect that is crystal clear for B2B manufacturing companies is that eCommerce will be a prominent income source in the years to come. In no way should B2B manufacturers let go of such a profitable and futuristic opportunity.

Apart from the said monetary gains, there are other ways eCommerce tends to benefit the B2B manufacturing space.

Access customers directly

The direct-to-consumer business model has well-served the B2C brands, but now, it can also assist the manufacturing industry. B2B manufacturing businesses can sell products via their website over the distributors, hence saving the commission, you would have spent otherwise.

Approaching customers directly:

Increases profit margins
Lets you exercise higher control over brand representation
Strike balance between optimum pricing and discounts offered
Derive consumer insights to enforce personalization
Elevate customer loyalty through retention campaigns

Without a doubt, one of the most significant advantages of having a B2B eCommerce website is customer data analysis to procure actionable insights for better decision making. Consequently, you can employ those acumens in your sales and marketing strategies, or you can communicate with the customer for feedback and incorporate the same into your product development process.

Allow innovation

Knowing your consumer’s shopping patterns adds value to your manufacturing and supply chain. Feedback received from your customers regarding equipment functioning can help modify your product ability in a manner that suits their needs. It functions as a unique value proposition for your B2B manufacturing business.

At every step of the process, from procurement to after-sale support, you can improve your services to introduce better delivery schedules, improve warranty, extend installation and training assistance. It also helps you know your popular product, and then you can pitch those to a more expansive customer base.

What’s more, you can move beyond geographical boundaries and sell your products to global customers. Not only does it strengthen your operations, but it allows you to modernize as per the customer trends.

Follow a scalability approach

For a scalable industry vertical like B2B manufacturing, it is significant to invest in resources that can accommodate the growing demands without requiring any migration or system upgrades. With a B2B eCommerce website, you’ll experience a surge in processing orders. However, to ensure steady profits, you need to fulfill business growth without needing more distributors or sales reps. Equipment requirements without customization can be instantly sold to the buyers.

With a robust B2B eCommerce solution, you can tap into new markets or even sell cross-border. Considering that in 2019, internationally sourced products conquered 43% of the total spending on industrial goods, it is a lucrative opportunity for the B2B manufacturing industry.

Improve process efficiency

For B2B sales reps, there is nothing more frustrating than contacting a client for payment clearance.

However, in the case of an active eCommerce solution, since customers directly shop from the website, it massively reduces the time spent by sales reps on product pitching and manual invoicing. More so, with automated payments and recurring billing for EMIs or regular reorders, the process becomes efficient and hassle-free.

In the long run, it streamlines account and invoice management, giving your staff and sales reps their much-deserved peace of mind.

Educates consumers about the brand

With distributors disguised as the middle man between manufacturers and consumers, it is usual for the latter to have little or no knowledge about the former. As per Google, over 58% of B2B industrial manufacturer buyers research a product online before following up with a brand. That is why you need to SEO-optimize your eCommerce website to receive higher traffic from organic searches for brand or product-related queries. Once you have a web page ranking on Google, it will familiarize more buyers who’ll then explore your product range.

Unlock the power of data analytics

Data analytics is a potent weapon, and eCommerce transformation provides you an opportunity to use it for your benefit.

A digital commerce website opens avenues to gain plentiful customer data that you can employ to derive insightful information, boosting CX and sales. Over time, these insights help better product manufacturing processes as per customer recommendations. B2B Manufacturers can use data analytics to:

Personalized product recommendations as per order history. As a company, you have an extensive product catalog that you’d want to share with your customers. You can tailor this file depending on the segment, customers, and other external factors with personalized product suggestions.
Dynamic pricing as per customization required or order history. If a customer has a bulk order, you can adjust your pricing to make maximum profits while closing the deal at a price that they’ll accept.
Allow upselling or cross-selling propositions depending on the recent purchases conducted. An ERP B2B eCommerce platform will enable customers to look for connecting parts, thereby improving customer service and efficiency.
Offer configuration and product matching that differ in shape, size, and color. It means customers can customize the products as per their requirements without requiring any help from the support department. It saves your and a customer’s time.

These benefits help realize the potential of digital commerce as-a-service in today’s rapidly changing economy. It unlocks possibilities related to automation, optimization, and profound transformation, adopting new business models that allow the small, medium, and large manufacturers to accomplish their business goals.

Wrapping It Up

In the B2B manufacturing industry, digital transformation is an ongoing process. Today’s trends will become tomorrow’s old news. But once you’ve laid the foundation of digital transformation in manufacturing, it will simplify your task of leveraging futuristic technologies, hence driving efficiency and innovation to your processes.

To achieve your B2B manufacturing goals., wholesale change isn’t required. Start slowly and grow from there. The key is to forge a strategy that allows you to step into the world of digital commerce, realize its benefits, and use it to take your next step forward.

But that isn’t even the only segment B2B manufacturing needs to work on!

Maximize Profitability, Quality, and ROI for Manufacturing.

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Microsoft SharePoint implementation has revolutionized the way organizations store, manage and collaborate. What started as a document collaboration tool has now been serving as an intranet and an efficient CMS.

Various SharePoint Platforms like Power Automate leverage the capabilities of low-code technology to inculcate business process automation with simple, quick and easy-to-follow steps. It enables everyone, from an IT expert to a non-technical business user, to create their own workflows and automate their tasks so that they can concentrate on productivity and efficiency.

Infact, other platforms like Power BI, Power Virtual agents and Power Apps empower the end-users to build digital solutions faster, respond rapidly and utilize data–driven insights into their decision-making process.

Since its inception, MS SharePoint has progressively evolved into a comprehensive digital tool to bring efficiency and collaboration at your fingertips. The article focuses on all-things SharePoint so that you have a guide to help you boost productivity with its many benefits. So, let’s dive deeper into the world of SharePoint.

Types of SharePoint Implementation

There are three ways of implementing SharePoint in your organization:

SharePoint On-Premise: It is locally stored on your company’s server and is managed by your internal IT team. Your team will be responsible for updates, patches, and security control. One of the biggest reasons why companies prefer it is the ease of migration to higher versions.

SharePoint Online: As the name suggests, it is the cloud version of SharePoint. Under this version, Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure hosts SharePoint farms and is also responsible for security patches and other such updates. Most companies prefer it because of its additional features and low infrastructure cost.

SharePoint Hybrid: This configuration lets users take advantage of Sharepoint functionality while using SharePoint On-Premise. Also, a user can access content in both online and on-premise functionalities from a single place.

What you choose for your organization depends on your needs, business complexities and overall requirement. However, what ties all of these in one thread is the seamlessness they bring to a business.

Microsoft SharePoint makes business processes run smoother and helps the team collaborate with more efficiency. If you’re still unsure about how positively Microsoft SharePoint can impact your business, let us give you a better glimpse.

Why is Microsoft SharePoint Important for Businesses?

Simple Way for Powerful Collaborations: With Microsoft SharePoint, your team gets a platform to collaborate and be in touch with each other from anywhere, at any time. It provides an easy-to-navigate interface with powerful functionalities that aids your team’s performance with minimum efforts on their side.

Improve Business Processes: With its built-in validations, SharePoint helps you collect vital information at one place from all stakeholders. It also has interactive components like BI dashboards which show scorecards, graphs, and KPIs in a simplified and unified manner. With all these features, your team finds the right information to make informed decisions and improve business processes.

Gives a Unified, Single Platform: SharePoint has a scalable architecture for employing web services. It can even include interoperability standards like XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). It has a rich library of APIs for lists and documents. With this, you can easily integrate your existing non-Microsoft IT system without any hassle.

Provides Secure Space for Knowledge Management and Sharing: SharePoint provides a safe repository for documents, historical data, and knowledge nuggets. By using it in your internal system, your team will get the benefit of continuous, safe and authentic organizational knowledge gathered over time from verified sources.

There’s no doubt that implementation of Microsoft SharePoint services can help a business achieve operational efficiency. In fact, it has helped many industries like BFSI streamline their functions. However, companies face difficulties when it comes to Microsoft SharePoint implementation. In this blog, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide to help you implement it in your organization.

Factors That Affect Microsoft SharePoint Implementation in Your Business

Budget Constraint

There’s no fixed estimation for the cost of SharePoint as it depends on various factors like whether you choose on-premise or online, whether you outsource it or not.

However, you can assume the project cost to be at least $25000. Besides this initial cost, there are many hidden costs involved. Let us explain them to you.

Licensing Cost: There are many licensing options made available by Microsoft for SharePoint and Office 365. You can choose your subscription plans based on storage space and the monthly plans start with as low as $5 per user per month. You may also need to obtain a license for MS SQL and MS Windows Server as they don’t align with SharePoint. (To understand more about pricing, please refer here).

Security Tools: You will also need to subscribe to particular malware protections and backup products. Of course, you can also choose third-party solutions to protect your system.

Hardware and Infrastructure: If you are opting for SharePoint On-Premise, then you may also need servers like Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint Web front-end, disk storage, networking hardware, etc.

IT Staff: With On-Premise functionality, you may need to hire IT specialists. However, the number and expertise of these specialists completely depend on the complexity of development and configuration. If you opt for basic functionalities, then the cost of maintenance and support will be lower and vice-versa.

Third-Party Software: Along with SharePoint, you may also need to spend money on third-party solutions required to carry out tasks on SharePoint.

Phases of Development

Phase I: Determining the Vision:

Ideally, you must begin by assessing the needs of your organization and how Microsoft Sharepoint implementation will address them.

Find Your Deployment Members: Before the implementation, you need to identify your major stakeholders in the implementation process. Your key business decision-makers, IT architects and end-users are the groups that will benefit the most with this implementation. Thus, their presence and thoughts are of the utmost importance.

Determine Your Business Needs: MS SharePoint is used for multiple purposes. From content management to document storage, you can fulfill many goals with it. Thus, you need to carefully map your objectives before you begin the process.

Phase II: Onboarding the Resources:

At this step, you will begin the rollout process of SharePoint. But before you begin, certain details need to be taken care of. They are as follows:

Technical Planning: The first step will be to find out a way to integrate your current content into SharePoint. Thankfully, Microsoft offers a variety of tools related to SharePoint which can simplify your migration process. Some of them are Microsoft Fastrack, SharePoint Migration Tool, PowerShell, Migration Manager, etc. Furthermore, you will also need to check your internet bandwidth and security checks before you start the rollout.

Carry a Pilot Test: Introducing a new technology becomes easier when you have the support of a few key stakeholders. Before you introduce the technology to the entire organization, you must run a pilot test. You can ask the participants to carry out routine tasks like storing and accessing the content, sharing the material, etc. to check its usefulness. Their reviews are important to make final tweaks before you introduce the technology to the organization.

Roll-Out to a Single Department: Before the organization-level rollout, you should roll-out the implementation of SharePoint to a single department or business unit. During this phase, you will direct this particular business unit to migrate their documents to SharePoint, train the end-users to use it properly and take their feedback for making any changes, if required.

Phase III: Getting the Right Value:

This is the final phase of the Microsoft SharePoint implementation where you will finally roll-out the technology to the entire organization. This process also has two phases where first you implement it and then, you drive its successful adoption amongst users.

Roll-Out to the Organization: Your final roll-out will have all the changes implemented after the pilot test and the single unit roll-out. Before you finally ask people to start using SharePoint, it’s important to train them and provide them with manuals. Also, you must be ready for feedback as it is an essential part of change management.

Drive SharePoint’s Adoption: Adoption of a new technology requires commitment from the leadership. They must be the change leaders and inspire the team to use the technology to its full potential. You can identify a few resources as your change champions and reward them to encourage people.

Microsoft SharePoint helps bring your entire organization together and makes collaboration effective and efficient. But making this implementation successful depends on how well it is deployed and how your team uses it.

Let us show you how you can help your employees get used to SharePoint.

How to Make Your Team Adopt SharePoint Easily

No technology can be used fully unless its users adopt it well. And, it is the top management’s responsibility to ensure that your team makes the transition easier. Some of the tips that you can follow are –

Gradual Implementation: As we have discussed this already in detail, the introduction of a new technology or system is always easier when it’s done in phases. It helps the team in understanding the new process and also provides an opportunity to the leaders for correcting the loopholes, if any.

User-Friendly UI/UX: The main purpose of implementing SharePoint in your organization is to make collaboration simpler for your team. A user-friendly UI/UX ensures that your team utilizes SharePoint to its full advantage. An interactive and intuitive UI/UX makes navigation easier and helps users adapt to it quickly.

Simple Features: Keeping the features simple and easy-to-understand is another way to engage your team. The key is to only include features that are essential for your organizational needs and remove everything unnecessary.
Right Training: It is the management’s responsibility to ensure that the team is properly trained to use SharePoint. From demos to user manuals, there are many ways to train your organization as you plan to implement Microsoft SharePoint.

Wrapping Up

Implementation of Microsoft SharePoint is a comprehensive process that includes a thorough assessment of organizational needs to determine the required functionalities, timelines and appropriate deployment options. Any wrong move can break your SharePoint implementation plan. Thus, you need Microsoft SharePoint consulting services from the Microsoft SharePoint expert, well-defined goals and willingness to change to make this successful.

FREE CHECKLIST

An Exclusive SharePoint Implementation Checklist For You.

Learn tips to leverage the benefits of SharePoint.

According to Gartner, Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2021, an increase of 4% from 2020. As more and more businesses are inclining their focus on digital innovation and heading towards achieving digital excellence due to the pandemic, the future of the software industry seems to be promising in years to come.

Today, when innovation is top-of-mind for enterprises and all businesses are putting their efforts to be at the forefront of the race for digital transformation, OutSystems has emerged as a facilitator of faster innovation and enabler of rapid digital transformation. By choosing OutSystems for your app development project, you can stay updated with the software development trends that will take the center stage in 2021.

Trend #1 AI-Driven Software Development will Gain a Huge Traction

The software development approach has been rapidly changing and enterprises are nowadays embracing AI-enhanced solutions. A report by IDC states that at least 90% of new enterprise apps will feature AI components by 2025.

How can OutSystems help?
OutSystems seamlessly integrates the power of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning with software development to provide next-gen AI-assisted development capabilities. The AI components of OutSystems enables enterprises to develop an app that provides optimized efficiency, faster insights, and better customer engagement.

Trend #2 Low-Code Platforms are Likely to Take the App Development by Storm

Low-code technology has revolutionized app development in the past few years and 2021 seems to be another year of tremendous growth for low-code technology. As per the prediction of Forrester, the total market for low-code development platforms will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 40%, reaching $21.2 billion by 2022.

How can OutSystems help?
In today’s fast-changing landscape, innovation has become the new normal. To move up the digital evolution curve, enterprises should continually update their apps or roll out new applications. Here, low-code platforms like OutSystems can help.

Trend #3 Future-Proof Mobile Apps will be the Next Big Thing

Enterprises are turning to future-proofing and modernization of mobile apps to stay ahead of the game and this trend will continue in 2021.

How can OutSystems help?
In this context, OutSystems is gaining popularity as it uses agile and futuristic approach and helps enterprises rethink their legacy applications from the perspective of today’s digital era. Furthermore, OutSystems allows enterprises to integrate IoT, AI, and machine learning capabilities to their apps.

Trend #4 PWAs will Enable Commerce Businesses Go Headless

According to GlobalNewWire, the global market for progressive web application is likely to reach value of $ 10.44 Billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 31.9%. PWA provides enormous opportunities for businesses to boost their clicks, upselling, cross-selling, retention, engagement, etc.

How can OutSystems help?
OutSystems believes in the power of PWAs and has transformed their development with low-code frictionless experience that provides native-like experience. Creating a Progressive Web App with OutSystems provides two benefits – i) a single code base to turn any OutSystems mobile app to PWA without further development, and ii) quick time to market.

Trend #5 Multiexperience Development Platforms will Reshape the Global Business Landscape

Gartner has predicted that by 2023, more than 25% of the conversational apps, PWAs and mobile apps at large enterprises will be run and/or built through a multi-experience development platform.

How can OutSystems help?
OutSystems has been named a Leader for Multiexperience Development Platforms in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant. Using this platform, it is easy to create fit-for-purpose applications pertaining to touchpoint-specific modalities. OutSystems enables enterprises to deliver a consistent user experience across mobile, web, wearables, and conversational touchpoints.

The Inference

The world is on the cusp of technological revolution and software development trends are likely to impact businesses to a great extent. Staying on the top of these trends is the need of the hour. With OutSystems, you get increased productivity, greater agility, consistent user experience, broad user-base, and faster ROI that helps you gain a competitive edge in the digital era. Reach out to an experienced software development company to learn how you can embrace these trends and reshape the future with OutSystems development.

Ranosys Technologies is the fastest growing OutSystems Partner having a strong commitment towards the OutSystems platform. It is the only partner of its size within the entire OutSystems ecosystem with partnerships for 3 different markets – APAC, the UK, and the UAE. The dedicated OutSystems Center of Excellence (CoE) at Ranosys helps clients speed up their digital transformation initiatives.

Create enterprise applications fast and deploy them faster.

Employ the low-code platform of OutSystems to develop engaging experiences.

Ever been at the mercy of a checkout button only because it keeps on vanishing like it’s on a spell or something?

Imagine you’ve started reading a news article when suddenly all the elements start shifting around the page like it’s some magic movie throwing you off your scent and forcing you to find where you left the phrase.

Quite frustrating, right!

Well, the truth is, such a web experience happens way too many times and with too many of us.

It primarily befalls when a new element tries to find its place on the page, causing such a commotion.

Thankfully, Google doesn’t like it either!

The trillion-dollar search engine never wants its users to have a wrecking experience on its search engine, which is why it’ll roll out new performance metrics as a part of its core web vitals 2021 updates.

These Core Web Vitals act like the search engine’s spine. It does everything to maintain its supremacy, command, and meaning in a digital user’s life.

It includes components like Largest Content-full Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FIP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLP).

This blog mainly talks about CLP or the Cumulative Layout Shift, which leads to the online ruckus we just discussed! And, then we’ll explore the various ways to optimize cumulative layout shift for a Google-approved score.

What is Cumulative Layout Shift?

Cumulative Layout Shift measures a webpage’s visual content stability. It adds the shifting scores in all the layout shifts, which are not a result of user interaction, precisely, within the 500ms of user input. It measures the displacement in the visible content viewport along with the distance shifted by the impacted elements.

Google CLS analyzes unexpected element movements in a page and their effect on user experience. Layout shifts occur when a visible element changes its position without any user request.

In a nutshell, CLS sums up scores of individual frame changes in a website design’s element.

The recommended CLS score is below 0.1

As per Google:

CLS below 0.1 is a good score.
CLS between 0.1-0.25 needs improvement.
CLS above 0.25 is a poor score.

Element distortions during browsing are an annoying experience. But more than that, it lowers a user’s trust in the content publisher and affects SEO and UX. Moreover, in worst-case scenarios, it might lead to financial losses as well.

And you certainly don’t want that to happen!

How to calculate Cumulative Layout Shift score?

The CLS score calculation depends on two factors:

Impact Fraction
Distance Fraction

Impact Fraction

It measures the instability amongst the visible elements of a screen displayed between two frames. The area occupied by the unstable part through its movement in both the frames determines the impact fraction.

For calculating impact fraction, you need to know what impact region is.

The impact region covers the area affected by the layout shift. Google identifies all the elements impacted and combines the original size with the shifted area.

Generally, the impact region is rectangular in shape, but horizontal and vertical layout shifts lead to a more complex form.

Back to impact fraction: divide the impact region area by the viewport area (The visible screen on your mobile or desktop without any scrolls).

Impact region: Impact region area/ viewport area

For example, if an element covers 50% of the viewport in one frame and shifts 40% down in the second frame, the impact fraction is 90%, i.e., 0.9.

Distance Fraction

It measures the unstable element’s movement in percentage relative to the viewport.

Before calculating the distance fraction, you must know the move distance.

Move distance refers to space before and after a layout shift. In simpler words, it entails how far a shifted element moved.

Coming back to distance fraction: divide the maximum move distance by the viewport height.

Distance Fraction = Max. Move Distance/Viewport Height

For example, if an unstable element moves 40% downwards on a screen, then the Distance Fraction is 0.40.

The significance of distance fraction in the CLS score

Initially, impact fraction dominated the CLS score; however, it suffered from inadequacies. Since huge elements move slightly, they didn’t impact the CLS score unless they shifted too much.

Enter Distance Fraction.

Incorporating it into the CLS score provides a better layout shifting comprehension.

Layout Shift

For calculating the layout shift., multiply the impact fraction by the distance fraction for one animation frame.

Layout Shift = Impact Fraction * Distance Fraction

Cumulative Layout Shift

Finally, calculate the cumulative layout shift by considering all the layout shift scores and adding them together.

Layout Shift scores (sum of each animation frame) = Cumulative Layout Shift

What causes Cumulative Layout Shifts?

As per Google, the following leads to a poor CLS score.

Images sans size attributes

Always add width and height dimensions to your images and videos. More so, allocate the image/video space using CSS aspect ratio boxes. It instructs the browser to reserve a suitable area for a web page when loading an image.

Ads, embeds, and iframes without dimensions

Ads contribute highly to layout shifts. Ads networks employ dynamic ad sizes to increase performance and revenue through higher click rates. Consequently, it degrades the user experience. However, you can reduce ad shifts by:

Reserving space for the ad slot statically.
Evaluate the available space when placing non-sticky ads at the top of the viewport.
Choose an additional size that works with the reserved area.
Eliminate layout shifts by allocating an expansive space for an ad.
Avoid removing an ad space when none is available by displaying a placeholder.

Embeddable widgets are portable web content inserted into a page. These include YouTube videos, Google Maps, social media posts, dynamic links, and more. Most times, you aren’t aware of just how much space embed content will take. Hence, web owners aren’t able to reserve enough space to prevent layout shifts.

To work around embeds, you can precompute sufficient space with a placeholder or a fallback. Explore the height of the embed file using browser developer tools. During embed loading, the contained iframe will resize itself to fit its contents.

Dynamically inserted content

You’ve probably experienced layout shifts due to pop-up windows that appear on the screen when loading a site. It occurs due to haphazardly placed banners like signup newsletters, install our app promotions, webinar windows, email requests, etc., shifting the readable content towards the end of the page.

Refrain adding content above an existing piece unless it leads to better user interaction. Moreover, when you’re trying to place this UI, allocate sufficient space in the viewport so that when it loads, it does not force content to shift around.

Web fonts causing FOIT/FOUT

Downloading or employing web fonts can lead to layout shifts in two ways:

Invisible or no text display until a new font is rendered (Flash of Invisible text or FOIT).
Swapping the fallback text with a new font (Flash of Unstyled Text or FOUT).

To prevent such layout mishaps, use tools like font-display and font loading API. You can also preload the optional fonts even when they’re not needed to reserve the necessary space for future font changes.

Actions waiting for a network response before DOM updates

Sometimes, loading animations require a network response, the lack of which leads to layout changes. So, whenever you’re trying to load an animation, use the Transform command to change it into ‘animation of properties.’

How to optimize cumulative layout score (CLS)?

Now that you know about layout frames., let’s review the various ways to optimize cumulative shift scores.

Speed load the fonts

Fonts are among the top reasons for slow page performances, resulting in a poor CLS score. All websites use at least one custom web font; these have different letter sizes and spacing than the default fonts. So, when these custom fonts don’t load properly, it produces layout shifts. That is why your website shows irregularity in content.

Although for a website, while custom web fonts disrupt layouts, they are significant for marketing and branding reasons. These are better than default fonts and of utmost importance to a website.

So how to use custom fonts while maintaining CLS score?

To do so:

preload fonts for better page rendering
Locally host fonts
Assess the performance of your fonts using aggressive caching and a good CDN. This way, the CDN will connect to the closest and fastest network and ensure a pleasant user experience.
It would, eventually, lead to higher loading shifts and minimize layout shifts. However, analyze its impact on the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint).

Embedded Content

Embeds like YouTube videos, social posts, Google Maps, etc., need proper steps to display them properly on a webpage. The embed methods include:

iFrame
JavaScript tag with HTML code
Inline HTML code

Embeddable widgets are becoming a usual addition to a webpage. However, they don’t include the accurate dimension of the widget in the code. So, when it loads, it causes layout shifts. The right way to optimize the Cumulative Layout Style score is by predetermining the embeddable widget size and using a placeholder in that space. Once you have an embed, inspect it using Chrome Developer Tools and identify its height. You can then style it with the right size, preventing any layout shifts.

Know the size of your images

Dimensionless images are one culprit to cumulative layout shifts.

When we say dimensionless images, it means there is no width or height information.

What happens is, during a page load, when you encounter such dimensionless images, the browser doesn’t find any pre-allocated space for it. Even if the images load, they will not have the right size and dimensions, leading to layout shifts and low page speed.

You can avoid such disruptions by specifying the width and height of the images. Follow a responsive design format or the aspect ratio in the CSS. When you use the aspect ratio, you need to mention its dimensions, so there is no issue with the web design.

Allocate space for ads

Indeed, ads are one big perpetrator for low page loads and layout shifts.

For starters, most ads use a dynamic design that adjusts to the screen rather than a fixed dimension to increase page performance, CTRs, and ad spends. Moreover, since these ads are hosted on different servers, undoubtedly, it slows your website.

There are a few ways to reduce, if not eliminate, layout shifts.

Allocate ad spaces previously. Use CSS to style the dynamic content.
Reserve the largest size for your ad; however, it might leave blank spaces in case of small ad sizes.
Even if the network supplies no ad, keep its place reserved. You can place a placeholder or fallback for the time being.

Take special care of pop-up windows and notifications

Every modern website deploys dynamic content. It includes types like newsletters, forms, sticky bars, messages or announcements, related content, and more.

Fortunate enough for you, the simplest way to avoid layout shifts is by inserting dynamic content below the existing content and never above. If there is no way you can do without placing such content below the current piece, simply reserve extra space.

Monitor website speed

Do you know what good layout shifts are?

Any shift that happens in response to user interaction is a good layout shift. Your site must load within 0.5 seconds of a user’s click to make sure no layout shift happens.

All in all, optimize your website for better speed and responsiveness. Eventually, it will lead to an excellent cumulative layout score.

How to measure Cumulative Layout Score?

Several tools help you test your CLS score. These include:

Real User Data

It employs data derived from fundamental user interactions.

PageSpeed Insights
Google Search Console
Google’s BigQuery
Google Data Studio

Lab Data

It employs tools to simulate user experience. It is a lab testing method; however, it resembles the real data environment.

Lighthouse
Webpagetest
Chrome Dev tools
Chrome Web Vitals Extension

Conclusion

So, that’s a wrap for everything you must know about cumulative layout shift. It might be less intuitive when compared to other Core web vitals factors, but it is an instrumental score. It helps explore whether users like surfing your web pages and how they can improve their site experience. And such prospects are always good to know.

As for the Core Web Vitals 2021 updates, if you want your website to rank higher and enjoy unending visitor traction, optimize cumulative layout shift scores. Once you do so, your website will turn into a lead generation engine, that too, a profitable one.

Interested in accelerating your lead generation?

Explore MarTech with us.

Core Web Vitals is the new buzz term in the SEO world, and we’re here to decode it for everyone trying to improve their Google rankings in 2021.

As we all know, the internet hosts trillions of web pages, and it would not be easy to find what you’re looking for if it wasn’t for Google’s algorithm. With the right metrics and ranking criteria, Google helps users locate the most relevant web pages within a few seconds. And it keeps on evolving year after year. From keyword density and page speed to overall user experience, Google core algorithm update considers every factor contributing to making web search a simple, quick, and efficient process.

To ensure that only quality content makes it to the top rank, Google has churned out a new set of metrics called “Core Web Vitals” in 2021. This article discusses them in detail and throws light on how you can optimize your web pages after this new development. Let’s begin!

So, what are Google core web vitals?

What happens when you visit a doctor?

They first check your vitals, right!

And then, factors like your blood pressure, weight, and age help them assess your current health conditions.

Similarly, the latest Google SEO update defines specific criteria to judge whether a web page provides pertinent information and a pleasant user experience. Referred to as core web vitals, they assess the quality of your on-page experience and conclude whether the web page is worthy of a good rank or not.

These Google core web vitals are an addition to already-known guidelines for good ranking like the following:

Mobile-Friendliness: Whether a page is fully responsive and mobile-optimized.
Secure Browsing: How prone a web page is to virus and malware attacks.
Presence of Pop-Ups: If your page has any intrusions in the form of pop-up ads.
HTTPS: If your page is HTTP encrypted or not.

And finally, in 2021, an updated set of core web vitals have joined the bandwagon. What sets them apart is that they’re measurable, actionable, and define the user experience in more transparent terms. With proper understanding, one can improve their UI/UX design and boost rankings. Let’s find out what they are –

Loading (LCP): How fast does the information appear on the screen?
Responsiveness (FID): How quickly does the page react to a user’s input?
Visual stability (CLS): Does the appearance of dynamic content like pop-up ads cause displacement in the readable content?

Up till now, user experience and quality content have been vague terms, but with this new update, Google has attempted to define them with an actionable formula. Each core web vital has a recommended threshold with which you can measure and maintain your SEO score. By keeping a check on these rules, you can predict and plan your SEO strategy in a much more constructive manner.

Here’s a detailed look at these criteria and how you can incorporate them into your long-term content plan:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

To put it into simple words, LCP refers to the time taken for the most prominent content to load on a web page. It can be your main banner or a video on your webpage; basically, anything that would catch a user’s attention when they visit your webpage.

What makes it different from earlier metrics is its emphasis on a user’s journey. It judges a page from a user’s viewpoint and lets you know whether your web page successfully creates a lasting impression.

Let’s face it – every page has certain elements which are more impactful and eye-catching than the others. For example, if a webpage has a few text lines and a large image, a visitor would first glance at it. However, if that image takes several seconds to load, the user is more likely to lose interest and bounce from the site.

LCP redirects your focus towards that particular part of your webpage, which will leave an impression on the user and its optimization. It is simple to understand, interpret and implement.

It breaks down your goal of improving the overall page speed into small, measurable units where you first ensure that the largest visible image or text block appears faster than the rest.

Moreover, the Google SEO update has also defined a good score so that you can measure your webpage’s performance using Search Console and PageSpeed insights. Here’s what your LCP score would mean –

If the score is under 2.5 seconds, it is a good LCP.
If it is between 2.5 to 4 seconds, it needs improvement.
If it is anything above 4 seconds, then it’s regarded as poor LCP.

FID – First Input Delay

Let’s begin this with a quick example – you just found the eBook you were looking for, and you need to fill out a form before downloading it. You fill it out and click on the submit button; however, the button takes too long to respond. That is what is known as the first input delay or FID.

In other words, the time taken by your page to respond to the first interaction request by a user is called first input delay. These requests could be anything like a redirection link, sign up page, login button, search option, or accessing the menu.

Believe it or not, these fractions of a few seconds are essential for the overall user experience. In today’s world of instant gratification, even a delay of microseconds could frustrate a user. However, we also need to understand that a browser needs time to respond to a request, and with increasingly complex web pages, its performance becomes sluggish.

It is where the importance of FID comes into picture. Instead of measuring and optimizing the entire web page’s performance, you can identify the first interaction point and focus on its enhancement.

Like LCP, you can also measure your FID score to understand how your web page performs as per this metric.

If the score is under 100 ms, it is good.
If the score is between 100 ms to 300 ms, it needs improvement.
Anything over 300ms is considered a poor score.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This is the latest addition to the long list of Google core web vitals and, again, puts user experience at the top of a web designer’s priorities.

Does it ever happen to you that you visit a webpage and suddenly encounter an ad that covers the entire screen? Now, you have to either close the ad or go back to the original page if you’ve clicked the ad by mistake?

These elements make the visual layout of a web page unstable and often frustrating for a visitor. The Cumulative Layout Shift metric aims to analyze a web page’s visual stability and discourages any unexpected layout shifts on a page.

However, you need to remember that a layout change is terrible only if it’s unexpected and abrupt. If the user clicks on a cascading menu and a new layout appears, it won’t impact your web page’s CLS score. When a shift happens as a response to direct user actions, it is expected and acceptable.

Google measures all the unexpected shifts on a page as it renders and combines it with the distance that each layout shift covers to develop a CLS score. Ideally, the score helps you find out where your web page stands-

If your CLS score is below 0.1, then it is considered good.
If your CLS score falls between 0.1 to 0.25, then it needs improvement.
If your CLS score is above 0.25, then it is rated as inferior.

Maintaining Core Web Vitals for a Better Ranking in 2021

Google algorithm is nothing but a reflection of evolving users’ expectations. In 2021, a web user is competent and expects a stable, straightforward, and simple-to-navigate web experience. If your approach to web design and development has always been user-centric, you need not worry.

However, a few tweaks as per the latest Google SEO update to keep your web pages up to date and at the top won’t hurt. With the Google core web vitals in place, you will be on your way to make your website visually appealing and enriching to your users.

Ultimately, what matters is how well you know your users and what efforts you put in to provide them with a good experience.

Ranosys, a global digital consulting firm is excited to announce that Akash Srivastava has joined their organization as AVP – Enterprise, Sales.

With his hands-on experience of working in different kinds of organization ranging from high-growth start-ups to joint ventures in the IT industry, Akash is known for leading and managing cross-cultural teams and forging long-term beneficial relationships across verticals. With his remarkable interpersonal communication skills and result-driven approach, he has a knack for understanding key business drivers and leveraging them to create value-enhancing digital experiences.

In his new role at Ranosys, Akash will be responsible for curating a strategic roadmap for multi-dimensional growth and managing key business relationships across industries.

“Akash is highly-analytical and understands the pulse of the digital industry. He has led many businesses to achieve their true growth potential by identifying the right opportunities”, says Anand Ramdeo, CRO of Ranosys. “His appointment is a wonderful addition to our growing team at the right time as his skills and knowledge will drive our organization towards market leadership and strategic growth”, he concluded.

“I am looking forward to being a part of a team that has set new standards in the industry with its meteoric rise backed by unparalleled delivery quality and client-centric approach,” says Akash. “In fact, I am thrilled to have joined Ranosys at this key juncture of its journey where my abilities and experiences will aid Ranosys’s vision of leaping forward with borderless expansion and future-ready solutions.”

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a digital technology systems integrator with offices in the US, UK, UAE and Singapore and 3 India delivery centers. Our core business is providing scalable, reliable and affordable eCommerce, product engineering and digital transformation solutions to clients worldwide. Since 2008, our flexible delivery approaches, strategic technology relationships and experienced consultants have delivered projects on time and on budget enabling Ranosys to become the technology partner of choice for many leading organizations.

We audited 125 home & furniture sites. Find out what is slowing down their conversion rate.

LEARN MORE

There can be no better time than 2021 to invest in an online furniture store. In the aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic, the shift to online shopping has sped up by 5 years as more consumers started to shop online due to physical distancing and safety reasons. The shift was already underway but the pandemic accelerated the speed by easing more consumers into the world of digital commerce and online furniture stores are no different. As we all know, people are now spending more time inside their homes; in the past year, millions of WFH offices have been set up and most living rooms across the globe have been revamped with the help of online furniture stores. In fact, home and garden is one of the three eCommerce categories that have shown the most significant growth during this period.

As a result, the demand for furniture in the eCommerce industry has risen considerably and thus, furniture retailers need to ace their marketing game and create a place for themselves amongst the increasing number of competitors. Creating an online marketing plan and understanding your target market is the first step of establishing an online presence. What comes next is the formulation of effective strategies that can catch consumers’ attention and bring them to your online furniture store

Choose Social Media Marketing for Your Online Furniture Store

In recent times, social media has emerged as an accessible platform where potential consumers interact and discover products they could use in their lives. As per a research conducted by Deloitte, consumers who use social media during their shopping process are likely to spend 4X more than non-social media users. It plays a major role in their decision-making and selection process.

Especially for products such as furniture and home decor, consumers tend to get more influenced by what they see during their routine social media scroll. As per a study, social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are a major influence when it comes to home decor and furnishing. Thus, it becomes important that an online furniture store leverages social media for their benefit.

Social media marketing looks simple on the surface but it requires creativity and spontaneous ideation to grab consumer’s attention through it. We have compiled a few tips that can help you up your social media game and enhance the conversion rate of your online furniture store –

So, without further ado, let’s get started –

Say hello to social media influencers

What is your first reaction when an ad comes before a YouTube video? You skip it, right? In fact, you’re not alone; nearly 65% of people tend to do the same. They are no longer interested in a brand asking them to buy their products. They would rather trust a recommendation or a review by a person of authority they follow and admire. And this is where influencers come in.

Since the time social media became an important tool of marketing, brands have started to allocate a sizable budget to work with influencers. Major online furniture retailers in the UK like MADE and Dunelm also frequently collaborate with influencers to reach the consumers in their niche.

Source – https://www.instagram.com/madedotcom/

However, influencer marketing is not just limited to bigger brands and established influencers. In recent times, micro-influencers with a following of 3-100k followers have also emerged as strong brand advocates. They regularly engage with their audience and have a loyal fan following which considers them more relatable than celebrity-like mega influencers. In a campaign run by a coffee brand, it was noted that micro-influencers achieved a whopping engagement rate of 45% as compared to 10% delivered by bigger influencers. At the end of the day, influencer marketing is all about getting the right engagement and a growing business can definitely benefit from the reach of micro-influencers.

So, if you’re a growing online furniture store looking to establish your identity amongst home decor and furnishing enthusiasts, influencer marketing should be on top of your marketing campaign list.

Pro tip: Start your influencer marketing campaign journey with a quick search on Instagram with hashtags like #homedecor #decor and make a list of all major influencers.

Create Visual Experiences

Social media is much more than just posting pictures and details of products. It lets you play with creativity and put your products in the spotlight by creating visual experiences. Gone are the days of product catalogs and animated pictures, it is time to get real with beautiful arrangements and live visuals.

Here’s a glimpse from IKEA UK’s feed that helps a user visualize how they could use their furniture in their homes.

Source – https://www.instagram.com/ikeauk/

But, this is not it. There are so many options in social media that you can explore to provide your audience with an interesting experience. From posting DIY tutorials and decor inspiration to managing a lively Pinterest board, an online furniture store can easily use imagery to inspire and allure customers via social media.

Pro tip: Dedicate a small space of your workplace for your product shoots which could be turned into a living room, a bedroom or a dining room as per the requirement for your social media feed.

Let the customers tell their story

There’s no denying the fact that your consumers are your best advertisement. In a survey conducted with 1590 consumers and 150 B2C marketers in the US, UK and Australia, 79% of the consumers said that user-generated content impacts their purchasing decision and brings more authenticity to a brand. From testimonials to product reviews, every piece of content that shows your furniture being used in the day-to-day life of a consumer can become a huge selling point for your business.

One of the most effective ways to become a part of your customer’s stories is by assisting them. With features like Instagram stories, you can conduct online Q&A sessions and offer tips related to furniture and decor. You can even take a leap and include customers in a campaign just like Ikea. They started a social media campaign wherein they helped customers design their small spaces in a way that they looked more spacious and airy – in return, they got multiple customer stories and the validation that their brand helps solve everyday problems.

Another method to ensure that your customers remain interested in your brand is by keeping in touch with them through social media. Make sure that you provide prompt responses to their comments and queries and take no time in acknowledging any appreciation they send your way. In this digital age, you need to stay in touch to stay in mind and that is why we have social media to the rescue.

Create an engaging and responsive eCommerce website

The entire purpose of a social media strategy is to drive traffic to your eCommerce website. Without a user-friendly website, the entire campaign will fall flat! In fact, a good website is often a better sales strategy than most others.

Now, there are many factors involved when it comes to designing a website that is successful in reaching out to your prospective customers amongst the growing competition and then, keeps them engaged.

One of the most important factors that you should never overlook is the responsiveness of the eCommerce website across all devices. It not only improves the user experience but also makes your website SEO-friendly.

Speaking of SEO-enriched eCommerce portals, there’s one aspect that often gets overlooked – site speed. Did you know that you only have 5 seconds to engage a customer and 1 in 4 visitors abandon a site if it takes more than 4 seconds to load?

Moreover, Google has time and again emphasized that site or page speed plays a major role in judging website performance and ranking a website on the search engine.

All of these factors suggest that ensuring good speed on your eCommerce website should be your priority in 2021.

Besides this, you must ensure that your eCommerce website is built from a user’s perspective. Simplify the customer journey and ease product discovery with clean designs and clear navigation. The user experience should be in focus while you design your online furniture store.

Finally, let your furniture take the lead

The key player in your entire plan would always be the products that you offer. Let your furniture do the talking and take centre stage in your social media plan. Inspire prospective buyers with your products, engage with them and let the world of social media take your furniture store to the next level!

The year 2020 has brought about a major structural shift in the way B2B commerce operates in the world economy. Due to the onslaught of the Coronavirus pandemic, a lot of B2B companies have shifted online with an aim to strengthen their digital presence. In fact, recent research by Mckinsey and Company that involved 3,600 B2B decision-makers has concluded that 90% of them expected the digital model to flourish even after the pandemic ends.

However, the pandemic is not the only reason why B2B commerce is now increasingly inching towards digitization. Here’re a few other reasons that have resulted in this shift –

As per a Google research carried out in 2015, B2B buyers now comprise a younger crowd, either millennials or Gen Z, who are more comfortable with the online shopping experience.
Today, most B2B buyers depend upon online research before making a final decision. Studies suggest that a typical B2B buyer carries out at least 12 online searches before making a purchase.
The influence of digital content on the B2B market has gone beyond industries. In fact, buyers hailing from the industrial manufacturing and supply industry rely heavily on online information and reviews.

The aforementioned statistics prove that eCommerce is now a big part of B2B brands and this has resulted in the shaping up of trends that will influence the functioning of the market.

This article is dedicated to discussing these impactful B2B eCommerce trends for 2021 and beyond. Let us have a look at them –

Emerging B2B eCommerce trends in 2021

B2B Commerce is here to stay and there’re certain trends that will grow in the years to come. Here’s a brief look at the most influential trends in 2021 and the years to come.

1. Growing B2B online marketplaces

Studies show that as many as 87% of business buyers belonging to all age groups choose online marketplaces for their B2B transactions. B2C marketplaces have always been in vogue but with time, B2B marketplaces have grown rapidly especially after the success of platforms like Amazon Business.

Online marketplaces are beneficial for both B2B buyers and sellers. On one hand, the buyers get an option to choose the right products from different sellers and vendors in one place. While on the other hand, small-scale vendors get to showcase their products, establish an online presence and grow their business with the backing of a renowned online marketplace.

In recent years, horizontal marketplaces like Amazon Business and vertical marketplaces like GoDirectTrade.com and ABB eMart have risen as major market players. In 2021, it is expected that similar marketplaces will emerge and many major vendors will resort to them for better visibility.

2. B2C-like Experience

As we discussed earlier, most B2B buyers are now millennials who are habitual to the perks and ease of online shopping and they expect a similar experience even when they’re browsing digital commerce for business.

In 2021, B2B brands will be seen focusing on enhancing user experience and creating simplicity for B2B buyers at every touch point. Here are a few changes that will take place in B2B eCommerce sites –

Making product discovery simpler with personalization and product recommendations.
A push towards receiving ratings, reviews and testimonials for every product.
Detailed product descriptions including images, videos, tutorials and downloadable documentation.
An increase in digital marketing efforts to leverage inbound marketing.

3. Dropshipping and DTC

Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method that enables a store to sell a product without keeping it in stock. Whenever the store gets an order, they pass it on to the supplier and the supplier ships orders to the customers.

On the other hand, DTC or direct-to-consumer is a method where a business lets go of middlemen or retailers and engages with the consumers directly.

After the pandemic hit the world, businesses had to find different ways to reach end-customers as the stores closed down and transportation halted. The only way to manage this situation was by simplifying the supply chain and thus, more and more brands shifted to DTC and drop shipping.

In the early months of quarantine, PepsiCo. launched two new online DTC stores and have been delighted with the direct rapport they were able to build through them. Similarly, Nike has been working on a DTC model and has been successful in bringing their manufacturing business closer to the endpoint of sale.

Both drop shipping and DTC have given B2B brands a new perspective about consumer behavior and preference. They have helped in conducting fruitful market research and understanding the pulse of the ongoing trends.

In 2021, these trends are bound to sustain and grow as complementary methodologies besides the traditional approach of dealing with the channel partners.

4. Unified Commerce

The importance of providing a similar experience across all channels and physical stores has become immense in recent years.

As the periphery of B2B buyers is growing, so is their touchpoint increasing. Research suggests that B2B brands are doubling their spending on digital marketing. As a result, B2B buyers can now discover a product online and decide to purchase it in a physical store. Thus, it is important that every outlet, whether digital or physical, remains in sync with each other. This process of ensuring that a brand is consistent with consumer experience at all touchpoints is called unified commerce.

In 2021, the B2B industry will witness a rise in connected operations and integrated marketing strategies. Unified commerce is here to stay and B2B businesses are starting to recognize its need.

Conclusion

2021 is a year that will witness a surge in digital initiatives and a shift to a client-first approach in B2B eCommerce. As we take steps towards a new world, B2B will stand side by side with B2C and start putting consumers first.

In the world of eCommerce, there are a few key factors you can bank upon to attract and retain your customers. User Experience, or UX as popularly called, is certainly one of them. Even if you are offering unique or world-class products, all your efforts will go in vain if you do not follow the best eCommerce UX practices for your online store.

According to a survey, more than 80% of users are less likely to return to the site with a bad UX. Isn’t this a good enough reason to revamp your eCommerce store so that you offer your customers an amazing UX every time they visit the site?

However, it is difficult to create one best UX solution that suits everyone but there are some key best practices that can help eliminate the frustrating parts for the end users.

So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

Top eCommerce UX Trends and Best Practices

From simple navigation to utilizing user-generated content, let us have a look at key UX strategies for your eCommerce site.

Prominent, Super-organized and Easy-to-use Navigation

Generally, all we are concerned about is how the homepage should look, how the product details page should be structured but many of us ignore the most crucial aspect of any website, let alone an E-commerce store, and that is the navigation menu.

What’s the point of having the website if a user is not able to find what he/she wishes to purchase? When they can’t find it, they won’t buy it. As simple as that!

An easy-to-use navigation will ensure an excellent user experience. Here’s what you can do to ensure that you have a user-friendly navigation and follow UX best practices for eCommerce.

Simplify your menu with fewer items which would make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.
Add layered navigation to help the users navigate through your product catalogue.
Make sure that the rest of the pages are no more than 3-4 clicks away from your homepage.
Keep the navigation in the same place using the same style, on all the pages.
Provide different ways of navigation- by brand, by new arrivals etc.

Hassle-free Checkout and Registration

It is found that most of the time a site’s bounce rate and abandoned cart is due the complications in the checkout process. All your UX efforts pay off when a user adds certain items to the cart. But imagine if he/she leaves the site because of the tedious checkout process or a compulsory registration? Now, that is really heart-breaking.

It’s a bit tricky to eliminate certain steps in the checkout process though. But remember- More the steps between user and payment, higher the cart abandonment rate will be.

Remove all the distractions from the checkout page. Do not divert customers by showing offers or discounts.
Provide all the major payment methods. According to reports, more than half of users expect a variety of payment options during the checkout.
Guest checkout is a must. Do not force users to sign up.
Shorten your forms- have as few fields as you can afford. Having auto-suggestion can help users fill their information more quickly.
Have a seamless look and feel for your checkout pages.

Effective and Omnipresent Search Option

A search option is one of the most ignored functionality of the majority of eCommerce websites. Most users prefer to search the product directly using the search bar. But when they cannot find the product, they cannot buy the product.

Put the search option on every page and possibly on the same location (usually top-right or top-center). It should be prominent and easy to use.
Incorporate auto-complete with auto-suggest functionality. It makes it easier for users to find what they want.
Offer sorting and filtering functionality for the search results as well. It will help the user to narrow down their search.
Don’t limit the search functionality just to the product names or brand names. Support all kinds of searches such as categories, attributes etc.

Design personalized user experiences in eCommerce

The biggest thing that we all have learned during the pandemic is to have empathy. There is going to be an immense amount of emphasis on humanity than anything else. Businesses have realized that they are dealing with real people with real emotions. What better time to start offering a personalized experience to let your users know that you care for them?

A personalized user interface can result in a better user experience. The website can be personalized based on user’s browsing behaviour, previous actions, purchase history, demographics and other personal data.

Although web personalization is a bit difficult and time-consuming task but not impossible. With the help of data collection tools that we have today, creating a personalization shopping experience is not that complicated.

Offer relevant product recommendations based on user’s previous interests/purchases
Different users visit the website for different purposes. It is a nice idea to personalize the site as per their roles.
Cross selling of the products- When a user is looking at a product, you can show them another relevant product somewhere on the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.
It is important to understand traffic segments and serve each segment with its deserved attention.
With the dominant use of mobile devices for eCommerce, device based personalization is a fast-growing trend.

Smart Product Visuals (Product images and description)

Let’s accept the fact that we cannot sell the products to the users online exactly the way they shop in a physical store. And that is, perhaps, the biggest convenient factor over an eCommerce store. Users won’t be able to touch and feel the product before they buy it online.

So, the best way to describe the product is through the well-photographed, high quality and large images. It conveys the value of the product, in a better way.

Show more than one angle of a product.
Include a video of the product. It can help the user understand the product, how it is used or made.
Include pictures of your products taken in realistic environments. The product in context is the best way to display its size and proportion.
If you have the control, use the white background while photographing the products. It allows the product to stand out with less distractions.
Use a 360-degree view to provide an experience close to physically going into the store and engaging with it.

User Generated Content

Sometimes, the most complete product description can still have few doubts in users’ minds. This is when reviews from other customers will help to answer some questions that users may have. It provides more insights about the products.

Almost 3/4th of the user base prefers to see pictures taken by other customers instead of images offered by the website. Trusted reviews can be the deciding factor for users confused between the multiple products.

Always encourage your customers to share their experience with the products on websites or social media.
Differentiate between the positive and negative reviews. That should provide the sense of overall quality of the product.
Display reviewer’s details along with the review. It is helpful to users to know a little information about the people posting the reviews.

Clear Communication

magine a user has added a product in cart after spending hours on the website and at the time of checkout, he/she gets to know that the product cannot be delivered to his/her locality. Can you imagine the frustration level?

There are various such scenarios that can affect the user experience and eventually the conversion rate. After all, no businesses like to see abandoned carts.

Provide all discounts, taxes etc. upfront.
Provide the details about the shipping charges, free delivery etc. at the product details page itself.
Have a functionality to show the delivery time based on PIN code, Area code etc.

Conclusion

User experience plays a very important role in a website’s performance. It is a widely accepted truth that the user buys the experience, not the products. The shoppers expect a seamless and frictionless shopping experience all the time.

A great UX drives loyalty, increases conversions and encourages customers to share a positive word of mouth about you. Hopefully, these tips will help you make the essential design changes to your website for a great E-commerce experience to your customers.

Sushant Bhosle

Team Lead - UI/UX

A technology enthusiast and a creative UX designer, Sushant is known for curating user-centered designs that drive innovation and scalability.

New look, continued commitment!

It is a moment of pleasure and utmost pride in unveiling the new brand identity. A lot has evolved since Ranosys started over 13 years back. What has remained unflinching is the trust and values we have built over the years. With this rebranded look, these values and our commitment just gets stronger and more vocal.

The new brand identity signifies that Ranosys is ready to embark on the next leap of its journey. With this rebranding, Ranosys redefines its mission to excel with a bolder and stronger approach of going above and beyond the expected.

“This rebranding underlines our ambition to achieve borderless growth and build a legacy of a distinct identity in the digital space. We shall live up to our brand promise in staying bold & courageous in sticking with our customers, employees, partners and community at large in seeing manifold successes. It is a true reflection of what we are – courageous, vibrant, competitive and a family”, – says Rameshwar Vyas, founder & CEO.

New logo

The new logo represents the way Ranosys stands bold, firm and stays futuristic in creating value for everyone who gets associated with the company. With focus on advanced technology and domain specialisation, the rebranding showcases us as enablers for a value-based ecosystem.

Our brand promise is verbalised loud and clear that we stand unwavering as a partner in success for our customers and teams all. This rebranding is not just a facelift, but strengthening of our ethos in staying client-centric to the bone.

The overall styling of the rebranded logo gives it a sense of forward thinking, energy, courage and a firm footing in standing for its values. The usage of colours like black, orange and red mark determination with a flavour of fervour and enthusiasm towards our customers, partners, employees and communities.

The tagline – Tomorrow. Today.

Thinking ahead

enabling tomorrow, today

Courage

to go above & beyond

Integrity

in everything we do

Client-centric

to the bone

Respect

for each and all

Teamwork

to grow and succeed together

About Ranosys

At the beginning of the decade, retailers had to adapt their business models with the digital uprising in the industry. As a result, they expanded their business to digital channels and focused on being omnipresent – this came to be known as the omnichannel strategy.

What followed, however, was a transformation of the customer journey. As the number of possible digital retail channels grew, digital presence was no longer the only concern. The retailers required seamless connect and transparency across all channels to provide their customers with a cohesive and singular experience.

If you’re wondering where we might be heading with this discussion, we have a quick example to simplify the intent of our article.

Let’s begin.

A potential customer comes across a product on Instagram with a clickable link and a discount coupon. She will expect that coupon to be already applied when she lands on the checkout page through the link. If your business is able to pre-apply her discount, she will be delighted and her chances of actually making the purchase will increase. However, all the aspects of your online business need to be integrated and have clear visibility into one another’s working to achieve this feat.

This is the main function of unified commerce. It entails providing a consistent customer experience in an era where the number of channels and customer touchpoints have increased owing to social media and growth in the number of eCommerce platforms.

Let’s have a quick look at the components of unified commerce

Interaction: As per research, consumers use more than 6 touchpoints everyday on an average. They interact with you on multiple channels and expect the same response everywhere. To achieve unified commerce, you need to have a single point of access for every customer interaction so that your team can access as well as input every customer information they collect.
Omnichannel presence: Unified commerce begins with omnichannel presence. Today, a customer may reach your products through social media, text messages or even your offline outlet. That is why it is pertinent that you’re within their reach at all possible places of retail

Connected operations: Your internal operations must be seamlessly integrated so that you’re able to provide your customers with uniform information and consistent experience. Studies suggest that 50% of shoppers expect that they will be able to make a purchase online and pick up in-store. You may also encounter a similar case and in that case, you will need your offline outlet to be in sync with your eCommerce portal. With a centralised system, your team will be able to access the details of the sale at every outlet and proceed with the transaction as per the customer’s preferences.

Seamless Inventory management: What if you run an ad about a product on social media while it is actually out of stock? You will not just waste your money on the ad but also have a number of disappointed customers. Thus, it is important that the product information, i.e., its availability, detailed information and price, must be uniform across all channels through a strong unified platform.

A successful retail business with unified commerce will ensure that a customer has a similar experience at every touch point – no matter how complex their customer journey is. Your business shouldn’t have any departmental silos or geographical limitations. Unified commerce propagates the idea of a consistent brand across all boundaries and at every platform.

How to achieve Unified Commerce with Salesforce

The world of today is inter-connected and it will become progressively more entangled as the technology becomes more sophisticated with time. Every information about your prospective consumer is available in the form of data and they expect you to know them well enough even before they start thinking about engaging with your business.

According to research, 85% of online shoppers start shopping on one device and complete it on another and they expect a similar experience on all of them. As a successful eCommerce retailer, you would ensure that your products are accessible from every device, platform or channel a customer chooses to browse.

And, this is where the need for unification arises. Your business would come full circle only if you’re able to tie together the impact of consumer preference and the value of omnichannel presence in a tightly-knit thread of unified commerce.

To truly achieve unified commerce in every sense, you would need the support of a technology like Salesforce that is modern, scalable and enables seamless collaboration. Salesforce can ensure that all your customer operations remain unified and follow a single source of truth. It can help you achieve a unified commerce experience by bringing together every information related to a consumer and the retail business on a single platform by integration of data, business process and customer profiles.

Needless to mention, Salesforce is world’s #1 Cloud CRM and has comprehensive solutions to help boost your conversion rate and achieve success in your eCommerce business. To understand it better, let’s have a look at some of its aspects –

Sales Cloud: It brings every information related to the customer on a single platform and supports your business by triggering data-driven lead nurturing.
Service Cloud: It helps you go beyond phone calls for customer support – you can now support your customer via chat, texts, social media through a unified channel which has a comprehensive profile of every customer based on their interaction at every platform.
Marketing Cloud: You can create and manage data-driven marketing campaigns on a single platform for all mediums – social media, email marketing and text messages.
Commerce Cloud: A scalable and agile Cloud-based eCommerce platform that helps businesses in providing a seamless shopping experience to their customers across all channels – social, web, mobile and store.

To sum it up in a few words, Salesforce has everything that it takes to build and grow an online business in today’s time. The combined power of all the mentioned tools can lead you to create consistency and curate a business based on the principle of unified commerce.

Now that you understand how Salesforce can be the secret ingredient of your eCommerce success, the next step would be to understand how you can integrate it into your business. There’re many proven Salesforce partners that can provide consultation and help you integrate Salesforce in your business but what if we told you that there’s a preconceived solution that can transform your online business with Salesforce in just 6 weeks.

Yes, it is true. So, without further ado, let’s introduce you to our accelerator program –

Phoenix – A Unified Salesforce eCommerce Solution

Built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Phoenix is an accelerator program with pre-built mobile-first eCommerce themes, landing pages, pre-written email notification and the backup of the powerful Salesforce ecosystem.

With Phoenix, you will have an eCommerce store that runs intelligent marketing campaigns, has data-backed insights and analytics, offers personalization and serves customers with live chat and case management. Moreover, you will get a payment gateway integrated along with a local shipping integration.

Phoenix is designed to help retailers like you – we help you reduce your time to market while ensuring that you leverage all the benefits of the Salesforce ecosystem and curate a unified commerce experience for your customers.

Phoenix bestows upon you the power of unified commerce – in just 2 months. If you’re still looking for a reason to opt for this, here’s a list of reason why you should empower your business with unified commerce using Phoenix –

Enjoy quicker time to market and give your business a head start.
Ensure utmost data security by leveraging the power of Salesforce.
Manage peak traffic with auto-scalability.
Create your own merchandising rules based on your needs.
And finally, create a high-impact brand that delivers unified and consistent customer experience at every customer touch point.

If you would like to discuss further, we’re only a quick message away, feel free to reach out to us.

At Ranosys, 2021 began with a new feather under our cap – our success story has been featured on the Salesforce.com official website!

From rising mid-sized organizations to Fortune 500 companies, our efforts and expertise have benefited clients from a variety of industry verticals and backgrounds. As Salesforce Partners, we have been consistently employing our skills to help our clients leverage the power of world’s #1 Cloud technology. But, in 2020, we took a step further and decided to deploy Salesforce organization wide for driving growth and enhancing employee experience.

Ranosys built a single source of truth with Salesforce replacing our legacy intranet systems. Pulse, as it is named, consists of employee onboarding, project management, recruitment management system, workforce management, leave management, assets management, employee claims and many more.

What followed, thereafter, was a milestone that reaffirmed our belief in persistence, hard work and the value of developing technical acumen – Ranosys Pulse is now live as a success story on the Salesforce official website.

Being featured on the Salesforce official website is a recognition that testifies for our expertise and ability to efficiently leverage the cloud technology and utilize its potential for growth and productivity. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment by the world’s leading Cloud platform and signifies our exceptional delivery quality and competitive edge. Hereafter, we are rejuvenated with a resolve to make a bigger difference in our clients’ digital journey backed by Salesforce’s manifold capabilities.

If you would like to learn more about our success story, you can find more about it on the Salesforce.com

Delivering Excellence as a Salesforce Partner

Trusted by leading brands across the world, Ranosys is a fast-growing digital consulting firm backed by a team of industry experts, experienced consultants and certified professionals. With a detail-oriented approach and transformational outlook, our Salesforce team is a major force to reckon with.

From expert Salesforce consultation to development, implementation and support services, we have been adding value to our clients’ business and reinventing their operations with Cloud technology.

Our Salesforce practise is heavily focused on research and development to promote enhancement and future-proof solutions. We are innovative, pragmatic and action-oriented. Besides the success of Ranosys Pulse, our team has also curated specialized Salesforce deployment programs to provide our clients’ with agile and comprehensive Cloud solutions. Some of our flagship Salesforce program are as follows –

Business 360: A Salesforce-based comprehensive business management solution that unifies every aspect of business operation.
Phoenix: A Salesforce Commerce program aimed to launch B2C business on eCommerce within a period of 2 months.
Harrier: Especially Curated for B2B business, this is a Salesforce accelerator program helps a business go live on digital commerce in a short period.

Going forward, we aim to benefit our client’s with the untapped potential of Salesforce and align their business operations with Cloud technology.

If you would like to know more about us or our Salesforce services, you can always drop a hello here. We look forward to getting to know you better!

Ranosys welcomes Mala Lahiri as the Head of Learning & Development. In today’s time and age, L&D is a crucial business function that must get more dynamic and innovative. With Mala’s onboarding, Ranosys intends to strengthen its L&D area altogether. Carrying over more than a decade of experience with large multinationals, Mala will spearhead the entire lifecycle of talent development through continuous training, evaluation and appreciation mechanisms.

With a rich corporate experience in companies like Tech Mahindra and Genpact, Mala is known to be KPI-driven and focused on mentoring future leaders with her learning methodologies and impactful behavioral techniques. Herself conducting multiple training in house, her success model heavily relies on the core belief of continuous learning and train-the-trainer techniques.

“The ability to learn, and translate that learning rapidly into action is the ultimate competitive advantage an organization can have, and Ranosys has the right hunger and culture for it. I take pride in heading this responsibility. The timing is just right as we scale to enormous growth paths, and I am truly excited.”, says Mala.

“Mala is focused, skillful and very clear of what the next level for Ranosys is – she’s indeed a great addition to our current leadership team,” says Sushma Vyas. “Her experience in large corporations makes us focus on not just the intangible value, but also on the measurable KRAs that L&D can drive. This timely move will transform our learning culture and help ourselves stay on top of the learning curve as an organisation. ”, she adds.

About Ranosys

Insightful, fun and engaging – MM20SG, which was held on November 26, 2020, was all this and so much more!

Right from the moment the event came live, we had a jam-packed day filled with interesting conversations, exciting contests and memorable discussions about Magento and its impactful role in driving digital commerce.

However, MM20SG was different from all its past editions.

Ranosys Technologies has been organizing Meet Magento Singapore successfully since 2018, albeit in a completely different setup. With the iconic Marina Bay Sands as the backdrop and amidst the hustle of Singapore city, Meet Magento Singapore is known for exciting opening acts, warm hospitality and fun-filled after-event parties.

However, this year took MM20SG to a different arena where we explored new possibilities and a different approach to keep the momentum of MMSG moving upwards.

We were all confined to our homes because of the pandemic but there was a single thread connecting us all – the internet .

And thus, Meet Magento Singapore held its first virtual edition in 2020.

The welcome remarks by Sushma Vyas echoed these sentiments. She emphasized on the role that digital commerce has played during the pandemic and applauded the efforts of the Magento community.

And on that note, MM20SG had begun.

First up from our stellar line-up of speakers were Nicholas Kontopoulos and Matthew McClelland with their keynote tracks discussing the importance of a unique brand identity and the role of data-driven insights respectively.

Followed by their power-packed discussion, MM20SG was divided into two tracks – solution and business – so that the attendees could choose a discussion as per their choice and interest.

In the business track of MM20SG, eminent speakers like Vikrant Shukla, Clara Ng, Anirudh Venkat, Ankit Agarwal, Craig Wheeler and Maurizio Stella discussed strategies to establish presence in the digital ecosystem, new omnichannel strategies, impact of human psyche on conversion rate and integrated commerce.

On the other hand, the solution track threw light upon the technical aspect of maintaining an online business. Expert Magento specialists like Miguel Balparda, Gowtham Ram N, Barnet Hellman, Nagaraja Kharvi, Vijay Golani, Ketika Maheshwari, Vimal Kumar, Stefan Lorenz Olsen, Narendra Vyas graced our speaker panel and shared their insights with the attendees.

MM20SG also had engaging panel discussions on topics discussing both the technical and business aspects of Magento Store.

Our panel discussion started post lunch break and began with a discussion on the “Future of mobile commerce: Magento PWA Studio”. It was hosted by Sourabh Modi and featured Shailendra Singh, Parikshit Maniar and Willie Tan.

Our next panel discussion emphasized upon the current state of the world and weighed the impact of Covid-19 on the future of retail. Moderated by Akshay Bajpayee, it featured Sreekanth Chetlur, Theresia Tristini and Anand Ramadeo.

Our last panel discussion was moderated by Vatsla Shah and focused on B2B Commerce. It featured esteemed speakers like Bharat Sharma, Reetesh Vadodaria and Fabricio Ibanez.

One of the major goal of Meet Magento Singapore events has been the opportunity it provides to like-minded Magento professionals for interacting with their counterparts and establish new bonds in the industry,

Although the event was virtual this year, MM20SG succeeded in curating an engaging experience where Magento enthusiasts from all over the globe made new connections and exchanged their thoughts.

In fact, there was a competition that awarded the most active person in the MM20SG community and the response was phenomenal. After the event ended, the results were declared and Shagufta Mubasher, Gaurav Harsh and Smita Kagwade were announced to be the winners of the coveted leaderboard title along with Amazon vouchers of S$100, S$50 and S$25.

Similarly, the MM20SG Selfie competition too recieved a whopping 200 entries and helped us all reminiscence about the time spent together and in the mighty outdoors.

Ketika Mahehwari won the selfie contest and received an Amazon voucher worth S$100.

Meet Magento Singapore has always received immense support of the industry in the form of sponsorship. This year was no different; in fact, it was ever more special. Our sponsors – Dot Digital, Wagento, SwiftOtter and AsiaPay – proved the importance of solidarity and unity in the face of adversity. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of them!

We are also equally excited to share that the sponsor booths were abuzz with activity and received amazing traction.

Furthermore, our Silver Sponsor, SwiftOtter Inc., also held a contest where they chose two lucky winners who won an opportunity to take up their course – Expert Developer (worth $375) and Professional Developer ($175) – completely free of cost. Tarandeep Kharbanda and Suresh Selvam were chosen the lucky winner for this contest.

Finally, the day ended with a keynote presentation by Anand Ramdeo followed by closing remarks presented by Rameshwar Vyas.

In the years to come, MM20SG will be remembered for being a pioneer of many milestones. This year, Meet Magento Singapore went above and beyond the geographical boundaries by hosting attendees from across the globe. It was attended by 750+ attendees from 100+ global companies and was graced by 30+ expert speakers who shared their experiences, valuable knowledge and tips with the Magento community.

We witnessed social media come alive with posts and tweets related to MM20SG and 26 November truly became a day when Magento Commerce was celebrated in all its glory.

You can still find the after current of the event in the form of our recorded sessions on YouTube and on our exclusive hashtag – #MM20SG.

You have done your research and you’re all set for Salesforce implementation in your organization – except you’re not sure where or how to begin!

From the time Salesforce started, it has steadily grown towards becoming world’s #1 Cloud solution with its impeccable features and seamless adoption. Today, over 88% of the Fortune 100 companies use at least one Salesforce offering.

One of the biggest reasons why Salesforce made it to the top is its ease of implementation and maintenance. However, you cannot optimize Salesforce to its fullest unless you’re prepared and have adequate expert consultation and support to guide you through the process.

Thus, to help you out, we have prepared a well-researched “Salesforce Implementation Checklist” so that you leverage the true benefits of Salesforce and its features for your business.

But before we begin, let us give you a glimpse at what might happen if you dive directly into Salesforce implementation without planning it out.

You might face these challenges without a Salesforce Implementation Checklist

Your team may be new to Salesforce: Your team members might be inexperienced when it comes to Salesforce and without proper planning and research, they might have difficulties in integrating Salesforce with your legacy process.
You are not able to optimize it fully: Salesforce is easy, efficient and full of features that can transform your business. However, lack of preparation may lead to poor customization and optimization of Salesforce in your organization.
Your team may lack training: If your staff is not fully trained and prepared for Salesforce implementation, they may limit their usage and not completely leverage Salesforce and its offerings.
You feel like you have no control with the new tool: In the absence of proper planning and training, your team may have questions and doubts before carrying out even their routine tasks. As a result, they may resist the transition.
You are way beyond your expected deadline: Salesforce implementation takes time, efforts and cost. Without a proper plan in place, you might go overboard with your expected delivery time and even budget.

Get started on your Salesforce implementation today!

As a Salesforce partner, we have assisted many organizations in their Salesforce adoption journey and have identified a few steps that optimize the implementation process.

In this blog, we are going to share those tips and help you make the most of the Salesforce platform.

Your Salesforce Implementation Checklist

Set Clear Goals

Before you start the implementation process, you need to introspect and find out the following –

What are you looking to achieve by adopting Salesforce in your organizations?
What are the areas that you would like to be enhanced with Salesforce?
How do you plan to provide Salesforce training to your plan?
Are you going to take assistance from Salesforce consulting companies or will this be an in-house process?

Understanding the purpose for your decision would lead you to setting realistic goals for

your team. You need to keep in mind that technological transition is a gradual process and having a clear intent would help your team in accelerating the Salesforce adoption process.

Pro tip: The smaller the goals, the better. Divide your plan into smart, achievable targets.

Discuss with key leaders

Salesforce implementation process is a collective journey. Before you zero down any goals, timelines or targets, discuss with the key leaders of your organization. Take into consideration their suggestions and doubts. If you have the nod of approval from the leaders, it will be easy for you to introduce Salesforce and reap its benefits.

Get stakeholders on the same page

As we have mentioned earlier, Salesforce implementation and integration requires the support of the entire organization and hence, it is important that you communicate clearly with all the stakeholders and get their approval before you begin.

Having them onboard would translate into smooth transition and better response from employees at all levels.

Choose a right partner

Having an expert Salesforce Consulting Partner by your side will help you choose the best course for your organization. There’s so much more to the process – you can customize Salesforce as per your requirements, there are updates to keep up with and your team needs to be trained.

A right Salesforce Partner will take care of these tasks and ensure that your Salesforce implementation is a success.

Set an achievable timeline with a realistic implementation cost

Salesforce implementation cannot be hasty. The integration process, data migration, team training and transition will take months to complete . Thus, you need to have a clear discussion with the experts to determine an achievable timeline along with the budget required for the entire process.

Introduce customization

Salesforce can be tailored to suit your unique needs – and that is why it rules the Cloud industry. Salesforce can help you unlock your marketing potential like never before with its multiple facets like the Community Cloud which leverages social media for conversion or Customer 360 that can help you unify all the customer information on a single profile.

Unfortunately, many organizations are unable to delve deeper into it and get the best out of Salesforce in the absence of guidance and knowledge. So, it is important that you communicate with your Salesforce team about your organizational needs and desired results so that they can customize Salesforce accordingly. Get to know the tool more, you will be surprised to find out what it holds in store.

Train your team

Salesforce can do wonders to the efficiency of your organization – all you require is trained professionals who can help you optimize its use.

Make sure that you set in place a training program for all the team leads so that they can pass on the knowledge to their team.

Keep an open door policy for any doubts and questions. And most importantly, be prepared for hiccups initially; it may take some time but a trained team will make Salesforce adoption simpler and successful.

Keep up with the new updates

Salesforce has new updates thrice a year – winter, summer and spring. They’re seamless and automatic without any downtime. But you need to be aware of what changes they bring so that you can prepare your team and update your software accordingly.

Get support from your partner

Your Salesforce tool will need updates and maintenance. So, it is crucial that you choose a partner who can provide you ongoing support and help you achieve success through Salesforce.

Summing up

Salesforce implementation can be the best decision you make for your business – but you will need a roadmap to make it happen. We hope that you are now on the first step of your Salesforce implementation journey and our checklist has helped you initiate the process.

However, should you find yourself in a dilemma, do drop us a quick message and we will come to your rescue!

Get started on your Salesforce implementation today!

October 2020 comes bearing a new release for Magento users – Magento 2.4.1!

It promises better security and enhanced performance. Since it was developed, Magento has always aimed at developing an eCommerce-centric platform that helps merchants provide exceptional user experience to their prospective customers.

With Magento 2.4.1, it has addressed issues that troubled users and makes the Magento development process quicker, easier and more secure.

In this article, we explore some new developments being introduced by Magento 2.4.1

So, without further ado, let’s begin –

Better user experience with Samesite cookie attribute

In January 2020, Google announced a new secure-by-default policy for cookies to enhance privacy and security for their web browsers. Abiding their example, other major browsers like Mozilla Firefox are expected to follow suit.

This new development has impacted Magento users in more ways than one. Created exclusively for eCommerce users, Magento works with third-party software and heavily relies on cookies for providing a personalized experience to the users.

With Magento 2.4.1, your Magento store will now support samesite cookie attribute so that your platform runs seamlessly and your visitors enjoy a smooth web experience.

Enhanced functionalities for B2B commerce

Due to its features and support, Magento has emerged as the most preferred platform for B2B commerce. The release of Magento 2.4.1 has further strengthened its position in the B2B eCommerce ecosystem.

The latest Magento release includes features like bulk order rejection and approval with a single click, the functionality to clear the entire shopping cart at once and adding individual items or the entire content of the shopping cart in the requisition list.

Adding to it, there is a “view rule” feature that enables users to check the rules that apply to their company without edit permissions and an alert icon on my approval tab which reminds users of their pending purchase order approval.

Magento 2.4.1 has truly ensured that B2B eCommerce users benefit fully from the new updates.

Better Analytics with Site-Wide Analysis Tool (SWAT) integration

Magento 2.4.1 will add a site wide analysis tool portal to the admin panel which can fetch data about the entire Magento website – like site performance, speed and site health – in no time.

SWAT integration enables merchants to access system insights, real-time performance monitoring, reports, and self-service recommendations. Merchants can use the new SWAT Admin role to securely access their SWAT Customer Detail pages through the Magento Admin.

Enhanced security with Captcha

The inclusion of CAPTCHA ensures better security and saves your web solutions from Bots. Magento 2.4.1 has included Captcha at both order placement and payment which saves any information from being stolen or misused.

Similarly, the use of Samesite attribute cookie will also protect users’ data from third-party.

Smooth content management

The last Magento release introduced a new media gallery to its users. With Magento 2.4.1, it receives better updates.

Your Magento store now allows for bulk image deletion, detection of duplicate images, better filtering of images and improvements in metadata viewing.

In fact, Magento Page Builder now allows for a full-screen view which helps in quick content edition. Magento 2.4.1 has made content management easier and simpler

Summing up

Magento 2.4.1 has proven that a Digital Commerce business cannot find a better foundation than Magento.

If you’re already working with Magento, now is the time to upgrade to Magento 2.4.1 NOW!

And if you haven’t finalized on an eCommerce platform yet, now is the time to Migrate to Magento with an ideal partner.

For any queries, feel free to drop us a hello!

Ranosys, a leading global digital consulting firm, today announced that it has joined the NetSuite Solution Provider Program. The partnership with Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit, one of the world’s leading providers of cloud-based financials / ERP, HR, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and omnichannel commerce software suites, enables Ranosys to leverage their decade-long experience of providing consulting services to implement and customize, and promote NetSuite for their long-standing clients.

With this partnership, Ranosys aims to utilize NetSuite’s capabilities and real-time insights across all business operations to assist its clients in concurring critical business objectives and streamline their processes. This strategic alliance will also enable Ranosys to meet the growing demand of its clients’ for a unified, cloud-based solution with a plethora of benefits such as built-in flexibility, scalability and native business intelligence.

“We are thrilled with this development and are proud to be Oracle NetSuite partners”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys Technologies. “Today, the business goals are ever-evolving and the technology has to be adaptable. With NetSuite’s functionalities, we aim to bring agility, smooth integration and omnichannel control to our client’s business while paving way for their rapid growth”, Mr Vyas continued.

Having served a diverse set of clients across industries such as eCommerce, healthcare, BFSI and Education, Ranosys has established itself as a fast-growing digital solution provider with offices in the US, UK and 3 India-based delivery centers. During its journey of exponential growth, Ranosys has been a key player in the success story of its clients by enabling digital transformation initiatives and providing scalable solutions that boost value propositions and business competitiveness.

As a NetSuite solution provider, Ranosys will provide consulting, development, implementation and support services for NetSuite financials/ERP, CRM, eCommerce, and PSA across different industry verticals. The company will deploy its expertise and experienced resources to build the industry-specific versions of the solution using NetSuite’s SuiteCloud development platform

Launched in 2002, the NetSuite Solution Provider Program is the industry’s leading cloud channel partner program. Since its inception, NetSuite has been a leader in partner success, breaking new ground in building and executing on the leading model to make the channel successful with NetSuite. A top choice for partners who are building new cloud ERP practices or for those expanding their existing practice to meet the demand for cloud ERP, NetSuite has enabled partners to transform their business model to fully capitalize on the revenue growth opportunity of the cloud. The NetSuite Solution Provider Program delivers unprecedented benefits that include automation of sales & accounting business processes with industry best practices, highly attractive margins in business planning, sales, marketing and professional services enablement, to training and education. For more information about the NetSuite Solution Provider Program, please visit www.netsuite.com/partners.

About Ranosys

About Oracle NetSuite

Oracle NetSuite pioneered the Cloud Computing revolution in 1998, establishing the world’s first company dedicated to delivering business applications over the internet. Today, it provides a suite of cloud-based financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR and omnichannel commerce software that runs the business of companies in more than 100 countries.

About Oracle

The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

With every Salesforce release comes a fresh set of developments and changes. Following the trend, the Salesforce Winter ‘21 release has announced its plans for retiring<apex:flash> component. This announcement comes as a response to Adobe’s decision of discontinuing flash after December 2020.

What this progression entails for you is a revision of your visualforce pages before the retirement of flash comes into effect and find other alternatives to fill the gap left behind by it.

In this article, we explore what you could do to prepare for the retirement of flash and what are the alternatives you could look into.

Why is Adobe retiring flash?

Adobe had announced its plans for discontinuing Flash by 2020 way back in 2017. And even then, it didn’t come as a surprise to the industry experts. Major browsers like Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft are already in the process of removing flash to keep track with Adobe’s retirement timeline.

At the dawn of internet technology, Adobe flash brought the multimedia experience to the world wide web. Then, how did it lose its hold over time? One of the most important reasons is cybersecurity.

Since the beginning, Adobe Flash has been a vulnerable program prone to cyber attacks and malware. It was about time that Adobe took a step towards making way for more secure and modern alternatives.

Presently, Adobe has already started the disenablemnt process and if you haven’t made the switch from Adobe Flash yet, then, this is the time to start.

What are your options with Salesforce after the retirement of Adobe Flash?

Here’s a list of steps that you can take with your Salesforce solutions after Adobe Flash requires –

Refactor your Salesforce integration to omit or remove the use of <apex:flash> component. Especially if you use API 50 or above, you will not be able to exercise any other alternative except removal.
Shifting to HTML 5 altogether by converting the code.
Migrating to Salesforce lightning web component from Visualforce. It is recommended as it doesn’t use Flash in its functionalities since its inception. Simultaneously, Salesforce lightning web component has proven to be revolutionary in terms of enhanced speed, security and performance. Besides preparing you for a future without Adobe Flash, Salesforce lightning web component offers the following benefits –

Why choosing a Salesforce Lightning Web Component is a better choice?

Greater pool of developers available: Salesforce LWC integrates custom HTML elements with modern Javascript and can coexist with Aura components. What this means in layman language is that anybody with knowledge of a front-end language like Visualfore or even a non-Salesforce developer who understands Node.Js or React.JS can switch to this. This simplicity helps in training your workforce with ease and migrating to LWC becomes a hassle-free task.

Easy customization: Salesforce LWC uses advanced technologies like CSS3, HTML5 and touch events that help in creating a responsive and customized design. Business owners have the freedom of customizing the components in any way they want with SLDS.

Faster Development: Salesforce lightning web component allows developers to work with generic components that only require a drag and drop functionality to be used on different pages. It also enables teams to work seamlessly on mobile and desktop devices.

Clearly, shifting to Salesforce lightning web component is a futuristic approach that will keep your digital solutions agile and customer-centric. While you may choose to carry this task with your in-house team, here’s how an experienced partner can help you leverage Salesforce better for your business.

Why do you need an experienced Salesforce partner?

Migrating to the Salesforce lightning web component requires understanding of the intricacies of the process and a team that can align your process and people with the changes in new technology.

An experienced partner like Ranosys can help you make the shift quicker and in a more efficient manner. With 12+ years of experience and a team of certified Salesforce experts, Ranosys understands what every industry requires in digital transformation.

So, before the clock strikes on 31st december and you have to bid a goodbye to Flas, we suggest you make a decision which will give you a competitive edge – shift to Salesforce lightning web component with Ranosys

When we discuss key eCommerce platforms, Magento is the most-talked-about option. Since its inception, Magento has become synonymous with fast, secure and responsive eCommerce solutions. With the introduction of Magento 2, it is now set to transform online shopping experience with its powerful features.

In this article, we set out to explore how Magento continues to be unparalleled in the eCommerce sector and how Magento 2 can be the catalyst in enhancing eCommerce portals with its futuristic advantages.

Why is Magento the right choice in 2021?

When a retailer decides to go online, they aim to find an eCommerce platform that can help them launch a perfect webstore for creating a seamless shopping experience for their customers.

From leveraging the technology for high-personalization to making online shopping a hassle-free process, every detail for a good user experience depends upon your choice of an eCommerce platform.

Since its inception in 2008, Magento has emerged as the most reliable and robust eCommerce platform for both B2B and B2C commerce. At present, Magento takes care of more than $155 billion in gross merchandise every year with its 4,500 stores in Alexa’s top 1M websites.

Despite facing immense competition, Magento remains the top choice for eCommerce websites and applications. Let us tell you why –

Built for eCommerce

Magento was developed specifically to address the needs of eCommerce businesses. Thus, it comes with comprehensive features and pre-built tools necessary to create an engaging online store.

Sleek UI/UX

Magento aims to make customer journeys memorable and ensures that your eCommerce solutions have an intuitive and engaging design with its huge selection of templates.

Highly Customizable

Magento can be hosted on the provider of your choice and you can get the admin panel customized as per your specific business needs. With Magento, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; you get to have control over the operations and the design.

Fast & Scalable

There’s no match to Magento when it comes to performance and stability. With fast loading speed, it makes an eCommerce solution search engine optimized and user-friendly. Similarly, its flexibility allows your eCommerce portal to grow with your business.

Major brands like Land Rover, Sigma Beauty, Hally Hansen and more have shown faith in the power of Magento platform. The introduction of Magento 2 has further added high-performing features that can revamp an online shopping experience forever.

With 137,266 websites already migrated to the latest version, Magento 2 has changed the game of eCommerce platforms. So, what is it exactly that makes Magento 2 fares higher than others? What are these features that the world is going gaga about? Let’s explore what makes Magento 2 special.

6 Reasons why you need Magento 2 for your eCommerce solution

Faster than your expectations

As per research, a delay of even 100-millisecond in the load time can cause conversion rates to drop by 7%. A customer always prefers an eCommerce site that loads as quickly as possible and the search engines too prioritize fast speed.

Although Magento has always been known for its feature of speed optimization, Magento 2 goes a step further and is 25% faster than its previous versions. Faster leading time ensures great performance and higher sales.

Smarter Checkouts

Believe it or not, but your checkout process has an immense effect on your sales. Experts believe that checkout optimization can raise conversions by 35.62 Percent. With Magento 2, your eCommerce portal will only have a simpler and quicker checkout process.

If your customer is already logged in an email account on the device, they need not furnish more details to complete the checkout process. Similarly, a billing address is required only when they pay for the purchase. This helps in reducing the cart abandonment rate.

Moreover, the shipping costs are revealed only at the last step. By that time, you will have their details to create personalized campaigns for them.

Premium Catalog Management

Magento 2 is capable of setting up more than 150,000 products in almost 5,000 categories. You can manage your product catalog across all eCommerce channels with one panel. Magento 2 also simplifies custom pricing and cataloging to attract different target markets easily.

Better Analytics and Reporting

Magento has always enabled its users with detailed reports that help in pushing an online business forward. However, Magento 2 has enhanced it further by integrating Google Analytics and Google Tag in its mechanism. With this development, you can get deeper insights about user behaviour and preference.

Highly responsive

The themes of Magento 2 are designed in such a way that they are uniformly responsive to every device. From a desktop to mobile of any size, an eCommerce app built with Magento -2 provides a great user experience on every device. In fact, a responsive back-end also ensures that your team can handle your webstore from any device at any time.

Maximum support for the migration process

Migrating to Magento 2 would require you to take the theme and customization to the new platform. While it may sound daunting, Magento 2 has provided the right documentation, guides and tips to help you carry the task. Moreover, you can always find the right Magento partner to help you sail through this.

Closing thoughts

Besides these benefits, Magento 2 brings with itself the decade-long experience of eCommerce and the support of a reliable community of Magento users.

Ultimately, you need a platform that allows you to introduce your personal touch to your online store and Magento 2 is exactly what you are looking for.

Ranosys, a leading global digital consulting firm, announced that it has entered into a partnership with BigCommerce, a leading open SaaS ecommerce platform for fast-growing and established brands. With this partnership, Ranosys is aiming to enhance its eCommerce solutions with high-performing features and make an entry into the league of promising BigCommerce development company.

“We’re excited to be teaming up with a platform like BigCommerce which is known for incorporating simplicity, flexibility and scalability in its online stores”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

With eCommerce on its portfolio’s forefront, Ranosys has constantly been delivering high-end solutions and has enabled major digital transformations in the past decade. The success story of its merchant partners speaks of seamless transitions, intuitive product cataloguing and engaging customer experience. From conceptualization to 24/7 support, Ranosys’s team of certified professionals has created online stores that have elevated the standards of end-to-end online shopping experience.

“Our eCommerce solutions have always been a trendsetter and as a BigCommerce Partner, we are sure of providing multiplied benefits to our merchant partners that promise impeccable user journey, responsive designs and a unique competitive edge”, Mr Vyas continued.

BigCommerce helps both growing brands and mature organizations in establishing a superior digital presence and revamping their digital experiences respectively with enriching content and rich functionalities. Ranosys, with its strong understanding of eCommerce metrics and experienced team, is all set to scale its clients’ business with future-proof solutions that enable growth and agility using BigCommerce.

About Ranosys

About BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a leading software-as-a-service ecommerce platform that enables merchants to build, innovate, and grow their businesses online. With a unique combination of easy-to-use, enterprise-level features and flexibility, BigCommerce powers more than 60,000 B2B and direct-to-consumer online stores across 120 countries — including Fortune 1000 brands like Avery Dennison, Ben & Jerry’s, Bliss, Burrow, Skullcandy, Sony, and Woolrich. Visit bigcommerce.com for more information.

If you run a B2B business, you would understand the complexities and sophisticated functionalities it requires. In a B2B business, your customers are nuanced, detail-oriented, and make an informed decision.

As a result, designing and developing a B2B eCommerce solution requires more planning and a robust platform that can enhance your business prospect and ease the buyer’s journey while presenting them with every piece of information they require.

Magento 2 has emerged as a reliable and successful platform for hosting B2B eCommerce solutions. With its plethora of functionalities that bring convenience and agility together to create a memorable eCommerce experience for B2B customers.

In this article, we explore how B2B eCommerce differs from B2C and how Magento 2 is the best platform for it.

Why Choose Magento 2 for B2B eCommerce Solutions

Multiple payment options: A B2B business runs on a wholesale basis and the sales take place in bulk. As a result, the amount of transactions is huge. With Magento 2, you can integrate multiple payment third-party options stressing upon the credit payment system.

Furthermore, you can also take advantage of Magento 2’s native functionality that customizes credit extension to individual customers on a basis like –

Order Limit.
Country of origin
Extension of credit limit based on account’s age.

Simple & Intuitive UI: The purpose of a B2C eCommerce platform is to attract customers with engaging design and content. However, a B2B eCommerce website or application needs the navigation to be as simple as possible to facilitate quick discovery and hassle-free bulk purchase.

Magento 2 provides many sleek options for theme customizations to enable smooth buying and product discovery process.

Friction-free and Rapid Ordering: With Magento 2’s friction-free ordering, the buying journey of a B2B buyer becomes quick and convenient. In a traditional eCommerce solution, the ordering process is not built keeping in mind the large volume of B2B purchasing. In Magento 2, they can place orders by entering SKUs, upload multiple CSV files or choose items from a pre-set requisitions list.

In fact, your clients’ sales team can also utilize quote management tools to respond to quote requests and place orders on behalf of the customers.

Custom pricing and catalog: A B2B business depends on long-lasting relationships with clients. Magento 2 provides custom catalog and pricing wherein you can create a specific pricing list and catalogs for different sets of target customers. This facility helps in converting more sales with targeted marketing and facilitates alternate payment systems.

Smooth and Seamless Integration: Magento 2 boasts of the best cloud commerce experience without back-breaking capital and maintenance costs. It has robust APIs and extensions that make integration with legacy systems a smooth and convenient affair. This makes the migration easier.

Wrapping up:

Magento 2 provides more control to the merchant and enables a smooth user experience for the buyers. It has many native functions that reduce its dependency on 3rd party applications and it still makes room for hassle-free integration.

Magento 2 has every feature that can boost a B2B eCommerce business and makes its operation convenient for all. So, if you’re looking for a suitable platform to give your B2B commerce business an online identity, then, Magento 2 is the right choice.

And if you’re already working with Magento 1, this is the time to migrate to Magento 2 as the support for Magneto 1 ends on 30 June 2020.

So, hurry up and chase your success!

New York, June 12, 2020. As part of its growth strategy, Ranosys Technologies, a Singapore based Magento implementation partner is expanding beyond Asia and Europe and into North America.

As a long-standing Magento partner, Ranosys has consistently delivered high-performance B2C and B2B eCommerce solutions for many leading global brands. Adobe recognized this delivery excellence and commitment to the Magento partnership by awarding Ranosys with their Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year award. In addition, Ranosys was recently accepted into Magento’s Express program with the announcement of their Falcon eCommerce accelerator package, which helps clients quickly deliver on the value of their Magento investment.

“We are excited to expand into North America and bring our deep knowledge of the Magento product and the eCommerce ecosystem,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. “Our investments in Magento certified consultants, UX designers and implementation methodologies will enable us to deliver tremendous value in this market.”

Leading this expansion will be Rob Davis, a former senior managing director at Accenture Interactive. According to Mr. Davis, “the N. American eCommerce market continues to expand across many fronts. In addition to helping retailers successfully navigate the new normal, we expect to see accelerating growth in the B2B market as manufacturers create new routes to market to sell to and service their customers.

About Ranosys

About Adobe Magento

Magento Commerce, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud platform, offers a one-of-a-kind eCommerce solution with enterprise power, unlimited scalability and open-source flexibility for B2C and B2B experiences.

Unlock your pathway to a profitable eCommerce store.

Claim your free Adobe (Magento) Commerce Consultation today.

Ranosys Technologies, a global digital consulting company is excited to announce the onboarding of Mr Umashankar Arora as its Vice President of Engineering. With this senior leadership position, Umashankar will be spearheading innovation in engineering teams and with his multidisciplinary experience, steer technology and domain practices to the next level of quality and excellence.

Uma, as he is often addressed, has a rich experience spanning about 18 years in the field of technology innovation & best practices, enterprise architecture design, people & project management, talent development, and strategic leadership in the industry. His friendly demeanor and work style makes it much easier for an organization to achieve its vision and objective.

“I am thrilled to be a part of Ranosys at this juncture where it is all set to embark on tremendous opportunities and head towards projectile growth. I am looking forward to instating process reengineering via innovation and get an edge in delivering top-notch services to our customers,” says Uma.

“Uma’s onboarding has brought our leadership team one level up”, says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. “His extensive experience with technical acumen is apt for our vision of delivering world-class service to our clients and celebrating their success as ours”, he further adds.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a global digital consulting company founded in 2008, with a presence in Singapore, London, New York, and California; and 3 offshore development centers in India. With proven expertise in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on the mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

At present, technology and digital innovation have become the biggest support and also a looming challenge for every industry simultaneously. Naturally, banks are no different. Financial technologies like FinTech have proven to be a disruptive innovation in banking.

To address these issues, Ranosys and OutSystems co-hosted a webinar on 17th June 2020. From discussing the disruptive technologies in BFSI and the use of low-code development to accelerate growth, our expert speakers discussed the prevalent pressing topics related to the banking industry.

It was a joint initiative by OutSystems and Ranosys to promote agility and customer-centric approach in the BFSI industry. At the end of the webinar, the audience had more insight into why low-code is the future and how one can implement it in the BFSI industry.

How OutSystems can help BFSI industry face new challenges with low-code development

The traditional banking industry faces new challenges every day as technology spruces up a new innovation in every few minutes. Keeping up with the emerging trends and changing customer demands require foregoing old techniques and embracing new technologies.

In such a situation, only rapid development and agility can help banks revamp themselves for the new world. Therefore, low-code development technology like OutSystems can pave the way for bringing digital transformation to the forefront in the banking sector.

How OutSystems can manage competition from Fintech and accelerate digital transformation

OutSystems is the #1 low-code development technology right now. It can help you accelerate your process of digital transformation and facilitate your movement from the legacy process to new alternatives.

This is the age of the internet and a fast and innovative bank mobile application is a must for every bank. However, the bane of slow development and backlogs can slow down your plans and dampen your growth trajectory.

As per reports, almost 73% of banks have application backlogs and there seems to be no solution for their improvement. These blockers increase the average time spent on application development and make deployment a lengthy process.

Low-code development technology like OutSystems can help in the rapid development of complex applications with the help of visual modelling. It decreases your time-to-market considerably and helps in meeting customer requirements with flexibility.

In recent times, FinTech has emerged as a major competitor to traditional banks. Startup companies leverage the latest technology and customer base to provide a quick, easy-to-use financial service which raises the customer experience.

As more and more customers have become tech-savvy, it has become a challenge for traditional banks to keep them interested and retain their loyalty. What traditional banking needs is a technology that can help them develop a competitive advantage.

OutSystems is the most viable and swift development technology that can support retail banking in transforming themselves into customer-centric service providers that can accommodate any scale and volume of business.

To make this claim clearer, here’s a list of ways in which OutSystems can help you bring digital transformation rapidly and tackle threats of disruption like the emergence of FinTech –

Smooth front-end development: OutSystems is based on the drag-and-drop model where a developer can choose components and weave them into their application. This makes front-end development easier, effective and enhances the user experience.
Quick back-end development: A recent study revealed that 35% of banks concentrate more on the front-end development than back-end functionality as it takes more time.
However, this practice has a huge impact on application’s efficiency as the core of a mobile application runs on the back-end operations.
With OutSystems visual method of development, the development time decreases 10 times and infuses a bank’s digital operations with agility and high speed.
Helps in Process Revamp: Most banks have a difficult time choosing to stay with their legacy system or moving entirely to a digital banking process. This decision depends largely upon the application development process.

With OutSystem’s functionality, a bank can freely choose between revamping their existing process or choosing a complete digital transformation as it allows quick development and rapid deployment.

Boosts Agility in the teams: With OutSystems low-code approach to mobile development, your IT team could comprise novice developers with a good sense of user experience and application design.

You would not have to depend upon hard coding and could design, develop and deploy an application and its updates with lesser time and efforts.

Faster feedback cycles: The success of a mobile application depends upon how quickly it adapts itself to customers’ feedback and demands.

With OutSystems, the feedback cycle has frequent iterative updates and moulds the application according to changing requirements. This functionality makes applications responsive, scalable and adaptable.

Wrapping up

In order to survive in today’s ever-changing environment driven completely by technology, innovation and digitization is of utmost value. A low-code platform like OutSystems ensures that a bank or financial institution remains proactive, flexible and customer-oriented.

OutSystems enables financial institutions to inculcate real-time analytics, personalized user experience and quicker turnaround time with its agile and functionality.

At Ranosys Technologies, the team is well-versed with the intricacies and nuances of OutSystems. We have successfully developed and deployed multiple applications using OutSystems and have helped organizations achieve digital transformation at a rapid speed.

Our team consists of developers with a mindset that promotes breakthrough innovation for better customer experience. Our live webinar on 17th June is a step towards sharing our insights and expertise on low-code with the industry.

So, if you manage a business and are looking for technologies that can accelerate your digital transformation process, we will e-meet you on 17th June and help you achieve your goals with OutSystems.

Singapore – May 28, 2020 – Forrester’s recent “Wave” announcement, naming Magento Commerce as a leading eCommerce platform confirms Ranosys Technology’s strategy to partner with Adobe across Asia, Europe, and the US to deliver high performing eCommerce solutions to both B2C and B2B organizations.

“We have a long and successful history of working with the Magento technology and have seen exciting advancements stemming from Adobe’s acquisition and integration of the product with the other Adobe Experience Cloud products,” says Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys.

In recognition of their commitment to this partnership and demonstrated delivery excellence, Ranosys recently received Adobe’s 2020 Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year award. This honor is given to Adobe Partners that have demonstrated outstanding performance in technical enablement, delivery quality, customer satisfaction, thought leadership, and promotion of the Adobe ecosystem.

To complement their Magento implementation capabilities, Ranosys also provides UX design, PIM integration, and mobile app development. Vyas continued, “a key part of our strategy is to provide delivery capabilities across the entire eCommerce ecosystem through a combination of investing in our people and developing additional technology partnerships.”

For more information please visit our site.

About Ranosys

Ranosys Technologies is a systems integrator with offices in the US, UK, and Singapore and 3 India delivery centers. Its core business is providing scalable, reliable, and affordable eCommerce, mobile app and digital transformation solutions to clients worldwide. Since 2008, flexible delivery approaches and experienced consultants have delivered projects on time and on budget enabling Ranosys to become the technology partner of choice for many leading organizations.

About Adobe Magento

Magento Commerce, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud platform, offers a one-of-a-kind eCommerce solution with enterprise power, unlimited scalability, and open-source flexibility for B2C and B2B experiences.

If you are an online merchant operating a Magento store, you’re more likely to have experienced the following scenarios –

– You worked with an agency for developing your store

– And, then moved on to a separate Magneto agency for handling your day to day development services

Some of you may argue that it might not necessarily happen and we do agree with you. However, this seems to be the majority of the scenarios wherein there’s a separate agency responsible for developing a Magento store and then, a separate or in-house Magento team for handling the operations.

Nowadays, there’s plenty of content available on topics like selecting an ideal partner for your eCommerce store, an essential checklist before signing any partner, and how to ensure that the delivery matches the expectation.

In this article, we address the key criteria before you sign on a new agency for your support needs. To shed some light on the same, we need to first understand how a Magento Partner agency functions.

Before we dive into factors that play a pivotal role in selecting the ideal partner, let us first understand the ideal team structure or composition of Magento Partner agency.

Different Kinds of Magento Partner Agencies

Majorly, all the Magento Partner Agencies have 2 kinds of teams in their workforce –

– Fixed Cost Project Team or Custom Development Team:

This is a team which pre-plans and freezes the scope of the entire Magento development process and its related.

This team might have Business Analysts, Magento Developers, UI/UX Designers, Team Lead, Project Manager, QA, and DevOps.

There are a fixed timeline and clear delivery expectations from this team in terms of the final project. This is the team that builds a new project or a webstore.

– Managed/Magento Support Team:

Although this team is structured on the same lines in terms of composition, it would either work on –

(a) dedicated hiring model wherein a merchant manages the tasks assigned to the resource who is hired in a dedicated model by him, part-time or full-time.

(b) time and material model which uses an hour-based format wherein a certain number of hours are purchased by the merchants.

The Managed Support Team always works on short-term or long-term goals and executes mundane tasks aimed at making sure that the webstore is functioning properly.

As discussed before, two cases might happen. In the first case, you might work with different Magento agencies for development and then, for managed support.

On the other hand, let’s assume that you have signed up with the managed support team of the same agency after your initial implementation. Now, you are working with them for your day to day Magento Support also.

However, it does not turn out to be as good as the previous engagement that you had with the same agencies fixed cost team. Thus, you would want to change to a new partner who is equipped with better support capabilities.

In that condition, let’s look at the key facets that you need to evaluate before changing your Managed Support Partner. We have broadly bifurcated them into 5 areas that can help you zoom into the right partner for your support needs.

5 Factors for Selecting the Right Magento Managed Support Team

– Approach:

Firstly, you need to ascertain what is the approach that your prospective partner has – is it a reactive or a proactive approach?

You can find this out by introspecting a few simple questions – do they wait from your end to define something which would take your brand higher or are they proactive in putting valuable suggestions that can potentially have a positive impact on your brand?

This is very vital as it determines and enables future growth for your brand and gets more brains on board who think inline to growing your brand.

To understand what is the underlying approach an agency has, you can prick them with questions such as

– “What is your approach during a Managed Support engagement?”

– “How has the association of other merchants in the past helped their brand grow?

The answer to these questions would help you gauge if they wait or initiate a positive change. If you don’t find words like “we recommended”, “suggested” being used quite often in response to the above question, it indirectly means that they are not proactive.

– Team Structure and Critical Support Protocol:

Critical support is a very vital piece of the puzzle that can change the game for you. If the agency that is working for you to provide critical support knows what they are doing, then any kind of downtime can be majorly avoided.

This indirectly affects your bottom line and drastically helps improve your customer satisfaction. While you are choosing an agency for your support needs, you need to make sure that they have set protocols, the definition of critical support, and a mechanism to address the same.

Defining what is L1, L2, L3 support needs and addressing time for the same is very essential. Ideally, you should have all of these mentioned in the Agreement which you would be signing so your business interest is completely safeguarded.

It would be an icing on the cake if the agency is ready to provide critical support contact numbers and an escalation matrix so that you know who to get in touch as the second point of contact if the first response is null.

– Understanding Ongoing Communication (Ticketing Structure or More Personal Interaction):

There are some agencies out there who provide support on a ticketing basis. While doing the same for non-important aspects of support is okay, but having a ticketing system is not a good idea for major things in the development planner.

You need an agency which has a planner as per the eventual business goal that your store has and who is also able to put in valuable suggestions from their end.

Moreover, it’s also advisable to clearly define the communication medium, in terms of the following –

– What tools are going to be used?

– Is it going to be slack, skype or any other?

– How often do you and the assigned resource or the team are going to interact?

– Billing and Working Methodology:

Committing a huge number of hours with an initial contract isn’t a bright idea when it comes to selecting your next Magento Partner for ongoing support.

There are mechanisms that you can avail to test waters and find out how the prospect agency provides support and if they can take care of your Magento needs. You can ideally ask them to provide a trial-based support hour format ( let’s say – a month or two).

You can also define a small task and ask them to quote for executing that task. Once the task has been executed and you have experienced the overall deliverables from the agency, then you would have an ideal time to go ahead and sign a prolonged contract.

In terms of billing, a quarterly model would be ideal for a time and material engagement wherein you pay the fixed number of hours that are consumed during that quarter and then the entire agreement depending on the tenure. For a dedicated hiring model, the payment terms are always on an advance model.

– Overall Credentials and Support Specific Testimonials:

Last but not the least, this would eventually help you understand the quality the agency is going to bring in. On the upfront, every partner would look ideal.

It’s only while exploring their real potential on ground credentials would realize how equipped they are to provide you unwinding support.

Few specific mile markers from a credential point of view would be the partnership level, their overall strength, the award and year of the award provided by Magento, the reason the award was provided.

This would help you understand the relevance of that agency in Magento which can help you get the best agency onboard.

The other aspect would be to look for support specific testimonials. This can be from the firms who they are serving currently.

You must try to understand why these other firms are with the agency and the best-case scenario would be wherein a global brand working with them for ongoing support provides a solid testimonial.

This would affirm that the said agency can provide world-class Magento support.

Wrapping Up

So, this sums up our recommendation on how you should look out for your ideal Magento partner. Though the above points might not touch certain areas, we are sure that if you walk through them while evaluating an agency, you would be able to find one of the best Magento partners who can provide you with the best support for your needs.

To make this journey even shorter, you can evaluate Ranosys Technologies, a Magento partner recognized by Magento for flawless delivery in 2020. Also, do explore our game-changing Magento Support Packages here!

Singapore, 14 May 2020 – With the recent announcement of Magento’s support of Azure, Ranosys is now offering a new infrastructure option for their Magento eCommerce clients. Microsoft Azure brings in high performance with much-needed scalability that further strengthens Magento’s capabilities and empowers customers to expand their reach across the globe.

As a trusted Magento partner, Ranosys has successfully deployed eCommerce solutions across the US, Europe, and Asia, earning Magento’s prestigious 2020 Delivery Quality Solution Partner of the Year Award. In addition, as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Ranosys brings its knowledge and experience of architecting and deploying Azure cloud solutions to its Magento clients.

By combining the enhanced functionality of Magento Commerce with the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Azure, Ranosys aims to create faster to market solutions for clients and deliver feature-rich experiences for their customers.

To complement its Magento implementation capabilities, Ranosys also provides experience design, PIM integration, and mobile app development. A key part of its strategy is to provide delivery capabilities across the entire eCommerce ecosystem by investing in its people and developing technology partnerships.

Ranosys always looks for new ways to provide greater value to its Magento clients. With this new development, Ranosys investments in Microsoft partnership will enable it to bring the power of these two leading technology vendors together to deliver high-performance eCommerce solutions.

For more information please visit: https://www.ranosys.com

About Ranosys

Ranosys Technologies , is a systems integrator with offices in the US, UK, and Singapore and 3 India based delivery centers. Its core business is providing scalable, reliable and affordable eCommerce, mobile app, digital transformation, and product engineering solutions to clients worldwide. Since 2008, flexible delivery approaches and experienced consultants have delivered projects on time and on budget enabling Ranosys to become the technology partner of choice for many organizations across Asia, Europe, and the US.

About Magento

Magento Commerce, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud eCommerce platform, offers a one-of-a-kind eCommerce solution with enterprise power, unlimited scalability, and open-source flexibility for B2C and B2B experiences.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Ranosys Technologies, a global software development company, is thrilled to announce the appointment of Mr Sumesh Soman as the AVP – Business Development – Magento. In his new role, Sumesh will be responsible for accelerating our eCommerce practices and fueling the long-term growth for businesses of all sizes in the digital landscape.

Mr Soman has a rich experience in handling Enterprise Sales and Client Management. His expertise lies in digital retail, eCommerce, marketing, sales management and sales operations. In his career, he has been a strategic resource to his clients by utilizing his reliable relationships with key platforms and ecosystem partners. His sales pitches are driven by a belief in the efficiency of one’s products and services in delivering an exceptional, value-enhancing and productive experience. His problem-solving approach has helped his clients in providing maximum value and garnering superior results.

“I am excited to be a part of Ranosys technologies and have extensive plans for our growth, expansion and client-service. Ranosys has already been delivering quality services in the field of Magento development and I am looking forward to steering their competencies towards a vision of greater achievements and bigger goals,” said Mr Soman.

“Sumesh is another fantastic addition to our growing team and his extensive experience will be invaluable for Ranosys as we expand our Magento offerings. His skills and acumen perfectly fit our drive to provide innovative and customer-centric solutions to clients and help them capture new markets and scale new heights,” said Anand Ramdeo, MD – EMEA, Ranosys.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on the mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

Singapore – May 5, 2020 – Ranosys Technologies, a Singapore-based software development company, today announced that it has achieved Microsoft Gold Competency in Application Development. Gold Competency, Microsoft’s highest level of partner certification, is only awarded to organizations that have proven skills and demonstrated expertise with a particular Microsoft service or technology.

The global public cloud services market is predicted to grow 17% in 2020 to a total of $266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019 (according to Gartner, Inc.), cloud adoption is mainstream. Enterprises are shifting their focus on scaling their digital strategies and accelerating their migration to the cloud.

Ranosys is committed to helping global enterprises in their digital transformation initiatives and driving their business value with innovative, agile, and scalable solutions. The right level of accreditation from Microsoft allows Ranosys to leverage the Microsoft platform to rapidly migrate clients’ applications to cloud and modernize their infrastructure.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies, said “We are proud to be recognized as a Microsoft Gold Partner. The status demonstrates Ranosys expertise in Microsoft technologies and a strong commitment to delivering measurable business outcomes and meeting the client’s evolving needs in the mobile-first world.” He further added, “Achieving Microsoft Gold Competency is a significant milestone for Ranosys that will enable us to combine our service delivery capabilities and connected infrastructure with the power of Microsoft platform to build innovative solutions spanning cloud, AI, Machine Learning and IoT.”

About Ranosys

Founded in 2008, Ranosys is a leading strategic digital transformation partner for many global clients and SMEs. It drives business thought leadership and supports clients with integrated digital solutions from key international offices spread across the UK, the UAE, the USA, Singapore, and 3 global offshore development centers in India.

Ranosys aims to bring greater agility to enterprises and help them keep pace with the technological advancements through its Microsoft expertise combined with experience in product engineering, digital transformation, and experience design. For more information, visit: https://www.ranosys.com/

About Microsoft

For more details, please contact:

Ranosys: Reetesh Vadodaria – reetesh.vadodaria@ranosys.com

Microsoft: Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Singapore, 21 April 2020 – Ranosys Technologies, a global digital consulting agency, is proud to have been named Adobe’s 2020 Delivery Quality Commercial Solution Partner of the Year for APAC.

This honor is given to an Adobe Partner in APAC who has demonstrated outstanding performance in technical enablement, quality, customer satisfaction, thought leadership, and promotion of the Adobe ecosystem. Ranosys received this award for exceptional delivery quality in Magento Commerce.

“We are thrilled to be named Adobe’s 2020 Delivery Quality Commercial Solution Partner of the Year. At Ranosys, we go above and beyond to achieve breakthrough success for clients. This award validates the value that we deliver to our clients through quality digital solutions, leveraging Adobe and Magento platforms,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys.

“Adobe is growing rapidly across the globe and specifically in the APAC market. Adobe’s commerce platform powers some of the best B2B and B2C commerce implementations. This growth is often supported by partners and the quality of the implementation oftens determines if a client’s investment on the platform is giving the right ROI to clients or not. We are delighted that our focus on quality and making our client’s successful is recognised by not only our clients, but also by Adobe,” said Sushma Vyas, COO, Ranosys.

About Adobe Experience Cloud

In the experience economy, every business must be a digital business and Adobe Experience Cloud is the global leader for powering digital businesses. With solutions for data and insights, content and personalization, customer journey management, commerce and advertising, Adobe Experience Cloud is driving Customer Experience Management (CXM) across both B2B and B2C for companies of every size. Adobe Experience Platform – the foundation of Adobe Experience Cloud – is the industry’s first purpose-built CXM platform, enabling personalized customer experiences in real-time at scale.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys is committed to reinventing the future of digital businesses. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

The world is facing a one-of-a-kind crisis right now. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we perceive life and how this world functions. However, our world has witnessed the worst and we will rise above this calamity too.

Business world, particularly, is reeling under the shifts caused by Covid-19. With determination and right guidance, you can steer through this situation too.

So, with an optimistic approach, the expert team at Ranosys Technologies has crafted a meticulous guide aimed at steering your eCommerce business through this testing time.

With the following step you can safeguard your eCommerce business during Covid-19 lockdown. We have broadly divided our steps into 3 areas:

Ramp up or Increase
Restructure or Realign
Exploring your option or Be Agile

3 Steps to Safeguard Your eCommerce Business During the Coronavirus Lockdown

Increase: Any business, no matter which part of the world it belongs to, is going to be eventually affected by Covid-19. Yet, there are certain areas in which you should increase your efforts.

Increase Social Awareness Messages: Whether you belong to an industry which is directly affected by Covid-19 or not, increase your efforts in creating social awareness for your customers. This would not only help you curb the spread (which in itself is a noble cause) but would also help develop a positive identity for your brand.
Increase Proactive Messaging: We know that the customer agitation and dissatisfaction is going to peak during these times. Thus, you must proactively intimate customers about any probable delays and unavailability of goods. You must also mention any other kind of issues that you are facing and its workaround. You need to devise these messages in such a way that within a first couple of clicks, the customer can view the message of unavailability and

Realign: The Covid-19 crisis has forced all of us to accept new realities. In the similar fashion, our business goals and actions need to be restructured too. Whatever plans you had devised in the beginning of the quarter require alteration.

However, you can utilize the period to restart your dormant plans. Following are some of the aspects you could switch to as the Covid-19 lockdown continues:

Realign to Inbound Marketing: Your customers are consuming more digital content than ever in the Coronavirus lockdown. Hence, this is a great opportunity for you to adopt an aggressive approach towards inbound marketing. Get your content team onboard and increase your SEO and social media outreach.
Concentrate on Dormant Projects:This is a perfect opportunity for you to get your creative juices flowing. Every business has plenty of ideas for their in-house development but client service takes precedence over them. You can direct your employees to work on these long-forgotten, but important projects.
Focus on Improving Existing Features : During this time, it would be better to finally implement the feature improvements you had always planned for. You could also introduce interesting marketing campaigns to utilize this time.

For example, if you’ve an eCommerce business selling clothes, you could build and release complete lookbooks and style guides to engage with your users. This is the time to realign your goal from customer loyalty than conversion.

Be agile: In the worst-case scenario, you might have to stop taking any new orders or serve any customers. This decision will completely depend upon the spread of Covid-19 in your region, the government norms and the overall difficulty in remaining operational. Although, before taking such a call there are a few aspects that you should contemplate.

Product Innovation: Is there something in your product arsenal that can be tweaked to serve a particular need of your customer during these times? If yes, then make that change, innovate and serve your customers.

A good example of it would be, how alcohol producing companies have transformed their business to produce hand sanitizer and how clothing companies with sufficient resources are working on making face masks.

Restricting Your Geographical Area of Operation: Though many webstores would be temporarily non-functional but you can restrict your order intake from a particular region. This might be the region in which you have your warehouse and offer an in-store/warehouse pick up for your customers.

The good thing about this is you can easily maintain social distancing by providing your services and segregating your customers into different batches.

Clear Messaging Regarding the Situation: Your registered as well as prospect customers should get a clear message regarding the status of their order and the future plans of the company. The ideal way is to put up a banner with this message.

You can also put smaller labels on each product details as well as the product listing page. The labels must clearly mention the reason (Manpower Shortage, Precautionary Measure, Governments Directive or any other in relation to Covid-19), provide a directive, and a tentative date of when you would be functional again.

Wrapping up:

The silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis has been the solidarity and unity it has brought in the world. As part of a larger community, we must stand together and build each other up. At Ranosys Technologies, our culture has always been of sharing and growing together.

To keep this culture alive, we have gathered a panel of industry veterans and experts on “Ranosys Covid-19 Response Taskforce” to provide their insights, helpful tips and aid to those who need guidance during this time.

We would love to have you as a part of this team. So, if you’re a contributor who wants to extend a hand with your consultation or a startup who needs to discuss their course of action, do drop us a mail at sales@ranosys.com.

The Coronavirus Pandemic has affected our lives in more ways than we had thought of. From practising social distancing to working from home, the past few months have forced the entire world to repurpose the way we have been functioning.

Due to the outbreak of this deadly virus, most of us are now delivering our work-related duties from our homes. As opposed to what people assume, working from home can be more stressful. In an office, we have our dedicated space and our team to fall back on.

On the other hand, working from home entails juggling family, haphazard routine and lack of coordination between team members. Especially during this time, when we are dealing with anxieties and uncertainties about the future, working from home or remote work can pose many difficulties for anyone.

However, the show must go on. During these times, we need to give our best to our work and sail through this period of chaos. In this article, we will talk about various things you can do to improve your work-from-home experience.

Tips to Work-from-Home Effectively

Follow a Routine: When you have nowhere to go, it becomes difficult to remain disciplined. This habit leads to less productivity and more delays. Thus, it becomes more important to stick to a schedule.

Even if you’re going to work from home, you must wake up on your usual time and start your work as per your office timings. You can also dress up well to motivate yourself for the day. Following a routine has a positive effect on your mindset and makes you start your day with energy.

Create a Dedicated Workspace: The reason why we all prefer working from the office is our workstation and the dedication that comes with it. When you sit in your cubicle, you know your only task is to give your best to the company.

Because of this sudden outbreak of Coronavirus, we are left with no option but to work from home. Most of us were unprepared and do not have a work-friendly space in our homes. However, creating a space with a good vibe only takes your laptop, your necessary equipment and a good table.

Working from a fixed space away from distraction will help you immensely in gaining focus and bringing more efficiency. Thus, we strongly recommend working from a formal setup even if it’s inside your home.

Communicate With Your Team: During office hours, our day is filled with chit-chat, healthy discusión and fun breaks. This banter helps break the monotony and bring energy back on a dull day.

As we all work from home now and are also isolated from any external contact, we tend to feel lonely, dull, and uninspired. The only way to perk yourself up again is by communicating constantly with your team via instant messages, conferencing, and calls. This will help keep your morale up and make coordination better.

Keep Checking-in With Your Managers: It is easy to get distracted and lose the vision of your goals when surrounded with family, house chores, and an imminent health crisis like Covid-19. So, you need to keep in touch with your leads and managers to help you navigate through this time.

A quick meeting to decide every day’s task and check-in at the end of the day to discuss the status can work wonders to keep you on the right path. Today, we have many options like Google Meet, Zoom, and Skype for Business to even conduct video meetings well. We suggest using these technologies to help you work from home better.

Ensure that You Have the Right Equipment: Most of us didn’t expect to be working from home at such short notice. It is quite possible that you may not have the right laptop, required software, good internet connection or a microphone to carry out your responsibilities properly.

If you face any such problem, then, you must communicate immediately to your team. Your communication will help them get you the right facilities and realign your work responsibilities to accommodate your problems.

Save Your Data: As per reports, the use of the internet has gone up by 30% since the Coronavirus outbreak. Everyone is using their mobile data and wi-fi connection to work vigorously or watch Netflix to survive the lockdown.

Hence, you will notice that the internet speed has become slower than usual. At this point, it is your responsibility to reduce your data consumption to reduce the burden on network providers and ensure that the internet services continue smoothly.

Here’s how you can do your part. If you’re using your mobile data, you can go to connection > Data Usage > Data Saver. If you’re using a Windows PC, you can right-click on the wi-fi icon and click on “metered connection”. If it’s a Mac, then turn on the content caching option on the sharing setting.

Wrapping Up

This is a stressful time for everybody across the world. On top of that, we must help our organization excel and sail through this period with ease. Working from home can be taxing but it is the need of the hour. With a few tips and patience, you can give your best to your organization and even achieve personal goals.

Productivity and efficiency can be achieved at any place if you’re determined. All you need to do is stay focused and dedicated towards your work, and your goals will be accomplished as you had planned them before this lockdown hit us.

We must make every effort possible to remain indoors. This is the only plausible way to save humanity. And, if we have to shift our office and work from homes to do so, we must.

Singapore, 27 March 2020 – Ranosys Technologies is glad to announce the appointment of Reetesh Vadodaria as Vice President of Enterprise Sales for the APAC region. In his new role, Reetesh will be responsible for implementing leading enterprise technologies to accelerate the digital transformation initiatives of our global clients and deliver actionable insights to help them gain competitive advantage.

Reetesh Vadodaria is a FinTech sales professional with over 15 years of experience in new business sales, account management and delivery management functions. He has strong domain knowledge of BFSI, having worked with global and regional clients such as Citibank, DBS, Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered, etc. in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions. Reetesh has worked for leading enterprise companies such as SAP Concur, Genpact Headstrong, Polaris, etc. before joining Ranosys. He also has a good understanding of Manufacturing, having worked as a Project Engineer for one of the world’s largest companies. Reetesh holds an MBA in International Business from NMIMS, Mumbai and a BE in Chemical Engineering from DDIT, Nadiad.

“I am delighted and excited to join the Ranosys family! We are poised for rapid and exponential growth, building on the strong foundation laid over the past 12 years. Ranosys has developed leadership position and enviable reputation in our chosen platforms, services and industry segments. We have achieved this on the basis of sincerity, honesty, talent and hard work,” said Reetesh. “I look forward to working with team Ranosys to help our enterprise clients in their digital transformation journey and to contribute meaningfully to our communities and societies,” he further added.

“We are extremely excited to have Reetesh on board. As Ranosys looks to continuously drive market leadership and strategic growth for its enterprise clients by keeping pace with accelerating customer demand, Reetesh’s extensive experience in Enterprise Sales will be a valuable asset in catalyzing this momentum,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

Salesforce recently released Spring ‘20 with new enhancements and features. Just within a few days of its release, Spring ‘20 has generated lots of buzz. If you haven’t explored the features of Spring ‘20 yet, this blog is a must-read for you. Here we have highlighted a few major features of this new release. Take a look!

1. Sales reps can streamline their workflow with Task-Queue Assignment

Sales reps can set up queues for tasks to share their workload. The members of the queue can view tasks and any individual from the team can take ownership of those tasks without waiting for the work to be assigned.

Image Source: Salesforce

2. Automation of complex processes has become easy with API availability

The new Spring ‘20 comes with powerful High Velocity Sales that allows Sales managers and reps to:

Branch sales cadences on the basis of email engagement
Schedule and manage scheduled emails
Build custom reports of lead outreach and conversions
Delegate tasks on weekdays only by turning on the Skip Weekends setting
Inspect sales cadences using the API
Track progress of sales reps by filtering completed sales cadence tasks
Advance sales cadences without a third-party calling or Lighting Dialer

Image Source: Salesforce

3. Get live revenue information through Revenue Recognition Reports

Recognize or forecast revenue at any point during the entire customer lifecycle through CPQ and Billing Revenue Recognition APIs. The API allows you to create revenue schedules and transactions in response to processes and triggers for any Salesforce object . It also helps you align around your revenue targets.

4. Drive better email campaign outcomes with Audience Studio Marketing Cloud

Leverage the enhanced functionalities of Salesforce Audience Studio such as Data Onboarding to connect known customer data to unknown user profiles, Enhanced Lookalike Segments to input your Reach goal, Audience Studio Auto-Complete Search, and the Audience Studio Audit Trail to monitor recent configuration updates.

Image Source: Salesforce

5. Control better – Permission Set Groups

This new user interface allows you to manage permission set groups efficiently. Instead of creating multiple permission sets, you can create a single permission set group for multiple users who need the same specific permissions and give them access in one step.

Image Source: Salesforce

6. Emptying the Recycle Bin is Lot More Easier Now

Now, you no longer need to select individual items or Switch to Salesforce Classic to delete all the items in one go. Salesforce Spring ‘20 allows you to empty your Recycle Bin in Lightning Experience in just one click.

Image Source: Salesforce

7. Create Clone Campaigns or Opportunities with “Clone with related records” feature

The marketer and sales reps need not to find or add the related records as they can now easily include related items using the clone opportunities or campaigns feature of Salesforce Spring ‘20.

Image Source: Salesforce

8. Automate Business Processes with Process Builder and Flow Builder

The Opportunity Contact Role in Process Builder or Flow Builder enables you to add new opportunities that have related contacts. You can also notify the opportunity owner whenever there is an update in the related opportunity contact role.

Image Source: Salesforce

These are a few major updates in Spring ‘20. Connect with Ranosys Technologies, a Salesforce development company with expertise in Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, to make the most of Salesforce major release.

This event has been called off due to Corona Virus. We’ll be happy to connect with you in the upcoming events.

Ranosys is glad to announce that we will be joining the most comprehensive technology conference of the year – Microsoft Ignite in Singapore, on 20-21 Feb 2020.

Microsoft Ignite The Tour is a series of events targeting 30 markets around the world and featuring more than 100 workshops and breakout sessions, 350+ experts, and more than 25,000 individuals focused on software architecture, development, security, and IT.

The event will be a great opportunity for team Ranosys to explore the latest trends in the areas of cloud, security and hybrid infrastructure, connect with technical communities and Microsoft experts, and learn new ways to solve customer pain points in the digital realm.

Ranosys, a pioneer Microsoft SharePoint development company based out in Singapore, is driving digital transformation with unparalleled SharePoint services. Ranosys has a skilled team of SharePoint developers with comprehensive experience in implementing SharePoint solutions for global clients.

We look forward to meeting you at the conference! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

Singapore, 3 February 2020 – Ranosys Technologies is glad to announce the appointment of Mr. Madanjit Singh as the Director – Growth & Alliances, APAC. Mr. Singh will play a key role in accomplishing the growth goals of Ranosys, building on the strong foundation that has been established over the past few years, and keeping up with the scaling demands of our clients in the APAC region.

Mr. Madanjit Singh has rich international experience in building category defining new businesses at the intersection of FinTech, Data, and Cloud. He has built an ecosystem of partnerships especially with “super-apps” platforms and a community of CXO executives. He served as the Managing Director of SAP – Concur for Southeast Asia with senior executives roles in Teradata Corporation, Citigroup Equity Ventures (Polaris FT), ING Banking Group, Hewlett-Packard Company, Lotus Development Corporation, etc. He has earned an executive MBA in General Management from the University of South Australia on a Hewlett-Packard Company scholarship and Bachelor of Arts (BA) from St. Stephens College, India and has been awarded the CF Andrews Memorial Prize.

“I am delighted to join Ranosys to deliver digital transformation initiatives for corporations who have global ambitions. In my thirty years of experience, I have seen the strong impact of technology to deliver business outcomes and competitive advantage. I see Ranosys primed for growth with strong global partners,” said Madanjit Singh.

“I am glad to have Mr. Madanjit Singh as the Director – Growth & Alliances of Ranosys, APAC at this exciting time when we are looking forward to the next phase of growth. The extensive three decades of experience across several industry verticals and strong leadership skills of Madanjit are synergistic,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. “Madanjit’s key focus area will be partnering with leadership in Ranosys for predictable growth, sales transformation and building an ecosystem of strategic partnerships in the APAC region,” he further added.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

Ranosys Technologies, a Magento Professional Solution Partner, joined India’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento India on 1 February 2020, as a Gold Sponsor. The event was organized by Wagento at The Leela, Mumbai. The conference featured 25+ speakers, more than 20 insightful sessions, and 600+ attendees including Magento developers, merchants, partners and agencies.

The event provided a great opportunity to team Ranosys to connect with the ever-growing Magento Community and learn about the next wave of digitization and innovation in eCommerce.

The conference commenced with the opening remarks by Brent W. Peterson, Co-Founder, Wagento and Vijay Golani, VP of Development, Wagento.

Many renowned business leaders, CEOs, and Magento influencers from around the globe, including Vinai Kopp, Stefan Willkommer, Marsha Naidoo, Sergii Ivashchenko, Vikrant Shukla, etc. took the stage to share their expertise and throw light on different aspects of Magento.

Kali Charan Rajput (KC) from Ranosys Technologies also delivered a compelling talk on “Design Thinking: The Secret to Succeed in eCommerce.”

The event witnessed a full house and a buzzing marketplace.

A Panel Discussion on “Managed Hosting” featuring Miguel Balparda, Arun Bansal, Shehzad Karkhanawala, and Pradip Shah engaged the audience.

Talking about the future of Magento, Ben Marks summed up his presentation with a beautiful line – “India is a heart of Magento.”

The conference concluded with the final overview and prize distribution.

Indeed, Meet Magento India was a blast! Cheers to team Wagento for a successful event. Team Ranosys had a wonderful time interacting with the Magento enthusiasts and sharing our expertise about how they can unleash new horizons in the eCommerce market.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the next Magento conference!

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

LONDON, 27 January 2020 – Ranosys Technologies, a Singapore-based leading software development company with specialization in transforming retail and e-commerce businesses, appointed Maurizio Stella as Director of Commerce. In his new role, Maurizio will spearhead the e-commerce and digital practices of Ranosys in the UK and EMEA, with a focus on consulting, sales strategy, experience design, performance, and growing online sales for our clients.

Maurizio has 12+ years of experience in the eCommerce industry and he has worked with businesses of all sizes, using all sorts of systems across many industries and territories. His experience is predominately with Adobe and Salesforce; however, he is truly passionate about leveraging technology in general to deliver change, it being in terms of growth, harmonisation or process optimisation.

“Ranosys has grown exponentially in capability and size in the last few years and has established itself as a global digital commerce services company. I am thrilled to be a part of Ranosys and look forward to capitalizing on their momentum and working closely with the talented team to help clients achieve digital commerce success,” said Maurizio.

Anand Ramdeo, MD- EMEA Region, Ranosys Technologies, said, “We are glad to welcome Maurizio to the Ranosys team. Maurizio’s strong experience in driving growth and innovation through digital transformation is well-aligned with Ranosys’s mission to provide enablement for the UK and EMEA clients to leverage the untapped opportunities.” He further added, “Maurizio’s expertise will be instrumental for us in continuously enhancing the omni-channel customer journey of clients and creating unique value propositions for them .”

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

Ranosys Technologies, a Magento Professional Solution Partner, organized the first Magento Contribution Day of the decade in the Pink City, Jaipur, on 18 January 2020.

Ranosys has a long association with Magento and has sponsored various global Magento events in 2019 – MagentoLive Europe, Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia, and Meet Magento India. Ranosys is committed to Magento and looks for opportunities to add value to the Magento Community.

Magento Contribution Day is one such initiative of Ranosys to bring together Magento experts, developers and architects, and provide them a platform where they can work with the Magento Community Engineering Team and Magento Trainers to shape the future of the leading eCommerce platform.

All the contributors got an opportunity to work with Oleksii Korshenko, Senior Engineering Manager, Adobe and Volodymyr Zaiets, PHP Magento Developer, Lindenvalley GmbH. All worked with an aim to develop features and improvements for the Magento 2 core.

We just started 1st #Magento Contribution Day in 2020 🙌👏! Thank you @ranosys for organizing this event and many thanks to your amazing Team! #Magento2 #ContributionDay #Community pic.twitter.com/Df3X5GP3OB — Oleksii Korshenko (@okorshenko) January 18, 2020

We extend our sincere thanks to all contributors and the Magento Community Engineering Team for their valuable contributions and making the event a success.

Looking forward to meeting you again in Mumbai on 1 Feb 2020, at Meet Magento India.
Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and keep sharing your Magento platform ideas with us!

Ranosys Technologies, a leading software development company having competence in Salesforce consulting and implementation, joined the inaugural edition of Singapore Dreamin on 15 January 2020. The event was organized by the Singapore Salesforce Community Members.

The conference featured an impressive line-up of speakers, 10+ breakout sessions and keynotes, and networking opportunities with the amazing Trailblazer Community.

The event began with the opening keynote by Karen Mangia, Vice President, Customer & Market Insights at Salesforce.

The hall was full during the breakout sessions. The speakers delivered gripping talks on various interesting topics such as Influence Salesforce Products with IdeaExchange, The Citizen Safety with Salesforce Platform, Best Practices for ERP Integration, and much more.

It was a great pleasure for team Ranosys meeting the partners, Salesforce experts, and the Trailblazer Community of Singapore. It was, indeed, an info-packed and eventful day for us.

Kudos to the organizers for such a wonderful initiative!

We are looking forward to meeting you again at the upcoming Salesforce events. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and let us know about your digital transformation journey

UAE – 13 January 2020 – Extending its longstanding collaboration with OutSystems, Ranosys, a Singapore-based global digital solutions specialist for business transformation, announced its partnership with OutSystems in the UAE market. This partnership is indicative of Ranosys’ continued strong commitment to OutSystems and will enable it to combine its domain knowledge of various industries & OutSystems delivery capabilities. In order to have standardized OutSystems knowledge, service & delivery, Ranosys has recently established a global OutSystems Center of Excellence (CoE) in India.

Ranosys’ association with OutSystems goes back to 2017 when it strategized to integrate the capabilities of low-code into its digital services and announced partnership with OutSystems in Singapore. This partnership enabled Ranosys to unlock growth opportunities for clients and garner ROI for various big brands in the APAC region.

Recently, in December 2019, Ranosys announced its partnership with OutSystems in the UK to create a unique value proposition and a rich portfolio of offerings for its clients in this region.

“Committed to their clients’ success, Ranosys leverages the OutSystems platform to power digital transformation projects across industries and use cases. By combining their global experience, business knowledge, and low-code delivery capabilities, Ranosys is uniquely positioned to help clients unlock business value,” said Rodrigo Castelo, Vice President Middle East & Africa at OutSystems.

“After Singapore and the UK, we are thrilled to partner with OutSystems in the UAE. This partnership is a significant move toward our continuing effort to help clients capitalize on growth opportunities and achieve success in their digital transformation initiatives, leveraging the power of low-code,” said Anand Ramdeo, MD- EMEA Region, Ranosys.

About Ranosys

Founded in 2008, Ranosys has grown to be a strategic partner in digital solutions for many mid to large-sized clients globally. It drives business thought leadership from key international offices spread across the United Kingdom, the USA and Singapore. In order to support clients with integrated digital solutions in a single or distributed team model, Ranosys has five (5) delivery centres, out of which 3 are in India.

With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses creating a digital business roadmap at a strategic level, create innovative solutions for core business processes of clients and navigate them through a complete digital transformation at operational & tactical levels.

Ranosys, a Magento Professional Solution Partner, is thrilled to announce that we are a Gold Sponsor at India’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento India 2020, for the second time in a row. The event is happening in Mumbai on February 1, 2020 and will be organized by Wagento.

2019 was a momentous year for Ranosys as we sponsored and shared thought leadership in various global Magento events, including MagentoLive Europe, Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia, and Meet Magento India. Ranosys also organized Meet Magento Singapore and Distributed Magento Contribution Day.

Joining the Meet Magento India event as the Gold Sponsor will be a great start to the year 2020 for team Ranosys. The conference will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to connect with the ever-growing Magento Community and learn about the next wave of innovation and digitization in eCommerce.

If you are also joining the event, do connect with us and learn more about how you can unleash new horizons in the eCommerce market and create an impactful customer experience.

We look forward to meeting you at the conference! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.
See you at the event!

As part of its growth strategy, Ranosys Technologies, a leading software development company headquartered in Singapore, appointed Mr. Kalyan Krishna J as AVP – Salesforce to drive their Salesforce practices in Europe and the Middle East region. In this capacity, Kalyan will capitalise on the Salesforce expertise of Ranosys to drive innovation for its clients and help them unleash new opportunities in the digital-first world.

Kalyan is an accomplished sales leader and has played a pivotal role in growing organisations in the past. He is committed to the Salesforce ecosystem and has added tremendous value to his clients by demonstrating and unlocking the true potential of various products from the Salesforce ecosystems such as sales cloud, service cloud, commerce cloud, and so on.

Speaking on his appointment, Kalyan said, “I am thrilled to join Ranosys in this exciting growth phase. The unique value proposition, customer-first culture, and strong domain expertise in verticals such as BFSI, eCommerce, Healthcare, Hospitality, Education, etc. make Ranosys an ideal Salesforce partner to deliver tremendous value to its clients. I am looking forward to working with this talented team to deliver top-notch services in the Salesforce ecosystem and create significant value for our clients.”

“We are glad to welcome Kalyan to the Ranosys family. Ranosys is assisting clients in their digital transformation efforts with platforms such as Salesforce for a while. With Kalyan’s deep understanding of the global markets, specifically the EMEA region, we are looking forward to growing our footprint in the region and establishing ourselves as a credible partner in the Salesforce journey of our clients” said Anand Ramdeo, MD- EMEA Region, Ranosys Technologies.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 4 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, New York, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

The support for OutSystems 10 is finally going to end soon. Yes, you read it right! Amidst all the buzz about the launch of OutSystems 11, OutSystems has put down all the speculation surrounding OutSystems 10. In one of its official blogs, OutSystems has revealed that it will be ceasing its mainstream support for OutSystems 10 by May 31, 2020.

If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of enterprises operating on OutSystems 10, many questions will be hovering in your mind – how it will impact your business, what should be your future course of action, etc. But, you need not worry as we have got your concern. So, keep calm and read on!

Why OutSystems is Ceasing the Support for OutSystems 10?

OutSystems announced the release of OutSyste1ms 10 in October 2016. With its incredible functionalities and features, OutSystems 10 modernized the enterprises and paved pathways towards digital transformation. Moreover, it succeeded in delivering high-performance and creating a compelling user experience.

Now, you might be wondering why OutSystems is ending mainstream support for this version in such a short span, despite the huge success. Well, OutSystems strives to help enterprises unleash their potential and drive their digital innovation in the realm of fast-shifting customer demands. And that’s why; it provides support for each OutSystems version for a minimum of 2 years from the date of its release. With each new version release, OutSystems rolls out new capabilities, new features, and significant improvements that cater to the business needs of the enterprises and expectations of their customers, simultaneously.

What if you don’t upgrade to OutSystems 11 by May 31, 2020?

When you submit a request for OutSystems 10 support after 31 May 2020, the technical team of OutSystems will help and respond according to the severity level and in agreement with the contracted support. OutSystems will not entertain issues related to bugs; however, in this case, the support team will suggest you temporary fixes.

Further, OutSystems will not release new features, quality fixes, and security patches for version 10. In such a scenario, you will put your business at risk if you don’t migrate to OutSystems 11 by the given timeline. Therefore, if you want to avoid obstacles and run your business smoothly, we strongly recommend you to upgrade to OutSystems 11.

What’s new in OutSystems 11?

In addition to security updates, you can expect the following outstanding features in OutSystems 11.

Screen Templates

Screen Templates enable you to develop applications faster with great feel and look. OutSystems 11 comes with built-in Screen Templates with pre-defined logic, styles, components, widgets, and layouts. You can immediately publish and preview screens, created using this feature. However, with OutSystems 11, you can also create your own Screen Templates.

App Architecture

With the introduction of Service feature in OutSystems 11, the process of designing complex apps has become a lot easier. Leveraging this feature, you can bring greater agility to software portfolio architecture.

OutSystems UI Framework

OutSystems UI Framework offers 60 beautiful pre-built and reusable patterns, reactive web template, the unified library of UI patterns, and a lot more to deliver outstanding user experience and gain momentum for your business.

Low-Code Microservices

OutSystems 11 has introduced Service Applications and Service Modules to get rid of repetitive tasks and reduce the time-to-market of the app.

Learn about more features here – https://bit.ly/2Q69aLi

How long is the upgrade process?

Actually, it’s a little bit difficult to have an accurate answer to this question because it may vary for different enterprises. Here, you must take note of the fact that the time frame for the upgrade process completely depends on the complexity level of the installation of the current OutSystems version. Nonetheless, you can touch base with an experienced OutSystems development partner to figure it out.

Migration to OutSystems 11: An Opportunity to Gain a Competitive Edge

How about completing migration at the very moment your competitors begin to plan for it? Sound good, right? With a well-thought-out plan in place and support of a dedicated and trusted OutSystems Partner, you can expedite the process and complete migration ahead of time. And, it will, for sure, give you an edge over your competitors.

OutSystems 11 will bring in several key benefits for your business – agility, governance, visibility across the entire app portfolio, portability and standardized operations, data protection across multi-experience touchpoints, and improved user experience and branding with 60 stunning pre-built and reusable patterns. In addition, the new version will help you overcome legacy gridlock issues.

So, how Ranosys can help you with seamless migration to OutSystems 11?

Ranosys is the fastest-growing OutSystems Partner, focusing on re-imagining the capabilities of enterprises and unlocking the digital opportunities for business growth. Ranosys has its dedicated OutSystems Center of Excellence (CoE) and offers a complete service portfolio. With its profound integration capabilities, architectural excellence, and comprehensive knowledge of Outsystems, Ranosys helps enterprises reduce the time to market & cost of innovation, and accelerate the digital transformation journey. The global exposure across Singapore, the USA, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar facilitates Ranosys to bring the power of OutSystems in these regions.

The Bottom Line

As the end of support for OutSystems 10 is official now and the countdown to 2020 has begun, it will be a wise decision to migrate to OutSystems 11 today to avoid rushed transition. So, make your move soon and plan your upgrade in advance!

Embrace the power of low-code for your critical business applications.

From development to integration & continuous support, we help you throughout the way.

Ranosys Technologies, a leading software development company headquartered in Singapore, is glad to announce that Mr. Mubaraq Shaikh has joined the company as AVP – OutSystems to drive our OutSystems practices in the EMEA region. Ranosys has a presence in the UK since 2017 with its registered office in London. Mubaraq will lead our digital transformation initiatives in Europe and the Middle East countries and will help clients redefine their businesses and drive real value.

Mubaraq is a seasoned business development professional with a unique ability to drive business strategies and forge lasting relationships. His prior professional experience in Europe, OutSystems experience and global exposure of the platform ecosystems will be of tremendous value for Outsystems practice of Ranosys.

“The company is focussing on expanding its customer and partner base in the EMEA. Mubaraq has strong business acumen and regional understanding necessary to help our potential clients capitalize on the growth opportunities, leveraging the low-code solutions,” said Anand Ramdeo, MD -EMEA Region, Ranosys Technologies. He further added, “We are thrilled to have Mubaraq as part of our team. His vision for scaling global organizations and drive customer value will be pivotal to give a fresh eye to our operational capabilities and growth plans.”

“It gives me great pleasure to be part of Ranosys. Ranosys has a strong commitment to building one of the biggest Outsystems certified teams in the world. With comprehensive domain expertise, fast-growing Outsystems team, Outsystems partnership at multiple locations, I look forward to working with such a brilliant team to add to the organization’s impressive success and deliver the next phase of their growth,” said Mubaraq.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software development company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 3 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Digital Transformation, Mobility Solutions, and eCommerce development, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services and helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

Leading Provider of Digital Solutions Reduces Development Time as an OutSystems Partner

Ranosys Technologies is glad to announce its partnership with OutSystems, the world’s leading Rapid Application Delivery (RAD) platform, in the UK market. OutSystems and Ranosys will jointly provide the most comprehensive and efficient way to create, deploy, and manage consumer facing and internal business applications across all devices and platforms to global organisations.

Ranosys has been assisting global clients in Healthcare, BFSI, Education, Manufacturing, etc. for over a decade. With this partnership, Ranosys and OutSystems will add tremendous value to the organisations in these domains and speed up their digital transformation journey. This partnership will focus on bringing the low code revolution in retail banks and financial institutions in creating frictionless digital banking experiences for customers; healthcare industry in establishing meaningful engagement with patients and physicians to improve patient care outcomes and reduce the overall cost of serving patients; education industry in delivering engaging student user experience while maintaining legacy systems, and the IT industry in modernizing their legacy systems and digitizing the ways apps are built.

Ranosys is a world-class organisation and committed to delivering the right solutions to its global clients. Ranosys has built a good capacity and is on way to create a big centre of excellence for the OutSystems practice. “Our partnership with Ranosys will bring low-code into new regions, industries and customer accounts. By aligning OutSystems’ award winning low-code platform with their capacity for delivery, Ranosys is positioned to accelerate digital transformations and uncover business value,” explained Peter Dunlap, VP Channels and Alliances for OutSystems.

Speaking about this partnership, Anand Ramdeo, MD, EMEA, said, “Low-code platforms are an essential enabler of digital transformation and accelerator of app development and deployment. We were looking for a low-code app development platform to boost the operational efficiency of our clients’ businesses and help them stay ahead of the digital curve in the technology world.”

“OutSystems is a leading platform and has delivered industry-focused solutions to the real-world, complex problems in many verticals. OutSystems partnership will empower us to help our clients drive digital transformation and overcome two major challenges – scale and speed, in new and innovative ways. This partnership has also made it easier to bridge the gap between IT and business by bringing in the notion of citizen developers,” Anand Ramdeo further added.

Ranosys Technologies has been working with OutSystems from 2017 in the APAC region and with this partnership in the UK, their intent is to bring the power of low-code platforms to their clientele in the UK and EMEA region.

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry operates amidst strict compliance and control. The management and retrieval of information, achieving cost reduction and operational efficiency, and staying ahead in a competitive global market in the rigid regulatory environment are the biggest challenges for the BFSI organizations.

With unparalleled features such as analytics, workflows, content management and reporting, data storage and analysis, SharePoint provides the financial industry with the best solutions to deliver compelling customer experiences across channels and generate significant business value.

Below are some of the advantages that the organizations operating in the financial sector can obtain using SharePoint:

1. Customer Analytics

SharePoint provides a 360-degree view of customers and tracks their data to enable banks and insurance companies to deliver personalized services. Moreover, leveraging this platform, the BFSI organizations can increase customer loyalty, decrease customer acquisition and retention costs, and gain higher ROI.

2. Process Management

With custom SharePoint mobile applications, workflows, and forms, financial organizations can automate and streamline their business processes. You can have a more collaborative approach to content dissemination and information sharing for quick decision-making.

3. Security and Governance

SharePoint lets you manage external sharing of content and restrict access based on the network location. SharePoint Online provides various permission levels – Full Control, Edit, Read, Restricted Read, View Only, etc. Further, the security of data can be strengthened using other features of SharePoint such as encryption of data, virus detection, and custom script restriction.

4. Cost Reduction

SharePoint considerably reduces IT costs by consolidating and centralizing all your information management activities into a single infrastructure. Moreover, you can bring down development costs by leveraging built-in tools for integration with Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems and other out-of-the-box components.

SharePoint helps the BFSI organizations manage their information better and deliver the right information at the right time to the right people. In addition, this platform reduces intricacies associated with the BFSI industry and the turnaround time for customers.

Looking forward to getting a SharePoint solution developed for your organization and transforming it into a more collaborative workplace? Touch base with a dedicated SharePoint development company.

With global e-retail sales projected to scale up to 4.8 trillion U.S. dollars by 2021, eCommerce has become more important and competitive than ever. Technology advancements and shift in consumer buying habits in the recent past have brought various opportunities as well as challenges such as driving traffic to online stores, capturing quality leads, retaining the existing customers, etc. for the eCommerce industry. Moreover, legacy commerce solutions have turned out to be the biggest barriers to innovation for this industry. Salesforce Commerce Cloud helps eCommerce merchants overcome all these challenges and improve customer engagement, market reach, and earn more revenue.

Previously known as Demandware, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) empowers eCommerce businesses to transform digitally with its robust features such as product management, multi-site management, catalog management, customer and segment-specific pricing, responsive mobile design, pre-built integrations, campaign management, etc. SFCC enables organizations to deliver a consistent and digital brand experience throughout the customer journey.

Advantages of Salesforce Commerce Cloud for eCommerce Business Growth

Salesforce Commerce Cloud brings in many benefits for your eCommerce business and helps you grow in the competitive era. Take a look!

1. Predictive Commerce

Salesforce Einstein has been integrated into Commerce Cloud that leverages artificial intelligence to predict consumer behavior in real-time and empowers merchandisers with smarter insights. Store owners can generate more revenue by offering the right product at the right time to the right customer. In addition, you can identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling, and can also personalize your offerings to improve sales.

2. Omnichannel Capabilities

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the right platform to integrate your brick and mortar store with the online store. It enables store owners to run their business across mobile, social, web, and other channels from a single platform. Further, multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-site support of Salesforce Commerce Cloud lets you scale up your eCommerce business across all geographies.

3. Create Unlimited Purchase Possibilities for Customers

Salesforce Commerce Cloud lets you extend digital commerce into your online eCommerce store. It provides you access to available inventory irrespective of location, to eliminate sales loss because of unavailable or out-of-stock products. Besides, this platform provides advanced order routing algorithms to ship the order smarter and faster.

4. Boost Marketing and Merchandising

You can run A/B tests, launch campaigns, share and manage product content without any technical support. Features such as Visual Merchandising and Active Merchandising assist you in increasing order value. Moreover, you can schedule tasks, create multiple catalogs, and get rid of various payment and billing complexities, using this platform.

In a nutshell, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a scalable eCommerce platform with unparalleled capabilities around internationalization, customer segmentation, multiple store management, and much more. SFCC is the best choice for hassle-free management of every aspect of digital commerce and speed up business operations.

So, choose SFCC for your next eCommerce project and reap maximum benefits from the platform. You can touch base with an experienced Salesforce Commerce Cloud consultant company to boost your digital transformation initiatives and achieve significant business outcomes.

Ranosys, a leading software development company possessesing competence in Salesforce consulting and implementation, joined the flagship event of Salesforce – Dreamforce 2019 from 19-22 November 2019, in San Francisco, California. The conference featured more than 2700 breakout sessions and brought lots of inspiration and fun with an amazing community of trailblazers.

The event started with opening keynote by Marc Benioff and Keith Block, Co-CEOs, Salesforce.

The speakers from all around the globe covered various interesting topics on Day 1, including the potential and pitfalls of AI, the cascading impact of 5G and how businesses can prepare, etc. Tim Cook, CEO, Apple, joined Marc Benioff to discuss the role of mobile in the enterprise.

The Day 2 was focussed on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and digital transformation. The insightful talks around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its role in digital transformation, how to achieve SDGs without repairing the trust crisis, the business of business is to improve the state of the world, etc. kept the audience engaged. Taking a break from technology, Arianna Huffington and Marc Benioff discussed about wellness.

The Day 3 was all about equality, sustainability, and climate. Former US president Barack Obama’s session was the major highlight of the day. Obama took part in a fireside chat with Marc Benioff and offered some advice for business leaders. He also cautioned on the pitfalls of the information age.

The Day 4 was the Personal Empowerment Day, focussed on Brain Health, Mindfulness, and Resilience.

Dreamforce was a smashing success. Appreciation to the organizers for such a well-organized event. With fascinating conversations off and on stage, hands-on activities, and lots of learning, Dreamforce was eventful for team Ranosys.

Looking forward to Dreamforce 2020!

Ranosys, a leading software development company offering unparalleled IT solutions to power digital transformation and innovation for BFSIs and FinTechs, joined the world’s largest FinTech event – Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF), last week. The event was organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in partnership with the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), from 11-15 November 2019 in Singapore.

In addition to more than 60,000 participants from 130 countries, the event brought an impressive line-up of distinguished speakers from Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, the USA, the Middle East, and Africa.

A week-long event began with an Opening Act followed by a presentation on “Singapore: Re-Imagining FinTech” by Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The event featured engaging talks and panel discussions on various interesting topics, including fintech regulation, open banking, insurtech, AI, etc. The buzzing marketplace further gave momentum to the event.

The major highlights of the event were – Global FinTech Hackcelerator, SLINGSHOT 2019, FinTech Awards, Deal Fridays, TechInnovation, and Innovation Lab Crawl.
Singapore FinTech Festival was an excellent platform for Ranosys to deepen knowledge in the digital FinTech technology synergizing with the global financial institutions, FinTech unicorns, investors, and policy makers.

A big thanks to the organizers!
We are looking forward to Singapore FinTech Festival 2020. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and let us know about your digital transformation journey.

The flagship event of Salesforce – Dreamforce 2019 is just around the corner and team Ranosys is looking forward to wonderful four days with lots of breakout sessions, inspiration, and fun with an amazing community of trailblazers. Salesforce will be organizing the Dreamforce from 19-22 November 2019, in San Francisco, California.

Ranosys, a leading software development company, possesses competence in Salesforce consulting and implementation. We enable global clients deliver an unparalleled customer service with our Salesforce capabilities. The event will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to discover the future of technology with Salesforce Community.

If you are also heading to Dreamforce, do connect with us! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

See you in San Francisco!

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, joined the biggest Magento event of Asia – Meet Magento Asia as a Gold Sponsor on 12 November 2019, in Bangkok. The event was organized by SmartOSC.

The conference provided a great platform to connect with the biggest brands and retailers across the globe, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other SEA countries. In addition, attendees got an immersive insight into the latest eCommerce trends.

The conference began with a welcome note by Jack Tran, Principal Consultant, SmartOSC, followed by an insightful talk by Nicholas Kontopoulos, Head of APAC Commerce Marketing – Magento Commerce.

Great and inspiring talk “The Purpose of Purpose” by @NicholasK71, Head of APAC Commerce Marketing at #Magento #MM19ASIA 🙌 pic.twitter.com/ZEk6x02fwZ

— Oleksii Korshenko (@okorshenko) November 12, 2019

In addition to engaging presentations, the conference also featured a Panel Discussion on “The Future of Customer Experience in Commerce”.

Vijay Pagadala, CSO, Ranosys Technologies, took the stage to deliver a gripping talk on “Fast-Scaling & Optimizing eCommerce Web Stores Using Engineered Algorithms”.

A great show by team SmartOSC, Kudos! Indeed, it was an amazing event with innovative ideas, purposes, and a wonderful Magento ecosystem.

We are looking forward to Meet Magento Asia 2020. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and keep the Magento conversations going.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, is glad to announce that we will be joining Meet Magento Asia on 12 November 2019 in Bangkok, as a Gold Sponsor. The event will be organized by SmartOSC.

The conference provides a great platform to connect with the biggest brands and retailers from all around the globe, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other SEA countries. In addition, attendees can get an immersive insight into the latest eCommerce trends.

Ranosys, being a thought leader in Magento Commerce, has sponsored various Magento events across the globe, including MagentoLive Europe, Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Indonesia and Meet Magento India and has also organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day. Ranosys is also an organizer of Meet Magento Singapore and Singapore Magento User Group Meetups.

The conference will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to learn about the industry direction, understand merchants’ needs in this rapidly changing digital eCommerce landscape, and connect with the ever growing Magento Community. Vijay Pagadala, CSO, Ranosys Technologies, will take the stage to deliver an insightful talk on “Fast-Scaling & Optimizing eCommerce Web Stores Using Engineered Algorithms”.

We look forward to meeting you all in Bangkok. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting right now to avoid the last minute hassle.

The world’s largest and a week-long FinTech event, Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF), will be coming with the Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SWITCH) on 11-15 November 2019 in Singapore. The event will be organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in partnership with the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS).

The event will bring an impressive line-up of distinguished speakers from Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, the US, the Middle East, and Africa who will deliver engaging talks on various interesting topics, including open banking, insurtech, AI, fintech regulation, etc.

Team Ranosys will be joining the event to synergize with the global fintech unicorns, financial institutions, investors & policy makers, explore the latest trends and happenings in the financial ecosystem, and deepen knowledge in digital fintech technology.

Ranosys, a leading IT partner for global FinTech, offers unparalleled IT solutions to power digital transformation and innovation for BFSIs and FinTechs. Ranosys takes new approaches to integrate new technologies into the already existing architecture and strategy of financial organizations and solve their industry-specific pain points.

If you are also joining the conference, do connect with us and learn more about how you can reach the next phase of transformation with our FinTech solutions.

We look forward to meeting you at the conference! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

See you at the event!

Ranosys, a leading software company headquartered in Singapore, is glad to announce that Tarun Talwar has joined the company as Director of Strategy & Growth – North America. Ranosys has presence in the US since 2013 with its registered office in Fremont, California. Tarun will lead and support the operational, tactical, and strategic initiatives for Ranosys for its North America operations.

Tarun Talwar is a former Founder and CEO (from 2001 to 2018) of Mindspan Systems, an Atlanta-based IT solutions and services firm. With 31 years of experience in the IT industry, he has offered world-class solutions and services in the areas of software product development, interactive marketing, and business intelligence. He has also served on the Board of Directors of USPAACC (US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce) – South-East chapter and SPIN Atlanta (Software Process Improvement Network), a reputed organization that promotes knowledge exchange and interaction among software engineering and process improvement professionals.

Mr. Talwar is a Founder and President of Prayas, a non-profit organization that promotes and supports educational efforts internationally, including financial support to economically disadvantaged students. He is also an occasional speaker at industry forums, particularly on topics related to entrepreneurship and bridging the gap between technology and business.

“Tarun is a pre-eminent in the IT industry and has vast experience in North America market, and we are delighted to welcome him to Ranosys” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. He further added, “We believe his wealth of expertise, particularly in business advisory, software product development, and process improvement, will be extremely valuable in incubating new capabilities and strategic initiatives as Ranosys continues to grow in North America.”

“Ranosys is experiencing rapid growth and I am looking forward to working with a very capable and passionate team” said Tarun Talwar. “I hope my past experience will enable me to contribute effectively to Ranosys’ vision of delivering high value service offerings globally. I look forward to mentoring this brilliant team and lending a fresh eye to its growth plans and operational capabilities” he added.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software company founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Singapore. It has 3 service delivery centers; one each in Singapore, London, and California, and 3 offshore development centers in India. With immense experience in Product Engineering, Retail and Commerce, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) and Healthcare, Ranosys focuses on mid-market to enterprise segment for digital transformation services.

With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models, Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

OutSystems organized the world’s largest and most comprehensive event series – OutSystems NextStep on 29-30 October 2019 in Amsterdam. The event showcased the best in digital transformation and low-code development technology.

Ranosys, an OutSystems Partner, joined the event with an aim to connect with the thriving OutSystems Community, learn about the new happenings in the world of low-code, and get insights into the vision of OutSystems.

The two days event brought together 3000+ attendees, including developers, architects, IT and business leaders from all around the globe who gathered to unleash their digital future with OutSystems.

The event began with a keynote by Paulo Rosado, CEO and Founder, OutSystems. He shared his valuable thoughts on what makes OutSystems a global leader in the low-code sector and how it is helping enterprises achieve digital transformation.

The event featured many business tracks and 50+ deep-dive tech sessions covering interesting topics such as DevOps, RPA, IoT, and AI. The impressive customer success stories about how they overcame the bottlenecks of innovation with low-code, inspired the audience.

The conference offered a full schedule of networking breaks, product demos, and OutSystems Innovation Awards program. The info-packed presentations kept the audience engaged throughout the event.

Some Major Announcements at OutSystems NextStep 2019:

Experience Builder and Developer Studio will be released in Q1-2020.
Integration of OutSystems with active directory, okta, or OData is now available.
The Architecture Dashboard featuring AI-driven architecture refactoring will be available in 2020.
React Web Apps, AI Infused Apps, and Chatbots are now available with OutSystems.

Indeed, it was a great time synergizing with the brilliant OutSystems Community! We appreciate the efforts put in by the organizers.

We look forward to meeting you all at OutSystems NextStep 2020! Connect with us on LinkedIn or Twitter and share your thoughts on how you are redefining your digital future and how can we help you.

MagentoLive Europe, one of the most sought after Magento events, took place on 22-23 October 2019 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Team Ranosys joined the event as a Silver Sponsor.

The two days event brought together more than 2,000 commerce professionals and 85+ speakers from all over the globe. It featured keynote sessions, workshops, and merchant panels around cross-border and omnichannel experiences, digital transformation, Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration, and much more.

The conference was a great opportunity for Ranosys to engage with the European Magento Community, get insights into the future of Magento, and connect with fellow global eCommerce industry leaders.

The PreMagentoLive conference began with the Contribution Day and Magento Partner Summit.

Day 1 started with a Panel Discussion on “Closing the Mobile Commerce Gap”, followed by other Panel Discussions around Magento Commerce Cloud, Amazon Sales Channel in Magento, and Progressive Web Apps.

The keynote sessions started with a wonderful performance.

The event featured various session tracks, including B2B, hands-on labs, commerce strategies and best practices, product previews, winning solutions, etc. on both days.

Some Major Announcements During MagentoLive Europe 2019:

Gary Specter, VP, Global Head of Commercial Business, Adobe announced the formation of a new organization within the Adobe Digital Experience unit with Magento and Marketo are at the heart of the new unit. This unit will be completely focused on the needs of growing customers under $1B in revenue.

2. Announcing Magento 2.3.3, Jason Woosley, VP – Commerce Product & Platform, Adobe announced a discrete security package in addition to a comprehensive, integrated release package.

3. Amazon Sales Channel extension is now also available for the Amazon U.K. Marketplace. The support for additional European territories will be available from next year

4. The Early Access Program for the integration of Adobe Sensei powered Product Recommendations feature into Magento Commerce will be launched in January 2020.

5. Magento Commerce will be available on both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The Early Access Program for Azure support will be launched in the beginning of next year. With this, Magento merchants will be able to choose the cloud provider of their choice.

6. The process of integrating Adobe Stock with Open Source and Magento Commerce is in-progress. This integration will provide Magento merchants with easy and quick access to over 130 million assets.

The Day 1 concluded with a splendid after-party.

Insightful presentations kept streaming on the Day 2. The day was wrapped up with closing notes and sponsors marketplace reception followed by DevExchange & networking event.

Team Ranosys had a wonderful day and ultimate networking moments at the event. Kudos to the organizers!

We are sponsoring Meet Magento Asia in Bangkok next month and looking forward to connecting with you all again.
Stay connected with us on LinkedIn & Twitter and keep the Magento conversations going.

Ranosys, an OutSystems Partner, will be joining the world’s most comprehensive and largest event series showcasing the best in digital transformation and low-code – OutSystems NextStep, on 29-30 October 2019 in Amsterdam.

The event will feature more than 2000 business and IT leaders, OutSystems developers and architects who will unite together to prepare a roadmap for future innovations. OutSystems will showcase 5 major product launches and their vision during the keynote session.

Ranosys aims to leverage OutSystems’ capabilities and automation benefits to reduce overall turnaround time and provide rapid legacy modernization solutions for building and delivering better apps. The conference will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to connect with the thriving OutSystems Community and unleash the digital transformation future with OutSystems.

If you are also joining the conference, take the opportunity to meet us and learn more about how you can achieve impactful outcomes for your business with our OutSystems expertise.

We look forward to meeting you at the conference! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

See you in Amsterdam!

The healthcare industry has transformed at a faster pace over the last few years. The driving force behind this rapid transformation is innovative and digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, the Internet of Things, wearables, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, etc. However, with the incorporation of technology, the risk of data breach and violation has also increased manifold. In other words, patient data security has become one of the biggest challenges for the healthcare industry nowadays.

The healthcare organizations can enhance and reinforce the healthcare data security by implementing a comprehensive data management and security system, i.e., Hospital Management System. Hospital Management System is also known as Hospital Information System, Hospital Management Software, Medical Automation Software, Healthcare Management Software, and Hospital Automation System.

A well-implemented Hospital Management System meets all organizational and technical requirements of the hospital and helps healthcare providers accomplish several tasks such as appointment & scheduling, patient registration, outpatient and in-patient management, pharmacy management, laboratory management, and much more, quickly and with accuracy.

Benefits of Hospital Management System Software

1. Improved Data Security

The HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requires all healthcare facilities to transmit, maintain, store or use the health information of patients in compliance with the established standards and regulations. Here, HMS can be of great help.

All the data and patient information on the HMS is stored on the cloud or server according to the specifications of HIPPA and can be accessed only by authorized persons.

2. Easy and Quick Access to Patient Data

Hospital Management System enables you to get the required data of the patient from different departments of the hospital in just a few clicks. You can retrieve data from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) or Electronic Medical Record (EMR) based on medical record number, patient’s name, etc.

3. Reduction in the Scope of Error

The scope of error reduces substantially as processes on the Hospital Management System are automated and are performed with high-accuracy. In a nutshell, HMS reduces duplication of information entries, transcription errors, and enhances information integrity.

4. Improved Operational Efficiency

Easy access to the patient data and automated work processes enable healthcare providers to make an accurate diagnosis and provide the best care to their patients. Moreover, the Hospital Management System does not face problems like lack of focus, miscommunication, and fatigue. It performs every task with the same accuracy and efficiency.

The HMS eliminates the manual intervention, integrates the functions and centralizes the information of all departments of the hospital, thereby boosting the productivity of employees.

5. Efficient Patient Services

Hospital management applications and hospital automation solutions improve patient satisfaction by letting them access and update their information on Electronic Health Records, schedule appointments in advance, check cost estimates and insurance coverage, etc. at their convenience.

To sum up, hospital management system software and hospital management apps are the essential requirements to digitize your hospital. It serves as a crucial decision support system for healthcare providers.

If you want to gain a competitive edge, hire an experienced IT company with in-depth knowledge of the healthcare domain, to get your own customized hospital management system mobile app and hospital management system website developed on Drupal, WordPress, or as per the requirement!

MagentoLive Europe is one of the most sought after Magento events that is going to take place on 22-23 October 2019 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. And, team Ranosys will join the event as a Silver Sponsor.

In addition to 2,000 commerce professionals, the event will feature workshops, merchant panels, and keynote sessions around the conversion of mobile shoppers, digital transformation, cross-border and omnichannel experiences, Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration, and much more.

The conference will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to connect with fellow global eCommerce industry leaders, engage with the European Magento Community & the biggest innovators in eCommerce, and explore new avenues of the eCommerce world amidst the elegant artistic heritage of Amsterdam.

Ranosys has sponsored various global Magento events, including Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento NYC, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia, and Meet Magento India. Ranosys, an organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore and Singapore Magento User Group Meetups, has also organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day.

If you are also joining MagentoLive Europe, take the opportunity to meet us at Stand D16 and learn more about how we are helping our global clients accelerate their digital transformation journey with our Magento expertise.

We look forward to meeting you at the conference! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

After sponsoring various global Magento and eCommerce events, including Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento NYC, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia, and Meet Magento India, Ranosys recently sponsored eCommerce Expo Asia Singapore 2019 – Asia’s only and highly-anticipated eCommerce exhibition and conference held on October 9-10, 2019 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

The two days event provided an excellent platform to the eCommerce merchants, developers, and industry leaders to engage in a lively discussion around the latest eCommerce issues, trends, and emerging technologies. It also featured leading experts and speakers from across the globe who took the stage to speak around supply chain management, eCommerce trade strategy, cross border payment, last-mile delivery, and much more.

Ranosys, a Professional Magento Solutions Partner, is an organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore and Singapore Magento User Group Meetups. The event was an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to get insights into different perspectives of the eCommerce ecosystem, connect with like-minded people, and generate a lot of synergies.

A well-organized and fantastic event! Team Ranosys had a phenomenal experience understanding the recent happenings in the eCommerce ecosystem, identifying and solving the pain points of global merchants.

Moving ahead, we are sponsoring MagentoLive in Europe on October 22-23, 2019 and already looking forward to connecting with you all again.

It would be great to stay in touch with you. Please follow us on LinkedIn & Twitter and keep the eCommerce conversations going.

After MageX 2019 – a fantastic Magento conference organized in Austin and eCommerce Expo London, Ranosys is joining eCommerce Expo Asia Singapore 2019 – Asia’s only and highly-anticipated exhibition and conference covering the entire spectrum of eCommerce on October 9-10, 2019. Ranosys is one of the proud sponsors of the event!

The event will feature leading experts and speakers from across the globe. It will also provide an excellent platform to the eCommerce merchants, developers, and industry leaders to engage in a lively discussion around the latest eCommerce trends, issues, and cutting-edge technologies.

Over the past few months, Ranosys has sponsored various global Magento events, including Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento NYC, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia, and Meet Magento India and has also organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day. Ranosys is also an organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore and Singapore Magento User Group Meetups.

Asia-Pacific has emerged as eCommerce’s leading region globally and stands at the forefront of payment innovation, specifically in terms of the rise of invisible, frictionless payments and mobile commerce. The event will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to get insights into different perspectives of the eCommerce ecosystem, connect with like-minded people, and generate a lot of synergies.

We look forward to meeting you at the event! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

Progressive Web Apps or PWA have brought a huge revolution in application development. With incredible features such as fast speed, offline capabilities, web push notifications, and easy updates, PWA provides the best of both mobile sites and native apps for businesses. PWAs harness advanced web technology to deliver an app-like experience to users.

Magento, on the other hand, is a robust and flexible eCommerce platform with thousands of themes and extensions available in the Magento Marketplace for enhancing the shopping experience of customers.

Progressive Web Apps and Magento, when combined, can bring various benefits for your eCommerce business.

Progressive web applications help resolve the issue of long loading time and expand your reach in the areas with poor internet connectivity.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) vs Native Apps

Features	PWA	Native Apps
Push Notifications	Yes	Yes
Offline Functions	Yes	Yes
Installation on Home Screen	Yes	Yes
Multi Device Compatibility	Yes	No
No Download Required	Yes	No
SEO-Friendly	Yes	No
Full-Screen Experience	Yes	Yes
Doesn’t Require Updates	Yes	No

Let’s delve deep into the advantages of converting your Magento store to Progressive Web Application.

1. Reap Cost-effective Advantages of M-Commerce

The global mCommerce sales are expected to surpass 693 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. The inclination of people towards mobile devices for shopping has given rise to mCommerce. Businesses need a mobile app to leverage the mCommerce growth. But, mobile apps come with the following challenges:

Developers have to build different versions for Android and iOS and then have to follow a rigorous procedure to get the app published and updated on the app store.
With 2.7 million apps on Google Play Store (as of June 2019) and 1.8 million apps on Apple’s App Store (as of the first quarter of 2019), it is quite challenging to get your app ranked in the app store.
The cost and time of mobile application development are high.

Choosing a progressive web app over a mobile app can be a wise business decision. You can provide native-app like experience to customers by modifying your Magento website into a PWA. Magento PWA Studio provides a set of tools to develop, deploy, and maintain a PWA storefront on top of Magneto 2. With PWA, you are not required to build separate websites and applications across Android and iOS. You just need to write code once and then you can run this code anywhere.

2. Make Your Magento Website Easily Accessible Across Various Devices and Platforms

PWA is written in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML and it can run on all popular browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. PWA lets users create a shortcut to the website that appears as an app-like icon on the user’s device. Progressive Web Apps run in a browser, but the browser UI is removed once the user adds the PWA to the home screen. Thus, customers get the immersive, app-like experience without downloading and installing PWAs. Moreover, a PWA occupies much less space than a native app. The URL of a PWA can be loaded on shared on any device and platform.

3. Your Magento Website Remains SEO-Friendly

Transformation of your Magento site into a PWA does not affect its SEO-friendliness, your web page is still indexable and crawlable. Progressive web apps are optimized for the high-speed and mobile site, which helps achieve a better ranking.

4. Make Your Magento Website Work Offline and Load Fast

PWAs load fast, thus improving conversion rates. All the essential components such as UI and core architecture get cached after the first page load and are stored in the local device. Your app just requires to retrieve new data instead of loading all the components again, during a subsequent launch. The best part of a PWA is, it allows your customers to access your catalog and shop even if the network conditions are unstable.

5. Engage Your Prospects with Push Notification

Like traditional apps, PWAs send push notifications to keep customers engaged with your Magento store. The Push Manager sends push notifications via an EventListener once the customer or visitor of your website provides consent to get notifications. PWAs provide real-time updates to customers on new arrivals, promotional offers, receiving orders, shipping status, etc. and keep them coming back for more purchases.

If you are also planning to convert your Magento store into a progressive web application, partner with an experienced Magento eCommerce development company to get the most out of PWAs’ capabilities for the growth of your eCommerce business.

After sponsoring Meet Magento NYC, Ranosys joined MageX 2019 – a fantastic Magento conference organized by Wagento in Austin, Texas, on September 12-13, 2019. The event featured insightful round table sessions, workshops, panel discussions, and interactive chat sessions.

Ranosys, a Professional Magento Solutions Partner, joined the event with an aim to get exposure to new perspectives on different aspects of Magento, stay updated with the latest trends in the B2B and B2C spaces, and connect with like-minded people. Ranosys is an organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore and has sponsored many big Magento events such as Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento NYC, Meet Magento Indonesia, Meet Magento Asia, and Meet Magento India.

Brilliant speakers from across the globe, including Rob Long, Miguel Balparada, Igor Melnykov, Ryan Manor, Mark Lewis, and Eric Erway delivered engaging talks around the topic.

Various trending topics were covered in the conference around Magento 2 Migration, Magento Extensions, eCommerce Best Practices, Progressive Web Apps, and more.

Post-event, Wagento organized an after-party at Brazos Hall that provided an opportunity to delegates to unwind and hang around with their Magento pals.

A well-organized event by team Wagento! Team Ranosys had an amazing time with the global Magento Community. We are sponsoring MagentoLive in Europe and already looking forward to connecting with the Magento Community again.

It would be great to stay in touch with you. Please follow us on LinkedIn & Twitter and keep the Magento conversations going.

A fantastic Magento event – Meet Magento NYC 2019 – was organized by MageMojo in New York on September 5-6, 2019. The event featured eCommerce and Magento merchants, influencers, partners, industry experts, developers, and business leaders from across the globe. After successfully organizing Meet Magento Singapore 2019, team Ranosys joined the Meet Magento NYC as a Gold Sponsor.

Ranosys, a Professional Magento Solutions Partner, joined the event with the belief that meetups and conferences are a great way to get exposure to new perspectives, connect with like-minded people, and stay at the forefront of the latest technology trends. An active contributor in the Magento Community, Ranosys has sponsored many big Magento events such as Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Indonesia, Meet Magento Asia, and Meet Magento India.

The first day of the conference commenced with the welcome remarks by Marsha Naidoo, COO, MageMojo followed by an insightful talk by Peter Sheldon, Senior Director – Strategy, Adobe on “Future Proof Your Online Retail Strategy,” and an engaging Panel Discussion on “Building Exceptional Checkout Experiences” headed by Rob Long, Ecommerce Evangelist, PayPal.

A brilliant Merchant Panel was moderated by Bret Williams, CEO, Novusweb. The discussion featured other leading experts from the eCommerce field.

After enthralling back-to-back presentations, the first day of the event ended with an afterparty.

Compelling talks and presentations around PWAs, AI, Magento 2, and other interesting topics in business and technology tracks kept the audience engaged on the second day. The conference concluded with the closing keynote by Eric Hileman, CEO, MageMojo.

A great show by team MageMojo. Cheers!

Team Ranosys had an absolutely amazing time with the global Magento Community. We are sponsoring MagentoLive in Europe and already looking forward to connecting with the Magento Community again.

It would be great to stay in touch with you. Please follow us on LinkedIn & Twitter and keep the Magento conversations going.

Mobile First Design: The Origin

Initially, when the users were more focussed on the desktop first approach, mobile first approach was not given much consideration while designing the web. Eventually, the changing digital landscape and increasing use of mobiles and tablets compelled organizations to plan their UX design and development strategy keeping mobile users in mind. That’s how; the mobile first design approach turned up.

The mobile first approach means that the website must be designed taking into account the online experience of mobile users before designing it for desktop users. In other words, websites with mobile first approach are designed for mobile devices and then the layout is adapted to fit the desktop and tablet devices.

As mobile is taking over the world, the mobile first design has become a buzzword and need of the hour for creating a consistent user experience across all devices.

Are the Mobile-First and Mobile Responsive Websites Similar?

Often the terms “mobile responsive” and “mobile first” are used interchangeably, but, as a matter of fact, they are not the same. However, both are related to website design.
In mobile responsive design, you are not required to create separate websites for desktop and mobile devices. The website is designed keeping desktop users in consideration. The content, design, and user interface of the website get automatically adjusted to fit the user’s screen.

In mobile first design, the website is initially created with all the essential elements for mobile devices. Elements that do not translate well to mobile devices such as animations and hover effects are eliminated. Additional features and content are added to enhance the website for screens of larger devices (desktops and laptops).

In a nutshell, the mobile-first design uses the essential elements of the website for faster and easier navigation on mobile devices. On the other hand, a mobile responsive design means all the elements of the website are adjusted to fit the screen size of the mobile device.

Mobile First Approach for Various Industries

The mobile first design is crucial for all organizations across various industries due to the increasing use of mobile devices for browsing the website. According to the statistics of statista, in 2018, mobile phones generated 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide which is 1.9% up from 2017.

The importance of mobile first technology, particularly for eCommerce industry, is apparent from the fact that by 2021, the total mobile eCommerce sales will reach 3.56 trillion U.S. dollars that will comprise 72.9% of total retail eCommerce sales (according to statista).

Mobile First Design for eCommerce Industry

A mobile first approach in responsive web design for eCommerce includes:

A responsive site design that is consistent across all channels and optimized for mobile.
Customer-centric UX, optimized navigation, appealing CTAs, and simple functionality.
A streamlined checkout process to reduce cart abandonment.
Prioritization of the content keeping mobile users in mind.
Leverage rapid development platforms for mobile web/app development.

Why Mobile First Approach?

A few compelling stats that will grab your attention towards mobile first responsive design:

Mobile devices drive 57% of all web traffic

51% of all emails are accessed on mobile devices

50% of all the USA shoppers shop via mobile devices

Nearly 8 in 10 customers move to other website if the content doesn’t display well on their mobile device‍s

83% of mobile users believe that a seamless experience across all devices is crucial

Some more good reasons to include the mobile first design in your eCommerce business are:

1. Enhances the Visibility of Your Website

Websites designed with mobile first technology are given priority in search rankings by Google search algorithm. Mobile first indexing takes page speed and mobile content as significant ranking factors. Thus, the lesser the page load time and better the content, the higher the chances of your website to appear in search engine result pages.

2. Delivers an Optimal User Experience

Websites built with a mobile first approach provides users with a streamlined and enriched experience which, in turn, helps them build a better opinion and credibility for your business. This approach lets organizations display the most prominent content to the targeted users.

3. Increases the Conversion Rate

A well-crafted and user-centric mobile first responsive design increases your click-through and conversion rates. Moreover, mobile-first websites consume less data, thus saving you space and bandwidth while providing a pleasant shopping experience to your customers.

4. Gives You an Additional Competitive Edge

M-commerce has skyrocketed over the past couple of years and this trend is expected to continue in the upcoming years. Therefore, adoption of the mobile first approach in your business processes will be a winning strategy and help you stay ahead of the competition.

The Future of the Mobile First Design Platform

The number of smartphone users in the world by 2019 is expected to cross 5 billion and there are more eye-opening stats that show world is going mobile. Besides, users tend to spend more time on mobile than desktops. So, a huge shift from desktop first design to mobile first design is likely to become the biggest tech trend. Furthermore, new technologies such as chatbots, artificial intelligence, etc. will bring changes in the functionalities of devices, bringing more avenues for eCommerce retailers.

If you are also planning to implement the mobile first approach in your business, seek expert consultation from an experienced web design and development company.

Ranosys Technologies successfully organized Meet Magento Singapore event on 22 August 2019 at the iconic Marina Bay Sands. The conference was sponsored by leading technology providers and companies across the globe such as Google, PayPal, Dotdigital, Dynamic Yield, ShipperHQ, Wagento, MageMojo, MSTS to name a few. The event brought together 250+ delegates and 25+ speakers from all around the world.

Meet Magento Singapore commenced with traditional, power-packed lion dance performance on entrancing drum beats that held the audience spellbound.

Sushma Vyas, COO, Ranosys Technologies kicked off the event with welcome remarks.

Moving forward, a great line-up of international speakers including Nicholas Kontopoulos, Monisha Varadan, Oleksii Korshenko, Dana von der Heide, Michele Saad, Brent Peterson, among others delivered informative talks. They shared their unique perspectives on various aspects of Magento technology.

Further, we had a highly engaging panel discussion on “How shopping experiences are influencing customer buying patterns.” The discussion was hosted by Swat Kumar, Regional Head – South East Asia & India, Magento, an Adobe Company and featured leading eCommerce experts – Jason Lee, Vitali Zagorodnov, Michal Lojewski, and Anand Ramdeo who put forward their views on the topic.

The sponsor marketplace encouraged the attendees to interact with each other and connect with service integrators, merchants, and technology providers.

Another Panel Discussion on “Mobile First: Myth or Reality” was led by Terence Rajah, Senior Solutions Consultant – APAC, Magento, an Adobe Company. He was joined by Isabella Zhou, Vikrant Shukla, Pan Xiuling, and Ankit Agarwal. The panelists presented variant points of view on the topic.

Presenting a keynote on the future of the Magento, Magento Evangelist Ben Marks focused on the involvement of the community to make Magento stronger.

The conference was concluded with the closing remarks by Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. He extended his gratitude and appreciation to all the speakers, sponsors, and delegates who made Meet Magento Singapore 2019 a grand success.

Later, we had a drinks reception at sponsor marketplace. Post event, Ranosys hosted an after-party at Supply & Demand – Esplanade for the attendees to unwind & socialize amidst spectacular views of the Marina Bay Sands.

Team Ranosys expresses sincere thanks to all those who took the time to join us on 22nd August 2019 and made MM19SG successful. Hope you had a wonderful time at the event and found it informative and interesting.

We look forward to meeting you all again at Meet Magento Singapore 2020!

After successfully organizing the biggest Magento event of Singapore – Meet Magento Singapore 2019, Ranosys, a full-service eCommerce development agency and a Magento Professional Solution Partner, is heading to the US as the Gold Sponsor of Meet Magento NYC 2019.

MM19NYC will take place on September 5-6, 2019 in New York. This conference provides a great platform to technology partners, experienced developers, speakers, and merchants to talk about Magento best practices and share their knowledge around the Magento ecosystem.

Over the past few months, Ranosys has sponsored various Magento events across the globe, including Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Asia, Meet Magento Indonesia and Meet Magento India and has also organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day. Ranosys is also an organizer of Singapore Magento User Group Meetups.

Meet Magento NYC will be an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to touch base with like-minded people, merchants, and industry experts from various countries and exchange insights about recent trends in the Magento ecosystem.

We look forward to meeting you at the event! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance to avoid the last-minute hassle.

Ranosys is pleased to announce its partnership with LendFoundry, the next generation digital lending technology platform. Through this strategic collaboration, Ranosys aims to expand the LendFoundry market and offer the company’s solutions to Banks, NBFCs and Fintech companies in Singapore and the APAC region.

LendFoundry strives to empower their clients to take advantage of the best upcoming innovations in the Fintech space. Leveraging LendFoundry digital solutions, Ranosys will enable global lenders to rapidly launch lending products that are scalable, flexible, and affordable.

Describing the strategic objective behind this association, Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys Technologies, said, “We are glad to partner with LendFoundry which is amongst the most dependable platforms for lenders today.” He added, “We aim to broaden the market of LendFoundry and look forward to augmenting the digital experiences of global lenders by offering them end-to-end digital lending solutions”.

Sandeep Phophaliya, CEO, LendFoundry said “I believe that the digital transformation in the lending business is now a ubiquitous and global phenomenon, yet it requires close hand-holding and collaboration between technology innovators and the lenders. Ranosys brings in over 10 years of software implementation experience with clients globally and their strong connection with customers in Financial services industry will make it easier to roll out LendFoundry solutions in this geography. We are excited and looking forward to this relation.”

About Ranosys

Ranosys Technologies is a renowned software development company in Singapore with international footprints in the UK, USA, and India. Ranosys is also featured in the list of top Software Development Company of SoftwareDevelopmentCompany.co. Ranosys caters to dynamic environments where business and technological strategies converge. With its technical & domain expertise and flexible delivery models Ranosys helps clients keep pace with the fast-changing needs of the global market.

About LendFoundry

LendFoundry is a full-stack, cloud-based marketplace lending platform managing the entire loan cycle right from origination, marketing, acquisition, underwriting, and servicing. It empowers the lenders to focus on their core which is lending. With clients in the USA and Asia, LendFoundry is enabling lenders globally to take advantage of technology.

The healthcare landscape has undergone massive changes in terms of disease patterns, demographics, and regulatory compliances. Technological innovations such as Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, IoT, Augmented and Virtual Reality, and Big Data have also given new dimensions to the healthcare industry. In the present digital era, patients also prefer a platform where they can schedule appointments, check their lab results & reports, and track their health at their convenience. Here, Drupal can be of great help.

Drupal, a scalable and flexible content management platform, is spearheading the digital innovation in healthcare with its elegant backend solutions, strong community support, trackable content editing and deployment process for HIPAA compliance, and other exceptional features.

Let’s take a look at how the healthcare industry is evolving with Drupal.

1. Engaging User Experience

People who are facing health-related issues always look out for an online platform where they can quickly locate the right physician, find prescriptions, medical records, and other vital information. In such a case, an intuitive website can help healthcare providers create an impactful digital experience for patients.

Drupal is the right choice for developing flexible, responsive, user-friendly, and engaging websites and web applications for healthcare organizations. Drupal provides a customizable dashboard that can be easily managed even by a non-techie. Moreover, websites built on Drupal provides faster page load speed, enabling uninterrupted and better interaction with patients.

2. Third-Party Integrations

Better connectivity is the key to success for healthcare organizations as they need to integrate their web applications with third-party APIs for smooth transmission of information between different healthcare sectors.

Drupal is a robust and highly extensible CMS that facilitates seamless integration with third-party platforms. Physicians can share medical information and details of patients with the relevant doctors and hospitals in an extremely secure manner. In addition, patients can also access their individual medical records.

3. Multilingual Feature

According to a report, the global healthcare market is anticipated to reach $11801 billion in 2021. As the healthcare industry is growing fast at the global level, it is crucial for healthcare service providers to have a website that can furnish information in the local languages of patients.

Drupal, with its multilingual feature, helps healthcare organizations showcase content in every regional language without creating a huge number of new nodes, thereby targeting more locations and reaching a broader audience.

4. Security

Healthcare providers are required to store a huge amount of records, data, and digital assets. Patient privacy is also of utmost importance. Thus, the security of information is the key concern for this sector.

Drupal stays on the top when it comes to security. Drupal account passwords are strongly encrypted and repeatedly hashed when stored in the database. The encryption system can be configured to pass the HIPPA, PCI, and state privacy laws. Besides, only administrators can decide who can access a particular piece of information.

5. Mobile Responsive Themes

According to a study, the number of smartphone users in the world will be more than 5 billion by 2019. As more and more people are using mobiles for accessing information, healthcare organizations can’t overlook the benefits of mobile compatible websites.

Drupal comes with responsive themes that fit screen sizes of all devices, including mobile, tablet, and desktop, thus providing a better browsing experience to patients. In addition, responsive themes decrease the loading time of websites on mobile devices. Google also takes into account the websites that are optimized for mobiles.

Your healthcare organization is providing outstanding patient services, but the need of the hour is to expand your services on digital platforms so that more and more people can get benefited. By choosing Drupal for your healthcare website development, you not only increase your reach but also make a giant leap in your digital transformation journey.

Partner with an experienced Drupal development company to learn how you can reap the maximum benefits by leveraging Drupal platform.

After a successful Meet Magento Singapore 2018, Ranosys is overwhelmed to announce Singapore’s most awaited Magento Event – Meet Magento Singapore 2019. The event will take place at Singapore’s most iconic conference venue and known to be a creator of world-class experiences for guests – Marina Bay Sands. We brought Meet Magento event to Singapore because it is a booming market for eCommerce. Online revenue from the Singapore region is expected to rise to US$8,639 million by 2023, according to a report by Statista. Ranosys, with its thorough technical expertise and several years of experience in Magento, aims to help businesses and merchants take advantage of this growth by helping them in their eCommerce journey.

Meet Magento is an initiative to bring together Magento enthusiasts, merchants, system integrators, technology providers, developers and eCommerce experts across the globe. This event is organized in more than 50 countries around the world including the UK, US, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and UAE every year.

Ranosys is the official host of Meet Magento Singapore and a leading Magento Commerce Agency with offices in Singapore, UK, USA and India. We continuously strive to contribute to the Magento community by joining global Magento Conferences such as Magento Imagine, Magento Live, Meet Magento events as well as organizing Magento meetups in Singapore regularly. Recently, we had our presence in Meet Magento India and Meet Magento Asia as sponsors and we are one of the exhibitors in the upcoming Imagine, Magento’s premier global conference in May 2019.

Meet Magento Singapore 2019 will serve as a strong platform for merchants, Magento technocrats, technology partners, system integrators and leading eCommerce experts to network and connect with the key players in the Magento ecosystem. We would have a line-up of international speakers who will help you augment your digital commerce journey and keep you attuned with current eCommerce trends.

We are excited about this event and if you are working within the Magento ecosystem, we would love to have your presence in this event. You can get involved in the event by:

Purchasing a ticket
Register today and reserve your place in advance for Singapore’s biggest Magento event of 2019.
Becoming a Speaker
If you are an eCommerce expert and have a remarkable story or something exceptional to share with the Magento community, be a speaker and submit your Call for Papers today.
Becoming a Sponsor
Sponsor Meet Magento Singapore 2019 to increase your brand awareness in the digital commerce ecosystem and have the opportunity to access merchants largely from the APAC region. Submit sponsorship enquiries at sg@meet-magento.com.

For further updates, sign up to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

We look forward to seeing you at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore!

A wonderful Magento event – Meet Magento Indonesia – was organized in Jakarta by ICUBE on 1 August 2019. The event brought together Magento merchants, partners, industry experts, developers from all around the globe. Team Ranosys joined the conference as a Gold Sponsor.

Ranosys, as a Professional Magento Solutions Partner and organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore 2019, has always been an active contributor in the Magento Community and has sponsored many big Magento events such as Magento Imagine, Meet Magento UK, Meet Magento Asia, and Meet Magento India. Ranosys joined the event with a belief that conferences are a great way to foster relationships with the community, expand knowledge, share ideas, and get together with like-minded professionals from a wide range of backgrounds.

The event commenced with a special dance performance followed by opening remarks by Muliadi Jeo, Owner and Co-Founder, ICUBE.

Many renowned Magento influencers and experts, including Ben Marks, Hirokazu Nishi, Olena Tkacheva and Bruce Denham to name a few, shared their expertise and kept the audience engaged with their talks.

Ankit, Magento Solution Architect and Yash, Customer Success Manager from team Ranosys took the stage to deliver a presentation on “Accelerate Revenue Growth by Migrating to Magento Commerce Cloud.”

Back-to-back insightful sessions in business, solution, and technical tracks helped us explore the latest trends in the Magento ecosystem. The networking breaks provided us an opportunity to indulge in meaningful conversations with the attendees.

Muliadi Jeo wrapped the conference with his closing notes followed by a closing networking session.

We appreciate and congratulate Muliadi Jeo and the entire ICUBE team for such a fantastic and well-organized Magento event. Looking forward to the next one and hoping that you would join us in Singapore at Meet Magento Singapore on 22 August 2019. We are passionate about Magento and eCommerce, if you share the same passion, stay in touch with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The London FinTech Week took place from 5th to 10th July 2019 in London, the heart of the FinTech Revolution. The event featured a series of meetups, hackathons, conferences, and networking sessions. Over 400 delegates per day from 50 countries and over 2,000 participants, including bankers, executives, government, researchers, and investors graced the summit.

Ranosys, a leading IT partner for FinTech around the world, joined the conference to keep abreast with the latest innovations, global challenges, and key trends that are likely to disrupt the financial services industry in the future.

The first day of summit commenced with the opening remarks by Dr. Jane Thomason, CEO, Blockchain Quantum Impact. Jane threw light on global FinTech developments, including FATF regulatory threats, Facebook coin, and emerging markets. She also announced the new vision and future plans for the FinTech Week.

Moving forward, the conference featured many engaging and insightful keynotes, panel discussions, and debates followed by a drinks reception. Some of the important topics covered during the summit include London in the Future of FinTech, The Future of Money, Most Disruptive Trends in FinTech, Commercial Uses of Blockchain and Digital Assets.

The second day of the conference also marked its beginning with the opening remarks by Dr. Jane Thomason followed by brilliant talks on FinTech Rise in Asia, Is London still the FinTech Capital, and what does it take to go from Startup to Success in Financial Technology.

The agenda also included Blockchain Business and Blockchain Developer Seminars to help organizations analyse the suitability of blockchain technology for their businesses and give blockchain developers an overview of Blockchain scalability solutions and emerging technologies.

The event concluded with the closing remarks followed by a drinks reception.

Team Ranosys had a wonderful and info-packed time at the event learning key disruptive trends impacting the financial ecosystem and indulging in meaningful conversations with the delegates. Looking forward to the next one.

We are passionate about technology and FinTech, if you share the same passion, please stay in touch with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Meet Magento Indonesia is returning again for the fourth year to connect local merchants, Magento technocrats, leading eCommerce experts, and technology partners with the vast global Magento ecosystem. The event will take place on 1st August 2019 at Thamrin Nine BallRoom, Jakarta, Indonesia.

With a belief that conferences are a good way to inspire and be inspired and foster relationships with the community, Ranosys is glad to announce that we will be joining the event as one of the Gold Sponsors.

Ranosys, a full-service eCommerce agency and a Magento Professional Solution Partner, has comprehensive experience in leveraging Magento platform for the development of customized B2B and B2C eCommerce solutions in the realm of ever-changing digital landscape. Ranosys has always been at the forefront when it comes to contribute to the Magento Community. We have organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day and sponsored many global Magento conferences such as Meet Magento India, Meet Magento Asia, Magento Imagine, and Meet Magento UK. Ranosys is also an organizer of Singapore Magento User Group Meetups and the biggest Magento event of Singapore – Meet Magento Singapore.

Meet Magento Indonesia will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to connect and create a unique synergy with the Magento Community, keep on the pulse of industry innovation, and talk to merchants about ways to improve customer engagement in the digital space.

We look forward to meeting you at the event! Reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting right now to avoid the last minute hassle.

Wondering which chatbots trends will rule the tech world in the upcoming years? Read on the blog!

The chatbot is not a new technology and it dates back to 1966. Surprised? Well, you heard it right! The first chatbot ELIZA was created in 1966; however, these conversational assistants began to gain momentum from 2010 and gradually became very popular among big brands and tech companies. With the introduction of Siri in 2011, Alexa and Cortana in 2014, Google Assistant in 2016, the entire landscape of chatbots got changed and shifted towards the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Since 1966, chatbots have accomplished huge milestones and come a long way. Over the past few years, the chatbot technology has evolved from simple answer machines to smart and advanced AI-powered chatbots that can effectively interact with potential customers. Undoubtedly, these conversational bots hold a promising future as various renowned companies including British Airways, LinkedIn, and Starbucks have expressed their interest in implementing chatbots into their business operations. According to the predictions by Statista, the global chatbot market will be worth 1250 million U.S. dollars by 2025.

Let’s have a look at some of the best chatbots trends that you can’t miss.

1. Chatbots Will Become More AI-Driven

Conversational AI was the talk of the town in 2018. With its machine learning feature, Conversational AI has expanded the capabilities of chatbots and will continue to improve the efficiency of these virtual assistants in 2019. Chatbots based on Artificial Intelligence will demonstrate improved ability to understand buyer context and adjust the interaction based on the unique context of each buyer. It, in turn, will help businesses make insight-driven decisions, provide seamless buyer experience, and increase conversion rates.

2. Chatbots Will Probably Take Over Mobile Apps

“Bots are the new apps” – this statement by tech mogul Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, strengthens the popularity of chatbots.

Further, Gartner has anticipated that 25% of customer service and support operations will use chatbot technology for engaging customers, by the year 2020. Gartner has also predicted that enterprises will manage 85% of customer interactions without a human agent. These statistics indicate that a huge shift from mobile apps to chatbots will be witnessed in 2019.

Some facts in support of mobile apps replacement by chatbots:

Users need to download an app which occupies space in their mobiles. Chatbots, on the other hand, are not required to be downloaded as they allow users to interact in a messaging app.
In comparison to chatbots, mobile apps offer less personalization and deliver the static user experience.
Building chatbots is relatively simple and less time-consuming than developing an Android or iOS app. Moreover, chatbots can be easily deployed on multiple platforms at once.
Every mobile app is designed with visual interfaces including images, text, buttons, etc., but you have to understand visual interfaces related to your favorite products. In the case of chatbots, you are just required to message your preferences and it will generate search results accordingly.

3. Voice-Based Bots will be in the Mainstream

With the inclination of many tech giants such as Amazon and Google towards voice-based devices, voice technology has taken a significant leap. Voice commerce sales in 2017 was $1.8 billion and it is expected to reach $40 billion by the year 2022.

According to predictions, chatbots with voice search feature (or talking chatbots) will be more in demand. This feature will let users make their queries using voice and will also enable them to play audio files of the messages generated by bots, thus providing real conversational experience.

4. Result-Driven Chatbots will be the Next Big Thing

Chatbots are capable to store a large amount of customer data that can be used to make an accurate analysis and improve all stages of the marketing funnel.

According to a study, 80-85% of businesses will prefer to deploy customer-centric, result-driven, and advanced bots that can improve themselves by learning and give a more precise response to queries of consumers.

5. Website Bots will Continue to Evolve

According to another study, 63% of people would prefer to messaging an online chatbot to interact with a brand. Seeing this trend, many organizations will embed chatbots in their websites for engaging with users. Furthermore, the 24/7 availability of bots will transform the chat option in websites. Chatbots will provide more control to businesses over their user experience strategy, sales and marketing activities.

In a nutshell, customer communication patterns are changing and in such a scenario, chatbots have become the need of the hour to bridge the gap between customers and the brand. As a matter of fact, chatbots offer a digital interface that consumers prefer to interact with brands.

Considering to include chatbots in your business processes? Partner with an experienced chatbot development company to digitize the ways of customer engagement and acquisition, and get first-mover advantage by staying abreast with the latest chatbots trends.

With so many programming languages available, it’s really difficult to choose one for your web application development projects. In today’s era of competition, businesses face many challenges such as security of large chunks of data, scalability, access to data, operational efficiency, etc. Therefore, it is very essential to choose a language for your software development that helps you overcome all these challenges.

With strong community support, accessible library and frameworks, support for multiple programming paradigms and many other remarkable features, Python is evolving as a global programming language and is growing incredibly fast.

Looking for some good reasons to choose Python for your web project? Read on.

1. Many Tech Giants Rely on Python

Python is the driving force behind some of the most renowned websites across the world. Owing to its automatic memory management, dynamic type system, code readability, and support for multiple paradigms of programming, several large enterprises such as Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, YouTube, Quora, etc. have shown their trust on Python.

2. Easy to Learn

Python is a user-friendly, simple, and intuitive language that is easy to learn. If you have a basic knowledge of any other programming language, you can easily learn Python and implement in your projects.

3. Reduced Development Time

If you are looking for swift development of web apps, Python is the apt choice. Development of apps with Python is almost 5-10 times faster as compared to other languages. As there is a direct proportion between the development time and cost; lesser development time will save you money too.

4. Supported by a Large Community

Python is backed by a large community comprising supporters and programmers who work enthusiastically to improve the core functionalities and features of the language. Therefore, you can get quick support for any complexity in your Python development project.

5. Support for Best SEO Practices

The human-readable code of Python helps your site rank high in search results. Django, one of the frameworks of Python, allows you to generate readable website links and URLs using SEO best practices and the most relevant keywords.

6. Offers Great Flexibility and Scalability

Python enables you to adapt the higher-level application logic in line with the changing user requirements, without making any change in the fundamental underlying components. You can also expand complex applications easily, thus responding to customer requirements faster and gaining the first-mover advantage.

7. One of the Best Programming Languages for ML and AI

A rich technology stack, strong community support, short development time, and a huge number of libraries and frameworks make Python one of the best programming languages for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Additionally, the simple syntax of Python enables data scientists to quickly start AI development without putting in much effort and time to learn the language.

8. Good Choice for Complex App Development

The data analysis and visualization feature of Python enables you to present and visualize data in an effective manner. You can choose Python for the development of complex numeric and scientific web and desktop applications. In addition to this, the same code can be run on multiple platforms without recompiling it.

To sum up, Python is on par with other programming languages when it comes to accelerate enterprise software development and simplify the app and web maintenance. It provides an interactive user interface for online platforms as well as business apps and websites.

If you want to know more about Python before choosing it for your project, reach out to an experienced Python development company that will help you make an informed decision.

What is OpenCerts?

OpenCerts is an online platform based on the blockchain technology that offers an easy way to issue, check and verify academic certificates. It provides a common standard for the issuance of digital certificates along with their validation and verification. It aims to allow individuals to easily access and retrieve their digital certificates from a single location.

The project is an initiative by the Government of Singapore and a collaboration among four organizations- Government Technology Agency (statutory board of the Singapore government), SkillsFuture Singapore (national movement to provide Singaporeans with opportunities to develop their skills), the Ministry of Education (ministry that directs the formulation and implementation of policies related to Education in Singapore), and Ngee Ann Polytechnic (an institution for higher studies in Singapore).

Currently, 18 educational institutions in Singapore have implemented this system and now students will receive blockchain-based digital certificates starting from the year 2019.

How OpenCerts Can Be Beneficial?

Currently, the certification system involves providing physical certificates to the candidates. Physical certificates mean that the copies need to be dealt with in person, they aren’t tamper-resistant and can be lost.

Also, the employers need to verify the authenticity of the certificates by communicating with the educational institution that conferred them. Hence, OpenCerts can help employers easily identify doctored certificates and at the same time assist students to get their certificates verified effortlessly.

Additionally, in OpenCerts, data doesn’t have to be stored in one location as each certificate’s details are kept in an individual file and all verifications are done through Ethereum. With this set-up, the cost of maintaining a blockchain-based digital certificate system could be highly reduced as compared to building an equivalent on a centralized database. Therefore, OpenCerts can lead to better security and cost savings.

How OpenCerts Works?

OpenCerts allows educational institutions to create digital certificates for their students by creating digital representations of every academic certificate and publishing them onto the Ethereum blockchain. Once the certificates are published on a public ledger like Ethereum, they are permanent and unalterable.

The certificates are essentially time-stamped and assigned a cryptographic signature. And, if any attempt is made to modify the content of any of these certificates, the certificate becomes invalidated.

Once the certificate is issued to the student, the candidate owns the file but cannot modify its contents as it would void the time-stamp and cryptographic signature of the certificate. However, he/she can send the certificate to potential employers instead of submitting the physical copy.

Further, when an employer receives the digital certificate, they can verify its authenticity against the public ledger using the certificate store interface. Here, the system verifies the time-stamp and cryptographic signature of the certificates to make sure that it has not been modified in any way.

Who Can Benefit From OpenCerts?

The following entities can benefit from the use of OpenCerts:

Students
OpenCerts change the way students receive their academic certificates and transcripts. Students can conveniently store and access their digital certificates that are tamper-resistant and permanent, through this platform. They will no longer need to obtain physical copies of their certificates as this platform enables them to share their digital certificates directly to potential employers or universities.Additionally, graduates who are Singaporeans and permanent residents of Singapore can also access their digital certificates in an online government repository called Skills Passport.
Institutions
OpenCerts can completely eliminate the need for universities and institutions to issue physical certificates. Schools can issue digital certificates and transcripts in the OpenCerts format, without investing in other platforms of their own. Also, as the requirement of physical certificate copies will drop, the administrative load will surely decrease.Furthermore, institutions will also save time spent on re-issuing certificates and vouching for their authenticity.
Employers
OpenCerts makes the process of verifying a certificate’s authenticity incredibly easy. Employers can easily check the authenticity of the certificates of anyone from any institution from one place. Hence, instead of calling an institution to verify each job candidate, employers can simply drag and drop the certificates onto the OpenCerts website and get them verified quickly and conveniently.

If you want to implement the OpenCerts platform into your educational institution, get in touch with an OpenCerts Consulting Company in Singapore and digitize your certificate issuance and verification process.

The biggest Magento event of the UK – Meet Magento UK 2019 took place on 19 June 2019 at The Mermaid, London. The event connected the global Magento Community with the UK’s eCommerce landscape and featured keynote presentations and insightful talks by the industry’s veterans who shed light on the emerging tools, trends, and tactics that are going to disrupt the future of eCommerce.

Ranosys, as a Professional Magento Solutions Partner and organizer of Singapore’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento Singapore, has always been an active contributor to the Magento Community and has sponsored many big Magento events such as Meet Magento India, Meet Magento Asia and Magento Imagine. With a belief that conferences are a good way to inspire and be inspired and foster relationships with the community, Ranosys joined the Meet Magento UK event as one of the sponsors.

The event commenced with a welcome note by Jamie Huskisson, CEO at JH followed by a general session on Magento Association: An Update by Guido Jansen and a keynote on Experience-driven Commerce by Ramadass Prabhakar.

Back-to-back insightful sessions in merchant and business tracks with small networking breaks in between kept us hooked throughout the day.

The event was concluded with the closing remarks by Jamie Huskisson. Drinks reception and after-party at Core Bar further provided us with an opportunity to indulge in meaningful conversations with the merchants, developers, and speakers.

Thumbs up JH team for such a fantastic and well-organised Meet Magento UK 2019 event. Team Ranosys had a great experience sponsoring the event, listening to brilliant talks, and catching up with the global Magento Community. Looking forward to the next one and hoping that you would join us in Singapore at Meet Magento Singapore on 22 August 2019. We are passionate about Magento and eCommerce, if you share the same passion, please stay in touch with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

OutSystems is a low-code rapid application development platform through which you can visually develop your complete application, easily integrate it with existing systems, and add your own custom code, if required. Overall, it lets you develop quality apps and deliver faster.

Businesses can use OutSystems to get their mobile apps developed easily and within a short period of time as its drag-and-drop capabilities and graphic user interfaces streamline the entire application development process. However, not just the development of apps, OutSystems also eases and speeds up the integration of applications with on-premises and existing cloud databases.

Every aspect of this platform is devised with the goal of helping organizations create enterprise-grade apps quickly and digitize their business faster.

Now firstly, let us understand what type of mobile apps you can develop through OutSystems.

OutSystems allows the development of three types of mobile applications:

Mobile Apps
These are the standard mobile applications that can be installed on the devices directly, have a native UX, have access to the permissions of the device, and can work offline too.
Responsive Web Apps
These are the applications that can be accessed by the users without installation, through their phone browsers. These apps use web responsive technologies to quickly adapt to multiple devices and mobile browsers.
Develop only the mobile backend
OutSystems can also be used as the backend for your custom-built native mobile app, which uses traditional tools such as Android Studio, Visual Studio, or XCode and respective native languages.

After learning about the types of mobile apps, now let us find out how OutSystems can benefit your business in mobile app development.

1. Deliver to Multiple Devices Through Single Code Base

As OutSystems produces highly performant hybrid applications, you can deliver your mobile app to multiple operating systems faster. An application developed with OutSystems can easily run on both iOS and Android devices. There is no need to adapt the code for each type of device.

2. Produce Apps With Intuitive UI

Deliver mobile apps with an attractive user interface by getting your application developed with OutSystems. This platform includes a fully-integrated UI framework called OutSystems UI which offers customizable themes for mobile apps. It also includes a huge library of samples and patterns through which you can get amazing mobile apps having a magnificent look and feel.

3. Rapid Development

Manual coding consumes a lot of time and efforts of the developer which leads to increased costs and development time. However, when applications are developed on OutSystems, the development speed increases by almost ten times. Hence, by considerably reducing application development time, OutSystems allows organizations save costs in the long run.

4. Get the Benefits of a Native App

Mobile apps developed on the OutSystems platform can access all of the native capabilities and APIs of the device (be it Android or iOS) by using plugins. The capabilities are not just limited to camera, geolocation, and notifications but also include Bluetooth, barcode scanners, and more.

5. Create Offline Apps in an Easy Manner

OutSystems has all the tools required to develop applications that run offline. Mobile apps developed with OutSystems automatically store all the app content on the device so that it can be easily accessed for offline use.

6. Highly Secure

Security is one of the biggest concerns in this digital era. OutSystems includes a comprehensive set of built-in security features that supports the complete development lifecycle of an application. Apps developed with this platform automatically include secure code patterns which act as a safeguard against prevalent mobile application vulnerabilities.

Additionally, OutSystems provides automated application security checks that warn developers about potential security risks when they publish applications. OutSystems also complies with other general security requirements such as identity management, access control, encryption, single sign-on, etc.

7. Quickly Push Updates to Users’ Devices

Updating your mobile app on your users’ devices can be done in a quick and efficient manner using OutSystems. You just need to deploy the application to OutSystems. Once the updated version of the app is published, OutSystems automatically pushes the updated version to the users’ devices. Hence, you can ensure that all your users are using the latest version of your mobile app.

8. Gather User Feedback With Ease

To enhance and grow your application, you need to constantly update it with the best features. OutSystems can make this process seamless by providing regular feedback from users. It provides an easy way for users to quickly submit feedback through the mobile application itself.

So far, OutSystems is one of the best solutions which combines the power of low-code development with advanced mobile functionalities. Are you looking to leverage the potential of this amazing platform? Get in touch with an expert OutSystems development company and release your application faster.

With almost 33% websites on the internet being built on WordPress, and many notable brands like TechCrunch, BBC America, Disney, Sony Music, and more adopting WordPress for their websites, the demand of this platform will grow in the years to come. With such enormous growth, organizations are looking forward to the latest trends and innovations in this technology to enhance their websites.

Due to the rising demands of businesses, the WordPress features are also growing persistently over the years to offer more engaging user experience on the websites and attract potential customers. With more innovative and advanced WordPress trends, you can make use of this platform to build a perfect website and serve your customers in an enhanced manner.

Let us have a look at some of the latest WordPress trends that you must adopt to offer better user experience and scale your website to new heights in 2019.

1. Personalization & Enhanced Support Through Chatbots

Chatbots are a great way to interact with your website visitors as they provide better engagement options. They also have personalization abilities. This means that you can learn more about your users than the fact they are some random visitors.

You can easily integrate chatbots within your website and provide enhanced user support. Through chatbots, you can gather a lot more information about your visitors such as – if they have clicked on a button, if they have downloaded something, and much more.

2. Mobile-Based Design for Higher Results

Mobile-based designs have led to the rise of two popular trends – Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Both have their own advantages.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Nowadays, Google gives high preference to Accelerated Mobile Pages in its ranking due to the reason that most of the traffic comes from mobile devices. Also, AMP pages are lighter, and load quickly.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Additionally, Progressive Web Apps make it easier to launch the websites from the home screen of the user.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Additionally, Progressive Web Apps make it easier to launch the websites from the home screen of the user.

3. Add Videos for Higher Impact

In modern times, as the internet speed has increased tremendously, playing videos on phones is now a piece of cake. Also, video consumption is going to increase more and more in the coming years. Adding videos in the websites make them more attractive because unlike text or images, they provide a lot of information in the quickest and most convenient manner. Video headers are a great way to leverage the power of videos as they give an enhanced look to your website.

With the latest version of WordPress, you can easily loop video headers. Additionally, a lot of themes have also updated their setting which allows you to easily insert a video header.

4. Improved User Engagement with Micro-Interactions

Micro-interactions are small and quick ways in which users can interact with a website. They let the users engage with the site with the least effort and usually take less than a microsecond.

Micro-interactions are especially used on social media platforms such as ‘likes’ on Facebook, ‘hearts’ on Twitter, and ‘claps’ on Medium. These types of interactive elements encourage the users to interact with the websites much more often.

5. Enhanced eCommerce Websites with Plugins

WordPress has emerged more than just a blogging platform in recent years. Now, this platform is increasingly being used for developing rich eCommerce websites too.

WooCommerce, being one of the most popular plugins, can be integrated with WordPress to develop highly responsive eCommerce stores. Other eCommerce platforms such as PayPal and Google Checkout can also be integrated seamlessly with WordPress. You can also achieve additional functionalities such as personalized shopping and subscription-based services through the latest eCommerce themes in WordPress.

6. Animations for Video Like Experience

Just like videos, animations on websites give an enhanced viewing experience to the users. Flash-based animations have now been modernized with improved technologies, making the user experience highly vibrant and interactive.

Many organizations have added particle animations on their websites which provide users all the information they could have gathered through videos. Particle animations are lightweight and can enhance the website without slowing it down.

Wrapping Up

The WordPress community always brings great changes which are beneficial for most businesses and are increasingly adopted by them. With such rising competition, don’t be left behind in enhancing your business’ website. If you are looking to give a boost to your WordPress website or want to develop a new site from scratch, contact one of the leading WordPress development companies and move forward in your business growth.

Ranosys is pleased to announce that we are a sponsor at Meet Magento UK 2019 – the biggest Magento conference in the UK that will take place at The Mermaid, London on June 19, 2019. The event will bring together the global Magento Community including merchants, Magento technocrats, technology partners, system integrators, leading eCommerce experts and other like-minded professionals to talk innovation.

Meet Magento UK 2019 will feature keynote presentations by the industry’s most renowned minds who will share their valuable insights into the recent happenings, emerging trends, tools, and tactics that are going to shape the future of eCommerce. The agenda of the event will also include panel discussions, networking sessions followed by a drinks reception and an after party.

Ranosys, an experienced Magento eCommerce Agency, and a Professional Magento Solutions Partner, is a thought leader in Magento and aims to deliver unparalleled digital commerce development services to global clients. Being an active contributor to the Magento Community, Ranosys organized Distributed Magento Contribution Day and sponsored many big Magento conferences such as Meet Magento India, Meet Magento Asia and Magento Imagine. Ranosys is also an organizer of Singapore Magento User Group Meetups and the biggest Magento event of Singapore – Meet Magento Singapore.

Ranosys works with technology partners from every region to get the right Magento solutions for the clients. Conferences is a good way to form such relationships with the community. Meet Magento UK 2019 will be a great platform for Ranosys to connect with the members of the European Magento Community, understand the recent happenings in the Magento ecosystem, learn about the pain points of global merchants and help them through our services.

We look forward to meeting you at the event! Get in touch with us to know how you can harness the power of the Magento platform and deliver an irresistible and enhanced shopping experience to your customers. You can also reach out to us on LinkedIn or Twitter and schedule a meeting in advance.

According to Global Workplace Analytics, the number of people who now work from home has increased tremendously with 4.3 million employees working from home for half the time. Sometimes remote working is involved not due to employee’s demands but due to the business requirements. Although, remote working has specific benefits for the employees, but it comes with added challenges for efficient working too. These challenges can be addressed by using dedicated tools. One of the best platforms for this is – Microsoft SharePoint.

Microsoft SharePoint is a widely used enterprise-level platform, adopted by organizations for efficient collaboration, data storage, and document/project management. It brings everyone together for better interaction and engagement, offers a common space to conduct discussions, update each other on the progress, and keep an open line of communication. Overall, SharePoint simplifies business processes, provides a secure internal information sharing platform, and enhances productivity.

Here, we will talk about the 5 ways in which Microsoft SharePoint can help teams collaborate:

1. Create a Community

One of the significant advantages of SharePoint is its ability to create communities within communities. Most of the organizations are usually a collection of small teams where everyone is working on specific projects. SharePoint allows you to create communities for each of your teams. It allows members to track and discuss changes, collaborate more seamlessly, and have a central location to share files. This becomes highly beneficial if your team is spread over various geographical regions or if your team comprises remote workers.

By creating communities, SharePoint becomes the central virtual location where team members can chat, meet through video conferencing, compare calendars, and store shared documents.

2. Exclusive Access to Teams

When Microsoft SharePoint is deployed as part of the Office 365, it creates a virtual workspace with team-only access where teams can meet, collaborate, and carry out tasks. You can enable team members to create a project, decide who can participate in it and what access each member will have. The IT department doesn’t have to manage these tasks.

Hence, only authorized members can access the documents located on the SharePoint server. You can also adjust access to the server depending on the flow of work.

3. Collaboration at Various Levels

SharePoint is beneficial for collaborating at both small and large scales:

Small Scale Collaboration (Team-based collaboration)

AS WE DISCUSSED IN THE ABOVE POINT, SHAREPOINT ALLOWS SECURE COLLABORATION WITHIN THE MEMBERS OF A TEAM.

Large Scale Collaboration (Company-wide collaboration)

YOU CAN ALSO CREATE CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL COLLABORATION IN SHAREPOINT BY USING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS. THE KEY ELEMENT OF COMPANY-WIDE COLLABORATION IS THE INTRANET THAT CONNECTS ALL DEPARTMENTS AND STORES TO ALL CORPORATE DOCUMENTS, POLICIES, UPDATES, AND MORE. EMPLOYEES FROM VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS CAN EASILY COMMUNICATE THROUGH THE INTRANET’S INSTANT MESSAGING TOOLS, DISCUSSION BOARDS, ETC.

4. Clearly Specify Team’s Tasks

In many cases, teams are created for specific projects like developing a new product, organizing an event, etc. To carry out these projects smoothly, the team leader is required to assign these tasks to the team members. With SharePoint, the team leader can easily set up individual tasks and assign those tasks to the participants. Hence, team members can find out what tasks they need to carry out.

Additionally, members can also track the tasks of other team members. This ensures efficient and effective collaboration as it is often the case that one task depends on some other task. In other words, one task cannot be started before the other one is complete. With SharePoint, you can get a clear idea of such dependencies.

5. Combine SharePoint with Outlook for Added Functionalities

It’s interesting to know that SharePoint accompanies Outlook in some really impressive ways. You can leverage Outlook’s rich feature set in SharePoint for calendar management and email. It ensures that all of your work items flow seamlessly between your regular calendar and your SharePoint calendar.

This functionality has its own advantage. It reminds employees about their daily tasks, deadlines and more.

Conclusion

Team collaboration within an organization has been part of the work culture since inception. With modifications in the ways teams collaborate in a modern work environment, enterprises require to deploy better platforms to achieve efficient collaboration at all times.

Microsoft SharePoint is one of the most powerful and useful tools falling in this category which provides complete solutions your enterprise needs to keep your employees engaged and productive always.

If you want to get a SharePoint solution developed for your organization, contact a dedicated SharePoint development company and transform your organization into a more collaborative workplace.

In September 2018, Dries Buytaert announced at Drupal Europe, and on his blog, that Drupal 7 & Drupal 8 will reach end-of-life by November 2021. This clearly means that these versions will no longer be supported by core maintainers for bug fixes, enhancements, and security releases. Also, interesting is the fact that Drupal 9 is scheduled to be released in June 2020, allowing organizations more than a year to upgrade from Drupal 7 or 8 to Drupal 9.

Let’s dive into what’s all there!

Why Support to Drupal 7, 8 is Ending?

The biggest dependency in Drupal 8 is Symfony 3. According to Symfony’s roadmap, Symfony 3 reaches end-of-life in November 2021. It infers that no security bugs will get fixed in Symfony 3 after November 2021. To keep Drupal sites secure, Drupal must adopt Symfony 4 or Symfony 5 before Symfony 3 reaches end-of-life. This major Symfony upgrade makes it compulsory to release Drupal 9. It also implies that support to Drupal 7, 8 must be ended till November 2021.

What’s New With Drupal 9?

The primary reason for releasing Drupal 9 is code deprecation. In Drupal 8, minor releases occur every six months which increase the number of new features being added to Drupal. As features are added, enhanced ways are implemented to solve problems and the code is deprecated. The major release of Drupal 9 gives an opportunity to remove this code and additional items that are no longer needed.

The secondary reason is, the release is related to third-party dependencies. As Drupal integrates with common PHP projects like Twig and Symfony, it needs to follow the vendor support lifecycles for these projects. With the release of Drupal 9, there will be supported versions of software like Twig 2 and Symfony 4/5.

Upgrading Now is Effortless!

Whenever a new major version of Drupal is released, upgrading always remains a challenge. In the past, each new major version of Drupal was highly different from the previous major version which led to compatibility issues and upgrading was a tiresome process.

However, upgrading to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8 is super easy! This is because, with the release of Drupal 9, there have been modifications in the manner of how Drupal is developed. Now, it is easier to carry out planning, preparing, and upgrading your Drupal 8 site.

How to Prepare for Drupal 9 Upgrade?

As we have seen above, transitioning from Drupal 8 to 9 will be much easier than previous major version upgrades. The initial release of Drupal 9 will be very similar to the last minor release of Drupal 8, as the main aim behind the Drupal 9.0.0 release will be, to discard deprecated code and update third-party dependencies.

If you are already running Drupal 8, the best way to prepare for upgradation is to keep your site up-to-date. As up-to-date websites are more secure and are highly seamless for upgradation process.
If your Drupal site is using contributed modules, just keep them up-to-date and work with module maintainers to eliminate the deprecated code.

What’s exciting is that as Drupal 9 will be built within version 8, developers will get an opportunity to test their code and make updates prior to the release of Drupal 9. This hasn’t been possible with the previous versions of Drupal!

What About Drupal 7?

If you are still using Drupal 7 and confused about what to do, you have two options:

You can stay on Drupal 7 and update your PHP version. If you further stay on Drupal 7 until after 2021, you can either sign up with vendors for a long term support contract. Vendor Extended Support will be provided until around 2024.
You can, of course, migrate to Drupal 9 and get the most out of this platform. For this, it will be favorable to migrate Drupal 8 by 2020, so that you can easily upgrade to Drupal 9 when it is released.

Wrapping Up

As additional information related to new features and updates in Drupal 9 is rolled out, organizations should consider their technology roadmaps and understand how the new platform will benefit them.

To get assistance in planning out your Drupal roadmap, plan your long-term Drupal strategy, and ensure a smooth upgrade to Drupal 9 when it’s released. Contact an experienced Drupal development company and make sure that your team can make the most of your Drupal site.

Magento, an Adobe company organized its biggest annual event – Magento Imagine from 13-15 May 2019 in Las Vegas. This three-day global Magento conference brought together more than 3,500 eCommerce industry experts, merchants, retailers, agencies, and developers from around 60+ countries all over the world.

Ranosys, a Magento Professional Solution Partner and an active contributor to the Magento Community, joined the event as a Silver Sponsor.

Magento Imagine 2019 kicked off with the Big Dam Run 2019 – a 5k run/walk. Team Ranosys also joined the Magento crew and ran the Big Dam Run. This run provided us with an opportunity to have meaningful conversations with industry influencers.

The conference commenced with a General Session by Philip Jackson, Ecommerce Evangelist and Digital Strategist, who talked about how to expand the opportunity that is available to you. Gary Specter, VP Commerce Sales, praised the exceptional contribution of Mark Lavelle (Magento’s CEO) and the Magento Community.

Many veterans from the Magento ecosystem such as Jason Woosley, Michele Miller, Gloria Chen, Max Long, etc. took the stage to share the latest announcements, impart their experience and knowledge, and engage with the audience. The event was full of announcements about Page Builder, Progressive Web Apps, Adobe Sensei, Magento Commerce Cloud, Omnichannel Order Management, and much more. Some important announcements were:

Integration of Adobe Sensei with Magento Commerce

A community-driven project: Adobe experience platform extension was announced to enable merchants to create smarter workflows and drive deeper insights.

Native integration of PWA studio’s to Paypal’s Braintree

General availability of the Google Ads shopping and Amazon sales channels

The conference concluded with a legendary after-party at Encore Beach Club to give attendees the much-needed relaxation and allow them to socialize with each other, amidst the beauty of water lounges and cabanas.

Indeed, Magento Imagine 2019 was a phenomenal experience and a great opportunity for team Ranosys to meet global Magento Community and learn the latest Magento trends through insightful talks & keynotes. We are looking forward to meeting you all at another Magento event soon!

Ranosys is delighted to announce that it will be co-hosting the Distributed Contribution Day on 4 May 2019. The event will be organized in 9 cities of India – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Surat and Pune, on the same day and time. Ranosys is hosting the event in Pune and Jaipur.

Being a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, Ranosys always looks for opportunities to add value to the Magento Community. Distributed Contribution Day is one such initiative of Ranosys to bring together Magento developers, Magento architects, and Magento experts from various geographical regions and work in parallel to suggest improvements for the Magento 2 core.

Ranosys has teamed up with CedCommerce, AppseConnect, DCKAP, Netsmartz, Codilar, Solwin Infotech, and Wagento to co-host the event. All these companies will organize the event in their respective cities. It will be a unique opportunity and a great platform for Magento developers to actively contribute to the Magento 2 core.

There will be a registration fee of Rs.50. The entire amount collected will be donated to BHARAT KE VEER as a sign of contributing to the noble cause.

Key Areas that will be covered on the Distributed Contribution Day

The participants will get a chance to work side by side with Magento U Authorised Trainers and gain competency in the following areas:

Develop features
Suggest improvements
Create, run tests and check results
Do cross code reviews
Create and merge PRs

Prerequisites for the Contribution Day

Working (up and running) Magento 2 version with develop branch, forked and pulled from GitHub
Debugger and IDE
Active GitHub account

When and where?

The event will be organized on 4 May 2019 from 9 AM to 6 PM in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Surat and Pune.

How to participate?

Just select a city and get registered to be a part of this year’s Distributed Contribution Day.

Save the date! We look forward to seeing you at Ranosys, Jaipur and Pune.

The financial industry has witnessed several challenges over the past couple of years – many of which revolve around rapid digital disruption, continued regulatory changes, and rising bars of customer expectations. In such a scenario when this sector is exploring innovative ways to improve customer service and keep up with constantly changing technology, AI-powered chatbots have emerged as one of the most promising conversational interfaces to bring greater value to the customer experience.

Chatbots have empowered the banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions by simplifying the complex processes, bridging the communication gap between the financial institutions and customers, providing proactive and intelligent recommendations, and digitizing the ways of customer retention, engagement, and acquisition.

Stats that indicates chatbots are the future of banking:

According to Gartner, more than 50% of enterprises will invest more in chatbot creation than traditional mobile application development, by 2021.
By 2022, chatbots will automate 90% of interactions in banks.
By 2020, 85% of consumers will interact with their bank using chatbots.
57% of consumers prefer to interact via chatbots for instant support.

How chatbots streamline the operations of banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry?

Chatbots are redefining the financial industry in the following ways:

1. Round-the-Clock Support

One of the biggest challenges for financial institutions is limited support services after office hours. However, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) support is available 24/7 but it can’t answer specific questions related to product fees, features, etc.

Implementing a chatbot help overcome these limitations. Chatbots replicate the human interaction and can respond to more service requests and frequently asked questions than an IVR. The Natural Language Processing capability of chatbots let them interpret the specific customer types and respond accordingly. Moreover, chatbots allow customers to tweak their queries with better keywords.

2. Improved Relevancy of Information

Nowadays, customers expect accurate answers to their queries within a few clicks. Chatbots help meet customers’ expectations by analyzing their needs and providing them with the most relevant information.

Chatbots are also capable of sending the relevant push notifications in a proactive manner and save money on mass marketing. Furthermore, on the basis of the customer’s response, organizations can adjust the chatbot to improve the information relevancy.

3. Eliminates Waiting Time

Service agents can serve only one customer at a time. Customers need to wait for a few minutes to reach the service agent, particularly during peak hours. Chatbots eliminate the waiting time by serving multiple customers simultaneously. Chatbots have scalable architecture and can be scale up during peak hours.

Chatbots are not intended to replace call centers, but to provide consistent and reliable customer service and handle repetitive and simple tasks so that call-center resources can devote their time to handle other priority cases.

4. Collect and Store Data for Further Improvement

Chatbots can collect and store customer data automatically. This feature helps financial institutions to understand the areas of dissatisfaction and pain points of customers and enrich and adjust the chatbot database accordingly. In addition, chatbots can self-improve the algorithm on the basis of customers’ feedback, to provide precise answers in the future.

5. Personalized Financial Advice

Chatbots can set and manage budgets, provide credit scores, and track spending habits of customers. These virtual assistants analyze the financial data of customers and provide smart insights and personalized advice on various investment options available to them. Moreover, users can manage multiple accounts, check their expenses and bank balance via chatbots.

6. Enhance Security

Chatbots, if well implemented, can help prevent fraudulent activities. They have features of capturing transaction data and fetching analytics. Moreover, chatbots send automatic transaction notification in real-time to keep users updated with their account activities.

With their endless possibilities, chatbots are the next big thing for the financial industry. If implemented precisely, chatbots can resolve queries of several customers instantly and increase their engagement. Any flaw in the deployment of these virtual assistants can backfire. Therefore, partner with an experienced chatbot development company to get first-mover advantage.

Team Ranosys is heading to Washington, USA, to join one of the biggest Drupal conferences – DrupalCon Seattle that will take place on 8-12 April 2019. Ranosys is delighted to be a Sponsor at the event which will feature more than 3,000 top influencers, foremost Drupal experts and organizations from all over the world.

DrupalCon Seattle 2019 is beyond a conference, it’s an experience and an opportunity to gain insights into how Drupal technology drives digital innovation. The event will be a great platform for Ranosys to connect with and contribute to the Drupal Community, and stay updated with the evolving Drupal best practices and major breakthroughs to deliver more value to clients.

Ranosys, a member of the Drupal Association Organization, believes in the transformative power of Drupal and aims to help clients stay at the forefront of digital innovation and create engaging digital experiences for their customers leveraging this platform. Further, our partnership with Acquia combined with comprehensive expertise in Drupal CMS development helps us deliver modular, feature-packed, and robust solutions to the global clients.

We look forward to meeting you at DrupalCon Seattle 2019, so drop by our Booth #715 to get a sneak peek at our Drupal services.

Acquia Engage Asia Pacific took place on 7 March 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. The event brought together more than 250 delegates including industry-experts from all over the world who shared their ideas and insights into how to deliver innovative digital experiences.

As an Acquia partner and a member of the Drupal Association Organization, Ranosys strives to combine its Drupal expertise with the Acquia platform to create forward-thinking digital experiences for its clients. Team Ranosys joined the event to learn the advanced ways to digitize the interaction of its clients with their customers across various touchpoints in their journeys.

Acquia Engage commenced with the welcome remarks by Chris Gibbs, General Manager Asia Pacific & Japan, Acquia, followed by an insightful presentation by Acquia’s CEO Mike Sullivan, who threw light on how Acquia provides digital freedom to its customers and partners. Acquia keynote, panel discussion, and interesting multi-track sessions throughout the day kept all the attendees engaged. Chris Gibbs wrapped up the event with his concluding remarks.

The event was indeed a great opportunity for team Ranosys to interact with Acquia community, share ideas on overcoming digital challenges, and contribute back to the community. It left us recharged and inspired which would drive us forward in the realm of digitalization.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

As technology is advancing rapidly, it has become imperative to acquire basic computer knowledge. But, the harsh reality is; many people are still deprived of computer education despite technological advancements in all areas. Though the government of India has taken an appreciable initiative and has launched Digital India campaign with a vision to transform India into a knowledge economy and digitally empowered nation, collaborative efforts from corporate sector can bring in effective technological disruptions.

With an aim to increase the digital awareness in the society and impart technical literacy, Ranosys started the Digital India Corporate Pledge program. This program is an initiative by Ranosys to realize its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) vision and actively contribute to the economic and social development of the country. The first phase of the program was conducted in a Government School, Chokhunti, Bikaner. Team Ranosys shared basic computer knowledge with the students of 9th and 10th standards. The school authority appreciated the effort and urged to have more such workshops in their school in future.

Talking about the program, Rameshwar Vyas, Founder & CEO, Ranosys, said, “Through the Digital India Corporate Pledge program, we strive to support and develop the areas in which our society is lagging behind and bring them at par with the already developed strata. We aim to leverage our technical skills and capabilities to improve digital literacy among the citizens of India and make each individual digitally independent.”

The key highlights of the Digital India Corporate Pledge include:

The mission of the program is to provide computer education to increase technical literacy and digital awareness in the society.
This program would be spread over four stages starting from basic level computer knowledge to the advanced level.
By the end of the program, the target audience will have a clear understanding of computer and related implementation areas.

Giving back to society is an integral part of Ranosys’ value system. We are planning to conduct the second phase of the program soon!

Ranosys organized a high tea party on 5th February 2019 to handover job offer letters to 42 candidates for Bikaner Development Center, India. The event was hosted at Hotel Basant Vihar Palace, Bikaner, to mark the special beginning of new recruits.

Ranosys believes that great vision without great people is irrelevant and thus, makes all efforts for the all round development of its employees. The high tea party was a wonderful opportunity to have a formal conversation with new hires and make them familiar with the culture and environment of the organization.

Rameshwar Vyas, Founder and CEO, Ranosys, met new recruits and handed over offer letters to them in a Meet & Greet ceremony. He said, “Knowledge and skills are the driving forces of social development and economic growth of any country. Ranosys strives to create a training infrastructure for new recruits and provide quality employment to youths.”

We are pleased to welcome new members in our team and look forward to working with them soon and witness their growth.

A remarkable Magento event was organized in India by Wagento on 2-3 February 2019 at Narayani Heights, Ahmedabad. The biggest Magento conference of India featured more than 500 participants including Magento developers, agencies, partners, merchants, and experts from the eCommerce field.

Team Ranosys joined the conference as the Gold Sponsor. Meet Magento India was a great platform for Ranosys to connect and create a unique synergy with the Magento Community of India.

The conference commenced with the opening remarks by Brent W. Peterson, Magento Evangelist, Wagento and Vijay Golani, VP of Development, Wagento. Many renowned eCommerce and Magento influencers as well as business leaders and CEOs from around the globe, including Vinai Kopp, Ramadas Prabhakar, Anton Kril, Miguel Balparda, etc., took the stage to share their expertise and engage with the developers and merchants. Sushma Vyas, Chief Operating Officer, Ranosys, also delivered an insightful talk on “Magento & Adobe Integration – Path to Personalization.”Delivering Magento keynote at Meet Magento India, Magento Evangelist Ben Marks shared that Meet Magento Association has now been transformed into the US based Magento Association, which will be responsible for global Magento events and association news in future.

Team Ranosys got an opportunity to discuss the upcoming Magento trends with Ben Marks.The event was concluded with the final overview, thanks note, and prize distribution.

Team Ranosys had a wonderful time learning, networking with the Magento Community, and exploring the incredible world of Magento. Thanks to all the attendees who spent some time with us. It was really nice talking and discussing Magento with you all. See you at #MM20IN!

India’s biggest Magento event – Meet Magento India is coming soon. Yes, you heard it right! The Meet Magento conference is going to take place for the second time in Ahmedabad on 2nd and 3rd February 2019, and will be organized by Wagento.

Meet Magento India 2019 will bring more than 500 participants including developers, system integrators, subject matter experts, merchants, service providers, speakers, and technology partners across the globe under one roof. Moreover, the conference will organize various interactive talk sessions and workshops to help attendees stay at the forefront of technological innovations.

Why Should One Attend Meet Magento India 2019?

If you are in a dilemma whether to attend the Meet Magento India conference or not, this blog will help you arrive at the right decision. Here we have discussed some good reasons to be a part of this event.

Enormous Learning Opportunities
The Meet Magento India conference will feature speakers and experts having decades of experience in various aspects of Magento such as Magento Progressive Web Application, Magento Test Driven Development, Magento B2B solutions, Magento Upgrade and Migration, Community and Enterprise Editions, Payment Industry, Scaling & Performance, etc. These industry experts would be sharing their insights into the latest eCommerce technology trends and best Magento practices to boost the performance of your business. Thus, you can expect lots of learning through this event.
Stay Updated with the Latest Magento Developments
The attendees of the Meet Magento event will get the opportunity to stay up-to-date with the advanced developments and recent trends in Magento and eCommerce world. Get new and deep insights into the latest technologies, trends, and industry innovations. You can also learn about the latest tools and technologies for Magento, how to carry out automation testing in Magento, how to deploy faster and more effectively, and many other important topics in this conference.
Make New Contacts with International Professionals
As Meet Magento India attracts the biggest innovators of the eCommerce industry, it will be a great opportunity for you to connect with Magento experts, contributors, Magento U authorized trainers, merchants, Magento partners, etc. and grow your professional network. You can join the prominent industry leaders over coffee in breakout sessions or over lunch and discuss your digital commerce journey.
Get Exposure to the Vast Magento Developer Community
If you are a Magento developer or are willing to pursue your career in Magento development, Meet Magento India 2019 is a must-attend event for you. It will expose you to expert developers across the world, give a chance to learn new techniques of the Magento development system and brush up on the latest Magento coding standards. What’s more? You may also get a chance to work with one of the leading eCommerce solution giants!
Special Highlight – Merchant Only Session!
The major highlight of Meet Magento India will be the merchant-only session with a strong emphasis on eCommerce solutions, marketing strategies, and business cases. The conference will open up a broad spectrum for the Indian merchants to help them benefit from the Magento platform and learn how to grow better with Magento. Merchants can get an insight into topics like the role of Magento in the eCommerce world, how Magento can help in B2B Commerce, how you can migrate to Magento, and more.

Ranosys Technologies is joining Meet Magento India as a Gold Sponsor and will also take the stage as one of the speakers. If you are also planning to attend the event, be sure to meet team Ranosys and talk digital commerce. Register now for the most happening Magento event of India!

Ranosys is glad to announce that we are a Gold Sponsor at Meet Magento India – the biggest Magento conference of India that will take place in Ahmedabad on 2nd and 3rd February 2019.

With Meet Magento event happening in India for the second consecutive year, this conference will feature more than 500 participants including Magento agencies, developers, merchants, and experts from the eCommerce fields. This event will provide attendees an exclusive opportunity to connect with the global Magento team as well as eCommerce experts to discuss their ideas, seek expert consultation and stay attuned with the latest Magento trends. In addition to sponsoring the event, Ranosys’ Chief Operating Officer – Sushma Vyas will take the stage as one of the speakers to share her expertise and insights with the Magento Community.

India is poised for significant eCommerce growth in the coming years and this sector is likely to be worth $71.94 billion by the year 2022. Ranosys, with its comprehensive domain knowledge and expertise in Magento, aims to help clients leverage this growth and explore the untapped opportunities.

As a Magento Professional Solution Partner, Ranosys strives to deliver top-notch digital commerce development services to help clients across the globe keep pace with the ever-changing eCommerce landscape.

Meet Magento India will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to connect and create a unique synergy with the Magento Community of India, talk to merchants about their digital commerce journey, and keep on the pulse of industry innovation.

We look forward to meeting you at Meet Magento India. Come and touch base with our Magento experts to learn how you can harness the power of Magento platform to deliver a seamless and engaging customer experience.

So you have got an amazing mobile application developed for your business and also invested a huge amount in its marketing, but still not getting enough downloads and user count. Sounds familiar? Well, this is the case not only with you!

Owing to the increasing number of smartphones, the number of mobile apps is also upsurging at a faster pace. According to the statistics of statista, in the first quarter of 2018, there were 3.8 million apps on Google Play and 2 million apps on Apple App Store.

Number of apps available in leading app stores as of 1st quarter 2018 (according to Statista)

In such a scenario where hundreds of mobile apps are getting introduced almost every day to the app stores, it’s quite challenging to retain your app in the user’s mobile device.

Here are a few ways through which apps uninstallation rate can be considerably reduced.

User-friendly Interface

Usually, users prefer apps with user-friendly interface and simple functionality, design, and layouts. An app with complex features has a higher uninstallation rate. Thus, developers must pay more attention to the UI/UX of the app. For optimizing user interface and user experience and to maximize engagement and conversion:

Perform A/B testing
Ensure that contrast, color, and fonts are pleasing to the eye.
Provide an outstanding and exceptional user interface in the mobile app.
Keep the overall UI of the app uniform so that users can easily identify the usage pattern all through the application.

App Performance

The app performance matters a lot. If your app takes more than 3 seconds to load, there are higher chances of your users to abandon your app and switch to a faster alternative. Developers can improve the app performance by:

Monitoring the critical drop-off points and taking corrective actions.
Keeping track of app performance such as features, loading time, etc., before launching the app.
Reducing the distractions like auto-playing videos, pop-ups, in-app ads, etc.
Maintaining data about users’ engagement with your app to track the performance.

Keep the Registration Process Simple

A complex login process and complicated registration process asking for lots of details drive the users away from your app, no matter how captivating is the user interface of the app. Therefore, keep the registration form simpler and provide the option to users to log in with either their phone number or email. You can also provide the choice of signing in with Google+ or Facebook account. This approach will help build the trust of users in your app and significantly reduce the uninstallation rate of the application.

Assure Privacy of Customer Data

In today’s era, users are security conscious and according to reports, most of the users uninstall applications due to privacy concerns. In order to overcome the security concerns of the users,

Make privacy and security policies easily accessible to the app users and keep them up to date.
Gather that much user information only that is required to make the app work and store it, if necessary, using secure methods.

Proactive Support

According to a study, 95% of unhappy users uninstall the app due to unpleasant experience and only 5% of them report the problem. As the app store offers various alternatives to users, it becomes difficult to retain customers once they switch to another app. Thus, reach out to them and provide proactive support before they abandon your application.

Provide the right channel to the users to convey their concerns and address them as quickly as possible.
Implement in-app support/help feature in the app for a seamless user experience.
You can also make use of live chats to provide instant support.

Keep the App Updated

As more and more businesses are inclining towards mobile apps, there are high chances that some of them might be catering to the same target market and offering the same stuff you do. In such circumstances, one of the ways to retain the loyalty of the customers to your mobile app is – keep it updated.

Introduce small bug fixes to let your users know that you are keen to improve your app continuously.
You can keep the app relevant by introducing new content and features.
Instead of releasing major updates every other day, launch updates in a modest number to enhance user engagement.

Add a Touch of Personalization

Prepare your marketing strategy around customer behavior and user trends. You can leverage predictive analysis techniques to take a look at the historical and real-time user behavior (in-app purchases, frequency of app usage, likes and dislikes, etc.) and on the basis of this data, you can create a tailored message to engage the users. The contextual messages make your mobile application more relatable to the users, thereby minimizing the number of uninstalls.

Keep up with Your USP

It is the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of your app that makes users install it over other competitors. Ensure that the selling proposition of your app is unique and offers value to the users. Also, optimize user retention strategy from time to time to engage with new customers and retain the existing ones.

Improve User Engagement

Many applications ask for unnecessary permissions to access certain functions and data. These unnecessary permissions may result in app uninstallation. In order to overcome this issue and enhance user engagement, mobile app developers

Must design the apps in such a manner that they do not ask for needless permissions.
Prepare custom permission settings UI, where user can check the usability of the permission and then can enable the permission.

Moving ahead

The fate of your app greatly depends on the features and functionalities that it offers to the users. As a matter of fact, getting an app developed is not a tough row to hoe, the actual challenge is to keep users engaged with your mobile application. One of the ways to retain your app in user’s device is, engage with customers via multiple channels including push notifications, in-app messaging, and email and keep them reminding about your app. For getting more insights into how you can offer value to customers through your app, you can consult an experienced mobile app development agency.

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Mobile apps have dominated our lives to a great extent. From searching for a location to shopping, we need mobile apps to perform every single chore. In the past few years, the global mobile app market has skyrocketed. The enormous popularity of mobile applications has paved a good opportunity for mobile app developers to showcase their creativity and innovativeness.

With 5G network trials underway across the globe, the mobile app development landscape is expected to take a leap in 2019. According to the Statista, mobile apps will generate a global revenue of $188.9 billion by the year 2020. Let’s take a look at what 2019 will bring for the mobile application development industry.

Machine Learning, Chatbots, and AI will Gain a Huge Traction

According to the reports of Gartner, 25% of customer service and support operations will leverage AI-powered chatbot technology across engagement channels by the year 2020. Moreover, by the end of 2020, the AI industry will reach up to a total value of over $40 billion.
Mobile Connected Smart Objects will be the Next Big Thing
The Internet of Thing (IoT) has gained tremendous momentum in several spheres such as consumer goods, manufacturing, retail, banking, healthcare, etc., and has become a mainstream technology. However, this technology has yet to go a long way. The mobile app development companies are leveraging this technology to provide an outstanding experience to customers. The IoT-enabled apps reduce the privacy and security concerns of enterprises.

3. Motion Sensing Applications will be in the Trend

Nowadays, most smartphones come with sensor capabilities that leverage multiple positioning features to provide highly contextual and relevant services and information. Location and motion sensing applications will be a big trend in 2019. The location-based apps are a good fit for vehicle navigation, fitness apps, and gaming. On the other hand, motion sensing apps help resolve the issues of security, power consumption, and theft.

4. A Huge Investment is Anticipated in Cloud Integration

The year 2019 is predicted to be a big year for the cloud-based apps. Developing mobile applications over the cloud serves various benefits such as increased user retention, better storage, reduced hosting costs, streamlined operations, and a high level of productivity. Moreover, enterprises can easily deploy new updates using cloud-

5. Instant Apps will be a Buzzword

Instant apps have integrated functions similar to websites and users can directly access these apps in the app store of the operating system, without downloading them. Instant application saves not only a lot of storage space in the mobile, but also the user’s time. Moreover, instant applications are user-friendly, convenient, and offer better performance. Although these apps are at the nascent stage and have been developed only for a limited number of smartphones, they have a bright scope in 2019.

6. Accelerated Mobile Pages will Bring Conceptual Changes

AMP technology is gathering pace steadily. This technology has accelerated the loading of pages on mobile devices. AMPs enhance the visibility of your website and increase the customers’ engagement and conversion rates.

Moreover, Google also provides an isolated search index for accelerated mobile pages. Such a big move from Google has brought new changes in the mobile app industry. By the year 2020, 80% of web traffic will come from mobile devices. In such a scenario, not implementing AMPs will put you behind the competition.

7. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will Continue to Rise

AR and VR technologies have flourished in 2018 and will continue to skyrocket in 2019. As per the predictions by Statista, by 2019, over 5 billion apps will be based on mobile augmented reality. AR and VR applications benefit the enterprises in many ways such as they analyze the data in real-time, streamline the work process, facilitate cross-geographic collaboration, etc. Moreover, the mobile applications built on these technologies provide a better interaction with the product.

8. Substantial Growth in Wearable Apps will be Witnessed in 2019

The increasing market for wearables will shape the future of mobile app development. According to the predictions by Statista, total revenue from sales of wearable devices will reach $33.78 billion by 2019. This growth will increase the demand for wearable apps, specifically in the healthcare industry, that can provide greater availability to the end-users.

9. Payment-Based Mobile Applications will be in Huge Demand

Digital and virtual currencies have changed the way consumers do shopping and have given rise to M-commerce, i.e., Mobile Commerce. In the first quarter of 2018, Google launched Pay, a mobile payment service that combines the functionalities of Google Wallet and Android Pay together. According to a report, global mobile payments will reach $1200 billion in the next 4 years.

10. Hybrid Apps will Lead the Mobile App Industry

A hybrid mobile app development framework has emerged as the quickest app development technology on any platform. Hybrid apps are compatible with various mobile operating systems and minimize the time scale and efforts to develop a mobile application. In 2019, some of the top hybrid mobile app frameworks like Ionic, PhoneGap, React Native, and Sencha Touch will keep upsurging and disrupting the mobile app industry.

New technology trends are emerging swiftly and disrupting the ways business is done. And, the mobile industry is no exception. In comparison to web apps, mobile applications offer more efficient and personalized solutions to businesses.

Staying updated with the latest mobile app development trends is the need of the hour in order to gain a competitive advantage. Contact an experienced mobile app development agency to upgrade your existing app or build new app from scratch.

Magento announced the release of Magento 2.3.0 during Imagine 2018 conference in Las Vegas. With new functionalities, numerous bug fixes, and back-end efficiencies, it’s beta version was released on September 21, 2018. The new exciting additions in Magento 2.3.0 are believed to help online store owners to deliver innovative and engaging experiences to their customers.

In this blog, we have highlighted some outstanding features of Magento 2.3.0 that tend to transform the eCommerce experience of the store owners as well as online buyers.

Magento 2 Multi-Source Inventory (MSI)
The MSI functionality of Magento 2.3 empowers store owners to manage their inventory directly from the Admin panel of the website despite different locations. Precisely, this feature helps merchants in the following ways:
- Managers can manage all inventory sources without installing any third-party platforms or extensions.
- Stock management is easy in multiple locations.
- Inventory can be reserved for high-performing checkouts. This reservation system improves checkout performance and eliminates re-indexing issues during peak order times.
- In order to accelerate integration with an external ERP system, MSI provides better import/export process.
Enhanced Security
All the efforts of Magento are geared toward building and enhancing customers’ trust. In order to minimize the probabilities of attacks by bots and prevent password hacking, Magento has added Google ReCaptcha and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
The Two-Factor Authentication lets the Admin add an extra layer of security that requires some other piece of information other than a username and password to login to the account. The 2FA authentication requires the user to verify via phone call, SMS, etc.
Google ReCaptcha prevents excessive invasions of bots, thereby protecting your website from abuse and spam. This feature provides security to certain web pages such as Login, Register, Contact Form, Forgot Password, and Admin Login. This module is available for earlier versions of Magento via the GitHub portal.
Magento 2 PWA (Progressive Web App) Studio
Though smartphones and tablets have increased the number of online buyers, conversion rates from these devices are less than laptops or desktops. In an effort to improve the shopping experience on mobile and boost sales, Magento has introduced its own PWA (Progressive Web App) Studio in Magento 2.3. PWA is a website having features of a native application but can be accessed without downloading or installing it.
Developers can create online stores as progressive web pages using PWA Studio. PWA Studio comes with various amazing features like offline support, home screen shortcut, faster user interface support, fast page load, push notification, etc.
Page Builder
The previous versions of Magento require extensive coding to build dynamic CMS pages. The Page Builder functionality in Magento 2.3 makes it easy for merchants to prepare and review the content and render it across multiple third-party platforms leveraging the intuitive interface, drag-and-drop editing tools, and APIs. Page Builder can be used for blocks and dynamic blocks, product, content, and catalog pages. Page Builder will be available 6-8 weeks after the launch of Magento 2.3. Howbeit, its features will be available as a paid extension or in Magento Commerce 2.3.
GraphQL Support
The previous Magento version leverages SOAP and REST. Magento has introduced GraphQL API language in Magento 2.3. GraphQL will empower the merchants to define the exact data and join various data in a single request. GraphQL enables the Magento PWA to work efficiently even if the mobile network connection is slow. Magento will write a new layer to provide a direct interface to the Query API, in order to support GraphQL.
Streamlined Magento 2 Payments
This feature will be available in the first quarter of 2019. Merchants will be able to streamline the risk management process and payments by integrating Signifyd, PayPal, and Braintree. This feature will also enable store owners to synchronize order and payment details on Magento backend, make payment balance transparent, and prepare a report on transaction details.
Declarative DB Schema
Declarative DB Schema is a new approach introduced by Magento 2.3 that changes database structure in XML files. The XML Schema files will be converted into SQL statements. Moreover, database changes implemented on a functionality or module can be rolled back to a previous version. This feature simplifies the installation and upgradation of the Magento.
PHP 7.2 Support
Magento 2.3 supports the latest version of PHP, i.e., PHP 7.2, for enhanced security and performance. PHP 7.2 lacks mcrypt, that’s why; the libsodium module will be used for encryption purposes.
Cache Management ACL
Magento 2.3 will extend and enhance the Access Control List (ACL) of the cache system to empower merchants to control and define the cache-related actions; thus providing fine-grained administration access control. Merchants can manage and define which user roles can delete and view the Magento caches.
WYSIWYG Upgrade
Magento 2.3 has an upgraded version of TinyMCE, the WYSIWYG editor. TinyMCE has been upgraded from version 3 to 4. Widgets, media gallery, and variables can be defined on per shop instance or globally and are implemented as plugins.
ElasticSearch Updates
Previously, ElasticSearch was available for Magento Commerce only, but now it has also been made available for Magento Open Source. With this upgrade, merchants will be able to integrate powerful search engine capabilities to their online stores. Magento 2.3 will support Elasticsearch v5. However, in the future, Elasticsearch may become a default search engine.
Asynchronous API
In order to enable users to make a quick request without waiting for the server’s response, Magento 2.3 will be released with a new feature – Asynchronous API. This feature will provide a huge benefit big online stores that receive a large number of API requests on a daily basis.

Magento 2.3 is expected to bring new opportunities for administrators, merchants, and developers as well as improve the customer experience. If you want more information about Magento 2.3 or want to migrate to Magento 2.3, consult an experienced Magento eCommerce development agency.

Meet Magento Asia 2018 was organized by SmartOSC on 8 November 2018, in Bangkok which brought together merchants, technology partners, Magento technocrats, and eCommerce experts across the globe.

As one of the Gold Sponsors at Meet Magento Asia, Team Ranosys also joined the event with an aim to contribute and support the Magento ecosystem.

The venue was charged with enthusiasm and witnessed 30+ international speakers, 500+ attendees, and several brands from all over the globe.
The conference commenced with a welcome speech by Hieu Nguyen, Chairman, SmartOSC, followed by impressive and insightful talks by a stellar line-up of speakers. The event featured speaker presentations of both commerce solutions and digital experience sessions.
Mark Lenhard, VP, Commerce Strategy & Growth, Experience Business – Magento, an Adobe Company, shared valuable insights on “Driving Growth with Experience-Driven Commerce.” Nicholas Kontopoulos, Head of APAC and EMEA Commerce Marketing – Magento, an Adobe company, delivered an informative talk on “The Future Of Customer Experience: Engaging The Channel-Less Customer.” Among other speakers were Jerry Smith (COO & Principal Consultant, The Ogilvy Group), Dave Mommen (Head of Alliances & Channels, Asia – Rackspace), etc.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies, engaged the audience by sharing informative insights on “Magento + AEM – Redefining Commerce Experience.”

Refreshment breaks and lunch provided a good opportunity for the delegates to network with each other and share knowledge about the emerging Magento and eCommerce trends.
The conference concluded with an after-party at Avani Hotel Rooftop bar for event attendees to unwind and socialize with each other, amidst spectacular views of Bangkok skyline.
Meet Magento Asia 2018 was a splendid event and Ranosys team is looking forward to meeting you all at another Magento event soon!

Ranosys is pleased to announce that it will be joining Meet Magento Asia conference as a Gold Sponsor at Bangkok on 8 November 2018.

A thought leader in Magento Commerce and a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, Ranosys strives to stay at the forefront of the latest Magento trends and provide best-in-class digital experiences to global clients. With an aim to add value to the Magento community and connect commerce experts, technology providers, merchants, and solution partners from across the globe, Ranosys organised the inaugural Meet Magento Singapore on 27 August 2018 at Marina Bay Sands.

With the accelerating growth of Magento in the Asian markets, Meet Magento Asia 2018 would serve as a great platform for Ranosys to demonstrate support for the Magento Community, connect with industry experts and talk to merchants about their digital commerce needs and how they can leverage Magento commerce to deliver compelling shopping experience. Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys, will engage the audience with an informative talk on “Magento + AEM – Redefining Commerce Experience.”

We really look forward to meeting you all in Bangkok and do not forget to say hello to us at Booth #2.

Ranosys and Easyship organized an eCommerce event on 30 October 2018, at WeWork Beach Centre, Singapore. Graced by experienced speakers, eCommerce merchants and technology providers, the event was focussed on helping store owners optimize their store processes and maximize their eCommerce conversions.

Vijay Pagadala, CSO, Ranosys Technologies, delivered an informative talk on how eCommerce merchants could grow loyalty, increase sales revenues and boost conversions. Moving forward, Sudhir Mehria, Customer Success Manager, Ranosys Technologies, shed light on how conversational chatbots engage users on eCommerce stores thereby providing a new channel for increasing conversions. Zak Tan, Lead Business Development at Easyship, helped the audience understand about a seamless checkout process on Easyship platform to align with merchants shipping policy.

The speaker presentations were followed with networking over drinks that helped the attendees to interact with each other.

We look forward to meeting you at the next eCommerce event!

For pics of the event, click here.

Online shopping has gained tremendous traction worldwide. The e-commerce trade across the Middle East has witnessed a huge transition and has increased by a whopping 1500 percent over the past 10 years.

As per a report by BMI Research, the e-commerce market in the Middle East is forecasted to be $26.9bn in 2018 and will reach $48.6bn in 2022. Saudi Arabia and the UAE will remain the fastest growing e-commerce markets in this region. Further, the report states some of the significant reasons for the growth of e-commerce in these two countries include young adult population who are digitally savvy, high purchasing power, growing number of 3G/4G subscribers among others.

E-commerce market size in different countries of Middle East
Government initiatives such as migration of paper-based services like logistics tracking, vehicle licensing and utilities billing to online platforms and integration with online payment platforms have been instrumental in building the trust of consumers in online shopping systems and e-commerce.
The UAE government has set up Matajircom, a duty-free e-commerce hub. This is a major initiative of the government towards the expansion of e-commerce in the Middle East and proliferating e-commerce in Dubai. The aim of this hub is to work closely with international and regional organizations and bring international, national, and local e-commerce markets closer together with Dubai.
Moreover, driven by the vision to accelerate commercial activities and creating limitless possibilities for new sales channels, Dubai will host the World Expo in 2020. The event will positively impact the economic growth and development of Dubai in the long-term as it is expected to bring in foreign investments, prop up the international image of Dubai, foster meaningful partnerships and innovation for a diversified economy, and benefit the infrastructure development.
How Ranosys can help you create a digital presence by leveraging the power of Magento?
Established in 2008, Ranosys, a leading digital commerce agency in the EMEA regions, the UK and Singapore, is keen to help retailers and merchants across Dubai and the Middle East leverage the growth opportunities with its e-commerce and Magento expertise. Our agile methodologies, analytics-led approach, and design-led engineering are geared to help you embark on a digital transformation journey and provide omnichannel experience to your customers. As a Magento Professional Solutions Partner with a team of 250+ professionals, Ranosys offers scalable, robust and best-in-class Magento solutions to brands across B2B and B2C segments.
Our Magento offerings include Commerce Consulting, Migration to Magento Commerce Cloud, Mobile Commerce, Magento B2B Marketplace Development, Support and Maintenance Services. Ranosys has worked with some of the largest brands, including Charles & Keith, BlackBerry, McDonald’s, Bloom Intelligence, and Veolia to name a few, and helped them strengthen their brand image and enhance the business growth.
If you are looking for a trusted IT partner for your business growth in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, connect with Ranosys to know more about their services.

Team Ranosys is heading to the streets of Barcelona and seats of MagentoLive Europe that will take place on 9-10 October 2018. Giving a momentum to MagentoLive events in the UK, France and Germany, MagentoLive Europe is an initiative to bring together the diverse European Community of developers, technology partners, and merchants, and expand the MagentoLive experience.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner is a thought leader in Magento eCommerce and aims to stay at the forefront of top emerging Magento trends to create best-in-class digital experiences for clients. Recently, Ranosys organized the inaugural Meet Magento Event in Singapore on 27 August 2018 to add value to the Magento Community, educate and inspire those who are considering to build and strengthen their online presence leveraging Magento Commerce.

MagentoLive Europe will be a great opportunity for Ranosys to connect with members of the European Magento Community and learn about the future of Magento after acquisition by Adobe, amidst the dazzling architecture and visually stunning beauty of Barcelona.

If you are attending this event in Barcelona and would like to find out a bit more about how Ranosys is helping its clients with their expertise in Magento or how Ranosys organised the first ever Meet Magento Conference in Singapore, please connect with Anand Ramdeo who is heading our EMEA operations. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or if you prefer Twitter, he is known as @anandramdeo on Twittersphere.

Have a great conference and do not forget to use #MLEU to share your experience with the Magento Community.

Magento vs Shopify – isn’t it a heated topic nowadays? It requires a huge consideration to determine which is the best ecommerce platform for startups, SMEs and big organizations.

When it comes to choosing the right and best eCommerce platforms, you are spoilt for choice as there are countless options of eCommerce platforms available. While selecting an eCommerce platform, you need to be more informed as your decision directly impacts the growth and success of your business. You must go for that option which offers you requisite features, functionalities, and ease of use.

Among various available digital platforms, Magento and Shopify are the two most leading eCommerce platforms with their own merits as well as some downsides. In this article, we have done popular eCommerce platforms comparison to help you make an informed decision.
Before delving deep into Shopify Vs Magento, first get introduced with both the platforms.

Magento – An Introduction

Magento is a flexible and robust eCommerce platform that offers extended plug-in architecture and several incredible features for tech-savvy store owners. This platform offers scalability and greater control over the content, functionality, and look-and-feel of online stores. Moreover, store owners can choose from thousands of themes and extensions available in the Magento Marketplace for their online stores. The two popular versions of Magento – Magento Community and Magento Commerce offer a lot of features to enhance the shopping experience of your customers.

Shopify – An Introduction

Shopify is a user-friendly, dynamic, and popular hosted shopping cart that can be installed easily. Some of the amazing features that make Shopify one of the most preferred platforms are: SEO-optimized, automatic mobile optimization, responsive and beautifully designed business templates, built-in payment processing, a drag-and-drop site builder, and 24/7 customer support.

Magento vs Shopify

Here are some major criteria that depict the difference between Magento vs Shopify.

Ease of Use
Shopify offers an easy-to-use and intuitive interface that allows you to move elements around the page to customize your store. It is easy to add products and set up payments using this platform. You don’t require much technical knowledge to manage your eCommerce portal with Shopify.
Magento, on the other hand, is not so user-friendly and requires coding knowledge to reap the benefits of its full functionality. You need to invest a significant time to understand Magento’s interface.
Hosting
With Shopify, you don’t need a separate hosting as this shopping cart is fully hosted by Shopify itself. However, you have to pay a monthly fee for the maintenance of the platform.
In case of Magento, store owners need not pay for downloading the platform, but are responsible for hosting of some editions. They need to hire a Magento expert to host and set up the Magento platform. But, Magento Commerce Cloud is an automated and managed hosting platform, created for Cloud infrastructure.
Installation and Customization
Since Shopify is a completely hosted shopping cart, it offers limited customization options. Some user experiences, such as checkout, can’t be customized with Shopify.
Magento offers full customization to store owners. You can add animations, featured product sliders, newsletter functionality, cross-selling blocks, etc. Pre-integrated modules (such as tax, payments, shipping) can be activated with a single click.
B2B and B2C Support
As Shopify was engineered for B2C only, the apps and templates of this platform are unable to manage the complexity of B2B workflows and transactions.
Magento is engineered to provide support for both B2B (the feature is available in Commerce Cloud Pro) and B2C.
Themes and Templates
Both Shopify and Magento have a massive collection of free and paid customizable themes; however, Magento offers a lot of feature-rich options than Shopify.
From the technical perspective, Magento themes require programming knowledge to install and modify. Shopify themes, on the other hand, are easy to install and modify and technical knowledge is not required to setup.
Speed and Performance
Shopify is a hosted solution that doesn’t provide control over server level adjustments and hosting environment. In other words, store owners are unable to control speed and the overall performance of their eCommerce stores with Shopify. Moreover, Shopify has limits on catalog size and product attributes, thus, this platform is not suitable to cater to customers with unique selling requirements.
Magento Community is a self-hosted platform that enables store owners to choose their own server and make requisite adjustments to boost the speed and performance of their eCommerce portal and apps. Magento Commerce runs on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and that’s why it is one of the top ecommerce platforms.
Inventory Management
Moving ahead, in this Magento vs Shopify comparison, let’s see how inventory management can help you arrive at the right decision.
Both platforms offer standard inventory management features such as product and pricing variations, inventory importing, inventory categorizing and filtering. Since Shopify offers limited advance features, it would not be considered the most suitable for large online businesses.
Magento offers several third-party services and advanced features for integrating a broader distribution network for better inventory management of your small as well as large online stores. Magento Order Management offers an order fulfillment system that enables cost-efficient, convenient, and flexible delivery, thus ensuring ultimate shopping experience for your customers.
Extensions and Add-ons
Shopify has a limited collection of add-ons as compared to Magento.
The Magento Marketplace offers more than 3,600 extensions and add-ons with advanced functionalities and features. You can integrate these extensions to your eCommerce store without writing code.
Search Engine Optimization
Shopify offers basic SEO functionalities to boost your SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) position. Shopify enables you to modify the file structure for search crawlers, optimize product and inventory pages, edit meta tags, etc. The limitation of this platform is; you can’t perform server-level configurations.
Magento allows store owners to tweak the store design as per their SEO strategy. This platform leverages canonical tags, redirects, and no-follow links. Moreover, you can tune up permalinks for meta content and inventory items.
Payment Gateway
You can integrate a custom solution or other payment options to Shopify for ease of payments.
Magento also lets you configure and set up different payment options to enhance the capabilities of your eCommerce store, but this can be done with the help of modules.
Reach and Popularity
10 of the top 500 companies listed on the Internet Retailer are powered by Shopify.
315,000 sites around the globe are built on Magento Commerce Platform. Magento powers 40 of the top 300 B2B customers and 70 of the top 500 companies both listed on the Internet Retailer
Customer Support
How can we complete this list of Magento vs Shopify without customer support? Shopify offers dedicated customer support and service. However, the Shopify community comprises a limited pool of developers and partners.
Magento provides community-based support. Magento has its own huge community of more than 300 Solution Partners and 60,000 developers, who are always eager to support you with your Magento related issues. They also keep on discovering innovative solutions to further enhance this platform. You can also seek support from a Magento partner agency that can help you with eCommerce store creation, set up, and management. Moreover, Magento Commerce Cloud also provides 24*7 customer support.

Shopify vs Magento – The Bottom Line

Both Shopify and Magento assure the success of your online eCommerce store, but when it comes to keeping pace with future eCommerce trends and manage the complexities of B2B commerce, Magento is the best eCommerce platform for small businesses to large enterprises. Unlike Shopify, Magento has vast possibilities and convenient built-in features. Magento enables you to transact in multiple countries and currencies, manage multiple multilingual stores, and allows you to leverage its Marketplace to enrich the functionality of your store.

Magento 2, the new edition of Magento, has gained tremendous attention of store owners due to its flexible architecture, user-friendly back-end UI, and simple checkout process. Features like usability enhancements for Admin Panel, multi-warehouse support, new search capability, performance and scalability updates, and better preview functionality make the future of Magento 2 promising.

Hope you find this Magento vs Shopify comparison article insightful. Do share it and let us know your thoughts.

In the past few years, oil & gas industry has gone through a bad time. Increase in global demand for oil & gas, decrease in the supply, dispersed assets and workforce in remote areas, a huge volume of complex data, and ever-changing regulations – these were some of the challenges faced by this industry. However, advancement in the technology has made things better for the oil & gas companies. The industry is recovering gradually and has been able to improve production at lower costs by implementing technological solutions.

In the upcoming years, oil & gas industry is expected to invest a whopping amount in enterprise mobility solutions. As a matter of fact, integration of mobile technology with the entire value chain of the industry can help oil & gas companies achieve operational excellence, track supply chain and workforce, etc.

Why the oil & gas industry must move to enterprise mobility?

Mobility is a great tool for oil & gas companies to improve their upstream, midstream and downstream operations. The right enterprise mobility solution helps the oil & gas industry achieve more with the less.

Quick Decision-Making

Mobility solutions enable managers and workers to store and retrieve accurate information anytime, anywhere on their mobile devices. It streamlines the entire process, resulting in quick and informed decision-making. Moreover, managers and supervisors can prioritize tasks and focus on improvement areas.

Better Collaboration

Mobility solutions resolve the issue of connecting with field workers and enable communication in real-time. Employees from different geographical locations can collaborate on complex projects with their managers, which, in turn, can enhance their efficiency and productivity.

Safe and Healthy Work Environment

Mobile technology helps analyze the real-time condition of machines and assets, and alerts the oil & gas companies of malfunctions and unforeseen risks. Besides, by harnessing the power of mobility, organizations can perform environmental assessments and take corrective actions.

Real-time Monitoring

Real-time monitoring of assets, inventory, fleet, and the workforce is feasible through mobile solutions. The work can be recorded in real-time as it is being performed which allows visibility to project managers into what is being accomplished.

Regulatory Compliance

As regulations keep on evolving and changing consistently, it is challenging for the oil & gas industry to stay compliant with the latest regulations. Mobility solutions help meet this challenge by letting oil & gas companies understand the regulations and obligations that are applicable to them at the site level or globally.

Key Takeaways

Real-time information is the need of the hour as it is quite difficult for oil & gas companies to manage the onshore and offshore operations effectively without it.
Time and data are valuable resources for oil & gas companies to stay competitive and drive incremental improvements, control and efficiency.
A mobile strategy is a must while defining the roadmap for digital transformation.
Deployment of mobility solutions results in operational efficiencies and reduced cost of maintenance

The first Meet Magento Event in Singapore took place on 27 August 2018 at the spectacular Marina Bay Sands. Ranosys Technologies were the official hosts & the event was sponsored by leading companies and technology providers across the globe such as PayPal, Dotmailer, MailChimp, SmartOSC, Yieldify, GetResponse, Kore.ai, Moni Media, NS8, BCNetcom, CLEARomni, and Veriteworks. This Magento event brought together 250+ delegates from all around the world.

A day before Meet Magento SG event, Ranosys organized Magento Contribution Day on 26 August 2018, which was headed by Max Yekaterynenko & Alex Paliarush from the Magento Community Engineering Team. During the workshop, Magento developers actively contributed to Magento 2 core, worked on GraphQL and PWA approaches.

Meet Magento Singapore commenced with a welcome speech by Sushma Vyas, COO, Ranosys Technologies, followed by an entrancing drum beat of the power-packed lion dance performance which left the audience impressed.

Moving forward, the event was graced by gripping talks from a stellar line-up of international speakers including Nicholas Kontopoulos, Nagesh Devata, Talesh Seeparsan, Vijay Pagadala, Tom Davis, Daniella Gregory, Todd Welling, Sytze Koolen, Anand Ramdeo, Aayush Mediratta, Piotr Karwatka, Ankit Agarwal, Rohan Lock among others. They shed light on Magento’s cutting edge technologies, growth strategies, and innovation.

The sponsor marketplace encouraged the attendees to connect and interact with merchants, service integrators and technology providers.

Further, we had an informative panel discussion on “Power of Magento Commerce for B2B” hosted by Ben Marks, Magento Evangelist at Magento, an Adobe Company. The panel featured leading eCommerce experts namely Vatsal Shah, David François, Sudhir Mehria, and Hirokazu Nishi who shared unique perspectives surrounding the topic.

Another Panel Discussion on “Next Generation Shopping Experiences with Magento and PWA” was moderated by Eric Erway, Senior Product Manager at Magento, an Adobe Company. He was joined by Piotr Karwatka and Lalit Nama who shared their views on PWA and its impact on eCommerce marketplace.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies, concluded the conference with the closing remarks and expressed gratitude to all those who made this event a grand success!

Later our delegates enjoyed a cocktail reception and networked with each other over drinks. Post event, Ranosys hosted an after-party at Supply & Demand – Esplanade for the attendees to unwind & socialize amidst breaktaking views of the Singapore Skyline.

We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all the distinguished sponsors, speakers and delegates for taking the time and effort to join us and to make Meet Magento Singapore event a huge success!

We look forward to meeting you all again at Meet Magento Singapore 2019!

Blockchain is the latest buzzword in the technology world and is quickly gaining traction across multiple industries, including finance, healthcare, and retail. Blockchain is a public ledger that contains all the information related to digital transactions. A series of blocks are interconnected in the blockchain and each block contains the transaction data and a timestamp for the prior block. In order to alter the particular block, all the subsequent blocks need to be altered.

Image Source: Blockgeeks

Despite technological innovations, the mobile industry is still facing various issues such as data leaks, inaccessible in-app purchases, malware-plagued downloads, and security threats. Here, blockchain comes to the rescue. Blockchain has the potential to alter the entire landscape of mobile application development. Decentralized system, keyless security infrastructure, peer-to-peer payment architecture, and distributed digital ledger are some of the amazing features that make this technology worth implementing in mobile app development.

Let’s discuss some of the major benefits of implementing blockchain in the mobile application development.

Data Protection
Blockchain adds multiple protection layers to your data. It assigns private keys to the users through which users can store, view, and manage the transaction related information at one place. Furthermore, the longer blockchain creates a robust architecture and brings resiliency in transactions. As the database is replicated on multiple computers, the chances of hacking reduce to a great extent.
Data Integrity and Transparency
Users can make their data and information available in a decentralized system using blockchain and every individual associated with this system has real-time access to users’ data. But, no one can tamper the information in the block. It not only eliminates the need for the middleman, but also makes data transparent while maintaining its integrity.
Secure Mobile Payments
Blockchain technology ensures secure contactless payments. The service provider generates the blockchain enabled transaction and all the involved parties have the record of relevant transactions in the system.
Eliminates the Need for Password
Blockchain authenticates the users, their devices, and transactions even without entering a password. It is possible due to the decentralization feature of the blockchain that enables the involved parties to provide their consensus for the authentication of Blockchain based SSL certificates.
Infrastructure Protection
Mobile owners can transfer the risk of hack to the secured platform by storing the DNS entry on the Blockchain. Nobody can get into the transparent, distributed DNS without the permission of the involved parties.
Enhanced Efficiency
Blockchain offers a distributed ledger that uses strong logic and few intermediaries to complete a transaction. It, thus, accelerates the speed of transactions and reduces the processing fees.

Blockchain can be of great value in your mobile app development strategy. The blockchain-based apps help you build trust with customers by providing them transparency, efficiency, and security. These apps also drive innovation for your business. However, it requires technical expertise and skills to integrate blockchain into your business apps as it is a complex technology. Thus, get in touch with a blockchain based app development company to stay ahead of the curve.

Ranosys is excited to announce the first-ever Meet Magento Conference in Singapore on 27th August 2018, at Singapore’s most spectacular conference venue – Marina Bay Sands! Meet Magento is organized in more than 50 countries around the world (including UK, US, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Poland), every year.

Ranosys is a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner and is in thought leadership for Magento eCommerce. We organize Singapore Magento User Group Meetup regularly to add true value to the Magento community and bring together eCommerce enthusiasts who are driven by self-improvement through knowledge sharing. Team Ranosys, with an aim to stay at the forefront of technological innovations, joins various global Magento Commerce events. Recently, we had our presence in Magento Imagine, MagentoLive Australia, Meet Magento UK and India.

For the first time, Ranosys is bringing Meet Magento Event in Singapore with an aim to connect eCommerce experts, technology providers, merchants, developers, and solution partners from across the globe and inspire and educate those who are considering Magento Commerce as a platform. This event serves as a strong platform to build meaningful connections, share expertise, and keep on the pulse of industry innovation from keynote presentations.

What can you expect from Meet Magento SG 2018?

Our stellar line-up of international speakers will give you an insight into the latest trends and future of Magento, specifically after the acquisition by Adobe. In this engaging and vibrant environment, you will have the opportunity to build a network and form possible partnerships with the key players in the Magento Ecosystem.

How can you get involved?

Buy a ticket and reserve your place in advance for Singapore’s biggest Magento event of 2018.

Be a Speaker

If you have a compelling story or great subject to share with the Magento community, be a speaker at Meet Magento Singapore 2018. Visit the official website and kindly submit your Call for Papers.

Be a Sponsor

If you are willing to sponsor the event to have access to merchants from APAC region and increase your brand awareness in the digital commerce ecosystem, submit your inquiries to sg@meet-magento.com.

We look forward to seeing you in Singapore!

The spike in smartphones and fast internet services have transformed almost every industry and business, and the financial industry is no exception. The emergence of innovative technologies has changed the competitive landscape and has also increased the customer demand for financial services with more personalization and convenience.

The upcoming years are expected to be somewhat wavering for the financial industry. On one hand, blockchain and automation will let financial institutions to tap the untapped innovation and growth, various regulatory changes, on the other hand, will bring a major disruption in the financial market.

Let us discuss in detail how FinTech will impact the financial sector in near future.

Chatbots for Better Customer Services
Today’s customers are smarter and knowledgeable and they demand services according to their own preferences wherever and whenever they interact. In order to connect with the customers the way they want, financial institutions are adopting the omni-channel strategy. Chatbots play a big role in improving the omni-channel customer engagement.
Chatbots, the newest trend in messaging, are becoming a popular tool for financial services industry to facilitate customer-facing interactions. AI-powered chatbots have replicated the human interaction and made it easy to address and resolve the queries and issues of customers in real-time, in a standard yet personalized way.
Detection of Fraudulent Transactions is Now Easy with AI and Machine Learning
Undoubtedly, technological innovations have brought several reforms in the financial industry, but at the same time, they have posed bigger risks such as fraudulent transactions. If went undetected by human-driven systems, these fraudulent activities can result in major losses for the financial institutions.
Fraud management has become easier with AI and machine learning techniques. These techniques combine automated data algorithms with human pattern recognition skills to identify such foul transactions while maintaining quality customer services.
Digitization Has Created a Massive Disruption in the Financial Industry
Digitization enables financial institutions to provide customers with more diverse solutions. Blockchain is getting so much buzz nowadays. This distributed ledger technology has the potential to save money and eliminate huge amounts of record-keeping. Blockchain creates an unchangeable record of the transactions where each transaction is linked to the previous one.
The global survey conducted by PwC indicates that 77% of financial businesses are looking forward to integrating blockchain in their processes by 2020.
Biometrics-Based Authentication for Enhanced Security
To reduce potential risks in transactions and address consumer concerns regarding security and privacy, financial institutions are adopting biometric authentication. This technology provides better protection against cybercrime, fraud, and identity theft.
Furthermore, biometric technology is swiftly replacing PIN-based, token and passwords based, and signature-based access.

Complex Regulations May Impact the Financial Industry
Complex regulations such as Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) will impact the operations of the financial companies. As per a global survey conducted by PwC, 54% of financial institutions assume protection, privacy, and data storage as the major regulatory barriers to innovation.
The financial institutions will have to identify alternate ways to drive innovation and manage data and systemic risk in compliance with new regulations.

The emerging digital technologies intend to reform the value proposition of financial services and products. In order to stay ahead of the competition and solve industry-specific pain points, financial services industry will have to take new approaches to integrate new technologies into their already existing strategy and architecture. For this, they need to strengthen their collaboration and partnerships with FinTech companies.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, always looks for opportunities to add value to the Magento Community. Singapore Magento User Group Meetup is one such initiative of Ranosys to bring together Magento developers, eCommerce experts, and digital commerce practitioners to provide them a platform to share their experiences, get insights into latest Magento trends, and brainstorm ideas for effective problem-solving.

Ranosys, with an aim to share Magento knowledge with the Magento Community and discuss new happenings in the Magento world, organized Singapore Magento User Group Meetup on 24 May 2018, at Amazon Web Services Office, Singapore. The Meetup was attended by various user groups, including Magento APAC team,developers and merchants.

The interactive sessions covered various topics, including how organizations can transform their eCommerce presence, running and scaling Magento on AWS, and Magento Commerce for B2B and B2B2C.

Synopsis of the Meetup

The session began with a power-packed presentation by Kai Chun Tang, the Channel & Alliance Partners Business Development Manager with Magento. He shared valuable knowledge on how to drive new business and transform eCommerce presence.

The audience was interested to know more information about Adobe acquiring Magento and its impact on the platform, which was responded by Kai Chun and Dene Schonknecht, Director Channel Sales with Magento. Further, they spoke about how the entire acquisition process will affect the branding of Magento.

Moving forward, Arthi Jaganthan, a Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services (AWS), discussed how to integrate AWS with the Magento platform. She threw light on the best practices for deploying Magento on AWS using services such as Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon Simple Storage System (Amazon S3), etc.

Vijay Pagadala, CSO, Ranosys, made the entire discussion more interesting by highlighting a few live case studies of large implementations. Further, he focussed on key design, architecture, and deployment of Magento Commerce for B2B and B2B2C.

Concluding the session, Ranosys announced that it will organize the first ever “Meet Magento Conference” in Singapore on 27th August 2018, at Marina Bay Sands.

For more details, visit the event website: https://sg.meet-magento.com/

Post presentations, the attendees got an opportunity to connect with each other and discuss ideas as well as share learnings.

We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to attendees, speakers, and venue & food sponsor (AWS) for their support and making this Meetup a success.
Looking forward to meeting you soon in the next Meetup!

Ranosys is proud to announce its partnership with Acquia, the digital experience company which is a leading provider of commercial solutions for Drupal. This collaboration with Acquia would further strengthen our expertise in developing scalable and robust Drupal sites for diverse businesses across the globe.

Acquia provides a cloud platform to build and manage multi-sites, Drupal 8 starter kit, integrated commerce and content, and digital asset management system. The Acquia Platform has helped thousands of global organizations create a single, powerful digital foundation for delivering world-class customer experiences.

Ranosys is a member of Drupal Association Organization and actively contributes to the Drupal community. With a decade of experience in Drupal CMS development and a dedicated large team of Drupal developers, Ranosys has worked on multiple Drupal projects for global clients, including Singapore Post, D-Link, National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technology University – NAMIC, BW Group, and NatSteel to name a few. Ranosys aims to leverage Acquia’s open cloud platform for designing and developing more optimized apps, high-performance websites, and delivering cutting-edge digital experiences for its clients.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies, said, “We are pleased to announce our partnership with Acquia. The partnership is indicative of our commitment to create significant business values for global organizations and help them realize their full potential.” He added, “We strive to combine our Drupal expertise with Acquia platform to offer innovative digital experience, drive conversions, increase customer engagements, and bring more scalability to clients’ businesses.”

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a renowned software development and digital agency, is headquartered in Singapore with offices in the UK (London) and the USA (California). With 250+ employees and comprehensive knowledge of Drupal platform, Ranosys drives the growth of enterprises through Drupal web apps and portals. Our Drupal development methodologies have enabled us to deliver even the most complex projects with sheer excellence. Our other areas of expertise include enterprise application development, Magento eCommerce solutions, enterprise mobility services, and quality assurance services.

In today’s technological era when organizations are shifting their focus from being data-generating to data-powered, the role of big data analytics has become more significant. Big data analytics helps enterprises leverage their data to identify new growth opportunities. In order to store huge data, the entire big data market is turning towards cloud architecture.

The year 2017 brought a new innovation in data management and changed the way information is maintained and processed. Many large enterprises adopted data analytics to gain insights into customer behavior and offer better digital services. This trend is expected to continue in 2018 however, data protection laws such as GDPR will make it quite challenging for the organizations to approach customer data.

What are the predictions for big data analytics in 2018? Read on!

A Major Migration from Private Cloud to Public Cloud
Public cloud providers will dominate the big data space in 2018. Cloud computing on private cloud environment requires frequent resource monitoring, technical automation, and complex virtualization. That’s why the big data industry is migrating to public cloud providers namely Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). High reliability, lower costs, near-unlimited scalability, and no maintenance are some of the features that are inclining big data players to the public cloud.
Inclination towards Data-Lake Architectures
Storing big chunk of data and gaining actionable insights from that data has been a challenge for enterprises in 2017. The year 2018 will witness an increased inclination towards data lake, which provides a single data repository and enterprise-wide data management platforms for everything – from business analytics to data mining.
Data discovery and visualization models have gained tremendous traction these days and have changed the ways of presenting data, thereby enabling decision makers to get deeper business insights.
Apache Spark will Replace Hadoop’s Traditional HDFS
The year 2017 has been a great year for Hadoop. The introduction of Apache Spark in Hadoop ecosystem has transformed the way data is analyzed, transferred, processed, and stored. Alternative data storage solutions like object, key-value, multi-model, in-memory data caching are diverting the attention of users from Hadoop’s traditional HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System).
GDPR will Bring New Opportunities
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will bring new reforms in terms of how data is generated, processed, stored, and shared. But, at the same time, it will present a great opportunity for the GDPR-compliant companies to strengthen their competencies, stay at the forefront of digital transformation, and establish trust with new and existing customers.
IoT, AI, and Machine Learning Will Impact the Data Management Technologies
With technological advancements, several innovations are likely to be seen in Machine Learning and Internet-connected devices. It will result in generation of a lot of data; thus, arising the need of real-time data analysis, processing, and optimization. Here Big Data comes into play. Big Data helps derive the real-time business values from the data generated by the IoT.

A properly organized and managed data helps you make quick decisions by providing valuable insights on time and fully realize the business potential. 2018 is going to be an eventful year for Big Data Analytics as an increasing number of organizations are investing in this technology. A partnership with an expert Big Data service provider can further enhance your capability to drive maximum value from the data.

Ranosys is glad to announce its partnership with Kore.ai – a platform for developing and deploying chatbots at the enterprise level. Kore offers a variety of bots that can be deployed on various channels like websites, mobile apps, email, SMS, and messaging services (Facebook Messenger, Slack, etc.). This AI-based chat platform leverages Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to facilitate intelligent communication between things, systems, and people.

Ranosys strives to remain at the forefront of technological advancements and add value to global clients. The partnership with Kore.ai will enable Ranosys to offer an AI-powered virtual assistant to its clients to automate their interaction with customers, resolve their queries in real-time, and increase customer loyalty and retention by engaging in meaningful conversations.

“We look forward to enriching the digital experiences and simplifying the workflows of large enterprises by improving their collaboration, efficiency, and productivity” states Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies. He further adds, “Our purpose is to leverage Kore.ai platform for delivering customized chatbot solutions to clients that would provide significant benefits to them by saving time, costs, and enhancing customer experiences.”

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a renowned software development company and proponent of digital transformation, is headquartered in Singapore with offices in the UK (London) and the USA (California). With 250+ employees and comprehensive knowledge of AI and Machine Learning, Ranosys aims to automate the business processes of clients. We provide top-notch chatbot solutions for various domains such as Retail and eCommerce, Healthcare, Fintech, among others. Our other areas of expertise include enterprise application development, eCommerce solutions, enterprise mobility services, and quality assurance services.

eCommerce industry has evolved at a rapid pace in the past few years and has captured a large market share. As per the report of Statista, the global eCommerce is expected to grow to $4.5 trillion by 2021. eCommerce comprises of almost 10% of retail sales in the US alone. Some of the major reasons for the fast growth of eCommerce industry are increase in smartphones, mobile checkout, digital-led stores, and machine learning (Artificial Intelligence).

Retail eCommerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2021 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Information Source: Statista

In this article, you will learn about the trends that will reshape the eCommerce industry in 2018.

GDPR Will Affect the Way Customer Data is Collected and Used
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) empowers the individuals to own their own data and any organization/business managing that data must keep it secure. You will be able to fetch the data of only those customers who choose to opt-in. As a result, you will have to explore the new and creative approaches to boost your marketing efforts and convenience the customers to give their consent to collect and use their data.
Voice Shopping Will Streamline the Customer Experience in a Whole New Way
Voice technology is expected to bring changes in consumer behavior and alter the eCommerce landscape. With the rapid growth of voice-assist products like Google Home and Amazon Echo, voice shopping will increase by leap and bounds in 2018. Some of the retail giants are likely to invest in voice-activated devices to deliver a positive customer experience.
Retail Omnichannel Practices Will Thrive in 2018
According to a study, organizations that follow omnichannel strategies can retain 89% of their customers. Omni-platforms will dominate the retail industry in 2018 and impact the sales by delivering cross-channel personalization across all integrated networks.
mCommerce will Drive Growth of the Global mCommerce Market
As revealed by a study, mCommerce will generate approximately $284 billion (45%) of total eCommerce revenue by 2020. The retailers can reduce cart abandonment rates and convert more mobile shoppers by keeping pace with trends like simpler checkout processes, quick response to customer queries via automated messaging tools, etc.
Blockchain-Enabled AI Will Fuel the Future of Retail
AI-powered chatbots will become smarter and Artificial Intelligence is believed to have its breakthrough moment in 2018. According to a Business Insider survey, by 2020, 80% businesses are expected to have chatbot automation implemented to some extent. Advanced technologies like blockchain will empower the chatbot messaging and bring digital revolution in the retail industry.
Content Rich Marketing Will Be Instrumental in Driving Engagement
Most of the bigger online stores are already using content rich marketing strategies to build meaningful and effective relationships with consumers and this trend will continue in 2018. According to a research study, about 46% of customers check reviews and/or blogs before making a purchase whereas 84% of customers check the product on social media. Since the present-day buyers have become smart, eCommerce businesses need to create impactful content that can drive the customers to take purchasing decisions.

Whatever strategies you are planning to implement to keep up with these trends, be sure they improve the overall experience of your customers.

The way testing is performed in the organization has changed considerably over the past few years and presented a new twist to testing due to the frequent releases and short development cycles. As a result of accelerated development process, complexities in delivering quality software have also increased. The testers are nowadays have to perform security and usability testing frequently.

The increasing inclination towards mobilization and digitalization is likely to change the entire landscape of the software testing in the coming years. Owing to the increasing demand for the test automation services and agile testing services, Technavio has predicted a rapid growth in the global software testing market by 2021, at a compound annual growth rate of around 14%.

In this blog, we have thrown light on the emerging software testing trends that are expected to gain momentum in 2018.

Digital Transformation Will Change the Testing Scenario
As most of the organizations have embarked on the digital transformation journey, a huge shift in digital testing is anticipated in 2018. Providing consistent experience across all channels will be the biggest challenge for the companies and to overcome it, organizations would likely pay heed to Quality Assurance and optimize their testing across all channels.
Agile and DevOps Will Hold the Reins
As per the reports of Forrester, organizations do not believe in the concept of centralized Test Centers of Excellence nowadays. Test automation developers are now considered as a part of the agile team. Moreover, testing is expected to become more progressive, iterative, and seamlessly integrated with development, making a strategic shift towards quality engineering.
The Demand for Big Data Testing Will Rise Exponentially
Big data technology will gain maximum traction and big data testing will revolutionize the world of software testing in 2018. As a matter of fact, testing big data apps is not an easy task; it requires pragmatic approaches to data science, deep understanding of the technologies, and a specific mindset.
IoT Could Turn Out to be the Biggest Software Testing Opportunity of All Time
Gartner predicts that nearly 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020, thereby increasing the scope of IoT testing. Testers will have to focus more on the Test-As-A-User (TAAS) approach to resolve the challenges of real-time data testing, device interaction module, and hardware-software mesh.
Performance Engineering Will Replace the Performance Testing
A good user experience is the key to success for any organization and that’s why businesses are giving preference to performance engineering over performance testing. Performance engineering covers a wide scope, including client-server interactions, a varied set of scenarios on the client side – end user scenarios across integration points, networks, and devices.
Quick Product Release Will Be the Need of the Hour
The QA process reduces the risk of unacceptable code, helps manage the complexities and challenges of creating unique customer experiences, assures quality in both the workflow and the final product. In 2018, the major emphasis of the enterprises will be on delivering high-quality products with the fastest time to market. Consequently, the role of software testing will be more crucial than ever.
Open Source Tools Will Be the Most Sought-After Testing Tools
Nowadays organizations rely on Open Source tools for proper implementation of DevOps, Agile, Test Automation, and Defect Management. As a result, these tools are expected to drive huge investment and will change the entire software testing scenario in 2018.

Software testing helps not only in identifying and fixing the bugs before the delivery of the software, but is also instrumental in taking certain crucial business decisions. The above-mentioned trends are supposed to bring both challenges and opportunities for the software industry. It is recommended to follow the right practices and methodologies that are the most suitable in your context to provide quality software testing services, in order to gain maximum traction in the competitive software testing industry.

An unwanted event that has a detrimental impact on your organization’s business continuity can be termed as a disaster. This may include a sudden power outage, software failure, hardware failure, a network outage, human error, physical damage or any other significant event that hampers the business processes all of a sudden. As such, Disaster Recovery (DR) is all about recovering from and preparing for such disasters in time.

Every organization must create an effective working plan on how to minimize the impact of a disaster. You should invest time and resources to plan, train yourself and prepare documents or processes. With cloud, organization can scale up its infrastructure as and when needed by using pay-as-you-go method. Cloud provides optimized resources and flexibility to adapt quickly to the required changes during a DR event.

So, how to integrate an effective disaster recovery plan with a cloud environment? Let’s discuss in detail.

Must have a cloud-based backup plan

When there was no cloud concept, data was backed up to tape and sent off-site regularly. This method used to take a long time to restore your system in the event of a disaster. Cloud is an ideal destination for backup data that might be needed quickly to perform a restore. There are many open source and commercial backup solutions that can be integrated with the cloud.

The best approach towards backup plan includes:

Selection of an appropriate tool or method to backup data into the cloud.
You must have an appropriate data retention policy in place.
You must have security measures in place for backup data.

Just having cloud infrastructure wouldn’t guarantee efficient Disaster Recovery. One must have plan for backup using the cloud environment.

Time estimation to recover from any disaster

Every minute of downtime for an application can affect business and finance of an organization, besides its reputation so you must know time required to recover data from your backup. There are two common industry terms for disaster planning purposes:

Recovery Point Objective (RPO): It is the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO): It represents the time taken to restore a business process to its service level after a disaster.

Organizations can plan solutions with cloud to provide cost-effective system recovery based on RPO within the timeline and the service level established by the RTO.

Warm standby method for recovery

This term is used to describe a DR scenario, in which a scaled-down version of a fully functional and working environment is run continuously in the cloud. It decreases the recovery time to a certain level, as all the services are always up and running. Cloud provides a variety of services for computing, storage and network at a very effective cost and also based on a pay-as-you-go method, which helps you architect and plan a warm standby method for recovery solution at a very effective cost.

In the cloud, you can select different data centers, which are physically separated, to store your backup data against any physical damage like fire or other natural hazards. Cloud also provides high security for application data, including encryption, SSL supported endpoints, web application firewall, etc. Cloud provides scalability and high availability for applications running on it, which undoubtedly helps you achieve a better approach for backup and disaster recovery.

Cloud Service Provider (CSP) e.g. AWS, also provides multi-site concept for disaster recovery. In this scenario, a duplicate application runs in the backend with your current application, which shares half of the production traffic. It can be achieved with the help of weighted routing policy provided by AWS route53 service. This type of architecture, which is called as active-active configuration, reduces downtime during disaster recovery.

Why to prefer Cloud Disaster Recovery over traditional approach?

In traditional and on-premises approach, the additional infrastructure must be procured, installed and continuously managed & maintained so that it is always ready to support the anticipated capacity requirement or against any disruption. But with the cloud, you will get access to highly available, scalable, fault tolerant, flexible, cost-effective, highly secure, and reliable infrastructure that runs its own global network for your application.

With a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, you can benefit from cost-effective, flexible contract terms and the scalability to grow as your needs change. Cloud Disaster Recovery allows you to increase business resiliency and continuity while protecting applications, with minimal investment.

Be proactive and seek expert suggestion to create a disaster recovery plan to address the potential obstacles in advance. Your proactiveness can make a big difference how your organization handles one of the most feared and difficult situations for every business process.

Disclaimer:

The content provided in the blog section is for informational purpose only. Ranosys does not make any promise or guarantee the completeness or accuracy of any information on this site or found by following any link on this site. Ranosys is publishing this information as the professional contribution of the author. If found inappropriate, Ranosys shall unpublish the article upon knowledge of the same.

There are very few people in the software testing field who have dedicated their career to help other people get better at software testing. I have worked with many excellent testers and Alan Richardson is by far amongst the most talented people I have worked with. Alan’s grasp on the software development, exploratory testing, and test automation is exemplary, but most importantly, his ability to dig deeper in the subject, and explaining it in a way that makes it easier for others to grasp, is his biggest strength. Alan has made huge contribution in the software testing field with his presentations at the conferences, blogs, articles, workshops, books, courses, and so on. The most important aspect of his work is the practicality as it is backed by the years of experience and commitment to learning, consciously and continuously.

It gives me a great pleasure to introduce Alan to our readers and ask him few questions about the software testing craft.

Anand: Alan, thank you for taking the time out to talk to us. I am sure many people in the software testing community already know you as ‘the evil tester’, but still, please tell us something about yourself.

Alan: Thanks Anand. I work as a Software Development and Test Consultant, helping people improve their testing and development processes. I spend a lot of my time continuing to improve my Software Testing and Programming skills.

I’ve been trying to spend a bit more of my free time doing something else, but that means that my retro game collection is expanding and I’ve started adding Japanese Famicom games to my collection now.

Anand: We have worked together many times, but guess, I never asked you about the name of your blog. Why did you name it as evil tester?

Alan: I started drawing Evil Tester cartoons when working on waterfall projects to alleviate the stress of a poor process. And I kept saying I would buy the domain name. A few years later, I realised that no-one had bought the domain, so I bought it. I find the notion of “Evil” in Software Testing as liberating and frees me up to test systems in ways that other people don’t. I tried to cover this in “Dear Evil Tester” and a few videos online.

Testers need to do the things that other people are not prepared to do. To do things that other people would not conceive of doing. Things that other people do not think are ‘right’. In films and books, the people that do this are often the bad guys. If we only stay on the path of righteousness, then there is a whole other set of paths that we haven’t explored – who else is going to do that?

Anand: Alan, when did you become passionate about Software Testing? Was there any trigger, did you develop interest over a period of time or was it love at the first sight?

Alan: I started by wanting to improve Software Development – I thought that by building CASE tools which would generate all code from diagrammatic models would prevent all Software Development problems. I swallowed much of the nonsense I was fed at University.

When I started programming Software Testing tools for a Testing Consultancy, I realised that if I moved into testing then I would be able to code, automate, test, design and manage. And only by utilising all those skills could I finally learn to prevent all Software Development problems.

When I started paying attention to testing, I realised that in addition to the technical IT skills and test techniques, I also had to learn more psychology, influence and soft skills than I needed as a developer. I think it was the constant learning and the need to use ever more skills that really drew me in.

I’m still working on preventing all Software Development problems.

Anand: You must have witnessed quite a few changes in our field. What do you feel about these changes? Which changes are good, which ones are not so good, and what changes would you like to see in our field?

Alan: I like the movement towards leaner and more agile development approaches.

I like that more and more people are adopting an exploration basis for their Software Testing process rather than defining scope up front and attempting to script away the observation and investigation parts of Software Testing.

The changes I would like to see are more people learning more of the Software Development skill-set and trying to blur the edges of their specialisms. That doesn’t just mean programming, that also means design, systems architecture, technology, analysis. The whole range of Software Development skill sets.

I also think we might have forgotten about model based approaches and I think I’d like to see more research into those.

Anand: What can a tester do to stay relevant in the AI/ML driven world with interfaces such as Alexa, Siri, and so on replacing the UI completely?

Alan: Until we actually work on those technologies it is hard to stay up to date with them. But hopefully, everyone who is testing software is trying to test below the UI of whatever system they are working on. In that way they can reduce their dependence on a UI to guide their testing.

And the more that people learn about Systems in general as opposed to specific technologies, they will develop the thought processes that allow them to apply their testing knowledge to any software.

Anand: How do you define boundary (of what to test) when the bulk of the complexity is handled by the services such as Alexa and Siri? How do you safeguard your application?

Alan: How we test it will partly depend on how we build it. The conversational interface creates a slightly different set of abstractions than we are used to between ourselves and the underlying functionality.

The parsing and matching process we choose to use will either limit or explode the combinations of data that we have to consider as input.

The hard part is probably going to be distinguishing between testing our app, and testing the interface which we have delegated to the voice recognition software, e.g., we are going to be relying on Alexa and Siri to distinguish between accents, but we’ll have to make sure that the application isn’t vulnerable to odd commands if the accent recognition goes wrong.

At the moment the conversational interfaces don’t seem to be much more complicated than the text adventure games of yore, but clearly the functionality sitting behind the interface could have a lot more impact than the sandboxed environment of an adventure game.

Safeguards will have to depend on the application we are using it for. We might find that some systems will have to play back the command before it is exercised, so we can review it. And we might even find that some systems will textually render the commands we verbally give them, so that we can review the command before it is exercised and avoid the ambiguity that arises when we listen to voices.

In the same way that we safeguard verbal orders to people. Sometimes, we replay them back for clarification, and when we have a verbal agreement, only then do we act on them.

Anand: How do you check if the AI / ML driven systems are ethically and morally correct? How do you ensure that the dataset they got for the training wasn’t biased? What can a tester do to help the organisations?

Alan: Ethics and morals will depend on the functionality that sits behind the interface. As with anything software related, we’ll have to try and specify what we mean by ethics and morals related to the functionality under test before we can say much about it.

Biased might not be a useful word to describe the data sets. We need to make them representative of the variability that the system will be exposed to in the real world. And that can be very hard. Fortunately, if we are working with something like Alexa and Siri, then we have an abstraction between us and the application so we really care about the results of the translation that Alexa and Siri give us. It becomes much harder when we are responsible for writing the translation routines between the real world and the system. And then it becomes even harder if there is not intermediate translation layer and the input directly results in a response.

The issue that many people face with AI is that the training sets are historical data and our cultural norms change over time. Such that there may be a perceived cultural bias in the training data sets. This and the notion of ethics is still being discussed by specialists in the AI field, so I’m more likely to let them investigate the ethics and morals for the moment. A recent overview of the topic was covered in a Microsoft Research podcast “Keeping an Eye on AI with Dr. Kate Crawford”

Hopefully we won’t try and use AI and ML for everything and we’ll still have some algorithms in there that we can test.

It is going to be an interesting set of systems to test and I’m slightly envious of the people who are being able to test them early.

Anand: What would be your advice to the testers who are not satisfied with how the software is delivered in their project? What should they do to bring the change?

Alan: There are two things to separate out there – how to deal with dissatisfaction, and how to effect a change.

Dissatisfaction is easy – start drawing Evil Tester cartoons – or your own variant thereof. I don’t recommend resorting to Voodoo.

The reason for drawing it, or writing it down is to be clear what you feel dissatisfied with. It’s important not to generalise at this point, be very specific about what you feel dissatisfied with: what happens, when, in what way are you dissatisfied, etc.

And perhaps, they don’t bring the change.

Check if other people feel as dissatisfied as you do, and if their analysis of the dissatisfaction is the same as yours. If it is then find a way of explaining the specific situations that trigger your dissatisfaction, and how it makes you feel, to the wider team or people that you think can help.

Also consider that perhaps the change needs to be in your response, or your attitude. Those are, after all, easier and faster to change than other people.

Before you try changing the team or other people, do think through how people might react to your explantation of the situation – do you have evidence? Have you phrased it objectively enough? Is it accurate and specific or is it overly generic such that people can disagree with it.

I’ve learned to ask questions, and ask them at appropriate times, e.g., standups, retrospectives are often good times. And different phrasing of questions might help temper reactions, e.g., “How do we know that…”, “I’m not sure if we are …”, “Do we think that this can…”.

But this is a big subject to delve into. Sometimes, I’m blunt. Sometimes, I’m subtle. Sometimes, I just make changes. Sometimes, I ask if change is required.

Anand: Do you have any advice for the people who are working in the software testing field, but not sure about the future prospects? What can they do to stay motivated and move forward with their careers?

Alan: Future prospects are partly down to luck, and the geographical location you are in.

But you can influence your luck by:

Researching and staying up to date
Reading blogs, signing up for newsletters
Create Google alerts for the topics you are interested in
Practicing your testing
Investigating the areas that you are interested in, e.g., ML, AI, Model Based Testing, Web Testing, Automated Execution, etc.
Improving all your technical skills
Creating a blog or a github account and releasing your notes and learnings
Going to meetups and networking

I’m motivated by constantly learning, so I try to work in companies where I will learn new things. And I try to stay up to date and write about, or create videos of, my interests so that people associate me with the things I’m interested in, which hopefully means I’ll be able to work on those topics.

Anand: Why terminology (such as testing vs checking or QA vs testing) is so fiercely debated in our field? What is your opinion about this?

Alan: Terminology has an important role to play. And always has.

I read this yesterday in a Sci-fi novel from 1975:

“You’re rather involved in semantics, aren’t you?”

“I am, doctor, because unless you ask questions in precise language, we’re going to be carrying on two completely different conversations.”

Specifically, the novel was “Cyborg IV” by Martin Caidin.

I encourage people to own their own language as much as possible, and some of the ongoing terminology debates highlight areas where other people have identified a lack of precision.

I don’t get involved in all of the debates online, and if I do, I make my case, and then try to use the language the way I think is important to demonstrate how to move forward. Most people don’t even notice the terminology choices I make.

For the ‘testing vs checking’ I tend to avoid saying ‘test automation’ and use variants on the term ‘automated execution’ – this allows me to consider automating applications without conflating the automated control with ‘testing’. I tend to use words like ‘assertion’ instead of ‘checks’ because assertion is more of a programming term. Also I don’t particularly like using words that are ambiguous, e.g., ‘checks’ can be used as a verb and a noun, and people do use it in both ways. “I have implemented some automated checks” “we will check for this”.

I think the distinction between the concepts of testing and checking is important. Testing requires a high degree of experimentation and exploration. The act of checking that something complies with a predefined set of acceptance criteria requires skill when identifying, how you will check for compliance, and if you choose to automate the process of checking then you need skill in automating. But the actual process of checking the compliance does not require the skills associated with testing and can most likely be automated.

It’s important to make these distinctions because it helps us think about the role we play and helps people who are not involved in testing, understand that testing is a skilled discipline.

And on a general point I think it is important that people learn to take ownership of their own understanding and communication of testing. So using your own words to explain concepts rather than a constant quoting of words and definitions from experts.

I think, as individuals, we gain more respect when we can communicate in our own words, rather than deferring to someone else.

Anand: I know that you are an avid reader. What are some of your favourite books that you think every tester should read?

Alan: For Testing?

Software Testing Techniques by Boris Beizer
Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Kaner, Bach and Pettichord

And all of my books as well, of course! 🙂

But we should also read outside the world of Software Testing:

Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans is a very good overview of modern design principles

Also, I recommend reading books on Systems Theory, Systems Thinking, Psychology and Cybernetics. I often encourage people to read Stafford Beer, W. Edwards Deming, Buckminster Fuller.

Start with web searches for all of these people, look for pdfs of papers they have written and constantly read about Systems based disciplines.

Anand: Any parting thoughts?

Alan: Thanks for asking all the questions. It’s useful to engage in periods of reflection to try and clarify what each of us thinks is important and identify what we have learned.

Particularly important to try and communicate that with other people because something that you think is obvious and often a throw away comment can make a big difference to someone who is hearing it for the first time, particularly if you have said it in your own words, because then you might be communicating it in a way that resonates with that person more strongly than any other way it has been phrased before.

We can all make a difference in the world of Software Development.

But to do that we have to step up and make our thoughts and learnings visible.

I know that can be hard because there are always people waiting to try and knock us down. But don’t let their fear stop you from putting your thoughts, work and ideas out there.

Your work will make a difference to someone.

And the act of putting them out there will make a difference to you.

In 2017, tech world witnessed a myriad of innovations and breakthroughs. Chatbots, Social Commerce, and Predictive Analytics entirely redefined the online shopping experience of the consumers and also helped marketers create omni-channel campaigns to attract more customers. Innovative technologies are likely to gain momentum and 2018 could see a big revolution in AI, blockchain, digital twins, IoT, and conversational platforms. In this blog, we are discussing 6 such technology trends that have potential to impact the businesses by leaps and bounds in the times to come.

Blockchain eCommerce will be the Word of the Year
Blockchain has been the talk of the town in 2017 and it will continue to take the world by storm in 2018. Blockchain is a distributed ledger that records transactions, connects them to other nearby transactions, and securely encrypts the information.
Blockchain offers identity authentication through a visible ledger, thereby reducing cyber risks. This technology is redefining the way online transactions are done. Moreover, blockchain will enable customers to monitor the process from end-to-end and verify the products. This technology is anticipated to address the pain points of the eCommerce industry by enhancing integration with business processes, cost-effectiveness, coherence, and transparency.
Exponential Growth is Expected in Digital Twins Technology
Digital twins serves as a channel that provides a strong way to track and respond to changes in order to connect the real world with the digital world. Digital twins is a digital replica of systems, processes, and physical assets that can be used to add value in operational efficiency.
Digital twins has strong potential to achieve better insights and drive better decisions by offering new ways to decrease downtime, optimize maintenance, monitor assets, and reduce costs. According to Gartner, digital twins will exist for billions of things by 2020, with an estimated 21 billion connected endpoints and sensors.
Immersive Technologies are Likely to Get Momentum
The immersive technology market is swiftly advancing and transforming the business outcomes. Immersive technology is an amalgamation of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality.
In 2018, this technology is expected to revolutionize the way people collaborate with the digital world. Immersive technologies, when combined with conversational platforms, enhance the user experience. As per the predictions of Gartner, by 2019, immersive technology will be evaluated and adopted by 20% of large enterprise businesses.
Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape the eCommerce Industry
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to be the next biggest frontier in the eCommerce industry in 2018. AI lets businesses to perform data processing, analyze big data, get real-time insights on market conditions and business performance, and create strategic decisions on the basis of these insights. As per the projections of Gartner, by 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed by AI-enabled chatbots. The global market for AI is expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2019. AI is also believed to help enterprises gain loyal customers by providing them security against online frauds.
The Demand for Conversational Platforms Will Be on the Rise
Conversational platforms are expected to bring a paradigm shift in the eCommerce industry in 2018. Conversational technology will help eCommerce organizations to grow in real-world environments, create a new dimension in the way people interact with machines, and improve customer relationships with a brand. Moreover, enterprises will be able to get insights into their customers’ preferences and help them in purchasing decision.
Edge Computing Will Change the Way legacy Technologies are Used
Edge computing enables businesses to process the data closer to the source of information and edge of the network instead of sending it back to the cloud or data centers for processing. This reduces the communication bandwidth and eliminates the latency between the cloud and sensors, enabling businesses to analyze data in real-time. IDC has predicted that the IT spend on edge infrastructure will reach 18% of the total IOT infrastructure spend by 2020. The market size for edge computing is also anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 35.4 percent from USD 1.47 Billion in 2017 to USD 6.72 Billion by 2022.

The world is moving towards Digital Transformation (DX) and the emerging IT technologies are supposed to have a great influence on the digital journey of the enterprises in 2018. The only way to stay competitive is to invest in technologies that keep you scalable, flexible, and connected.

Ranosys is excited about the upcoming Magento event – Magento Imagine 2018, which is going to be held in Wynn Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, from April 23-25, 2018. This event is in its 7th year and helps connect the global Magento Commerce ecosystem by bringing together more than 3000 merchants, eCommerce experts, Magento agencies, developers, and industry leaders across 50+ countries. The event will be graced by keynote speakers from all over the world, who will share their insights on Magento trends.

Magento is the world’s #1 eCommerce platform that handles over $100 billion in gross merchandise volume, every year. This platform is supported by a highly active global community of 150,000+ developers and a vast global network of more than 300 solution and technology partners.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner, is in thought leadership for Magento eCommerce and organizes Magento Meetup every month. Ranosys helps clients maintain their competitive edge by keeping them updated with the latest trends in this niche. Magento Imagine 2018 will be a great platform for Ranosys to understand the best practices of Magento that are currently in trend and apply the gained knowledge to help global clients leverage the benefits of Magento to the fullest.

Connect with Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading Magento eCommerce Agency headquartered in Singapore with service delivery centers in the USA and the UK and three offshore development centers in India. With experience of about a decade in designing and developing Magento eCommerce stores and mobile apps with Magento backend, Ranosys offers end-to-end Magento services, including consulting, implementation, migration, optimization, and maintenance, to help eCommerce entrepreneurs, enterprises, technological companies, and other organizations grow their businesses.

Looking forward to meeting you in Las Vegas!

Digitalization has emerged as a key disruptor in the past few years and Ranosys, being a renowned Drupal Design & Development Agency, leaves no stone unturned in helping enterprises transform, realign, and propel their success in this digital era. With an aim to bring back something valuable to offer to its customers for their digital content strategy, Ranosys team is participating in DrupalCon 2018 – an international Drupal event, which is going to be held in Nashville, TN, USA from April 9-13, 2018. DrupalCon will be a great platform for Ranosys to gain latest insights about Drupal and contribute to the Drupal community.

DrupalCon 2018 shall provide a stage to developers, designers, whether they are beginners, or experts, to explore what Drupal is capable of doing with its secure and open platform. It will inspire them to take their work to the next level. This event is also a great opportunity to give face to the notable names in the industry. Drupal’s founder Dries Buytaert will be one of the keynote speakers of the DrupalCon 2018. The speakers from across the global Drupal community will track feature topics around Javascript, Front End, DevOps, Content Strategy, Site Building, PHP, and above all, Being Human.

Connect with Ranosys

Ranosys team is excited to meet you at DrupalCon and listen to your ideas and offer you Drupal consulting and transform your digital experience with its Drupal expertise. We have a keen understanding of Drupal platform and we help drive the growth of enterprises through bespoke Drupal web apps and portals.

See you at Nashville!

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading software development company headquartered in Singapore with service delivery centers in the USA and the UK and three offshore development centers in India. With the commitment to excellence and over a decade of expertise in Drupal ecosystem, Ranosys offers enterprise Drupal development services to the clients worldwide.

The healthcare industry is on the cusp of radical changes and has yet to reach its pivotal moment. Blockchain, predictive analytics and other latest technologies are leading the Digital Transformation (DX) by rapidly replacing the traditional healthcare systems. As a matter of fact, digital health applications have gained tremendous traction in the past few years and are slowly going mainstream, creating a significant impact on the cost of operations, quality of care, and accuracy of patient information. On top of that, technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence are shifting the paradigm of medical treatment and research.

Healthcare IT Spending – Global Snapshot

Owing to reforms in healthcare regulations and emergence of new technologies, healthcare spending of the organizations in market research, IT and advanced computing solutions has increased manifold. In 2017, digital health investments crossed $6.5 billion, approximately 109% up from 2016. This growth curve is expected to continue in 2018.

According to an analysis by Forrester Research, in 2018, healthcare organizations will increase their spending on IT by 10% over the amount they spent in 2017.
As per the reports of IDC Health Insights, healthcare IT spending in Western Europe will grow to $14.6 billion in 2018.
According to the predictions by India-based market research firm, by 2020, the global healthcare IT solutions market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.4 percent, reaching worth $228.79 billion.
Federal healthcare IT spending is projected to exceed $4.8 billion in 2019.

Total Healthcare Providers IT Spending (U.S. Dollar) by Region, WorldWide, 2012-2018

Information Source: Gartner

By 2020, the digital healthcare market is anticipated to have a value worth $206 billion, wherein wireless and mobile solutions will have the major contribution.

What 2018 holds for the healthcare industry? Here are top IT trends and future possibilities that will transform the healthcare industry in 2018.

Blockchain Technology Will Be the Game-Changer
The advent of blockchain technology in 2017 has made data sharing easy for healthcare providers. Blockchain has the potential to drive innovation in community-based healthcare models and preventative care. In 2018, this technology will create a new level of integrity for healthcare information and continue to facilitate stakeholders in the healthcare value chain to track patient data and share access to their networks, without compromising data integrity and security.
Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics Will Take the Center Stage
One of the biggest challenges faced by the healthcare industry is the transformation of raw data into insightful information. Predictive analytics and machine learning will help healthcare organizations overcome this hindrance, improving chronic disease management, patient care, supply chain efficiencies, and hospital administration. Machine learning, in particular, will be of great help in processing and analyzing huge chunks of real-time data at a much faster speed, which, in turn, will deliver more accurate results and enhance clinical trial efficiency.
Dramatic Rise Will Be Seen in the Telehealth Services
As per the predictions of Statista, the market size for global telemedicine is expected to reach more than $40 billion by 2021. The telehealth patients worldwide are projected to reach 7 million in 2018.

Information Source: Statista

As technology is becoming more secured and refined, clinics and hospitals will have more inclination towards telehealth services in order to create new efficiencies, prevent readmissions, improve care coordination, and make care more convenient for patients. Telemedicine will enable patients to connect with medical professionals irrespective of their geographical location via technology from the comfort of their home, for a range of follow-up care and illnesses.
Internet of Things (IoT) will Lead the Healthcare Industry
According to a study, 87% of healthcare organizations are planning to implement IoT technology by 2019 in order to revolutionize the way patients are treated. IoT enables health practitioners to collect data from various IoT medical devices and gain valuable insights about patients’ health. Moreover, wearable IoT devices are likely to dominate the healthcare industry in 2018.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be in the Forefront
Healthcare organizations will spend an average of $54 million on AI projects by 2020, as stated in a report. AI will bring advancements in healthcare treatments and will improve medical diagnosis. Healthcare bots will help patients in real-time simply by answering to their health-related questions and manage their medications by providing information on recommended doses and types of medications.
Cloud and mHealth Solutions will Continue to Grow Exponentially
In 2017, cloud technologies have been instrumental for medical facilities and hospitals to get remote access to patients’ health records and information in compliance with HIPPA, HL7 and ISO 27001 security standards. In 2018, the cloud infrastructure services are expected to continuously improve. The mHealth market is predicted to be valued at approximately USD 33.59 billion in 2018. The growth of the mHealth solutions market can be attributed to the advent of advanced network technologies and connectivity.

The influx of new technologies has disrupted many industries, and healthcare is no exception. Be proactive and inculcate innovative healthcare IT solutions to quickly adapt to emerging technology changes in order to stay at the cutting edge of innovation, improve patients’ safety, and deliver the best health outcomes.

Ranosys, a leading provider of IT services and solutions, has opened a new Offshore Development Center in Pune at the heart of IT Hub – World Trade Center (WTC), just six months after the opening of the UK office. This move is indicative of its aggressive expansion plan and significant growth in the global enterprise IT sphere.

Pune, also known as the Oxford of the East, is one of the fastest growing cities and is a major IT hub of India. Pune office will allow Ranosys to engage highly qualified, experienced and skilled technical consultants based in India and strengthen capabilities to deliver strategic business outcomes and unparalleled value to its global clients.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys, said, “We are pleased to announce the opening of our new development center in Pune, India in line with our strategy to establish global competency centers and offer the best in class services to our customers worldwide. Pune office will help us expand our operational capabilities, rapid scaling of our team and extend our digital consulting services for our global customers.”

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a renowned software development company headquartered in Singapore with onshore service delivery centers in the UK (London) and USA, and 3 offshore development centers in India. Ranosys offers comprehensive and end-to-end enterprise solutions to help global organizations in their digital transformation journey. Our areas of expertise include eCommerce Development, Mobile Application Development, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Enterprise Web Applications, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Testing & Quality Assurance Services, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). We have immense experience in delivering 500+ projects in 10+ industry verticals, including but not limited to healthcare, education, fashion & apparels, oil and gas, etc.

We are excited to render our services to the clients from our new location.

The demand for faster response time, unpredictable traffic patterns, and ever-growing datasets have made it a bit perplexing for the software architects to decide which cloud practices are the best to build a highly scalable application.

In this blog, I have shared 7 best cloud architecture practices that can be considered when designing a new app for the cloud or migrating an existing app to the cloud.

Be Pessimist and Design with An Assumption that the Hardware will Fail
What could go wrong will go wrong – keeping this theory at the back of your mind, you will be able to create a fault-tolerant architecture and think about recovery strategies only when you design with an assumption that your hardware will fail. Build mechanisms to deal with the failures, before disaster strikes. Good cloud architectures are unaffected by re-launches and reboots.
Questions you need to ask before start designing cloud architecture:
- What if any of the nodes in your system fails?
- How will you identify the failure?
- How will you replace the failed node?
- What instances do you have to plan for?
- What are the single points of failure?
You have to design for software failure in order to revamp the overall system. For this, you can ask the following questions:
- What will happen to my app if the dependent services change its interface?
- What if downstream service returns an exception or times out?
- How will you deal if the cache keys grow beyond memory limit?
Like it is said, prevention is better than cure, you should design the system keeping these probable and possible failures in mind.
Implement Elasticity
Elasticity is an ability of a system to scale-up during a sudden change in business needs, in order to handle the increased traffic load. Prior to implementing Elasticity, ensure that your deployment process is automated and build process and configuration are streamlined.
There are three ways to implement Elasticity:
- Proactive Cyclic Scaling: Periodic scaling (quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily)
- Proactive Event-based Scaling: Scaling during the huge traffic surge (marketing campaigns, new product launch, festive season etc)
- Auto-Scaling Based on Demand: Scaling on the basis of system metrics
Disassociate the Components
The components must not have strong dependencies on each other. As a matter of fact, the scalability of components increases if they are loosely coupled. Decoupling the components helps in smooth functioning and does not affect the entire system even if any of the components is busy (slow to respond), slept (no response) or dead (fail). You can use messaging queues to build a loosely coupled system. If you are creating batch-processing architecture, you can build asynchronous components that are not connected with each other.
Implement Parallelization
The cloud allows you to manage massively parallel operations. Apply the concept of parallelization at every step of designing the cloud architecture, be it requesting data from the cloud, storing and processing data in the cloud. Automation of parallelization along with its implementation will create a repeatable process in the cloud.
The best practice in the case of batch processing application is, you can build a master node that processes task in parallel by spawning up several save worker nodes. In the case of a web app, you can use a load balancer to distribute the incoming requests across various asynchronous web servers.
Implement Security in Every Layer of the Cloud App Architecture
Your service provider handles the physical security of the cloud app, but application and network-level security must be implemented by you, according to the requirements of your business. The cloud offers many features and tools to secure your app.
The basic guidelines to secure your app are as follows:
- Download patches from the vendor’s website on a regular basis and update your AMIs.
- Redeploy instances from the new AMIs, ensuring that the latest AMIs is deployed across all instances.
- Test your apps to ensure that the patches don’t affect any part of your system.
- Invest in test scripts to run periodic security checks and automate the process.
- Don’t run your processes as Administrator or root login unless absolutely required.
- Ascertain that the third-party software is configured to the security settings.
Leverage Different Storage Options
Cloud architecture includes a wide range of storage choices for archiving, backup, and disaster recovery. There are different storage (like object, block and file storage) for several use cases. Your workload and use case should help you decide what storage option to leverage in the cloud. ‘One size fits all’ is not an option here, meaning no single storage option fits all situations. It is essential from performance, cost, and functional perspective to leverage different cloud storage options, for different types of datasets.
Don’t Fear Constraints
When organizations plan to migrate their apps to the cloud, they will find that the cloud might not have the exact resource specification that they have on-premise. Don’t constrain yourself while using cloud resources because even if the cloud environment does not provide you an exact replica of your hardware, it offers more of those resources to compensate that need. The cloud offers abstract resources that become powerful when combined with the on-demand provisioning model.

These are few of the the best practices to design and build highly scalable cloud applications. Each use case is unique; therefore, an architect must be thoughtful in analyzing how best practices can be applied to each implementation.

Disclaimer:

With a view to empower Trailblazer Community and enable organizations to reinvent and transform their corporate learning model, Salesforce launched myTrailhead at Dreamforce 2017. This new customizable learning technique will help businesses promote a culture of learning while encouraging employees to improve their skills matrix. myTrailhead is an extension of the Trailhead (launched by Salesforce at Dreamforce 2014) gamified online learning platform and is instrumental in keeping pace with the evolving technologies. myTrailhead is built natively on the Salesforce platform, including Lightning Platform and Heroku. It awards virtual badges and points that employees can showcase on their LinkedIn or Trailhead online profiles.

myTrailhead facilitates businesses to:

Customize training content and corporate branding
Gamify learning with badges and points
Create and share customized paths for learning
Provide real-time feedback and appreciation on demonstrated skills

Technologies Included in myTrailhead

myTrailhead consists of the following new and existing technologies:

Trail Maker
A tool for creating customized learning content for their employees in just a few clicks. Organizations can also customize the pre-curated Trailhead content with their own brand for best practices for customer service agents and sales enablement, etc.

Trailhead Profile

Trailhead profile showcases the points accumulated, badges earned, and skills learned by the employees, which, in turn, helps businesses reward and recognize the employees on the basis of their expertise. This tool also helps managers identify the skilled resources for specific projects.

Trail Mixer

With Trail Mixer, employees can build and share custom learning path called Trailmixes. Trailmixes can be created from external content such as slide presentations or videos, custom content or public Trailhead content. It enables managers to centralize all relevant onboarding materials on one Trailmix, both within and outside of the Trailhead.

Trail Tracker
An application with leaderboards for assisting managers to motivate employees, assign and track their learning and competencies. The leaderboard displays rank on the basis of milestones and earned badges.
Trail Checker
Trail Checker provides ratings and rewards to employees if they successfully complete the challenges built by the organization. These challenges could be quizzes, hands-on assessment, and stand-and-deliver.

myTrailhead is a great platform to learn in-demand skills. This learning platform is anticipated to be in pilot in 2018. It will be available to general public later in the year. Pricing of myTrailhead will also be announced later on.

Disclaimer:

In the digital era, customers experience plays an important role in determining the success of any business. Cloud computing is the key enabler of the digital transformation and offers a boost to drive innovation by empowering organizations to leverage the technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, augmented reality, chatbots, internet of things (IoT), etc. A cloud-delivered and cloud-enabled business model helps enterprises to reduce IT infrastructure complexity, focus on digital transformation, and discover newer channels for increasing customers outreach.

In this blog, we discuss how cloud computing can help enterprises in their digital transformation.

Enables Faster Prototyping
An enterprise requires continuous innovation, testing, and implementation to drive digital transformation. Cloud provides organizations with a platform where they can easily build, test, and deploy apps on different platforms throughout the transformation phase, without setting up complex infrastructure.
Enhanced Collaboration
Cloud computing enables businesses to access, retrieve and process information at any time and from any place, ensuring efficient collaboration and improved productivity. Moreover, video communication is much easier with cloud, as it lets businesses to manage and schedule meetings directly onto the system.
Improved Security
You may constantly face the risk of losing critical information due to unexpected system shutdown, data breaches, etc., if your data is stored in-house. Furthermore, in case of the big data analysis, the chances of system failure increases considerably. Enterprises can reduce this risk by moving to cloud hosting which enables them to create multiple backups of their data in a secured medium.
Reduced Operational Costs
The cloud provides a scalable service model where enterprises are supposed to pay only for the resources used. It helps effectively scale the resources on the basis of requirements and saves the cost of purchasing and managing IT infrastructure. Moreover, cloud servers reduce the need of IT support staff and continual server environment refreshes.
Flexibility and Efficiency
Cloud computing brings agility and flexibility by providing requisite platforms, infrastructure, and computing resources, without investing in different IT infrastructure. It enables enterprises to quickly respond to customer needs, eliminating the problem of IT systems overload or over-provisioning.

Though the cloud technology offers a wide range of benefits such as rapid deployment, automatic software updates, disaster recovery, elastic capacity, and pay-per-use, migrating all your apps and data to a public or private cloud with zero data loss and minimal impact on productivity is not an easy task. Engaging a dedicated cloud service provider for your cloud transition project will ease your cloud transition journey.

The demand for integrating social media in business operations is increasing steadily. Social networks not only allow users to interact beyond social or local frontier, but also let them share videos, photos and play social games. As a matter of fact, social media is no more just a place to hang out nowadays, it has turned into something greater where businesses can connect with their existing and potential customers.

Social Media – A Glimpse

In the United States, social media spending is expected to reach $17.34 billion in 2019.
86% of people follow brands on Facebook, Pinterest and other social media and 75% of them purchase the products after seeing ads on social channels.
As per the reports of Statista, in 2021, there will be around 3.02 billion social media users around the globe.
Currently, Facebook has more than 1.86 billion active users and it is the market leader in terms of scope and reach.

Social media presents a massive pool of prospects that businesses can capitalize on through advertising. According to a research, for the first quarter of 2017, there has been a hike of 61.5% in paid media spend on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Instagram.

The Big Challenge of Advertising on Facebook

Although Facebook has 1.86 billion active users and presents a great opportunity for businesses to capitalize on this audience, it’s an uphill task to advertise on Facebook and deliver a consistent feel, look, and message that is in line with other channels of your organization. Moreover, it is difficult to maintain price changes, library of product images and descriptions while simultaneously managing product promotions.

What is Magento Social and How It Helps Overcome the Challenges of Advertising on Facebook?

Magento Social is a product of Magento that allows businesses to turn their social profiles into digital storefronts. Magento Social directly integrates Facebook profile of your business with Magento Commerce, making it easy to set up a Facebook shop with the correct pricing, description, photos, and information of the products. Since the product listings are updated automatically on a regular basis, it reduces your efforts to manually manage product catalogs at various places.

Image Source: Magento

Magento Social makes it convenient for your customers to share and like their favorite products from the up-to-date listings. Further, merchants can keep track of performance and available budget towards the best-performing categories and products. It allows you to make strategies to quickly clear inventory or launch a promotion campaign for the best-selling product.

Image Source: Magento

How Magento Social Helps Businesses Gain a Competitive Edge?

Easy Management of Product Listings with Your Social Profiles
Magento Social integrates Magento product catalog with the social networks of the merchants, allowing them to launch a storefront with just a few clicks. It automatically keeps your Magento product catalogue consistent with product listings on your social media profiles.
Increased Engagement with Your Brand
Merchants can optimize their social channels to display their products and brands to the potential buyers. A strong social commerce strategy not only strengthens your brand, but also converts followers into customers and customers into marketers.
Brand Recommendation
Consumers most likely tend to purchase products which are recommended to them by their friends or relatives. Magento Social empowers your loyal customers to share your products over social channels.
Compelling and Optimized Ads
Merchants can create optimized and impressive ads from their eCommerce site in real-time in order to drive customer engagement. The ads can also be displayed with product descriptions and images.
Reach More Buyers
Magento Social provides embedded precision targeting tools through which you can identify your audience and allocate ad spending towards best-performing categories and products.

Get Magento Social, a bundled extension of Magento 2.2, installed soon if you want to turn your social media initiatives into a growth driver and generate new revenue streams.

Optimize sales, boost revenue & turn your social profiles into digital storefronts.

Explore the right Adobe (Magento) Commerce integrations as per your needs.

Magento is one of the world’s leading eCommerce platforms. It is looking to extend its B2B, Cloud, and 2.x offerings at a faster pace. Magento claims 19.64% market share among all eCommerce platforms. More than 250,000 merchants around the globe use Magento and this platform accounts to an estimated $100 billion business every year. On an average, businesses using Magento grow 3 times faster than those on competitive eCommerce platforms with almost 50 percent lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Magento Community has 150,000 developers who contribute to building extensions and improving the platform.

The popularity of Magento has also considerably increased the threat of security breaches. Cyber attacks can lead to leaked financial data, vulnerable client information, and disrupted information that, in turn, affects the goodwill and credibility of your business.

In this blog, we have provided some tips to make your Magento eCommerce store secured and protected.

1. Update to Latest Magento Version and Security Patches

Magento periodically launches new versions with known bug patches, general maintenance, and security enhancements. Magento releases accompanying notes with every latest patch to specify the fixes that have been made to overcome previous flaws. However, it gives a clue to the hackers to exploit the outdated online stores. Therefore, in order to assure the security of your online portal, it is recommended to upgrade to the latest Magento version available that should protect from all known threats.

2. Ensure Magento Security with Secured Password

You can reduce the risk of security breach by simply following right password practices.

Your password must be strong, unique, and completely random.
Avoid using special dates, favorite places, pet names or any personal information as your password as these are easily crackable.
Your password must combine special characters (like exclamation marks, dash, question marks, etc.), numbers, uppercase, and lowercase letters.
We also recommend you to change your password frequently.
Don’t use the same password for multiple logins.
Saving passwords on the computer increases the risk of being hacked by the malware roaming around on the internet. Thus, do not save passwords on your computer.

3. Implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and Change Your Admin Panel URL

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) provides additional security to your Magento store. 2FA requires password and username as well as a piece of information (such as letter combination or a number sequence) that only the user knows, for login. Two-Factor Authentication extensions can be easily downloaded from the Magento Marketplace.

The standard URL of your online Magento store, by default, is yourdomain.com/admin. Obtaining access to your Magento admin page is not a hard nut to crack for the hackers. In order to reduce the risk and ensure security, we recommend you to create a custom path to your admin URL using Magento’s guide.

4. Prevent SQL Injection by Implementing Firewall

Hackers use SQL Injection technique to tamper the sensitive data or make changes to the backend of a site through coded commands. Though Magento takes all the possible measures to prevent SQL injection, you are advised to secure your online store against such attacks by implementing a firewall application.

Firewall defends your site against malware attacks in the following ways:

Alerts the administrators by detecting unapproved SQL statements.
Keeps check on out of policy SQL statements made in real-time.
Blocks attempts of SQL injection before their execution.
Tracks and analyzes the incoming threats by logging SQL activities.
For user level flexibility, firewall creates whitelists of SQL statements per user basis.

5. Use an SSL Encrypted Connection

In order to ensure security of the data being sent from and to your Magento portal, use an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypted connection. Unencrypted data connections are vulnerable to data interception and theft. You can apply SSL through Magento’s URL setting found in the Admin Panel. Once you install SSL, an iconic green padlock will appear on your website in the browser, indicating the visitors that your online store is safely encrypted.

6. Implement Disaster Recovery and Backup Plan

Even after following all the security tips, your webstore is never entirely protected from hackers. In such circumstances, having backups of your website on the hard disk and cloud will help restore the previous version of your website. Backups are also useful in cases of configuration issues with newly installed extensions, deletion of critical files and other accidental errors.

Other Security Tips

Directory Indexing should be disabled.
Use IP whitelisting and .htaccess password protection for admin.
File Permissions: Core Magento and Directory Files should be set to read only, including app/etc/local.xml files (Configuration Files).
Never use paid extensions that are published on torrent or other sites. Install extensions from only trusted sources (preferably Magneto Marketplace).
Monitor all system logins (FTP, SSH) for unexpected activity, uploads or commands.
Review server logs on daily basis against suspicious activity.

Although Magento support team constantly works on security and maintenance updates to keep the web-stores secured, online store owners must stay cautious in their efforts for smooth and safe operations of their online businesses.

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with presence in the UK and the USA, has a comprehensive experience in rendering end-to-end Magento eCommerce development services, including Magento Security Optimization. Our dedicated Magento experts conduct website vulnerability audit to prevent security breaches.

Feel free to contact Ranosys Technologies or drop a line to sales@ranosys.com to know more about Magento services.

Magento has emerged as a robust tool for migrating traditional businesses to online. With a rapid growth of B2B market, in September 2017, Magento released Magento 2.2 version with some amazing features. This platform is designed to provide a unique experience for admin and customers while making life easier for all.

B2B eCommerce – The Future

As per the reports of Forrester, B2B eCommerce in the US will top $1.1 trillion and comprise 12.1% of all B2B sales by 2020.
eCommerce in Singapore is expected to grow by more than 11% by 2021.
The European B2C eCommerce turnover is anticipated to grow at a rate of 14% and reach around €602 billion in 2017.
In the UK, the B2B marketplace is forecasted to be twice the size of that of B2C.

Here are few of the new features of Magento 2.2 for B2B eCommerce.

1. Custom Catalog

Magento 2.2 empowers store owners to define customer catalog access and to control categories, products, and prices displayed to their business partners. The catalog creation process runs in the backend and the Admin is notified by the system when the catalog is available to be assigned to multiple customers.

The catalog can be created by following these simple steps:

Step 1 – Select Products for Catalog

Select the products to be displayed in the new catalog. Specific products can be excluded / included using the filters.

Step 2 – Set Custom Prices

The store owners can apply one discount to all products in bulk, set new fixed prices for each product or set individual discounts on per product basis.

2. Advanced Account Management

Advanced account management tools have been added in Magento 2.2. Magento 2.2 enables multiple buyers to share a single account. The store owners can create and assign different roles and requisite permissions to each buyer, completely controlling what can be edited or viewed by the user. The merchant’s interaction is not required as it is possible to manage the corporate account from the frontend.

A B2B client can view company information, credit balance, orders, and quotes as well as define roles and permissions, remove or add new company user with great ease.

3. Quote Management

In the older versions of Magento, the merchants can get quote requests only after installing certain tools, but in Magento 2.2, it is a default feature. You are provided with the option to filter and search specific quotes as well as customize them.

All communications and updates related to each quote can be viewed in the history log. Moreover, you can save each quote proposal draft multiple times before it is finalized to be sent to the B2B partner.

One of the most amazing features of Magento 2.2 for B2B is that the business partner can request a quote right from the shopping cart. Documents and comments can be added to quote requests. Merchants can set an expiration date for quotes.

4. Easy Customer Negotiations

Magento 2.2 allows merchants to calculate and apply discounts, total cost data, suggest alternative products, negotiate with B2B partners about the price of the products and shipping conditions.

5. Payment on Credit Option

Credit card or PayPal payment methods are already available with the older version of Magento, a new option is added in Magento 2.2 – Payment on Accounts. With this feature, completely configurable credit (with conditions and limits) can be provided to selected B2B customers. The store owners also have an option to set a limit for maximum and minimum order amount and restrict credits for particular countries.

Current outstanding balance (credit amount), credit limit, and available credit can be viewed on the Company Credit page, which appears as follows.

The B2B customer account section appears as follows.

6. Swift Purchases

Orders can be placed as fast as possible by uploading a CSV file or entering SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). Magento 2.2 lets your business partners enter multiple SKUs simultaneously. Magento automatically validates the SKUs and notifies customers if that inventory is available or not.

Magento 2.2 also features an accelerated ordering with requisition lists. The store owner can create multiple lists of regularly purchased products and hand over to specific buyers. B2B clients can copy already completed orders, add items from product pages and category (via “Add to Requisition List” button), or add items to each list by entering SKUs.

7. Improved Security

Unserialize calls have been removed from Magento 2.2 in order to address security vulnerability issues.
Hashing algorithm is upgraded and revamped to enhance security for sensitive values.
In order to have 100% chargeback protection and identify and reject fraudulent orders, Magento 2.2 has been integrated with Signifyd.

8. Automated Shipping Processes

Merchants can automate their business processes with Magento 2.2. It helps improve B2B operations by allowing merchants to load and dispatch the store products from anywhere and apply unique product allocation rules based on each shipping location. New mail features and service providers can be added with ease without updating the site completely.

Other Magento 2.2 Features

Better Productivity
Magento 2.2 has been introduced with improved indexing which allows customers to browse the store and place orders during indexing. The technical stack update includes Varnish 5, Redis 3.2, MySQL 5.7, PHP 7.1, etc. This version does not support Varnish 3 and PHP 5.6.
Advanced Reports
Magento 2.2 has much better reporting system than the older version. However, third-party modules are still required for report generation.

Developer Features

Various developer-oriented features have been integrated with Magento 2.2.

Minimized core around plugins.
Improved deployment flow to upgrade product environment in no time.
Improved logging of JS exceptions and crons.
Improved performance toolkit with updated features like support for new B2B entities, faster generation (up to 14 times), profiles update, etc.

Improved ERP Integration
For all new features, Magento 2.2 offers APIs to connect the existing ERP services with the new version. However, in order to support the new B2B functionality, modules used for ERP integration must be updated. Moreover, it will be easier to update the product prices in bulk with the new Tier Price API.
Bundled Extensions
Magento 2.2 features the first third-party extension – Magento Social, which helps connect your corporate Facebook account to your store. You can also create a page with products from your catalog. The shoppers will be redirected to the corresponding product page on clicking a product.
Pipeline Deployment
This new deployment process reduces production system downtime for site updates and supports easy management of configuration between environments. Resource-intensive processes can be implemented on the build server.

Magento 2.2 has several advanced features that offer enhanced functionality, flexibility, and most important, security to your webstore. If you are planning to migrate to Magento 2.2, you must hire dedicated Magento agency in order to reap the maximum benefits from this platform. Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with presence in the USA and UK, specializes in Magento eCommerce development, Magento designing, Magento customization, Magento SEO, plugins and extension development, Magento migration, and other Magento services. If you want to upgrade your eCommerce platform to keep up with the trends, contact us or drop a line to sales@ranosys.com.

Ranosys Technologies, a leading digital technology service provider in Singapore, the UK and the USA, has become a partner of OutSystems, a popular low-code app development platform provider, to accelerate the digital transformation journey of the clients. This partnership will enable Ranosys to further enhance its low-code development expertise, and to develop flexible apps with quick turnaround time.

The partnership will enable both organizations to acquire new customers in SMBs and Enterprise level customers. The major focus of this agreement is to drive end-to-end enterprise mobility solutions using Ranosys’s enterprise mobility expertise and OutSystem’s proven low-code app development platform.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO, Ranosys Technologies, said “We are delighted to partner with OutSystems. This partnership fortifies our commitment to deliver superior value propositions and enterprise-class solutions to the global clients.” He added, “Collaborating with OutSystems is a step towards our commitment to provide affordable solutions based on cutting-edge technologies for our valued customer. We are looking forward to leveraging OutSystems’ capabilities to provide rapid legacy modernization solutions and reduce overall turnaround time in building and delivering better apps.”

In its role as an OutSystems partner, Ranosys will provide consulting, design and architecture, development, server administration, and maintenance and support services, in order to drive innovation by reaping the automation benefits provided by this low-code platform. For more information on Ranosys OutSystems offerings, visit https://www.ranosys.com/outsystems-low-code-development.

About OutSystems

OutSystems has emerged as one of the best rapid application development low-code software platforms with advanced mobile capabilities. This Rapid Application Development Platform (RADP) provides all the needed tools and environment for developers to build, deploy, and manage custom enterprise apps with ease. At present, OutSystems manages the entire app lifecycle of large portfolios at more than 600 enterprise organizations across 22 industries in 33 countries.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, an OutSystems low-code app developer in Singapore, the UK (London) and the USA, is driven by digital transformation and aims to seek the fastest path for enterprises to value in today’s digital economy. Ranosys has comprehensive knowledge of OutSystems and offers continuous, agile and rapid development and quick delivery and management of enterprise level apps.

For more information, visit https://www.ranosys.com.

In an era when enterprise mobility has scaled new heights of achievements, page loading speed is crucial in determining the success of any eCommerce business. In a research, it was observed that approximately 40% of mobile users take themselves off from a web page if it takes a longer time to load. In order to reduce the page load time on mobile devices, Google introduced AMP in 2015. It came up with mobile search algorithm update in 2016 and started highlighting Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) in its mobile search results. Shorter load times can help eCommerce retailers to improve their web performance and visibility on Search Engine Results Page (SERP) of Google.

A Brief Introduction of AMP

AMPs are open-source protocols that speed up pages loading on mobile browsers. AMP HTML pages can load 15-85% faster than non-AMP pages.
AMP – an extremely powerful version of HTML, supports various ad networks.
Data consumption reduces eight times when you load AMP than an average web page.
The AMP links appear with gray lightning-bolt featuring logo along with the tag “AMP” in Google search results.
AMP pages can be easily activated on websites built on Magento, Drupal, WordPress and on many other popular CMS.

Is AMP different from responsive web design?

Both AMP and responsive web design make use of the same programming languages – CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, but both are used to achieve different goals. A responsive web design is a method of developing websites that can be easily accessed by users on any mobile device. On the contrary, AMP is a web framework that aims to deliver remarkable speed and quality content to users.

While the responsive websites are created by redesigning the existing website whereas, implementation of AMP can be done easily on existing websites without the need of redesigning.

Performance Report of a Responsive Page

Image Source: Search Engine Journal

Performance Report of the AMP Version of the Same URL

Image Source: Search Engine Journal

Benefits of AMP for eCommerce Businesses
Let’s see how AMP can help eCommerce businesses to grow.
1. Reduced Bounce Rate
  One of the reasons why visitors leave the site is – slow page loading. AMP enhances the user experience by improving page load speed. It leads to a reduction in the bounce rate and increases the average time a visitor spends on a site.
2. Increased Effectiveness of Online Advertising Campaigns
  According to a research, eCommerce businesses that used Accelerated Mobile Pages in their online email campaigns observed 200 percent increase in click-through rates and 18 percent increase in ad performance. The higher the click-through rates, the higher will be the customer engagement.
3. Improved Search Engine Visibility
  Faster loading speed increases the visibility of the pages in the organic search results of Google. That means your store will appear in top search when customers perform a mobile search to look for the items.
4. New Insights About Customers
  AMP enables businesses to track video engaging, clicks, conversions, number of returning and new visitors. AMP also offers built-in support for Google Analytics that helps you get some new insights and devise strategies accordingly.
5. Monetizing Your Website is Easy with AMP
  Websites are generally loaded with ads to generate more revenue which, in turn, increases the load time. Some users install ad blockers to load sites faster. With AMP, sites with an abundance of ads can load quickly as AMP supports an extensive range of ad technologies, networks, and formats, therefore ensuring effective ad monetization on the mobile web.
Most of the customers prefer to do shopping from their mobile phones and they want pages to load really fast. Here, AMP proves its worthiness. AMP enables users to quickly navigate and easily read the content, avoiding pop-ups in articles. Moreover, all your SEO activities without AMP are in vain.
Since Google supports AMP, one should also go for Accelerated Mobile Pages to bring more success to eCommerce business. For now, there are no clear indications that AMP will impact ranking soon, but we hope that it will be a key ranking factor in the future and become the new standard for the mobile web.
Ranosys, a trusted IT partner and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) development company with presence in Singapore, UK (London) and USA, has comprehensive experience of about a decade in offering enterprise mobility solutions. Our skilled AMP developers have competence in making your existing page AMP and implementing the best AMPs, regardless of your industry vertical. We are keen to offer excellent service at the first place. Connect with us.

Ranosys strongly advocates the digital transformation and leaves no stone unturned in helping its clients to transform their businesses to “Digital Organization”. In order to make a strong presence in OutSystems platform, Ranosys joined Accelerate: The OutSystems Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Seminar organized on November 17, 2017 at Andaz Singapore.

The seminar was graced by amazing speakers, industry experts, and OutSystems partners. The session started with the welcome note by Mark Weaser, Vice President of Asia Pacific, OutSystems. Mike Hughes, Director of Product Marketing and Andy Pemberton, Vice President of Global Solution Architecture from OutSystems shared their insights on how to accelerate the digital transformation and mobile and web development with low-code. Daniel Lim, Managing Director of Dreamcloud, shared knowledge on how to accelerate web and mobile app development.

The session was concluded with the accolades and industry awards received by the Outsystems in the last year.

At the end of the session, Team Ranosys got an opportunity to collaborate and exchange ideas with the speakers, industry experts and like-minded people over lunch.

The breadth of topics and depth of the knowledge coverage made the seminar very interesting and incredibly valuable. Looking forward to helping our Asia Pacific and global clients leverage the benefits of OutSystems to the fullest.

About OutSystems

OutSystems has emerged as one of the rapid application development low-code software platforms. Development of small to large mission-critical apps is easier and faster with OutSystems. This platform also speeds up the integration of apps with existing cloud and on-premises systems. A recent survey recorded that 74% of OutSystems customers observed a significant enhancement in their software delivery speed.

Several trusted review sites have recognized OutSystems as one of the top-notch low-code development platforms. For instance, TrustRadius has named OutSystems as a 2017 Top Rated Low-Code Platform. It has been recognized as a Leader in Forrester WaveTM report. Gartner has also named OutSystems as a Leader in Magic Quadrant for Enterprise High-Productivity Application Platform as a Service 2017 Report.

If you are planning a roadmap to digitalize your business using OutSystems, contact Ranosys.

Ranosys organized the 14th Singapore Magento User Group Meetup on November 9, 2017 at Microsoft Singapore. Ranosys has been offering Magento services since 2008 and always look back at ways to contribute to the Magento community. Singapore Magento User Group Meetup is one such initiative, where we welcome Magento professionals, developers, merchants, and eCommerce experts to explore the wonderful world of Magento.

The Meetup was totally amazing, inspiration-fuelled, and info-packed. Sessions covered broad-based topics like Digital Commerce without Limits, eCommerce Needs and Opportunities for Foreign Workers in Singapore, and Deployment of Omnichannel B2B2C Commerce, Order Management & Logistics Platforms.

Agenda of the Meetup

Sharing valuable insights on how Magento is meeting the increasing traction of global customers towards digital transformation, Mel Lim, one of the members of the Enterprise Team at Magento Commerce, threw light on buying patterns, commerce system flexibility, driving innovation, maximizing gross margins, and fulfilling end-to-end expectations.

Watch Mel’s presentation video by clicking the below link:
Digital Commerce Without Limits – Singapore Magento User Group

Vijay Pagadala (CSO), Ranosys Technologies, shared his ideas on how retailers, distributors, wholesalers, and commerce providers can reap the maximum benefits of integrated B2B2C platforms, in order to fine-tune and streamline their product offerings, order management, sales processes, logistics, and customer service.

Click the below link to watch Vijay’s Presentation:
Deployment of Omnichannel B2B2C Commerce, Order Management & Logistics Platforms

Haryadi Handoko, Executive Director of PT Digital Media Technology – Optical Disc Business of Centurion Corporation Ltd, put forward some interesting findings about mobile usage patterns and shared his views on eCommerce needs and opportunities for foreign workers in Singapore

Video of Haryadi’s presentation:
eCommerce in the Student & Worker Accommodation Industry – Singapore Magento User Group

After the presentations, Magento enthusiasts got together to network and socialize. It was a great opportunity for the community to share learnings and exchange ideas.

For photos of the Meetup, please visit our online album.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.941917012631404&type=3

One of the major challenges for IT teams is to develop enterprise-grade mobile apps. Many of the organizations use the legacy IT systems that restrict them to align with the ever-changing demands of their businesses. In such a scenario, the emergence of low-code technology has proved a boon for bridging the gap between IT capabilities and ever-changing business needs. The low-code platform lets businesses create and quickly deploy high-quality apps with minimal coding. OutSystems, a low-code technology platform is gaining traction among enterprises for it helps in smooth digital transformation as well as real-time performance management of the apps.

When to Consider a Low-Code Technology Platform?

You must choose a low-code platform in the following instances:

Your app is supposed to work on all major mobile platforms.
You are planning to use your mobile apps as a competitive advantage.
You need to build and manage multiple apps at a faster pace.
In-house IT development is prone to errors or is slow.
Your important considerations are lifecycle management, iterations, and changes.
You have a backlog of web or mobile apps to build.

Top 5 Reasons to Select Low-Code Technology Platform

Shorter Lead Times and Enhanced Security
Business leaders prefer to outsource their work to external vendors when IT backlogs increase. This strategy resolves the short-term needs but creates long-term challenges as it becomes difficult to manage multiple IT teams and projects. Here, the low-code platform plays a vital role. Low-code platforms use the common infrastructure and shorten the lead times, thereby enhancing compliance, security, and transparency.
Lower Risk and Higher ROI
Low-code platforms have inbuilt data integration capabilities, cross-platform support, and security. Moreover, these platforms are easy to customize and the risk of catastrophic failure associated with them is significantly low.
Innovation
Hand coding an app is obviously a labor-intensive work and time-consuming task. With low-code platforms, innovative functionalities can be created and features can be customized quickly with great ease.
Increased Stakeholder Engagement
Building and updating the apps at a faster pace is possible with low-code platforms that enable developers to share fully functional features with stakeholders in a short span of time. Dynamic and short iteration cycles boost responsiveness and user engagement.
After Launch App Maintenance
A successful launch of an app is not enough to stay ahead of the competition. You need to keep your app updated with new features. Integration of new features and complex updates can be easily made with a low-code platform without affecting the development of other projects.

OutSystems as a Low-Code Platform

OutSystems has been named as a Leader in Mobile Application Development Platforms 2017 by Gartner. As per a recent survey, 74% of the OutSystems customers improved their software delivery speed significantly. It combines advanced mobile capabilities with the power of low-code development. Features like unbeatable speed, easy integration, great UX, built-in security, massive scalability, error-free deployment, and real-time performance dashboards make OutSystems an incredible low-code platform.

As a low-code platform, OutSystems addresses the challenges of faster delivery cycles and digital transformation. With OutSystems, it is easy to develop small to large mission-critical apps in faster and easier manner. It also speeds up and eases the integration of apps with existing on-premises and cloud systems and databases as well as manages the continuous, agile and rapid development and delivery of apps. OutSystems makes it possible to develop the app once and deliver it quickly across various channels simultaneously.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, an OutSystems platform developer in Singapore, UK (London) and the USA, helps create enterprise level apps, leveraging this low-code platform. We have comprehensive knowledge of OutSystems that enables us to offer continuous, agile and rapid development and quick delivery and management of all the apps, required to digitalize the client’s enterprise.

Have you ever wondered that you can know what your customers are searching on website? Or if your customer is a fitness freak, a passionate reader or a tech enthusiast? Or you can send the recommendation directly to customers’ email for a product that they were searching for a long time? Well, this is possible through Predictive Analytics.

Predictive Analytics is a part of advanced analytics that is used to predict future trends, behavior and activities on the basis of historical and current data. The techniques used for Predictive Analytics are: automated machine learning algorithms, data mining, artificial intelligence, and predictive modeling. Predictive Analytics is going to expand its impact in the world of eCommerce in the coming years.

Predictive Analytics helps online retailers get better insight into what will make the customers to respond to their calls to action or buy their products, and through which platform the customers are going to interact with their brand. eCommerce industry can benefit by turning the data generated from Predictive Analytics into actionable insights.

Let us discuss in detail how Predictive Analytics will drive the growth of the eCommerce business.

Relevant Promotions and Recommendations
Predictive Analytics uses machine learning to understand consumers’ behavior and determine what products they are looking for. Based on this, retailers can offer relevant recommendations that are likely to generate a sale.
Furthermore, Predictive Analytics helps identify the promotion strategies that worked best in the past. Retailers can analyze the browsing pattern of the consumers and offer the right promotions in real-time.
Management of Supply Chain Process
It’s easy to understand consumer demand and manage supply chain management process, including planning, forecasting, sourcing, delivery and returns, through Predictive Analytics. Large retailers can utilize the results generated by Predictive Analytics in avoiding out-of-stock items, better inventory management, optimized use of cash flow and warehouse space.
Retaining Repeat Customers
Predictive Analysis technologies enable retailers to offer the right product to the right customer, in the right way at the right time. Based on this analytical approach, businesses can optimize their communication strategy in advance in order to confirm purchasing trends. This, in turn, converts new customers to repeat customers.
Real-Time Pricing Management
Predictive Analytics offers insights into available inventory, competitor pricing, customer activity, desired margins on the product, preferences and order history, and historical product pricing. Using these inputs, retailers can set real-time pricing for the products in order to maximize profits.

In the changing business environment, the only way to create a greater impact on consumers is to offer innovative services. Predictive Analytics helps retailers transform and reshape the online shopping experience and exceed customers’ expectations by providing real-time insights into the performance of multiple channels, current and future marketing trends, and consumer behavior. Moreover, Predictive Analytics enables eCommerce businesses to promote targeted advertising and optimize costs. If you also want to stay ahead of the competition, include Predictive Analytics in your marketing strategy. For more information on how to use Predictive Analytics in reaping benefits to your business, contact Ranosys.

Boost your eCommerce ROI with predictive analytics.

We can help you better your eCommerce revenue with our strategies.

Magento Meetup London, which was organized on 25th October 2017, provided a great platform for the London Magento community to meet and exchange ideas and information about Magento. Ranosys, an eminent Magento eCommerce development agency and a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with presence in the UK and USA, participated in this event to gain curated information from the Magento experts, to share its expertise with the Magento community, and to extend connections with the Magento enthusiasts.

Anand Ramdeo, Managing Director – EMEA Region, Ranosys, presented his views on testing strategies for the eCommerce Stores built on Magento, in the meetup. This blog post is a summary of this event.

This event provided a good opportunity to network with others from the Magento community and learn a bit more about how others are using Magento. This event was hosted at the END’s office and the evening started with the talk from Renato Cason, the Head of Development at END. Renato shared his experience around improving the performance of eCommerce stores powered by Magento. Let us revisit some of the tips and tricks that Renato shared to improve the performance.

The first tip that Renato gave was around optimising the code base. He recommended this amazing talk from Max to identify different ways to find and remove unused modules, disabled unused functionality, and remove inefficiencies in the core.

The next tip Raneto gave was around the usage of the tools. He mentioned two main tools that can help you identify how your Magento application is performing.

Magento Profiler
Blackfire

If you are not using these tools already, have a look at them to see as they can give a good insight on performance as well as the dependency graphs for a Magento page. This dependency graph could be useful in identifying which dependencies were requested, but never used. One important thing to remember is that although profiling locally is useful, it would not uncover issues that you are likely to face in the production environment.

After sharing tips around organising the codebase and profiling, Renato shared the importance of caching and tagging. He recommended that caching should be used with appropriate tagging or a sensible TTL strategy. He also highlighted the risk of caching too much as a big product catalogue with many stores and currencies can potentially generate millions of entries.

He has shared his presentation online and if you would like to know more about improving performance of your Magento site, you should certainly have a look at his slidedeck at SlideShare.

In the second talk, Anand Ramdeo shared his views on how testing can be managed in an eCommerce environment, specially if you are working in an Agency.

He highlighted that one of the best ways to grow any business, especially the service business, is by ensuring that your customers are successful. If your customers, internal or external, are successful, they will have more reasons to work with you and give you more business. It is a simple concept, however, software defects, big or small, can often come into the way of making your customers successful. These defects can often manifest themselves in lost revenue, lost opportunity, and bad publicity. Not only that, it also makes your development a bit reactive and hampers your ability to innovate and add features that can delight your customers.

After touching upon the risks of releasing bad software, he shared his views on how Ranosys works to ensure that the quality of its deliverables meet the expectations of its clients. With focus on good engineering practices and a testing strategy that is contextual, repeatable, robust, extensive, and reusable, it becomes a bit easier for Ranosys to manage the quality of its deliverables.

In an agency environment, your ability to create a repeatable and reusable model could be your biggest asset. As it allows you not only to ensure quality of the projects you are delivering, but also lets you to offer independent testing services to other eCommerce applications and agencies. It was great for Anand to discuss Ranosys strategies around this with the Magento community. If you are interested in learning a bit more about the testing strategies for the eCommerce store, you can have a look at the presentation Anand gave at SlideShare.

Overall, this event was an excellent opportunity for the team Ranosys to learn from the community and contribute in the growth of this community in the UK.

A huge thanks to the organizers of the Meetup for giving us an opportunity to share our knowledge and increasing our understanding of the Magento ecosystem. It was a great event and looking forward to the next one.

If you found this blog post useful, please share it with your network on Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter.

Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives these days. Almost two-thirds of the entire global population is using mobile on a regular basis and this is evident from a survey report, which states that there are 4.96 billion mobile users around the world. The proliferation and innovation of the mobile internet have empowered the consumers like never before and they have turned savvier when it comes to researching and purchasing the products. According to the forecasts of BI Intelligence, mCommerce will account for 45% of $632 billion of total eCommerce sales by 2020.

With eCommerce and mCommerce trends gaining traction on a global level, these trends are performing beyond expectations in the UK. Studies by various agencies forecast an increasing percentage of mCommerce transactions amidst an escalating eCommerce landscape. As per the predictions of eMarketer, in 2017, the UK retail eCommerce market is expected to exceed £81.55 billion ($110.07 billion). The same report states that smartphones will channelize 46.5% of total retail mCommerce sales in the UK. In a nutshell, £35.31 billion ($47.66 billion) UK retail eCommerce sales will come from mobile commerce, in 2017.

Some Interesting Facts About Mobile Commerce in the UK

In 2017, the UK alone will have 43.6 million smartphone users.
Mobile’s share of total UK retail sales will rise from 6.3% to 7.6% in 2017. (Statistics sourced from: eMarketer)
By 2024, spending on mobile will top £53 billion.
Approximately half (42.4%) retail sales will be generated through a mobile device. (Statistics sourced fro

Image Source: Business Insider

eCommerce Trends to Watch in 2017

With more than half of the internet traffic coming from mobile and smartphones being used at every phase of buying journey, retailers are now devising their marketing and content strategies around mobile. Based on the changing shopping patterns, we have predicted trends that will drive the eCommerce industry in 2017.

1. Cognitive Automation and Robotics Will Continue to be the Talk of the Town

Tools like chatbots and AI voice assistants in mobile messaging platforms and mobile apps will narrow the gap of personalization that online buyers come across while shopping. These tools are going to be an important part of retailers mobile strategies in 2017 and will reduce the need to manually type in product names, shipping information, and payment credentials, thereby helping businesses reach a bigger audience.

Watch the below video to get insight about how AI will empower retail in 2017.
Future of retail is here with the AI – Are you ready? – Singapore Magento User Group

2. Contextual and User-Focused Commerce will Thrive

In the present scenario, consumers want context-based, optimized, and highly intuitive shopping experience. In 2017, the entire focus of merchants will be on simplifying and streamlining the buying process by allowing consumers to purchase anything, anywhere, anytime with just a click.

3. Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Will Take the Stage

The incorporation of AR and VR into retail models will provide retailers an opportunity to reduce consumer pain points and create a personalized and differentiated shopping experience. With the use of these technologies in the apps, the consumers will be able to try and buy products without visiting the store.

The rise in smartphone sales is driving momentum from eCommerce to mCommerce and this has changed consumer shopping preferences and patterns. Since shopping through smartphones is steadily on the rise, it is becoming necessary for merchants to ensure that their web portals are mobile-responsive to meet consumer expectations.

Ranosys, one of the leading eCommerce development service providers in Asia Pacific, the UK and the USA, follows the constantly evolving trends in order to keep clients ahead of the curve. If you are looking for new ideas and rapid momentum for your online store, contact us. We assure you to provide advanced eCommerce solutions and extend your online presence globally.

Recently, we had the privilege of talking to Anna on various aspects related to the software testing. It was a very interesting talk and so we divided our conversation with her in two parts. In the first part, we shared Anna’s views on the Software testing leadership and the role of the conferences

In this final part, let us talk about the context, conflicting priorities, and the challenges of testing applications powered by the new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Anand: Anna, let us talk about the changing role of a tester. In the old days, remit of the tester was clear. Test the application and find defects. However, in an integrated team, tester is a part of a larger team and there are conflicting priorities from the PM or Scrum Master, developers, DevOps, Product Owner and so on. How it has impacted the role of a tester?

Anna: There are conflicting priorities from different stakeholders because the meaning of quality is different for every stakeholder. One of the exercises I do during my training is to identify stakeholders. Like really identify all of your stakeholders, who depend on your work, and figure out what quality means to them. This exercise can bring many interesting points and reveals how quality is different for different people.

For example, company reputation could be very important for the C-level people; delivery dates could be very important for the marketing group because they build their campaigns around those dates; and operations or product team can have completely different meaning for quality. Operations Support team do not want 300 people calling on Monday morning to ask the same question – as the customers don’t know how to navigate the software with the broken workflow. An Information Security team could be another stakeholder. They want to ensure that there is no leakage of information.

In order for you to balance all those requests, you need to first discover what quality means to different groups of stakeholders, and then you can have the conversation of conflicting priorities.

This is why; I keep on pushing people into the leadership thinking. You have to understand your business as much as you understand your system. Sometimes business decision is to deliver faster with reasonable quality and that is okay too as they may have appropriate support on the business side to address it. It is possible for business to tell the user that the software is released with some issues — because it was important to release. Ultimately, it is the customer experience that matters. This is something that testers must learn, because if they do not, they may be pushing against the wall. As a test leader, you are expected to learn about the business and sometimes release new version in production with some known bugs. Be friends with business. Understand that they do not want to release with the bugs, but they may have some reasons. Understand those reasons.

Anand: Conflicting priorities are about understanding the context as well. When a tester starts working on a new project, what advice do you have for them to understand the context?

Anna: There are few focus areas you need to go through in order to learn and understand the context of your testing assignment.

Understand your mission and your stakeholders. First of all, why are you brought into this project? Who are you working for? Who needs your services? Find answers to these questions in order to understand the focus and the scope of your work. A hint: do not make your own assumptions about your testing mission, always discuss and confirm with the identified stakeholders.

Understand your resources. Resources are: time, tools, environments and skillsets of the people who can help with your testing mission. For example, if you have a developer on your team who will write a log interpreter tool for you – it will save you time to troubleshoot bugs you found. Also, such tool will help you learn about the message exchange/implementation details of the system without going to all the meetings where such details are being discussed. Another example: operations support admins know production system and users well, as they deal with customers on a daily basis. They can help with testing and will discover interesting bugs – as they know a lot about user patterns and pain points. You can also review test coverage with them, as they will give you some ideas.

Understand your product. Discover what market niche your product is created for, understand the competition, and learn about your product’s competitive advantage — because that is how your product is being sold. That information will help you to adjust your testing focus and identify the risky areas that can compromise the product quality.

Understand your users. Who are the customers of your product? What is their skillset? Which issues are they solving with your software? You need to park your experience as a tester and think like a user and the experience they will have with the product. You may know your product inside out, but your users may not. Understand their limitations.

Understand the depth of system changes. Discover and evaluate risks of the changes that are happening in the program. There could be new features, changes to the existing workflows, there could be changes in the architecture or technology stack. Those are different context drivers and they will have an impact on the way you test.

Understand your technology. You need to grasp the risks as well as the advantages (possibilities) of the new technology that your product is built with, and learn about the tools which programmers use when working with such technology. That knowledge will greatly enhance your testing strategy, as you may need to develop new testing methods and build your own testing tools for your mission.

Anand: You must have worked at many levels. How do you identify that there are some issues with the test function? How would you know if an organization needs help with the testing?

Anna: Basically, what you look for is complains. If there are no complains and everyone is happy, there is nothing that a consultant can bring. If people are complaining, it means they are ready for a change. Normally, people do not want to suffer and that’s what you want to look for. You need to talk with the testers and find why they are not happy and you need to talk with the developers / project managers / business owners and understand why they are not happy with test function.

There is always an opportunity for improvement, no matter what. I’ll highlight few areas where to search and what to look for, when addressing the issues.

Can the process be improved? We can always find a way to fit a tester in a process in a better way. Sometimes testers are excluded from decision making meetings, and sometimes they are brought in too late in the software delivery process and miss the opportunity to discover various issues. For example: discovering an inconsistency in the proposed solution at the discussion stage is much more efficient than finding the same inconsistencies at the product development stage – after the code has been written. Testers in general have a better understanding of the whole system and they can pinpoint such inconsistencies easily.

Are your test metrics/reports useful for the target audience? Have a look at how information is provided from the test team to the rest of the organization. I have seen many times that the metrics do not tell the right story at all. For example, you report that a tester executed 20 test cases – what does it mean? Nobody knows! What stakeholders look for is the information which helps them to make a decision. Provide information about the state of software in a meaningful way to your stakeholders, and you raise their respect and trust for test function.

How does the company evaluate testers’ skills and productivity? For example, is there a common expectation that all bugs have to be found by testers before release, and testers are blamed for bugs in production? Is tester being judged by the number of bugs found? Such expectations can create counterproductive habits in testers, lower their morale and introduce an additional tension between testers and developers.

Are your testers resistant to change? Sometimes, testers do not like flexibility. Some people are comfortable with where they are and there is a resistance to new ideas, sometimes subconscious. People are not comfortable with the change because their approaches will need to change, their routines, their communication and so on. Pad the path to change anticipating the learning curve, and provide support to people in test organization so that they are more comfortable with changing their habits.

Anand: When you identify opportunities to improve, do you take a top down approach or a bottom up approach in introducing these changes? Do you start with the management or the testers?

Anna: Unless you are a manager, you can not tell someone “this is how you should do it”. As a consultant, you can only highlight the opportunity. I have often seen that the biggest complaint may be the biggest opportunity. A consultant needs to look at organization’s major pain points and then address them.

But again, it depends on your role. If those people are reporting to you, you can tell them this is how we are going to work tomorrow. If they are not your reports, you can only offer suggestions. It depends on how you are brought into this organization. A consultant would discuss where the opportunities are, suggest few efficient ways to approach the desired outcomes, offer learning materials to add more understanding to the issues at hand, share case studies, discuss the pitfalls and will generally help the organization create a roadmap to success.

Anand: Anna, Let us talk about the new technologies. Many organisations are adapting Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based solutions. In this new world of AI powered, voice activated applications, what challenges a tester should expect?

Anna: The challenges that I have seen with new technologies – the number one is getting ready for it. I run a meetup for that: looking at the new technologies and how as testers we approach them. Usually, new technologies do not come our way straight away. They are usually coming from the top – either from the R&D, Engineering Excellence group or whatever.

Someone recently spoke about AI in the testing department at my meetup. It is very rare now for testers to get involved in ML/AI validation, but AI is becoming mainstream. Within few years, you will have AI in many industries such as Retail, Service, Vertical Farming, Finances, Urban Development – there is AI in everything. IMO, testing is more important in AI than the development because you need to build a testset that can challenge the AI.

Number one in approaching testing of the new technology is to gain the trust of the developers you work with. Number two, you have to really understand the risks of the new technology. In the olden days, if a feature didn’t work, it was a big deal. Now, it’s not. Ethical issues are a big risk now. With AI, there is so much interference with the personal life that ethics becomes an important matter. As a tester, you need to understand that, you need to include mitigation of ethical risks into your testing strategy.

Another thing is the IoT. IoT is very interesting – it watches you. It doesn’t look at your history, it watches you as you live your life. Imagine, your fridge is watching you, it knows what is inside and what you may want to order. With such an environment, you have privacy issues, ethics issues. It is very important to identify the risks and think through potential problems. For example, if machine accepts a verbal command and if you have an accent, would machine understand you? It is a big risk. It would be very important for testers to be aware of what is going on.

We now have virtual reality, augmented reality, driverless cars. Testers would eventually need to test features around that. Testers need to be proactive about these future tasks. Get ready for the new ideas, think about what issues there might be? Who, if not testers, are going to think about those issues?

To me, these are challenges, but they are also opportunities because these are the places where testers can shine. They can identify and highlight the potential risks. They can bring their mindset and skillset to the table to protect organizations from the risks related to privacy, ethics and endangerment of people’s lives.

In such environments, it helps if a tester can “speak the language” of the developer. Know the tools they are using, learn their language, understand their challenges. It is such a new sphere that testers can even come up with their own test methodologies. None of it exists; you can be a pioneer in testing new technologies and become an inventor of new test methods as well.

Anand: What advice would you give to somebody who wants to grow professionally and really wants to become good at it?

Anna: If you want to grow professionally, first of all – be open. Be open to new ideas. Be open to the fact that in some areas your experience doesn’t matter and your expertise doesn’t apply. There is a good exercise that context-driven testers play: a game called Where would it not work? It goes like that: name a testing practice or a process (“best practice”) and come up with situations where this practice or process wouldn’t work, would not apply. It is a great mental exercise to open up your mind to new ideas and to question the notion of the “best” practices.

Second: become part of a professional community. If you don’t belong to such community, you will spend your professional life reinventing the wheel. There are lots of good ideas and methodologies floating around. Community provides a safe avenue to discuss new ideas and practices.

Of course, become really good at software testing. Ideally, find a mentor. Ask mentors to give you hints, give you challenges. Talk to them about their expertise, learn from them.

Participate in conferences. My upcoming conference ConTEST NYC is focused on new things in software testing. There is always something new that people are sharing. That’s the main advantage of coming to the conferences. You learn and network with people who are thinking like you. A lot of things about software testing is gut feeling. Many people outside the software testing world may not understand what testers know intrinsically. It helps to be able to discuss your experience with people who may have the same perception.

And last, but not least: develop your communication skills. That is becoming a requirement now, and it wasn’t there five years ago. Now, it’s “a must have” skill for IT professional. Get prepared to work with others and to explain what you are doing. We, the software testers, rarely know the right way to tell our story, explain our value. Learn to provide your input and help this profession grow.

Anand: Thanks a lot, Anna. There are plenty of things for people to take on from this conversation. Any parting thoughts?

Anna: First of all, I invite everyone to my conference ConTEST NYC. It is happening end of November in New York, USA. ConTEST is focused on new and emerging technologies, ideas and practices in the field of software testing and quality engineering.

When you join the group of people who discuss emerging trends in your profession, you are taking the stand of the thought leader and contributor advancing the craft. You come back to your organization as a leader enhanced with the new ideas and expertise, and that’s very valuable to the company who sent you to the conference. Growing and supporting test leadership is my passion and I strongly encourage everyone to participate.

Finally, don’t worry about the doomsayers who say testing is dead and the job is going away. Ideas, skills and the need of testing is not going away. Critical thinking is always going to be needed. Keep learning and don’t be left behind.

Anand: Thanks Anna for taking the time out to talk with us. I am sure your experience and insight would be extremely useful for many people. I have been following your work for a long time now and I will look forward to your conferences and other contributions in the software testing community.

To our readers, hope you found this conversation informative and insightful. Please, share this conversation with the relevant people in your organization or network on Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In. Stay in touch!

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The future of eCommerce industry depends on the innovation. As a matter of fact, eCommerce trends keep on evolving constantly and in order to achieve competitive edge over others, it is essential to adapt the changes happening around at a very fast pace. Over the past few years, there has been an increase in interest around mobility solutions among enterprises. Enterprise mobility solutions enable retail and eCommerce industry to provide swift customer service, reduce operational costs and acquire new business opportunities. Moreover, real-time decision-making becomes easy with enterprise mobility solutions.

Some Interesting Facts About Enterprise Mobility

As per Strategic Analytics, enterprises will invest $61 billion in enterprise mobile apps by the year 2018. (Statistics sourced from: CDW Newsroom)
The global enterprise mobility market (which comprises of mobile business apps, mobile security, mobile application management and mobile device management) will generate $140 billion a year by 2020. (Statistics sourced from: Business Standard)
Companies gain an extra 240 hours of work per year from employees due to enterprise mobility. (Statistics sourced from: iPass)
By 2022, enterprise mobility market is expected to reach the US $510.39 billion. (Statistics sourced from: Transparency Market Research)

Benefits of Enterprise Mobility

As seen from the facts, there is a huge growth in the Enterprise Mobility, but why is it happening? Why organizations are adopting mobility solutions? Let us explore some of the key benefits of adopting enterprise mobility solutions.

Better Collaboration
Enterprises can get easy access to email, web conferencing tools, and instant messaging by using mobile collaboration apps that, in turn, enables to manage project and workflow even while employees are on the go. When combined with latest cloud trends, mobility solutions can further improve collaboration, considerably enhancing the operational efficiency and transforming the existing business models.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Enterprise mobility empowers businesses to respond to complaints, inquiries, and needs of the customers regardless of time and place, which ultimately increases brand loyalty and brings great business opportunities.
Improved Quality Service
Mobility solutions help streamline the business operations and accelerate the core business processes. Based on the browsing patterns, user behaviour and purchase history, eCommerce businesses can showcase products that their customers are more likely to buy, resulting into a personal touch and unique experience to the customer service.
Wider Reach
There has been a significant increase in the use of mobile applications compared to websites that helps enterprises reach a wider audience that they simply would not have reached otherwise and boost the location-based sales and marketing – opening a new arena yet to be explored.
Increased Conversion Rate
The constant and better connectivity with users lead to greater possibility of conversion. Enterprises can include mobile apps in their business strategies to enhance brand awareness and acquire new business opportunities. Mobile apps allow to interact directly with the potential buyers and closing a sell.

In the realm of digital business where consumers want a service or product at their convenience, enterprise mobility provides an opportunity to get quick access to requirement of consumers and interact with them in the way they are comfortable with. Owing to the rapidly increasing mobile apps and cloud computing ecosystem, this landscape is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. However, in order to get the advantage of mobility solutions, enterprises must make sure that their mobile apps are user-centered and adapted to the latest technologies.

If you are planning to integrate enterprise mobility solutions with your eCommerce business, you should consult or hire a mobility expert having requisite expertise and skills. You can count on Ranosys for your mobility needs – be it the improvement of app usability, modernization of mobility platform or creation of a new app. Ranosys has a team of experienced mobile app developers who have always been in the forefront of developing robust and rapidly deployable mobility solutions that are compatible with the business requirements of the enterprises. Contact us to know more about our enterprise mobility services.

Anand : First of all, I would like to thank Anna for taking the time out from her schedule to share her journey, views on test leadership and the importance of conferences. Anna has helped many people, directly or indirectly, with her contributions in the software testing field.

We are honoured to have her with us today.

Anand: Anna, thank you for speaking with us today. Please, tell me something about yourself.

Anna: My name is Anna Royzman. I have been a tester / test manager for 15+ years; worked in the financial sector, e-commerce, and a few other sectors. I started speaking at conferences in 2011. Later on, I helped to organize several testing conferences myself. And then in 2016, I began organizing my own conferences. I do two conferences a year: for software testers (in the Fall) and test leaders (in the Spring), because I believe in developing test leadership.

My organization is a nonprofit; it’s called Global Quality Leadership Institute. Its mission is to become the leader for quality advocacy in technology. My programs are developed in accordance to that mission. Software testing education and leadership education is something that I believe is very valuable in this world.

Anand: When did you start this Global Quality Leadership Institute?

Anna: I founded the Institute in 2015. My focus is on test and quality education. Besides conferences, I co-organize NYC Testers Meetup and other testing events such as peer conferences and workshops (WITS, WOTBLACK). Peer Conferences have a different format: it’s the experience reports from testing shared with participants. It is a format with lots of conversations intended to discuss and compare experiences. I believe that sharing experiences between software test professionals is something that our industry can benefit from more than, say, listening to a lecture.

Our profession is different because lots of what we do depends on the context; our strategy depends on the context. It is not easy to teach testing outside of context because a lot of things would differ depending on the context. Peer workshop allows for the knowledge sharing between test professionals. People’s experiences are very unique and sharing them within a peer group, discussing it and deriving some essence of testing expertise is very valuable in this format. That is why; I am a huge proponent of peer workshops, whenever possible.

Anand: Organizing these conferences is a hard work. How do you take help from the software testing community in this humungous effort?

Anna: I am well known in the software testing community, and that helps. People who know what I am standing for — the development of the professionalism and expertise in software testing — provide a lot of support. Many people across the globe spread the news about the conferences I run. When I invite them to speak, they gladly come — because they trust in what I do.

Anand: How would you encourage people to contribute more in the testing community? How would you tell them that it is important to attend the conferences and help people like yourself in organizing the conferences?

Anna:I think you have to have a passion for your profession and a drive for becoming an expert in your field. If you do not have an urge to become better, you probably do not belong here anyway. Software Testing as a distinct profession is relatively young. While developers and software engineers did a lot of testing as they produced their code in the past, there was a separation of task, but not the title.

Software Testing became a career choice quite recently, and so there is not much what we know about the craft. People come up with theories about software testing, they conduct experiments to prove or disprove those theories, share collected data and evaluate experience reports. Methodologies around testing are evolving. If you are passionate about testing, do contribute to the development of the craft. Conferences are the place where such knowledge and research is shared, and community understanding of the craft is enhanced by participants involvement. I invite you to join us!

Anand: You must have had an interesting journey, could you share some key milestones with us to give a glimpse of your career?

Anna: Most of the people I know fell into testing accidentally. I am one of them. It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. It is good because something was driving you to become a tester: maybe an intrinsic curiosity, a drive to excellence, a compassion and so on. Since software testing is rarely taught in the schools or universities, people bring in a lot of experience and various domains expertise from outside to the testing field. Such outsider views and practices are integrated into testing and create more enhanced collective body of knowledge for our field of practice.

What’s bad about the diversity of newcomers to the field is the little knowledge and, as a result, absence of standards that benefit the practice instead of adding impediments to it. Many years ago, there were many rules around how testing should be done, how heavily should it be documented, and I kind of suffered through that too. Heavy documentation and reporting can suck the life out of your job. However, what really pushed me forward was the realization that I could generate interesting ideas about testing: what else can be tried, what permutations and paths I can run the software through, which scenarios could I come up with, etc. It was rather an intellectual challenge, and it kept my passion strong.

Over the time I learned that not all test ideas generated in my head can be executed — because of the lack of time. So I started developing the strategy approach – what can be done better, what can be done fast, how can I streamline those ideas into something tangible that I can do. It’s when I started thinking about the usage of tools – different automation tools, various helpers. You can explore the application manually and start testing it, but if you are a professional, you will start using appropriate tools to help you. I wasn’t a developer, but I wasn’t afraid of the tools. I started using them whenever they could save me some time. When I became a Manager, I combined test automation and the exploratory testing methods to address the challenges of the task at hand.

What is unique about testing is that your context and priorities change every day. It saddens me how many people do not get it, management included. If you put your plan on paper, you really want to follow it; however, you cannot follow the plan due to many reasons. Something is not ready, something has changed, priorities shifted. As a strategist, you need to ensure that you are ready for the change – your tools are ready, your approaches are ready, your resources are in hand. In my journey to become an expert I became good at adjusting to the changes rapidly.

I eventually started sharing my experience with other experts and that’s when my own expertise began to shape up. So that is sort of next step, how you expose yourself to the wisdom of your community. At some point you grow, you mastered all the tools and the methodology that is applicable in your context and then you have to expose yourself to the wisdom of others. When you learn from others and compare your experiences, you realise that the strategies you have worked with would not work in other contexts.

You have all the tools at your disposals, you have all the resources and you know how to motivate others to do testing because you can not do all the testing yourself. And at this point, leadership qualities would start to develop. So even though I was a Manager before, the leadership qualities start to develop the more I understand what’s going out in the world of our profession. Then you want to encourage people, you want to motivate people, you want to encourage investigation of our profession and you want to encourage the community.

At this stage, you are a leader. You are no longer a participant, but you are driving the changes. You are inviting people to go with you. And that’s where I think I am right now.

There are different challenges at that stage of your journey. You have so much knowledge that you need to share. At this stage, you want to teach people what you know and I want more people to get excited about the possibilities of the craft.

Anand: Completely agree. Sharing, in my opinion, is great because it is always good to have a validation or know about the criticism or opportunities to improve from others. When someone shares their journey on things like test automation, how do you give them the feedback?

Anna: I have experience with a lot of tools as a test lead and test manager, and I have a lot of experience in different ways of automation. As a Test Manager, test automation tools are my tools that can help me gather the information I need to give to my stakeholders. I have tried many different things in my automation journey – I have used pairwise tools, test generation tools, direct assert verification, model based AT, UI automation, web testing and so on. Automation is a code. Automation can be outdated. There could be defects in the automation tool itself. As a Manager, I know how many resources could be wasted in maintaining the automation project. If the tools are not ready when you need them, the efforts are wasted.

All of that had a lot of value to me, and so whenever I talk to someone I can often say: here are the benefits of whatever you are doing and here are the issues that you can encounter, and that’s how you can potentially address them.

Anand: Testing as a profession has changed. How the perception of the management has changed about testing and the role of a tester? What skills are required in the testers these days?

Anna: I believe that the introduction of Agile in the mainstream software development has opened up the opportunities for testers to participate more in every stage of the software creation process. A tester brings an interesting set of skills to every stage – for example, questioning the assumptions, not taking anything “for granted”. Since you are part of the team from the inception, you question the assumptions. Normally testers are good at that because they have to develop those skills anyway. Agile makes it possible for testers to validate those assumptions at the “product shaping” stage, not in production. Tester introduces that skillset to the process.

Usually, the perception is: we test the software and nobody is there to wait for your voice at this inception stage. So when you say something at this stage, they can tell that you to come later. But you need to persuade them and tell them that you are good at this.

Another place where you can use this skill is when you develop acceptance criteria. It allows people to consider important questions earlier – not when the functionality is done.

Another great skill is analytical skill. People around testers needs to accept it. Testers sometime can not express their value or explain what useful skills they can offer to the team.

A word of caution. Sometimes, when you develop a feature, you don’t want a lot of negativity. People are thinking about positive things and when a tester asks all those questions, they are not ready to answer. It happened to me. I went to my very first Agile planning meeting with a list of questions and people in the meeting said: Anna, we are not ready to talk about that. I am like, well I can’t work without the requirements. It took me a while to change my mindset. Sometimes it could be unintuitive how testers fit into this new process. But once you internalize this process, it becomes much more rewarding.

Another skill testers can bring is pair testing. Testers can work with the developers to discuss those test ideas during the active code development stage and help devs to test these ideas. It’s great for the team building as well. As a Test Manager, I had to train my teams on these skills. Some of the testers were shying away from the communication. They were like, give me this application and we will find all the defects. It is useful, but testers can add a lot more value then that.

Anand: Thanks Anna. To our readers, hope you found Anna’s views on software testing, test leadership, and conferences interesting. We hope that her contribution in the software testing field will help the budding testers to advance their career in the right direction.

We have shared some of the conversations we had with her in this blog post. We will cover remaining conversation in another blog post next week.

Please, do stay in touch and share this conversation with the relevant people in your network or organization.

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Ranosys believes that seminars and conferences are great platforms to meet the world-class technology speakers and tech evangelists, make new connections, broaden your horizons, and be seen as an expert in your domain. With an aim to stay abreast of the latest Xamarin development technologies and offer innovative services to the global clients, Ranosys participated in MonkeyFest 2017 – the largest cross-platform Azure & Xamarin conference of the year. This 2-day event was organized at Microsoft Asia Headquarters Singapore.

All the 40 sessions of the MonkeyFest were enriching. Cloud experts, DevOps bosses, security champions, and Xamarin gurus from all over the globe graced the event. They shared their insights on current trends in .Net and threw light on all the facets of modern mobile application development like Unit and Functional Testing, Bot and Game Development, Leveraging DevOps for Mobile Applications, Application Frameworks like Reactive and MVVM, etc.

MonkeyFest – Global Xamarin Summit – Singapore 2017 was an excellent opportunity for Ranosys to interact with the keynote speakers and enhance networking with the Xamarin community. The conference enhanced Ranosys experience with more knowledge and information. Many thanks to the organizers for inviting us to this global Xamarin Summit!

We look forward to attending many such events.

About Xamarin

The entire mobile landscape has witnessed a paradigm shift over the past few years and Xamarin has evolved as a leader in the cross-platform mobile app development. Xamarin has an ever-growing community of over 1.4 million developers. This framework uses unique API and UI tools with the latest development technologies for building mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a leading mobile application development company based in Singapore with international footprints in the USA and UK, has experience of about a decade in providing end-to-end enterprise mobility solutions. We have developed high-performing native and cross-platform apps for startup to enterprise clients.

If you want to strategize on ways to drive your business growth with Xamarin, contact us today!

Hosting an event is a great way to strengthen the bonds with the clients, attract new customers, and create buzz around your business. The Singapore Magento User Group is one of the most active Meetup groups in Singapore. The passion for eCommerce and Magento platforms encouraged Ranosys to commence Singapore Magento User Group Meetup every month. In the Meetup, we invite top Magento experts to discuss and debate how various features of Magento and emerging trends in eCommerce can add value to the customers and the store owners.

This time, the event was organized at Microsoft, Singapore, on September 6, 2017 and was graced by Magento experts from the UK, Singapore, and India, who shared their insights about the impact of AI on retail, how to drive eCommerce growth by leveraging the logistics, and how mobile UX can impact your eCommerce sales.

Important Agendas of the Meetup

Discussing the relevance of Artificial in the present context, Anand Ramdeo – Managing Director, EMEA Region, Ranosys – threw light on the domains where AI is being used and how retail can be empowered by this technology. He made the entire session interesting by putting forward some amazing cases of AI in Magento, retail, and other domains. Anand has previously worked with software powerhouses such as Amazon, IBM Rational, etc., and has also served as a consultant to big brands across the Europe.

Go through the entire presentation here:
AI in Retail – Magento Meetup

Feel free to click the below link to watch the video of Anand’s presentation.
https://engineers.sg/video/future-of-retail-is-here-with-the-ai-are-you-ready-singapore-magento-user-group–1956

Our other esteemed guest speaker was Senthil Kumar, the Head of Sales for DHL eCommerce, Singapore. He has over 15 years of logistics experience, managing operations in warehousing and transportation across the freight, express, and postal industries. He shared information about the latest trends in the eCommerce market, various shipping methods, what points you should consider while choosing the shipping method, how to find the right logistics partner and manage the returns.

Watch Senthil’s presentation video by clicking the below link:
https://engineers.sg/video/use-logistics-to-power-your-e-commerce-growth-singapore-magento-user-group–1957

In his presentation on the role of mobile UX in Magento eCommerce, Kali Charan (KC) Rajput – UI/UX Lead at Ranosys – revealed various crucial facts about the mobile UX. He elucidated the importance of mobile UX, common UX mistakes, and best practices/delighters in mobile UX.

Go through the entire presentation here:
Mobile UX in Magento – Delighting Users to Buy

Watch KC’s presentation video by clicking the below link:
https://engineers.sg/video/mobile-ux-in-magento-delighting-users-to-buy-singapore-magento-user-group–1958

It was indeed a fruitful session. A big thanks to all the speakers and participants who took out time to join us and helped us make this event a success.

Looking forward to meet you soon in the next Meetup.

Ranosys, a leading software development company in Singapore with service delivery centers in the UK, USA, and India, has received the status of Advanced Technology Partner in AWS Partner Network (APN). Only those APN members who meet certain criteria (such as comprehensive training on cloud and AWS technologies, increased technical validation, and a high number of public client references) set forth by AWS, are awarded with the Advance Technology Partner status.

The Advanced status promotes Ranosys expertise in automation of resource management and optimization, migration strategy, automated deployment, and server design and architecture. This achievement will empower the organization to expand its reach within the partner network community of the AWS and serve the enterprise customers in a better way.

“We are delighted to foster our alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Advanced status will give us greater visibility in the AWS ecosystem and empower us to provide extended support across the AWS platforms” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys. “The Advanced status will give us the agility to add immense value to our IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) offering and to serve our expanding customer base of the AWS with secured and customized solutions in the cloud,??? he further added.

About Ranosys Technologies

Headquartered in Singapore with delivery centers in the UK, USA, and India, Ranosys is a preeminent outsourcing and technology services partner for global customers. The company has a dedicated team of AWS Certified Developers – Associate and AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate who possess competences in developing cloud-native apps, migrating data and apps to cloud environments, and developing and managing cloud infrastructures. Ranosys also has extensive experience in scaling enterprise cloud adoption through infrastructure optimization and compliance automation.

For further information about the support plans, please feel free to contact Ranosys Technologies or drop a line to sales@ranosys.com.

Anand : First of all, I would like to thank Ajay for taking the time out from his schedule to share his views on various aspects of software testing with us. Ajay is an inspiration to many people in the software testing world. With his dedication to the craft and passion for the learning and sharing, he has helped many testers around the world. Ajay has presented in many conferences around the world including a keynote at CAST 2015.

We are honoured and privileged to have Ajay with us today.

Anand: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us Ajay, Appreciate. To start with, tell us something about yourself.

Ajay: Hello, I am Ajay and a software tester. I have spent my last eleven years learning about software testing, problem solving and how to think well. I like to meet software testers and understand their perspective of software testing. I blog at www.enjoytesting.blogspot.com and tweet as @ajay184f.

Anand: When did you start your career in software testing? Was it something that just happened or did you choose software testing as a career?

Ajay: I was offered the position of Associate QA Engineer at my first job. I liked the subject Total Quality Management in my engineering degree and the passion seems to have helped me get the job of a software tester. Even after the interview, I did not know what is software testing. I did not want to take up another offer for the fear of being asked to program. After the initial software testing training at my job, I had more questions than answers. Maybe, that is when the software tester inside me was born.

Anand: When did you become seriously passionate about software testing? How did that happen? Was there any trigger?

Ajay: As I had many questions, I started searching for answers. I wanted to be the best software tester. When I searched for “How to become the best software tester???, one of the Google search results was the video by James Bach: Becoming a software testing expert.

Another important trigger was an email sent by my colleague about a testing workshop by Pradeep Soundararajan. I attended that workshop and that led me to discover the beautiful world of software testing and how the testing community is alive and learning all the time.

Anand: How do you know if a tester is not passionate or engaged with the craft? What are the signs?

Ajay: Most of the times, you will know it when you talk to a tester. Some of the signs I look for are:

Do they ask sensible questions or are they happy doing what is told to them
Do they invest in their learning or wait for the company to sponsor their learning. It is not always the money but the motivation to spend time in self-learning. For example, Srinivas Kadiyala spends time outside his office hours to learn about software testing. Check out his blog.
How does one practice software testing?
Are they proud of their work?

Anand: When you look at your journey so far, what makes you feel good and satisfied?

Ajay: I got an opportunity to learn from many thought leaders as part of the workshops, testing meetups and conferences all around the world. That makes me happy and feel lucky to be associated with the thought leaders. Many testers are unaware that there is an active community which thinks and works on software testing apart from their day to day office activities.

I have experienced multiple conferences like CAST, EuroSTAR, Agile Testing Days, Mobile App Europe, VISTACon, STePINSummit, Unicom’s WCNGT, Think Test, QAI Conference. Also, the experiences at workshops like Problem Solving Leadership, Rapid Testing Intensive, Rapid Software Testing are going to help me for a long time.

Anand: Tell us something about the books you have read related to software testing. Which books would you recommend and why?

Ajay: The first books that helped me understand more about software testing are:

Testing Computer Software
Lessons Learned in Software Testing

Then, I was introduced to the world of Jerry Weinberg’s books like Perfect Software and Other Illusions about Software Testing, Are your lights on?

Then, you start picking up books specific to the problem you are facing right now at your workplace. I loved the book on Mobile app testing by Jonathan Kohl when I was testing mobile apps.

Anand: What are your views on different styles of testing such as scripted, exploratory, in an agile context, and so on? What is your style?

Ajay: As long as the customer is happy, I am happy to follow any style. Personally, I prefer exploratory testing approach. I believe that a skilled tester can adapt to any style especially agile contexts where there is constant change and feedback loops.

Anand: What is the biggest contribution a tester can make in a project?

Ajay: Our role as testers is to gather information to the management about the quality of the product, project and the testing efforts. I love talking to as many stakeholders as possible, understanding everyone’s expectations and alerting any discrepancies. A tester’s biggest (one of the biggest) contribution would be to understand that things can be different than what it appears to be. A tester should be able to sniff out problems and be courageous enough to share it with the stakeholders.

Anand: What changes have you noticed in the role of a tester? How is it evolving?

Ajay: When I started as a tester, it was considered as the last line of defence and testers were blamed for any bugs in production. Slowly, they were involved in meetings where developers discussed the product design and were encouraged to understand the underlying technology. Now the testers are slowly asked to come out of the silos and be involved right from the start. Even with all these changes, one thing remains constant and I like that. The testers need to be constantly working on their skills. The testers should understand that testing is their core skill and irrespective of the context they are in, skills like questioning, critical thinking, observation, manipulation, resourcing are always in demand.

Anand: Do you have any advice for the people who are still discovering if testing is for them or not?

Ajay: Anyone can test. To test well, you need to work on your skills. So find out if you are ready to put in the long hours to hone your skills. The journey to become a skilled tester is never ending and interesting at the same time.

Testing doesn’t mean no coding. It doesn’t mean working alone. Read the blog posts by testers all over the world – https://www.ministryoftesting.com/testing-feeds/ and see if it interests you. Talk to the testers from the community on Twitter, Skype and clarify your doubts.

Anand: Thank you, Ajay, for sharing your views with us. Your insight and work on software testing have helped many testers around the world. We hope that you will continue to contribute to this community of software testers and help it move forward. Once again, sincere thanks for taking the time out to share your views with us.

To our readers, if you like the views and insights shared by Ajay, please share it in your network on Linked-In, Facebook, or Twitter.

Follow Ajay on:

In the present scenario, the world is progressively inclining towards digital realm and online shopping has become a fad. The quick increase in online sales is possible only through intuitive and engaging eCommerce stores. Though several eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Demandware, WooCommerce, Hybrid, etc., are available, Magento has always been the first choice for B2B and B2C eCommerce because of its scalability, flexibility, functionality, and other comprehensive features.

However, while considering Magento for their eCommerce stores, several merchants often get stumped selecting between the two editions: Magento Community Edition (an open source) and the Enterprise Edition (the licensed version). Well, it’s obvious! As both the Magento editions offer an amazing array of features, it becomes a daunting task to pick the one. In order to help merchants avoid this perplexing situation, we have comprehensively evaluated both the editions. Explore here!

Are Both the Editions Capable of Catering to B2C and B2B Customers with Equal Efficiency?

Magento CE is an excellent alternative for small businesses with a limited number of features. Additional features can be added to this edition via extensions that are available in the Magento Marketplace.

Large and mid-size organizations with large-scale projects must go for Magento EE as it has all the features of Magento CE as well as some additional amazing inbuilt features that help them carry out their businesses sleekly.

When it comes to efficiency, Magento CE offers full capabilities only for B2C customers. It requires third-party add-ons to meet the requirements of the B2B businesses. On the other hand, Magento EE has advanced features to cater to both the B2B and B2C customers in a competent manner.

Is It Worth to Go for Licensed Magento Enterprise Edition?

Magento CE is free to download and the feature gaps in this edition can be fulfilled through modules, but using the third-party solutions is not always secured. On the other hand, Magento EE comes with a licensing fee which may vary as per the requirements of the businesses.

As a matter of fact, both Magento Community and Enterprise editions are self-hosted and packed with certain amazing features like different product config types, catalog management, checkout and payment features, marketing tools, etc., howbeit, Magento EE has some more advanced enterprise-level features such as better search OOTB, merchandising, customer loyalty options, full page caching, etc., which make this edition a little bit expensive. Here are some of the features that make the licensing cost of Magento EE worth it.

Features That Make Magento EE Far Better Than Magento CE

1. Scalability and Performance

Magento Enterprise Edition (EE) is the better choice for the eCommerce stores that manage a large number of products and have high traffic. Full Page Caching feature allows multiple users to browse the site simultaneously, without affecting the loading time. Moreover, this edition has the feature of optimized indexing that enables merchants to add and update products without performing re-indexing.

Image Source: Magento

Other features that enhance the scalability and performance of Magento EE are:

It provides database sharing support for order management, products, and checkout.
For better performance during checkout, this Magento edition supports deferred inventory updates.

As Magento CE does not come with inbuilt Page Caching and other feature, merchants will have to hire Magento developers to implement modules for Page Caching and other performance fixes.

2. Store and Site Management

If the backend of the store is managed by more than one person, then Magento EE could be a better option, as it provides advanced management tools and capabilities like Return Management Authorization (RMA) tool, merging and staging of content, etc. Segment-specific content can be displayed virtually on any page of the site using the Banner Rotator widget.

Image Source: Magento

RMA enables businesses to have complete control over the whole return process.
Besides this, Magento Enterprise Edition supports advanced permissions, enabling e-store owners to create multiple admin roles and restrict and enable users from viewing certain aspects of the site.
Image Source: Magento

All these capabilities are difficult to implement with Magento CE.
3. Shopping Experience
There are many features that are common in both the editions and enhance customer experience like customer wishlists, bundled products, tiered product pricing, coupon codes, cross-sells and up-sells, persistent shopping cart, built-in review, etc.
Nonetheless, Magento EE has some additional features that altogether make the shopping experience more pleasant. This edition lets merchants offer loyalty points, host private sales, set up gift registries, provide gift wrapping services, and give online gift cards or store credits. Moreover, customer segmentation can be done on the basis of order history and geographic information. Magento EE also lets businesses to customize the customer registration process to gather actionable customer information.
With Visual Merchandiser (which is not available in Community Edition), merchants can select from a wide range of automated sorting options in order to control product positioning into the right category.
Image Source: Magento

4. Elasticsearch
The leading edge search functionality of Magento EE lets merchants set search synonyms and ‘stop words’, in order to deliver highly pertinent search results. The users can search in 33 different languages. The ‘Elasticsearch’ can easily manage large catalogs and is scalable to support fast-growing enterprises. Furthermore, installation and configuration of the Elasticsearch is also easy.

This feature is missing in Magento CE.

5. Comprehensive Rollback System

Rolling back to a previous version of any element or a page on the site and track the changes are easy with Magento EE.

Magento CE allows store owners to roll back to the previous day’s backup, but doesn’t permit to restore from an older version.

6. Professional Support

Whenever any technical issue arises with Magento CE, store owners have to either do their own research and solve the problem, or contact to their Magento agency/developer.

On the other hand, Magento EE offers dedicated account management and 24/7 technical support to quickly fix the issues. New diagnostic tools in Magento EE help in comprehensive analysis of modified core files, key database tables, and installed extensions.

Image Source: Magento

7. Security

Magento CE is not “PCI compliant”. It also does not have highly secured payment bridges or credit card tokenization features which are required by the credit card companies and banks.

Magento EE has more powerful security features – The Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS).

Inference

Of course, Magento CE is an open source and the most practical choice, but the online store owners will have to spend money to configure, customize, and integrate added extensions and features to their websites if they go with this edition. For the big businesses, who are looking for wider scalability, greater control over the environment, and out-of-the-box functionalities, it would be an uphill task to sustain in the highly competitive market with the Magento CE edition. In this scenario, Magento EE will provide greater flexibility and wider reach.

Still have doubts whether it is fruitful to migrating from Magento Community to Enterprise edition? Feel free to contact to Ranosys Technologies or drop a line to sales@ranosys.com.

Online shopping and eCommerce have received a great consideration in the past few years. According to Pew Research Center Survey, the online purchasing behavior of the Americans has changed tremendously in the recent years and they prefer to purchase directly through social media platforms these days. In the era of conversational marketing, the only way to win customers is to add personal touch while interacting with them. In such a scenario, integration of chatbots with the Facebook Messenger has taken the eCommerce industry to a whole new paradigm and opened a new channel for businesses to sell their products online. Chatbots constrict the gap of personalization that online buyers face while shopping.

Specifically designed to replicate human interaction and powered by AI, chatbots exhibit intelligent behavior like that of a human. Chatbots enable customers to simply ping their favorite brand on Facebook Messenger and get information about their latest collection. Furthermore, clients can also get a recommendation on styles that they would like the most. Although chatbot is the newest trend in messaging, its popularity can be established by the fact that 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020.

Chatbots stimulate a real conversation with the customers and help businesses reach a bigger audience and transform customer experience to a whole new level of online shopping. Here are some of the benefits that chatbots can provide to the eCommerce businesses.

1. Higher Outreach

Businesses can leverage the popularity of mobile messengers such as Facebook Messenger, to outreach massive audience. By creating a bot on Facebook Messenger, online stores can connect to 900 million users and let them know about their services/products.

2. Lead Generation

Affiliate marketing is easy with chatbots. Businesses can offer their services to the audience who are actually interested in their services/products. These automated text communication tools offer a comprehensive overview of each prospect and respond instantly to customers’ queries, thus increasing conversion rates.

3. Enhances the Shopping Experience

Chatbots stimulate the shopping experience by allowing customers to order any product from the online store without visiting the website or downloading an app. Since chatbots save the order history of the customers, it becomes more convenient to order the products just at one click.

4. Improves Cross-sell or Up-sell

Chatbots upsurge up-sell or cross-sell by engaging customers and answering to their questions. The bots can store the order history of the customers and make recommendations based on this history or suggest complementary products while customer is purchasing certain products like “you may also like this??? or “others who bought this also bought this???.

5. Customer Service

Using chatbots, businesses can provide quick, personalized, and convenient customer services. Integration of chatbots with the online stores allow customers to browse the products in an easier way and place an order directly from the Messenger.

Moreover, exchange or return of products is easy with chatbots as they initiate the return process after getting answers to some standard questions.

The Bottom Line:
Facebook chatbots have a huge potential in the eCommerce industry and they are a new prerequisite for online businesses. Be it the promotion of a brand, generation of automatic replies to queries, reaching the target customers or raising the awareness during a product launch, chatbots offers a sublime opportunity for retail brands. In addition to this, chatbots empower businesses to engage off-website audience and turn them into customers. Businesses, who have not incorporated chatbots in their marketing strategy yet, must integrate soon to enhance their work efficiency and help their customers in a better way.
For more understanding on the chatbots market or integrating chatbots with multiple shopping carts, contact us or drop an email to sales@ranosys.com.

Ranosys, a leading software development company, takes great pleasure in announcing the expansion of its international footprint with the opening of its new office in London, UK. After notable achievements in the USA, Singapore, and India, Ranosys takes this opportunity to leverage the vast array of knowledge and experience to serve the UK and European clients.

As per the reports of The Telegraph, tech sector in the UK is growing faster than the economy of the country with 72% of investment outside London. Ranosys intends to leverage this growth and offer its services to the organisations operating in the UK and European technology ecosystem. The new office will enable Ranosys to cater to the existing client base in the UK and Europe with more responsive services.

Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys, said, “The new UK office is a part of our growth strategy and we are geared to extend our support in the European market with efficient services. We have successfully delivered various projects across the UK in the past few years, which has strengthened our portfolio. Our expansion will bring added convenience to the clients in the European market and enable us to provide more personalized services to them.” He added, “This growth is possible only because of our hard-earned customer trust and reputation in the industry.”

“By extending our services in the UK, we aim to provide dynamic technology solutions and strategic advantage to the local organizations and businesses of all sizes,” said Anand Ramdeo, who has joined Ranosys UK office as the Managing Director to lead its initiatives in the EMEA region. “We are now well-poised to handle the growth we are experiencing in the EMEA region and will be able to absorb new customers at the current pace of growth,” he added.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a renowned software development company that offers comprehensive and top-notch solutions in the areas of eCommerce Development, Mobile Application Development, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Enterprise Web Applications, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Testing & Quality Assurance Services, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). We have immense experience in delivering 500+ projects in 10+ industry verticals, including but not limited to healthcare, education, fashion & apparels, oil and gas, etc.

We are excited to render our services to the clients from our new location!

MagentoLive UK 2017 is in full swing! The 2-day event began on June 27, 2017, at Park Plaza, Westminster, London. The event serves as the best platform to connect with the entire Magento ecosystem, including Technology Innovators, System Integrators, Web Design Agencies, and Merchants, at one venue.

As a Professional Magento Solutions Partner, Ranosys never miss any opportunity to meet and talk to Magento experts and enhance its support processes to the clients all over the world. Ranosys participated in MagentoLive UK 2017 for further understanding of the Magento market and provided knowledge and insights to several customers to grow their online business and strengthen their brand value.

Some of the highlights of day 1:

Magento experts exchanged their views on “Understanding the Total Cost to Upgrade on Magento.???
Magento threw light on its comprehensive research findings.
The Magento merchants shared their experiences and discussed how to approach a project, minimize upfront costs and risks, and enhance the return on investment.
The speakers provided an insight into the Magento Economy and Progressive Web Applications. Gary Specter, SVP, Global Sales and Customer Success, Magento Commerce, presented Magento Solution timeline and also discussed about how Magento (as a platform) is evolving.
Two case studies were also presented during the session. One of them was presented by Oliver Sweeney, the London-based premium luxury shoe and menswear. They shared how they overcame the most challenging aspect of M2 implementation, i.e., integration from the POS to CRM and to the Magento.

Indeed, it was a fruitful session. Looking forward to Day 2. Stay tuned for more updates!
For more photos from the event, visit our gallery page here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1541816909195702.1073741873.126255294085211&type=3
About Ranosys Technologies
Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with its international footprint in the USA, UK, and India, has vast experience in offering end-to-end Magento services including eCommerce consulting, eCommerce web and app development, mobility solutions, migration to Magento from another portal, and support and maintenance for the existing platform. We help clients maintain their competitive edge by keeping them updated with the emerging trends in this niche.

Campus and off-campus recruitment drives are the big events for procurement of talented and qualified candidates at Ranosys. Continuing the same trend, a mega one-day off-campus recruitment drive was organized at Ranosys Technologies, Jaipur, on June 3, 2017. Ranosys invited online applications for various positions from freshers in this recruitment drive. The response was overwhelming and over 250 candidates from the major colleges in and around Jaipur applied in the drive. Many outstation candidates also showed their interest and applied for the recruitment drive. Approximately 100 candidates were short-listed for the Aptitude Test & Interview.

Manisha Jain, Assistant Manager – HR at Ranosys, said, “We conducted recruitment drive with an aim to reveal an opportunity for the fresh talent to get an exposure to the corporate world and utilize their unbounded energy and enthusiasm for organizational growth. The response was overwhelming and we got 43 candidates shortlisted for our final round.??? She further added, “The candidates, who cleared the final round, will join the organization from June 12, 2017.???

Wishing good luck to the selected candidates for the final round, Chandra Kumar, Executive Director of Ranosys, said, “The recruitment drive events are always a major source of Ranosys talent acquisition. Staying synced with the latest technologies improves quality and efficiency of work. Fresh graduates have the zeal to accept the challenges and view the things from different perspectives and bring out of the box ideas which surely benefit the organization.???

Here are some pics of the event.

Collaboration tools, nowadays, are gaining a huge popularity over Content Management Systems as they can better align the business, help employees work as a close-knit team, manage the time and tasks effectively, and enhance employees’ productivity. An abundance of collaboration tools are provided by the digital world, which has made it a daunting task for modern businesses to pick one.

Microsoft’s SharePoint 2016 has emerged as one of the best collaboration tools which adapt the architecture of the Cloud platform Office 365 and helps streamline the internal and external business processes in a well-organized manner. SharePoint 2016 is an easily customizable platform and can be integrated with third-party plugins and add-ons, Web 2.0 capabilities, and social networking features. In addition, SharePoint 2016 is easy to use and reduces content redundancy and data entry errors. How can the organizations make the most out of this collaboration tool? Read on to find out.

How to enhance collaboration using SharePoint 2016?

1. Sync SharePoint with Outlook

MS Outlook has some amazing features of email and calendar management, which can be complemented with SharePoint. SharePoint 2016 helps set the extra reminder about deadlines and tasks so that organizations can deliver projects on time. So, by integrating Outlook and SharePoint together, businesses can leverage the robustness of each platform.

2. Create Bespoke Communities

Since every team works on unique projects, SharePoint 2016 lets businesses create communities for each team where they can share information, thus collaborating more seamlessly. It works better if the team has remote workers or the workforce is geographically diverse.

3. Collaborate on Most Crucial Documents
SharePoint effectively integrates with OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud document platform. This enables teams to make all the important documents available at a central location and retrieve them as and when required.

SharePoint 2016 comes with some amazing features that facilitate easy integration with Outlook, create communities, and help reap the maximum benefits from this collaboration tool. Let’s explore these features in detail.

10 Features That Make SharePoint the Best Collaboration Tool

1. Easy to Customize

The businesses can get custom components or apps built on the SharePoint, to get the job done right. Moreover, the entire SharePoint experience can be customized in compliance with the organization’s branding.

2. Centralized Management

SharePoint provides a central repository to store important documents, share files, discuss and track changes, ultimately enhancing the collaboration between teams. SharePoint can be accessed and managed from iOS devices, Outlook, Mac Finder, and Windows Explorer, from anywhere.

3. Cost-effective

SharePoint lets organizations consolidate the internet, extranet, and intranet under one platform. It reduces the overall cost and improves accessibility to each site.

4. Ease of Use

Organizations can use SharePoint with ease even without knowledge of web development. SharePoint has programs that enable businesses to update or build the website or create online tools for the team.

5. Security and Integrity

Integrity and security of data are assured with Data Loss Prevention functions of SharePoint. Businesses can search and set up automated notification functions for sensitive information. Moreover, SharePoint 2016 supports encryption protocols for data connections.

6. Obtain Critical Updates and Organize the Workflow

SharePoint helps organizations stay organized by allowing them to receive significant updates on when contracts were sent and signed, and how the projects are progressing.

7. More Storage Capacity

SharePoint 2016 addresses the complexity of increasing data volumes which ultimately enhances the performance.

8. Zero Downtime Patching

SharePoint 2016 enables the organizations to import updates without downtime. The number and size of packages have been reduced in this new version of SharePoint, which has resulted in decreased downtime to update SharePoint servers.

9. Search Function

The strength of search function becomes apparent, particularly in hybrid scenarios (“Cloud Hybrid Search???). Additionally, up to 500 million entries can be incorporated in the search

10. Enhanced User Experience

SharePoint 2016 has simplified the interaction with contents. The link gets automatically maintained when the documents are moved. This platform allows to preview uploaded videos and images in the libraries.

Inference

Nowadays, organizations are focusing more on effective team collaboration to improve performance and productivity. Here, SharePoint 2016 comes into the role. Furthermore, the businesses who are not in a position to migrate to the cloud can reap the benefits of some of the coolest and newest innovations which cloud offers by installing SharePoint 2016.

The importance of B2B eCommerce is increasing day-by-day and this fact can be revealed by the projections of Forrester Research that states – B2B eCommerce in the U.S. will reach $1.1 trillion by 2020, accounting for 12% of all the U.S. B2B sales. Owing to this growth, B2B marketers are inclining towards improved eCommerce platforms, and prefer to sell products online for easy shopping experience for their customers. A number of options are available for building an eCommerce platform like Zen Cart, Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, etc., but it’s an uphill task to choose the best one.

Magento has always been a great eCommerce platform for B2C customers. Now, Magento is all set to extend its functionalities to B2B companies and fulfill their eCommerce requirements with its B2B modules. Since Magento was initially designed for B2C; it has certain limitations for the B2B, which can be blown over by implementing Magento B2B extensions as per the business requirements. Here, we have thrown light on different Magento B2B editions and features that make Magento a reliable B2B eCommerce platform.

Magento Editions

Magento Community Edition is an open-source and flexible platform for small businesses to fulfill their basic commerce needs.
Magento Enterprise Edition has several features by default that make it a popular platform for wholesalers and retailers to build a sustainable webshop. This edition is built to manage order spikes and increased traffic during the biggest sales day.
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition, which is supported by Amazon Web Services, is another great fit for B2B customers. This module includes performance management and content delivery network tools that simplify the contract management process for retailers. Furthermore, it provides managed services and a leading hosting infrastructure and facilitates quick deployment of scalable, secure and customized web storefronts.

What features make Magento a reliable B2B eCommerce platform?

1. Group Pricing

B2B customers are more flexible about pricing and require advanced and complex pricing which includes sales volume based prices, group, and individual discounts, location-oriented prices, etc. Magento lets merchants run their retail as well as the wholesale website on one platform and allows them to display different product catalogs with varied prices, shipping and payment options for both the websites.

Image Source: Magento

With ‘Catalog Permissions’ and ‘Customer Group Catalog’ in Magento Enterprise, B2B store owners can put up various product catalogs and prices. ‘Group Price’ feature in Magento Community enables merchants to show the price for all the products, but display different numbers. With ‘Tier Pricing’ feature, price can be displayed according to the volume of the products.

Image Source: Magento

2. Customer Segmentation and Targeted Promotions

With Magento Enterprise Edition, store owners can accumulate customer information (like location, gender, age, shopping behavior, etc.) to segment their customers in a better way and offer them personalized shopping experiences.

3. Private Sales

With ‘Private Sales’ feature of Magento Enterprise, merchants can restrict some customers to access certain parts of the website as well as can send invitations for events to the customers. The “Countdown Timer??? allows to offer time sales to the special customers. As these features are available with Magento Enterprise, the store owners using Magento Community will have to use the extension to avail the benefits.

4. Ordering

The wholesale buyers who are doing frequent purchase from a particular online store know what products they are looking for along with their SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). In this case; ‘Order by SKU’ extension can speed up the process of bulk ordering. The product list gets displayed as soon as the users insert the SKU and they just require to choose the desired product, mention the quantity, and click on “Add to Cart??? button. This feature is not available by default; however, can be added by using extensions.

5. Payment

Magento has a default option of payment by invoice called check/money order. Unless the B2B customers don’t have extended requirements, there is no need of any modifications in this default option. This platform also offers one more payment option – credit limit.

6. Shipping

Magento provides flexible shipping options which can be configured on the basis of per product. Extensions like ‘shipping per item’ can also be used.

Conclusion

B2B eCommerce has not yet reached full maturity and Magento is sewed-up to capitalize on this opportunity. The B2B segment is likely to undergo several changes in the upcoming years and Magento eCommerce solutions enable the store owners to incorporate these changes without any hassle by providing flexibility, scalability, and control over the look-and-feel, functionality, and content of their online store.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, an acclaimed Magento Professional Solutions Partner in Singapore, has extensive proficiency and experience to offer world-class eCommerce development services and craft the perfect solutions to help B2B customers realize their business potential. We extend our eCommerce expertise to embrace one of the world’s swiftly growing eCommerce platforms, Magento, in order to keep the clients updated with the latest trends.

Mobile apps are the new way for businesses to interact with their customers and have taken the world by storm. The year 2016 has witnessed a tremendous spike in the mobile apps and the craze of mobile apps is anticipated to continue in 2017 as well. A right mobile app helps organizations strengthen their brand awareness and reaches out to the potential customers.

A big question in front of organizations is- for which mobile platform (Android, iPhone, Windows) must they develop an app to meet their business objective? As a matter of fact, each mobile platform has its own pros and offers certain flexibilities lacking in others, so it’s difficult to choose one platform for mobile app development. Since enterprises have to deal with different types of customers who own different types of mobile devices, they need to have a mobile application that could function flawlessly on almost all the platforms.

Nowadays, cross-platform apps are a new trend. Unlike native apps which work on a specific device and operating system, cross-platform apps run on various platforms and work wonders in ensuring a wider reach, tapping into the greater market potential, and enhancing the user experience. Explore what other advantages enterprises can get by investing in cross-platform mobile application development.

Benefits of Cross-Platform Application Development

1. Increased Customer Engagement

Unlike native apps which are limited to a single platform, cross-platform mobile apps run on multiple platforms and enable to connect with customers more effectively than any other channel.

2. Customer Loyalty

Retaining the existing customers is as important as acquiring the new ones. Cross-platform mobile apps help reach the target audience on the go and boost the customer loyalty. These apps also help organizations strengthen their online presence and brand reputation.

3. Customer Acquisition

As per the reports of TechCrunch, the U.S. consumers spend approximately 5 hours per day on their mobile devices. Thus, the more mobile platforms a business cover, the more users it will likely be able to fetch. Here, cross-platform mobile apps can help enterprises a lot in reaching a large number of audience, engaging them, and turning them into customers.

4. Cost-effective

A cross-platform mobile app can be developed faster than a native app for Android and iOS. Moreover, it is easier to update and maintain one application that leverages a single codebase and runs across all platforms. As cross-platform apps don’t need customization for each platform, the cost and time associated with their development get reduced.

5. Quicker Turnaround

Cross-platform apps ensure better communication, super fast response times, great performance as well as quick turnaround times, which keep enterprises ahead of time in the cut-throat competition.

6. Uniformity

Cross-platform apps have uniform UI/UX, which makes it easy to sync the updates. Furthermore, a consistent feel and look improves the retention rate and reinforces the brand image.

7. Wider Reach and Effective Marketing

Cross-platform mobile apps give exposure and wider reach to the organizations as you can target different platforms with just one app. These apps make it to all the major app stores, thus providing more outreach to the businesses.

Inference

Cross-platform apps are the future of mobile app development. Owing to several significant benefits like quick deployment, lower costs, wider reach, and quick turnaround time, the craze of cross-platform apps is increasing among small businesses as well as enterprises. For the organizations who are still using conventional native apps, it’s the time to make the right call for their businesses and explore the potential of cross-platform apps.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a mobile app development company in Singapore, has a comprehensive expertise to transform clients’ ideas into featured iOS, Android, and cross-platform apps. Our developers are well-versed with cross-mobile application development and carefully craft the clients’ apps as per their business model to ensure that their apps get maximum exposure and downloads.

SMEs are considered as the important building blocks in the economic development of any nation. In Singapore too, SMEs significantly contribute to the economic restructuring by providing 70% of employment in the nation. As per the latest data from Singstat, small and medium enterprises contribute to more than 50% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Despite this, one of the biggest challenges faced by SMEs is the increasing competition from the corporate enterprises from global world. Since countless competitors are offering the similar products at the similar prices, the only way for SMEs to stand out and sustain in the competitive market is to provide the best customer services. This can be done by adopting an effective and efficient CRM software which not only helps SMEs make informed business decisions, but also lets them improve the customer relationship through customized services.

Before starting with Salesforce CRM benefits for small, medium businesses, let’s take a quick look at what does Salesforce do?

What does Salesforce do?

These days, Salesforce has emerged as #1 robust cloud-based CRM to serve the needs of the SMEs and connect the management, customers, and workforce together. SMEs can take full advantage of the capabilities of this platform with Salesforce Small Business Solutions. Here we have unfolded how Salesforce can assist SMEs to grow their business. Read on!

Benefits of Salesforce CRM for SMEs

1. Mobile Access

Along with the desktop version, Salesforce cloud solutions are also available on the mobile devices which give SMEs an easy access to customer data, lead-generation process, social profiles, contacts, and more. The collaboration capabilities of the app allow the SMEs to keep the team updated on the deal status and seek support whenever required. It is one of the best salesforce CRM benefits.

2. Automated Workflow

Salesforce automation benefits are one of the most highlighted features. The automated workflow feature of Salesforce accelerates the sales process and enables SMEs to assign tasks, make suggestions, and respond to approval requests (such as order placements, discounts, and expenses) anytime, anywhere.

3. Collaboration

While making a list of benefits of salesforce, we can’t miss to include ‘collaboration’?

The built-in social tools of Salesforce help SMEs drive the sales by letting sales representatives and staff members collaborate with each other. Open discussions and sharing of data, insights, and files are easy with this platform, which further enhance the productivity of the workforce.

4. Real-time Sales Forecasting

Salesforce enables SMEs to get a meticulous outlook of their entire business with comprehensive forecasts. Sales forecast in real-time on the basis of customers, contract values, revenues, and periodic and monthly quota attainments is not a herculean task for SMEs with this platform. Moreover, small and medium enterprises can review and adjust these forecasts in real time, in accordance with their business goals.

5. Opportunity Management

SMEs can manage the opportunities efficiently and close the sales quickly with Salesforce CRM system. With the inbuilt deal evaluation and quoting tools of Salesforce, small and medium-sized enterprises can reveal the value of each deal, current stage of the deal, and create detailed PDF quotes which can be directly emailed to the customers. It’s one of the amazing benefits of Salesforce, for sure. What do you think?

6. Contact Management

Salesforce serves as a robust contact management system for SMEs as it enables them to store addresses, phone numbers, and other critical data of the customers (like past communications, activity histories, the deals they are a part of, etc.) in a hassle-free manner. Furthermore, the profiles of the customers automatically get synced with their social media accounts (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn), which makes it easy to respond instantly to their concerns and queries.

7. Reports

Salesforce facilitates SMEs to keep an eye on their key business metrics and make critical decisions from anywhere. With the drag-and-drop reporting tools (including real-time graphs and charts) of Salesforce, generation and analysis of reports are easy. Since these reports are also showcased in the dashboard, it takes no time in retrieving the data soon after login.

8. Lead Generation

Improved lead generation is one of the benefits of using Salesforce. Salesforce provides all the tools to SMEs required to make smart marketing decisions and convert prospects into sales opportunities. SMEs can know about the source of lead- social media, marketing channel or campaign, and can also track the lead’s contact information and recent activities. This platform automatically assigns the apt sales representative to the lead for timely follow-ups.

9. Third-Party Integration

SMEs can expand the core functionalities of Salesforce by integrating with third-party apps and software solutions, in order to reap the maximum potential of the platform and achieve a single integrated collaborative business process management environment.

10. Tracking Competitors

With the help of Salesforce CRM, SMEs can keep a check on the activities of the competitors and any coupons or discounts that they may be offering. SMEs can also know the stage of their deals and determine their next moves accordingly, to win the deals.

The Essence

A good CRM tool is like a compass and map for SMEs which helps them determine what moves they need to take to turn prospects into customers and what obstacles they need to overcome to close the maximum deals. Salesforce is #1 CRM worldwide in the present scenario, which operates in real-time and helps track sales, sync all the sales/marketing activities, manage leads, develop long-lasting relationships with customers, and improve the conversion rates. Therefore, SMEs must reap the benefits of Salesforce CRM software to blaze a trail and get a big jump in their revenues.

About Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading Salesforce CRM consulting and implementation company in Singapore, providing Salesforce CRM Cloud Solutions to the global clients from 8+ years. We help organizations unleash the full potential of this platform and offer Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud Consulting in order to build a sustaining engagement between the customer and the brand.

eCommerce is going to take a whole new shape in 2017 with increasing mobile usage. Owing to greater mobile uptake and splendid internet services, Asia-Pacific retail eCommerce market is projected to grow faster in the upcoming years. Ranosys always keeps it abreast with new eCommerce trends and helps its customers implement the eCommerce platform, using Magento. It gives us immense pleasure to announce that we are participating in Seamless Asia 2017. It will be a great platform for us to further understand the market of this niche, analyze the best practices, and help our customers scale the business.

A group of highly professional speakers from world’s leading software companies will share their insights, and we are looking forward to a wonderful event, at Suntec Convention Centre, Singapore. Some of the key speakers are from companies like Facebook, Walmart, Netflix, Samsung Pay, DBS, Dwolla, Mondelez International, Cashless Journey, JD.ID, Flipkart, etc.

Connect with Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading eCommerce development agency in Singapore and Asia Pacific. This event will be a great opportunity for merchants to stay updated with eCommerce trends. If you are also considering to start an eCommerce channel to take your business to new heights, this event will be beneficial to meet and learn from eCommerce experts. As a Magento Professional Partner, Ranosys is committed to support its customers to create online stores and garner the full potential of eCommerce platform. You can connect with our experts and realize your ideas into business.

A visually stunning and user-friendly Magento eCommerce website plays a crucial role in strengthening your online presence and boosting your sales. You can hire a Magento agency to drive your eCommerce growth. With several Magento agencies offering their services, finding the right partner that best suits your requirements is not less than a herculean task. There are several factors one must keep in mind before picking any Magento agency. Here we have provided a checklist for selecting your Magento agency.

1. From How Long the Magento Agency is in Existence?

Ask some questions to the Magento agency before finalizing it, like:

How many websites have they built on the Magento platform?
Have they built mobile and responsive websites?
Do they have catered the business of your type?

2. Cost and Quality

You will need the help of a Magento development agency on different stages of your online store development and even after the launch of your web. In order to avoid confusion, it’s better to get an idea of cost estimation of development or updating your eCommerce store in future, beforehand.

3. Technical Expertise

Don’t rush while hiring the Magento agency for your project. It’s always better to hire certified resources who possess in-depth knowledge of the domain.

4. Resources

Ensure that the Magento agency you are planning to hire has a sufficient number of designers and developers so that they can work as backup whenever the need arises. Besides this, power backup and a constant high-speed internet connection is a must for completing any project efficiently. Check for all these high-end resources.

5. Portfolio

Go through the portfolio to get an insight into the work experience of the Magento development agency. Only an experienced agency can offer you the world-class and high-quality Magento solutions. By having a look at their portfolio, you can know more about their efficiency in delivering the projects on time, their cost and performance.

6. Location

Though you can partner with a Magento agency based in another country, it is recommended to look for a local agency as you can meet them in person and discuss your concerns.

7. Is the Agency a Magento Partner?

Prefer to choose an agency having a partnership with Magento as it can have easy access to Magento support, services, forums, and extensions. They are also well-acquainted with the latest Magento technologies.

8. Communication

An uninterrupted communication mechanism helps in the quick understanding of the requirements of the clients. It also enables the clients to provide their feedback. So, make sure that the Magento agency has smooth communication flow and it provides prompt response to your queries.

9. Methodology

Enquire about the tools and techniques that the agency uses for the development purpose. If you are a new venture, tried and trusted methods will work the best. But, if you already have your website and planning to redesign it, hire an e-commerce agency that provides flawless support processes, streamlined transition process, and effective monitoring tools. Choosing an agency that uses the best practices and follows the ethics will help you reap the maximum benefits.

10. Pre/Post Development Support

Getting an eCommerce website designed and developed will not solve your purpose. You need to maintain and upgrade it regularly, and here the role of Magento agency comes into limelight. Pre/post development support ensures that your eCommerce website is bug-free and updated with new features. Also, it provides convenience and efficiency in business operations.

The Essence

A right Magento partner with an extensive track record of technical prowess and great services can assist you in reducing the operating costs and boosting the revenues, thereby turning out to be a valuable asset for your online store.

Before arriving at any decision, don’t forget to get the quote from different Magento agencies.

About Ranosys

Ranosys, a pioneer eCommerce development agency in Singapore, extends its eCommerce prowess to embrace one of the world’s swiftly growing eCommerce platforms, Magento. As a Magento Professional Solutions Partner, we provide scalable Magento solutions to the startups, SMEs as well as corporate enterprises, to provide omnichannel experience to the customers and explore the business growth.

With a thriving growth in the smartphone users, the number of apps has also increased. Nowadays, mobile apps have become so integral part of everyday life that the whole world seems to be buzzing to the tune of these apps. Since these apps simplify the life and fulfill day-to-day requirements, more and more people are getting engrossed in them. That’s the reason why iTune Store and Google Play Store have witnessed an explosive growth in the number of mobile apps in the past few years. The year 2017 is also anticipated to be promising from the perspective of mobile apps development. Here we have provided a brief about the latest mobile app development trends that can be anticipated in 2017.

1. Augmented Reality (AR) Apps will Revolutionize the Mobile Industry

In 2016, the entertainment and gaming industries have seen several enthralling new entries into the AR, such as myNav, SkySiege, iOnRoad, and Pokemon Go. Although AR is the future, it is still in the experimental phase. AR apps are supposed to be on an all-time high in 2017 as well.

How Consumers Feel When Watching Content in VR

2. IoT and Wearable Apps are the New Rage

2017 could be a big year for IoT and wearable apps. Most of the enterprises have started embracing IoT (a system of connecting devices using electrical sensors and the Internet) in 2016, and this trend will continue in this year as well.

3. Trend of M-Commerce Seems to Stay Strong

Customers’ preference to make a purchase via Apple Pay and Google Wallet instead of plastic money is giving a thrust to m-commerce. M-commerce payment facility along with wearable devices is likely to skyrocket in 2017.

4. Communication with Customers Will Be Easy Via Interactive Push Notifications

Since the world is moving at a fast pace and the user pays heed to the time-saving element, interactive push notifications will ace in 2017. It lets users respond to a message without opening the app and allows brands to reach their customers with simple and short messages.

5. Fortified Security Feature

As per the reports of Gartner, 75% of mobile apps fail to clear the security test. The negative trend of exploiting security lacuna in apps to steal confidential and sensitive data by the hackers will continue in 2017. Howbeit, Google is striving to use automatic security updates and more granular app permissions model.

6. Integrated Mobile Payment is Expected to Rock the eCommerce World

In the past few years, there has been a considerable push in the mobile transactions. The integrated payment technology makes the payment process easier and faster. It follows that in 2017, the app stores will witness an increase in bespoke mobile applications, allowing merchants to smooth the progress of mobile payment in a completely secure manner.

7. AMP is Going to Transform the User Experience

In early 2016, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) was integrated into the mobile search listings of the Google. Web pages with AMP coding have high chances of visibility in the mobile web search results. AMP would help businesses augment their conversion rate and considerably reduce the bounce rate.

8. Micro and Enterprise Apps Will Take the Business World By Storm

Enterprise apps help manage, streamline, and restructure the business processes while micro apps perform much-targeted operations. Both micro and enterprise apps are widely accepted in the business fraternity and this mobile app trend is going to boom not only in 2017 but also in the upcoming years.

9. Cloud-driven Mobile Apps Will Be on the Rise

As per the reports of Cisco, cloud-based apps will drive 90% of total mobile data traffic by the year 2019, and there will be a compound growth of 60% in the mobile cloud traffic, per annum. Considering this fact, it can be expected that 2017 will behold powerful mobile apps which occupy minimum space in the internal memory of the smartphone and directly fetch data from the cloud.

10. Big Data Applications Will Be a Big Shout-Out

Taking the bright future and cross-industry potential of big data into account, venture investors are investing assertively in big data startups. In 2017, the focus will be on refining the core big data capabilities of enterprises by improving the functionality of big data apps.

Inference

The mobile app development trends in 2017 are obvious to buzz the business world. Hence, making your business thrive and distinguished from competitors will be a tough row to hoe. The only way to stay unvanquished is to follow the trends and embrace latest enterprise mobility solutions in your business.

NEWS & INSIGHTS

Explore our latest highlights

Discover trends, industry updates, and expert opinions to drive informed decision-making and innovation.

What an amazing experience was it for Ranosys to host Singapore Magento User Group Meetup in association with PHP User Group on April 18, 2017, at Red Dot Ventures Pte. Ltd.

Ranosys is in thought leadership for Magento eCommerce and organizes community Meetup every month. These Meetups are attended by different user groups – developers, eCommerce experts, and merchants, to gain more knowledge about the latest trends on Magento platform.

This time we had an amazing guest speaker – Ben Marks, a Magento Evangelist and a voting representative in the PHP-FIG. He has more than 10 years of working experience in open-source commerce and has worked with some of the biggest brands. As a mentor and educator for Magento, he has trained many developers directly, as well as through the Magento U Fundamentals series. In the Meetup, he shed light on new initiatives as well as product announcements that are most likely to be made in Imagine Conference 2017. He also shared his valuable insights about Magento 2. During Q&A session, he also answered to the queries of the Magento Folks.

Another brilliant speaker was Shurn Heng, who shared knowledge about 4 levels of IT Structure. Shurn has 14 years of experience in the field of Information Technology and has worked with several renowned IT companies.

A big thanks to the speakers, venue and food sponsors, and all the participants for taking out time from their busy schedule to join us and make this event a success.

Stay tuned; we have many more interesting Meetups on the horizon. We’ll announce next Meetup soon. See you!

For photos of the event, please visit our online album. If you are interested in watching the video of Ben’s presentation, feel free to click the below link:
https://youtu.be/eWePxVCAM1c

About Ranosys Technologies

Ranosys, a leading Professional Magento Solutions Partner in Singapore with its international footprint in the USA, UK, and India, has vast experience in offering end-to-end Magento services including eCommerce consulting, eCommerce web and app development, mobility solutions, migration to Magento from another portal, and support and maintenance for the existing platform. We help clients maintain their competitive edge by keeping them updated with the emerging trends in this niche.

Connect with Ranosys

Ranosys is a leading eCommerce development agency in Singapore and Asia Pacific. This event will be a great opportunity for merchants to stay updated with eCommerce trends. If you are also considering to start an eCommerce channel to take your business to new heights, this event will be beneficial to meet and learn from eCommerce experts. As a Magento Professional Partner, Ranosys is committed to supporting its customers to create online stores and garner the full potential of eCommerce platform. You can connect with our experts and realize your ideas into business.

Singapore- March 31, 2017 –Ranosys Technologies, a leading omni channel eCommerce Development Company based in Singapore, has been promoted to Magento Professional Partner.

Magento, being the most popular eCommerce platform in the world, claims 29% market share among all eCommerce platforms. More than 250,000 merchants around the globe do more than $50 billion business every year through this platform. On an average, merchants using Magento grow 3X faster than those on competitive platforms with almost 50 percent lower Total Cost of Ownership.

“Magento Professional Partnership will enable Ranosys to unleash the full power of the Magento ecosystem and help fuel the growth of our customers. With this, we aim to bring the power of bleeding edge eCommerce innovation to B2B and B2C merchants adapting their customers changing buying patterns,” said Rameshwar Vyas, CEO of Ranosys.

Ranosys Association with Magento – A Glimpse

Ranosys has close to a decade experience in developing eCommerce solutions based on Magento platform and already developed numerous eCommerce stores for the clients in Singapore and Asia Pacific region.

The onboard certified Magento developers and solution architects keep pace with the latest Magento 2 platform and fulfill the business needs of the clients spanning across promotions, shipping, merchandising and payment. Our esteemed Magento eCommerce clients range from, but are not limited to Charles & Keith, Singapore Post, D-Link, NTUC Learning Hub, Zippova and Pipa Bella.

Ranosys also organizes Singapore Magento Meetup Group and Silicon Valley Magento User Group where it invites Magento experts to share their knowledge, expertise and insights about the platform. Ranosys had been the Silver Sponsor of MagentoLive 2016, Australia, where renowned speakers shared their perspectives on the future growth of eCommerce. This year too, Ranosys is planning to be a part of MagentoLive 2017 in Bengaluru, in May. The aim is to bring this partnership to much higher levels, benefiting the industry at large.

Want to build a personalized eCommerce store for your customers?

Get free consultation today.

“Race cannot be won by accelerating in top gear, but it can be won by changing the gear at the right time. Timely decisions in life can help win the race of life.” The same holds true for the business too. Change is good and when it comes to information technology; it becomes imperative to keep pace with the emerging techniques around the globe. Magento 2.x is one such technology which is gaining popularity nowadays.

With loads of amazing features, Magento 2.x was launched in June 2015. User-friendly back-end UI, flexible architecture, and simplified checkout process are some of the outstanding features of this new edition of Magento, which are grabbing the attention of store owners. Magento 2.x is supposed to augment the eCommerce experience for both customers and admins. To know more about why Magento 2.x is far better than Magento 1.x and how can it help your business, read on.

What Features Make Magento 2.x More Promising Than Magento 1.x?

1. Integrates Modern Technology

Performance has always been one of the major issues that store owners encountered on Magento 1.x. Here is how Magento 2.x resolves this issue:

For using Magento 2.x, store owners need not install third party’s module on the server.
Magento 2.x helps enhance the speed of the web stores as it supports the latest versions of PHP (from PHP 5.5x to PHP7) which already have security fixes.
In Magento 1.x, images are required to be optimized manually, but in Magento 2.x, there are some inbuilt tools through which, images can be optimized directly on the server.
The clients are not supposed to perform superfluous browser’s operations because Magento 2.x has bundled and minimized JavaScript.

2. Responsive Admin Panel

The Admin Panel of Magento 2.x has got some amazing improvements. In comparison to Magento 1.x, it is more shrewd and user-friendly.

Information search, store management, and navigation to all parts of Admin Panel are quite easy-breezy in Magento 2.x.

Uploading new products is easier with Magento 2.x. Along with images and description; you can also upload videos of the product. Magento 1.x lacks this feature.

You can keep track of the current status of your business by monitoring the last and top Search Terms, Last Orders, Average Order, and Last Search Terms displayed on the Dashboard of Magento 2.x. The new edition also allows you keep the record of Bestsellers and Customers, Shipping and Quantity, and Revenue Tax.

With Magento 2.x, you can add or remove the columns on the customer management or orders grid at your own, without seeking the help of the developer.

Magento 2.x has advanced content staging.

Faster and improved import of product data.
“Data Migration Tool” enables fast transfer of Magento 1.x data to Magento 2.x.
The new Marketing section contains well-known tools from Magento 1 like SEO & Search, Communications, User Content, and Promotions.

3. Search Engine Optimization and Security

From the perspective of SEO and security, Magento 2.x outshines Magento 1.x.

Magento 2.x has fortified hashing algorithms for passwords.
Rich snippets on the catalog pages perk up search result in the search engines.

4. Improved Fronted Performance

The new Luma theme of Magento 2.x appears far better than the default theme of Magento 1.x.

Users can easily access the store via any mobile or desktop device.
Setting the Guest Checkout feature to ‘yes’ in the Admin Panel will make it easy for the users to navigate. Moreover, Magento 2.x can automatically search the existing registered customers by scrutinizing their email address.
In order to view the primary content, the website visitors won’t have to hang around for the full page load.
Magento 2.x has streamlined checkout process that allows customers to create an account on the checkout success page, thus simplifying the registration process.

With Magento 2.x, the customers can keep track of their orders in a more comprehensible way. Order details comprise of the list of all products, their images, quantity, and subtotal.

Customer’s billing information is sent from the website directly to the payment gateway, which is completely secured. Magento 2.x offers WorldPay, Autorize.net, Braintree, PayPal, and few other payment options.

5. Split Database Performance Solution (Enterprise Edition Only)

For different functional areas, Magento 2 uses three separate master databases for checkout, orders, and product data. This helps enhance the scalability and performance of the website. However, this feature is available in Magento EE (Enterprise Edition) only. In Magento CE (Community Edition), only one database is used.

How Can Magento 2.x Be Beneficial For Your Business?

If you want to improve the performance of your store, you must invest on Magento 2.x. Let’s discuss in detail how this new edition of Magento can garner advantages for your business.

1. Improved Productivity

Magento 2.x can take your business to new heights by letting you manage your store more efficiently. Magento 2.x comes with new Admin Panel Design that provides a streamlined interface to your site. With the introduction of Visual Design Editor, you can easily blocks and containers even if you don’t possess specialized technical knowledge.

2. Enhanced Scalability

Magento 2.x features improved indexers with more efficient updates. It accelerates the query speed, ultimately improving the performance of your store. To reduce server load and speed up page load, Magento 2.x is integrated with Varnish Cache. Furthermore, several admin users can create and edit products simultaneously, without any concern of data conflicts.

3. Improved Conversion Rate

Magento 2.x offers an overwhelming shopping experience to the users. It enables you to display your products along with their images, description, and videos. Users can browse your site using any device (PC, tablets, or smartphone). Simplified checkout process further helps the store owners improve conversion rates.

4. Cost-Effective and Effortless Upgradation

Magento 2.x includes updated information on versioning policies and upgrade compatibility. Hence, besides ameliorating core Magento software, installing and upgrading extensions in Magento 2.x will also be much simpler as compared to Magento 2.x. With the export/import functionality of Magento 2.x, you can export your inventory data, customer data, product catalog, customer records, and other records , and then import them into Magento 2.x.

5. Easier and Faster Theme Customization

In the theme core, Magento 2.x makes use of its own CSS and LESS, instead of Bootstrap. Moreover, it supports CSS preprocessing which speeds up page load, boosts up the performance, and makes the system search engine friendly.

It is with immense pleasure that Ranosys announces the accomplishment of the ISTQB foundation certification by two of its quality analysts: Shivani Sain and Bijay Laxmi Sharma. The certification provides proof of their capabilities in the key concepts and best practices of testing. It is an internationally accepted recognition, which further vouches for the quality of Ranosys resources. Quality is vital in terms of software development as good quality product lowers the cost of maintenance for our clients in the long term. It is a continuous and systematic process that improves the reliability of the product.

ISTQB® has created the world’s most successful scheme for certifying software testers. As of June 2013, ISTQB® has issued over 307,000 certifications in 70 countries worldwide, with a growth rate of approximately 12,000 certifications per quarter. Indian Testing Board (ITB) is responsible for the ISTQB certification program in India which provides benefits to quality analysts for the adoption of more structured testing practices.

Ranosys is a process-oriented company and we follow well-defined procedures established for quality control. Our motto is to provide quality tested solutions to our clients and the achievement of the ISTQB certification upholds our commitment towards this goal.

Ranosys is proud to announce the accomplishment of SCRUM Master certification by three of its Team Leads – Divya Arora, Kalicharan Rajput, and Bharat Mungarh. This certification stands testimony to their project management skills right from project planning and control, client communication to delivery. They have been instrumental in promoting the principles of Scrum and other project management methodologies within the organization.

Scrum is a software development methodology in which the product development is done in iterations as compared to the sequential approach adopted in the waterfall method. It makes it more agile and flexible to adapt to changing requirements and priorities and unforeseen challenges. It is, therefore, considered most suitable for managing the product development and requires close collaboration with all key stakeholders to work as a unit.

Miss Divya Arora, when asked about her experience in achieving the Certified Scrum Master certificate, mentioned, “While working with Ranosys from past few years, I have gained deep knowledge in managing iterative practices as well as change management and realized the many benefits it has to offer. Hence, I decided to go for the Scrum Master certification as I wanted to better myself at it and sharpen my skills further.”

“Thinking hard and adopting all parts of SCRUM on a daily basis in projects, it took me about 6 months to effectively learn the nitty-gritty of SCRUM and finally, I took a step forward to achieve the CSM certificate. It is the result of many sleepless nights to effectively achieve the Scrum Master Certificate,” said Kalicharan Rajput.

Ranosys is committed to adding value to its clients business. Adopting project management methodologies like Scrum will help our clients reap the benefits by ensuring improved quality of the product, faster time-to-market, and better risk management.

Magento, an open-source eCommerce platform, is the only name that reflects in mind when it comes to get a secured, easy-to-use, and SEO-friendly eCommerce store. Magento is one of the best open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) for development of an eCommerce store and with its open architecture, the users can explore the custom solutions tailored to meet their needs.

With the professional team, Magento offers various products and solutions that help consumers grow wider in the era of online shopping. With various businesses reaching only 100 to 200 customers, Magento has already proven the dynamic change in the sales by its compatibility with the eCommerce business. In fact, it is connecting the world to shop easily and conveniently.

Why use Magento eCommerce is simple in its own way. The features provided by CMS are attractive and mind-boggling at the same time, like:

• Attractive Themes
• SEO friendly
• Easy use and group management
• Integrated and Online help
• Minimal Server Requirement
• File manager with easy uploads

Achieving a certification in Magento development is a lengthy process and requires careful consideration and hard work to qualify the exam. The certification verifies your ability to customize Magento according to the best practices and demonstrates your understanding of Magento’s architectural concepts.

An eCommerce store created by a certified Magento Developer adds value to the quality of the work and what if one provides you a team of experts with crazy Magento minds. Ranosys enhances the value of your eCommerce store as we continue to prove ourselves in this domain.

We say “Winning is a habit”, and just don’t say it, we prove it by our expert team, starting from Manish Mittal & continuing further to Ketika Maheshwari, Aman Agrawal, Sohan Lal Majok, Ashish Purohit, Sourabh Modi, and Vaibhav Bhaiya. We always feel proud to be one of the well-known eCommerce service providers in Singapore, and we owe this to your dedicated team and happy to hear the positive responses on our work from our clients.

Given the complexity of the oil & gas industry, the challenges faced in this industry are myriad. Rising input costs and fluctuating market prices are hitting top-lines as well as bottom-lines. Extraction and refining processes involve continuous production, requiring assets to be run at steady levels of production, which makes it difficult to implement lean solutions.

Adding to these woes, there is increasing political and public pressure to reduce industrial risks and accidents. Environmental and sustainability concerns are gradually pushing oil & gas companies to increase spend on QSHE to meet customer demands. As the competition for natural resources and reserves is growing, companies are driving towards exploring and producing in remote, harsh and hostile locations, where even the simplest of the operational tasks can become very difficult and costly. Incredibly complex supply chains are making it difficult to deliver projects on time and manage budgets.

Project overruns have far reaching consequences as capital costs as well as operational costs are already high. In short, due to changing business environment, increasing competitive intensity and need for increased focus on QSHE, rising costs are putting pressure on product margins and overall profitability.

In such a scenario, technological solutions can play a critical role in keeping project costs as well as schedule under check. From monitoring and tracking operations, risk assessment and formulation of mitigation strategies, automating dangerous and error-prone tasks to enabling quick response to change and enhancing productivity and profitability – IT has the right solutions to serve all needs.

Through centralized enterprise applications and mobility solutions, oil and gas companies canre-engineer and integrate their end-to-end business processes across the value chain. IT solutions have enabled oil and gas companies to monitor and track remote operations, undertake preventive maintenance, manage uptime/downtime, analyze real-time data and raise alerts and automate other such functions. Visualization, analytics, business intelligence and modeling are making it easier for decision makers to perceive the wealth of complex information, which in turn is leading to improved management.

IT can equip them with such capability that allows them to act more predictive to better tackle the complex economical and environmental challenges of running an oil field today- be it internal bottlenecks, customer demands or external threats. Adoption of technology in this industry has been laggardly thus far. In the future to come, oil and gas companies need to further exploit the benefits that IT has to offer.

Ranosys Technologies has worked extensively with oil and gas companies and gathered experience of real-time business scenarios. opTrak, the eLogging system with workflow management solutions, is one of the enterprise solutions developed by Ranosys for the oil and gas industry. It is a centralized business application that stores and tracks shift-related data. It allows the workers to enter their shift & equipment/ asset logs and admin/ manager can generate relevant reports and configure the dashboard. Advanced analytics features enable mitigation of risks, predictive asset management and optimization of operations.

The origin of Outsourced Product Development (OPD) can be traced back to early 1990s when organizations adopted the practice of hiring third party vendors for development of products and services primarily to cut costs of in-house development. However, along the years, organizations have come to adopt OPD for multiple other reasons such as quicker time-to-market or access to external expertise that is not available in-house. OPD, as a business model, has gained acceptance as an extended development option for product companies as it represents a relatively low-risk, high benefit opportunity.

By outsourcing product development, companies are able to acquire new expertise, build additional resources, ramp up development team at a faster pace, minimize development costs and above all boost bottom lines by focusing on new competencies.

However, companies that are outsourcing product development are increasingly looking for more than just short-term benefits like reducing IT expenses and improving profitability. What this translates to for software solution providers is that focus has to be on providing quality software and building a more robust, scalable and flexible product that will stand the test of time.

Economic advantages aside, companies expect value addition in softer aspects too that will reap in benefits in the long run. Factors like product conceptualization, sound product design, exhaustive product testing, strategic product marketing, mitigation strategies for identified risks of failure and post-launch support and enhancement will prove to be the differentiating factor for vendors in the OPD market.

In their race for survival and growth, businesses are trying to become more flexible today. With ever-increasing competition in the market, companies need to open new avenues for building their competitive advantage. Outsourcing has become a common practice and almost a given in a multitude of industry verticals. Shortening the time-to-market cycle assumes enormous importance to exploit the early mover advantage. Adopting the agile methodology for new age product development has become critical as nimbleness is the key here. Quick iterations, continuous improvement and rapid response to change is necessary to succeed amidst fast changing market dynamics.

The product engineering process begins with in-depth research and understanding of client’s needs, domain, market demands and competition. From conceptualization and refinement of the product idea, to advancement and implementation of the product and establishment of software support framework in the market, OPD involves giving shape to an idea, developing a usable product out of it and turning it into a successful business venture.

Ranosys ranked among 20 most promising OPD companies

Ranosys has been selected amongst 20 most promising outsourced product development (OPD) companies in the world by SiliconIndia. A distinguished panel comprising of accomplished CEOs & CIOs of public companies, VCs and analysts, including SiliconIndia editorial board decided on the top 20 OPD companies out of 500-odd shortlisted companies. We believe our competitive advantage lies in our value proposition for outsourced product development.

As stated by our CEO, “Our value proposition lies in sound product engineering, integrated strategic planning, seamless communication, innovative collaboration and specialized resources throughout OPD cycle.” What differentiates us from our competitors is efficiency and effectiveness of operations that we derive from our industry-specific expertise gathered over the years to deliver best practices in IT solutions to our clients.

Ranosys has been selected amongst 20 most promising outsourced product development (OPD) companies in the world by SiliconIndia. SiliconIndia is a technology magazine launched in the US with global circulation and readership. Competing against 500 odd companies shortlisted by Silicon India who were judged on various parameters, Ranosys finally made it to the top 20. A distinguished panel comprising of accomplished CEOs & CIOs of public companies, VCs and analysts, including SiliconIndia editorial board decided on the top 20 OPD companies. With this, Ranosys has yet again marked its presence in the international outsourced product development (OPD) market. It is a matter of great pride for the company to be recognized in a global forum.

We believe our competitive advantage lies in our value proposition for outsourced product development. As stated by our CEO, “Our value proposition lies in sound product engineering, integrated strategic planning, seamless communication, innovative collaboration and specialized resources throughout OPD cycle. We don’t just build products, we build relationships with our clients”. What differentiates us from our competitors is efficiency and effectiveness of operations that we derive from our industry-specific expertise gathered over the years to deliver best practices in IT solutions to our clients. To know more, please read the full article here.

Digital Commerce: Driving the change for the retail industry

Opening the floodgates: How Covid-19 triggered the B2C eCommerce turning point

Addressing the challenges of B2C eCommerce online store

Changes in B2C eCommerce customer behaviour will become even more ingrained:

Changing market trends place retailers in distress:

Agile B2C eCommerce trends and behaviors:

Dealing with vendors for end-to-end operations:

Offering omnichannel experiences at all times and costs:

Where to from here: More answers lay ahead

Get your business online in weeks not months.

What is Dreamforce?

When and where is Dreamforce 2021 taking place?

Is there any information about the exact venue of Dreamforce 2021?

Who can attend Dreamforce?

Why attend Dreamforce 2021?

How to attend Dreamforce?

Will there be a Dreamforce Dreamfest at the 2021 event?

What can I expect from Dreamforce 2021?

Are you ready for Dreamforce 2021, then?

Have you checked out our Salesforce offerings yet?

About Ranosys

What is international eCommerce?

How is international eCommerce different?

Important factors that impact international eCommerce

Achieve more with international eCommerce

Adobe Commerce (Magento) – the perfect fit for international eCommerce

What features make Magento the best eCommerce platform for international expansion?

Final take:

Wondering how Magento fits in your B2B plans?

What is customer experience?

Why does customer experience matter?

What is customer experience transformation?

The challenges of positive customer experience

Improving customer retention:

Decreasing customer acquisition cost:

Companies are prioritizing customer experience, and so should you

OutSystems: Doing things differently but achieving the goal

Adapt with OutSystems or Perish without it

Less coding. More Innovation.

Online eCommerce stores: The future of food and beverage industry

Latest trends in the food and beverage industry

Notable challenges of online food and beverage industry and their solutions

Final Take

Build your presence in the world of digital commerce.

eCommerce product recommendations with Magento

Types of eCommerce Product Recommendations Available

Summing Up

Ayushi Gupta

Business Analyst

What is an API?

What is an eCommerce API?

What can eCommerce APIs do for a digital commerce architecture?

Reduces functionality implementation cost:

Better Performance:

Better and faster upgrades:

Easy integrations with other platforms:

Deliver omnichannel customer experiences:

Lead the competition:

Top 10 eCommerce APIs that improve customer experience

Catalog APIs: This API helps you create, edit, and manage your product catalog. It allows you to update thousands of products instantly and integrate with other critical systems like inventory management, order management, etc in a hassle-free way.

Login APIs: This API manages customer data and identities. It allows users to log in to an online store even when using different systems and channels.

Conclusion

Stay atop of changing customer demands.

What is Adobe Sensei?

Personalized product recommendation with Adobe Sensei and its benefits

Ai-driven retail

Different recommendations types

Embedded admin based merchant experience

Streamlined workflow

Auto page tagging and catalog sync

Final words

Embrace digital transformation with Adobe.

Ayushi Gupta

Business Analyst

OutSystems- The #1 low-code development platform

How to get OutSystems certified?

Recertification and certification validity

Why should you attend the Get OutSystems Certified DevCamp in the first place?

What you’ll learn:

Our Speaker: