From Outdated to Outstanding: The Benefits of Revisiting Your Salesforce Ecosystem
Salesforce has been a powerful tool for businesses for over two decades now, and it continues to evolve and expand with new features and capabilities. As a result, many organizations have built large Salesforce ecosystems over the years, with multiple applications and integrations. However, with so many changes and updates happening all the time, it is crucial to regularly revisit your Salesforce ecosystem to ensure it is still meeting your business needs and providing maximum value. Here are some reasons why it’s time to revisit your Salesforce ecosystem: Outdated Integrations: Over time, integrations between Salesforce and other systems can become outdated and may no longer be supported. This can cause problems with data accuracy, reliability, and security which can negatively impact your business. By revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem, you can identify any outdated integrations and replace them with newer, more robust solutions. Unused Applications: As your business evolves, you may find that some of the applications and integrations that you once relied on are no longer necessary. Keeping these unused applications and integrations in place can cause clutter, slow down your system, and create security vulnerabilities. By reevaluating your Salesforce ecosystem, you can identify and remove any unused applications and integrations, which will help streamline your system and improve overall performance. Missed Opportunities: New Salesforce features and capabilities are being released all the time, and it can be easy to miss out on these opportunities. By revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem, you can identify any new features and capabilities that could help improve your business processes and operations and implement them as needed. Compliance Requirements: Salesforce is used by businesses in many different industries, and each industry has its own unique compliance requirements. Reauditing your Salesforce ecosystem will ensure that your system is still in compliance with any relevant regulations and make any necessary updates to meet these requirements. Increased Efficiency: As your business grows and changes, your Salesforce ecosystem can become cluttered and inefficient. By revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem, you can identify areas for improvement, streamline processes, and make changes to improve overall efficiency. Improved User Adoption: Analyzing your Salesforce ecosystem can help identify any user adoption issues, such as confusing or cumbersome processes, and make changes to improve overall user satisfaction. This can lead to increased user adoption and better engagement with the system, which can drive improved business outcomes. Better Data Management: Data is a critical asset for any business, and it is essential to ensure that it is accurate, up-to-date, and secure. By revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem, you can identify any data management issues and make changes to improve data accuracy, security, and accessibility. Improved Customization: Salesforce is a highly customizable platform, and over time, customizations can become outdated or no longer necessary and can lead to a cluttered and inefficient system. By identifying and addressing any outdated customizations, improving system functionality, driving a better user experience, increasing productivity, and future-proofing your system, you can ensure that your Salesforce ecosystem remains a powerful tool for driving business success. Enhanced Mobile Experience: With the increasing importance of mobile technology, it is important to ensure that your Salesforce ecosystem is optimized for mobile use. Revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem can help identify any areas where the mobile experience can be improved, such as slow load times, difficult navigation, or compatibility issues with different devices. By making changes to optimize the mobile experience, you can ensure that your users can access and use Salesforce from their mobile devices, which can drive increased productivity and engagement. An enhanced mobile experience is a critical aspect of a well-designed Salesforce ecosystem, and can help ensure that your system is providing maximum value to your business. Future-Proofing Your System: The pace of change in technology is faster than ever, and it is essential to ensure that your Salesforce ecosystem is prepared for the future. Revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem can help ensure that your system is up to date with the latest features and capabilities, which can help prepare your system for future changes and challenges. This can involve regularly checking for new releases, attending Salesforce events and webinars, and staying informed about new features and capabilities. This can also help identify any areas where the system can be improved to better handle future growth and scalability. This can involve streamlining processes, optimizing data management, and making changes to improve overall system performance and efficiency. In conclusion, revisiting your Salesforce ecosystem is an important step in ensuring that your system continues to deliver maximum value to your business. By identifying and addressing any outdated integrations, unused applications, missed opportunities, compliance requirements, areas for increased efficiency, user adoption issues, data management concerns, outdated customizations, mobile experience issues, and future-proofing considerations, you can ensure that your Salesforce ecosystem remains a powerful tool for driving business success. Tavant can help. As an experienced Salesforce partner, Tavant has helped global organizations achieve maximum business value through Salesforce transformation. We have enabled clients to redefine efficiency, collaboration and customer relationship with our in-depth domain knowledge, and Salesforce expertise. To learn more about how we can help you revisit your salesforce ecosystem and gain a competitive edge, visit here or mail us at [email protected].
Remote Field Service is Here to Stay. Are you Ready?
Changes, Implications, and Impact In 2020, remote field service became an integral part of field service, and that trend is here to stay. Field service companies had to deal with remote services in the early days of the epidemic. Those that could adapt and embrace remote services were able to thrive in the shifting field service landscape. Even though the epidemic has ended, it is apparent that the influence of remote field service will be long-lasting. In fact, prior to the pandemic, organizations that invested in virtual services technology were deemed best in class and ahead of the curve. According to a recent report, the worldwide field service management market is expected to reach $29.9 billion by 2031, rising at a CAGR of 19.2% from 2022 to 2031. With the emergence of advanced technologies and evolving customer expectations, along with the impact of the recent pandemic, the field service business witnessed a drastic transformation. Organizations now want to use data from connected assets to improve service resolution as they transition from traditional and standard service contracts in which technicians and service engineers physically install, inspect, maintain, and service equipment to a model in which resolution and quality experiences can be delivered remotely. The ability to track service performance and value delivered will become more critical. Remote Field Service- A Friend with Many Benefits Remote field service offers a number of benefits for companies, including improved customer service, increased efficiency and productivity, and reduced costs. It also enables businesses to provide customers with real-time access to service technicians and customer data, improving customer satisfaction. Additionally, remote field service can help companies reduce costs by automating manual tasks, such as scheduling and dispatching, and providing customers with real-time updates on their service requests. This can help companies improve efficiency and productivity and reduce labor costs. Also, massive volumes of data are generated by field service firms from technicians, assets, equipment, clients, and logistics. If the data is not utilized to enhance a company’s operations, it is basically squandered. Effectively harnessing and sharing field service data can enable more efficient field service operations—and, ultimately, a better customer experience. Need of the Moment Managing field service operations is a complex task. It requires strategies, tools, personnel, and resources to be effective. Legacy systems can push businesses towards obsolescence and lead to digital oblivion. Companies that don’t have a proper field service management system will inevitably struggle to keep up with their customers’ needs and may even face financial losses. With so many stakeholders involved in field service, implementing a clear adapt-and-response plan will be critical to sustaining day-to-day operations. Businesses that implement this will be able to retain revenue and satisfy KPIs. In an environment where equipment seemingly doesn’t fail or where the physical presence of an onsite technician quarterly can lead to a customer’s diminished view of the value of service, seeing is often believing. Therefore, manufacturers and service organizations must ensure they can highlight the value of service even if it takes place in the background without the customer seeing any disruption to their operations. Automating the “last mile’ Field Service Management systems automate the “last mile” between a service company and its customers, making the connection between the two more direct. It automates the job of field service technicians. However, “Field Service Management” is a catch-all phrase that masks the enormous advancements in the field service space. Field service management is essential for any business. It helps companies manage customer relationships, ensure customer satisfaction, and improve efficiency and productivity. It also helps companies reduce costs and optimize service delivery. Field service management helps companies cut costs by making processes more efficient and reducing the amount of manual work that needs to be done. It also helps companies improve the customer experience by providing customers with timely and accurate information about their service requests. Field service management also helps companies make more money by giving customers better service and delivering services more quickly. A modern, trustworthy FSM solution is one-of-a-kind in its capacity to allow service companies in any industrial sector to operate profitably while optimizing their commitments to deliver customer promises. At its core, Field Service Management enables service organizations to: Consolidate all their work from multiple systems of record such as ERP, CRM Maintain data in one central environment Contain a view of all the available resources, parts, and materials Successfully deliver the service required Increase uptime Shorten mean time to repair and improve first-time fix rates Empower field service technicians Reduce field service costs Increase customer satisfaction Strategies for effective field service management Several strategies can help companies improve their field service management. These include: Automating manual tasks: Automating manual tasks, such as scheduling and dispatching, can help companies reduce costs and improve efficiency and productivity. Implementing customer feedback: Customer feedback analysis can help businesses identify improvement areas and adjust guarantee customer satisfaction. Optimizing service delivery: Collecting data from customer service calls and other sources can help companies optimize their service delivery and improve customer experience. Utilizing technology: Utilizing technology, such as remote field service, can help companies automate tasks and provide customers with access to service technicians and customer data in real time. Competition is fierce in today’s changing business landscape, and customers want more. Field service operations must be agile so that your employees can deliver excellent service anytime and your customers know what to anticipate. Conclusion and Final Recommendations The field service industry is moving towards increasing customer satisfaction by improving service standards. It must be enabled by empowering service teams with a mobile on-demand solution that leverages real-time data from the field to streamline and automate processes. This gives field engineers the confidence to make data-driven and efficient decisions which can directly improve revenue growth, employee morale, customer satisfaction, competitive differentiation, and overall service quality. This will catapult real customer-focused service companies above the rest. Remote field service can revolutionize field service management and provide customers with real-time access to service technicians and customer
Touchless Documents-How Automatic Document Classification Makes Lenders More Efficient
Lack of digital documentation Mortgage loan applications in the United States typically consist of 500 or more pages of various documentation. Before applications can be evaluated, all of these documents must be categorized and the data on each form extracted. Most loan processing documentation is paper-based, from sales to origination and servicing. Aside from the obvious issue of high operational costs – including print prices, storage, and delivery – paper-based documentation can present significant challenges for lenders. Compliance with regulatory standards becomes increasingly difficult due to time-consuming procedures like integrating information from paper documents and reporting to regulators. And this is more complex than it sounds! Extracting data and classifying mortgage loan application packages has been costly and labor-intensive for lenders. A mortgage is often one of the essential purchases in a borrower’s life. Therefore, they don’t anticipate closing their loan in minutes or hours, as they do when applying for personal credit. However, they demand prompt service and are disappointed when paperwork delays last for weeks. A growing number of homebuyers are from a generation of digital natives who want transactions to go smoothly. To compete in the fickle millennial market, lenders must compete on experience, quality of service, and speed. Automating data capture can fast-track the home loan process from weeks to days and increase operational efficiency in the loan process. Modernize and automate processes How can Touchless Documents change the mortgage cycle? The importance of touchless documents in the mortgage sector is straightforward: it automates document processing. Think of the significant amount of time spent on tasks such as identifying the type of document, organizing them into proper files, examining income documents, and manually inputting data. Touchless Documents automates indexing, extraction, and filing, saving lenders the time and effort of manually processing most documents. Instead, lenders only need to check documents marked as faulty by the AI system. This will benefit mortgage lenders in multiple ways: Increase operational efficiency in the loan process: Automate the historically time-consuming lending process, making it more streamlined and seamless for all stakeholders. Faster time to close: Most lenders who use next-gen digital technology with AI can expect a 30% decrease in document processing times. This automation alone reduces the average origination cycle by several days. Improved staff utilization: Most lenders struggle to keep their senior processors and underwriters focused on the most crucial credit decisioning activities. Paper procedures continue to take up an undue amount of time in their daily operations. Loans usually include at least 20 different types of documents totaling hundreds of pages. Specialists have more time to focus on their core, high-value work when AI extracts routine data from papers. Less human errors: New AI models for document processing are exceedingly accurate, with error rates for structured documents often falling below 5%. This eliminates the possibility of costly human data extraction errors, which slow down the underwriting process. Human mistake rates rise during particularly busy periods as staff strains to keep up. Regardless of volume, a machine-driven process produces consistent outcomes. The most recent AI engines have feedback loops that minimize mistake rates as the model refines itself. Touchless Documents: Work Smarter & Faster While lenders have had to undergo lengthy processes in the past manually, Tavant has introduced a machine-oriented approach that successfully increases workflow by up to 80% by automating and regulating the processes of loan application and disbursal. Tavant’s Touchless Documents instantly recognize documents, automating document classification, indexing, splitting, categorization/subcategorization, pairing with borrowers, and data extraction with the highest accuracy. Additionally, the Touchless Lending platform integrates seamlessly with existing lender systems, including CRMs, Point-of-Sales, LOS, and document management systems, to optimize document-related workflows, organize and process documents faster, and deposit the results of the document classification and data extraction back into the system of record. Processing broker-submitted loan paperwork was time-consuming and labor-intensive prior to the implementation of Touchless Documents, necessitating the use of a pool of human resources and turnaround times that could be overnight. What used to take hours is now done in minutes after integrating Tavant’s Touchless Documents. Brokers can receive quick feedback on their file uploads and provide direct advice to their borrowers on document upload requests. Touchless Docs has helped businesses process nearly 500 loans and over 90,000 pages of loan documentation in just one month, with a document classification success rate of about 92%. Tavant has been the top Fintech software and solutions provider for over 20 years, anticipating customer demands and adjusting accordingly to provide the correct customizable solutions. Tavant’s Touchless Lending® product suite maximizes data-driven decision-making to address even the most complex lender and borrower issues. How you begin is how you win! As the leading Fintech software and solutions provider for more than 20 years, Tavant proactively anticipates customer needs and adjusts accordingly to provide the right configurable solutions. Tavant’s Touchless Lending® product suite maximizes data-driven decision-making to solve even the most complex lender and borrower challenges. Reimagine Your Mortgage Experience Using Touchless Lending® Request a demo or visit here to learn more. FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant implement automatic document classification for lenders?Uses AI/ML to identify, classify, and extract data from loan documents like pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, and IDs, processing documents in seconds. What efficiency gains do lenders achieve with Tavant touchless document processing?70-80% reduction in review time, 90% fewer errors, cost savings, faster approvals, and improved customer satisfaction. What is automatic document classification in lending?AI-powered identification, categorization, and data extraction from loan application documents without human intervention. How accurate is automated document processing?95-99% accuracy, continuous improvement via ML, handles various formats, flags uncertain cases for review. What documents can be automatically classified in lending?Income statements, bank statements, tax returns, IDs, appraisals, insurance policies, employment letters, credit reports, and supporting docs.
AI is the future of test automation- Are you Ready?
Traditional QE Isn’t Working Anymore Traditional tried-and-tested methods of testing and quality need to catch up in today’s changing environment. A siloed approach: Typical QE teams are separated from development teams. This structure concentrates on optimizing the subcomponents and deviates from the true purpose of enhancing the user experience. Slowing overall engineering velocity: Traditional quality engineering has been chiefly manual, impeding rapid development and operations procedures. Expensive: Traditional QE requires significant engineering resources and costs 30%–40% of the overall expenditure. An afterthought: For decades, the testing strategy has been put off until the end of a product cycle, which is too late and can cause release delays and budget overruns. THE NEW DIGITAL ERA REQUIRES INCREASED SPEED & AGILITY DevOps and intelligent automation, as well as the proliferation of digital applications, have considerably challenged traditional techniques for application testing in recent years. Delivery times have gone from months to weeks, and nowadays, testing has moved to the left and right of the software development lifecycle. Agile and DevOps have combined development and testing into a single, continuous process. Quality engineering has changed from testing to starting with the planning of the first application. It creates a constant feedback loop that lets you plan for the unexpected and act on it. However, to properly comprehend the magnitude of the evolution from testing to quality engineering, we should first recognize how data has impacted software development. Data can do more than just power automation use cases and AI learning datasets for repetitive development and testing processes. The enormous amounts of data users create daily to make it more important for quality engineers to predict risk, find opportunities, increase speed and agility, and reduce technical debt. Quality engineering is changing in tandem with the ever-increasing cyber security concerns. Today’s quality engineering role must enable faster application, product, and service delivery and act as an enabler, not a barrier, to digital transformation. TAKING QE IN THE NEW As these changes in quality, technology, people, and organizations take hold, QE will grow into a role that is more pervasive, real-time, and based on insights. AI-led autonomous frameworks will support this to make sure business continuity and value. Testing will evolve away from traditional ways and toward new ideas and methodologies appropriate for the application engineering world of the future across five dimensions: data, frameworks, process, technology, and organization. FROM APPLICATION-FOCUSED TO PURPOSE-DRIVEN Today’s rapid growth of enterprise application testing environments shows no signs of slowing. As it evolves, QE’s focus on apps will be less defined by its alignment with business objectives. This means testing, monitoring, and making real-time fixes to ensure that the business “works” as well as the code. It also entails creating self-learning, self-adapting systems assisted by machine learning and advanced analytics. Tavant is actively planning for this future. We are propelling QE into the future with breakthroughs in holistic QE strategy, incorporated cognitive and machine learning capabilities, and end-to-end automation. This changes everything, from test planning and test case development to test execution and environment setup, and it helps QE reimagine its role in the future enterprise. Tavant Quality Engineering Services helps organizations engineer quality into their processes by incorporating a whole gamut of services, tools, and techniques to elevate the end-user experience. AI-Powered Next-Gen Test Automation Framework Tavant’s AI-powered next-gen test automation platform, FIRE (Framework for Intelligent and Rapid Execution), is Tavant’s proprietary suite of solution accelerators aimed at optimizing the overall testing effort and delivering a high-quality product. It is a comprehensive tool and technology agnostic-test automation framework. This framework can orchestrate multiple automation tools and technologies, including (but not limited to) Selenium, Appium, Cypress, Protractor, Microfocus and Java, C#, F#, Python, and PHP. The test automation framework ensures speed to market and superior quality software. FIRE 5.0 accelerates the time to market while simultaneously aiding developers to enable a dual shift of the software development lifecycle to gauge the consumer experience and provide continuous feedback into the system. It offers comprehensive test automation coverage and efficiency of more than 90%. Importance of Quality Assurance & Testing in the Finance Industry The financial industry is on the verge of transformation. Mobile banking, investment, insurance, app payments, advances in technologies such as cloud, mobile, AI, agile, and DevOps, and concerns about fraud detection management, data visualization analytics, risk and compliance management, and digital lending require specialized testing. Tavant’s Quality Engineering Services have been designed with the financial industry in mind. Our quality engineering services can help you with an error-free application and accelerate your time to market at a lower cost. Visit here to learn more.
Driving Scalability with Universal Registry for TV advertising
A Massive Ad revolution is in progress Large amounts of advertising dollars previously locked up in traditional linear TV advertising have become available over time. Much of this is due to the consumer migration to digital and OTT. This move recently included the implementation of targeted, dynamic ad insertion for live, linear broadcast programming across multiple MVPDs, thus expanding the impressions available for sale by programmers But are the advertising infrastructure, procedures, and governance in place to support such a shift? This shift to targeted advertising has created the need to rethink traditional inefficient workflows and re-evaluate the scale needed to support an order-of-magnitude increase in advertisers and campaigns, including how to manage yield efficiencies. Advertising dollars are spent through campaigns, which often include multiple placement orders distributed across numerous broadcasters or publishers. Agencies typically administer these campaigns to track how much of the budget has been spent or is pending. A complicated campaign, on the other hand, can swiftly spiral out of control as it is routed through several intermediaries and end parties. Consider the chaos that ensues when hundreds of campaigns are carried out daily. The absence of underlying rules across these several bodies for governing campaigns and creatives implies that significant inefficiencies plague the entire system. The parties go to great lengths to reconcile the execution of the campaigns. There is no doubt that advertising budgets get leaked through the cracks in the system. What are the arguments in favor of a common taxonomy and universal identifiers? ‘Johnson and Johnson,’ ‘J&J,’ and ‘Johnson & Johnson’ are all variations of the same firm. This example demonstrates the lack of uniform standards. With increased targeting and measurement becoming the norm, we need data compatibility between systems, which requires standards. The increased proliferation of programmatic inventory will necessitate the standardization of many brand and advertiser identities. Interconnected systems will also enable workflow automation for tasks such as copy instructions, RFP automation, etc. Uniform IDs/taxonomies will enable new, robust measuring and reporting methodologies, allowing for simple information consolidation in a multi-channel world. Industry-standard ID solution To address the issue of non-standardization of entity names and campaigns across the sector, a centralized registry of names should be established, where a unique ID is issued, managed, and standardized. The centralized registry would be responsible for developing and maintaining a consistent taxonomy and registry for advertisers, brands, and campaigns. Including elements like copy instructions and creative changes would lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive, centralized tool. The standardized solution leads to greater automation across ad workflow This is how a centralized repository model will impact several advertising processes: RFP – All requests for proposals come into the centralized system, which assigns a referenceable id that can then be integrated into the seller’s system instead of being handled externally as is now the case (through email or phone). Proposal – The seller creates the plan in their system and sends it to the buyer via the centralized system, which links the proposal to the RFP. The plan is communicated between the vendor and the customer in the current scenario via email or phone. With each side having its system of distinct IDs, this rapidly leads to a lot of backtracking and cross-referencing. Creative Delivery – Creatives are delivered to a centralized hub with industry-standard metadata, such as links to centralized campaigns and line-item IDs. Currently, creatives are provided to each publication with minimal standardized data attached to them. Ad standards – All ads will be pre-cleared for compliance through the central registry. In the current process, each publisher manually views each creative to see if approved. Instructions – Instructions will be provided via the standard format API. Currently, there are disparate methods and formats for providing instructions. Reporting – Advertisers and brands will be standardized, allowing for industry reporting and consolidated fulfillment info for buyers. Currently, publishers have individual advertiser and brand naming conventions. Invoicing – The invoice should display spot details and the value of each spot. Components of the Solution Building blocks of the Centralized Registry system are depicted below. Integration through APIs Master input and update of campaigns Automatic push to Order Management Systems Integration with creative content management systems Integration with Ad servers such as GAM, Freewheel Self Service Interaction Portal to allow advertisers and broadcasters visibility and update to creative and campaign status. Built in notification of pending flights and creative updates Campaigns & Flights Master repository of campaigns Cross MVPD visibility to Flights. Cross Flight visibility to Campaign. Auto notification of updates/changes Creative Management Master repository of creatives Standardization of brand and advertiser names Distribution status of creatives Integration with creative transcoding RFP Management Input of RFPs via multiple options such as forms, import or salesforce integrations Standardization of all RFP elements RFP workflow with required alerts System Reporting Campaign Dashboard Flight Dashboard MVPD Dashboard Critical Issues status System Logging by actor Conclusion With a massive advertiser shift underway, the time has come to introduce a unified campaign and creative control across the ecosystem. This will provide the creative identification space with the now lacking interoperability. This repository will not only serve as a single source of truth for advertisers, but it will also standardize the naming convention across different partners. This will result in ecosystem alignment and enforcement, with each player recognizing and passing the identifier to the next player in the chain. Reach out to us at [email protected] or visit here to learn more.
Get More Out of Your Field Service Operations with Service Analytics
Manufacturers strive to differentiate themselves in an era of connected products and services. And one way to make this happen is through improved service operations. With field service analytics, contractors often on location to install, maintain, or repair equipment, systems, or assets, can enable higher customer satisfaction and profits. From Cost Center to Competitive Advantage The sheer volume of available information can do wonders for a field service operations. The data collected by a field services organization via its fleet and workforce management technology (as well as how a business uses this data) can set it apart from the competition. Warranty Management is an example of this, which has traditionally been regarded as a cost center. Manufacturers are beginning to recognize that (when combined with the right platform, technology, and partner), the volume of data accumulated can actually be used to gain a competitive advantage. Why Service Analytics is Gaining Momentum With more connected equipment and sensors than ever, today’s manufacturers have access to more potentially valuable data nuggets. A study by the Aberdeen Group found that field service organizations that adopted analytics technology saw their service profits increase by 18%, customer retention rates by 42%, and SLA performance by 44%. Let’s look at some of the ways this can happen: Ways in Which Service Analytics is Impacting Field Service Field Tools & Knowledge Repository Field Service Technicians are constantly under pressure to provide a solution or repair as soon as possible. They are sometimes given very little time to understand the nature of the problem they are called in to solve. Field service management technology provides tools and access to knowledge repositories to field service personnel on the job, allowing them to troubleshoot more quickly. With field service technicians having access to information and insights, jobs get completed faster and result in a seamless experience for the customer, dealer, and manufacturer. Machine Failure Prediction Service analytics can help make an impact on reducing machine downtime and,as a result, project downtime for your customers. Imagine being able to send an email notification to the dealer, telling them of a 40% probable engine replacement. With parts identified and ready to be shipped directly to the dealer, on their agreement. Service analytics offer manufacturers real-time actionable insights to increase machine uptime, reduce part failures, and save on cost and effort. New Opportunities Manufacturers are drowning in data as IoT devices and sensors, connected machines, and other technologies proliferate. With the addition of smart learning models becoming more accurate, manufacturers can now use service analytics to drive decision-making. The integration of field service analytics with the sales CRM system enables product cross-selling and up-selling. This, in turn, may reveal opportunities to boost aftermarket revenue. Integrated View Service was frequently viewed as an afterthought by many manufacturers, with service prices discounted or given away to promote product sales. Sales teams are pressured to sell products or equipment with little regard for the service team’s ability to execute. This typically leads to a compromised customer experience as the service leader begins to reallocate resources to meet customer needs. These operations can be handled more efficiently with service analytics. Field service operators can get a complete picture of all assets, products, and customer information in one location. As a result, they are better able to advise customers, resolve issues more quickly, and increase productivity. The Future of Field Service is Seamless With an increasing demand for personalized, actionable customer support, service analytics can play a significant role. An entire ecosystem surrounds the customer, with field services is at the forefront. Putting analytical tools in their hands can empower personalized and quick service resolution. By using field service data, businesses can create more lifetime value for their customers while improving business processes and practices across the service life-cycle. The only question that remains is, how soon?
Code-based versus Low-Code/No-Code test automation solutions: Which one to Choose?
Concerns about the quality of software test automation solutions are growing every day, and we face an array of challenges in addressing them. One of the challenges is that we have several test automation solutions to automate our test cases (Web, API, Mobile, etc.). Some test automation solutions in the market require exceptionally good programming knowledge, whereas for a few, intermediate programming knowledge is enough, and we have a few where we can automate things with almost no coding experience. To top it all, there is pressure to deliver faster to the market What is a Code-based Test Automation Solution? Coded solutions, like traditional automation systems, necessitate a very trained workforce with an in-depth understanding of certain tech stacks. A team capable of writing custom code from scratch is required in this case. These solutions are intended to be developed and used by technical users such as SDET, developers, etc. What are Low-Code/No-Code test automation solutions? Low-code test automation solutions allow users to automate tests with some or little coding skill set/experience. Most of the automation testing happens without actual programming. Typically, the most used features/utilities are already built-in through GUI so that users can select the required actions and combine them into a sequence. However, coding expertise is necessary when achieving anything complex to interact. No-code test automation solutions allow users to automate tests in the application with almost no coding knowledge and experience. These solutions are intended to be used by non-technical users such as product owners, business analysts, etc., where we would mostly need to select, click, enter text, scroll, or drag and drop. Difference Between Code-based Vs. Low-Code/No-Code Test Automation solution Category Code-based Solutions Low-Code/No-Code Solutions Coding Need High Low or None Complexity Overly complex Less complex Flexibility Extremely flexible Less flexible Primarily Servers Technical users (Developers and SDET) Anyone who is a part of the project can contribute. Security Concerns Quite Low High Execution Speed Low to Medium (depending on the test case count and test steps). High Automation Design Robust Tightly coupled In today’s world, where new test automation solutions are frequently released, enterprises are looking for ways to expand and accelerate their software delivery processes. Even low-code/no-code solutions now have all the necessary built-in qualities that make them simple to implement with little to no coding knowledge/expertise. The question is if it is winning hearts! Code based Solutions Pros Cons Design and workflow flexibility – Design in accordance with your company’s existing workflows, expertise, and skillset. Ease of Use – Understand your intended users and their skill sets. Create the framework to match up. Need a new feature? – Decide the priority of that feature and implement it, what features your framework should have, and to what extent each feature should go. Something not working? – Find the root cause and go ahead and fix it. Reporting or Dashboard requirement – You have complete access to your execution results and can create whatever report/ dashboard format you want. Pricing – The long-term cost-per-run is much lower than any low-code/no-code test automation solution. Time to build – Creating a stable solution takes time. Depending on the AUT, it could take a lot of time. Need to provide your own DevOps/SecOps ecosystem No Outside assistance – When you develop your own solution, you have only yourself to hold accountable when things go south. Low-Code/No-Code based Solutions Pros Cons Almost no ramp-up time, it is a ready-made solution – no need to build your own. No maintenance for hardware and no need to involve DevOps/SecOps. Outside assistance – You have someone to assist you (based on your support contract) in case you have any queries or need help. Limited scalability- Need a new feature or integration with another tool? – the solution does not yet support a feature. You must wait for a feature and support ticket (you do not have any control over deciding priority) Support wait time – Response time depends on your subscription. It can be anywhere between minutes or hours to days at times. Pricing – it varies, but in the long-term, cost-per-run is significantly higher than using any traditionally built code-based test automation solution. Limited customization- Inflexible reporting/dashboard – Most of these solutions will not give you a choice to have “out-of-the-box” customization. Have any queries? – You are dependent on the solution maker to help you out. Helpless- Waking up after a few months of solution implementation to realize that you cannot increase automation coverage due to the solution’s lack of support. The automation solution company is sunsetting the tool due to any reason.” Since each organization works on different objectives, to deal with the question of which approach to use, here are the top few items to mull over: Who (Tech/Non-Tech/SDET, etc.) will create and maintain these automation test suites? What is getting automated – APIs/Web/Responsive/Desktop/Mobile apps? How complex are the test cases and business situations to be automated? What is the skill set/expertise within the team for creating and maintaining this test automation suite? Is this a new or an existing project where we have already done some automation? Is the test automation suite meant to be integrated with other tools like Test Management, bug tracking, CI/CD, etc.? The test automation suite is meant to be executed at what size? What is the budget and time duration required to complete this project? Final Thoughts It is imperative to realize that there is no silver bullet. As shown above, each choice has its own pros and cons. The key to success is choosing the right solution that balances your team’s skill sets and expertise and simultaneously meets your organization’s objectives. Until then, happy test automation!
7 Ways to Get the Most Out of an Industry Conference
Conferences play a significant role in just about every industry by providing a setting where like-minded people can connect through networking, share ideas from different aspects of their work, and learn from each other. Although conferences were forced to adjust how they function as a result of the Pandemic, year 2022 saw a return to normalcy as a more traditional business schedule resumed. Tavant took full advantage of the departure from virtual events and excitedly jumped right back into the fray. Our FinTech team represented Tavant at 25 industry conferences this past year. We know times have changed, and because of that, we want to share our top 7 tips to help you be as prepared as possible for all the conferencing that will take place in 2023. 1: Preparation is key. Preparing is an essential tip for any conference attendee, rookie, or veteran. Having an idea of what information you are looking for and reviewing the agenda allows you to plan accordingly, so you don’t waste any time and can get the most out of the event. Finding out who’s going, if possible, and figuring out with whom you want to connect enhances the possibility of you creating new connections. Also, it is important to make a plan that works for you. If you are better at networking and more of a social butterfly, maybe setting up more meetings or going to frequent get-togethers will help you get the most out of the conference. Regardless of your sensitivity to social interactions, it wouldn’t hurt to have an “elevator pitch” ready in case the opportunity presents itself. Lastly, make sure you bring any items you might need, like chargers, business cards, or anything else you might want to help you get through a long day. No one wants to leave a conference with their strongest memory being a missed opportunity. 2: Gold star attendance. This may seem like a no-brainer but attending the sessions is one of the best opportunities that you will have to learn new aspects of the industry and potentially what your competitors are up to. Take notes, bring a recorder, or whatever you need to do to help you gather and retain as much information as possible to benefit you and your company. 3: Networking is essential. Networking is a big part of conferences – it leads to new relationships and opportunities that can have incredible value for your individual professional career or the success of your company (preferably both). If you have been to conferences before, reach out to past or potential colleagues in the industry beforehand instead of wasting time trying to find them during the conference. This will save you time and allow you to take in more of what the conference has to offer. Try to connect with a speaker if you can, but this might require a backstage pass and some luck. Don’t forget: a lot of networking is done outside the venue, so attend those after-parties and other extracurricular events in order to maximize success. After the conference, reach out and chat with those you met to help build those new relationships. This allows the connection to grow and shows your appreciation for having met them, which feels good for whoever is on the receiving end. 3: Be active on social media. One aspect that people might overlook with everything going on during a conference is being active on social media. LinkedIn is the easiest way to connect with like-minded professionals and stay in contact with people. Twitter is also a solid option depending on how public-facing your industry or company tends to be. Scrolling through the newsfeeds of your relevant social media accounts before a conference may give insight into who is attending and the topics that might be covered. Furthermore, checking for any conference-specific hashtags is always a good idea. This will also make it easier to anticipate and understand the thoughts and interests of those attending, specifically those who are excited enough to post about it online and share it with their colleagues. If you are short on content, try diversifying the type of content you share on social media by taking more pictures and videos while at the conference, particularly of yourself with people you’ve met. Remember: a photo is a lasting memory, making it a great way to connect with people and develop strong professional relationships. Not to mention, if you are one of the first people to post about a conference you are attending, then you are far more likely to maximize the size of your audience for that content, thereby bringing more brand awareness to your company. Be sure to ask for the consent of all parties involved before taking pictures to avoid any unwanted photographic attention! 5: Stay organized. Conferences can be overwhelming – there is lots of information being exchanged with not always enough time to process everything. This is where staying organized comes into play. Having a well-thought-out organizational system will help you stay on top of your schedule during the conference and make it easier to keep track of names, session notes, business cards, and other information after the conference has finished. Whether it’s labeling information properly right away or taking time to collect everything necessary at the end of the day, the small efforts you make could be the difference between new opportunities and missed ones. Whatever you come up with, make sure you have a plan that works for you. 6: Divide and conquer. While this applies more if you attend a conference with coworkers, it is essential that you don’t all attend the same sessions, as it limits how much your company could have gotten out of the conference. Instead, spread out and take advantage of as many opportunities as possible to learn more and connect with more people. Also, make sure to set up a meeting time with your coworkers before and after the events to plan or recap the day. Divide and conquer
QAOps – Shift in the QA paradigm
What is it? Is it a specialization or a new team role? – The answer is No. QAOps, also known as Continuous Quality (CQ), is a process of including quality engineering (QE) in Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). So, instead of being an isolated process, software testing is integrated into the CI/CD pipeline. It requires solid collaboration between the QA team, development, and IT operational teams to build a highly effective and cohesive process. In contrast to DevOps, QAOps emphasizes QA engineers’ problems and the importance of integrating software testing into the DevOps workflow. How to Implement QAOps: We can successfully implement QAOps by implementing Automation Testing, Parallelization, Scalability Testing, and Integration of Dev and IT Ops with the QA team. Let us look at each of these briefly: Automation Testing. Automated testing forms the base for the QAOps. It involves performing tests with the help of scripts, tools, etc., to certify test cases by repeating pre-defined actions that require very minimum human-centric efforts. To make it happen, SDET engineers must work on building a solid automation framework. Once we have an automation framework in place, QA engineers select the tests that can be automated which saves time and tests functionalities well. QA engineers should focus manual effort on testing only those functionalities that cannot be automated and/or exceptional testing use cases that are not good candidates for automation. Although it is impractical to automate every test due to tool and technology stack limitations, we should strive for high automation coverage by automating as many tests as possible. The best way to approach QAOps is to integrate automation testing into the CI/CD pipeline. Parallel Testing (Parallelization) Parallel testing entails running multiple tests concurrently rather than sequentially. It allows you to run tests in various browsers and platforms at the same time, drastically reducing testing costs, effort, and time. In the QAOps framework, your tests should run quickly because if the execution happens slowly, then it will impact the entire delivery process. We should run our tests parallelly instead of sequentially to achieve speed. Additionally, it improves test coverage. Parallel testing necessitates a good infrastructure to run the tests concurrently, but the results are impressive with no impact on the delivery pipeline. Scalability Testing Test scalability comes into play once the application goes live and begins to gain popularity and gives you the desired results, which is when you must scale it judiciously. When the application scales, the testing of that application must necessarily scale as well. Scalability helps in determining the application’s performance under varying load conditions. With the result of scalability testing, we can conclude the response of the application with respect to the differential loads. As a standard QAOps practice, the QAOps team must have access to the scalable infrastructure and framework to perform testing and increase the speed of tests when needed. Integrate Dev and IT Ops in QA The final and most crucial step toward the framework’s success is incorporating all QA activities into the CI/CD pipeline. Applying a shift-left testing approach to integrate the QAOps framework can help to avoid launch delays. When the QA engineers collaborate with Developers and IT Operations teams, it helps in testing new features without any lag from the team. This collaboration between the different teams makes the development and testing process more effective. Here are a few responsibilities (not only limited to) of an engineer who performs QAOps work: Building an automation test plan Developing and maintaining the QA automation framework and scripts Configuring remote automated test execution (including parallel run) Reporting and distributing the results via communication channels such as Slack, MS Teams, email, etc. Communicating and collaborating with the Operations and Development team (from development start to deployment into live environments) Few tools/technologies stack that the QAOps team use for different streams to add value to the QAOps process: Functional Automation: Selenium, Appium, Cypress, Playwright, Protractor, WebdriverIO, and others. Performance Testing Tools: JMeter, LoadRunner, NeoLoad, and others. CI/CD Tools: Azure DevOps, AWS CodeBuild, Jenkins, Git workflow, and others. Cloud infrastructure: Azure, AWS, Docker, and others. Remote browser execution: BrowserStack, SauceLab, Pcloudy, and others. Reporting: Extent, Allure, Report Portal, and others. Benefits Of QAOps: As this process demands collaboration between the QA, Development, and IT Operations Teams, it allows them to enhance their skills in a variety of areas. As the QAOps process abides by the shift-left testing approach, this accelerates issue fixes early without sacrificing time and deploys the application sooner. CI/CD testing allows issues to be identified at an earlier stage, providing a reliable application with the utmost quality. Because testing occurs on a continual basis, the chances of an improved customer experience increase since the application quality and delivery are improved. IT operation team avoids any delays by having the QAOps operations run constantly. This permits the QA team to test new apps/features without being slowed down. In Conclusion QAOps is critical for teams that automate their CI/CD pipelines because it emphasizes speed without sacrificing quality. Once implemented, this process in the CI/CD pipeline saves time and money on testing products. The rise of QAOps highlights the problem that quality is frequently overlooked in software development.
Why Data Modernization Should be a Priority for all Lenders and Bankers
Before the pandemic, mortgage companies were already under attack from fintech and nontraditional lending organizations. Most businesses didn’t have much to say about how the changing competitive landscape would impact their lending programs, so it seemed like the mortgage and banking industries were happy with how things were going. They mainly relied on the relationships they had built with their customers. However, in a post-COVID world, digital technology has completely transformed the financial industry. Mobile banking has gradually replaced brick-and-mortar banking. The cadence of transaction processing has shifted from periodic batching to real-time processing, posing a significant challenge to financial institutions; legacy IT systems are obsolete and incapable of providing a real-time digital banking and lending experience. This is challenging because customer expectations are not just sky-high – they are stratospheric. The demand for consistent real-time digital lending has made the financial services industry more competitive, and banks and fintech mortgage lenders are struggling to meet the needs of modern customers with their legacy, rigid IT systems. Data Modernization: The Foundation for Digital Transformation Data modernization, a process of migrating siloed data from legacy databases to modern cloud-based databases, enables organizations to be more agile by eliminating the inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and unnecessary complexities associated with legacy systems. Until recently, the processes for implementing loan origination hadn’t changed for decades. In many organizations, the process is still “informal” and carried out manually, often with paper documentation sent from department to department. The pandemic has revealed flaws in nearly every company’s data management practices. Organizations have recognized the urgent and critical need for a modern data infrastructure that manages data to make it highly accessible, practical, compliant, and valuable. Fintech mortgage lenders benefit from near-term cost savings and powerful analytics that extend personalization and optimize forecasting when they have a modern data backbone and digital mortgage solutions. As a result, mortgage companies have started shifting their focus from optional to critical digital transformation. The first step toward modernization is to create automated flows for this overall process, employing RPA, artificial intelligence (AI), or machine learning (ML) technologies to reduce human involvement, reduce errors, and automate adjustments where necessary, all in support of human activity where desired. Second, reviewing the data needs for this process and making the data better and more complete can help people make better decisions and grow the credit market. Data becomes even more powerful when it is smartly combined with intelligent process automation (a combination of Robotics Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), or more precisely, a mix of tools and techniques such as OCR, speech recognition, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Loan forgiveness and mortgage forbearance are not new elements of loan servicing, but those areas have reached a scale hitherto unknown in the mortgage industry. Therefore, additional data and analytics are needed to make better decisions about loan modifications and their potential impact on the business’s risk and capital. AI analytics will only be helpful if the mortgage companies have the additional data to make a meaningful decision. A real-world example of the value of alternative data came from 2016 when severe flooding affected homes owned by a regional bank. Rather than waiting for homeowners to default on flooded or destroyed homes, the bank enlisted the assistance of a mapping and analytics firm to confirm flood-stricken homes against the bank’s mortgages. As a consequence of this, the bank was able to make use of the data and achieve a significantly improved comprehension of the threat that this event posed to its portfolio. And the organization was given the tools it needed to proactively reach out to the customer to arrange forbearance or provide other assistance to the homeowner. Why is Data Modernization an opportunity for lenders and bankers? Process efficiency: Reducing the “time to yes” The underwriting process’s inefficiency occurs in preparing the credit proposal, outlining detail for the credit committee what all these risks are, and calculating their likelihood and impact. Automation, data insights and analytics, and underwriting platform-based digital mortgage solutions are key levers that significantly impact the underwriting value chain. These technologies influence risk assessment and proactive risk monitoring and thus aid in risk prevention. Next-gen modern technologies automate manual processes and integrate legacy applications, such as policy administration systems, to eliminate information duplication. Other interventions, such as agent/customer portals, intelligent workflow, and real-time process visibility, allow agents and underwriters to work closely together. Subsequently, it reduces sales cycles, bringing “time to yes” down to five minutes. Raising the standard: transparency, consistency, and auditability Modern loan origination systems help standardize the credit underwriting process by ensuring that the best method for managing operations is used. Individual lending organization differs in some details, but most follow a consistent pattern in credit underwriting, and this process can be improved if everyone involved uses the same platform. Having instant shared access to the information required to complete the underwriting process improves efficiency while also increasing transparency and lowering the operational risk of critical information remaining in the hands of a few key personnel. It’s all about the data Banks and financial organizations generate massive amounts of data, and the vast majority of them are terrible at managing it. Data can now be found everywhere. Data modernization allows for more informed decision-making by reliably extracting data from various disparate systems. It facilitates the identification of high-value data combinations and integrations. It also enables people to identify opportunities at the moment quickly, allowing them to capitalize on something that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, eventually generating more revenue. Furthermore, data modernization reduces the risks associated with data security and privacy compliance. In its process, it looks for sensitive information so that you can limit user access to data in a precise and more efficient way. How can your organization take advantage of digital lending modernization? Consumers have shifted dramatically toward online channels during the pandemic, and businesses and industries have responded in kind. To help financial institutions achieve operational efficiencies, credit process optimization and automation of low-end credit processes to