Category: Technology and Innovation

NoCode development refers to a platform or tools that help non-developers to create computer software applications without writing even a single line of code. Traditionally computer programmers write code in a preferred computer language to develop software applications. Every business change had to go through a circular phase of back-and-forth iterations before a change in the software code can affect the business change. NoCode gives freedom for an end-user to make changes as business demands and eliminates the dependence on programmers. The whole purpose of NoCode is to make people who are not programmers to produce applications without writing a single line of code.

What is NoCode?

NoCode solutions are end-to-end solutions used by people who are not programmers to create and update web applications and websites using pre-configured graphical user interface artifacts. NoCode allows non-developers to modify, build and deploy software programs without knowing how to program in a programming language or working as programmers. When non-programmer wants to change an existing software program, they can’t do it. With NoCode, one can easily make any change as they choose.

The Future of NoCode

The Future belongs to Citizen Developer who wants to do things as it demands. They would like to change the software code to suit the new business model or new business process, a new idea, or a new strategy. They also would like to do it immediately and assess the impact instantly. If these have to happen at such a speed of thinking, it can only be done using a NoCode platform. The traditional software development process consumes quite time to make software code changes in an agile manner and thus does not suit a dynamic modern enterprise that is always exploratory. Perpetual innovation is the art of success in the 21st century, and NoCode is the means to achieving it. NoCode has gained momentum in the recent past and is here to stay, with more traction in the years to come. Slowly, we feel all developers will turn into Citizen Developers with many NoCode platforms coming into the market.

Conclusion

Programmers have needed a solution for a long time and when it comes to coding it faster to situations. Only innovation can solve the problem, and one such innovative solution is the NoCode platform. It doesn’t matter how you have been designing, programming or developing a software program until now but when it comes to scaling up the system you are building, then there is no substitute for NoCode platforms. NoCode platforms have scaled to demonstrate increased flexibility, scalability reliability, and quality. In Retail ViVA, 15 modules are built using our NoCode platform CodeSelfie and thus have high scalability to changing needs. We built Retail ViVA to suit modern retailers who are hungry for innovating all through to create a better customer experience.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

Retailers can use QR codes to drive traffic to their website or landing page or any call-to-action page in a simple scan & go way for the mobile users. Retailers can also send discount coupons through QR codes or send a similar call to action for after-sales service making it very simple for users. In the current contactless environment, it can help to confirm delivery by customers through a simple scan of QR code on the delivery pack. You can get feedback from your customers through QR code usage or even help them download a mobile APP in seconds without any complexity.

What are QR codes, and what can they do?

QR codes are like bar codes but more secure, and most electronic devices have them. Most mobile phones come with the in-built capability to read QR codes and display their content or action. For example, you can scan QR codes in shops to find products or their features. This helps the customers to find the right one quickly. You can use QR codes for promotional purposes such as sending a discount coupon, free games coupons and other offers etc. Customers can confirm delivery by scanning QR codes. You can make payment easy through the use of QR codes. The ability to embed even call-to-action information in QR codes makes it multi-purpose oriented and Retailers can exploit this feature to their best of imagination in making it easy and intuitive for customers and other stakeholders. As mobile devices are becoming more powerful and are equipped with advanced scanners, retailers can even convert a QR code to a barcode for easier scanning. Further, retailers can customise application needs according to the technology of QR code through their innovation.

What can QR codes do for customers?

When scanned with a mobile phone, a QR code can convert it to an image, text or even a barcode with no distortion. By default, we can see any kind of image in the QR code in a live mode which allows customers to share an image via social media or e-mail. It helps customers to avoid the hassle of typing a web address or perform multiple instructional steps to achieve their purpose. In the current era of contactless payment, it helps immensely to pay at check-out by simple scan in seconds.

Conclusion

Retailers and their brands should take advantage of the evident QR code trend. As QR codes are now quickly and widely adopted by web users as a mobile web interaction tool, the retailers need to be using them more and more to retain their customers. Retail ViVA is QR code ready, and we integrated it at multiple instances to improve customer experience. Any modern Retail ERP must have extensive use of QR code integration to save time, build efficiency and enhance customer experience.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

5 min read

SERP is an abbreviation for “Search Engine Results Page,” and Ranking stands for “Position,” among others. Together, they represent the position of your website or blog or article on a search engine result page. When we query for a “Keyword” in a search engine, results get displayed based on our query. Search engines follow their algorithms to populate results in relevance to the Keyword. The keyword is the word what a user thinks about when he desires to search. If I am looking for a summer cruise ride and stay in California, my keywords for search maybe “Summer cruise from California.” There are many search engines in the world. Google occupies the number one spot, followed by Bing.

We have pets at home, and they love to play with us. They demand attention and importance. My friends have been telling me how they have been playing with their pets all through the day due to lock down and working from home. Similarly, you should treat your website as a digital pet and bestow attention and importance. The importance it seeks is to wine, dine & dance on the first page of Google and every website’s heartthrob is Google SERP ranking.

Google and Bing have their algorithm to show up a website on the first page or first in the search listing. It is a golden principle that no search users go beyond the second page of search engine listing and most do not even go beyond the first page. Hence, your website must get listed on the first page of google search so that your site comes up for the relevant keyword. The process of growing natural traffic to your website both qualitatively and quantitatively is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). When we started our google SERP ranking improvement project for www.retailviva.com, our objective was to get ranked on the first page. We are a team of four that wanted to attempt this. It is all started on 17th April 2020 with our first meeting to debate and discuss and lay the path forward to achieve this. The first step was to understand google webmaster guidelines in toto. This strategy much helped us to understand all the little nuances that we need to care for in a website.

We scheduled one-hour meetings thrice a week and a day in the middle was left to accomplish changes that we must make based on our previous day understanding of SEO techniques. Simultaneously, we realized that content is king and to confess, we had poorly written content on our website then. We started re-writing content for about 35 pages, with a clear articulation of relevance of content for each specific page, plagiarism-free. The related pictures selection also was a task added to content preparation. The keywords were the riddle and puzzle to be solved, with questions like single keyword per page or multi-keyword per page or which relevant keyword search users will think first. We quickly realized that one must make several strategic decisions along the pathway of the website SEO process. We applied collective decision making after consideration of all contexts. We sometimes agreed, few times agreed to disagree, but all times agreed to the conclusion.

When we started, our SERP ranking was at the bottom of the 120th page in google search and we could see us forging forward every week as we began making changes in tune with our learnings on SEO strategy. The motivation of small success made us finish the google webmaster guidelines from the first word to the last without missing any side links and when we finished, we were more than ordinarily confident that we have at least done everything right as per the author. We did a similar exercise for Bing as well quickly in the next few days. It was 90 days of learning something from scratch and we moved to the third page in SERP by that time.

We had a unique website design wherein our home page was the visualisation of our module icons with links without any wordings at all. Google loves unique websites and we consider our site as unique, quite unusual to other product websites. We then realized that we must have wordings to represent our home page for Keyword tagging and with a single line wording and tag line, we hit our last nail to finish it in style.

The D-day was the sweet 100th day, and we noticed that we are at a numero uno spot in SERP in google occupying the very first position in about 35 developed countries starting from the United States and ending in New Zealand for “cloud retail ERP” keyword. The simple learning was that follow the author’s instructions meticulously to get the best results.

I will fail in my duty if I do not mention three colleagues who contributed the maximum to this project namely Santosh Kumar Chakilam, Sudhakar Emani, and Neha Velshetty. Kudos to my colleagues who scored 100 out of 100 in 100 days. They are on to their next mission to maintain SERP rankings and that discovery will give us more knowledge to pen sometime in the future. Until then, please try and make your website wine & dine on the first page of Google SERP.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

3 min read

Enterprises are full of content and float in content every moment. There must be a system to share, store, protect, control, and destroy content so that only authorized content is shared or stored. In the absence of a content management system, documents may be lost or destroyed or distributed unauthorizedly or stored in the wrong locations. So that content is properly managed, enterprises adopt a centralized Content Management system, which is popularly known as Enterprise Content Management (ECM) or Content Services (CS). Both of then represent the way content is organized and systemized in an enterprise.

Traditionally, enterprises managed content in a scattered manner, some in the storage location of individual employee’s computers or the more organized ones pointed storage in one central drive in their network. However, this is rule-based, and success depends on employees following the rules to store as per corporate policy and procedure. They were indexed to search but did not have any associated taxonomy tags to group them for easy retrieval. Keywords search within content was also not possible easily.

Cloud-based content management systems coupled with file sharing and file synchronization services became quite popular during the last decade and occupied center stage in corporate adoption. However, there were concerns about security for adoption at a faster rate and became more popular as an employee’s personal cloud content management system quickly. Some of them have improved and are addressing the gaps for being a full-fledged enterprise content management system with robust collaboration features. Multiple users collaboratively manage web and enterprise content, synchronizing their thoughts, actions, and expectations. ECM systems have brought the vibrancy of active collaboration for concerted effort and shared storage, avoiding duplicate storage of the same documents within a single network. The deduplication of document circulation has saved a substantial amount of space and corporate bandwidth usage in their buy operational timing. In one of our client locations, the average saving on deduplication noticed was close to 50% of data circulating over email.

Retail ViVA, our Retail Management System, has integrated ECM across the other 25 modules and stores data with intelligent taxonomy for easy retrieval. The accountability matrix created for content access is in adherence to corporate governance policies of the enterprise. Retail ViVA stores all reports in ECM and circulates a link for access, providing transparency of who has consumed or otherwise. ECM helps retailers to achieve the efficiency of content storage coupled with ease of content access.

ECM is green, clean, and is the cream of corporate governance objective. Retailers must care about what content is distributed and who has authorized such content for distribution. We can achieve the best accountability while avoiding duality of authority, bringing in clarity in the organizational hierarchy towards faster achievement of enterprise goals and objectives.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

4 min read

A bot is a software backed application that can converse like humans either via text or text to speech to another individual on the other side, for information provision or clarify a query. Due to this conversational capability, bots are also known as conversational bot or chat(ter)bot or virtual agent (meaning a customer service agent) or smart agent or other similar names. Chatbots got developed to enhance human efficiency and to take care of routine or repetitive actions so that human’s precious time can be applied to do something more value-adding. In modern times, chatbots have gained popularity, more in customer service, and much less for enhancing internal efficiency.

We always opine that customer service is personal and needs a personal touch. If a chatbot is involved with a customer, maybe, we can finish it with a personal touch by way of chatbot transferring the conversation to a physical service agent. Similarly, if the chatbot can be applied to internal processes saving precious time of employees, employees have more time to indulge in customer conversation or create a good experience for customers. I strongly feel enterprises must first start using chatbots internally to improve efficiency rather than jumping to use it for customer service. All of us spend several minutes accessing information, either in search or navigating a series of menus in an ERP or eCommerce application or travel site. If we can save that time spent, we will have more time at our disposal to read or attend to more value-adding tasks. Employees are motivated as it takes lots of routine and mundane tasks out of their functions.

Let us imagine a situation of generating a customer outstanding aging report and mailing it to my boss for a forthcoming review meeting. I may spend between three to five minutes to accomplish this task, depending on the smartness of the ERP system that is in use. If I can indicate the same in a chat with a bot as “mail debtor aging report to the boss and me now,” it takes less than ten seconds for me to type. The time saving is enormous, and the task gets accomplished. Here the bot understands the debtor aging report, and looks for it in the report menu, understands my boss from the organization chart, runs the report, gets the report, and mails it to both. I can give my best each day by delegating my routine tasks to the bot and I can do more productive work. This new way of engaging makes me motivated to contribute to enterprise goals and success. I become an engaged employee ever working towards enhancing enterprise agility and growth.

While designing and developing our Retail Management System, Retail ViVA, we decided to internalize the chatbot for improving employee efficiency before using the bot for customer service. We got Tulsi, our chatbot trained on all twenty-six modules before embarking on training the bot for customer service. We could sense enhancement in employee engagement and productivity in a short period of two months. Employee satisfaction surveys also indicated a more robust engagement than before. Employees also loved the way they can get information on demand and that information being live without any lag.

Any employee would love time-saving methods. Employees feel empowered when they can get information on demand and feel motivated as well. Information on demand helps in their decision making and becomes a sound decision support system. Access to information and delivery success boosts their confidence to grow to the next level of the hierarchy and contribute to enterprise goals.

I recommend implementing a chatbot for internal systems first and then plan to implement for customer service. By getting used to the chatbot, employees can better articulate chatbot design for external customer service options, so that brand equity enhances.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

3 min read

Enterprise adopts Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products to digitize their operations. Some enterprises settle for one single ERP product which may cover most of their operational needs. Others may opt for multiple products that claim superiority for a specific function and integrate them using the integration method. The first is a single solution approach through a single vendor and in the second, it is a multi-solution approach using multi-vendors or using one system integrator to integrate and maintain them. With the cloud slowly becoming the norm, the single solution of multi-solution has taken the discussions to the next level of debate, as it may be possible to integrate solutions in a hybrid cloud environment. My understanding by way of consultation with several Chief Information Officers (CIO) indicates mixed reactions; for some, multi-solution is a win-win while for some others, it has become a nightmare.

Modern business applications come with connectors for external systems to draw and put data, thereby creating permanent connectivity between two different software systems. Application Programming Interface (API) or other similar interfaces help achieve interaction between multiple systems. However, when two systems interact, there is more exposure to security risk due to users using different connectivity and what is technically known as transport security. Further, cloud hosting has created another new concept known as a hybrid cloud where you connect with multiple systems residing in various clouds, also exposing to security risks. While one can mitigate these security risks through proper security protocols, a risk exposure remains even though mitigation measures are put in by way of encrypted transport protocols.

Let me take, for a moment, example of buying a new motor vehicle. We test-drive many and finally settle for one. We may like individual features of some but may not find all those loved features in the final one we decide. However, we settle for the final one only because it has the most features that we liked, while it certainly lacked few that also we loved. Similarly, in software products, the easiest way to avoid much of security risks, cost of integration, cost of unification and cost of attaining equilibrium in version update between different software is to opt for single solution.

But the future of software is drawing us to same conclusion. When NoCode platforms mature, users can create or add features of their choice to an existing software they use. If the software is built entirely on NoCode platforms, they can add whatever they need or desire. Time is not very far off when this becomes a reality and then, I am unable to see traction for corporate CIO to opt for multi-software combinations. It will be interesting to buy the one which has most features like the example of the motor vehicle above and add the features the enterprise desire using NoCode platforms.

Seeing this future trend, which is emerging, we built 16 of our 26 module Retail Management Software, “Retail ViVA” using NoCode platform of ours, giving absolute freedom for Citizen Users to add features of their choice or re-configure it as they like. If the platform is NoCode rather than LowCode, users can customise the solution to their specific needs under common corporate standards. If a Citizen User can model her/his needs by themselves, why do they need to opt for multi-products of speciality and take the hassles of combining them to one bundle? In the NoCode environments, self-modelling does not consume much time and one can quickly model and achieve desired results. As we mature into advanced NoCode platforms, users may rethink of moving away from specialist SaaS software products to one unified ERP product of their choice and cascade it up by themselves to their most needs. I strongly feel that NoCode platforms will change the landscape of cloud software and its subscription and see some significant disruptions coming along in the medium term of two to three years. Until then, it will be life as usual with multi-software thriving and gaining market share with their excellent specialized offerings. I opine a single solution approach is safe and secure and has long term sustainability so long the solution provider is credible, stable, and resilient.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

5 Min read

Analytics is a systemic way of discovering data for aligned or non-aligned patterns and presenting it in a visualized manner that the human mind cannot miss the apparent trends that presentation is highlighting. The summarised highlights of data presented in charts and graphs pave the way for easy understanding. Analytics became popular right since accumulatio of business data coupled with the introduction of specialist analytics tools in the marketplace that claimed exclusive data discovery familiarity.

As these tools became popular, we noticed corporate houses performing various analytics for top management by way of relevant charts. This kindled human reaction to those visualization and thus was born data-driven decision making. Senior management makes strategic decisions based on data visualization presented to them. However, in the early days of these tools, the analytics visualization was restricted to senior management, and scarcely, the operational team had access to these analytics platforms. Dashboards were not used by the operational team, least to create it by themselves for their own data analytic needs. However, all the analytics were batch driven then, not providing helpful insights on a real-time basis. It is like the report card of our children which we get every quarter from the school to know what scores they have got and being blank until the end of the quarter to see how the child is progressing in studies.

With the advent of the Millennial and Gen Z workforce, the appetite for self-service and drive for making decisions on their own gained momentum. Their independent cum collaborative working styles required that they own their data, network about their thoughts on data analytics in close circles, and pursue actions from their consideration. Self-service analytics and on-demand analytics came into play to their advantage. On-demand analytics is not possible in batch mode, and the absence of embedded analytics was an apparent frustration to them. All the frontline analytics vendors rushed in to fill the gap with connectors that can export data almost in real-time to provide real-time analytics. Some created common platforms to connect reputed ERP, and other popular cloud software and others provided a generic model of configuring connectivity between systems to pull data almost instantaneously. The Embedded Analytics became the basic norm, not even as a unique feature beyond the primary offering.

However, still, the third-party embedded analytics had its limitations of not being fit for fast throughput online customer-facing data roll situations like stock market transactions or online revenue management systems or the like. Further, some of the online ERP systems cater to high volume eCommerce transactions, and embedded analytics fell short of configuring for alerts integrated with workflows linked to those transactions.

It is in this context, natively embedded analytics came in, developed natively by software product owners, not to miss even the split of seconds that is involved in the transfer of data to the third party data model and produce analytics based on such transferred data. Natively embedded analytics uses the same database rather than using another database replicated online from the central action database. Natively embedded analytics stands superior to third party embedded analytics. However, third party specialist embedded analytics were much superior in product features and performance being specialist products. The trade-off then was what to choose between embedded and natively embedded or hybrid of them. The natively embedded has the advantage of showcasing what-if situations as transactions are captured even before a transaction commit is made if situation demanding and warranting. While one may not do transaction-based analytics in an online manner, there may be situations that require predictive analytics for transactions in the offing. A natively embedded one has an edge to provide that instantly like an instant coffee.

While building Retail ViVA, our Retail Management ERP software, we developed a natively embedded analytics platform of our own so that users need not miss out on their abilities to use the analytics even for transaction-based decisions making. While the senior management may be involved in data-driven decision making, the operational team may be involved in transaction-based decision making. Further, a unified database used for analytics produces one truth which is core in corporate decision-making.

While embedded analytics war is on between various specialist business intelligence vendors, large ERP product vendors have created their own native embedded analytics given largeness and complexities of their data model. Who will win this war is an interesting question and time alone will answer? Whoever be it, the native has an edge, being really at the Edge. Maybe, a hybrid model may best fit to serve multi-purpose needs of modern growing retail enterprise.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

Today’s business world is competitive, full of intelligent strategies to create new brand vibes and experiences. Strategic intentions require the weighing of various alternatives. Today’s data science algorithms facilitate data analytics, presentation, and visualization and thus become a sound decision support system. However, the challenge still lies in getting context-relevant information during the decision-making process. Even if the relevance is adequate, the question of intelligent information to decision-making on-demand comes next

When you are in the moment of strategic decision making, you often find that you are short of that one or two unanticipated critical relevant information to make the right decision. The pre-set analytics or data visualizations need to be re-drawn to another created moment aborting the current moment where a reasonable amount of time invested in making a decision. A second moment has its own warm-up time and thus, cumulatively, we spend more time to make the right and intelligent decision. Most corporate decisions are made not in one moment, and delay in decision-making is one of the most inefficient processes that pull down an organizational success. Unless you have context-relevant information on demand, you need another moment and another moment and so on.

Any information system should facilitate providing information to users as they demand so that all moments are fulfilling with full set of information to make the right decision. This way, you don’t need to anticipate a variety of information needs and prepare for it. The foundation information for the decision making can get prepared in advance, but all artifacts of information surrounding them should be accessible on demand.

To solve this problem, we built “Tulsi,” our AI-powered on-demand information bot, which then brings up information from our Retail ViVA database to the user’s command. In any moment of your meetings, you can get all contextual information to make your intelligent strategic decision.

A real on-demand information system is the one retailer look for today. Like a stitch in time saves nine, a decision in time may save hundreds of dollars! A modern Retail ERP system must have on-demand information provision for saving precious management time.

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com

We are just a day away to start a new 2020. 2020 is going to be a year where consumers of ERP systems (users) are going to demand more opportunities for self-development. They will be less likely to continue to accept rigid systems, multi-clicks to do one simple job, non-intuitive screen movements or data picks, or non-responsive systems.

Technology is transforming year after year, and we have seen some intuitive and beautiful technology showcases in simple applications. But when it comes to ERP, it is always the case of big, long, highly validated, and continuously synchronized screen captures with multi-woven approval flows. Younger users are demanding change and severe change. They want to be citizen developers to develop themselves as situation demands. They do not wish the central IT to control what they need, but would like to define, design, and demonstrate what they need by themselves.

Their needs are genuine, as businesses need to be responsive to market dynamics. And market dynamics are very fluid and fuzzy, due to strategic and competitive forces. Hence, the time to change is minimal. But young users are willing to strategize within limited time as situation demands but want the system to be an excellent companion to be able to adapt to dynamic changes.

ERP vendors have spent millions of years, developing several screens and process flows. Will 2020 change the dynamics of these persistent efforts being questioned? Can ERP vendors provide responsive systems where citizen developers can make changes by themselves in minutes or seconds and achieve their objectives? Will just an excellent user interface provide good user experiences in the future? Will the ability to change by themselves will topple all the other goodies that ERP vendors are offering today? Will the cloud be restrictive for citizen developers without having the flexibility to make design changes that they desperately need?

My prediction is that 2020 will start the revolution for ERP users to demand very dynamics solutions that they can interpret, re-design, re-deploy, and re-energize themselves. And by 2023, we will see all the ERP vendors, who have rigid screens built-in on the great maxim of best practices being questioned, being voted unhealthy from user needs perspective, and being rejected unwieldy from user needs perspective.

The best to survive are the ones who provide responsive solutions built on no-code frameworks, where every user becomes a citizen developer to define their own needs. They will make their own ERP playlist, like how they make their music playlists.

That’s precisely the reason that we have built most of our Retail ViVA ERP modules on no-code, intending to make it fully no-code in the next year to come. We want to celebrate the making of citizen developers soon, and we are striving hard to achieve that objective. I hope that I can update more positively on this during 2020, and on the eve of 2021 as well. Till then, it is all going to be making more for the citizen developers from Sathguru!

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan

raguk@sathguru.com