Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader, is pleased to announce that the Prolifics’ robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent document processing (IDP) solution “IntelliDocs for Healthcare” won the grand prize at the prestigious IBM Build a Bot Challenge for best RPA solution.
This IBM Build a Bot event, held between Dec. 15 and Jan. 31, was subtitled “Automation for the Common Good,” and challenged participants to broaden the vision of what RPA can do, specifically in collaboration with data sources, artificial intelligence (AI), and systems like business rules, document processing and workflow. The event drew more than 2,100 sign-ups, 70 envisioned projects, and 35 IBM robotic process automation applications submitted. IBM saw participation from 116 countries and engagement from business partners, customers, other technology firms, and academia. Prolifics is an IBM Platinum Business Partner.
Our grand prize-winning entry, “IntelliDocs,” is a digital worker solution that automates the healthcare prior authorization process. Prior authorization is normally a time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone process that often leaves physicians and patients in limbo. IntelliDocs extracts and classifies data from authorization forms, checking for accuracy; enters the information into the payer’s electronic health records system; provides status updates and hotline support via chat and phone. The result is less data-entry time, less manual work, fewer errors, and lower administrative costs, with patients getting the treatments they need, faster.
Salem Hadim is Prolifics’ Head of Intelligent Automation Consulting Practice. “We’re very proud of this achievement, and it reflects Prolifics’ leadership in the AI Powered Business Automation and Intelligent Automation space,” said Hadim. “Many thanks go to our digital engineering teams that brought our ideas and designs to life with this winning solution”
A second Prolifics submission, called “Hope,” won the third-place prize. Hope is an AI powered, automated mental health assessment tool. Companies use Hope to collect survey data through forms or chat sessions. The program analyzes the data and uses a scientifically proven scoring system to identify and contact those who could use assistance – with early detection being the key to better outcomes.
Prolifics’ third submission, “ResuMan,” made the finalist list. ResuMan is an AI powered candidate screening tool that automates the application review process. It collects applicant and job posting data, applies machine learning to filter the information, and then matches the right candidate with the right job.
Saying that the world of IT is fast moving, is an understatement; new projects, solutions and innovations are always on the horizon, providing IT teams with a duality of being eager to constantly improve, while balancing workloads to manage their ‘as is’ technology estate, throw-in software updates, bug-fixes and software testing and the fine balance between innovation and maintenance is skewed, leaving organisations losing the battle. The mundane maintenance of core IT stifles innovation before it takes its first breath.
Here we explore the ever-growing world of Managed IT Services, and why they are becoming so crucial to organisations across the world, the impact this has on revenue and the innovation that can arise from finding the right Managed Service Provider (MSP).
IT Managed Services Save You Time
No matter your budget, time is a commodity that is in short-supply, especially in IT – being able to quickly react to changing landscapes or customer demands requires agility and the bandwidth to take on new projects; this is often not the case for internal IT teams, as their current resources are at capacity, looking after what already exists or is soon to be deployed, placing IT Management, CTOs and CIOs in a quandary – drop everything and start innovating, or maintain what is currently available and forgo innovation until things calm down.
Our experience shows the latter is often the common choice, not ‘rocking the boat’ is a safe bet for obvious reasons but being left behind by more agile competitors has less than desirable consequences in the long-term. Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are keen to change this and give you the time required to innovate by:
Removing Time Consuming Maintenance
Updates, patches and day to day management is essential to how your businesses technology functions, however, this maintenance is a task many internal teams feel like they could do without – especially if the software or application is proprietary, meaning that specific sets of skills are to be recruited by the organisation, becoming a task within itself.
Diagnose Issues Faster
A dedicated Managed Service team with experience in discovering problem areas are far more likely to find bugs than those who aren’t. Using a Managed Service Provider means that thorough diagnosis, potential issues are resolved faster.
Note: Prolifics employ our end-to-end QA solutions to improve diagnosis.
Less Time Hiring Staff
Rather than hiring staff specifically to manage legacy software, Managed Services help improve your ROI by having these resources readily available, therefore removing the need to look backwards, and instead providing a focus towards innovation. Why ‘skill-up’ staff on a software that’s no longer part of your organisation’s strategic direction.
IT Managed Services Save You Money
IT budgets aren’t exhaustive, so ensuring the best value for money throughout everything your team does, is essential. As organisations look to Managed Services post COVID-19 in an effort to streamline costs, this route to team augmentation is a viable option to quickly enlist skilled staff, without breaking the bank.
Specialist Skills, Reasonable Costs
As new projects are constantly being commissioned, some of which encompass new technologies or processes, finding the right staff at the right time can be tricky; specialist IT Managed Service Providers often have a cohort of well-trained experts, that can be used on a project-by-project basis, to suit most budgets.
“Prolifics ensures that Managed Service staff have real, client-facing experience before being placed on projects, compared to other SIs, who use graduates.”
24x7x365 Onshore Support for Less
Finding onshore staff that are security-cleared (SC) and can actively monitor your systems is a huge cost that many organisations are finding hard to accept, some believe it is overkill, however, as many have experienced, downtime is never good and could deal a serious blow to profitability. Using a Managed Service Partner allows for a subsidised pricing model with a guarantee of reducing or stopping downtime all together.
Blended Managed Services Model
Organisations often want the security of a UK-based Managed Service provider, while also requiring the power of an offshore or nearshore team to complete projects. This can often be expensive and is shared between multiple companies, increasing the price, and reducing the accountability.
Prolifics offer a blended Managed Service model that allows for the best of all (3) worlds- onshore, offshore and nearshore, providing a service to reduce the cost of team augmentation.
Managed Services Mitigate IT Risk
Downtime, security attacks and data breaches spring to mind when speaking about IT risk- they’re sometimes unavoidable, however, reducing the likelihood of this happening is essential for customer privacy, satisfaction, regulatory compliance and profitability.
Ensuring Business Continuity
Imperative in modern organisations, a strong and thorough business continuity plan must have the correct resourcing to undertake issues swiftly. Working with a Managed Service partner ensures that an end-to-end approach is undertaken, limiting risk and having a strong plan to quickly bounce back.
Best Practice
Enterprise IT is laden with guidelines, Quality Assurance (QA), and vendor best practice, this can sometimes be a minefield for the uninitiated and can be the crux of introducing risk to IT systems. Working alongside a trusted Managed Service partner with certified skills in software, strong governance and processes around QA and security ensures that risk is mitigated.
Industry Compliance
As industries evolve and adapt to changing demands, the compliance that must be undertaken in keeping systems, software and data secure and compliant with government or industry mandates requires both industry and technical proficiency. A Managed Service provider prepares the necessary steps to compliance, working closely with business leaders to reach true compliance.
2022, The Year of Innovation
Time, money and risk, have a direct impact on what projects you undertake, why they’re undertaken and if you’re able to complete them before another shift to the industry or business landscape. Managed Services are quick becoming the ‘secret sauce’ in transformation projects, providing organisations with the assistance they need, exactly when they need it, opening the door for innovation and in turn, a less stressed IT team.
Regardless of where your team are based, the ‘new normal’ ensures that IT departments can connect and work on projects with greater efficiency than ever before; this leads to 2022 becoming a catalyst for innovation and new solutions to empower enterprise IT.
As you look to compete with accelerated modernisation efforts and customer-centric projects, ensuring you have the right team by your side is imperative to success. Prolifics can offer a variety of Managed Services across technologies and vendors- use the calculator today and begin your journey with a trusted partner.
Prolifics Wins Four at the 2021 ICMG Awards for Global Digital Architecture Excellence
LONDON, UK., March 21, 2022 – Digital Engineering consultancy, Prolifics Inc., won four accolades in the 2021 ICMG Annual Global Awards for Architecture Excellence, held in New York earlier this year.
The awards encompass four individual competencies, including the Global Award for “Best Digital Architecture in IT Services,” Regional Awards for “Business Intelligence and Analytics,” and “Best Software Architecture in IT Products,” and team and leadership recognition awards. The shortlist featured a strong selection of finalists with more than 200 projects, from 27 countries and four rounds of evaluations for entries. The win propels Prolifics into an elite group of distinguished and highly respected global winners.
Speaking on the accomplishments, Prolifics CEO, Satya Bolli, said, “It is a great honour for Prolifics to be recognized for one of the most prestigious and coveted awards from the ICMG global architecture panel. With this award, Prolifics has achieved an important milestone in driving digital transformation and promoting digitalisation in enterprises globally.
“I am confident that our organization will demonstrate great tenacity in setting a very high benchmark in delivering on promises in the field of Digital Engineering in the future. This recognition helps strengthen Prolifics’ position as a leading global provider of digital solutions by accentuating our offerings in consulting, engineering and managed services across various business verticals.”
Prolifics was able to complete this major achievement, winning one global and two regional awards for a single solution that leverages the power of open-data architecture, cloud-native technology and microservice-based frameworks. Together, they build a unified data analytics platform that enables the accelerated delivery of scalable and highly responsive real-time data metrics. This allows Prolifics’ clients to leverage interactive data visualisations and run AI/ML workloads on Azure and AWS for rich business insights at blazing speeds.
Alongside the technical achievements, Prolifics was also recognised in the category of Top Global CIO, highlighting our strong, innovation-led leadership. Greg Hodgkinson, CTO at Prolifics, said, “Innovation is mainstream at Prolifics. We have taken numerous initiatives to nurture innovation culture in our organization. We take customers’ complex problems through our global innovation centre journey to co-create unique, innovative, and affordable solutions. The 2021 Global Award for Digital Architecture Excellence has sparked a flame that will ignite new projects to come.”
Ajay Malgaonkar, Vice President and Head of Engineering & Global Delivery, who was also recognized in the category of Top Global Chief Digital Strategist and Chief Solution Architects, was overjoyed with this achievement. Malgaonkar said, “This award is a worthy recognition of the team’s leadership in forging industry-leading digital engineering capabilities, enterprise architecture best practices and a true commitment to offer unmatched delivery experiences to our clients. A great collaborative global team of skilled engineers is at the helm of it all.”
You can review a list of all the ICMG Global Winners 2021 here.
About ICMG Global: ICMG Global has been promoting creative and responsible Digital Architecture in the corporate world by encouraging innovation and enterprise. This award program is in its 15th year and provides a platform to showcase innovation, solutions, results, success, and the logic and the process of using enterprise architecture to achieve business goals. A neutral, peer level, jury driven assessment which includes highly distinguished members like John Zachman and many others, carry out detail assessments over 300 feature points to arrive at the ratings.
Prolifics modernise Clipper’s customer onboarding, reducing time to value from months to weeks.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, 12th March, 2022- Digital Engineering and Systems Integrator, Prolifics announce a successful modernisation project for the UK’s leading retail logistics provider, Clipper Logistics, accelerating the onboarding processes of new retail and carrier customers from months to just weeks.
The project, which has been essential to both Clipper and their client’s scalability, allows the logistics company to quickly integrate retail customers’ order management systems with Clipper’s own warehouse management system, strengthening its end-to-end logistics capabilities.
Rebeca Kilduff, CIO, Clipper Logistics commented:
“With e-commerce booming in the last 18 months, many retailers have needed to scale their logistics operations quickly.”
“We needed to easily integrate with our retail customers in a scalable and reliable manner to meet this demand. MuleSoft has allowed us to create reusable APIs and integrations to connect with our customers easily and quickly. That means we’re able to accelerate innovation with our customers and become more competitive in the market.”
Prolifics, the end-to-end strategy and implementation partner for the project, quickly identified a lack of flexibility in the existing systems, which did not allow for Clipper to make carrier changes centrally, instead, only at a retailer level. To resolve this, Prolifics, using MuleSoft technology, empowered Clipper to make the same carrier changes in-house, improving efficiency and streamlining processes.
“To modernise Clipper’s onboarding, first we had to look at what was causing them the most pain – we identified that carrier changes were siloed, therefore hindering the entire distribution process.” said Prolifics, Senior Account Manager, Jonathan Sharland.
“We quickly solved this bottleneck with a common integration channel between the retailer, carrier and Clipper, allowing us to move towards a standardisation project across all integrations, to facilitate growth and agility.”
Clipper, guided by Prolifics’ expertise, accelerated innovation by building reusable APIs, introducing standardisations for all partners and suppliers, resulting in a faster, cheaper and simpler onboarding process.
Now building reusable APIs for Orders, Addresses, SKUs, and more, Clipper has become ‘a composable business’; quickly building new digital services with existing capabilities, reusing existing APIs instead of having to create them from scratch each time. This approach has made onboarding simpler and more cost effective, while making Clipper more agile for future projects.
“With MuleSoft integration technology, we can meet the needs of the business and our customers faster, which is critical for supply chain efficiency,” added Kilduff.
Prolifics’ UK Head of Technology, Marc Edwards, named as MuleSoft Retail GTM Champion.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, MAY 26th, 2022 – London Software Engineering and digital integration company, Prolifics has been named as a MuleSoft Go-To-Market (GTM) Champion, demonstrating their expert knowledge and experience in solving digital integration challenges for the retail industry.
GTM Champions bring experience and insight across the technology landscape. They work with a cross-functional team to develop a joint go-to-market strategy and spend several weeks establishing this joint approach to help clients understand how MuleSoft, provider of the leading integration, API, and automation platform, can accelerate their digital transformation
Prolifics created an API-led integration strategy, enabled by MuleSoft, that addresses the growing need to integrate non-traditional order fulfilment channels and provide a ‘single view of stock’ as an enabler to improved order conversion and customer satisfaction. The unique case study successfully enabled Prolifics to be named as a GTM Champion for the retail industry in the first MuleSoft GTM cohort.
The credential was awarded after a stringent process which saw Prolifics meet strict criterion, including skill in applying the MuleSoft for a real-world, digital business use case. The award was backed up by internal recommendations from the larger MuleSoft team, based on innovation, experience and positive outcomes from MuleSoft engagements.
Frank Mulligan, Prolifics UK General Manager commented:
“We are incredibly proud of Marc receiving this credential from the MuleSoft team; it is a testament to our commitment of providing innovative, market-leading solutions for the retail industry.”
“Prolifics have decades of experience within both integration and retail, working with the UK’s largest retailers as a trusted partner to their business goals, through our global commitment to innovation and digital engineering proficiency.”
Prolifics UK Head of Technology, Marc Edwards, formally Head of Technology at The Very Group, was chosen to represent the London digital integration specialists and provide key insight into some of the retail innovation conducted by the Prolifics Global Innovation Centre, while demonstrating a deep understanding of the retail landscape, helping cement Prolifics’ retail-specialist GTM status.
Mr Edwards commented:
“I’m thrilled to be named as a MuleSoft GTM Retail Champion. Our proposed solution demonstrates a small segment of Prolifics ability to solve serious industry problems, that are often rooted in poor integrations.
“By using MuleSoft, we help our clients to build reusable APIs and services, enabling them to become a composable business through reuse, agility and flexibility.”
The GTM credential means that Prolifics will be closely partnered with MuleSoft and their new and existing retail clients, to realise business value through best practice, accelerators, consultancy and innovative solutions using the MuleSoft platform. The partnership offers a shared goal of removing bottlenecks and allowing retailers to leverage technology as an enabler, giving way for reuse on future projects and phased developments, all while increasing return on investment and a faster time to market in a highly competitive industry.
Prolifics is committed to helping mutual customers quickly connect their apps and data to deliver digital projects and innovation faster, reaching out to both new and existing MuleSoft clients, with a series of events, content and targeted solutions.
MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, Inc., a Salesforce company. All other marks are those of respective owners.
Prolifics acquires Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner, Tier 2 Consulting Limited.
London (United Kingdom), June 29, 2022 – Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Tier 2 Consulting Limited. Incorporated and registered in England and Wales, Tier 2 delivers software solutions to its clients using modern, open-source, cloud-native technology, and an agile project approach. The Tier 2 team is composed of full-stack Java developers and Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift experts. Based on its skills and experience, Tier 2 was in fact the first Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner for the UK and Ireland.
For Prolifics, the acquisition is part of its ongoing expansion and growth goals. Tier 2 brings expert custom software development – using its agile approach with disciplined delivery – with a large and loyal UK customer base. Its Red Hat Premier Partner status, coupled with Prolifics already strong partnership with IBM, will expand opportunities across the board.
For Tier 2, becoming part of the Prolifics family will mean the ability to scale its existing custom software delivery capability to meet the increasing demands of its customers, offer expanded solutions and services in performance, volume, and penetration testing, in data and analytics, as well as provide enhanced career opportunities and job advancement for its people. Tier 2 will continue to operate as a separate entity under its current leadership structure.
“We are thrilled to have Tier 2 as part of the Prolifics family. Their skill in software development and delivery and significant expertise in Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift will greatly increase our position and visibility in the high growth potential of the UK and North America cloud markets.”
Andrew Kennedy, Managing Director at Tier 2 Consulting, said:
“This acquisition marks a significant milestone in Tier 2’s 20-year history. Building on our already proven track record of custom software design and development, it will provide Tier 2 with the basis for future expansion, to the benefit of our customers and our highly skilled team. We share Prolifics’ ethos around quality solution delivery and technical expertise, and are delighted to have become part of the family.”
About Prolifics
Prolifics is a digital engineering and consulting firm helping clients navigate and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. We deliver relevant outcomes using our systematic approach to rapid, enterprise-grade continuous innovation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product – using agile practices to deliver immediate and ongoing increases in value. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas – Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity – at any point our clients need them.
About Tier 2 Consulting
Tier 2 works in partnership with our customers to understand their business challenges, and deliver custom software solutions using modern, open-source, cloud-native technology and an agile project approach.
We are full-stack Java developers, Red Hat Middleware and OpenShift experts, and became the first Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner for the UK & Ireland in 2014, an award based on proven skills and experience. In 2021, we became one of the first Red Hat Container Platform Specialists in EMEA, an award which cements our position as the Red Hat partner of choice for delivery of cloud-native applications.
The beauty of our ultra-online, digital-first age is that for the first time ever, data really is everywhere. Everyone has the world at their fingertips it seems: a democratisation of information unlike any prior. Organisations of all sizes can tap into this wealth of information and use it to better their business—in theory.
In actuality, this flood of data has inundated many businesses. When trying to fish value from the wide sea of information, c-suite decision-makers find themselves quickly overwhelmed. Most companies will admit that their data collection and synthesis is a bit of a mess. The sheer abundance of data coming at a business from all angles has caused a data management crisis where meaning, context, and governance have not kept up.
While the full democratisation of information may be the goal, if your team can’t interpret what data is relevant, they can’t properly synthesise it and wield it to its full potential. It goes without saying that when each department has its own native data organisation process, they don’t always meld well into one corporate overview that’s vital for decision-making. Rather than optimising processes, this slows down the whole organisation—and may actually cost you revenue.
It would seem, then, that while democratisation is undoubtedly a plus, striking the right balance between a free-for-all and a managed stream is the feat of the hour. How can you find the balance? A balance that simplifies data for team members of all technical levels to use and maintains security, while also encouraging free and abundant access? A true democratisation of data?
What is Data Democratisation?
At the basest meaning of the term, data democratisation simply entails expanding data access to more people. No longer is data solely the purview of data scientists, now everyone in the organisation has a part to play. However, the exact extent to which unlimited access constitutes “democratisation” is up for some debate. As the concept evolves, different organisations interpret the term somewhat differently.
Consider a spectrum bridging the two concepts:
Total Control
Traditionally, data would flow through specific gatekeepers as part of a rigorously controlled data governance programme. This protects organisational data, but also makes it impractical for people to access the data they need, when they need it. An excessive limitation of information flow—in the name of due diligence—prevents relevant data from reaching its destination.
Total Freedom
On the other extreme, certain quarters advocate making information available directly to anyone within the organisation. However, this light touch data management exposes you to a higher risk of costly data breaches—and in some cases is not even legal, such as when handling financial information or other sensitive data. Not to mention that unfettered access to raw data is not particularly useful for less technically-attuned team members, and can just confuse more than it helps. While on its face a full democratisation of data, this simple opening of the floodgates often does more harm than good.
To truly democratise data in the workplace, you need to find a balance between these two extremes, satisfying the demand for more access while also maintaining appropriate controls. When you find your organisation’s unique formula, this equilibrium offers the best of both worlds. It’s neither unresponsive authoritarianism nor unruly anarchy, but a balanced and open exchange.
Why is Data Democratisation Essential to Your Business?
Effective data management can propel your business to new performance heights. The ability to access and interpret data in real-time results in speedier decision-making, which in turn creates more agile teams with an edge against slower, data-stingy competitors.
But, as discussed, it’s not just about giving more people access to raw data. Unrestricted access to unsynthesised information does nothing to help less-tech-savvy team members—and is risky. Some level of data processing is still essential in order to string together the whole story for users.
Consider, as an example, large banks, retailers, and online services, that share client information with thousands of employees. In a raw dump of data (the “full democratisation” some envision), these employees all suddenly have access to highly sensitive—and often irrelevant—information, which is also prone to leak.
A true democratisation effort on the other hand, would make this information available, but direct it where it needs to go: into the hands that can use it best. Rather than accessing snippets of unrelated, unprocessed information, seeing the whole picture at once can empower team members to better innovate and make informed decisions.
This organisation and strategic dissemination of data enable greater collaboration.
Data producers (and the people who wind up using that data) can seamlessly share information for the whole organisation’s benefit. Democratisation increases trust and transparency, making operations more productive. And as you continue adding data, the system becomes increasingly valuable.
Too many businesses struggle with delays, data silos, and archaic processes. Now is the time to modernise your legacy systems and streamline your information flows.
Getting Started With Data Democratisation
The first step in democratising your business’ data is to learn what functionalities are available and how they align with your needs. In order to know where you want to go, you first have to understand where you are.
Where Are You Now?
Analyse what data you collect, how you synthesise it, as well as what requirements you must adhere to and what drives your data collection efforts. Essentially, you want to determine which technical problems you need to solve and which business goals you can achieve.
What’s Your “Why”?
Identifying your drivers at the start will help you coordinate your efforts with your business goals as a North Star. Whatever the solution—be it strategic, financial, or operational pivots—having a clear sense of direction makes democratisation easier.
Where Are You Going?
Going back to that spectrum of “total control” to “total freedom,” upon appraisal, where do you find your business falls? Why? These questions give insight into your data culture. They also inform you how best to attain your democratisation objectives. What products or training do your people need? How will they use them?
This assessment stage is a great time to reach out for for a little outside professional help. Analysis can be quite a challenging process on your own. After all, it’s not just about the raw data. It’s also about understanding and cataloguing your assets, methods, and domains.
Once you develop a clear picture of where you’d like to go, it’s time to make a plan to get there. This plan will outline which specific modifications to make to your systems and processes.
Achieving true data democratisation means bringing together all your various raw data sources into a user-friendly whole. Thus, the quality of connectors for bringing in that data without corruption or loss is paramount to later use. Note that the data is dynamic: you want live data to keep your staff abreast of the latest information. The tools you use must accommodate this ever-changing nature.
Modern AI-powered analytics tools can process your data in detail to extract contextual details. Then you can incorporate the results through a user interface that enables people of any technical ability to understand and use—and trust—the data.
Too often people are deterred by the seemingly complicated nature of data democratisation, but it’s actually quite feasible. In fact, it’s not the complexity that organisations need to sort out, but rather the basics. Establishing the right foundation for data management—a foundation that tells you the who, what, where, when, and how of data access—will enable you to make clear, decisive steps forward.
Democratise Your Data with Prolifics
The technology and knowledge are available now to better prepare for the future of data management. As business intelligence tools increase in sophistication, organisations must grab this opportunity to put data where it belongs: front and centre, in the hands of workers who need it.
Data democratisation speeds up your workflows, clearing the path for information to support real-time decisions. While every business has its own optimal procedure, the best approach finds the happy medium between excessive restriction and an uncontrolled data deluge.
Of course, finding that happy medium can prove a challenge on your own. That’s why it helps to have a pro in your business’ corner. In comes Prolifics.
Prolifics comes to the table with decades of experience in helping companies manage data across industries, including finance, retail, and logistics. With us as your guide, you can efficiently proceed through the stages of data democratisation. From identifying your situation and needs to developing a plan and finally implementing a successful transition, we’ll make your democratisation process a breeze.
Are you ready to modernise your team’s data consumption and meet the digital era head-on? Let’s move your business into the future—democratise your data with Prolifics!
Data drives the business world. Accordingly, between customer relations and evolving trends, companies that fail to ensure the accuracy and veracity of their data only hold themselves back. The most recent statistics indicate a willingness among companies to spend extensively on data. Despite the 2020 setbacks brought on by Covid-19, the investments are only increasing. To truly leverage the coming years, IT and business leaders must plan wisely, with an eye toward emerging trends in data analytics, to maximise profits and productivity.
What should you be on the lookout for in 2022? Consider these five data analytics trends.
1. Master Data Management
Although this is a well-established area, master data remains the heart of your business. It’s the high-value information that provides critical insights into everything that makes your company tick: data on your customers, vendors, products, partners, staff, accounts, and more. Therefore, it stands to reason that any weak spots in your Master Data Management (MDM) strategy can have severe rippling impacts throughout your organisation. Strengthening your MDM approach is paramount to achieving your operational goals.
MDM encompasses a set of strategies used to manage an organisation’s master data. Before we discuss your strategy, however, it’s important to first establish a firm grasp on what your master data is, and how it may relate to other data sets.
Think of master data as your end-all-be-all pool of information—a golden record, if you will. There is only one record of this data and it should serve as the data your entire organisation leans on. For example, you should only have one set of data for any particular item your company sells regarding its specifications.
Whereas you should only have one set of master data, you may have several sets of “wrong” or “incorrect” data. “Wrong” data doesn’t necessarily imply factual error. It may contain the correct information, but be the wrong type for a given situation. Similarly, incorrect data is an inappropriate entry of the data you need. For example, you may have three different profiles for the same customer or employee. Wrong or incorrect data may lead to disagreements on which is correct, or how many people exist with the same name. Organisations can rectify these disagreements with a robust and clearly articulated MDM strategy.
2. Data Fabric
As companies source data from seemingly infinite sources, ensuring that data flows in one coherent stream is crucial to using and understanding it. Big data has boomed over the past decade as hybrid clouds, AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and edge computing entered the mainstream. Data Fabric aims to unify your data sources to curb challenges like data silos, security risks, and data bottlenecks.
There are more data sources available today than there were yesterday. The same will be true tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. A few of those sources may be in real-time; some might be structured, whereas others are unstructured. That data must be cleaned, verified, and handled before you can leverage it for analytics and machine learning.
Data Fabric essentially comprises the architecture of intelligent and automated systems that facilitate end-to-end integration of all those data pipelines. It fills the gaps between structured and unstructured data streams that otherwise would not “play well” together. You may think of Data Fabric as a blanket covering your messy data landscape. However, instead of taking an “out of sight, out of mind” approach, Data Fabric unifies the mess to drive decision-making. With more and more data sources popping up every day, it’s no wonder that forecasters expect the Data Fabric market to grow at a CAGR of 25.90% by 2027.
3. Process Mining
Among modern data analytics trends, one cannot overlook process mining. The practice is crucial to eradicating bad habits and patterns and running your organisation efficiently.
Process Mining assesses your organisation’s operational processes, extracting information from event logs, databases, information systems, and management software. With this information in hand, process mining then dissects which practises work and which need improvement. Organisations of all sizes—from fresh start-ups to international enterprises—can maximise efficiency by understanding how their processes work.
Think of process mining as a full audit of your operational processes. Are they running as efficiently as possible? Might there be areas to streamline that will increase productivity? Are you taking any unnecessary steps?
Process mining tells organisations what’s going on internally. Instead of just relying on assumptions, business leaders can make data-driven choices to expand their operations with increased productivity.
4. Operational Analytics (AnalyticsOps)
Operational Analytics (OA), also known as AnalyticsOps, leverages real-time data to support decision-making on the fly. These data analytics trends all seek to enhance your organisation’s decision-making process, and AnalyticsOps is no different. AnalyticsOps strengthens functionality by improving client experience, bolstering inventory management, and increasing overall productivity.
In short, AnalyticsOps is about turning insight into action, ASAP. What good is all that information if it just sits in a data warehouse and doesn’t promote action or change? Instead, put that data to work in the various tools that drive your business.
WSU, known as one of the first data-rich institutions, was an early adopter of AI technology. Software from IBM ran daily audits to strengthen predictive modelling and reporting capabilities. Their IT environment spanned more than 100 databases, an entire student information system, and protected research data.
By leveraging data analytics trends like AnalyticsOps, WSU better poised itself to identify students at risk of not graduating or struggling academically. With this data, WSU puts those students on a straightforward path to success—while saving considerable capital on their data management strategies.
5. Data Democratisation
Large corporations generate significant quantities of data every minute of every day—not to mention the avalanche of information coming at them from outside as well. Ideally, they’re leveraging all this information to grow and flourish. However, making informed choices can prove difficult when that data gets trapped in information silos. As a workaround, major enterprises turn to analytics trends like data democratisation, allowing for a free—but not wildly uncontrolled—flow of data throughout the company.
Data democratisation aims to make certain data accessible and functional for all employees and stakeholders within a company. This means more refined data capture, yes, but also educating team members on reading and using that data to make better decisions—regardless of their technical background.
To implement this sort of democratised system within your organisation, you need to first implement a modern data architecture that leverages business intelligence tools and platforms. At the same time, while you can invest in all the hi-tech tools in the world, you’ll still need to develop new habits and processes within the organisation. It takes time to change old habits, but data democratisation proves its worth in the end.
Refine Your Data Analytics Processes With Prolifics
Considering the pace at which information technology continues to develop these days—some even refer to this as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”—modern businesses must leverage data analytics trends to stay ahead (or even just to keep afloat). However, whether you run a small business or a large multinational enterprise, you’ve got a lot on your plate already. It’s hard to keep up with the latest and greatest, especially when the latest and greatest seem to change day-to-day.
That’s where Prolifics can step in to help. With over 40 years of experience transforming businesses of all sizes into competitive, data-driven enterprises, we at Prolifics keep our thumb on the pulse of technological change. By partnering with our data experts, you can keep ahead of the competition with best practices and the latest trends in data analytics.
Are you ready to elevate your data analytics processes to achieve full end to end visibility?Get in touch with Prolifics today to learn how data can increase your organisational productivity across the board.
As retail and supply chain companies join other sectors in going thoroughly digital, application programming interfaces (APIs) continue to take on increasing importance. More applications within and outside of each organisation need to be connected together—and APIs offer a proven way to do so.
Application programming interfaces simplify the development of safe and effective services. The API acts like a brain or a telecom network, connecting many systems together and delivering real-time information to customers, suppliers, and people throughout the company.
Integration via APIs helps bring legacy systems into the modern age, while also extracting maximum performance from your cloud-native applications. Considering how many retail and supply chain firms juggle a variety of old and new systems, they need an easy, speedy way to string them together. API integration is the answer!
The Rise of the API Economy Powers Digital Transformation Among Enterprises
APIs are gaining widespread use in part because of the strategic handiness of the “API economy” approach to uniting technical and business systems. Joined together by the central API, hundreds of applications can suddenly communicate with each other instantly. The connecting API itself becomes a valuable product.
For example, a shopping app can include a map, or a warehouse management system can connect to suppliers’ databases. Billing, accounting, customer relationship, and other software can all be connected through APIs. The result? Innovative companies engage the digital generation on customers’ turf—and reap greater profits.
API integration also makes your business more agile, as you can deliver multichannel services effortlessly. A customer can make purchases digitally or in person, with no difficulty to your system either way. All sales tie into the same network.
From a supply chain management perspective, an API-centric approach lets you add new sources (such as shipping out stock from a brick-and-mortar store), without complicating warehouse stock management numbers. This technique also makes you more resilient, as you can quickly switch transportation methods according to where stock is located or going. Sales and marketing become smarter.
Improving the Retail Experience With API Integration
API integration is good for business—and that goes for retail customers, as well as the business itself. Widespread integration makes the shopping journey more consistent across channels.
Instead of customers dealing with frustrating communication mismatches, an API can provide instant order statuses, personal vouchers, or any other information—by phone, web, kiosk, or anywhere. Or consider the classic conundrum of showing up to purchase something at the store, only to find out that it’s out of stock—even though the website says it’s available. The harmonisation of channels through an API alleviates this problem in real-time.
As yet another example, nowadays people often make purchases through shop recommendations. When retail systems communicate through an API, they not only reflect the same stock data but can also offer consistently personalised recommendations based on buying patterns. The retailer can upsell products related to previous purchases—and again, it doesn’t matter which venue the shopper uses.
Retailers can also use API integration to improve the shopping experience in more subtle ways, such as by giving customers more internal data. For instance, a bicycle shop may use an API to let people explore bike routes, equipment, and other company data. Third-party developers could then build their own apps on top of this API, further expanding the bike vendor’s marketing reach while solidifying partnerships.
APIs bring all your business’s individual systems together. This gives you immediate and complete information on stock numbers, order statuses, customer preferences, suppliers, shippers, and any other data you could want. The speed and granularity of integration are unprecedented, telling retailers in detail exactly who their customers are and enabling friendlier marketing practices.
APIs Connect People and Businesses With the Supply Chain
Application programming interfaces are about uniting the many aspects of your supply chain, from suppliers to logistics. Complex processes become more manageable as APIs facilitate automation, analytics, and other innovations, essentially building an “event-driven architecture” to support the rapid flow of business information. This architecture tracks and responds to actions (the “events”) from users and from the system. The approach pushes information through your organisation right away, rather than waiting for other systems to pull the information.
This results in more dynamic and responsive software than conventional business conventional architecture. As soon as customer information (like a sale) or any other data (like a new shipping option) enters the system, it produces real-time results anywhere you want.
Event-driven architectures make your supply chain capable of adapting to complex needs on the fly. Data-driven decisions become the norm, since your whole team has access to the most current information, even if they are widely distributed. You can combine point-of-sales systems, internal databases, supplier databases, cloud apps, mobile devices, warehouse inventory, and more into an efficient framework for making business decisions.
Your supply chain, in turn, evolves from the basic transportation of products into a smart network that imbues businesses with amazing responsiveness.
Power Up Your Business With Prolifics
APIs are so critical for digital transformation that they have become the highlight of industry-wide efforts. The API economy combines data sources and applications to give your employees real-time insights into any facet of the company. Using this information, your organisation can enhance customers’ retail experiences and earn more sales.
With API integration your retail store can sell on the web, on mobile apps, and in-store, all without any impact on inventory data or performance. The API ensures that the process runs smoothly regardless of shoppers’ preferred channel.
But APIs don’t just improve your retail experience; they also bolster your supply chain on the back end. From before production until after-sales, you’ll have extensive interconnections suffusing the organisation with vital intelligence. How many parts do you have? How long will it take to ship? Instead of guessing, you’ll know precisely the situation—and how to act.
Prolifics’ custom solutions can meet your exact needs for digital transformation. From assessing your organisation’s API readiness through to deploying and maintaining your installation, Prolifics has the experience to perform your API integration seamlessly. We partner with the top global IT vendors to build you a cutting-edge system.
Take your retail and supply chain operations to the next level with API integration. Contact Prolifics now!
As the fourth Industrial Revolution continues accelerating rapidly, businesses need to adopt strategies that set them up for whatever the future may hold. That includes adopting an API-first design approach.
A future-proof design enhances and connects multiple processes to deliver superior operational efficiency. With reusable software components that work to API standards, you can easily and quickly build secure products.
However, it’s not always easy to see these advantages with all the myths surrounding API-led development. You may have heard that APIs are new and untested technology or that a code-first approach is best, for instance. Other myths include a supposed lack of business value and an excess of complexity. However, the truth is that API-driven development actually outperforms code-first methods that are becoming outdated, thanks to its elegant modularity.
Composable business models can be assembled from pre-made parts. These modules comprise technologies including APIs, as well as business processes that can rapidly redeploy into new configurations suited to the times. This methodology helps make organisations more nimble and adaptable.
What Is API-First Design?
API-first design centres software development on application programming interfaces (APIs), instead of starting from the code itself. The API serves as the guiding force that shapes the rest of the development project. Since APIs define how different systems connect with each other, this approach outlines what a product can do before building the product.
API-led development speeds up innovation by streamlining and securing the development process from end to end. Programmes have a specific set of actions that they can perform, which makes it easy to write the appropriate code. Writing the API in advance gives you the concise basis for making graphical, voice, command line, or any other interfaces that may elaborate on the blueprint. This contrasts against conventional code-first development, which can get messy if started from ill-defined coding.
API-first design’s growing popularity is easy to explain: its speed, security, and simplicity greatly enhance a structured flow of information. Phones and other devices connecting to cloud apps have further helped the API economy bloom. As a result, businesses large and small are turning to this method to increase the efficiency and reliability of their offerings. API-first design lets businesses react nimbly in any situation, rolling out new goods and services to customers as soon as demand arises.
The API-led design also reduces the cost of developing components since these composable applications are reusable by nature. The blueprinting allows you to create applications that can perform the same work in multiple contexts. These work like building blocks that you can rapidly assemble into different products to satisfy evolving desires. You’re more agile—thanks to these reusable services.
Unfortunately, despite its many benefits and obvious superiority over a less-structured code-first approach, API-led design strategy suffers from a number of popular misconceptions and myths. Let’s clear the air about several of these longstanding misunderstandings.
Myth #1: APIs Are New
While API-driven development has exploded in recent years, the technology itself is not new. It has been around for over two decades and is a battle-tested solution that powers many of the online services we know and trust today.
The reuse potential for rapidly releasing new functionalities ranks among the main reasons for the present popularity of APIs. For example, consider the increasingly popular open banking system. The concept depends on public APIs, which allow financial service providers and their partners to respond more effectively to customers and regulatory requirements.
Governments are pressuring banks to allow outside organisations to check balances or conduct other transactions. Traditionally, banks closed off their systems for security purposes. However, modern APIs alleviate these concerns, offering a fast route from the bank to the public while maintaining security. Now instead of each bank or other institution having its own way of doing things, there are common techniques like JSON that unite many disparate organisations into a highly functional whole. The open-access nature of APIs gives these services a useful structure—making them both easier to build and more secure.
While API use itself is not novel, previously it might only have been added as an afterthought to link other tangential programmes. Today, companies start by creating the API, which then interfaces with any number of other systems. It’s the difference between tacking on an API to solve an existing problem versus designing the API from the start to respond to multiple unfolding problems. In short: APIs are not new—but over recent years they have blossomed into a centrepiece of the digital economy.
Myth #2: Code-First Is Always Better Than API-First Design
This myth seems to have arisen simply due to an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” bias for historical solutions. Code-first is how things have been done in the past; now, however, API-first design often makes more sense. The application programming interface takes into account business needs according to key stakeholder input—not only technical capabilities—to steer development faster and farther.
In the context of building a reusable system, thinking about the API first is a must. You shouldn’t start developing before considering the requirements! Designing for reuse is designing for the future. Starting with the API fosters good design practices, making it easier to extract value from your resources down the road.
With the growth of the API economy, interconnectivity has become critical to business success. Companies like Expedia, Uber, and Stripe have built fortunes on APIs. And it’s not just large organisations—companies of any size that are reaping the benefits of API-first design. These software connectors unleash creative potential while supporting safe code.
API-first design’s superiority also rests its big-picture focus on delivering more concrete long-term ROI versus just starting to code. Instead of only fixing problem A, you’re also fixing problems B, C, D, and E.
Thus, code-first offers a false economy. It may seem easier to start coding straight away, but it doesn’t prepare you for the future. With API-first design, you assemble a clear notion of what each reusable component does ahead of time, which offers a powerful method to fix your business challenges.
Furthermore, by dint of their reusability, API-first designs can solve multiple problems across multiple systems. They open the door to unexpected applications later on—encouraging further innovation. While code-first may seem faster at first glance, its short-sightedness locks you into a constrained path from the start. Meanwhile, the API map only reveals greater horizons as you go.
Myth #3: API-First Approaches Have Low Business Value
While some may think that API-first development has low or no business value, it actually contributes substantially to enterprises’ bottom lines over time. An API-led approach is fundamentally attuned to an organisation’s operational needs from the get-go, by virtue of its design. Therefore, it’s planned with the business’ profit front of mind.
API-first development boosts innovation, adaptation, and agility—you’re essentially fortifying yourself for the future. As your business grows and evolves, unexpected challenges and opportunities will always crop up. A well-made API enables you to quickly pivot and capitalise on these moments rather than constructing off-the-cuff solutions from scratch on the fly.
Let’s take a look at what can happen if you don’t start with an adequate API. If anyone can come in and interact willy-nilly with the system, they can flood it with transactions, taking it down. This is not necessarily malicious, either—often, a flood of transactions is just a signal of positive, explosive growth! But a system needs to be secured for these unexpected moments if it is to run effectively and consistently.
For example, consider the eCommerce titan of titans, Amazon. Amazon Marketplace features APIs open for anyone to connect their shop and sell online. Their API-first design allows millions of products to be sold without overloading the system or otherwise threatening security. This gives third-party vendors access to an immense market, shoppers access to over a million vendors, and Amazon much larger profits.
Myth #4: API-Led Development Is Too Complex
Developers more accustomed to a code-first approach may wrongly assume that an API-first development cycle is more complex. However, these steps are actually quite simple and very adaptable to your needs.
With API-led development, you write apps to talk to a general API—not to specific devices, like an Android phone or a Windows computer. This straightforward approach frees you to reuse components as you please.
APIs streamline the process of innovating and developing for the future. It’s a different approach but not necessarily more complex. There’s some upfront commitment in compelling everyone in the organisation to pivot to develop with APIs and update legacy applications, certainly. But the long-term payoff comes with streamlined, easily reusable, and rearrangeable systems.
Having fewer interfaces makes innovation speedier, organisation-wide. You can roll out a new app in weeks, instead of months! All the building blocks are there—it’s just a matter of stringing them together through your carefully established API. Complexity doesn’t increase, it decreases. You have a single standard to which developers code, unifying efforts into an efficient process for delivering value to customers.
Streamline Development with Prolifics
API-first development simplifies the production of solid code. While application programming interfaces themselves are not new, they are experiencing a dramatic rise in popularity—indeed, technology as a whole has begun reconstituting itself around an API-driven economy. It’s time for your systems to catch up.
API-led development offers numerous compelling advantages over code-led development for technical staff—while also yielding faster and more functional products for customers. The resultant business value on both operational and consumer-facing ends makes this a doubly smart choice to modernise your enterprise.
The face of digital business is changing quickly—sometimes, it seems, too quickly for the average business to keep up. That’s why it helps to team up with a digital transformation partner with years of industry experience, like Prolifics, to make your transition to API-first development secure and speedy. No matter the project, the Prolifics team is here to help your business excel in its digital innovation goals, just as we have for businesses across the UK. Contact Prolifics today to see how we can ready your business for the future ahead.
