There are a dime a dozen technologies and mobile app development languages available today. Despite that, app developers constantly face the challenge of broken and interrupted links. It is important to select a technology that meets your requirements and can be used with ease by both the developers and users. With the advent of AngularJS in 2012, sitting in front of computers trying to find the right solution has become a thing of the past.

With mobile app development in AngularJS, mobile app developers are breathing a resting breeze as this programming language has freed them from looking for codes needed to achieve their targets. While AngularJS is a Javascript framework, the most recent, Angular is built on Typescript – a typed superset of Javascript. It is the predecessor of Angular. Before jumping to the benefits of using AngularJS for developing mobile apps, let us understand what this language is and how it has changed the app development landscape since its inception.

What is AngularJS?

To simply put, AngularJS is a JavaScript framework developed and introduced by Google.

AngularJS is a framework that makes designing of dynamic web pages efficient and is initially launched to simplify the creation of dynamic and web app. Since then, it has come a long way and is widely used today for restructuring JavaScript code. AngularJS is also used to gather data and also helps developers to maintain the code integrity of the application.

AngularJS works on building blocks, some of which are mentioned below:

• Directives for extending HTML attributes
• Rules to gather data into HTML
• Handling of Error and event
• Unit testing
• Binding and Routing
• Rendering of HTML and Controllers

AngularJS also helps in modifying J-query DOM libraries. Whether it is allowing the developers to maximize HTML’s functionality by adding constructs or abstracting DOM updates, AngularJS makes it streamlined.

10 Reasons you should use AngularJS to develop your next mobile app

• Creates a dynamic web application with AngularJS’s Model View Controller (MVC) architecture. The MVC segregates logic, process, and user interface into different modules, making the developing of website easy and simple while enhancing code quality.

• Improves the architecture of the app and boosts flexibility and functionality. It helps build robust workflows and accomplish results with only a few manipulations on JavaScript and HTML. With several templates, modules and other user interface effects, developers can customize the app and enhance the user experience significantly.

• Since AngularJS depends upon HTML to define the user interface (UI) of an application, it saves developers the time of defining the program flows in deciding what to upload first. Moreover, HTML is a far more straightforward language than JavaScript and is more declarative and intuitive.

• Mobile App Development with AngularJS is synonymous to simplicity and ease of use. With a simple coding script, developers can add AngularJS to an HTML page. Libraries can be added later to make modifications even at a later stage. The code is easy to maintain, and the enhanced and declarative UI helps to build an engaging app experience.

• AngularJS is a powerful solution that is extremely useful for developer hard-pressed for time. It facilitates parallel development with its modular capabilities and lowers the apps’ time-to-market.

• Its modular structure allows developers to organize codes into buckets based on its components, directives, and services. This is extremely critical in saving time since anyone familiar with AngularJS can refer to these buckets and reuse them. These modules also enable developers to ‘lazy load’, which allows the application feature to be loaded on demand or in the background.

• Mobile App Development with AngularJS makes it an achievable goal to divide the tasks across different team members while ensuring organized code. Once you have a precise understanding of this, you can ensure that you make the best of these modules. Developers can improve productivity with appropriate modules built.

• The code of AngularJS can be reused due to its modular structure. Depending on the developer’s choice, each module is either independent or dependent on each other. They have an option to reuse their earlier built component for a new application or reinvent the wheel. Just by copy-pasting the old codes, developers can save a ton of time and build apps in minutes.

• AngularJS for app development makes testing extremely simple with its AngularJS modules that are easy to manipulate. It allows the developer to load the required services and perform automatic testing by segregating the modules.

• Say goodbye to getter and setter functions when developing a mobile app with AngularJS since it relies on POJO (Plain Old JavaScript Object). POJO allows object manipulation by offering all the traditional JavaScript functionalities. Developers can add or delete properties from the objects and at the same time loop over these objects whenever necessary.

Now that we know the benefits of AngularJS, let us look at some of the use-cases and how it can be helpful in developing some of the greatest mobile apps. If you are working in a niche and want to gain impressive popularity, then you need to choose the one with its gestures and matches. If you are still to make a decision, then here are some popular AngularJS apps that can help you realize it’s worth using.

Popular Apps that use AngularJS

Review apps:

Many online review apps are built on AngularJS for its great user experience. Such app development with AngularJS provides critical information to readers who are about to take actions on the things they are interested in. These apps allow users to determine the best solution, make an informed decision and save a ton of money.

Apps for finding destinations:

A travel and destination finder app is best built on AngularJS for it includes dynamic features. These travel apps developed with AngularJS, make it easier for developers to create powerful, easy to use, intuitive apps while providing a great user interface.

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Weather update apps:

Some of the most weather update apps are built on AngularJS. One of the most common examples is Weather.com. With an interactive display, this programming language allows developers to create an interactive app that allows users to perform real-time activities without compromising quality.

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Content portal apps:

Popular apps such as Freelancer.com and Upwork.com are built on AngularJS. These websites are famously known for crowdsourcing content and need to be updated regularly. With such apps developed on AngularJS, developers can handle a large amount of data, crowdsourced posts as well as user information all while providing enhanced user experience.

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Interactive social media apps:

Some of the world’s most powerful and popular social media apps are developed with AngularJS. LinkedIn is one such popular app. This app not only handles a large volume of data but also requires an update of data in real-time. All this is made possible with AngularJS and its comprehensible features.

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Final Thoughts

AngularJS has become popular among developers for its ease of use and simplicity. This is especially useful after the advent of several marketing practices, which has made it difficult to find the real worth of products amid stiff competition. It is imperative to find the right development tool for your business no matter how challenging the task may be. That is where AngularJS is a clear winner presently for its myriad benefits and features.

A word of prudence: it is always advisable to consult the right technology partner before taking the plunge into developing a mobile app.

What is the similarity between Gmail, Sony PlayStation and Facebook’s Like Button? Besides being iconic product successes, they were all invented through experimentation.

Gmail was developed by an employee at Google while experimenting during the set-aside time for personal projects. Sony’s Playstation was created by an entry-level employee at Sony, while he was tinkering around with Nintendo and Facebook’s like button was invented during one of the hackathons at the company.

In all the above examples, what stands out is that all these companies take experimentation as a critical factor to accelerate innovation for their businesses. These forward-thinking organizations understand that a culture of experimentation cannot be built if businesses keep standard practices.

In the 2000s, W. James McNerney Jr. became CEO of 3M. He has had a successful stint at GE as a senior executive and brought some of those practices to 3M to improve the efficiency of the company and boost growth. He looked at narrowing budgets, created a leaner team, and implemented Six Sigma. Though, it seemed like McNerney’s plan was perfect, it did not yield desired results. Why? Simply because it did not leave room for experimentation in the effort to become efficient.

The company, which had invented groundbreaking products like Thinsulate, Scotchgard, Post-it notes, etc. was losing its innovation edge. According to this report: in the past, one-third of sales had come from new products (released in the past five years), but that fraction had since fallen to one-quarter.

In this age of digitization, business leaders understand the culture of innovation is critical to digital transformation and they are also realizing that innovation cannot be driven without a culture of experimentation. According to a recent research done by Deloitte and MIT, most business leaders identify creating a culture of experimentation within the organization is one of the top challenges for organizations to compete in a digital environment.

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The most innovative organizations foster a culture of experimentation in their organization. According to Jeff Bezos –

Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day….

Why experimentation is crucial for digital innovation

In a data-driven world where businesses have an avalanche for customer data generated with every digital interaction. While this huge amount of data is extremely useful in driving insights, it can also stifle experimentation. That is because businesses tend to look at data as a final word on what the consumer wants and follow a standardized process of delivering their stated needs and not understanding their latent needs or solve a problem for them.

One of the major reasons why traditional organizations do not adopt a culture of experimentation is the fear of failure. Exactly, why most of the digital disruptors are the organizations which do not follow a set pattern.

If Netflix opened just another brick and mortar video rental shop instead of an online portal, it wouldn’t be the where it is and the same thing goes for enterprises like Uber, Airbnb, etc.

According to Maile Carnegie, group executive of digital banking at financial services firm Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) Ltd. of Melbourne, Australia,

‘’it’s fascinating how some young, digital companies experience failures every single day in their efforts to achieve their purpose, and they’re comfortable with it.”

Why experimentation is important to drive innovation

Today’s businesses are data-driven and however, that also means only relying on data to create solutions without testing and experiment can lead to failures, if not, it can also restrict an organization to explore the full potential of innovation.

According to an HBR research, companies which foster a culture of experimentation will see 5 times higher growth in revenue compared to those which don’t.

Most digitally maturing organizations understand this and hence they prioritize driving a culture of experimentation. According to a survey done by MIT, digitally maturing organizations are more likely to experiment and iterate.

How organizations can create a culture of innovation

Celebrate failures and learn from them

Like earlier mentioned in the article, most organization fail to adopt an experimentation culture due to fear of failure. However, business leaders must empower their teams to learn from failures. Some of the ways of doing this is:

• Encouraging employees to propose out-of-the-box ideas without having fear of any negative views.
• Rewarding them for pitching innovative ideas irrespective and communicating the same across the organization.
• Encourage brainstorming sessions which are cross-functional to have a different perspective.
• Acknowledge and encourage your team to drive insights from failures and share with a wider audience.

Business leaders should encourage their teams not to fear failures rather consider it as a critical step towards experimentation and failing forward. As rightly quoted by Jeff Bezos on Amazon’s innovation culture –

“One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there.”

Testing and adapting fast

While experimentation is critical. Experimentation and iteration are critical for businesses to respond to digital disruption. Leaders should encourage their teams to learn from those experiments, iterate and adapt fast to drive the full potential of innovation.

Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are constantly running experiments in an effort to continually improve prove the platform experience. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg estimates that 10,000 versions of his social media site are running at any given instance as it tries and finds small improvements

Companies should figure out how to experiment to compete in the future while also maintaining the core business so that they can perform in the present.

For instance, Cisco takes a portfolio approach to innovation investment, according to James Macaulay, senior director of the Cisco Digitization Office, “you need some highly predictable, highly reliable asset classes, so to speak, but you also probably want to have some moon shots in there that could potentially return a thousand-fold. We’re trying to balance predictability of returns while allowing for the opportunity of very high returns on investment.”

Remove silos and blur the lines of hierarchy

Another setback that organizations face while driving a culture of experimentation is organizational silos. To drive a culture of experimentation, collaboration is critical. In today’s digital landscape not just customers are digitally connected, various functions across the organizations too are connected. In that context, experimentation and sharing of ideas can happen at an inter-department level. Some times innovations come from areas least expected.

Like mentioned earlier in the article, the idea for the gaming device Sony PlayStation, came from Ken Kutaragi, a relatively junior Sony Employee who spent hours experimenting  — something that wouldn’t have happened in a siloed and an environment with a rigid hierarchy.

This can happen by encouraging and facilitate people across all departments to work together and collaborate on ideas. Also, having employees at every level to work together — often the best ideas come from the people who get their hand dirty while building a solution.

Another aspect of breaking silos is democratizing data – so that anyone in the organization can harness them for improved customer experience. For instance, at Uber, 50% of their employees have access to an insights database which helps to inform their decision making on a daily basis.

Create a top-down approach to experimentation

When it comes to driving change, it is critical that business leaders drive that change. Having the CXOs leading by example will create confidence in their teams to do so. More often, in a set environment leadership team are unwilling to change what is working for them. However, getting their buy-in is important for successfully transforming the culture. Business leaders could initiate testing and experimentation when the risks are minimal and then implement the learnings to bigger projects.

In conclusion:

To be competitive in a digital world it is critical for organizations to foster a culture of innovation where their teams have the ability to:

• Use agile methods to continuously test and innovate.
• Manage the knowledge interfaces among departments and team to brainstorm and derive insight from data and experimentation to accelerate innovation.
• To utilize the organizational and technical infrastructures to drive experimentation at scale in order to deliver digital transformation.

Digital technology has changed the way that companies conduct business. Mobile app development companies have begun integrating ways to track and gather user data in their products for research purposes. One study found that while the average American spent 9.4 hours online each week in 2000, the number had risen to 23.6 by 2018. This is a clear opportunity for companies to interact with their consumers.

A digital experience entails any interaction between a user and an organization that is only possible through the use of digital technology. Spending almost one full day a week online, the average American is a prime target to be reached in this fashion. Why not take advantage of it?

Three ways that you can provide a great digital experience that will engage new customers is by personalizing and customizing messages, integrating social media, and implementing intuitive and responsive web design.

Personalize and Customize

One of the best ways to find a solution to any problem is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Ask yourself, “What are my user’s motivations?” It is not an easy question to answer without some research. Thankfully, technology has made this kind of information more accessible by collecting user data whenever people use products.

You can create personalized messaging for your individual customers. For instance, a header that resonates with the user can grab their attention and break through the clutter. Personalized calls to action are 202% more effective than generic ones. Mobile app development companies can also help you develop personalized push notifications for your app’s users.

Netflix is one of the companies leading the way when it comes to personalization. It’s well known that the streaming service will recommend TV shows and movies based off of what you have already watched.

However, Netflix takes it a step further by customizing the programs’ images to highlight the stars you will recognize from shows and movies they know you have seen before and enjoy.

There are a lot of different forms of data that can help you personalize each customer’s experience. When you keep track of what they have purchased in the past, you can offer discounts and recommendations that they will be more likely to use.

Personalization and customization will help your digital experience stand out to users.

Integrate Social Media

In addition to spending a significant portion of their week on the internet, almost 80% of Americans have at least one social media account.

Your website should include links to all of your social media channels. On social media, customers can ask questions that you can answer directly in a short amount of time. Any time that customers make a positive comment, you can easily share it with all of your followers or connections.

Social media can foster a community and can help make your company appear more relatable. All of your channels should be active and fun in an attempt to spark conversations with your customers. Posting and sharing visuals and videos are a great way to get people talking or sharing.

Patagonia’s Instagram has almost 4 million followers and mostly shares images of people using their products. As an outdoor apparel company, they also share a lot of stories about causes that they think are important to their users and their brand, like sustainability and wilderness protection.

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Ecommerce sites often use videos to showcase products. Sharing them on social media gives customers the chance to see the product in use which was previously only possible by physically going to the store.

Social media is a great way for users to build a relationship with your brand and informing them about topics you will both find interesting and important.

Implement Intuitive and Responsive Web Design

Web design may be one of the most important parts of the digital experience. For many people, their first digital interaction with your brand on their computer is on your website. Make a lasting impression by incorporating visuals and easy-to-use navigation. Visuals can break up each page and help make the site easier to read while intuitive navigation will keep visitors from getting frustrated.

The entire site should make your branding stand out with its design and color. Your web copy should have fresh and distinct wording that matches your brand voice across other channels.

Cultivated Wit is a creative studio that uses its about page to show off the kind of copy that they like to write and the type of work that they can deliver. It’s clear that Cultivated Wit’s mission is to make complicated ideas more understandable and products more fun by using humor, slick design, and a creative use of technology.

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Recalling that the best way to provide a better experience for your consumers is by putting yourself in their shoes, think about how consumers would interact with your web page and direct them to the most important pages you want them to see.

A web design that encourages user interaction with your brand can increase engagement. Integrating a point system and competition can help you turn user interaction into a game and keep users coming back.

Building an easy-to-use site with game elements will give your brand another way to engage with users.

Make Your Digital Experience Worthwhile for Your Business and Your Consumers

Getting your customers to interact with your brand is the most important step toward getting them to repurchase.

If a consumer never interacts with your brand, then that person will never get the chance to buy your service or product.

Personalization and customization can stand out and grab your target audience’s attention. Then, integrating social media will help you build your relationship with your audience in a casual, more relatable environment.

Finally, an intuitive and responsive web design will make it easier for consumers to find things on your site and become loyal customers.

Create a valuable digital experience and watch your engagement, traffic, and sales increase.

With the App Store becoming no less than a battleground, app developers need to create icons that not only stand out but also provide an overview of the key functionalities. Even though there are a dozen articles claiming to educate on the importance of app icons, it is important to revisit the basics as an app icon is perhaps the first thing potential consumer notices about the app. It must tell a story, create intrigue and make the user curious enough to find out more.

Icon designing is a critical phase that requires in-depth brainstorming even before the development process starts. Your app icon and app screenshot is what your user will see first before installing it. If your app icon takes more than 5 seconds to think what it means, then it perhaps needs to be reconsidered.

In this blog, we will discuss the importance of an app icon and how to create successful icons that rank higher in the App Store.

No Second Chance to Create a First Impression

The icon of your app is the first point of engagement for a user. A great icon can increase downloads up to 560%! With a ton of options available in the App Store, the pictorial representation of the app is important to catch your user’s attention and keep them away from meandering for other options.

One company that does a really good job at this is Slack. It has made a mark on users with its simple yet elegant design. The earlier logo of Slack had The simple “S” symbol with a soothing color palette that made it easy to spot the icon among the crowd. The color theme of the icon is nothing short of nostalgia of colored gels put over strips of solid colors. They recently changed their logo keeping the color palette same.

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Let the picture do the talking

In addition to creating a great first impression, a quality app icon should also explain the basic features of the app to the viewers. For instance, a food app should be able to convey the genre of the app by using icons related to food or delivery person.

Take for example Clear Todos – a to-do app. Even though an old app, it has an upbeat and catchy icon that suggests how life can be better by having a task organizer. What sets it apart from around a million such apps is the colors that are refreshingly new and how each color behind the tick mark represents different rows and columns.

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Following the success of Clear app, several apps including Microsoft To-Do have borrowed the concept using a tick mark to stand out on the digital shelf.

Yet the Clear app stands out for its use of colors and its unique brand identifier in the app icon itself.

Cut Through the Noise

It is difficult to find an attractive icon and it is even more difficult to make one. If you create an image that grabs the attention in seconds, then half your job is done. By making your app unique and exquisite, you can cut through the noise and make your app recognizable. It is the first thing that will connect with people both on functional and emotional levels. While the functionality of the app does play an important role in increasing the recall value, what really sticks in the mind is the picture you use as the icon. Speedtest by Ookla is a great intersection of unique yet simple design.

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While there are just two colors used in the icon, the contrast of the colors and the concept of the speedometer creates a striking impression on the viewers. It does its job of telling the audience that the app is about measuring speed.

Other apps that describe its functionality through images include:

Measure app from Apple and Scanner Pro by Readdle

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Note: To begin, start with a brainstorming session and ask yourself – what do you want your icon to communicate? Then create an image that is unique with exquisite patterns and designs.

Importance of Icons for App Store Optimization

To generate more visibility and rank higher in the App Store, developers need to optimize apps as part of the ASO. If the icon is well designed and thought through, it will get more visibility and ultimately be downloaded by the user. To design eye-catching icons, it is advised to keep the design simple and appealing. Create an icon that is relatable to your business, grabs attention and looks good even when scaled to the smallest size. Also, the icon should look equally good when viewed in light and dark backgrounds.

Even before going on to the whiteboard, it is important to establish the purpose of the app icon. Decide if you’d want to create a functional or a branded icon. While using company names may work for branded apps like Uber and Facebook, functional icons can use objectives to describe the app. Once the purpose of the app is ascertained, you can then kickstart the creation of a successful app icon by having an exquisite design along with a cherry-picked color palette.

Small details go a long way to determine the success of app icons. When designing an app icon, keep in mind the minutest of details like image quality, the element’s creativity and the uniqueness. Even though there are no tried and tested ways for app icon designing, read the following tips that revolve around the three basic pillars: quality, design, and creativity.

Avoid Text

Keeping in mind the scalability of the app icon, it is never a good idea to have text on the icon. People will definitely have a tough time reading the text which you squeeze into such a small area. But in case you decide to have it, then Apple guidelines advise to emphasize words that relate to the actual content your app offers.

‘’Use words only when they’re essential or part of a logo. An app’s name appears below its icon on the Home screen. Don’t include nonessential words that repeat the name or tell people what to do with your app, like “Watch” or “Play.” If your design includes any text, emphasize words that relate to the actual content your app offers.’’ – From Apple’s App Icons guidelines.

Take for example Line social media app and Grab. Line App is a clear winner for its legible font and idea even though both the apps use the same color (green and white). Since Grab is a transportation app, it uses a font that also tries to signify roads. But this creativity also makes it hard for the users to read the name. Either way, refrain from using text in the app icon. Even if you have discovered the perfect word that will influence users’ actions, it is better to have it where it belongs – in the description.

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Choose Colors Wisely

Your color palette can create a lasting impression and get inside your user’s head. To choose the perfect palette, look at what your competitors are using and select a completely different color scheme. In other cases, if your brand has certain color guidelines, then stick to those. In some cases, you can even use the logo of the company as Facebook does.

If you’d like to take some color inspiration, then turn to the Strata app. The icon appears to be simple patterns. But what separates it from thousands of puzzle games is the color combination along with attention to details – whether it is subtle shadows, pastel palette or faint textures. The icon simply feels at home on the App Store!

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Pro tip: it is a good practice to have a background color in the icon so that it doesn’t blend with any background when users download it on their devices.

Keep It Simple

Make more with less if you want your app icon to be successful. Mixing more graphics in such a small space can lead to confusion. Remember that simplicity will underscore the theme of your app. To make your icon stand out, try using only one symbol but in a creative way! The language learning app, Duolingo’s cartoonish approach is very creative and comparatively offbeat from the boring flags and corporate icons. It insinuates that language learning doesn’t have to be serious with its icon, which looks like a hypnotic owl!

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Consider the App Store Sizes

There are so many handheld devices in the market with different screen sizes and display. Luckily, both platforms – Google and Apple – have detailed guidelines that can help designers clarify their doubts. Android API Guides for Launcher Icons is the Bible of all Android Developers while iOS Human Interface Guidelines For App icon is used by iOS programmers.

Follow their best practices and advice when you develop an icon. These manuals have all the necessary information required for adjusting icon to the different screen sizes. Below are some of the pixel recommendations and attributes by both Apple and Google based on the devices:

App Store

• iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone 6 Plus: 180 x 180 px
• iPhone 6s, iPhone 6 and iPhone 5: 120 x 120 px
• iPhone 4s: 120 x 120 px
• iPad and iPad mini: 152 x 152 px
• iPad 2 and iPad mini: 76 x 76 px
• iPad Pro: 167 x 167 px

Google Play

• 32-Bit PNG (with alpha)
• 512 x 512 Pixels Dimension
• 1.024KB maximum file size

Don’t Forget A/B Testing

Since no one has the answer on how to develop the perfect app icon, A/B testing is the way to figure out what works best for your app. According to a study, testing app icons can increase app page performance by up to 26%. Conduct the test on specific elements like background, colors and small pictures. You can also test different letters or numbers placed on the image to see how it performs.

Conclusion

App icons have come a long way from being just the visual expression of the app. With millions of app available on the App Store, icons need to draw the attention of the viewer and compel them to download it. With so much riding on the looks of your icon, it is not surprising that so much time is spent on brainstorming on the icon design.

Designing an app icon is one of the most daunting tasks. But with an understanding of common aesthetic rules, you can make this as swift as a breeze and flourish on the digital shelf. Just remember, whatever you design, always provide a high-resolution image and keep it simple yet bold and friendly.

An API is an interface that makes it easy for one application to ‘consume’ capabilities or data from another application. By defining stable, simplified entry points to application logic and data, APIs enable developers to easily access and reuse application logic built by other developers. It allows for the clear separation between interface and implementation. A well designed API allows its user to rely only on the published public interface, abstracts implementation details. This enables API developer to evolve the system independently of the client and augurs well for the development of highly scalable systems. In the case of ‘web APIs’, that logic and data is exposed over the network.

Now, Web API is the hot currency in the digital world. Organisations like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce etc., are essentially selling their services via APIs. So:

• APIs can be among a company’s greatest assets
• Customers invest heavily on APIs: buying, learning , writing clients.
• API is public contract, therefore its developers need to honour it.
• Cost to stop, change using an API can be prohibitive.
• Successful public APIs capture customers.

Every API in the world follows some sort of paradigm or architectural style like Control Language, Distributed Object, RPC, Resource-based architecture (REST) and query language.

Control Languages provide an economical and efficient way for application programs to control remote process, usually residing in hardware (like firmware of a printer). Hewlett-Packard’s PCL printer language is one such example of control language[1]. Control languages involve sending compact escape sequence codes that are embedded in the data stream between computer and peripheral hardware. These escaped sequence control commands are interpreted by the embedded software and appropriate functionality takes place. Control languages are by its very nature system specific and are not viable for building scalable, general purpose systems.

Remote procedure calls(RPC) allow programs to call procedures located on other machines. When a process on machine A calls a procedure on machine B, the calling process on A is suspended, and execution of the called procedure takes place on B. Information can be transported from the caller to the callee in the parameters and can come back in the procedure result. No message passing at all is visible to the programmer. However, it’s not easy for clients to invoke remote procedure calls. They may establish connections to remote systems through “low-level” protocols like the BSD Socket API. Developers that use these mechanisms must convert the data types defined on the remote computing platform to corresponding types on the local platform and vice versa. This process is called data marshalling. This can be a daunting task because different platforms use different character encoding schemes (e.g., ASCII, EBCDIC, UTF-8, UTF-16, Little and Big Endianness) to represent and store data types. App Developers who work at this level must therefore understand how the remote platform encodes data and how it interprets any byte stream received.

Remoting technologies like CORBA and DCOM have made it much easier to share and use remote procedures. Hewlett-Packard’s Orblite project is one such effort to build CORBA based distributed object communication infrastructure [2]. Orblite infrastructure can be used to communicate between processes running on computer with processes running on hardware devices like digital scanner, printer etc. The pieces involved in the distributed call in Orblite is figure 1. It involves generating common procedure call signature via an Interface Definition Language(IDL) compiler using a contract defined in the IDL language. This process generates Stub in client and Skeleton in server. Both communicating parties must agree on transmittable types before hand and this is usually done using a Common Data Representation (CDR) format. With this setup client and server can be implemented in different technology and hardware stacks. RPC protocol is free to use any transport mechanism like TCP, HTTP, TCP over USB etc

Fig 1. Pieces involved in a CORBA distributed call.

Though CORBA based system is very good improvement over RPC in terms interoperability, there is still a lot tight coupling in terms of IDL and CDR which affects scalability and independent evolution of system. The systems thus developed are also very complex in nature. You can see that in the below figure 2 which traces logical flow of a remote method invocation across all subsystems.

Fig 2. The logical flow of a remote method invocation.

HTTP mitigates many of these issues because it enables clients and servers that run on different computing platforms to easily communicate by leveraging open standards. But the challenge is how can clients use HTTP to execute remote procedures? One approach is to send messages that encapsulate the semantics for procedure invocation. One can use open standards of data representation like XML and JSON to transmit data between client and server. There are many concrete implementations/standards of http based RPC like XML-RPC, JSONRPC and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Among these SOAP is the most famous. SOAP provides a layer of metadata which describe things such as which fields correspond to which datatypes and what are the allowed methods and so on. SOAP uses XML Schema and a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) for this purpose. This metadata allows clients and server to agree upon the public contract of communication.

For example a SOAP based system for communicating between process running in Desktop and firmware running in a digital scanner will have a WSDL defining operations like – GetScannerCapabilities, CreateScanRequest, CancelScanRequest, GetCurrentScanJobInfo – and values and their correspond datatypes applicable to each operation.

But, it can be noted that number of operations, their semantics and parameters are unique to each system. This poses great deal of problem in integration of disparate systems, as developers have to consider WSDLs of every other system that is to be integrated. Though SOAP allows for Service Oriented Architecture (where domain specific services are exposed via http web services), non uniformity among web services is rather limiting.

For example, consider the SOAP based services to work on Amazon S3 buckets and their individual objects , we can notice an explosion of operations to be considered. Also, though SOAP web services use HTTP protocol as transport mechanism, they use only POST http method. So, we are not taking advantage of idempotence and cacheabilty of GET http method and partial update semantics of PUT method.

Bucket Webservices

• ListAllMyBuckets
• CreateBucket
• DeleteBucket
• ListBucket
• GetBucketAccessControlPolicy
• SetBucketAccessControlPolicy
• GetBucketLoggingStatus
• SetBucketLoggingStatus

Object Webservices

• PutObjectInline
• PutObject
• CopyObject
• GetObject
• GetObjectExtended
• DeleteObject
• GetObjectAccessControlPolicy
• SetObjectAccessControlPolicy

So, next improvement in web APIs is to use a Resource Oriented API called Representational State Transfer (REST). It is an architectural style that is defined by a specific set of constraints. REST calls for layered client/server systems that employ stateless servers, liberal use of caching on the client, intermediaries, and server, a uniform interface. REST views a distributed system as a huge collection of resources that are individually managed by components. Resources may be added or removed by (remote) applications, and likewise can be retrieved or modified. [3]

There are four key characteristics of what are known as RESTful architectures

1. Resources are identified through a single naming scheme
2. All services offer the same interface, consisting of at-most four operations, as shown in Table below
3. Messages sent to or from a service are fully self-described
4. After executing an operation at a service, that component forgets everything about the caller (stateless execution)

In REST based APIs, HTTP is used as a complete application protocol that defines the semantics of service behaviour. It usually involves four HTTP methods with the below semantics:

Usual semantics of REST API is that when you do a POST on a collection of resources(which has a unique URI), a new resource is created in that collection and unique URI is returned to the newly created resource. We can perform a GET on the newly created resource URI to get all its information in some representation. Using PUT on this URI, we can update partial resource(that is, only necessary parts). We can use the DELETE operation on the URI to remove resource from the collection permanently. This application semantics holds good for any resource based services and thus helping clients to integrate disparate systems and also helps us reason about communication across subsystems easily. In REST style, server-side data are made available through representations of data in simple formats. This format is usually JSON or XML but could be anything.

Most of the above mentioned operations on AWS S3 buckets and objects can be easily modelled on only two URIs and four http methods as:

GET, POST, PUT, DELETE /api/buckets ?query_param1=val…
GET, POST, PUT, DELETE /api/buckets/:object_id ?query_param1=val…

A URI can choose support a limited number of http methods and all GET requests are idempotent thus provides for caching in intermediaries and thus greatly improves efficiency.

One of the tenets of RESTFul architecture, that is less widely used is Hypermedia which provides “next available actions” in the response of an API. Roy Fielding in his paradigm defining thesis about REST called this as HATEOAS (Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State). HATEOAS allows us to develop elegant, self discoverable API system. For example, if we develop a HATEOAS API for Multi-functionality Printers, get operation on the URI api/capabilities return printer capabilities like Print, Scan, Fax with link to access these capabilities like /api/capabilities/scan, /api/capabilities/print and /api/capabilities/fax. A GET on /api/capabilities/scan will return links to access scanner capabilities like /api/capabilities/scan/flatbed, /api/capabilities/scan/ auto_doc_feeder and so on.

A HATEOS API [5]

curl http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers

{
  "_embedded": {
    "customerList": [
      {
        "customerId": "10A",
        "customerName": "Jane",
        "companyName": "ABC Company",
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers/10A"
          },
          "allOrders": {
            "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers/10A/orders"
          }
        }
      },
      {
        "customerId": "20B",
        "customerName": "Bob",
        "companyName": "XYZ Company",
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers/20B"
          },
          "allOrders": {
            "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers/20B/orders"
          }
        }
      },
      {
        "customerId": "30C",
        "customerName": "Tim",
        "companyName": "CKV Company",
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers/30C"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "_links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "http://localhost:8080/spring-security-rest/api/customers"
    }
  }
}

One of the downsides of RESTFul APIs is that client may need to call multiple APIs to get different resources to piece together information needed by the client. When resources are related forming a graph of relations, it becomes extra difficult in RESTFul architecture to express the need to retrieve selective information from the web of relations among resources. A new API style that is gaining currency these days called ‘GraphQL’ mitigates this problem.[6].

GraphQL is basically RPC with a default procedure providing a query language, a little like SQL. You ask for specific resources and specific fields, and it will return that data in the response. GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more. GraphQL reduces the number of HTTP requests to retrieve data from multiple resources.

However, endpoint-based API’s are able to utilise the full capabilities of HTTP protocol to cache response data, but GraphQL dispatches queries through POST requests to a single endpoint. So, advantage of out of the box http caching is lost and API developers are needed to device custom caching mechanism themselves.

There are emerging standards for API documentation like OpenAPI pioneered by Swagger. Swagger allows for API design, API documentation, API development, API testing, API mocking, API governance and API monitoring. We can alternative documentation tools like Sphinx, along with its extensions. API documented using Sphinx looks something like below.

Another issue in maintaining resource based APIs like RESTFul APIs is versioning. We have API URI and at some point it will need to be replaced or have new features added while keeping the older APIs still supporting existing clients. There are many solutions to solve this issue, each having its own merits and demerits. One popular approach is to embed version number in the API URIs like /api/v1. But REST purists frown upon this approach as they see it breaking the fundamental concept of REST – evolvability. A resource is meant to be more like a permalink. This permalink (the URL) should never change. But the practical downside to version approach is that pointing v1 and v2 to different servers can be difficult.

This issue of server setup for different version can be resolved by putting version number in in the hostname(or subdomain) like “https://apiv1. example.com/places”. Another approach to API versioning is to put version info in body or query parameters or custom request header or as part of content negotiation. [7]

Overall, Web APIs are the new digital currency using which digital services are sold. Essentially services provided Facebook, Google, Amazon, Salesforce etc are via APIs. So, organisations take great care in defining, documenting and maintaining their Web APIs. Web APIs are public contracts and hence every software engineering due diligence exercised in developing key software systems should be followed for Web APIs also.

References:

[1] http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpl13210.pdf
[2] https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/97feb/feb97a9.pdf
[3] Distributed Systems, Third edition by Maarten van Steen and Andrew S. Tanenbaum. ISBN: 978-90-815406-2-9
[4] https://spring.io/understanding/HATEOAS
[5] https://www.baeldung.com/spring-hateoas-tutorial
[6] https://blog.apisyouwonthate.com/understanding-rpc-rest-andgraphql-2f959aadebe7
[7] Phil Sturgeon. “Build APIs You Won’t Hate”.

Digital transformation is changing the face of every industry today. Though the insurance sector has been a late adopter of the technology boom, it is definitely catching up. Digital transformation has become a priority for many insurers and that’s why they are investing not just in technology but are also building teams adept in taking their digital strategies a step ahead. According to a 2019 survey done by Accenture, 40% of the insurers say technology can improve customer loyalty and around half as many say it can help in boosting operational efficiency.

For most insurers going ‘digital’ implies having online portals, a mobile app, some automated processes etc. While this may be a good start, it will still keep them at a very nascent stage of the ‘digital transformation’ journey.

Imbibing true transformation will require a change in the broader ecosystem, including both front-end and back-end systems

Digital Transformation in insurance –need and the opportunities

In the near future, the insurance marketplace is going to exist and operate out of the digital environment. Earlier, going digital was mostly limited to e-commerce, but with the rapid adoption of the internet, mobile, technologies like wearables, social media, big data and cloud computing the need to go digital is irrefutable and opportunities are immense.

The digital disruption in the insurance sector is primarily driven by market forces like changing consumer preferences, competitors, technology innovations and the ever-changing regulatory model.

Here is a view on how these factors are changing the insurance landscape.

Changing consumer preferences

By 2021, e-commerce sales are expected to reach $4.5 trillion nearly double its value from 2017. However, the insurance sector has a long way to go when it comes to providing seamless and delightful digital experiences.

Customers are demanding more customized and digitally optimized solutions from insurers. 90% of insurance respondents say that in five years, consumers will buy most of their insurance through online and mobile apps. However, the sector has taken only baby steps to cater to those. While nearly half of the customers expect more digital transactions, a survey suggests only 22% of insurers have launched personalized, real-time or mobile solution.

Image Source

The paper-based processes and legacy systems of the insurance sector rarely meet the expectations of today’s technology-savvy consumer. Hence, consumers prefer digitally mature insurance partners who can provide faster and advanced solutions.

With the number of mobile users set to cross the $5 billion mark in 2019, today’s consumer is more connected than ever. Their expectations have also risen. Today’s digitally savvy consumers expect their insurers to provide value at every stage of the sales cycle and even post-purchase.

Prudent insurers are already using digitization to provide consumers personalized experience. According to Oracle analysts, insurance companies deem customer experience more important than the product or sustainable growth.

Many insurers are already moving away from mere transactional relationships with the consumer, to a more engaging one. They are looking at partnerships beyond financial enterprises to provide value-added services to their customers. For e.g. “Panasonic Smart Home & Allianz Assist” have partnered to provide integrated solutions which provide home monitoring and control systems along with home protection services. This solution protects people’s home from potential damage like break-ins, glass/window breakage, water leakage etc.

The emergence of a new breed of competitors

Legacy insurers are waking up to competition not just from direct insurance players but also from Insuretech start-ups. While new entrants impose significant competition for the established players, many foresee competition coming from outside the insurance industry.

According to a survey, 74% of insurers believe that some part of their business is at risk of disruption from Insurtech startups moving into their market.

Digital stalwarts like Amazon and Walmart are capitalizing on the insurance industry’s sluggish evolution into the digital world to disrupt the market and scoop their share of the insurance space by catering to niche customer groups. Digital maturity is enabling these competitors to move and innovate with agility and offer personalized customer experience.

The rise of aggregators’ business model has also given the power in the hands of consumers to compare quotes and coverage from multiple players, hence making the competition even stiffer for insurers.

Technology Disruption in the Insurance sector

The emergence of technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Predictive Analytics, Telematics etc., presents a huge opportunity for insurers to collect and exchange data about consumers, identify new growth opportunities and personalizing consumer experience.

Here is how the rise of technology is disrupting the insurance space:

Blockchain – Increasing digital transactions, complex compliance protocols third-party payment channels fraudulent claims, etc. are some of the challenges that the insurance sector faces. According to Mckinsey, five to ten percent of all insurance claims are fraudulent. This is where the insurance sector is starting to see the potential of blockchain technology. For instance, Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative, B3i, launched by organizations such as Swiss Re, Aegon, Allianz, Munich Re, and Zurich aims to explore the potential of distributed ledger technologies to better serve clients through faster, more convenient and secure services.

Internet of Things (IoT) – Insurers are using IoT and the ever-connected ecosystem to provide proactive solutions to consumers. IoT is opening up non-traditional insurance data to insurers which could reveal risk factors, enabling insurers to offer a price differentiation or new value propositions.

Mobile-Based Telematics – Mobile-based Telematics enables innovation in usage-based insurance (UBI). Telematics mobilizes the data collection process using telecommunications and information processing tools. Right now, it is largely used in the auto insurance sector where data collected through mobile devices deployed in the vehicles can help in analyzing driver behavior and provide customized services accordingly.

Predictive Analytics – Predictive analytics techniques can help insurers analyze real-time data from the web and social networks and reach out to the right audience with personalized products and services.

Gamification – Gamification as a tool helps in gaining higher customer engagement. Insurers are using it to incentivize customers through rewards and loyalty points or discounts. Gamification apps using fitness data from wearables can help insurers to incentivize with lower premiums for maintaining healthy habits.

Artificial Intelligence – According to IDC, by 2020 the amount of data available will grow 10-times, and there will be 1.7 megabytes of new information created every second for every human being on the planet. In the next few years, we will be collecting more data on how people make decisions on a day-to-day basis and this will give insurers more understanding of the personal risk attitudes of people and therefore drive better insurance products and coverage in new areas.

AI can be useful in analyzing real-time data and assist with fraud identification, identifying subrogation opportunities, shorten claims cycle time, improve claims forecast etc. According to a survey, 79% of insurance executives believe that AI will revolutionize the way insurers gain information from and interact with their customers.

In 2017, Lemonade Insurance made headlines when its AI Jim settled a claim in less than 3 seconds, while the topmost insurers take 316,800 times longer to complete the settlement vs Jim.

Changing regulations of the insurance industry

The compliance regulations of operations in the insurance industry are constantly changing and the legacy systems requiring tons of paperwork is not built to keep up with the ever-changing nature of the industry. Automated digital platforms make it easier for insurers to comply with regulatory guidelines, reduce the number of resources required for managing compliance and mitigate risks.

The insurance industry is seeing the emergence of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to deal with the ever-changing regulations system. RPA can help in capturing the changes in the business rules, interpret data sources and communicate the changing compliance regulations to the current systems.

Creating a successful digital transformation model for insurance firms

Becoming a digital insurer is not just about implementing technology at an organizational level. Instead, it’s about creating a wider platform that can connect customers, partners, and employees all at the same time.

Here is how insurers can implement a successful digital transformation plan for their organization.

Mapping your digital maturity

Assessing where you lie in the digital transformation map is the first step towards this journey.

The ‘Not Digital’ status was common for most insurers several decades ago, when everything was produced through a paper-based model. For many legacy insurers, it is still a reality. The categorization in the below figure will help you in mapping where your organization lies on a scale of ‘not digital’ to ‘extremely digital’

Image Source

Aim for an organizational transformation

Becoming a true digital insurer, cannot be limited to operational automation, it has to permeate every aspect of the organization from front end to back end processes, from policy to purchase claims and from finance to HR.

Achieving an organization-wide change would require commitment at every touch point. Digital transformation is not just meant to benefit the end user, but also making your organization change ready and agile enough to adapt quickly. That’s why aligning the organization for the change is an important step towards this journey.

Implement an agile approach.

Creating a step by step plan for digital transformation is critical and planning ahead is required, but over planning should be avoided. Change is the only constant and it is as true for the insurance industry as well. The digital transformation plan for your organization should be flexible enough to incorporate the changing dynamics and technological advancements getting introduced in the industry during the course of implementation.

The best approach would be having a long-term goal but a phase-wise plan. Insurers can start with analyzing market trends and start with the markets where digitization would solve most problems or bring the most benefits. For eg: bringing improved experience in areas with most consumer activity.

The next rational step would be to develop a plan to modernize core systems with cloud-based technologies to better support middle and front-office systems. This will help in improving the technical efficiency, streamlining costs and schedule risks of the modernization efforts.

Some of the process integrations that insurers can bring in their existing systems can be:

Mobile Capture — this process can help in expediting the applications and claims process significantly by allowing policyholders to apply for policies or initiate claims digitally at their convenience. It takes away a lot of manual processes like data entry or postal efforts because insurers can use mobile capture to send in forms, reports, and status to clients.

Customer Communications Management (CCM) — establishing a CCM system will help insurers built better customer relationships by enabling timely communications with relevant information. CCM can take care of real-time tracking, status updates, on-time alerts etc. leaving employees to focus better on other business tasks.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) — RPA can help insurers to improve customer management and making sure that compliance requirements are met. RPA system can collect and integrate data from the external website, portals, and applications and therefore automate activities like price matching, coverage comparisons or keeping a tap on regulatory compliances etc.

Case Management — one of the major challenges that the insurance sector face is doing away with the highly paper-based system. The automated case management system can help in digitization of documents, tracking case status, managing caseloads etc. With the help of Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems case management system can be highly effective. Integrating the case management system with CCM can lead to highly optimized and enhanced customer experiences as well.

Set up a dedicated “digital transformation team”

70% of Life and P&C insurers lack the confidence to execute complete digital transformation because they feel they don’t have an achievable plan with critical elements such as a clear vision, compliance, and risk processes.

A digital transformation plan cannot be successfully implemented with an ‘ad hoc’ team; doing so will only complicate the process. In fact, a poorly implemented system will lead to insurers spending more time, money and effort in managing the disparate system. Therefore, it is important to build a “digital transformation task force” for the job. Prudent insurers are realizing the importance of having a dedicated team in a survey almost 87% of insurance firms said they have a dedicated ‘digital innovation’ teams.

The dedicated team should comprise of members from each area of digital impact in the journey, this will help in bringing expert advice and planning across each touch point in the journey.

Create a robust IT infrastructure to support digital strategy

The infrastructure is the backbone of the entire process. It will play an important role in the seamless implementation of the digitization process (release cycles, automated testing, and deployment) and managing interactions across the partner ecosystems. Therefore, it is important to have a robust infrastructure which can help in redesigning of the front-end systems to provide rich user experience and also their integration with the back end operations.

A typical insurer’s operational cycle would resemble the below matrix.

Image Source

The above image represents the core function of an insurance policy lifecycle at the top, from left to right(New Business, Underwriting, Policy Maintenance, and Claims). Any core function of the business will have a trigger to initiate, then data collection, data evaluation, customer/stakeholder interaction and closing the deal. All of these functions at an organizational level would be supported by functions like HR, Marketing, Accounting, IT etc.

This means the insurance process is highly integrated across organizational levels and therefore it is important to have a robust IT infrastructure to support each and every element of this integrated ecosystem.

Leverage data and technology to innovate and create a personalized user experience

The new-age consumer is evolving into a more technology savvy and connected consumer, resulting in an explosion of data through multiple channels data through multiple technologies like IoT, wearables, social media etc. Drawing actionable insights from all this data like analyzing customers’ pain point, anticipating their needs and providing a customized solution will help insurers stay ahead of the curve.

In the healthcare insurance sector, health insurance provider Humana in the United States has partnered with Apple, and they let consumers share their Apple HealthKit data with the Humana Vitality app.

Any digital transformation plan should involve a process to unlock internal data sources, leverage external data sources and better gather, mine, analyze and visualize that data with advanced analytics technologies and finally, turn this data into action to provide a personalized experience to the user throughout the value chain.

Choose the right technology partner

Choosing the right technology partner is the most important step in implementing a successful Digital transformation plan. Many insurers have started realizing this fact.

51% of insurers plan to partner with major digital technology and cloud platform leaders within the next two years.

It is important to carefully choose a partner who understands not just your business well but is also capable of understanding your operational processes well. The digital transformation process is going to be integrated across all your processes, therefore it is critical to work with a partner who is comfortable with your processes, knows the limitations and will help you in improvising during the course of implementation.

Digital transformation in the insurance sector – opportunities that lie ahead

Digital transformation in the insurance industry is not just a means of adopting market trends but is an ongoing process to innovate, stay relevant and stay ahead of the competition. The legacy insurance ecosystem is usage based and telematics- led industry and incorporating advanced digital propositions will help insurers capitalize on the future.

A fully digitized process can go a long way in optimizing processes and reducing costs. For e.g. an integrated claims supply chain can enable insurers to reduce costs across the enterprise, improve customer service and mitigate risks even before an event occurs. Forty-seven percent of insurers say a lack of collaboration with the IT function is preventing them from realizing their technology investments’ value. Digitization of operations will help to break down silos within the organization and allow for faster processes.

In this age becoming a digital insurer is a mandate for insurers to stay relevant, sustain growth and increase profitability. However, it requires an org-wide transformation to reap the true benefits of digitization.

In the light of changing consumers needs, increased competition, technology, and data disruptions and ever-changing compliance landscape, it has become a must for the insurers to choose the path of digitization.

However, a successful digital transformation requires a broader approach, than just introducing automated processes. It will require these 7 steps to truly transform your organization: assessment of your digitization capabilities, stakeholders buy-in, an agile plan, dedicated task force, robust IT infrastructure, capitalizing on data, and most importantly choosing the right digital partner.

If done right digital transformation can enable your organization to not just stay relevant but gage and capitalize on the upcoming opportunities as well.

The use of automation to drive tangible business benefits has become a reality today, with nearly all organizations riding the wave of emerging cognitive technologies. The insurance industry is no exception and lies at the crossroads of digital disruption. Traditionally considered as a highly regulated and cautious sector, today it faces a radical shift due to the rising benefits of intelligent technologies.

According to a research, up to 25% of full-time positions in the insurance industry will either be consolidated or reduced in about a decade as a result of the prevalent digital disruption. With such headwinds in the industry, automation can be a game-changer strategy that can help insurance companies increase their profit margins and revolutionize customer experience.

To gain a competitive advantage, several insurers have already deployed an automation strategy in areas like New Business Processing, Claims Processing, & Finance, and more are following suit.

The insurance industry is now aggressively evaluating use cases for cognitive automation to boost efficiency in their current processes and thereby lower operational costs. They are embracing digital solutions to remain profitable amid stringent regulatory norms while handling complex portfolios in a low-interest rate environment.

The good news is that the insurance sector is quite digitally savvy and an early adopter of new technologies. Especially, the players in the short-term insurance sectors (auto, home, health, etc.). Prudent players who have been the disrupters have reaped the benefits of digitization and will continue to do so. According to a Mckinsey report, a large insurer could more than double profits over 5 years by digitizing existing business.

For digitally savvy insurers, most of the routine activities like quote, purchase, policy documents, renewal, claims (processing) etc. are completely digitized and requires least human intervention and offer higher customization. For example:

• LexisNexis Data Prefill solution helps in pre-populating insurance applications using only a few customer data points leading to reduce costs, and faster & and accurate quoting and underwriting process.

• Progressive Insurance, enables customers to “name their price” and choose elements of a policy that fit their budget—the level of deductibles.

• Some insurers offer pay-as-you-go auto insurance whereby drivers are charged by the mile.

• Ladder Insurance has partnered with Fidelity Security Life to offer life insurance without the use of agents directly to consumers online without charging any annual policy fees.

Opportunities in the Insurance Industry

The insurance market has become competitive and more robust over the last few years with the coming of the online P2P insurers, technology, and insuretech players.

Far-sighted insurers acknowledge the looming competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which can leverage their users’ pool of data to provide customized insurance products. Amazon has already taken in a leap in this area by hiring insurance professionals and is set to transform the insurance market in several European countries.

While digitization in the insurance sector is set to create opportunities, it will also present newer challenges for traditional players. With low-interest rate scenarios, the revenue streams of legacy insurance companies are quickly drying up, as investing customers’ premiums in several financial institutions are not paying the same returns when compared to the last few years. In the future, these challenges may increase, owing to the fast pace of digitization and changing customer preferences.

For instance, in the auto insurance sector, traditional insurers might face challenges as the use of sensors and telematics makes driving less risky and liabilities from autonomous cars go to manufacturers. The McKinsey report suggests, in the future profits for traditional personal lines, auto insurance might fall by 40 percent or more from their peak.

Insurers who have picked the pulse of the digital disruption and have innovated their products and value chain have seen growth. Some of these insurers are Progressive, Direct Line, Geico and more.

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It is only a matter of time when the likes of Facebook jump onto the bandwagon and provide stiff competition to the traditional mortar and brick insurance companies. Therefore, the need to adopt cognitive automation in the insurance industry has never been so pressing. And the call of the hour is to optimize operational costs, enhance accuracy, improve customer experience and get the most returns out of the allocated capital.

Challenges Faced By Insurance Companies In Adopting Automation

• Scattered Data

One of the biggest challenges in the insurance industry is that data is collected both electronically and on paper, making it extremely difficult for cognitive technologies to play their role efficiently. Dealing with mixed data format means that companies need to transfer this data into their machines, which can be costly and susceptible to human errors.

• Legacy Applications

Larger insurance organizations today use several legacy applications and point solutions. This leads to operational inefficiencies and excessive costs used by administrative functions.

• Manual Processes

The insurance companies are infested with several back-end processes which are usually labor-intensive, time-consuming and repetitive in nature such as underwriting, renewing premium and conducting compliance.

Use Cases of Intelligent Automation in the Insurance Industry

• Smart Data Reader

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) can be used to replace the manual paperwork involved during policy issue and claims processes. With the help of RPA, a smart media reader can be developed that can extract relevant information from the scanned documents. This solution has the potential to eliminate the manual extraction of data and its entry into the systems.

The RPA in insurance can use capabilities such as OCR, NLP, and machine learning to read, extract and validate data. This system can be seamlessly integrated with existing operations that deeply rely on extracting information from documents.

• Customer Service With Chatbots

Over the last few years, there has been a growing geographic and functional diversity of chatbots. Whether it is US-based Liberty Mutual Insurance’s “skills” for Alexa or “Nienke,” the “virtual host of Dutch insurer Nationale-Nederlanden or India’s HDFC Life’s chatbot collaboration with Haptik, all these chatbots have been deployed to enhance the customer support services.

Chatbots in the insurance industry can be used to analyze customer needs, modify product offerings and even solve the customer’s questions or provide them useful links.

• Automated Underwriting Solution

Creating a rule-based system for underwriting processes can increase efficiency and productivity. The automated system can identify if a submission or renewal can be handled by a machine or needs human intervention.

In the case of the first scenario, predictive models and machine learning algorithms can easily evaluate and provide a price for the submission. In the latter case, human intervention would be required in addition to the insights provided by the system.

• Smarter Process Analytics

One of the fundamentals to improve processes is by measuring several parameters including the number of requests and transactions processed. In the paper-intensive insurance industry, failing to measure outcomes can result in hefty losses in not just operational efficiency, but also in customer satisfaction.

With automation, organizations can measure not only the number of transactions but also have an audit trail that can be really beneficial for complying with regulatory norms. All this further enhances customer satisfaction, streamline applications, claims, and response of the customer service.

Quick Points to Remember

• Now that you know the use cases of automation in the insurance industry, let us look at some important points to remember before you decide to automate processes.

• Identify the areas to be automated. Trying to automate all complex processes is of no use if they do not provide any substantial savings.

• If you are new to automation, then try to begin with baby steps and then eventually expand. Starting small can help you clearly define objectives, the scope of work and the desired outcomes.

• Understand the extent of automation and avoid going overboard. Using cognitive automation in all areas may not lead to significant savings. Rather than automating all complex processes, insurers should focus on hybrid processes to achieve desired goals.

Future Of Automation In The Insurance Industry

Use of automation in the insurance industry has had a positive impact on customer experience and satisfaction. Several insurance companies have benefited from this, including a UK-based company that used automation to proactively identify customers inflicted by floods. The system then created a waiver plan for the next month’s credit and notified those people that their dues were waived.

With cognitive automation in the insurance sector becoming more and more sophisticated, it will provide a cost-effective way to meet rapidly changing regulatory requirements and help businesses concentrate on strategic long-term issues. Artificial intelligence enabled assistance can lower the documentation time by as much as 80%, thereby making insurance companies more profitable.

Today, companies need to rethink how they want to use human potential and how much they can trust a computer to handle their operations. By doing this, one thing becomes clear that human touch will become premium in the future, especially when robots will do most of the repetitive and mundane work.

Only the work involving a higher degree of human intelligence will not be automated. Positions in operations and administrative supports will likely be prone to layoffs or will be consolidated. However, the extent of the impact of automation will greatly depend upon the market, group, and the potential for automation.

The high-frequency products are digitized and automated to a larger extent. Whereas there could be challenges in converting the legacy policies into this new arena, it is not just technology challenge, but also the product has to evolve to meet current market conditions and tech/regulatory landscape. Insurers will have to re-look at digitization from a broader perspective which is inclusive of product innovation, services, and business models.

Looking Ahead

While the prospect of automation has been there in the insurance industry, the speed of its adoption has been increasing over the last 12 months. As disruptive technologies challenge the traditional ways of operations, organizations need to become “comfortable” with being “uncomfortable”.

The insurance sector can only optimize costs, enhance decision making & productivity, lower costs, optimize the customer experience and alleviate accuracy by embracing smarter technologies such as RPA, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

As digital technologies continue to disrupt the insurance sector, the industry will have to move from its current – ‘reactive’ mode to ‘predict and prevent’ mode. And, this evolution will have to be at a faster pace than ever before as the stakeholders in the insurance value chain like the brokers, consumers, financial intermediaries, insurers, and suppliers become more adept at using advanced technologies.

Cognitive automation in the insurance sector can help businesses automate key operational processes and maximize returns amid stiff competition. As insurers evolve, the focus will be more towards adding value to key functions by working with intelligent solutions.

All these can only be achieved if organizations strike a balance between automation and human intervention. Businesses who fail to adopt smart solutions will eventually lose to new market entrants, while the ones who do too much too soon to get the early mover advantage will also be at risk.

The key is to have a balance by running test programs to see the capabilities of these technologies and align them to the business’ objectives and expectations. These are extremely interesting times for the insurance sector.

If CXOs are asked to name the one aspect which is likely to impact their future business the most, chances are ‘customer experience’ will likely rank high. Providing a great customer experience at every touchpoint is an imperative for every business across domains – be it retail, healthcare, media & entertainment, banking and more. Even enterprises in the B2B domain which hitherto did not give priority to a great design experience have come to realise their folly.

Consumers are consumers everywhere – be it as someone interacting with a beautifully designed taxi-aggregator app or a poorly designed human resources tool within the office. So a consistently good customer experience today improves chances of brand loyalty, strengthens brand affinity and may even result in brand evangelism. 81% of companies recognize customer experience (CX) as a competitive differentiator, yet just 13% rate their CX delivery at 9/10 or better. This is not relevant only for consumer-facing businesses – even enterprises which have niche B2B communities as target audience – say, healthcare professionals, logistics and more should take cognizance of these developments.

There are several sets of numbers floating around to indicate the huge market potential of IT Services. According to a report, the ‘global customer experience management’ market size is expected to reach USD 32.49 billion by 2025. The report goes on to say that the retail sector is one of the largest end-users segment of customer experience management software. However, software is only one aspect of ‘customer experience management’. In fact, digital solution providers are only a small component of the larger digital transformation market: Digital Solutions Providers, Cloud Solutions Providers, System Integrators, System Administrators, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Providers, Platform as a Service (PaaS) Providers and many more play a role. Some of the services include Cloud Computing, Big Data & Analytics, Application Development & Maintenance, right deployment of Emerging Technologies (IoT, Blockchain & Artificial Intelligence) and more.

Suffice to say that even with Digital Experiences – a small component in the overall IT & ITeS industry the full potential of how it can benefit enterprises has not been full explored or understood by a large number of CXOs. According to Forrester Wave:

A digital experience platform architecture will help to align strategies, teams, processes, and technology to meet this integration imperative with six primary themes:

• Coordinate content, customer data, and core services to drive reuse and quality
• Unify marketing, commerce, and service processes to improve practitioner workflows.
• Deliver contextually and share targeting rules to unify the “glass.”
• Share front-end code across digital touchpoints to manage a common user experience.
• Link data and analytics to add insight and drive action.
• Manage code and extensions for maximum reuse while avoiding over-customization.

As you can see there is room for diverse skill sets and offerings. However, when it comes to technology partners, many view them with the narrow lens of coders and app development teams. The B2B service companies offering such services should also take a share of the blame as many have not made the endeavour to position themselves on a higher scale…up the value chain. To be able to get the attention of CXOs, digital experience partners should empathise with the business issues they grapple with and offer to be their design thinking and technology partners. They need to pitch their offerings at a higher level and not just as mere designers and coders. Also, the distinction between design and design thinking has perhaps not been highlighted enough over the years. Many enterprises still see design as ‘how things look’ and focus on the ‘beauty aspect’ (surely an important one) and not on the more process-driven design thinking aspects.

Today, digital experience partners such as Robosoft are uniquely placed to lead process of transforming the fortunes of enterprises by implementing processes that facilitate rapid product development. It begins with an understanding of the client’s business and is designed to be an ongoing process.

This helps cut long lead times to develop digital products and helps enterprises execute faster, learn quicker and iterate to get better. The process is cyclical and hence keeps pace with changing customer expectations.

We have worked with a few leading enterprises across key domains in going beyond the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to integration of product roadmaps and emerging technologies.

Healthcare

While the domain includes hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health tech and more, our focus is in offering the benefits of blockchain in these areas:

Our team developed the mobile Clinical Trial Management System for a few leading pharmaceutical companies in the US. We have also created custom software solutions for Clinical Trials, Patients & Enterprise. A current clinical trial project integrates Blockchain, AI, ML, Mobile, Chatbots (Text & Verbal) and more. Apple is investing heavily behind healthcare where the focus is on using the ecosystem of the Apple Watch and iPhone working together to collect & share vital patient data.

Retail

Aside from blockchain, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Chatbots, Robo-advisors, & Voice Assistants, Big Data & Analytics, Internet of Things & Wearables are some of the technologies in different stages of development and adoption in retail. Here are some great examples:

Sephora introduced AR into their platform in early 2017 by way of their Virtual Artist platform, which shows customers a realistic “mockup” of how certain skin care and makeup products would look with their face shape, skin colour, and other distinguishing features.

The app for Bareburger harnesses AR technology to allow customers to “see” the menu item in front of them on their device before they order, giving them a better, more mouth-watering ordering experience.

Banking & Finance

Banks and financial institutions have a unique opportunity to use technology to create a tailored approach using empathy and automation for the delicate and sensitive nature of finance. Voice Assistant technology is one such. Aside from voice, blockchain, AI, Machine Learning and human-like interfaces are also opportunities in this segment.

The engineers at JP Morgan have created ‘JPM Coin’ – the first US bank-backed cryptocurrency

In 2018, Bank of America launched their artificial intelligence (AI)-driven virtual financial assistant, Erica, “to help clients tackle more complex tasks and provide personalized, proactive guidance to help them stay on top of their finances”

An Australian bank UBank is set to debut Mia (short for My Interactive Agent) a digital assistant with a human face powered by artificial intelligence technology.

Data Science is also a specialisation which banks tap into for use cases such as fraud detection, risk modelling, personalised marketing, predicting lifetime value, recommendation engine and more.

Enterprise Apps

Enterprise mobility applications are effecting a paradigm shift in the landscape of processes in organizations. Some of the areas in which they play a role include instant communication platform for employees, sales leads & CRM, Supply Chain & inventory management, workflows & approvals, onboarding & training to name a few. Digital experiences can play a role in boosting employee engagement too: interactive learning modules, HR operations, payroll come to mind.

To sum up, enterprises are skimming the surface when it comes to possibilities with digital experiences which can simplify lives of people. The future is exciting in this context as we discover more exciting possibilities of digital experience which delight.