Category : Opinion

Software 2.0 – A Paradigm Shift

Nov 7,2018 / By H N Ramkumar / No Comments

All these years, software is largely developed in an imperative way. It is characterised by programmers writing explicit instructions to computers to perform tasks in languages like C++, Python, Java etc. Thus, computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of ‘how to’. This imperative style concerned with ‘how to’ contrasts with declarative descriptions concerned with ‘what is’, usually employed in mathematics^[1].

With the advent of neural network based deep learning techniques, computing is moving towards a new declarative paradigm, sometimes dubbed as ’Software 2.0’ with earlier imperative software development paradigm being called Software 1.0 retrospectively^[2].

In this new paradigm, we will not spell out the steps of the algorithm. Instead, we specify some goal on the intended behaviour of desired program ( Like Recognising emotions in images, win a game of Go, identify spams in e-mails so on), write a skeleton of neural network architecture, throw all computational resource at our disposal and crank the deep learning machine. Lo and Behold! we will end up with a model which will provide results for future datasets. Surprisingly, large portion of real world problems like – Visual Recognition, Speech recognition, Speech synthesis, Machine Translation, Games like Chess and Go – are amenable to be solved in this way. We can collect, curate, massage, clean and label large data sets, train a deep neural network on these datasets to generate a machine learning model and use this model for future use. Here, no algorithm is written explicitly, neural networks are shown enough data of enough variety to come up with a predictive model.

Declarative programming is not entirely new. Relational databases and SQL queries to retrieve information out of databases is an exemplar of declarative specification of computing. Relational database is based on a simple but a very elegant mathematical formalism called ‘Relational Algebra’. Programmers specify what they want from the database via an SQL query and not how to retrieve data from database. Programmers are happily oblivious to the internal organisation of data in the database and algorithms used to optimally retrieve data. Database engines work extra hard to organise data optimally and retrieve data optimally on request via a query.

Another area of declarative computing is functional programming based on the mathematical underpinning called ‘Lambda Calculus’, which predates even digital computers. One of the tenets of functional programming is to use higher order functions, which allows us to compose programs declaratively without getting bogged down by the algorithmic nitty gritty.

For example, consider the below code snippet which extracts the names starting with ‘a’ from a list of names and converts into upper case and creates new list of such transformed names.

// Java 7
List<String> names = Arrays.asList("anna", "bruno","amar", "fido", "alex");

List<String>upperCased = new ArrayList<>();
for (String name : names) {
    if (name.startsWith("a")) {
        upperCased.add(name.toUpperCase());
    }
}

// Javascript
const names = ['anna', 'bruno', 'amar', 'fido', 'alex'];
let upperCased = [];

for (name of names) {
    if (name.startsWith('a')) {
        upperCased.push(name.toUpperCase());
    }
}

Notice how this code involves iterating over the list, checking if the name starts with ‘a’, converting each such name to upper case and adding to the new list. If this operation is quite involved, then it becomes tedious and difficult to reason about the program. We need to follow along the iteration to understand exactly what is happening inside loop body. So, the code is not evident and intent revealing.

On the other hand, consider the same operation performed using higher order functions like map, filter etc.

// Java 8
List<String> upperCased = names.stream()
        .filter(name->name.startsWith("a"))
        .map(String::toUpperCase)
        .collect(Collectors.toList());

// Javascript
upperCased = names.filter(name => name.startsWith('a')).map(name => name.toUpperCase());

Here, if we know the semantics of the operations map and filter, we pretty much know what is being done!. We need to just look up as to what operation is being performed in map and filter. This is quite intent revealing and code is concise too. One of the great advantages of such higher order, declarative program is that compiler also can infer the intent easily and can apply optimisations and transformations like parallelisation.

Renowned computer scientist Erik Meijer reckons this successful conversion of training data into models using machine learning techniques of deep learning as future direction of computing^[3].

These machine learning models are essentially pure functions devoid of any side effects and are based on solid mathematical ideas of back propagation and stochastic gradient descent. As we have seen previously, software paradigm based on solid mathematical underpinning is destined to succeed. The new paradigm is like turning the test driven development on its head: in test driven development we device test cases and then write code to satisfy the expectation of those test cases. In software development paradigm based on deep learning, we give machine the test cases(train data) and we produce software which will satisfy these test cases based on neural networks.

There is, however, one fundamental difference between the Software 1.0 code and machine learning model. Code is deterministic and discrete. The output of model is probabilistic, uncertain and continuous. A spam filter would not tell whether a mail is spam or not in discrete boolean terms. But, it will tell its confidence as to the possibility of a mail being spam. However, by providing large amount of carefully curated training dataset to the spam filter, we can improve the accuracy of spam filter to any desired level.

As Dr. Meijer puts it succinctly, the future of programming seems to be combining neural nets with probabilistic programming. Companies like Tesla have already made great strides in this direction.

References:

Mobile Technologies Opinion

How Artificial Intelligence can lead to smarter and more efficient business processes

Oct 29,2018 / By Nikunj Sanghvi / No Comments

From IBM Watson winning Jeopardy less than a decade ago to Artificial Intelligence becoming a part of our daily lives through voice assistants like Siri, Google Home or Alexa, this technology has come a long way.

Recently in an interview, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai stated –

‘’AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.’’

While it might take some time for AI to become as ubiquitous as electricity in our lives, we are heading towards that direction. And, enterprises are betting high on the technology. According to a report, the AI market will grow at a rate of 52% by 2025. As enterprises boost their investments in AI, the reign of AI is just beginning to reshape and push innovations across industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail, etc.

Image Source

AI innovations across industries:

Here are some interesting innovations that we have seen in recent years revolutionizing various industries:

Healthcare

The AI healthcare market is expected to reach $6.6 Billion by 2020. The healthcare industry seems to be bullish about the technology and is using it in multiple ways.

Precision medicine is one discipline of healthcare where AI has proven to be extremely useful. Here a patient’s DNA is scanned through deep genomics algorithms, to identify anomalies that could be linked to genetic disorders and mutations linked to diseases like cancer.

Another prominent example of how AI is accelerating healthcare’s efforts in saving lives is Atomwise’s AI, which was able to predict two drugs that could put a stop to the Ebola virus epidemic. In less than one day, their virtual search was able to find two safe, already existing medicines that could be repurposed to fight the deadly virus.

Retail

Japan’s SoftBank telecom operations created a humanoid robot ‘Pepper’ that could interact with customers and ‘’perceive human emotions’’. According to Softbank Robotics America, a pilot of the Pepper in stores in both Palo Alto yielded a 70% increase in foot traffic in Palo Alto. Nestle used ‘Pepper’ to serve coffee at its stores in China and Japan. A visitor chooses the type, size and strength of coffee using the tablet held by Pepper. Once the selection is made, the humanoid passes the order to a dual-arm robot, which makes coffee with a Nestle coffee machine and places the beverage on the serving tray. The entire process takes exactly three minutes.

North Face an apparel brand has also adopted IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology to help consumers with purchase decisions.

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Manufacturing

General Electric’s (GE) has created Predix Manufacturing Execution Software, which is designed to make the entire manufacturing process—from design to distribution and services—more efficient and hence save costs. This suite of solutions powered by data integration, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), machine learning, and predictive analytics, provides manufacturers with plant-floor and plant-wide collaborative visibility of all work in process.

Banking and Financial sector

AI in the Banking and Financial sector can provide zero-lag customer service, improve efficiency and accuracy.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) launched its in-house bot Ceba to more than a million customers. Swiss bank UBS last year launched its AI systems on the trading floor, which analyses the sea of market data to identify trading patterns and formulate new strategies for trading volatility for the bank’s clients.

AI is also helping in the compliance and security aspects of banking. HSBC partnered with big data startup Quantexa to utilise AI software to counter money laundering. According to Quantexa’s press release, “the technology will allow HSBC to spot potential money laundering activity by analysing internal, publicly available, and transactional data within a customer’s wider network”.

AI boosting efficiency in business operations

While AI has accelerated the pace of innovation across industries it has also permeated the foundations of business operations and is set to change the day to day work lives impacting the ROI of enterprises. A report from Accenture states that, by 2035, AI has the power to increase productivity by 40 percent or more, for enterprises.

Here is how enterprises are using AI and Machine learning in various functions for higher efficiency and boosting ROI

Marketing

AI can find multiple applications in the marketing function from search to customer engagement.

Here are few examples of how marketing is leveraging AI

Improved search functions – technologies like Elastisearch are becoming mainstream in e-commerce by populating the best possible results for a search query. The distributed nature of Elasticsearch enables it to process large volumes of data in parallel, quickly finding the best matches for consumers’ queries.
Recommendation engines – Building a robust recommendation engine is the key aspect of creating a personalized user experience. Netflix is one of the best examples of how a recommendation engine works. More than 80 per cent of the TV shows people watch on Netflix are discovered through the platform’s recommendation system.
Customer segmentation is another aspect where AI is improving efficiency for marketing by learning from customer behaviour for e.g. Companies such as AgilOne are helping marketers to improve and optimize email and website communications, by analyzing, continually learning from user behavior.
Recently IBM launched its new IBM Watson AI Marketing Suite that improves the marketing efforts by personalized targeting, improved programmatic buying insightful campaign analytics. The suite contains three AI-based solutions – IBM Watson Ads Omni, IBM Media Optimizer, and Predictive Audiences.

At Robosoft, we were a part of a project aimed at helping a leading US retailer based in Illinois, draw maximum ROI out of their marketing spends. The company relied on senior managers’ making marketing investment decisions based on past experiences with traditional marketing channels such as billboard and newspaper advertising. Even though there were massive amounts of data available for analysis, no data was utilized in determining the best channels to spend marketing dollars for maximum return on investment.

As a solution, a large scale machine learning system was developed to maximize Marketing Return on Investment (MROI) across all digital marketing channels. The system helped in

Enhancing the company’s customer touch points’ data collection capabilities across all web & digital assets.
Determining customers’ purchase behavior across digital channels.
Recommending optimal allocation of marketing budget across all digital channels.

The company saw improved EROI across all digital channels, prediction model empowered marketing managers to make data-driven decisions and also helped in defining the in-depth content strategy to rank highly for the most relevant keywords.

HR and Recruitment functions

AI can help in various aspects of HR like scheduling meeting, filtering candidates, reducing attrition, enabling a faster recruitment process, etc.

HiringSolved is an AI-powered recruitment tool that enables diversity during selection.
Mya, an AI recruitment tool expedite the process of recruitment by providing quick responses to applicants about their application and other information related to it
IBM Watson is working towards building such a predictive model for companies, that can predict attrition patterns amongst employees.

A US-based recruitment startup wanted to revolutionize how recruiters hire using artificial intelligence. Through their proprietary machine learning algorithm, they wanted to reduce the time and effort required to fill a job position for companies. We were a part of a project for the client aimed at developing a robust machine learning algorithm to best match candidates to a job opening.

The matching algorithm that was created achieved high rate in matching candidates according to the job openings, making the recruitment process highly efficient.

Customer service and customer engagement

Artificial Intelligence is currently being deployed in customer service. According to Gartner, by 2020, 55% of all large enterprises will have deployed at least one bot or Chatbot.

Since chatbots can lead to faster but at times inefficient and machine-like customer responses, enterprises are using bots which can work in tandem with their human counterparts. One company that provides AI-augmented messaging is LivePerson, where simple questions can be handled directly by a bot, but as soon as the conversation becomes too complicated the bot can hand the conversation off to a human.

AI can also help in creating models to boost engagement with customers by improving internal processes. One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Asia that conducts clinical trials based on various types of drugs that belong to Therapeutic Areas like Gastroenterology, Neurology, etc. wanted to ensure patients have access to a simplified explanation of the documentation given to patients during clinical trials. We were a part of a project for the client which was aimed at optimizing the process & time required in translation from Scientific to Simplified documents.

An AI based model was used to translate the documents to the desired language of choice. Additionally, a mobile app was built for the patients as an engagement platform for clinical trials which consisted of an AI-Chat bot that provides answers to user’s text/voice-based questions on-the-go. Resulting in patients being more willing to participate in the trial as they felt more in control of the clinical trial experience.

Supply Chain Management

One of the most challenging aspects of managing a supply chain is predicting future demands for production. Machine learning algorithms can find new patterns in supply chain data daily, without needing manual intervention or the definition of taxonomy to guide the analysis. Lennox International Inc. is an intercontinental provider of climate control products for the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration markets use machine learning for their demand forecasting.

AI can also help in automating the inspection process for the manufacturing enterprises for e.g. The machine learning algorithms in IBM’s Watson platform can determine if a shipping container and/or product were damaged, classify it by damage time, and recommend the best corrective action to repair the assets.

Finance and Accounting

According to Bernard Marr, a futurist and a business strategist, –

‘’The key to the digital transformation of accounting and financing is pairing people and machines together allowing each one to contribute in areas they are best skilled at. Machines can efficiently and accurately analyze a tremendous amount of data, they can spot patterns in the data and learn how to treat various kinds of data.’’.

Some organizations are using AI to simplify their finance and accounting process simple like-

At Deloitte, auditors access AI tools with natural language processing capabilities to interpret thousands of contracts or deeds.
At Crowe Horwath, data scientists have harnessed technology to tackle complex billing problems in the healthcare industry. The team used machine-based learning to sift through enormous but disparate billing systems of its healthcare clients to flag accounts with discrepancies.

Challenges in deploying AI to business process

Like with many emerging technologies, there are challenges, with deploying AI to enterprise processes. According to a new MIT-Boston Consulting Group survey, 85% of executives believe AI will change business, but only 20% of companies are using it in some way, and just 5% make extensive use of it. Some of the challenges that may impede the process are –

Access to data – companies need to invest in creating the infrastructure to collect and store the data they generate and to recruit talent capable of making use of it.
Ever changing markets – businesses do not work on a static model, which means AI models will decrease significantly in efficacy, so smart companies will need to keep deploying resources and investments in keeping up with the market dynamics.
Specialists – AI still being a niche domain, the lack of AI know-how in management is hindering its adoption in most cases.
Cost – AI technologies are an expensive deal to an organization. While big names have separate budget allocations for AI implementation, it is the small and mid-size enterprises that struggle to implement AI solutions to their business processes.
Computation Speed – Technologies like AI, machine learning and deep learning solution, require a huge number of calculations to be computed at hypersonic speed. This requires processors that have advanced processing power much higher than what is in general adoption today.

In Conclusion

As rightly stated by IBM’s Dr. Kelly –

“In the end, all technology revolutions are propelled not just by discovery, but also by business and societal need. We pursue these new possibilities not because we can, but because we must.”

The bigger technology players are paving the way for having automated and AI enabled processes. The industry as a whole has to evolve in terms of technology, trained resources etc., the costs of deployment will need to go down for smaller players to be a part of the AI revolution and finally infrastructure at an optimal cost will need to be created.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

Is Voice Assistant Technology the Future of Banking?

Oct 24,2018 / By Nikunj Sanghvi / No Comments

Ask anyone you know: what’s the longest you’ve had to stand in line at your bank? Chances are high that you’ll hear a number of stories detailing long, frustrating experiences at their bank that left them feeling irked and ignored the longer they stood there.

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. And this begins with how users search for information to meet their specific needs.

Over 50 percent of users do at least one voice search online per day. Experts estimate that the current market share of virtual digital assistant/voice assistants will triple by 2021. Our world is becoming ever-increasingly connected and automated. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa have shifted the way we view our daily list of to-dos by enabling us to manage our time and tasks more efficiently. Over one-third of people say that digital assistants are part of their daily lives.

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Currently, much of VA technology is being used for devices that manage mundane and simple tasks, such as:

Finding restaurant reservations and maintaining our home’s temperature
Using home assistants to include items on our shopping lists while our hands are full
Setting a timer while we cook
Making basic search queries for the weather forecast

However, can the emergence of VA technology be the bright future that banking needs? How will this technology enable banks and financial institutions to better serve their clients in the short and long term, without creating unnecessary barriers to our personal, human interactions?

From then Until Now: AI and Finance

Robots assisting customers with their banking needs is not a recent innovation. Indeed, anyone who has had to repeat themselves on the phone in order to be understood through a series of voice commands, or those who have been denied a bank loan because of a restrictive computer program, can attest to the fact that AI and automatic technology have been around for years.

The Banking Technology Vision 2017 report from Accenture states that not only do 80 percent of all bankers believe that voice-assistant technology will revolutionize their industry, but they believe it will do so within three years. While that timeline may seem short, the reality for many banking leaders is that they’re already starting to see the benefits of using VA tech for both customer interactions and data management.

We’ve seen tremendous advances in the field of natural language processing (NLP, for short). Users have gone from the example above, where customers would find themselves frustrated and despondent at the near-fruitless interactions with their banks, to the natural and organic conversations that we carry on with Alexa and Siri, experiencing moments of ease and delight.

When implemented well, voice-assistant technology brings customers and banks closer together. Here are a few examples of companies creating meaningful transactions and interactions with VA technology while considering the needs and wants of both their company and their customers.

Leading by Example

As a leader in the financial and banking industry, you need to meet your users where they are. And for the vast majority, that means reaching them through their mobile devices. It’s not difficult to find apps that are already making strides in tailoring their customers’ experiences while managing their financial portfolios.

Apps such as Mint (budgeting app from Intuit), Venmo (digital wallet to send payments), and Stash (investment and savings app) offer something that has been missing from much of banking: personality. Users can have a more organic interaction with these apps, empowering them to make smarter financial decisions, becoming better customers.

Tomorrow’s AI-Enabled Banking, a recent report from IPSoft highlights the fact that “73% of millennials would rather trust their finances to tech companies like Google, Amazon or PayPal than to their own bank.” That’s no small matter, and banks should be paying attention to numbers such as these.

Image source

Financial institution Cap One recently partnered with Amazon to allow users to access their bank accounts and account info with their voice. In addition, Santander enables their customers to make payments and authorize transfers using their voice within their SmartBank app.

Products, services and customer care interactions are increasingly being injected with a sense of humanness, regardless of the level of automation involved. These interpersonal relationships between you and your customers may be the difference between winning or losing to your competitors, both to existing competitors and to new market players.

People and Data: What to Prioritize in VA Technology

Voice-assisted tech is growing in popularity simply because it is easier to use. With that advantage, your company can focus on three key areas to consider when implementing (or enhancing your current) VA technology platform and mobile app: security, accuracy, and platform.

Security

Security (and privacy), while ubiquitous for banking institutions, is an ever-present concern when new technology (or any technology) is involved. Be forward-thinking in your approach to speech recognition software (and updates), password requirements, and situational consideration of privacy (for example, the option to simply display, rather than recite, confidential financial information on the screen when in a public place).

Accuracy

Despite all the advancements and innovations, VA will never be 100% correct all the time. Put safeguards in place for those times when things break down to ensure customers aren’t feeling lost or frustrated. Create a plan to handle misunderstandings when someone’s voice commands aren’t understood clearly by a bot, to prevent would-be disastrous mistakes that could cost both you and your customers significant losses.

Platform

While customers can move from app to app with ease depending on their needs, large enterprises require a strategic, considered approach to choosing the right platform for their users. For many, Facebook chatbots are the simplest and fastest form of reaching their clients, but that avenue is often too informal for most banks and financial institutions. In this regard, consider a customized yet manageable approach to your back-end technology. If you plan well, your users will continue to grow with you and your technology without you being limited in the future to the popular platforms in today’s market.

You can effectively harness VA technology in your banking app to leverage not only the existing knowledge base and familiarity with technology that consumers possess, but also to maintain a formidable competitive edge, establishing your company as a leader in the marketplace. AI and VA technology offer you the flexibility to meet customer needs with fewer resources in less time.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

5 must-read books on business thinking for CXOs

Sep 28,2018 / By Ravi Teja Bommireddipalli / No Comments

In 2016, after nearly two decades in professional life, I enrolled in not just one, but six online courses offered by the reputed Interaction Design Foundation (IDF). My initial plan was to complete a course on ‘Services Design’ but I ended up completing these:

Emotional design – how to make products that people will love
User research –methods and best practices
Conducting usability testing
Information visualization – getting dashboards right
Mobile user experience design – designing UX for mobile apps
Design Thinking – the beginner’s guide

Completing these courses and learning something new was useful and a deeply enriching experience. The cherry on top was the email from Interaction Design Foundation about my performance: “One of our developers did a database extract of the top performers (1%) in our courses, and your name came out on that list!’’ – Mads Soegaard, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Interaction Design Foundation

After I completed these courses many have asked for book recommendations on the topic. But Design Thinking is one piece of the puzzle when it comes to solving complex business problems. Over the years, as a consultant, I have worked with several CXOs across diverse business categories and geographies. The business problems faced by each of those organizations were unique and covered a range of aspects: service delivery process, organization structure, brand positioning and many more. Aside from hands-on experience, I realized that the holistic thinking outlined in several books helped me immensely to grasp the problems at hand and offer solutions.

Among many such books, here are my 5 top picks, which would help CXOs take a 360-degree approach in solving business problems:

Book 1 – Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek

In a succinct TED Talk, Simon Sinek connected Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Jobs and demonstrated that they all think in the same way – they all started with ‘why’, the larger purpose. Nike says, ‘our purpose is to use the power of sport to move the world forward’. And they outline their mission as: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”.

Author – Simon Sinek

But the clincher is in defining who an athlete is: ‘if you have a body, you are an athlete’. Suddenly, Nike’s business is elevated from selling shoes & sportswear to a rallying clarion call. It is meaningful for their employees, partners and various stakeholders. You can see its manifestation in their hugely successful marketing and the famous ‘Just Do It’ tagline. I believe every organization can define such a lofty goal.

At Robosoft, our core purpose is to “simplify lives” through delightful digital experiences. We believe in simplifying every aspect of life; the way people buy, transact, pay, get entertained, bank, get insured, sell, invest, mange health, etc. We touch billions of lives through our advice, design and technology capabilities.

Such goals are best set in an inclusive manner so that employees buy into them and do not see it as a diktat from the top. Simon Sinek’s book explains the framework needed for businesses to move past knowing what they do to how they do it, and then to ask the more important question – WHY?

Book 2 – Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Kaplan and Norton

Author – Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton

Businesses are more complex than ever before. Competition comes in various shapes and from unexpected quarters. No one would have predicted taxi aggregators would change the face of urban transport across the globe. FinTech players continue to challenge traditional banks. Such complex challenges call for not just a clear strategy; but also require an implementation framework. Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect of strategy is to define how an organization is different from competition or what is the unique value proposition to customers. Organizations generally choose to differentiate themselves either on Total cost, Complete customer solution or Product innovation. E.g. Apples competes on innovation, Walmart competes on cost, and IBM competes on “one stop shop for IT”.

At Robosoft, we chose our value proposition to be “a full-service digital experiences agency” by offering digital advice, design thinking and emerging technologies implementation.

Once the customer value proposition (CVP) is chosen, implementing it in a way that ensures sustained value creation–depends on managing four key value-creating internal process perspective categories: operational efficiency, customer relationships, innovation management, and regulatory/social processes. The processes are then enabled by the learning and growth perspectives which consists of Human capital (skills, knowledge and competencies), Organization capital (culture, alignment, teamwork and leadership) and Information capital (IT applications, infrastructure and systems). This book taught me the benefit of defining the HOW?

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Book 3. The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

How do companies become learning organizations by thinking systems and thinking holistically? Peter Senge, an American systems scientist and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, offers 5 disciplines: A shared Vision, Mental Models, Team Learning, Personal Mastery and System Thinking.

Author – Peter M. Senge

As organizations grow in complexity and newer challenges emerge, our ability to identify the right problem to solve becomes extremely important. Systems Thinking is the 5th discipline that the book talks about; which enables us with the ability to think cause-and-effect. Once we know the core problem that we need to solve, our ability to identify, design and innovate the right solutions, products and services for the market becomes accurate.

This book enabled me to define WHAT products, WHAT solutions and WHAT services to offer to the market in a very holistic manner.

Book 4. Change by Design by Tim Brown

At the core of this legendary book is the belief that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination and not from a flash of brilliance. Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO and he defines design thinking thus: the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. The chapter on ‘Putting people first’ was of particular interest to me where he outlines three mutually reinforcing elements of any successful design programme: insight, observation and empathy. Insight is about learning from the lives of others, observation is watching what people don’t do, listening to what they don’t say and empathy is about standing in the shoes of others.

Author – Tim Brown

I firmly believe that design thinking is not the exclusive realm of designers – we all can learn from others’ lives, feel their pain points and think of solutions. At Robosoft we get to partner with a diverse set of companies, domains and end-consumers. What we solve for is vastly different for a bank as compared to say, a news organisation – Design Thinking helps us straddle such extremes.

Book 5. The Knowledge Creating Company by Nonaka and Takeuchi

Despite the devastation of the World War, Japan has emerged as a global economic power and a world leader in important industries like electronics and automobiles. In this book the authors contend that Japanese firms are innovative, create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies.

Author – Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi

The culture of un-learning, learning and then innovating are the key ingredients towards becoming a knowledge organization. They say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Our ability to not depend on past success and create a new future depends heavily on our skill to un-learn; which then opens up for a possibility to learn and create new knowledge.

Summary:

While the above 5 books are on different subjects, they all are ‘connected’ in some fashion as they are all about making a difference to the customers. Peter Drucker famously said, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer”. What binds them all together and important for holistic business thinking could be summed up thus:

Identifying the larger purpose of the organization is key to success and thus “start with WHY” is the most important read for all CXOs.
Strategy is about differentiation, customer value proposition and answer the HOW for organizations. The design of strategy, its execution and monitoring are key to building successful companies and delivering value to shareholders, vendors, customers and employees
Identifying the right problem to solve is very important and thus the power of cause-and-effect is key. ‘Systems thinking’ thus becomes extremely important to solve complex problems and it also ensures that we are not solving the symptom but the actual cause. This helps us identify the right products/services for our customers and answer the question “WHAT”
Once we know the product/solution, it is important to design it well by being empathetic to the user who faces the problem and thus design thinking plays a very important role in innovating new products, services and processes
To do all the above, it is a MUST to build a learning culture that enables the organization to continuously un-learn, learn and innovate.

I look forward to your views on these books and your recommendations on other good reads on the subject of business thinking.

This article was first published on LinkedIn by Ravi Teja Bommireddipalli

Mobile Technologies Opinion

How Retail Apps Are Using Augmented Reality to Provide a Better User Experience

Sep 18,2018 / By Nikunj Sanghvi / No Comments

Imagine being able to experiment with different outfits that you want to buy from the comfort of your sofa, or being able to “try on” multiple shades of lipstick with a click of a button without the mess of color strips lining the back of your hand as you test them out in the store. Imagine being able to customize your food delivery so that your favourite items are available at the click of a button or two and having a feature that allows you to pre-order a day or two in advance.

You don’t have to imagine that with too much difficulty these features and functionalities have been available for a number of years by several large retailers, providing their customers the ability to tailor their purchasing power and subsequently giving retailers insights into their customers’ preferences and habits.

Research indicates that by 2020, augmented reality technology will claim a market share worth over $120 Billion. And while consumers have witnessed significant advancements that help them simplify their decision-making process, many retailers may have been slow to adopt this burgeoning industry tool while it was still in its early stages. The good news for consumers is that many are slowly joining the ranks of these larger companies that have been using the technology for years, with the hopes of making this technology ubiquitous in our shopping habits.

Let’s examine a number of key ways that augmented reality technology is helping retailers create a more delightful customer experience from beginning to end.

Virtual Reality vs Augmented Reality

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Let’s begin with a quick definition review, and a differentiation in two closely related technologies. Virtual Reality (VR) portrays a world completely generated by computers and entirely immerses the user in this constructed world; Augmented Reality (AR), however, sits at the crossroads between the real world and the “enhanced” reality that is projected from digital devices in order to increase (augment) our senses and perceptions. Essentially, VR requires the user to enter an entirely fictional world, whereas AR is real life with “upgrades” or add-ons.

Because of its usefulness in a range of applications, AR has become widely used in the retail world. This technology, once innovative and new, is now offering a reliable and effective UX tool for retailers. Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis, states this well:

“Like any other marketing effort, if [AR is] deployed thoughtfully and with planned momentum, it could give any brand a great lift in sales no matter what the competition is doing. If other brands aren’t already deploying consumer-friendly additions that help their customers shop better and easier, then they should take note at successes surrounding those who do and consider a change.”

The rise of the viral sensation Pokémon GO saw this on a global scale, with an almost manic adoption of augmented reality in the mainstream media. Users found themselves immersed in half-reality, half-fiction as they scoured their neighbourhoods and communities for signs of hidden Pokemon to catch and other players to connect with, often to the detriment of their own health and safety. Despite these negative effects, Pokémon GO showed people that AR is a formidable and easy-to-use tool to generate mass adoption if designed properly.

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Augmented Reality is a More Powerful Tool

There’s a popular saying that, in essence, states that the most powerful tool is the one most often used by its owner. The same can be said for augmented reality. Once on the fringe, it has become commonplace in our devices and applications and a staple in how we interact daily, both with technology and with people. AR is a simpler technology to implement than VR technology, in as much as it can often be cumbersome and expensive to create a different reality for users using VR.

Consider the medical field: doctors, nurses, and medical practitioners would greatly benefit from immersion or support in a critical scenario that had real-life, real-time consequences, but that can also allow them to learn more effectively in a constructed or semi-constructed reality.

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AR can be especially useful in this arena by reducing errors, offering real-time assistance for difficult cases, and providing beneficial shortcuts for both patients and doctors. For example, nurses and other medical professionals report that 40 percent of the time they can’t find a patient’s vein on the first try, with those numbers being even higher when drawing blood from children or seniors. AccuVein, a product that accurately scans for and locates a patient’s veins, is helping to significantly reduce the “miss rate”, in some cases as close to zero misses.

In the world of retail and consumers, however, customers need to only understand and experiment with the products they’d like to buy in order to learn how those products will serve to enhance their daily lives. From this perspective, AR makes an effective and powerful tool.

Take QR codes, digitally rendered square blocks of even smaller blocks of black and white, which have been around since 1994. These codes contain useful data, such as a direct link to a company’s website, an online promotion, or an action to email someone, simply from scanning the QR image. We still use QR codes (in blockchain transactions) but have graduated far beyond these simple QR codes from a decade ago, and can now access tools that recognize data from a picture of a sign in a store or the facial recognition software that helps you pick the best shade of lipstick for your skin tone.

Enhancing the User Experience with AR

In effective marketing campaigns, retailers have to walk a fine line between showing customers their current reality (life without this product) while attempting to show how things will improve or redirect that reality once their products are in the hands of the customer all without making the customer feel belittled or attacked. This messaging is subtle, but so important for the relationship between retailer and consumer, as it implies that reality needs improvement and what better way to convey that than by actually enhancing reality in real time?

Retailers are incorporating AR technology into many aspects of the customer experience, both online and in person at the store. For retailers selling physical products and goods, AR tech offers customers an easy way to see products in “real life” without ever stepping foot in a store. Zara, McDonalds, and Sephora are well-known examples of companies that have integrated AR technology into their platform to reduce frustrations that consumers may feel when searching for just the right products, as well as providing comprehensive information about those products to build trust between consumers and retailers, which creates a longer-lasting relationship that benefits both parties.

Almost 75% of consumers think that retailers should be utilizing augmented reality technology in some way, and over half of customers feel that if companies are already using AR technology, they aren’t using that technology to its full potential to make the customer journey streamlined and customized. Although AR technology can drastically increase sales, if the technology isn’t designed properly for users, then sales will stagnate.

We examine several of these companies below that have implemented AR well, and how this technology has not only increased the enjoyment their customers feel when shopping for their products but also helped customers make better purchases that match their needs.

Companies Effectively Using AR Technology

From Cart to Consumer ─ Simplifying Decision Making for Customers

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. With the addition of more efficient 3D facial recognition software, Sephora gave customers the power not simply to upload a self portrait, or “selfie”, to the app but now offered real-time rendering of their face using Sephora’s app, giving them a more realistic impression of the Sephora products they were hoping to purchase.

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Try Before You Buy: Using AR to Create Your Dream Home

A recent survey showed that furniture is the most popular item that customers shop for using augmented reality technology. AR offers retailers the opportunity to create comprehensive and immersive product catalogues for customers; if they never look at it, it’s no inconvenience, but these product listings are available at a moment’s notice and greatly reduce the time spent researching the various options available to customers.

Retailers like Wayfair and IKEA have created apps that allow users to select products from the catalogue and use their smartphones or tablets to show in real time how those products would actually look in their homes and offices. This reduces the stress involved with picking something that doesn’t fit, and it reduces the time spent searching, buying, shipping, and building a product that eventually doesn’t work well for their space. Retailers know that this workflow significantly lightens the burden on the customer and allows them to research these options all before clicking “Buy now”. The team at IKEA is anticipating that this technology will show a triple increase in sales by 2020.

Mouthwatering Experiences Through AR and Dining

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.

The Future of AR in Retail

While AR technology has been around for roughly three decades, advances in facial recognition, immersive technology and real-time feedback are just starting to come into maturation. Those developing and using this technology recognize that the future of AR lies in how the devices we currently use and how we use them will change, and inexpertly enhancing and crafting the user experiences with AR.

From a customer perspective, “AR allows for pre-purchase testing of products and makes the purchase process feels more hands-on.” In today’s market, however, users don’t have wide-reaching access to a completely seamless interaction with retailers, and there are still bugs that need to be worked out in existing software (lacking a natural field of view, comprehensive product info, 3D sensing, low resolution) before users can feel confident using AR from retailers on a large scale to be able to receive customized experiences.

This is where the key changes in the technology will greatly impact mass adoption of AR technology: the tailoring of “personalized, accessible and well-designed” products, services, and experiences. Shopping is an activity that each and every one of us performs, and when retailers recognize the value of investing in and properly designing AR for their customers, they’ll begin to see greater returns on customer loyalty, brand power, and increased sales.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

Digital Transformation – how integrated enterprise solutions are fueling the process

Sep 6,2018 / By Jay Shah / No Comments

Started in 1934, LEGO was on a growth trajectory for over 50 years. In 1994, owing to the rising popularity of video games and internet the company suffered a major set back and a drop in their sales. In response, they tried diversifying their product portfolio and also collaborated with various production companies to form themed products. While this lead to a short-term rise in numbers the phase ended soon. That is when the organization started with a drastic revamp journey in 2004 with its new strategy called ‘shared vision’. One of the major pillars of this strategy was ‘leveraging digitization’.

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Since then, digitization has remained a critical aspect of LEGO’s business strategy. The company has weaved in digital technologies in multiple areas – at a product level, consumer level and at an enterprise level (as depicted in the figure below).

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All these forces, working together helped LEGO overcome the negative growth in 2003 and mark about 30% growth in the next 10 years, a curve that is on an upward trajectory since.

While LEGO’s success story and digitization efforts sound inspiring and business leaders would love to replicate this success in their respective domains, it is easier said than done. Advancements in technology and digitization are not just changing the way enterprises operate but how various industries operate as a whole. Uber has changed the transportation business, Netflix has completely disrupted the OTT landscape, the automotive industry has recently witnessed the entries of technology companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, as vehicles are increasingly getting connected; there a lot of such examples.

As digitization is reshaping the competitive landscape of the companies, it is crucial to understand how short-term are existing business models, in the light of the fast pace of digital disruptions and how they can also leverage technology to address it.

But are enterprises ready for the rapid pace of this change? In this context, digital transformation for enterprises is a must but do organizations really know what does it mean and how to go about it?

As pointed out by this research, while 90% of business leaders deem digital transformation important bit of their business strategy. Almost a similar percentage aren’t sure how to create a plan that integrates the entire digital ecosystem for their organization seamlessly.

There are various challenges that enterprises today face while developing a digital transformation plan. One of the key challenges is disparate systems. The need of digitization though apparent, the need for an organizational level digitization integrating all the departments is still not established.

Also, the rate at which various departments are embracing digitization is also different. For instance, while customer-facing and IT departments are excelling in their efforts of digitization, HR and other departments are lagging behind. This is leading to a lack of strategic alignment between departments, and finally affecting an organization’s progress towards digital transformation.

As per a study, Only the minority (37%) of business leaders see delivering a seamless experience across digital channels as one of the top three priorities for digital transformation in their organization, but half (50%) see this as a top area for focus when aiming to improve the digital experience for customers.

This non-integrated approach towards digital transformation has also to do with the way digitization has evolved. A digitization pyramid has the below elements (as shown in the image below)

In earlier days, there was a huge emphasis on the lowermost layer which is the Transaction Processing Applications such as SAP, Oracle, Core Banking Solutions, etc. And, as the name suggests that was largely capturing transactions. We went through talking about end-to-end processes, and integrations to avoid Silos.

In the next phase of this evolution we saw a lot of ERP solutions emerging to manage and to some extent centralize data. Today, another layer which is the knowledge-driven or intelligent layer is evolving on top of this, which is enabled with technologies like Analytics, AI, Machine Learning, advisory solutions etc. Further, customer acquisition strategies powered by the data gathered by these solutions are making enterprises understand and design solutions based on consumer insights. Now the same cycle is repeating at a higher level. We are talking about end-to-end solutions, integrations, avoiding silos. But at a higher level of abstraction that focuses on Customer Acquisition strategies, Analytics, ML, AI and so on.

Slowly the Server side is becoming more powerful and prominent. And also the real estate, memory and storage on the Mobile device is increasing. This revolution is what we need to capitalize on. Businesses are adopting enterprise solutions that are solely the Server side solution. At the other end, some talk about only the optimization in the mobile device. However, both these need to function and evolve together to bring about the largest benefit of the current cycle of the digital revolution.

What is an integrated enterprise solution all about?

It is about creating a connected ecosystem where people, businesses and things, are all working together to make business transactions (financial or non-financial) happen.

Take for example – the data recorded by a blood pressure monitoring device remains native to the machine. What if this data can be transferred to a diagnostic centre or a hospital where a physician can access it in real-time and advice the patient on their health, and probably patients can also make payments for the consultation online. This completes a transaction in which a patient, a machine (thing), a platform (cloud computing), one or more applications, businesses and a set of doctors are involved. In this case, technology has enabled the interaction of various components inclusive of the enterprise and the end-user to make a business transaction happen.

There are various technologies that are helping enterprises in developing well-integrated enterprise solutions that act as key enablers for digital business transformation. (As shown in the image below)

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1. API Management: APIs are one of the critical aspects of creating a connected enterprise solution. These are the set of functionalities that businesses would share with their partners, customers etc. In this context various API management tools become important. Businesses deploying enterprise solutions for digital transformation would have to look at adopting different aspects of API management. APIs can be used in exposing one or more business services to consumer applications and also help enterprises open data and services that help them integrate with their existing business partners. For example, a manufacturer or retail wholesaler may share its product catalogue and inventory data via API with resellers who want to integrate updated information about available products for sale on their own retail websites.

2. Cloud-Native Apps: When creating a connected enterprise solution there will be a need for more flexible platforms that can enable faster changes in business data and functionality, and cloud-native apps can help businesses achieve that. Cloud-native applications are purpose-built for the cloud model and is a way of approaching the development and deployment of applications in such a way that adapts or understands the various facets and nature of the cloud – resulting in creating processes and workflows that fully take advantage of the platform. In cloud-native apps, these requirements could be easily fulfilled utilizing containers and microservices. With microservices architecture, apps are being built as a distributed collection of services, which pairs up with the distributed nature of the cloud.

3. DevOps: Today, owing to the need of building enterprise solutions that are connected, it is important for businesses to adopt DevOps way of building and delivering software.

According to AWS –

‘’DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.’’

This helps in creating an ecosystem where various development, operations and in some cases the quality assurance and security teams are merged together for faster delivery of solutions.

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4. Internet of Things (IoT): When creating connected enterprise solutions IoT becomes a critical aspect for CIOs and IT leaders. In this context, Machine to Machine platforms (M2M) become the most important part of IoT solutions. Both Machine to Machine and IoT are technologies enabling devices to communicate with each other, M2M refers to isolated instances of device-to-device communication, and IoT refers to a grander scale, synergizing vertical software stacks to automate and manage communications between multiple devices. Bringing these two together will play an important role in created connected enterprise solutions.

5. Analytics: With multiple sources of data from customers, partners, things, customer service representatives etc., it becomes of prime importance for business enterprises to use the data in reshaping their business solutions based on the insights derived from the data and reshaping existing solutions to meet the customer demand. To make the most out of this data Big data technologies and predictive/prescriptive analytics are going to play a decisive role in generating value out of data. Integrating these analytics capabilities with the enterprise solutions is becoming important.

6. Mobility: As smartphones become smarter and more integrated to our lives, business stakeholders internal (employees) and external (customers, vendors, etc.) would want to be connected to businesses through different channels, mobile being one of the most important of these. Enterprises would have to start offering and supporting their products and services across diverse mobile devices and subsequently start strategizing for relevant mobile technology adoption.

7. Web-Scale Technologies: Web-scale technologies refer to an architectural approach which helps in delivering capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting. Web-scale IT methodology enables businesses in designing, deploying and managing infrastructure at any scale that can be packaged in a number of ways to suit diverse requirements and can scale to any size of business or enterprise. It is not a single technology implementation, but rather a set of capabilities of an overall IT system. Web-scale technologies are redefining the traditional approach towards web/mobile app development enabling digital business transformation.

8. Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS): While moving applications to the cloud in form of cloud-native apps enables enterprises to develop more agile, faster and flexible solutions, it is not feasible to move all apps into the cloud. Hence it has become essential to integrate cloud-native apps with on-premise apps, this is where iPaaS solutions have become important. These platforms help to integrate develop, execute and govern integration flows between disparate applications. An iPaaS can simplify an organization’s overall system. With the help of a virtual platform, iPaaS connects applications and resources to create a consistent structure. The iPaaS framework creates a seamless integration of resources across multiple clouds and between cloud and legacy applications.

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In conclusion:

Many organizations today are struggling with digital transformation and facing challenges in their pursuit of building an integrated enterprise solution that gives insight to the end-to-end process. However, with the availability of innovative technologies like SaaS-based digital experience monitoring and analytics, which provide deep, in-depth visibility, unique insights and actionable recommendations this situation is fast changing. In the future we will see an evolution of smarter, intelligent enterprise solutions, that will fuel the digital transformation revolution for enterprises helping them build an integrated ecosystem, benefitting the end user, optimizing workflows and also driving ROI for enterprises.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

How Today’s Healthcare Apps are Making Life Better for Patients

Aug 27,2018 / By Nikunj Sanghvi / No Comments

The Past: Healthcare Before Mobile Devices

In the last 100 years, we have watched as healthcare has advanced while people continue to struggle with their health. Obesity rates are rising, so much so that the United States has an obesity rate of almost 40 percent, over 60 per cent of Australia’s population is overweight or obese, and India is now home to the world’s largest obese population. Cancer rates are also on the rise, several of which have yet to find a root cause. With the advent of widespread technology use, however, we’ve seen exponential changes in the way we perceive and manager our health and wellness.

For much of the twentieth century, the major impact that technology had on healthcare was data management. Family doctors and other medical professionals once tediously maintain patient records but faced risks such as damage and theft. Now, nearly every aspect of a doctor-patient visit is recorded digitally.

An excellent example of this shift in technology behind data and the relationship that patients have with the healthcare industry is Epocrates, the medical application from AthenaHealth.

Epocrates is unique, in that it was one of the very first applications (apps) released when the App Store was first introduced to the world. This point-of-care medical app provides over a million healthcare professionals with support and a network of trusted consults and providers, identifying and safely reviewing multiple drugs and their characteristics to ensure that medications are distributed and used properly and effectively. In addition, the system is set up to automate many of the tasks once performed manually and to access all relevant data and research for the best possible medical advice.

Read the story of how we collaborated with Athenahealth in redesigning and improving the user engagement of the Epocrates app here.

The app iDoc was tested in 2012 – 2014 to determine if it could improve doctors’ efficiency and effectiveness at locating information within a database of textbooks, the study showed that efficiency in search results increased and subsequently reduced the number of unnecessary tests that doctors and nurses had to perform to find the root cause.

Ten years later, we’ve entered an era where healthcare has grown beyond the walls of hospitals, clinics, and doctor’s offices and is managed in the most ubiquitous place: cell phones.

The Present: The Healthcare of the Tech Age

The global market of applications has surpassed 1 million apps since the App Store first launched in 2008. Users can download free or minimally-priced apps that help them not only track their progress but also help them manage their habits, eat better, and connect with a community of other users for support and encouragement. Similarly, physicians and medical professionals have access to a number of applications that offer not only real-time patient monitoring for more up-to-date health data, such as the AirStrip ONE monitoring app, but that also provides comprehensive and ongoing education about critical insights and advances in their fields, such as Radiology 2.0.

Alongside the growing marketplace of healthcare apps (estimated growth to $111 Billion by 2025), we’ve also seen the rise of wearable technology devices both for patients and doctors: from trendy pedometers like FitBit and clothing that monitors basal temperature, heart rate and blood pressure to apps that manage patient information across regions and offer referral networks of medical professional, apps are often integrated with wearables and other mobile devices to provide a more seamless experience for users.

You can read more about such technologies in our ebook – Digital Transformation in healthcare – the evolving landscape

Benefits of Healthcare Apps

The primary benefit of healthcare apps is the education and peace of mind they provide for patients. Users can access a wealth of resources that help them understand any health conditions they may be experiencing. For example, Propeller Health helps patients not only monitor their asthma inhalers but also sends data about a patient’s use of their asthma attacks and inhaler use directly to their doctor, giving them more accurate, more up-to-date information about their day-to-day health concerns.

Image source : Google Play

In study conducted in 2015, researchers wanted to learn whether apps were actually helping users lead healthier lives. The study showed that many health ”apps help people overcome barriers like a lack of understanding or organization,” which increases their chances of choosing better habits and leading healthier lives. Other key results of the study indicated that users not only had lower BMIs than non-app users, but that they also possessed a greater belief in themselves to actually achieve their health goals.

Other types of health apps offer supplementary health support and goal tracking. Sleep Cycle helps users track not only their sleep patterns, but also determines the best time to wake you up to prevent grogginess from waking up in the wrong sleep cycle. Happify uses scientific methods proven through psychology to increase your mood and overall satisfaction in life. Fooducate not only provides resources to make healthy meals, but it also connects users to a database that contains details about the nutritional content of the food you buy, just by scanning the product barcode with your app.

Apps that allow patients to connect directly with a doctor, such as HealthTap, provide a framework of trust and safety; doctors can request the information they’ll need to provide assistance, and patients can benefit from real-time answers and speedy lab test results in a confidential and secure environment.

Image source : Google Play

The Future of HealthTech and Healthcare Apps

Looking to the very-near future, we will begin to see Artificial Intelligence (AI) play a bigger role in routine medical care. AI can assist doctors in predicting diseases and helping to prevent them. Even something as simple and accurate record keeping or clinical services are repetitive tasks that can be better managed by AI, freeing up time that doctors need to work on more difficult medical cases and vital research.

In short, apps make patient’s lives more fulfilling by providing a medium for them to connect with trusted experts and stay on track with goals that may have otherwise gone unrealized. These apps will continue to evolve as users provide feedback about what works best for their unique needs and by giving them a safe space to share their health and wellness journey.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

Changing Perceptions — creating a unified healthcare system

Aug 21,2018 / By Priyanka Shroff / No Comments

Health and technology are coming together like never before. The blending of these two distinct entities has lead to explorations that not only question the existing system but dare to rethink and replace trodden concepts and address untapped needs. From self-prognosis to smart diagnosis, from wearables, for technophobes to object sensors for elderly care, from real-time health monitoring to remote patient management, from smart pharmacies to timely medicine dispensers and from biostamps to injectables — processes, services and devices in the health spectrum are being vehemently explored.

All these amazing, ground-breaking innovations are questioning conventional approaches to healthcare at every stage. But this also prompts us to observe and reflect on these happenings around.

Are we looking at the essence of health and applying technology as a tool to simplify the journey, or are we looking at simplifying technology to address the healthcare sector?

The word ‘health’ is defined as a state of being, free from illness or injury. It invariably gets associated with the notion of something going wrong and rectifying a problem. It is also perceived as an individual-centered term, where the sense of self is strong and the feeling of looking inwards is overpowering.

However, the inclusion of ‘care’ almost instantly adds a positive feeling of concern. It makes the entire concept more humane and embracing. The focus beautifully shifts to the overall wellbeing of a person, rather than looking at health in isolation.

The attachment of this word has lead to exploring diverse facets of this proposition and a desire to seek a more holistic in nature approach. This is gradually making the perception of healthcare more universal in terms of access, economical without compromising the quality and understandable in terms of a science.

Technology is striving to play an important role in identifying various touch points, where it can interact with people in their healthcare journey. This is not restricted to pre, during and post health problems, but also explores the idea of empowering people to own their health, stay informed and focus on individual wellbeing.

Today, we are witnessing varied types of innovation being explored in order to achieve a democratic approach towards healthcare. These innovations primarily are categorised into 3 buckets.

Process Innovation
Technology Innovation
Business Innovation

Process innovation — the very method of buying and using healthcare is being redefined.

PillPack redefines the function of a pharmacy. The personalized service monitors and manages your medication directly with your doctors. It responds to your prescriptions, packages the medication by the dose and ships it directly to your door.

Process innovation

MediPay has identified the most latent pain point in healthcare servicing. A seamless, stress-free experience that gives you a clear picture of the medical insurance you are entitled to based on your profile, using it at the right time and place and even paying your doctor directly.

MediPay

A 3-step easy, transparent and fair payment plan for every medical need

Technology innovation — uses technology as a tool to develop and improve new products and treatments.

Cue Health is developing convenient technology to solve innate health problems. Their health monitoring system connects you to your health at a deeper level. You can use their portable device by adding your sample and simply loading it into the disposable cartridge. This gives them access to information, which otherwise would come after a long wait and unpredictable costs.

Cue Health

Cue’s portable device (L). Cue’s software delivers a personalized mobile health dashboard, which stores test results and connects directly with on-demand telemedicine and prescription services (R).

Business model innovation — creating new business models that are now matching the incumbents.

Apple ResearchKit is making catalogued research data available to research facilities and laboratories. The software framework for apps lets medical researchers gather robust and meaningful data. This has accelerated breakthroughs in specific diseases like autism and depression through rich medical insights and discoveries.

Apple ResearchKit

Apps created with the ResearchKit are already producing medical insights and discoveries at a pace and scale never seen before.

Bowhead is positioned as having fun with self-care. This approachable wellness tracker and personalized guidance tool prompts you to celebrate your health. You can earn tokens for tracking daily health behaviour, test your nutrients and hormones in realtime and get prescribed medication based on your body’s unique needs.

Bowhead

Bowhead Health is designed for individuals who want to take control of their health data and outcomes.

We see all these amazing interventions around us and are awed by the very possibilities of the same.

Though, on the flip side, this also sheds light to the fact that these healthcare interactions are happening in isolation. They are solving one problem at a time across the journey, waiting for the rest to be solved by another. It is more of a ‘Eureka Moment’ of one than a syndicate driven transformation of a system.

Why can’t the healthcare system be more connected? Where each touch point in a person’s healthcare journey that is remotely associated with the concept of care, is inconspicuously connected to form a strong network of sorts.

The answer to this predicament lies in creating a symbiotic relationship between primary healthcare needs, where there is an understanding and sharing of rich insights across care settings.

A systematic three-step process:

1. Patient information can be accessed and exchanged across care settings.

2. Collection of a wide range of vital health data that can help diagnose and treat patients in real-time from a preventive perspective.

3. Rely on this strong network to diagnose and treat more patients in ways that use time, money and human resources efficiently and effectively.

Healthcare data

Healthcare data that can be leveraged to create a robust system (Source — IBM Watson Health)

Can we create an ecosystem of sorts?

My lopsided diet can connect me for a free first-time consultation with a dietician — a vitamin deficiency identified in my body is verified by a local doctor — the required nutrition pills are on its way home.

A niggling pain in your back takes you to your family doctor — he is unable to give you a precise diagnosis — you are directed to the best available specialist (considering your urgency and insurance scheme) — you check the reviews and experiences shared by people — you visit the doctor and he prescribes 10 days of therapy sessions and weekly medication to strengthen your back — your appointment with your local physiotherapist is scheduled and your pharmacy sends you an intimation that the medicines are on its way — a yoga center in the vicinity offers you a free yoga session trial.

These are just two use cases, but the mental respite and positive affirmation people desire concerning their health needs to be felt and understood. Can every journey associated with health be reiterated with care? Care that is simple to understand and easy to execute.

A system where primary care, long-term care and post-op care are smoothly handed over from one to the other. Where support groups are introduced in the care process not as a last resort, but more as a first resort towards recovery.

Ecosystem

The connected Healthcare system

The possible solution

The possibility of this strong ecosystem lies in creating a Unique Identity System, something like an Aadhar for health. A system built on your biometric and demographic data, which is built on the premise of well being, care and trust. A platform binding key areas of effective healthcare, giving rise to the concept of a Unique Health ID.

Unique Identity System

A unified Health ID, which is unique to a person. This ID is an integral part of the health ecosystem — a rich health repository, where each vertical can cross-reference and talk to the other if allowed to. This also leads to the provision of a relevant, specialized and complete health solution.

The identification method can be anything from a smart card (corresponding to your blood group), biometrics (iris scan, fingerprints or face scan), or something as futuristic as an injectable or tattoo. The user is given a digital key, deciding who can see the data.

UHI

UHI can be an identification method : (l to r) Scannable tattoo, injectable, smart card, iris scan, fingerprints, face ID

The larger intent behind creating this system is to form this Circle of Care, where the quadrants of Diagnosis, Treatment, Wellbeing and Payments all group together to form the greater whole. Each is playing its own special role, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Circle of Care

The four pillars in this circle define the ideal approach to healthcare, where each pillar is essential to design a system of care. Diagnosis is linked to your medical centres, research and IOT devices. This corresponds to the nature of treatment and their offshoots, like medical facilities, pharmacies or support groups. Payments mainly consist of medical insurances and bills, which are seamlessly fitted in. This is invariably the area of contention in your journey and thus needs to be addressed tactfully. Wellbeing as a concept exists in isolation and is completely missing from the current system of care. Areas like health and nutrition, fitness, mental health organisations and advisories need to be brought in the forefront as the fourth pillar of strength.

This synergy will completely change the game. We will gradually set to build a structure, where the very concept of health goes beyond the defined line. It fundamentally changes the way we perceive and interact with the system. This unified and holistic approach will make people more positively proactive about health, rather than negatively reactive.

The feasibility and practicality of this mammoth transformation is a discussion by itself. But can we aim to gradually, but consciously shift our focus from just celebrating the current, revolutionary ideas by one to a collective, evolutionary approach towards a unified healthcare system?

Credits.

IBM Watson Health, PillPack, MediPay, Cue Health, Apple ResearchKit, Bowhead, Unsplash

Additional Credits.

Design Labs – Dean Gonsalves, Hiral Shah, Noelle Mathew

Mobile Technologies Opinion

App Development Trends in 2018: What’s the Next Big Thing?

Jul 30,2018 / By Guest Post / No Comments

Guest post from Dave Bell, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gummicube.

The app ecosystem is always changing thanks to technology and consumer behavior that leads to new trends. Keeping up with the latest advances is important for app development as well as App Store Optimization (ASO) – developers should always be working toward improving their app. Let’s review some of the latest growing trends in app development that developers will want to capitalize on.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has been a hot topic for app developers, especially with Pokémon Go demonstrating the technology could be the basis for a profitable app. Hardware and software advances mean AR is becoming more widely supported, and developers are actively seeking new ways to integrate it into their apps.

Apple announced the ARKit 2 at WWDC 2018. This enables new ways to implement AR in apps, as well as the USDZ file format designed specifically for augmented reality. This came shortly after Google revealed new AR capabilities at Google I/O where users can access and interact with apps through AR.

Augmented reality is also seeing more use in apps and mobile games. Shopping and fashion apps can allow users to virtually try on clothes with AR. The Jurassic World AR game, released near the new movie’s box office debut, places dinosaurs in the world around the user. As the technology becomes easier to develop and implement, we’re looking forward to further progress and innovative applications of AR.

Instant Apps

Another key trend, which Google has devoted time and effort toward, is Instant Apps. Developers can create smaller versions of their apps that users can try without needing to fully install. Initially, these were only available for a select few mobile apps and games, but are now available for all developers.

In relation to the aforementioned Augmented Reality, Google has begun integrating ARCore into Instant Apps. Users can open shopping apps they might not have installed after viewing items they want to purchase thanks to AR. Many developers are viewing Instant Apps as a new way to market, advertise or provide a “free trial” to encourage full installs. So far, developers have seen an increase of up to 27% in installs as a result.

In a time where instant access and gratification is in high demand, users and developers can both benefit by taking advantage of Instant Apps to get what they want quickly.

Internet of Things

If it seems like everything is connected these days, it’s because they are. The Internet of Things (IoT) is what we get when devices of all sorts are connected to the Internet, thus allowing access from an app or mobile device.

For instance, there are apps that allow users to turn on and off their home lights remotely, unlock and start their car, or see how much they’ve been using their treadmills. These are all devices connected to the IoT, with associated apps that can be utilized to gain users while providing them with ease and convenience.

Any device that can be connected to the Internet can benefit from IoT, whether it’s to gather and report data to the user or to allow remote access. As such, not only are app developers finding new ways to utilize IoT in their apps, but other industries are in need of apps to connect with their products. It’s a growing trend that has a big impact on practically every industry, and app developers are at the forefront of it.

Virtual Assistant Compatibility

While phones and other mobile devices have been improving their virtual assistants steadily over time, third-party developers have had few opportunities to truly utilize the built-in assistants on their own. However, as virtual assistants grow in their capabilities, app developers are finding new ways to work with them.

Most notably, Apple recently announced SiriKit, which allows developers and users to create custom shortcuts to app functions through the Siri virtual assistant. Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa already work with third-party applications, and more virtual assistants are seeing added functionality across apps.

Providing the ease of use and access that virtual assistants offer allows apps to provide better service to their users, ensuring loyalty and consistent use. Now with Siri added to the mix of assistants that can access and utilize third-party apps, developers are bound to start capitalizing on this growing trend.

What’s Next?

Innovation is key to thriving in the app industry, and today’s trends will help shape the future of the app ecosystem. What we’re seeing developers advance now may not last forever, but there will certainly be new trends in the next half of the year. Developers should never stop thinking ahead and make the most of the latest advancements to ensure that their app is at the ahead of the curve.

Mobile Technologies Opinion

OTT vs. Television – tug of war or an era of collaboration?

Jul 24,2018 / By Vinodh Kumar / No Comments

An entire neighbourhood gathering on a Sunday morning to watch Mahabharata, lazy afternoons with Shanti or insightful evenings with Amul Surabhi; television has a special place in the hearts of Indians.

In a digital world, where we have the flexibility of consuming content anywhere anytime, and across mediums – our relationship with television has changed. With the deluge of digital content, television as a device also serves as an extension of the digital medium via technologies like Google Chromecast and Amazon Stick.

So, does this mean that OTT or digital content viewership will supersede television content viewership and our good old friend will lose its sheen?

While this might be a possibility in the distant future, television medium isn’t going to fade away soon. Yes, the time spent and the way we consume television content is bound to see a shift, television will still be one of dominant medium for the coming few years.

Here’s why:

India has a huge viewer base when it comes to television:

While the growing content on the digital medium and the exceptional amount of time spent on internet might give an impression that the audience is moving away from TV content. That isn’t the case. According to a recent report, India has a massive TV audience base of 780 million. An interesting thing to note is, that despite the growing interest in the digital content, TV viewership has seen a rise of whopping 21% among the young audiences, with 224 minutes of daily time spent.

One of the reasons for this seemingly contradictory trend is audience expectations from both the mediums are different. When it comes to the digital medium most video content is seen on the smartphones. The drawback of this is the dwindling attention span of viewers, where users are constantly switching between apps. Further, most of the digital content is watched while the users are on a commute, and hence, shorter versions of episodes or web series work. However, when it comes to TV people expect longer versions of episodes. Another important aspect is television is a part of the daily family routine of Indians, a place that is difficult for any of the digital media platform to occupy at present.

According to Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC

The unique Indian habit of the entire family sitting together prevails.

Hence, given the current scenario, digital video growth is led by it becoming the second or third screen as 97% of India is still single TV homes.

Largest media spends are on television

When it comes to the digital medium, the time spent in India is lower than that of US and China. Further, according to BARC, youth viewership has grown on TV.

Given the increasing popularity of the digital medium it is surely gaining advertisers’ monies, however, television is still getting the major share. Hence pumping more monies in the television medium to produce content, which isn’t the case with the digital medium. Since traditional mediums like television and print still dominate overall ad spends in India and brand building is still largely happening through mature ad mediums such as television. Given the huge viewer base that TV enjoys, from an advertiser perspective, TV viewership is more valuable than a similar viewership on digital video.

Another reason why television gains advertisers interest is the fact that chances of viewers skipping a channel is lesser than skipping pre-roll or ads. So, brands will have to think about integrating their communications with the content instead of generating generic communications for all mediums.

As Ajay Chacko, Co-Founder and CEO, Arre, rightly puts it

“Advertisers, both traditional and new-age, are welcoming of content as a route to marketing. Brands are evaluating a balance between performance and impact when planning their media spends. There is cognisance of the fact that pre-rolls/ads can be skipped or blocked or muted when pushed down user’s timelines and feeds, but content is what consumers actively seek out and hence, more effective or impactful.”

Digitization yet to permeate the rural markets

When it comes to the overall split of the OTT viewership, the majority exists in urban India. Rural India is still predominantly a television market and a huge one at that.

One of the reasons for this is the poor penetration of fixed broadband. According to a recent report, while Internet penetration in urban India reached at 64.84 per cent in December 2017 compared to 60.6 per cent in December 2016, the rural Internet penetration grew only a little — from 18 per cent in 2016 to 20.26 per cent in December 2017. However, with the introduction of low-cost network providers like Reliance Jio, this scenario is expected to change. The number of users of Jio is on the rise and video is an important driver for Reliance Jio’s high mobile data traffic. On the Jio network, subscribers watched an average of 13.4 hours of video each month in 2017. While low-cost network providers like Jio will further boost the consumption of digital content it is unlikely to have an effect on the television viewership, as yet.

Best of regional content is still on Television

One of the major reasons why Television is widely consumed is the huge library and options of regional content it provides. According to a recent BARC report –

The General Entertainment Channels (GEC) dominates the genre viewership pie with the highest share of eyeballs (51%), followed by Movies (25%). These are the two biggest genres on television.

Further, in the recent years, the share of GEC has declined by only a meagre 2%, which might be a function of increasing number of youth viewership.

Producing high quality original regional content is going to be an important aspect for OTT players to grow. In this case, Indian channels and media houses with their apps have an advantage because of the already available library of content. For instance, players such as Hotstar and Voot have higher access to Star India and Viacom 18 media libraries. According to a recent Deloitte report, currently, 40% of the viewership of OTT platform comes from regional content.

So far, OTT players like Netflix and Amazon Prime have focussed on pushing global content to Indian subscribers, but they have realised how critical it is for them to offer regional and original content to viewers.

Image source: Counterpointrsearch.com

Amazon Prime is likely to invest around $300 million in the Indian market for acquiring rights of Bollywood films and also producing original content, similarly, Netflix is producing more Hindi content like the recently launched series ‘Sacred Games’.

Regional content is going to be a major game-changer when it comes to changing the dynamics of the OTT market. However, it will not immediately impact the television market given the huge viewership, reach and the library of content available on the medium.

Paying for Television vs OTT

The Indian market is still fairly unaffected by the phenomenon of cord cutting. The major reason for this is, there is no economic reason to cut the cord as yet, since, TV delivers the highest value for money. Most OTT players work on the subscription model.

According to a research the majority of Indian audiences are still stuck to the free or ad-supported model as of now. Further, several options including web-series, stand-up comedies, etc. are already available on YouTube free of cost.

Image source: Counterpointresearch.com

This implies that the OTT players will have to compete with the lower cost of Cable/Dish TV subscriptions and also provide compelling content for viewers to do so. This shift will also depend on the factors mentioned earlier in the article.

Future

In the near future, both TV and digital video will grow in parallel. Television viewership will see a steady increase, video OTT will grow as a second screen. Also, with the growth of viewership of the digital media, we will see advertisers spending more money on the medium, though, television will still get the major share of ad spend compared to the OTT medium.

Ad-led online video platforms will also grow by manifolds in India (as wireless 4G ecosystem explodes) and subscription led online video platforms will grow as the fixed broadband infrastructure improves.

Further, with the cheap data network providers like Jio, we see a rise in the consumption of OTT content. However, it is unlikely to have a huge impact of the share that television medium enjoys.

We will also see OTT players pushing in more regional original content to suit the taste of the younger generation on the portals since the current viewer base is mostly the youth.

At present the OTT market is highly dispersed with pure OTT players (Netflix), channels and media houses (Viacom’s Voot, Hotstar), telcos (Jio TV, Airtel TV) etc. In the coming years, we will see an emergence of a more collaborative ecosystem.

India is a major market for the global OTT players and the boost in the infrastructure and digitisation is surely going to further shift the way media is consumed across mediums. It is a critical time for both TV and the OTT medium with a plethora of opportunities. Players across mediums will reap the benefits of this growth, and TV & the video OTT platforms will find a perfect platform to co-exist in India.

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