info@asiainc500.com

Digital Transformation

How Impactful SaaS is in Accelerating Digital Transformation of Businesses?

Digital Transformation continues to increase the adoption of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, and technology solutions like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Application Management systems (AMS). On the other hand, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is touted as one of the key digital transformation accelerators, promising improved business agility, increased productivity and lower operating costs.

As tech leaders continue to look to validate the ongoing shift to SaaS-driven applications from traditional software systems, it is imperative that business decision-makers understand how they can leverage SaaS more effectively for meeting their business goals and accelerating digital transformation.

Four ways SaaS solutions help businesses drive digital transformation faster:

Improve Business Agility

SaaS solutions enable unmatched business agility in two direct ways. First, with effortless scalability, SaaS can meet the ever-shifting demands of a business, whether that is scaling up for business growth needs or scaling down for restructuring systems. The second way SaaS solutions provide business agility is through constant improvements and updates. While standard software deployments require renewal licenses and version upgrades to let you access the latest technology the vendor offers, SaaS solutions simply get better with regular updates. Thus, the combination of limitless scalability and constant functionality improvement with SaaS solutions helps future-proof businesses as well as accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Boost Customer-centricity

As organizations switch to SaaS, their solution vendor becomes their partner, giving them a range of abilities to improve their customer-centricity and customer relationship. Improved collaboration capabilities add great impact on value chain relationships. The collaboration improvement capabilities provided by SaaS can be in many forms depending on the type of application and are enabled by advanced software architectures like multi-tenancy and non-relational databases. SaaS provides an improved ability to assist customers in the field leveraging augmented reality. Thus, the improved value-chain collaboration capabilities gifted by SaaS solutions enable businesses to improve their services, products and processes, aligning correctly with their digital transformation goals.

Improve scalability and accelerate innovation

Scalability in SaaS is huge, as the number of users who can access the software can be increased effortlessly. SaaS software can reduce hardware requirements and can grow on cloud infrastructures. One of the major benefits of the SaaS model is accelerated innovation, which allows businesses to provide their customers with smoother and faster access to cutting-edge technologies. It omits the time and costs consumed by traditional software for implementation and updates.

Improve mobility

With the SaaS model, businesses can effectively provide their employees with remote access to software tools and databases without requiring them to install any software or hardware. Additionally, SaaS eliminates the need for virtual private network access. This edge that SaaS provides is highly crucial for businesses to improve operational effectiveness and support a hybrid work model. 

Reasons why businesses should adopt SaaS solutions to stay competitive:

Total cost of ownership

A SaaS subscription eliminates a lot of costs borne by the user in on-premise software and covers the essentials, which not only results in a more affordable total cost of ownership but also reduces complexity and overhead.

Resourced costs

According to Gartner, the annual cost of maintaining and operating on-premise software can be up to four times the initial investment and can consume up to 75% of an organization’s total IT expenditure. Whereas, the SaaS model is just the opposite of that and comes with a one-time investment format. 

Try before you buy

Most modern SaaS companies allow their customers to test or pilot the software initially to check whether it can add any commercial value to their business. This approach ensures that your money is invested in the right solution that can help get the desired results.

Final Thoughts

There are no shortcuts to achieving digital transformation, however, moving from traditional on-premise software to modern SaaS solutions is a relatively stronger strategy that can offer immediate and continuous benefits. Financial outlay and integration complexities are among the most common roadblocks to digital transformation, but with the help of SaaS solutions, today, more and more businesses are traversing these obstacles. And, the trend is expected to continue and grow in the coming days.   

By Subasini Jena 0 Comments

The Asian SaaS Market and Its Promising Growth

While companies from different industries have suffered crises during the pandemic era, the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry’s growth doesn’t seem to slow down. SaaS tools provide solutions to a lot of challenges that popped up or intensified during the lockdowns, such as the inability to work from the office and the need for remote work and internal communication. SaaS solutions enable organizations to access data from any device having an internet connection and from anywhere through convenient subscription-based software, thus making them the go-to solution for businesses across many industries. SaaS provides you a hassle-free experience by giving simple access to it via the internet, without requiring tasks like installing and maintaining software.

The Evolution of SaaS

While many think that SaaS is a new concept, it actually dates back to the 1960s. The early SaaS systems used to rely on ‘dumb’ terminals connected to a mainframe. This technique was popularly used by small businesses, government organizations and educational institutions, without having to pay for hardware, training and support. It can be called as an early forerunner to the internet and SaaS. With time, computers became more popular, affordable and accessible, making people realize the need for single solutions for multiple tasks to save time and money, and to improve internal collaboration.

The SaaS Transformation

Software giant Salesforce, in 1999, introduced its customer relationship management (CRM) platform as the first-ever SaaS solution and succeeded over time. Leading the way to prove that SaaS is the future of software delivery, Salesforce made the SaaS model popular in the market. Initially, SaaS was recognized as a model suitable only for small businesses and startups, but over time, it became a revolutionary success with a wide adoption rate. The limitless functionality, low upfront costs and exponential growth of SaaS made it a go-to option for large-size businesses. Businesses started to switch from single-use models to subscription-based models.

SaaS Stats to Watch in 2023
  • Gartner claims that almost 65.9% of spending on software will go to SaaS models by 2025, up from 57.7% in 2022
  • Oracle reports 91% of companies consider SaaS an enabler of emerging technology adoption
  • According to a report by BetterCloud, 85% of business applications will be SaaS-based by 2025
  • BetterCloud statistics argue that around 38% of organizations are running completely on SaaS, while 80% of companies will switch all of their systems to SaaS by 2025
Why is SaaS Loved?

SaaS is loved by businesses of all sizes and across industries for several reasons. Here are some of the key advantages of SaaS:

Automatic Updates: SaaS companies ensure that their platforms are always up-to-date so that you can use them confidently

Cost-efficient: SaaS is highly cost-efficient as it doesn’t demand expensive hardware acquisition and high maintenance

Time-saving: The SaaS model saves a lot of time spent on installation, configuration, training and maintenance, allowing you to invest your time in more crucial tasks

Highly Scalable: SaaS provides you the flexibility to scale up and down as per your requirements, enabling you to grow your business faster

The Growth of SaaS in Asia

In the past few years, Asian SaaS companies have not only caught up with their global competitors but have also proved the potential to overtake them and become trendsetters in the SaaS space. The market for SaaS in Asia Pacific is expected to see the highest CAGR of 12.1% from 2022 to 2028. India and China are significantly contributing to the growth of the SaaS market owing to the increasing demand for outsourcing of cloud-based software and the mushrooming of small and medium businesses. The SMEs are increasingly outsourcing cloud-based SaaS platforms for reducing the cost of software deployments. Moreover, the exponential growth in the IT industry in Asian countries is further expected to present huge opportunities to the market. The growing number of secured servers in Japan, China, and India further boosted the growth of the SaaS market during the forecast period. Furthermore, major players in Asian countries are focusing on improving their operations and increasing their operational and process efficiency to stay competitive, which is expected to provide tremendous growth opportunities in the SaaS space.

The SaaS market in India is expected to account for around 7 – 10% of the global SaaS market, from the current share of 2 – 4%, according to a research report by EY-CII. The SaaS revenues in India are already witnessing 20% growth annually, with a rising uptake in SaaS solutions from Indian small and medium businesses across sectors.

SaaS Applications the Asian Market Focuses On

The evolving SaaS industry in the Asia Pacific region is primarily focusing on developing applications in the following areas:

  • Enterprise resource planning 
  • Customer relationship management 
  • Human resource management 
  • Supply chain management 
  • Messaging applications
  • Web conferencing platforms
Verticals the Asian SaaS Market Focuses On

The Asian SaaS players are now concentrating their focus on creating industry and niche-specific solutions. Such solutions are often for a unique set of clients and are particularly developed to meet their specific needs. The development of SaaS solutions in the Asian market is majorly focused on the following six main verticals:

  • Information technology 
  • Telecommunications 
  • Education & Healthcare 
  • BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) 
  • Manufacturing 
  • Retail
Asia’s Top 500 SaaS Companies – 2022

Asia Inc. 500 is listing the 500 Exemplary SaaS Companies in Asia. The list will recognize the top 500 Asian SaaS companies that did exceptionally well in innovation and customer service & support in the year 2022. The list will be the first of its kind in Asia and will serve as a compressive directory of the best SaaS companies that businesses seeking SaaS can access. The listing will be done under several categories. The nominations will be evaluated by a jury comprising hand-picked industry experts from a spectrum of disciplines. The top-ranked companies will be listed on the Asia Inc. 500 website.

The Asia’s Top 500 SaaS Companies – 2022 listing aims to:
  • Represent software innovation and diversity from all industries.
  • Recognize 500 exemplary SaaS companies, several of whom might not have come to public attention.
  • Rank and build a comprehensive directory of 500 SaaS companies across Asia – one that will serve as an index for Asia’s best SaaS companies.
Who can apply?

The nominations are open to any SaaS application/product/solution, regardless of industry, product focus, or market share in Asia.

How to apply?

Visit our website (http://asiainc500.com/), choose the category you want to nominate under, fill in the details with supporting documents proving your claim and submit the nomination.

To learn more, visit: http://asiainc500.com/asias-top-500-saas/

Wrapping Up

Although the Asian players have entered the SaaS landscape a little later than their global counterparts, some businesses have already established themselves as international SaaS brands. The determination, innovation and competitiveness these Asian companies are showing, imply that the Asian SaaS industry is going to witness massive growth very soon.

By Subasini Jena 0 Comments
disaster management

RAMP: An Emerging AI Technology Changing the Way the World Responds to Disasters

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to a changing climate

The Sylhet region of Northeast Bangladesh continues to recover from a series of unprecedented flooding events that occurred in the months of May and June of this year. Atiqul Haque, the Director General of Bangladesh’s Department of Disaster Management, reported that the flooding was the worst in 122 years leaving wide areas of Sylhet submerged and disconnected from the rest of the country. Humanitarian agencies in the area have reported that 4.3 million people have been impacted directly by the flooding, leaving an estimated 384,000 people displaced. Months after the initial reporting, flooding in some areas has receded, leaving hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis shelter less.

aerial view of flood
An aerial view showing the flooding in Sylhet, Bangladesh in June 2022. Credit: Mushfiqul Alam/NurPhoto, sourced from the New York Times

These floods may well be only a warning sign of what is to come in the years ahead. Bangladesh is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to climate change, responsible for driving sea level rise, extreme flooding events, and intensifying tropical storms. Already more than 10 million Bangladeshis have become “climate migrants” according to Bangladesh.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs. A USAID government report in 2018 found that 90 million Bangladeshis, 56% of the total population, live in high-risk climate exposure areas. The same report estimates that one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by climate change by the year 2050.

RAMP (Replicable AI for Microplanning) is changing the way we respond to disasters

Advances in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are opening the door for innovative solutions that aim -to tackle some of the most pressing environmental and social problems of our time. For context, artificially intelligent machine learning models are algorithms that have been taught by humans how to recognize patterns in data. We interact with these technologies in our everyday lives more than we know (e.g., when we use a map on our phone when something we type is autocorrected, when we use our phones to identify a song). RAMP is a machine learning technology that has been taught to accurately detect and capture building footprints from satellite imagery taken from space. The RAMP model and its building footprint data products can be used for a variety of applications such as disaster planning, population estimation, and health microplanning. Disaster response, another one of RAMP’s main applications, can provide invaluable in the context of an event like the flooding that took place in Sylhet this spring.

The first thing that needs to take place after a disaster occurs is understanding the impact it has had on human lives. Rapid response teams begin gathering as much data as possible from existing national and sub-national records to determine the population distribution in the affected areas. Understanding how many people are affected and where they are located is the foundational and most critical stage in a disaster response effort. It is also often the most difficult. In many parts of the world, data on these critical insights have varying levels of accuracy and are often incomplete or do not exist together. In addition, there is no immediate way to update the data aside from doing so by hand, which is an incredibly time-consuming task. 

Open street map building
Open Street Map (OSM) building coverage over Sylhet. OSM is a great resource for disaster response mapping, but coverage can be patchy depending on the location and can easily become outdated in places that are growing quickly. RAMP data can improve, validate, and supplement manually collected OSM building data.

RAMP changes the playing field by greatly reducing the time needed to create an updated map of where buildings existed prior to the flood event. The rapid response team would only need to feed the machine learning model a small set of training data to localize the model so it can accurately extract building footprints against the most recent satellite imagery. RAMP comes with its own hurdles for use of course, but the infrastructure can be set up and in place before a disaster even strikes. The overall reduction in time associated with data creation can then be re-purposed towards planning the response with a more accurate and recent map. All of this enables more effective identification of vulnerable populations, planning navigation routes, and the distribution of life-saving medical supplies.

building footprint
Example building footprint data over Sylhet from the RAMP model project. Buildings are outlined by green polygons, which are used to train a localized RAMP model. Imagery © Maxar Technologies 2022
RAMP was developed to democratize AI and ML for use in humanitarian applications by lowering the bar for entry into building extraction using satellite imagery

Other projects in the past led by large commercial companies like Facebook and Google have developed similar models to RAMP. The projects have released building footprint data across huge geographic areas providing invaluable insights to humanitarian organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF, but these projects have their limitations. The models and documentation on how the data was created are not publicly released, meaning these tech giants essentially hold the keys to where and when the data is produced. Other platforms like Open Street Map serve as a great open data platform, but buildings are generated manually through crowdsourcing, and it is not a pathway to large-scale data creation. RAMP addresses these limitations, building on these past efforts and taking things one step further by making every aspect of the technology openly accessible, replicable, and extensible.

Beyond the technological capabilities of RAMP is the important question of who. Who should have access to and own these tools? Who is building them and tailoring them for specific country contexts? Who is deploying these tools? Who is making decisions based on this data? Whose lives are affected by this technology?  RAMP, a DevGlobal initiative, was designed and developed in concert with in-country decision makers and end users, giving small local governments and health ministries with limited resources a seat at the table. 

As a species, we have faced societal and environmental disasters since the beginning of time. We will continue to face them until the end of time. By sharing innovative technologies openly and making them accessible to all, we can change the way that we respond to disasters and who has access to critical disaster relief. 

For more information on RAMP, you can visit the project’s website at http://rampml.global/

DevGlobal Partners spans across Africa, India, and the United States supporting the world’s leading non-profits, companies, philanthropies, multilateral agencies, and government agencies on their innovation and sustainability initiatives. To learn more about how the team can facilitate event production and project management for your organization, contact info@dev.global.

By Seamus Geraty 0 Comments

10 Smart Elements that Showcase Ideal Email Campaigns

The primary idea behind floating a marketing campaign is to reach out to your target audience. With cutthroat competition prevalent in the market, curating marketing campaigns that can hit the right chords with your audience has become necessary. The ultimate goal is to boost conversion, sales, and profits.

If widespread reach and affordable costing are on your cards, then kicking off an email campaign would be the right thing to do. The only point of caution here is to add a personal touch and make your campaign as meaningful and action-oriented as possible.

To make things easy, you can hire the services of an email marketing expert. With a professional by your side, you will be assured that you are moving in the right direction.

Infuse your Email Campaigns with these Pro Inputs:

  • Begin with an Endearing Welcome

Reach your prospect’s inbox, just in time when they are psychologically getting ready to accept you and your products. Facts suggest that welcome emails have an open rate of 50%, making them 86% more effective than newsletters. But, it all boils down to the efficiency of the welcome email and the genuineness of the message itself. An uncluttered, minimalist email works the best for new leads and prospects.

Welcome emails help new customers and subscribers to understand that they are important to your brand. In addition, this is an optimal way of preventing your prospect from moving away.

  • Focus on Personalization

It is understood that a personalized email has a higher chance of being opened. This stat is steady because every customer wishes to be addressed in their name, helping them feel special. They also feel that the company is genuine if they are addressed by their names and given utmost respect for their identity.

Once the customer understands that a brand is putting in the effort to address their pain points, they will look forward to receiving emails from you. In the process, you will secure a loyalist by your side.

  • Keep a Friendly Tone

You would not want your customers detesting your emails purely because of the usage of highly complex terminologies and language. Therefore, make sure that your emails are casual and conversational. The readers should always feel that the company is some kind of friend offering solutions to their problems in a friendly manner. Keep the language short and crisp, while being casual and personal in tone.

Avoiding industry jargon would make a smart move. Instead, let your email sound like it comes from a friend making well-thought-of advice.

  • Pay Attention to Segmentation

Even though every customer is unique, a certain set of customers can be recognized with similar traits and characteristics. Since it is difficult to draft tailor-made emails for every customer, segmentation should work wonders. Businesses usually use segmented contact lists for the campaigns, ensuring that the right kind of email reaches the intended set of customers or prospects, without issues.

With email list segmentation, you can send relevant content to your prospects, who might be more willing to engage and act on your emails.

  • Say No to a No-reply Email Id

You have initiated an unmatchable email campaign but can still not garner the kind of response you had anticipated. Do you know why this is happening?

Because you are using a no-reply email id, your customer wants to get in touch but doesn’t understand how to go about it. Do not use such email ids especially when you expect a response from the email recipients. It is counter-productive to share another set of email addresses for sharing feedback or responses. Use the right corporate email id that indicates what the email recipients can expect in due course of time.

  • Make an Impactful Subject Line

When your prospect receives an email, he will be persuaded to open it only if your email subject lines appeals to him. Therefore, you need to draft a short, sweet, and crisp subject line to make an impact. Also, the subject line should make the reader understand the context of the email while piquing their curiosity to read more.

It would be useful if the subject line could offer a glimpse of the purpose of the email and the kind of content it may contain.

  • Have a CTA

Even though email campaigns help with brand awareness, the ultimate goal is to convert leads to actuals. CTAs (call to action) help prospects in understanding what they should be doing next. It is a great way of taking them towards the sales funnel. Most CTAs tend to be lackadaisical in their approach and devoid of any spark or wit or any urgency. CTAs should provoke positive action and compel readers to take immediate steps, right away.

Your focus should be on designing a CTA that creates a sense of urgency. This factor helps with increased conversions. However, strategic placement is equally crucial.

  • Avoid Beating Around the Bush

You need to value your prospect’s time and keep the content of your email as precise and concise to the point as possible. Everyone receives heaps of promotional emails daily. You do not want your email to be lost in the crowd because you managed to make these emails bulky with images and loads of content that do not add value to the readers.

So, stay as brief and specific as possible with your email copy. Keep the emails engaging by breaking the content down into specific bullet pointers instead of long paragraphs.

  • Keep a Watch on the Analytics

Ascertain whether your email marketing campaign is bringing the desired results. This assessment is possible by tracking the email marketing analytics. One can include varied analytics software solutions for analyzing emails and their success ratio. Some of the most essential parameters to pay attention to include open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rates. Analytics can propel the efficacy of each campaign to the tee. Analytics can also help marketers to craft better email campaign copies on a regular basis, using their experience to tweak the emails for the better.

  • Make them Mobile-friendly

Emails are drafted on desktop computers, so they might not be compatible with mobile platforms. This aspect would make a considerable chunk of your prospects leave. Remember that most of the audience has now migrated to the mobile platform for most of their tasks. It is easier for business professionals to check their emails on their smartphones themselves. Prevent this scenario from panning out by optimizing your emails for the mobile platform with responsive email templates.

  • Start Working on Your Email Campaign Today

All this while, if you have weighed between options to zero down on a result and return-driven marketing campaign, then it is time to turn to email marketing.

With this marketing approach, your prospect receives details about your brand and products directly to the inbox on a regular basis without incurring many costs compared to other media. Here, the chances of initiating a one-to-one interaction by relying on email customization are higher than any other media. The best part is that these campaigns are affordable and attract higher ROIs.

Author Bio

Vaibhav Pandit is currently associated as a Sr. Campaign Manager with Inbox Army, a full-service Email Marketing Agency offering the full spectrum of email marketing services. He primarily helps his clients with Content Strategy, Digital Strategy and implementation of Marketing Automation through Customer Journeys. He has hands-on experience on various Enterprise Marketing Automation Platforms. On a regular basis, he discusses campaign metrics with the clients and provides continuous feedback on the marketing automation, email marketing efforts on that basis of which, he helps them formulate/update and implement marketing strategies. He also handles and leads full-scale marketing automation & email marketing audits, and accordingly comes up with List Growth Strategies, Segmentation and Targeting.

By Admin 0 Comments
fake online reviews

Alert! You are getting conned by fake online reviews!

Just recollect when was the last time you purchased a product or service online. Do you remember the delivery executive asking you to rate the service? This is the exact point we are going to discuss in this article.

In this digital era, customer reviews and ratings have become the backbone of a business that operates online, they can easily make or break it. Let’s take a common example – every time we plan to dine out, the first thing we do is to check out the place online and read reviews given by the previous guests before booking the table. Also, while shopping online, we set customer reviews as one of the solid parameters to measure the product’s quality. But, do we actually know how many of those reviews are fake?

Understand the fake online review scam

Believe it or not, at least 40% of those reviews are fake! On social platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, there are hundreds of groups with names like ‘Amazon reviews group’ and ‘Flipkart rating group’ that are meant to help sellers attract customers with fake reviews. If you visit one such page, you will find posts like “XX $ for XX reviews”. Such groups are common platforms for sellers and reviewers to earn profit by conning innocent buyers. There are many websites like fiverr.com, where if you search with the keyword ‘reviews’, you’ll find many reviewers’ profile that read bios like, “I will provide you positive and five-star ratings on Google Play Store, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business reviews and good feedback services.”

Companies or individuals who sell products online, not all of them but most of them appear on the top of your e-commerce app’s search result with a 5* rating or good customer reviews. By ranking themselves top on search results through fake ratings and reviews, such sellers try to influence the buying decisions of their customers. Fake reviewers are also used to bring down a product from the top and this is the reason some people are even paid to leave negative reviews on some products.

Some facts about the reviews on E-commerce giant Amazon

  • 99.6% of the fake reviews on Amazon are five-star reviews.
  • Amazon allows you to report abuse in a review or fake, misleading and inauthentic reviews.
  • Recently, Amazon had deleted 20,000 fake reviews through its fake reviews-weeding mechanism.
  • There are around 215 million reviews on Amazon out of which more than 2 million reviews are unverified.
  • Around 61% of reviews for electronic products on Amazon are fake.

Fake Reviews – The Stats you must know

  • Only 3 to 10% of real buyers actually review a product.
  • 82% of American adults check reviews before buying the products. 
  • 16.2% of customers say that they make their buying decisions based on ratings and reviews. 
  • 20.8% of American adults say they only trust reviews by verified buyers and 4.1% say they don’t trust reviews at all. 
  • A survey in India found that 62% of consumers across 220 districts say they found a positive bias in the reviews, so there is awareness, but what lacks, is the ability to identify fake reviews. 
  • 54% of customers would not buy a product if they suspected it to have fake reviews.
  • 95% of customers suspect faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores.
  • 93% of buyers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.
  • 34% of consumers say that their low product reviews have not been published by e-commerce sites. 

How can you identify fake reviews?

  • Look at the reviewer’s profile, if he or she has reviewed just one product, and it’s all gathered about it, then take it with a pinch of salt. 
  • Look at the timing of the review. Say between July 2020 and September 2020, the product has suddenly broken an average or bad reviews tree and received only five-star ratings and good reviews, it is very likely that the seller hired bots or an agency during that period to generate fake reviews. 
  • If a product has only five-star reviews, then it is a red flag.
  • Spot reviews with similar language. If the product you are looking at has 50 reviews and 25 of them are from unverified buyers and they’ve all left just one-word reviews like amazing, brilliant, must buy, then don’t go for it.
  • Today, there are many websites that allow you to verify reviews. Feel free to run a quick check when you buy something online next time. 
  • Check whether the review has too much emotional language. If the review has too many emotional words like great, wonderful or amazing, then that could be written by a company employee.
  • Don’t trust the highest and lowest ratings. They could be either written by company employees or rivals. 
  • Look for bad grammar or spelling errors. These are signs of fake review.

Wrapping Up

We’re living in an age where opinions can be bought and sold. So don’t just trust online reviews blindly. Be a smart consumer. Look for verified buyers or run a quick research on the product you’re looking to buy. on the worst case, try reaching out to the reviewers with your questions on the product. Fake reviewers won’t bother responding. The genuine ones will most probably get back to you.

By Ali Khan 0 Comments

Insurance Technology Trends in 2020 | Pyramid Solutions

The latest technologies are changing the way customers interact with companies. Insurance Technology’s biggest drivers include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, IoT, Blockchain, and Digital Ecosystems. Insurers are already investing in Insurtech, but a large proportion of MGAs and agents in the industry remain untapped.

What is Insurtech? Why should we care about it?

According to Investopedia, Insurtech is all about using technology-driven innovations designed to boost savings and enhance efficiency from the current insurance industry model. In simpler terms, Insurtech is the amalgamation of Insurance & Technology.

In contrast to other markets, the have always been inclined to the traditional way of doing business, at least until recent years. Advances in insurance technology have given a platform to upcoming Insurtech startups to thrive in the industry.

Now let’s jump into some of the insurance technology trends of 2020 that are going to change the industry and also how you can use these trends for your benefit!

Insurtech Trend 1: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The insurance community traditionally has been slow to adopt new technologies. The disruption by digital mechanisms like AI and Machine Learning are slowly starting to redefine the essence of the insurance sector – customer relationship through trust and advice.

Big data and machine learning are technologies that are mostly used by insurers, not agents. These technologies allow insurers to provide their products and services online – through their websites, mobile applications, and even through texts.

The takeaway- insurance technology does not replace insurance agents but rather helps them provide better customer service.

Use Case for AI in the insurance Industry:
  • Image Analytics
  • Machine Learning in Underwriting (Automated Process of Claims)
  • Process Automation of Data Intake
  • Connected Claims Processing
  • Chatbots and Virtual Agents
Use Case for ML in the insurance industry
  • Lapse management
  • Recommendation engine
  • Assessor assistant
  • Property analysis
  • Fraud detection
  • Personalized offers
  • Experience studies

Insurtech Trend 2: Big Data & IoT

‘Customer Retention is the key to making your business successful. You have to listen to your customers and address their problems to make them happy.’ If you’ve been a part of any business, you’ve probably heard this mantra.

In recent years, customer retention has proven to be a better indicator of success than operational efficiency. A study from Harvard Business School shows that an increase in customer retention rates by only 5% will increase your revenue by 25-95%.

But how does insurance technology come into this?

A lot of insurers and even agencies are investing vast amounts of money in integrating big data analytics and intelligence into their business models. Big data allows you to use data processing models that store customer information and use it to map out their preferences.

There is a lot of potential for IoT and big data in the insurance industry. Many insurers are collaborating with companies like Vitality and Amazon to provide more tailored services to their customers. Chatbots and virtual assistants are also very popular for personalized real-time customer assistance.

IoT facilitates risk assessment to insurers in different markets by gathering data through devices like GPS car tracking devices, smart smoke alarms, and alarm systems to sell them personalized products.

The takeaway- The use of Big Data and IoT in insurance allows agents to find new customers in niche markets and retain existing ones by using customer data to provide personalized service.

Insurtech Trend 3: Digital Ecosystems

Ecosystems are customer-centric networks through which products and services are offered by various players.

Insurtech agencies now pose significant competition to insurers who are selling policies directly. Many insurers over the years have invested a substantial amount of capital in insurance technology for themselves. Despite this, the results have not turned out in their favor.

Carriers with Insurtech agency giving competition to carriers not using Insurtech agencies.

However, with careful analysis, collaboration, and integration, specialists believe that they can close the gap between insurers and Insurtech agencies.

According to worldInsurTechreport.com, 90% of Insurtech startups and 70% of Insurers agree with collaboration to develop a new ecosystem. Also, 96% of insurers do think that digital ecosystems are having an impact on the insurance industry.

Above all, Insurtech’s distinct aptitudes make incubators the perfect partner for nurturing a strong foundation in the marketplace. A lot of traditional insurance agencies might be uncertain about the road ahead.

It is high time for these agencies to either invest in insurance technology and innovation, partner with an Insurtech agency or just shut down their agencies for good.

Don’t panic; this will not happen immediately. But if you’re an agent and you want your career to grow, then this is the right time for you to hop in the train of insurance technology. It’s now or never.

The takeaway- Digital ecosystems are blooming – join the insurance technology wave before it’s too late.

Few best Insurance Memes of 2019

  • Insurance is a cutthroat business.

Insurance Agents and The Mafia are very similar.

Why?

Both start their pitches with “That’s a nice family you got there. It’d be a shame for them if anything happened to you, wouldn’t it?”

  • The woes of an insurance agent

Agent: “Thank you, Mr. Smith. I wish I had 15 more clients like you.”

Mr. Smith (surprised): “But why? I file a lot of claims and always pay premiums late.”

Agent: “I’d still like 15 clients like you. The issue is that I have 150 clients like you.”

  • Getting creative with sales pitches

Life insurance agents to their clients: “It’s fine, don’t rush. You can sleep on it. If you wake up tomorrow, let me know what you decide.”

  • The insurance business is diverse too!

How do insurance agents, underwriters, and actuaries drive?

The agent favors the accelerator, the underwriter favors the brakes, and the actuary decides the way forward by looking at the back window.

Author Bio

Ketan Vegad

I have been associated with PCI for the last five and half years. I am ALMI, ACS and CSM certified professional with 12+ years of experience as Managing Consultant and Software Testing Professional with rich experience in Life/Annuity Insurance, General Insurance, Property & Casualty Insurance Domain.

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Robotic Process Automation & Insurance Industry | Pyramid Solutions

Insurance Companies can save 30% to 50% of operational costs using RPA!

Most insurance companies such as life, health, property, car or travel insurance are overwhelmed with back-office processes. These companies often service large volumes of repetitive business practices that prevent them from offering timely customer service, meeting growth and profit targets, and maintaining a strategic competitive advantage in the insurance market.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to the use of software and algorithms to simulate human actions in existing systems and applications. The software sits at the user interface level of an application and transmits data between systems, much in the same way that a human user would. There are no actual “robots” involved in the physical sense of the word; rather, the term is used because RPA software mimics human behavior, utilizing the same user interface a person would (through screen scraping or some other method) rather than Web services or APIs.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is at the peak of inflated expectation cycle, says Gartner. They estimate by 2022, 85% of large and very large organizations would have deployed some form of RPA solutions to automate their business. Overall, the global Robotic Process Automation software spend is expected to reach $2.4 billion in 2022.

RPA helps insurance companies streamline their processes and enhance their ability to increase the client base with Service Satisfaction. Many insurance companies – whether providers of health insurance, car insurance, property insurance, or travel insurance are heavily inundated with back-office processes. Insurers regularly handle claims-processing and underwriting as well as providing policy quotes. This means they are often overwhelmed with high volumes of repetitive business practices that prevent them from delivering timely customer service, meeting growth and profit expectations, and maintaining a competitive advantage in the insurance market.

10 Use Cases for RPA in the Insurance Industry

  1. New Business & Underwriting
  2. Claims Processing
  3. Business and Process Analytics
  4. Manual Data Entry Process
  5. Usage of Legacy Applications
  6. Regulatory Compliance
  7. Scalability
  8. Blend New Technologies with Existing Systems
  9. Policy Cancellation
  10. Form Registration

RPA & Insurance Industry

RPA is able to capture manual steps that employees take to log into the software, search documents, and enter data and replicate them. Enterprise insurance firms can thus deploy a “digital workforce” for use-cases in claims processing, underwriting, and more.

RPA in Claims Processing

In general, RPA software is good for copying data from one source into another so long as that data appears the same in both sources every time. Claims adjusters are often tasked with collecting relevant information from claimants, hospitals, the police, and other insurers in order to make a decision on whether to pay out a claim and for how much.

Once the necessary records are obtained, the relevant data within them need to be translated to the insurer’s digital record of the incident. Without automation, claims adjusters would read through all of the records they collected and manually enter the necessary information into the system. In specific cases, RPA can help in this effort.

For example, someone might file an auto insurance claim immediately after their accident while they’re still on the road. In this case, they may need someone to tow their car. Some auto insurance customers pay for roadside assistance.

Traditionally, employees would need to manually input data from a claim about the customer’s accident into the system of a third-party mechanic that has an agreement with the insurance company. RPA software could automate the translation of this data between systems, thus speeding up the time it takes for a tow truck to reach the customer.

RPA in Underwriting

RPA has similar applications in underwriting, namely its ability to pool information from disparate sources into a single place. Underwriters need to evaluate the risk that potential customers, their homes, and their cars pose to the insurance carrier. The information they need to do this varies depending on what they need to assess.

Underwriters at larger auto insurers can check if a driver has been previously insured with similarly-sized auto insurers within a shared database. RPA software could do this instead, copying the name of the customer’s insurance carrier into the appropriate spot in the auto insurer’s CRM.

RPA software could translate data from public databases into the auto insurer’s CRM, allowing the underwriter to make a decision about whether or not they can offer the applicant a policy or not faster.

RPA in the long-term

Especially within industries, like insurance, which is highly dependent on the efficiency of their back office, RPA is being adopted at increasing rates in order to use to automate burdensome, high volume, and time-consuming business activities. This automation technology is being used to fight some of the biggest challenges faced by insurance providers, in order to promote long-term success opportunities and a competitive marketplace.

RPA can help insurers cut operations costs, achieve increased profits, make companies more competitive, increase growth, improve compliance, and provide faster customer service than ever possible before. Because of the flexibility and improvements that RPA can deliver, its adoption by insurance companies is only expected to become more global and inevitable. Rather than remaining just a technology option to choose from, RPA will eventually become a necessary component for insurance providers to remain competitive industry leaders.

Top RPA tools

UiPath

More than 2,750 enterprise customers and government agencies use UiPath’s Enterprise RPA platform to rapidly deploy software robots that perfectly emulate and execute repetitive processes, boosting business productivity, ensuring compliance and enhancing customer experience across back-office and front-office operations. UiPath is used by thousands of companies particularly in document management, contact center, insurance, healthcare, finance and accounting, human resources, and supply chains and to address major technical challenges, including data extraction and migration, process automation, application integration, and business process outsourcing.

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is a global leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), empowering customers to automate end-to-end business processes with software bots – digital workers that perform repetitive and manual tasks, resulting in dramatic productivity gains, improved customer experience and more engaged employees. The company offers the world’s only web-based and cloud-native intelligent automation platform combining RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics right out of the box, to help organizations rapidly start and scale their process automation journey. Automation Anywhere has deployed over 1.7 million bots to support some of the world’s largest enterprises across all industries.

Blue Prism

Blue Prism Group is a multinational software organization based in the UK. They pioneered RPA to reduce the high risk and low return processing work and data entry job manually. The technology used is based on Microsoft.net framework and it supports any type of platform and applications. It allows the design automation process that too within IT governance. The tool supports the internal and external decryption and encryption keys. The users are provided with audit logs enabling. The customized code of .NET provides a high rate of robustness.

Kofax Kapow

Kofax Inc. is a process automation software provider based in Irvine, California. They offer process management, RPA, e-signature, mobility and customer communication services to multiple customers in 70 countries worldwide. Kofax Kapow is the most efficient way to acquire, enhance and deliver information from any application and data source or enterprise system without coding. It supports all types of application environments and data sources, including websites, portals, enterprise systems, and legacy applications, Excel, Email, XML, JSON, CSV, and SQL. It can automatically publish robots with standard Java, .NET, SOAP, RESTful interface which is used to control robotic processes from external applications and remote systems.

RPA Tools Comparison:

S.NoParametersAutomation AnywhereBlue PrismUiPath
1AccuracyRationalSet for BPO optimizationSet for Web Automation
2ArchitectureClient-ServerClient-ServerOrchestrator
3Cognitive CapabilityVery HighHighHigh
4LearningBasic knowledge of programming requiredAbility to develop and controlVisual Designer
5Macro-RecorderPresentAbsentPresent
6PriceHighMediumHigh
7Trial Version availabilityAvailableNoFree edition available
8ScalabilityLimitedHigh-speed executionMedium speed execution
9Re-UsabilityYesYesYes
10RobotsFront & Back officeFront & Back officeOnly Back office
11RecordersYesNoYes
12AccessApp-basedApp-basedMobile Browsing
13Process DesignerScript-basedVisual Process-basedVisual Process-based
14Base TechnologyMicrosoftC#Microsoft
15ReliabilityHighVery highModerate
Author Bio


Ketan Vegad

I have been associated with PCI for the last five and half years. I am ALMI, ACS and CSM certified professional with 12+ years of experience as Managing Consultant and Software Testing Professional with rich experience in Life/Annuity Insurance, General Insurance, Property & Casualty Insurance Domain.

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Digital India – Demonetization – Digitally Empowered

Technology has become a part and parcel of our day-to-day life. There is no day in this present age when technology is not used. Starting a day with technology and ending it by one, technology has been used in some or the other way these days. “Smart technology” is that familiar terminology which is widely being used in every being’s life today. Smartphones, tablets, gadgets, smart televisions, etc., are the products of smart technology that have made human life smarter, easier and accessible. Smart technology has not only enhanced the way of living but also became an integrated part of everyone’s life.

With the technology transformation clinching in every inch of the world, it was time for developing countries like India to embrace this transition in order to survive the race. While digital transformation has enabled many countries to progress economically and globally in every diverse field, it was India’s turn to take the baby’s steps in 2015. With a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and the knowledge economy, the prime minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi Ji, launched the Digital India Programme on July 1, 2015.

The Digital India programme is a campaign launched by the Government of India to ensure that the government services are made available to citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure and by increasing internet connectivity or by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology. Ever since the launch of the programme, the prime minister’s dream of a ‘Digital India’ has been moving towards its goal with quick pace, with many states enjoying the perks of adopting digital systems. Starting from health care system, education, online business to the electronic Vidhan system of the state assembly, the flagship programme has completely changed the fate of the states.

In what could be termed as a historic moment in the face of India, Demonetization was yet another pivotal subject that shook the entire nation further persuading them to cling to Digital India. Demonetization was the most popular and enchanted terminology then which has become the talk of the town ever since the announcement made by the government on November 8, 2016, to cancel the legal tender of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The move has come as a surprising and unprecedented step from the honorable prime minister with a historic effort to clean up the decades-long corruption and black money that has left the entire nation in awe.

The demonetization drive by the prime minister to achieve a digital economy by going cashless had a positive impact on many firms and organizations. Every small business or firm inculcated the practice of digital transactions. Ever since the announcement made, payment gateways were on the rise and few became the nucleus. Starting from a tea or vegetable vendor to Flipkart or Amazon or any other reputed vendors, mobile wallets were for everyone. Standing in favor of the decision was the Education sector that cast its vote too for a digital economy.

Consider the old days wherein one had to stand in long queues at the banks for the financial transactions, the days when there was no proper diagnosis of the disease and no adequate infrastructure for medical surgery, where one had to turn to the malls or stores to buy the grocery or clothes or any other essential goods. Technology has changed the entire scenario now; banking transactions can be done from our smartphones with many conveniences, major surgeries can be performed with the collaboration of famous surgeons across the world through video conference and you can shop and buy your favorite goods from your home. With the advent of the internet in schools and widespread adoption of technology in the same, smart schools are the new face of education now.

This has digitally empowered citizens and businesses to get accustomed to the technology practices further impacting the economy. The broadband connectivity in all Panchayats, Wi-fi in schools and universities, Wi-Fi in public transports, Public Wi-Fi hotspots with 5th generation networking speed has influenced citizens to march forward towards Digital India. The robust usage of technology by the nation has made India Digitally empowered and also the leader in usage of information technology in the delivery of services related to various domains such as health, education, agriculture, banking, etc.

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Women at the heart of digital transformation

Digital transformation has changed every industry across the globe ushering into an era of higher efficiency and productivity across the globe. It has revolutionized the way of serving the customers, improving the competitiveness of the business and further pushing forth its expansion into the global market. Digital transformation continues to be a disruptive force across many industries today. While digital technologies are radically and rapidly changing the way people work, consume, get information and communicate, their consequences, however, may differ for women and men.

We live in an era where about 126 million women have started running their own businesses at a global level and 48% of female leaders are comfortable with cutting-edge technologies such as AI, machine learning and Blockchain. Nevertheless, it’s baffling to see that only 5% of leadership positions in the technology industry are held by women. Women’s participation in the tech sector has been bridging the gender gap making it imperative that women can lead the way in digital transformation.

Imagine running your own startup, advancing in career opportunities that were once limited to high gender or male-centric! Imagine standardizing yourself and your career with an accelerating pace that galvanizes your potential in equilibrium with the male counterparts! Here I am to talk about those successful women leaders who are not only role models but also can be inspiring and encouraging to the women leaders of tomorrow.

Pooja Naidu
Head of Product, FT Group Products, Financial Times

To begin with, we all know that there are only 8 million women in India who are running their own businesses, whereas, only 10% of formal enterprises are being operated by women. This is a manifestation that women still continue to face several underlying hurdles that hamper their full career advancement. Despite everything, here’s the story of Pooja Naidu, who managed to succeed her way leading the path in digital transformation. She is the Head of Product, FT Group Products, Financial Times.

With a significant array of experience for over two decades in retail, media and banking industries, Pooja is now the Director of Product at the Financial Times. A digital leader who drives product teams to deliver high value, market-leading product, has proven leadership skills in product management with Financial Times, Tesco and M&S. Pooja in her current role is responsible for the FT Group Portfolio of products, overseeing over 35 brands and leading the delivery of the GDPR transformation program for FT.com.

Diana Carrasco
Head of Digital Risk, Compliance & Public Policy, HSBC Digital Bank

Diana, who has been working in the Financial Industry since 2002, is the Group Head of Risk, Digital Channels for Lloyds Banking Group. Prior to this, she was the Head of Digital Risk, Compliance and Policy UK & EU for HSBC Digital Bank and served as the Head of the Mentorship programme for the European Women Payments Network (Amsterdam). Diana has held leadership roles in digital transformation for both Visa and HSBC and believes that risk function should always be understood as a business enabler and not a blocker.

Dorota Zimnoch
Founder & Managing Director, Zing Business Consulting

Dorota, an accomplished leader, and an entrepreneur, who reinvents, disrupts and relaunches banking and insurance businesses with the convergence of financial technologies, is the Founder and Managing Director of Zing Business Consulting. She is an international fintech and insurtech expert and the Top50 global influencer with over two decades of experience working with leading financial brands such as Citi, AIG, Alico, MetLife, and 4finance, as well as startups. Dorota has held multiple board advisory positions at companies such as Santander and the Heart Warsaw and has been ranked no.13 on PWC Power Global 100 and no.19 on Women in Finance Power 100.

June Klein
Founder & CEO, Technology & Marketing Ventures, Inc.

The Corporate Visionary’s Most Influential Female CEO USA, June Klein is the Founder & CEO of Technology & Marketing Ventures, Inc. With over three decades of experience in financial technology, June has pioneered digital initiatives at top firms like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch and currently runs her own business. She is the former tech advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who has been awarded Corporate LiveWire’s Most Innovative Financial Technologist award.

Winnie Palmer
CEO, Morphosis Marketing Company & Co-Founder, Innovation Nation Limited

Winnie Palmer is an experienced digital transformation practitioner with over 15 years of experience in delivering enhanced customer engagement, productivity and revenue growth through state-of-art digital marketing and operations. She is a Board Member at the University of Greenwich, CEO at the Morphosis Marketing Company and Co-founder at Innovation Nation and has a keen focus on innovation and business performance.

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Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Healthcare Market

We all know that VR and AR have had an everlasting impact in the global world and what’s next is, that it’ll continue to have with several innovations taking birth in tune with the emerging trends. Needless to say, many tech giants and even startups are investing in the augmented reality and virtual reality to offer a real experience to the customers in the virtual world. The prominent questions that hover in one’s head are what is the scope of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) in pharma and healthcare sectors? How is that going to benefit the healthcare sector and the pharma companies? The answer is straight and simple. With the introduction of faster and smarter technology, pharma and healthcare were among those diverse sectors that have progressed fast. Augmented reality and virtual reality are gaining prominence among medical personnel for various applications that offer improvisation of equipment maintenance, patient care, surgical training, and rehabilitation.

For many years, healthcare industry and pharmaceutical companies have been formulating ways in this digital world as in how to best serve the needs of their customers who are patients, doctors, nurses, hospital administration, etc. Their struggle to achieve one includes maintaining stringent specifications on their marketing messages while delivering the promising results and also increasing sales. Considering the fact that the present age that we live in is a digital era, one should not be carried away presuming that Virtual and Augmented Reality is just another digital marketing tool like social media. Rather it must be identified as a new communication medium for educating all stakeholders across the spectrum.

What does this technology have to offer to the pharmaceutical companies in terms of marketing? Well, here is how.

Health Product Demos

Pharmaceutical companies are entirely into drugs and their development. Let say, there is a drug available in the market and to enable patients to know how a drug works, instructions are provided to read. What could be more promising than the same drug company using the VR to develop an application that enables the patients to see how a drug works or functions in their body than just reading instructions. Sounds amazing, isn’t it? This application could be used as a health product demo for the sales representatives visiting GPs. This demo could become a time-saving resource for both the sales representatives and the doctors as well and few companies are even experimenting with the use of VR for health product demos. For example, Novartis scientists have brought virtual reality into drug discovery by creating a VR application showing a 360 degree, three-dimensional animation of how molecules interact with certain body tissues. A company called Amplified Robot also used AR to demonstrate the hypothetical mode of action for a drug.

Virtual & Augmented Reality For Surgeons

Let us suppose you’re a trainee doctor preparing for a test and have to give the test but you want to practice before you give the test. The suitable environment that can help you with the practice in a hands-on-way is the virtual reality application for training and educational purpose offering computer-aided simulation models that mimic real-life processes. The virtual reality system helps the trainee doctors and assist surgeons in planning upcoming operations and educate patients. It also helps surgeons in the operating room, guiding them in a three-dimensional space. One best example is the Osso VR, which is a surgical training platform designed for surgeons, sales teams, and hospital staff of all skill levels. This platform offers highly realistic hand-based interactions in an immersive training environment containing cutting-edge procedures and devices.

Virtual & Augmented Reality For Patients

Let say there is a patient with a fractured bone or a blood clot and this technology can be used to demystify medicine. There are AR tools that will allow patients to see through the fractured bone or blood clot while the doctor explains what the problem is and what needs to be corrected. They can also be explained about where the wrist is broken and where are the doctors going to fix it and how the entire process works. Removing the anxiety and uncertainty of how everything works, the VR applications make it real for the patients. The applications also can also be used to provide virtual diagnosis and patient education.

Virtual & Augmented Reality for Rehabilitation

Virtual reality applications can be used for post-traumatic stress disorder, rehabilitation, pain management and drug efficacy. Patients with phobias can be treated in VR environment to help them overcome their phobia. It can also be applied for pain management, wherein a VR environment is designed to reduce the pain by acting on psychological component of the pain experience. Virtual Reality company MindMaze designed a medical virtual environment to help patients recover from amputations, and explored uses of the technology for neurological problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, and autism.

The use of these advanced technologies in live streaming of surgeries, surgical training, patient monitoring and pain management serves as a market opportunity. The adoption of these new technologies have revolutionized the medical field and transformed the healthcare experience. With the growing demand for better delivery of care services, pharma companies are investing into the VR to capitalize on the high growth opportunities they offer.

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