Top 10 Challenges that Can Fail Master Data Management Implementation

If you are a data-driven organization, then you can easily understand the importance of the Master Data Management (MDM) solution. For the effective management of your product and customer data, it is very essential for you to ensure the successful implantation of the MDM solution.

However, Master Data Management is a large scale software that manages all your business information in a single place and allows access across the different departments of your organization.

It manages the unstructured data in a well-organized way with the next level accuracy by offering an advanced set of features, functionality, and modules for the valuable data. The MDM solution boosts the data flow within the organization and eliminates the data discrepancy.

Implementation of a robust MDM solution helps you reduce the risk of data duplication and leverage the data cleansing. Essentially, it enables you with simplified the data linking and matching of relevant data and provide you the actionable insights about the different entities of your business.

Though Master Data Management contains a lot of advanced capabilities, there are a few challenges that you might face while developing or implementing it. We would like to share the biggest MDM challenges so you can design the right MDM strategy in advance and get maximum benefits out of the solution.

10 Biggest Challenges that Can Fail the Master Data Management Implementation

1. Data Standards

Establishing the data standard is one of the complex parts of Master Data Management implementation. You need to set the standards for your master data in a way that it should be in agreement with all different types of data available in your organization.

Make sure your defined data standards are capable to adapt the data from the various departments of your company. It is very important to plan your data standardization in advance. Else, this process will become cumbersome.

2. Model Definitions

The master data model is available with three different layers such as first-tier master data, second-tier master data, and meta-data. The integration of these various layers makes the master data more understandable and simpler. The master data model you prefer would make a considerable impact on your business operations.

Moreover, the MDM solution you select should be agile and adapt to the changes in complex systems seamlessly. If you integrate an inactive and ambiguous master data model, then it will only add a burden to your existing challenges.

3. Data Governance

Though you have set up the data standards and defined the right data model for your massive master data, the implementation of the MDM solution can be complex.

You need to determine the right data governance policies and string business rules to address the complexity of master data effectively. Data governance is an essential aspect to get a clear view of data operations.

4. Tooling

When you need to select the Master Data Management tools, you have a lot of options. More options drive more confusion. But make sure you are selecting the right one that fits into your data management requirements.

Before making a choice, you need to analyze your business requirements, the goal, and purpose you want to achieve through the MDM tool, and what benefits the tool will deliver to you.

Additionally, consider the future needs along with your existing scopes so you will need not switch to another tool in the near future.

5. Data Integration

This is a very crucial part of Master Data Management as you need to collect data from different enterprise software and sales channels and manage them into the MDM solution. With the help of advanced software, the tedious job of data integration becomes easier.

But, while transferring the data from one application to another, there are chances of plenty of mistakes. Furthermore, data integration is a time-consuming process too. Moreover, during the data transfer from one system to another a few fields might be transferred effortlessly while others might face complications.

6. The Why Question

I have gone through many scenarios where a few stockholders agree to the implementation of the MDM solution, while others have the question “why” while adopting it. So, it is very necessary to communicate the advantages and benefits of the MDM software across the organizations and to each stockholder.

Get every individual of your organization on board and provide them the knowledge about MDM. Once your people have a clear understanding of why they should adopt the MDM, it empowers your business.

7. Sponsorship

Sponsorship will be a decision from senior management or c-level executives. But, it is very essential for the successful implementation of the Master Data Management solution. The decision-makers should be aware of the importance of the project and must stand behind the goals.

8. Talent and Knowledge

Most of the organizations consider the MDM solution just like any other project. If you understand the importance of the MDM solution from beneath, you can consider it as the backbone of your company.

Develop and implement the solution with the help of the experts who have proven experience and talent in the same field. The skilled professionals can deliver a structure that helps companies to achieve their expected results from the MDM solution.

Make sure you are hiring the cream skill set who have capabilities to build and deploy a next-generation MDM for you.

9. Data Stewardship

To maintain the quality of the data, data stewardship is very essential. If you collect the bad data into your system, then it would not only hamper the consolidation of your master data but also create problems in your data management in the long term.

Thus, if you ignore the data stewardship, you won’t be to achieve the successful implementation of the Master Data Management solution.

10. Go Back to Start

For the successful implementation of the MDM solution, you need to ask the below-listed questions to yourself.

  • Where do you start with the management of your massive master data?
  • Have you prioritized important tasks and defined a starting point?
  • Did you make the appropriate preparation for implementation?
  • Is everything in place for the successful implementation of a professional MDM solution?

If you have all the answers to the above questions, then you can expect considerable success through MDM. But, if you don’t have a satisfactory answer to any of the questions, then you need to go back to draw and start a new sketch of the implementation process.

How Master Data Management of Pimcore Successfully Addresses All the Challenges?

Pimcore is a leading Digital Experience platform that consists of different components such as Product Information Management (PIM), Master Data Management (MDM), Enterprise Content Management (CMS), Customer Data Management, and E-commerce framework.

Credencys offers Pimcore development services to harness the potential of each component in order to build advanced business solutions for the companies. We develop separate solutions using each component individually. We can also combine multiple or all the components together to develop a complete digital platform for you.

We have a team of experienced and skilled Pimcore developers who develop custom MDM solutions to address your specific business needs. We develop and implement the software by considering the advanced functionality so our clients can gain a competitive edge.

Do you want to adopt the MDM platforms that collect data and enable you with a consolidated view of your massive information for better business decision making? Discuss your project requirements with our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions about Master Data Management

What are the biggest problems in Master Data Management?

The major problem with Mater Data Management consists of data redundancies and inaccuracies, the sheer volume of data, insufficient analytic, unreliable reports, high data maintenance, and integration cost, and more.

What is Master Data Management solution?

The Master Data Management solution ensures businesses about the sharing of harmonized data and cross-system data consistency without considering the physical location of the systems. It also allows to set up independent master data in different systems. It provides advanced services for the alignment of master data that involves the recognition of identical master data objects and keeping them consistent in the IT environment.

What the latest trends of Master Data Management?

The latest MDM trends that every business who aspire to develop and implement a Master Data Management solution are

  • More industries will adopt master data management
  • MDM integration with workflows and business processes
  • Customized data security solutions to overcome data quality issues
  • AI and Machine Learning in MDM
  • Cloud-based MDM deployment will rise

What are the best practices for Master Data Management implementation?

For the effective management of your massive business information in the MDM solution, you need to adopt the best Mater Data Management practices which include collecting maximum information, checking out for the data quality, implementing a common metadata layer, organizing your data in a meaningful way, providing quick access to data to the right user, and more.

How to Build A Great Mobile App Development Team? [Points to Consider]

The entire world has transformed adapting to new technologies by using mobile apps. With a skilled mobile app development team, many businesses have seen success. Experts say that a mobile app development company owner need not be a mobile expert. Similarly, other technical groups say that neither the project manager nor the mobile app developers should be an expert handling a mobile app project. All these days we were talking about mobile app development in our blogs, and today, we will talk about how to build a mobile app development team, successfully.

You will know about the positions that generally a mobile app development team has, and the team’s responsibilities and qualities of suitable candidates for those positions along with expectations of capable and skilled employees from the app development company.

In a statistical report released in the year 2019, it has been told that globally, the mobile app revenue is projected to rise up to $582 billion US through downloads and in-app advertising, in the year 2020. Moreover, about 100 million smartphone users will be using voice assistants by 2020, and there are several other predictions about the inclination of mobile app users. Thus, you should understand the future of mobile apps in the world and should enable a proper structure for your mobile app development team. Only if you have a strong team, you can achieve your business goals easily and generate more mobile app developments in the future.

A healthy mobile app development team’s designation structure

A successful mobile app development team should have a visionary or goal towards what to be achieved or what the team will work on, designers, developers, QA testing specialists, and sales and marketing specialists for app promotion. Let us see how and what all these roles play to build a strong mobile app development team.

1. Visionary

Though visionary here means the goal of the project but also refers to position names such as project manager, business consultant, or strategist, who drives the entire project as a key point of contact. A visionary is responsible for leading the entire project to reach the correct vision of achieving the ideal mobile app.

A qualified visionary is also responsible for maintaining the app’s consistency and foresee that it is developed according to the customer’s requirements. A visionary should have a high technical background and stay in line with the proper understanding of business. He/she should be capable of inspiring and motivating team members, managing and leading human resources to get the right candidate. Also, a visionary should take accountability and the ability to multitask as well.

2. Designers

We all may think that designers’ work is so simple than the developers. But in fact, they are the ones who have to go through the project requirement documentation thoroughly and develop navigation mechanics and basic wireframes in the app. Next to this process, the designers work on the user design experience and user design interface, which we technically call as UX/UI for native and hybrid platforms or on a specific platform they design the app. Finally, if you look at who should work in the design team, it is a strategist, navigation planner, visual designer, and a content planner. Most often the design team provides output along with testing.

3. Developers

Developers should have expertise working in any mobile app platform and any supportive and trending programming language for bringing out an effective mobile app. The major role of developers involves processing the completed UI/UX frameworks and incorporating them in a real-time application i.e. either on Android or iOS. The programming languages can be chosen among Java/Kotlin for Android, Objective-C/Swift for iOS, and C# for Windows phone. You also have cross-platform mobile development, which requires different languages–HTML/CSS/JavaScript for PhoneGap and Cordova, C# for Xamarin, and JavaScript for React Native. Besides these skills, developers should have broad thinking of how to develop an app further once it crosses the development stage.

4. Quality Assurance specialists

You may require QA specialists for testing the app, and the feedback they provide is the most important one than any others. They play a vital role in deciding whether a mobile app can go into the market or before it reaches customers. Like how they have the rights for decision making, similarly, they also should provide improvements and how those improvements help the project to move further.

5. Sales and marketing specialists

Although you take many efforts to develop an app and deliver it as a finished product to the market, without sales and marketing, you cannot bring the end product to the limelight. The role of sales and marketing specialists include communicating with customers, promoting the brand image, creating strategies along with advertising materials, which throw some light on the product with customers and convert it into huge profits.

Essential Characteristics for A Mobile App Development Team

1. Skill level proficiency compliance

Extremely high-skilled mobile app developers look for accepting more and more challenging tasks to polish their developing skills forever. When one of the team members is highly-skilled and provides quality work, the developer expects the rest of the team members also to be equally talented. Also, developers expect a qualified project manager to guide them with managing tasks and QA specialists for guiding them with any technical flaws and are professional and co-operative as well.

2. Fixed processes

Despite having formed a complex team structure, a mobile app development team establishes a cordial relationship between its members. It could be from the highest, mid-level, and the low-designated team members. Still an elaborate schedule of every member’s role should be provided and explained; otherwise, no particular team will understand the work involved and contributed by another team. Each team and sub-teams should be made aware of the complete project scale and what role the team members play in it.

3. Mutual respect

Developing a mobile app involves a lump-sum of time and effort by the mobile app development team. Customer’s time should be given priority and the entire team should work towards a deadline. No member of an individual team can take their sweet time to accomplish the task given. There should not be postponement until delivery unless there is a delay from the customer end in terms of approval. Similarly, customers should also understand the time and effort that the development team takes to provide a complete product and should not bring in any condition of speeding up the app development before the deadline provided. Both customers and the mobile app development team should have an understanding of mutual respect.

Conclusion:

Mobile app development is a complex process, as it involves numerous skills and multiple stages. The team should be highly experienced and adaptive to any methodology upon changing technology. Hoping this blog was helpful and informative to the mobile app development company to form a successful mobile app development team. We have experts who can provide valuable suggestions for mobile app development and how to choose the best talents for app development. Our customer service representatives are anytime reachable for addressing your queries via phone, e-mail, and chat.

Frequently asked questions

1. What kind of responsibilities can I have in a mobile app development team?

You can assign tasks with regards to product management, agile methodologies and Scrum management, user interface and user experience, app design, content writing, business analysis, communication, QA, and app performance testing. Apart from these, your engineer requires skills such as modern coding languages, cloud infrastructure, cross-platform capabilities, data expertise, integration with cloud-hosted systems, and security.

2. Is team size important in mobile app development?

No, team size does not matter with a mobile app development team. Even small teams with versatile and multiple skill sets can work along to create a mobile app successfully. Make sure that they are not more specialized; otherwise, communication could be a problem. Many companies have seen success starting as a small team and using agile methodologies to break the complexity in the work assigned.

3. How to know if my mobile app development team is skilled enough?

Though technology plays an important role in developing a great mobile app, that is not sufficient to make it successful. If your team is capable enough to deliver the assigned task on time, then they are on track and you need not test their skill efficiency as well. You can sense their efficiency with the results they drive towards product accomplishment.

4. How to hire the best talents for a mobile app development team?

If you can invest enough in human resources, you can hire a human resource manager and delegate hiring responsibilities to the manager by setting your expectations properly and provide a deadline for the same. If not, you can partner with any human resource consultancy who is an expert in hiring for a mobile app development team and go on a commission basis per candidate. You can even offer a better package to a freelancer in the relevant field but with at least 3 to 5 years of experience working as a freelancer.

Native Apps vs Hybrid Apps: Why Native Will Be Your Next Choice?

In many forums, you could still see discussions about why native apps create more value than hybrid apps. Although many factors provide a convincing solution, yet it requires better clarity. This blog focuses and digs deep into native app vs. hybrid app i.e., major differences, hybrid vs. native app performance, and native vs. hybrid mobile app development. In a recent report generated by Statista, the number of smartphone users throughout the world until 2019 has crossed 3.2 billion. Also, another statistical report about smartphone usage states that nearly 194 billion mobile phone apps were downloaded all just in 2019.

Besides the app usage records generated, the success of a mobile app depends on the user design experience overall, which we technically call as UX.

A recent report by Localytics conveys that 21% of users uninstall or do not use an app only after experiencing its user design. So when you look at what user expects out of a UX design interface, it includes usability, navigation, easy search or learning ability, and the overall design of the app. If your app cannot satisfy your user with the amazing and adoring design, then your app may not yield your success. Now to provide better UX experience to users, you should know what native app vs. hybrid app is.

Native Apps vs Hybrid Apps

Native Mobile App – What is it?

Several businesses may want to release apps on various platforms. Some may like to develop in one specific platform and then implement it in other platforms depending on the number of users. But some may want to release apps on multiple platforms all at a time.

So through a native platform, you can create and optimize a product for specific platform development.

Benefits of developing a native app

A native app provides seamless and uncompromising performance on any device by leveraging the operating system’s entire capabilities. It utilizes the platform’s core programming and APIs to make apps more responsive and faster.

Hybrid Mobile App – What is it?

Developing a hybrid mobile app is more or similar to a native mobile app, but they are almost similar to the websites which are bundled as native app features.

Benefits of Developing a hybrid app

A hybrid app can run flexibly on any platform or device, which reduces the development time and makes it reach the entire audience. But if you plan to add or customize more features, it can consume more time when compared to a native app.

Why should you opt For Developing Native Mobile Applications?

These are certain reasons as to why developers or businesses should develop apps using the native operating system. Be it performance, safety, scalability, and speed, a native mobile app benefits from a hybrid app.

1. Performance

In discussions about the native app vs. hybrid app, the performance takes the first slot. Apps developed on native platform functions smoother, faster, and provide a great user experience when compared to hybrid mobile apps.

Moreover, a native app utilizes all the software and hardware functionalities of the device it is installed on to provide an integrated service to users.

Features such as cameras, GPS, contacts, microphones, etc. are accessed by a native app, which is already a part of the device. Another advantage of developing native mobile apps is it implements gestures of both standard operating systems or newly defined, depending on what you use.

Moreover, it can easily access a device’s notification system and also be used even if you are not online. If you expect your app to perform tremendously and accept any software integration required whenever then, the native app stands out to be the best.

2. Safety

It is not that easy to misuse a mobile app that is built on a native platform, which you cannot find in hybrid mobile applications. A hybrid mobile app falls on the system’s web browser security; however, the presence of several layers of security provided by the operating system safeguards a native app. Be it any platform you choose to develop an app, and it is necessary that you provide high-end protection to users’ data. So when you compare native app vs. hybrid app advantages, the native app platform takes the high score even in safety factor.

3. Scalability

Adding on more features or customizing any feature becomes easy with developing a native app, as it is just a single platform, it makes your job easy to make the application faster, configure any new APIs, and more. But the same option, when performed in a hybrid mobile app, can be time-consuming, which is double that of a native app.

4. Speed

Due to a native app using the device’s inbuilt features, it operates faster and allows you to work easily with the app features. You will not be stuck anywhere while using a native app. The same does not work with a hybrid mobile app because it creates a secondary layer between the user and the app; therefore, users experience slow performance if they use a hybrid app. Developers should also keep in mind that it all takes only 10 seconds for a user to wait for an open; otherwise, the user exits the app and switches over to some other similar app. If a similar case happens with the user again and again, then the user may uninstall the app permanently, which is like a bounce rate you get for websites.

5. User experience

Besides all the aforementioned factors, user experience is something significant and should be considered as a top priority while developing and launching any mobile app for that case. Your app may have fabulous features, but the retention rate is also highly needed. Make sure that you provide a better user experience interface so that the user, when logged into your app, will not try to exit without liking to use it.

Conclusion:

On comparing the native app vs. hybrid app, the native app takes the crown because of its flexibility to develop and use and splendid performance. If you want to create an app that better sells your product or service, it is a wise choice considering native app development. You can refer to several forums on native app development or Contact us for better guidance on how to go with the same. Our technical support agents are available round-the-clock to address your queries and serve you better. You can also drop us an e-mail regarding your query, and we shall revert to you within our stipulated time zone.

Frequently asked questions

1. What is the difference between cross-platform development and native app development?

A native app can be developed using a default language and an integrated development environment for both Android and iOS platforms. In contrast, apps developed on cross platforms issues a framework after coding is complete. You can deploy a cross-platform app in Android, iOS, and Windows phones as well.

2. Which platform is the best? Android or iOS

The number of Android users is more in the world; at the same time, the usage of iPhones has also been rising these days. Previously, developers were creating apps for Android, and after analyzing the reach, they were introducing in iOS as well. But it is always good if you could introduce your app on both the platforms because there are possibilities of losing those iOS users if delayed.

3. Should I also have a website developed if I release an app?

It is not mandatory to have a website if you are developing and launching an app. During the initial stages of mobile app implementation, businesses had websites developed first and then transformed and expanded, having mobile apps developed later. In case you have many businesses and want to publish all in one place, then you can have a website to inform your customers about the same. But if your app has a good response and you want to reach even the audience who still do not use smartphones, then having a responsive website with app features brought in similarly, would work.

4. How much should I invest in developing a mobile app on both iOS and Android?

First, you should check what and how many features you are going to develop in your app. Depending on the features’ complexity, the cost of developing an app may vary. Also, make a note of software and application integration into your app because APIs also cost you more. Lastly, you should decide if you are hiring a few developers individually and getting this done or outsourcing it to a mobile app development company.

Hiring developers generally costs you more, and if you are planning to launch your app in iOS, it could cost you triple. Prefer outsourcing and make a deal with a company because you may get any additional service from the company’s end for preferring app development with them. But keep in mind that either the way outsourcing also can cost you but not as you go individually.

5 Essential Features of a Robust Master Data Management (MDM) Solution

Data is critical to ensure the success of any business in the current time. Companies make their critical business decision based on the data. But, to achieve effective decision making, you need to have a consolidated and analytics view of the data that your organizations collect, manage, and push on the different sales channels.

Master Data Management is highly popular across the businesses due to its capabilities to deliver a complete, accurate, and holistic view of critical business information across the organization. The MDM platform is a centralized location where you can manage your customer data, product information, and digital assets.

For effective implementation of MDM, you can refer to different online resources such as Whitepapers, blogs, articles, press releases, etc. in a centralized location. But, what you should consider when it comes to the features of an advanced MDM solution.

Through this post, we would like to help you by providing a list of features that you should look for in Master Data Management software.

Top 5 Mater Data Management Features

1. Data Localization

In many countries, the free flow of customer data is prohibited. They do not allow companies to access the data out of their countries or regions.

This could be a challenge for businesses as they certainly need to access the data along with considering the geographic limitations and parameters in place that restrict the usage of data on other countries.

Data localization is something that helps organizations in such a situation.

The data localization features allow businesses to store the data on any device that is physically available within the geographical boundaries of the countries and regions from where the data is generated.

Master Data Management software with a data location feature helps you standardize your location data using data quality and integration tools. You can connect with centralized location data using other domains. It also allows you to discover links and relationships amongst the relevant assets and documents available in the master data.

There are chances that your location data cloud overlap with your other business data. Through the continuous analysis, you will be able to refine your operational information.

Thus, it is a vital feature that allows businesses to manage and maintain customer data within geographical boundaries. It improves customer data security by restricting access to the data in specific countries or precise regions.

2. Master Data Linking and Matching

Master Data Management manages all the data that we have collected from different solutions and channels. Its core capability is the solution matches and links the relevant data with each other to enable you with a complete overview of your business.

Most of the organizations capture data using varied applications or systems. Other companies use acquisitions that have increased the number of silos in which data resides. Thus, there are a lot of chances of information variation and duplication.

To avoid such cases, the robust Master Data Management solutions offer data matching and inking features. The feature uses an algorithm that identifies the duplicate data and resolves multiple entries into an accurate and single record.

Well, if you avoid this feature, then you will come across various consequences. For example; you can add the same product multiple times or contact the same person again and again due to data duplication. Well, this directly impacts your customer engagement and retention.

Now you might be clear that with the inaccurate data you won’t be able to get analytical results and accurate insights.

Matching and linking feature help companies to manage the massive amount of data efficiently by reducing the risk of duplication. It eventually reduces confusion and improves the reliability of corporate information.

Master Data Management allows you to transform the data from multiple systems to a single platform and makes accurate records. And, the data matching and linking help you:

  • Avoid data duplication
  • Add accurate information across all your systems
  • Monitor the integrity of your source system
  • Enrich your MDM records with third party data
  • Automate the number of resource-demanding tasks

3. Data Enrichment

Data enrichment is a process and a set of tools that improves the data quality that is coming from different sources. When you collect the data manually, it is scattered and you won’t be able to get a 360 view of the information available to you.

To get accurate results and better insights, streamlining, and cleansing of data is very essential. It eventually enables you with customer-related or operational benefits as it allows you to identify the incorrect, irrelevant, or incomplete data and delete or modify the data whenever you want to get a more accurate view of your customer information.

By integrating third-party tools or software, you can refine and enhance your data further.

Start the data enrichment process by validating the data you already have and then move ahead for data cleansing. Once you are done with the enrichment of available data, start collecting the data from the external sources to get broad insights about different business information.

With data enrichment, you can have richer product or customer records that help you in making timely and proactive business decisions that ensure a greater degree of success. The qualitative data boost your confidence in your available information and improve your risk management.

Using the enriched data, you can identify the emerging patterns, analyze the market trends, and reduce your exposure to risk.

4. Data Governance

Master Data Management should be flexible and scalable to introduce actions and conditions and modify the data as per the changing business rules. It is very essential to share the data across multiple use cases such as when you are performing the approval process or importing the data.

All the business rules should be managed in a centralized location. When the rules get changed, it should be affected and applied everywhere across your existing enterprise systems and organization. You can implement the business rules directly in the user interface. You need to wait for backend development to implement it.

Allowing you to implement your business rules, MDM solutions enable you to create, manage, and apply your own data governance policy across the organization. Your selected data governance policy helps you to

  • Define the business rules that enforce the integrity of your data
  • Design a workflow for the approval process and decisions based on key data situations
  • Determine the data lifecycle for each relevant object type

By defining business rules, you can implement your data governance strategy accurately and quickly.

It’s a highly business-specific feature that addresses the expectations of individual entrepreneurs. By allowing to create specific data govern policy, it helps you to reduce the risk of violation of company policies, data integrity, and more.

5. Data Security

As the business grows, the quantity of data your company manages increases. For the security of your massive and confidential data, it is very necessary to set up an efficient data privacy process and policies.

One of the proven ways to maintain data security was to set up role-based security policies. The MDM solution enables businesses with role and right based permission that restricts the access and actions of different users. This feature helps a lot in protecting the private and sensitive data of an organization.

Leveraging the capabilities of an advanced MDM solution that encrypts data attributes with the business defined cryptographic key. Thus, users need to enter a password if they want to view any attribute values.

This feature ensures businesses with zero vulnerability. It eliminates all the possibilities where the external parties try to access your confidential data.

Credencys Provides an Effective Master Data Management Solution using Pimcore

Credencys is a leading digital experience provider from the USA that helps businesses to drive growth and success by developing advanced business solutions. We have a team of developers who have proven experience in developing custom master data management solutions by offering Pimcore development services.

Our Pimcore developers make sure that the master data management solutions manage the massive data of your products and customers and link them as per the relevancy to enable stockholders with broader insights about the different aspects and make the right business decisions.

Would you like to make the right business decisions quickly by developing a next-generation Master Data Management solution? Feel free to connect with our experts to understand how Pimcore enables you with a highly cost-effective and feature-rich MDM software.

Frequently Asked Questions on Master Data Management

What is a Master Data Management platform?

Master Data Management is a technology, processes, or tools that ensure the master data is distributed and coordinated across the organization. It is also popular with its abbreviation MDM. It offers a unified master data services that provide consistent, accurate, and complete master data to internal and external resources of the organization.

What is an essential part of Master Data Management?

Master Data Management solutions contain many different parts. But, when it comes to considering the essential parts, it could be data quality monitoring, concept standardization, hierarchy management, correction and cleansing of erroneous data, business taxonomy, reporting, matching and unique keying, and de-duplication.

How is Master Data Management implemented?

You need to consider seven best practices for the successful implementation of a Master Data Management solution that involves the alignment of MDM vision with your business vision, start small. think big, progress tracking, effective collaboration, maintain architecture consistency & product fit, embrace data governance, and choose the right MDM service provider.

Why is master data so important?

Data is considered as the valuable assets for any organization as it provides many actionable insights to the companies about the varied business elements. When managed properly, the data helps companies achieve their strategic financial results and organizational goals. By adopting the best MDM practices, the organizations can allow their staff to access accurate data quickly and perform the tasks effectively.

9 Powerful Tools for Cross-platform Mobile App Development

These days, a mobile application becomes inevitable for business in every sector. When it comes to developing a mobile app for your business, you need to focus on developing in multiple platforms especially, in both iOS & Android platforms because developers and businesses mostly target them. With the advent of modern technology, now developers no need to develop separately for multiple platforms, thanks to the arrival of cross-platform mobile app development. Yes! In recent years, the growth of cross-platform mobile app development is so popular around the globe.

Here in this article, we are going to elaborate on why cross-platform mobile app development is so popular and the list of powerful tools for the developers to develop mobile apps in cross-platform.

Cross-platform Mobile App Development: What is it?

In simple words, cross-platform mobile app development can be termed as developing a mobile app that can be suitable to run on multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, and so. In other words, it can be illustrated as the development of compatible software applications that can be functional on multiple mobile OS.

The cross-platform mobile app development does carry pros and cons in it. However, when compared with the advantages of using cross-mobile app development the cons would be negligible. Here we have briefly discussed the benefits of developing mobile apps in Cross-platform.

Benefits of Cross-platform Mobile App Development

  • Mobile app development codes can be reused instead of creating new codes for making the same software compatible with other mobile OS.
  • With the aid of cross-platform mobile app development, companies or business owners can save a lot of money.
  • Developers are able to complete the app development project in the quick time since they don’t need to develop the same app suitable for other platforms.
  • The cross-platform app development solution utilized by the developers is easier to implement on multiple mobile operating systems and easy to sync with the mobile devices running on the various operating systems.
  • The cross-platform mobile app development gives the advantage of easy maintenance of mobile apps in various platforms at once. Besides, the mobile app will have the same UI and navigation across multiple platforms so users would not find any difficulties accessing those.

How Cross-Mobile Apps Are Developed?

As far as the experts’ advice it’s better to hire a reputable cross-platform mobile app development company for developing a highly reliable and highly functional cross-platform mobile app. Because to match the ongoing fast-paced mobile marketing world, you need to ensure the creation of a mobile app that can be successful by following all those systematic development processes with the latest app development features. By doing so, the visibility of your mobile app will achieve your goal and can reach potential users across the world.

List of Steps Involved in the Development of Cross-Platform Mobile App

  • Defining Process of Mobile App Objective
  • Illustration of Mobile App Functionality & Features
  • Picking Potential Business Competitors
  • Creating Wireframes & Use Cases Scenarios for Mobile App
  • Wireframes Testing
  • Fixing Errors & Testing
  • Choosing Right Platforms for App Development
  • Creating Codes for Mobile App
  • Testing
  • Launching

Apart from those main things, you should notice when it comes to developing a cross-platform mobile app is the development tool. Make sure, your app developers pick the best cross-platform mobile app development tools for developing your cross-platform mobile app.

List of Top 9 Best & Powerful Tools for Developing Cross-Platform Apps

1. React Native

It is an open-source framework based on Facebook’s library ‘React’. React Native allows developers to develop a cross-platform mobile app much faster than any other framework. Moreover, React Native gives the advantage of Learn Once & Write Anywhere to the developers. In addition, it utilizes the old and most popular open-source programming language Java. Owing to that, it is highly popular among the developers for developing a cross-platform mobile app.

2. Flutter

Flutter one of the releases by the Internet giant Google. Flutter framework launched in 2018 and it gained slow pickup among the developers and now it’s one of the most preferred frameworks for developing cross-platform mobile apps by the developers across the world. Flutter framework uses dart programming language, though it is still new it can be learned easily since it is almost similar to C/C++ and Java programming language.

3. NativeScript

NativeScript is another framework well known for developing a revolutionary cross-platform mobile application other than React Native and Flutter. The NativeScript launched in 2015 and gained the attention of so many developers across the globe because of its open-source model and allows developers to access 700 plugins for developing mobile applications.

4. Xamarin

Xamarin owned by Microsoft and uses C# language for developing cross-platform mobile apps. The feature of code sharing and cloud service testing makes this Xamarin framework a robust tool for developing cross-platform apps. Features like native API access, high performance, easy testing, and so leads developers to prefer the Xamarin tool for developing a cross-platform mobile application.

5. PhoneGap

PhoneGap now owned by Adobe, this framework allows developers to create native applications using popular languages like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and so. By using this framework, app developers can develop applications suitable for android, iOS, windows, and blackberry mobile operating systems. Now, Adobe is trying hard to make this framework popular among the developers for making cross-platform mobile apps by adding more features and vast community support.

6. Appcelerator

Appcelerator is another open-source framework tool for developing cross-platform software. The Appcelerator using single JavaScript as its programming language owing to that app developer won’t feel difficult on the coding process. By the way, the Appcelerator allows developers to develop better real-time analytics, and MBaaS enriched mobile applications much faster than any other tool.

7. Unity3D

Unity3D specially used by the app developers to develop cross-platform gaming applications. Unlike the other framework tools, this Unity3D allows developers to develop mobile applications with high-quality graphics. The gaming applications developed by using Unity3D tools can be capable of playing in the various platforms including PlayStation and Linux OS. The strong community support offered by the Unity3D framework acts as a big plus and that’s the main reason developers prefer this tool for developing an impressive mobile gaming application.

8. 5App

This 5App framework tool is peculiar when compared with all other existing tools because of its design and functionality. HTML5 and JavaScript are the primary languages used by this 5App framework, moreover, this framework tool is specially designed to satisfy the needs of the companies and consulting firms for developing a mobile application for their business operation. Moreover, this 5App framework gives high-security options; owing to that developers prefer this framework for developing apps with high data security provision.

9. Rhomobile

The Rhomobile framework is one of the popular app developing tools that allow developers to create a cross-platform and enterprise-level mobile application. Also, this framework suits well to develop native mobile applications. The presence of the Eclipse plug-in allows developers to generate coding at ease and also this plug-in makes the debugging and testing process quickly and easily.

In addition, there are several other editors and IDEs which can be utilized by the developers to develop a reliable and functional cross-platform mobile app.

Bottom Line

Guess the answer to your query about how to develop cross-platform mobile apps end with this article. The year 2020 is going to be the year for cross-platform apps, moreover, the ongoing pandemic will suit well for stepping into the development of a cross-platform mobile app. Start thinking and pick the right theme & category for developing a mobile app. At the same time, make sure you engage with the right cross-platform mobile app Development Company for making a better cross-platform mobile app.

Frequently Answered Questions on Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

1. Is It True! Cross-platform is the Future of Mobile Apps?

Yes! The future of mobile app development will be based upon the cross-platform frameworks. Cross-platform frameworks will act as a tool for developers to develop potential cross-platform apps.

2. Is there any difference in-between native and cross-platform apps?

Yes! There are notable differences between native and cross-platform apps in code usability, device access, UI consistency, and Performance. Well, native apps will deliver high performance than cross-platform apps. However, cross-platform gives the upper hand on code usability, device access, and UI consistency.

3. What is the best framework for cross-platform app development?

Since each framework has its own set of pros and cons. It truly depends upon for what purpose the app is going to be developed and the goals to be achieved by the app.

4. How long will it take to develop a functional cross-platform app and how much will it cost?

The cost of developing a functional cross-platform mobile app development starts from $5,000 and the maximum limit would depend upon the features. By the way, professional developers can develop a fully functional cross-platform mobile app in a few months mostly by around 4 to 5 months.

Building a DevOps pipeline for your App: Choose a CI/CD server

CI/CD is considered to be a complete build server that mostly functions as a virtual machine offered by a cloud provider to develop mobile apps, from anywhere in the world. Though techies can understand the technology well, for viewers, who do not know about CI/CD, CI is continuous integration, and CD is continuous deployment. DevOps CI CD pipeline is used for mapping the gap between development and operations teams by developing applications, testing, and deploying them. In other words, we call them the main source of building a DevOps pipeline for your mobile app.

Again, I know you are going to ask me what is a pipeline in DevOps. It is a set of processes developed in a software engineering team to make sure smooth development, testing, and deployment of applications happen appropriately. Hope, now you have some clarity on why you are reading this blog.

Now, what this blog brings you along? There are certain recommendations by experts as to what top CI/CD servers available, and which one to choose. This showcases which companies are offering DevOps as a service and maybe a short note on how to build a DevOps pipeline. Before we move into further sections in this blog, you must know what criteria should be looked into while choosing a CI/CD server provider.

What criteria with the CI/CD server provider should you look into?

While choosing a CI/CD provider, it is mandated that you verify whether the provider satisfies the following bunch of questions.

  • Does the server support all mobile platforms such as Android and iOS?
  • Is it tied up with Github and Bitbucket for hosting support?
  • Is it possible to utilize the free trial for both Android and iOS?
  • How easy it is to set up?
  • How many types of integration can it support?
  • Can developers operate different workflows?
  • Will it allow performing multi-tasking simultaneously?

So this is the checklist that you should have while choosing your CI/CD server provider.

Benefits of CI/CD server

  • Quicker software builds: Integrating CI and CD results in faster builds and delivers quicker outputs. It enables you to track the progress of a project and issue feedback in real-time when you carry out the implementation in continuous cycles.
  • Reaching market on-time: By introducing your app into the market in time, you get better customer engagement, amazing profits, supportive pricing, and advanced market goals as well.
  • Coding improvements: With CI, developers can integrate their code into a common warehouse, and it allows them to share their builds number of times a day rather than working remotely. Indeed, it helps them to develop a high-quality app.
  • Highly skilled developers: CI/CD pipeline implementation provides more profits by minimizing the cost of the software you use. CI helps to simplify your tasks into everyday tasks and identifies defects in coding in the early software development cycle.

Choosing the CI/CD server provider

Based on the aforementioned criteria, there are few CI/CD providers listed here.

1. Bitrise

Bitrise supports Android, iOS, and other native frameworks such as react and flutter and provides extended support to mobile app development. It provides Github and Bitbucket sign in so that you get hosting from the companies’ own hosting product. You can test both Android and iOS platforms through Bitrise. It is easy to set up and allows multiple integrations, along with tremendous workflow support. This way it is very useful to avoid the same steps for every build when code is published. It enables parallel builds but only two at a time until you complete your trial.

2. CircleCI

CircleCI is known to be the best CI provider because it lets you handle many diverse projects. It acts as a multi-purpose provider that not only companies that develop mobile apps can only use it, but it is friendly for non-tech companies as well. It also supports both Android and iOS and carries a pretty easy setup process. You get a .yml file which has to be configured to decide how you want to bring out your project.

It also supports Github and Bitbucket through which you can display your repositories on the server’s dashboard. The best part with CircleCI is you can even use it on Linux and Windows systems but does not support the Macintosh operating system. The scope of using integrations is very limited but provides an explicit workflow with CircleCI’s second version. You can very well build parallel apps in CircleCI.

3. Github Actions

This is a newly introduced server among the giants in existence, but it provides features similar to CircleCI. Actions are Github’s own products that can be used as a repository. It offers a few templates that even support non-mobile app development companies. However, Actions supports Android and iOS platforms for no doubt but not sure about how it supports Linux and Windows platforms. It provides required support to multiple workflows and allows you to configure each workflow by creating various workflows as per your expectations.

4. SemaphoreCI

SemaphoreCI was previously supporting the iOS and Beta version in Android, but now they have enhanced their service to the entire Android version as well. Unfortunately, it does not support Bitbucket but recently started supporting Github Sign In for repository dashboards. It offers an interesting and interactive workflow editor for you to utilize completely. It provides a 14-day trial of parallel builds and offers a free trial to try Android and iOS. You can avail support for Linux and macOS virtual machines as the server supports open-source projects. You can set up this server effortlessly and allows even third-party integration for your program builds.

5. TravisCI

TravisCI is the first CI-CD provider to build a DevOps pipeline. It is available in open source and so trying out several of its features is made easy. It initially had only Github Sign In and recently has included Bitbucket Sign In as a beta feature as well. It acts as a limiting factor if you use Bitbucket server as your build control. Since it is an open-source CI/CD provider, it allows you to build DevOps on both Android and iOS. It also has a premium version which is called Travis CI Enterprise. By simply adding a .yml file to your repository, you can set up the server within minutes.

Moreover, the .yml file allows you to send notifications or merge into a few third-party systems. So it is good at providing multiple integrations. You can very well manage your workflow but may not find a relevant document for the same. Instead, you can use the manual that is available for managing your builds, which would do the job for workflow as well. Consequently, you can run multiple builds on TravisCI as it supports parallel builds.

Several other CI/CD providers are Gitlab, Bamboo, AppCenter, Code Magic, and Jenkins, which you can also consider provided if any of them satisfy the factors mentioned as criteria in the previous sections.

Conclusion:

Building a DevOps pipeline is important for every developer to create a streamlined workflow and to manage both Android and iOS platforms on CI/CD server. Prefer to have a cloud-based server so that you can flexibly manage your features and resources accordingly. Meanwhile, if you are opting for a paid version of this server, cloud-based will reduce the cost incurred on it. Moreover, you can securely store your repositories in the dashboard that any server offers. If you have any queries on the same, do approach our technical support team for suggestions. We are easily reachable through phone, e-mail, and chat as well.

Frequently asked questions about building DevOps Pipeline

1. How to set up a basic deployment pipeline?

You have to follow three steps to set up a basic deployment pipeline or the first time setup.

  • Set up a build server
  • Install a few test suites
  • Add a deployment step and finally,
  • Run the server to publish what you have developed so far

2. What are the important phases in DevOps?

There are six phases interrelated and none of them can be skipped or changed. This is also called as 6Cs of the DevOps cycle.

  • Continuous business planning which begins with understanding the skills, results, and resources required
  • Collaborative development which starts with manual design plan of development and programming
  • Continuous testing which improvises your builds stage by stage
  • Continuous release and deployment
  • Continuous monitoring
  • Customer feedback and optimization

3. What does DevOps offer to developers?

You can speed up your application, development process and deployment facilities that should be faster to adapt to customer needs, market changes and new business goals in a better manner, reliability you expect, rapid delivery, scalability, security, collaboration, and commonly used best practices.

4. Is there any notable difference between Continuous Integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD)?

Yes! Continuous Integration (CI) is a simple process that allows you to integrate source code into a mainline code base, whereas continuous deployment (CD) is the next process after CI takes place successfully, before delivering your product to the client. It involves several processes such as testing, staging, and implementing the source code.

Is Pandemic Ideal Time for Your Startup or Mobile App Idea?

The world has come through many pandemic situations previously but not as worse as COVID-19 I believe because most of them did not affect the entire population. A tsunami was not a pandemic condition, but no one expected it would take a lump slot of people from the entire world. The COVID-19 does show such signs of taking lakhs of lives and affecting lakhs of people across the world. This pandemic has been giving a really tough time not only to the general public but also to business owners. It is time for entrepreneurs to decide whether beginning a start-up company is ideal or going wisely for mobile app ideas.

Several new start-up companies that came into limelight this year are stuck due to this pandemic lockdown condition. Indeed, existing business owners and even some of these start-up companies are transforming their business into digital by developing a mobile app that could help them serve and retain their customers. Without knowing about the end of lockdown appropriately, it is not viable to start a new business physically. Instead, you can hire mobile app developers who can provide you with a plethora of future mobile app ideas to develop your business online, particularly at this stage. Although the government says that the economy is under downfall but you got to believe “Where there is a will, there is a way”.

Here are some of the important factors that help you decide which is best—starting a start-up or developing a mobile app idea for your existing or new start-up. The following section does not answer how to build a mobile app; instead, it talks about why you should build a mobile app.

Why is a mobile app idea better than a start-up idea during a pandemic?

#1: You stay one step ahead of your competitors

Several existing companies may act instantly according to the prevailing pandemic condition. Many of them may have a physical store but not a mobile app to face the current situation, and sometimes, it may lead to losing their market and customers. But being a start-up or if you have an idea of beginning as a start-up company, you can take a wise call by giving a thought of mobile app ideas, which creates a strong pathway for your future business. You should choose a different way against your competitors so that you can swim across the sea and reach your destination quicker than others do. After this pandemic gets over, you will see yourself in a stronger position, having more scope for your business expansion.

#2: Go for an MVP instead of capital ventures

A focussed entrepreneur always knows the best source for generating revenue and realizes that rather than looking or investing in capital ventures, gaining customers is ideal. COVID-19 is not a good condition for businesses or jobs because the disease has closed the thought of investors investing in start-up companies now. So the recession has started in businesses and many job holders have already lost their job due to companies unable to handle such a worsening situation. To become stable in business, as a business owner, you should decide an MVP (minimum viable product) that satisfies your customer demands. Even though MVP is not an engineered solution, still it does not cost much as well as does not consume time to develop.

#3: Choose the best app type that is booming

You must consider developing in any one of these sectors as a mobile app idea, as it has been seeing success even during the pandemic.

  • Entertainment and streaming apps: People are left with no choice by watching movies, series, TV shows, dramas, etc. because all are locked down inside the house with this vulnerable pandemic condition. So the online video streaming apps like Netflix, Disney Hotstar, Amazon, etc. are at their peak, and people spend most of their time on these apps. Also, online streaming is something that interests them to watch movies that they have not seen until now. So you can create an app that provides live streaming and download options as well; so you earn income through enormous website traffic. Develop the best mobile app idea with a great MVP that can fill your pocket with enough money.
  • Apps for video conferencing: Since work from home has been followed as a trend and policy by most of the companies during this COVID-19 pandemic, people find comfortable using video conferencing apps to connect with their colleagues all at a time. Currently, we have Zoom, the free video calling app and Facebook is yet to launch the same feature. Investing in these apps is never going to be in vain.
  • Mental health and meditation apps: This may sound crazy to some of you, but people being always at home in a locked-down situation take so much stress to handle kids at home. Moreover, kids cannot go out and play freely and they also have developmental stress and sometimes, go against their parents. Also, employees who are used to work from office may tend to do additional work during this time, with the pressure they get from their superiors. So you can develop a fitness app that not only provides physical exercises but also relaxation modules for their mind.
  • Food delivery app: The food delivery app has already got a good move among customers. If you look at the trend of door-step food delivery even before this pandemic, it was showing a growth of more than 50% when compared to its previous years. Now, with physical stores being banned to operate in this COVID-19, food delivery apps have taken initiative to deliver groceries and other food products along with cooked food delivery. Moreover, protein and meat delivery centers are tying up with food delivery app companies and delivering the everyday needs and essentials for their customers.

#4: Acquire extraordinary talents for less salary

Due to recession taking place in many companies across the world, once everyone gets through this pandemic lockdown condition and life becomes normal, unemployment increases. By the time you will be able to get skilled talent for a lower salary because it will be a time where people look only for jobs and do not consider salary as a constraint.

#5: Act according to demand

Being a start-up, you can mold your business according to the increase or decrease in product demand. For example, if the market is up and things go normal, you can concentrate on revenue generation and do something for promotion and get a return on investment. But in conditions like COVID-19, you cannot be so concerned about just the cost. If your business is over-productive and you want to sell it off, but at the same time, you should look at your customer value, then you can ease certain factors such as the cost of providing additional quantity at the same cost to your customers.

#6: Ample time to plan your start-up business strategies

If you want to become a start-up company or like to develop a mobile app idea, this pandemic provides the ideal time you require. You can plan your business strategies accordingly and predict the future mistakes you might commit and prepare a prevention plan right now. You can also make a widened plan for cost-cutting so that your business can face any kind of situation.

Conclusion:

This blog is not to promote or prove that the mobile app idea is the best, but it is to make you understand and act smart during this COVID-19 pandemic. If you require any help with developing mobile app ideas, do contact us on our toll-free number and talk to our customer support executive.

Frequently asked questions

1. How should I develop a mobile app?

Have your own ideas and write them down on paper. Shortlist the best idea you are skilled in, so you need not depend on anyone to run your business. Approach a mobile app development company to bring your ideas into the limelight. Get a framework done for your mobile app and if you are happy with its predicted outcome, move it for development. Developers will finally test your app multiple times, fix bugs if any, and then provide it to you as a complete product before your app launch date.

2. How much money will it take to develop a mobile app?

The cost to develop a mobile app depends on the app complexity i.e. features, software, application, and developer cost. So be ready to spend more if you require the best mobile app.

3. Which one is the best service to provide online during this pandemic?

It was already mentioned previously in this blog with some sectors that are in a boom. Still, you can prefer to develop an app that serves medical needs, food, entertainment, or similar kind.

4. Whether mobile app development can be reliable?

Online selling is at a high peak since its inception. It helps keep your business stable under any conditions. It is anytime the best investment that you can look for returns upon.

8 Most Common Product Information Management Challenges

No matter what industry you belong to, customers are looking for more personalized and highly relevant experiences.

Along with customized experiences, customers want to have access to a new range of products. Thus, to meet the ever-increasing demands of the products, businesses need to manage the product information efficiently.

As more and more customers prefer to shop online or at least they search for the product online before visiting the nearest store. Hence, it becomes essential for retailers to keep updated their website with the information customers look for.

Businesses have to make sure their multiple channels or customer touchpoints enable the buyers with up-to-date and furnished information in the most intuitive and convincing way. You need to manage a wide range of vendor multiplicity, product catalogs, as well as complex product details too.

Do you think you can achieve such a great level of agility and integrity in the distribution of product data through manual product information management?

In the process of addressing all the complex requirements of the different stakeholders through manual product information management methods, you encounter many challenges. It won’t make you capable to meet the changing market condition and ensure the success and growth of your organization.

Let’s learn about the most common challenges faced by the Product Information Management systems and how you can address them.

8 Most Common Challenges Faced by Product Information Management

1. Lack of transparency amongst internal teams and departments

In small organizations, communication is more open and transparent. But, in large scale organizations, effective business commutation is the biggest challenge. The employees cannot share information, priorities, goals, and tools due to the communication barrier. This ultimately ends up making your department least productive and inefficient.

You have to establish some effective strategies to remove the communication gap across your teams and departments. For the success of any organization, it is very necessary to have a cross-functional and collaborative team.

Product information software can help you establish a communication platform where different teams and departments interact with each other. The employees can easily update others about the tasks and deadlines and help in eliminating any confusion by bringing everyone on a single page. So, your team becomes more productive and generates better results.

2. Dealing with multiple sales channels becomes tough

To strengthen your brand presence, it is very essential for you to establish a uniform and strong presence on multiple customer touchpoints and sales channels. But it is challenging to meet the frequently changing demands of different market place websites.

Every channel has different requirements for information format and types. They have their own standards and product list approval policies. They might ask you to set different prices for different regions.

With the help of a PIM solution, you can achieve all these just with a few clicks. IT allows you to toll out up-to-date and accurate information. Moreover, you can launch the latest update in different languages, at different prices, for the different markets.

3. Managing a massive amount of product data

Businesses have to manage a massive amount of content for a wide range of products. Along with the product data, they have to manage information related to different sales channels, multiple services, distributed vendors and suppliers, and many other details that businesses have to deal with in order to deliver a better customer experience.

If you manage such enormous data manually, then searching for relevant and accurate information becomes a tedious job. You need to sort all the content to get the right one.

An advanced PIM solution can collect and organize the districted data as well as standardize product information. The software offers a centralized place to store and manage product data. Thus, the Product Information Management system allows to manipulate and handle any amount of product data effortlessly.

4. Disorganized product catalog

If your organization is selling a large number of products then it will be difficult to manage such a huge product catalog manually.

Being a business owner, you need to deal with different requirements of multiple sales, a huge range of products, and several vendors. It becomes challenging to maintain and update the uniformity of data in your product catalog. Eventually, you develop a complex catalog that is difficult to keep organized.

A flexible PIM software enables you with an automated process for consolidating the product information in a centralized location and collecting the data from different vendors. Product Information Management solution simplifies your product data management and makes the product marketing easier.

5. Manual tasks and spreadsheet will be error-prone

Companies, who manage the product information manually, highly rely on spreadsheets. Managing such a huge amount of data in spreadsheets is a cumbersome and time-consuming activity. You have to upload thousands of products in the spreadsheets manually that is quite error-prone.

If every individual across the organization managing the data in separate sheets, it creates a huge communication gap. In case data is missing from the spreadsheet, you will end up by presenting wrong and ambiguous information to the customers.

Using a feature-rich product information management system you can upload the data in bulk. Moreover, it improves the accuracy of spreadsheets and allows to create workflows too.

6. Handling cluttered digital assets

While managing a wide range of products you might need to create and manage varied product videos, marketing visuals, presentations, manuals, photos, and many other digital resources on a regular basis. Thus, you have to manage a huge pile of digital assets.

All these digital files and archives are very important to your business. If you fail in managing them in an organized way, then it will be difficult for you to sort and retrieve the relevant product information whenever required. It is better to manage all your digital assets in a library, in a consolidated way.

Using a robust PIM solution, you can easily manage and sort numerous data such as videos, marketing data, product attributes, etc. in a centralized platform. It becomes smoother to find and retrieve the exact information when you need it.

7. Lack of supplier communication

You need to set up a communication platform where you can update the suppliers about the launch of the new products, changes in your requirements and regulations, provide updates about the existing products, and more.

There are chances the data may be in the wrong format, incomplete, and misspelled. If you obtain such data, then you will have an inadequate and incorrect product listing. You need to correct the data before publishing it on your eCommerce website. Editing of such inappropriate data takes considerable effort and time.

Product Information Management system works as a portal that allows you to interact with your vendors seamlessly. It allows you to deal with an emergency situation and problems as well as streamlines your supply chain.

Smooth communication with the suppliers helps you improve the time to market your product by ensuring the authenticity of the product information at the same time.

8. Product launch cycle delays

The manual product information management ends up you with manual tasks, unorganized product catalog, cluttered information, and so on. It directly impacts on your product launch lifecycle. Your product launch could be delayed.

For the success of any business, timely product launch is very essential. The organizations should have better control over the product’s lifecycle and a perfect vision about the end product in order to gain higher productivity.

The next generation PIM solution provides you a dashboard that enables you with a consolidated view of your product data. You can track all the updates and have a holistic view of all your product information.

Moreover, a PIM solution helps your sales and marketing team know which are ready to market products and which sales channels are more suitable to display them. Thus, the platform offers enriched product information and timely product launch that eventually increases sales and delivers better customer experiences.

How Credencys Addresses Product Information Management Challenges using Pimcore?

Credencys has proven experience and expertise to build custom product information management solution as per your custom business needs. To deliver a robust solution, we utilized the advanced features and functionalities of Pimcore’s Product Information Management.

We have a team of Pimcore developers who help you to embrace digital transformation for your eCommerce store by harnessing end-to-end Pimcore development services. We can build a solution that collects the data from different channels, enables you with the consolidated view of product data, and allows you to deliver the contextual product information to your customers.

Are you ready to drive a paradigm shift in your business by replacing your manual product information management process with a PIM solution? Let’s Connect

Frequently Asked Questions on Product Information Management

What is Product Information Management?

Product Information Management is also known as PIM. The advanced PIM pal forms allow you to manage the massive product data that required to sell and promote products through multiple distribution channels. It allows you to manage all your product data and digital assets in a centralized location. It can also collect, manage, and refine the data efficiently to generate effective output.

What is a Product Information Management solution?

The PIM solution enables businesses with a single platform where you can collect, manage, and enrich your product information, distribute them on different customer touchpoints and sales channels, and create an engaging product catalog.

How does Product Information Management work?

Product Information management allows you to manage all your product data, content, and other resources in a centralized place that you can use to market and sell your products. The solution also provides high-quality data to ensure your staff can use it for multiple sales channels or internal use.

What are the best Product Information Management solutions?

There is a lot of Product Information Management software available in the market but most of them are expensive. Here are a few cost-effective PIM solutions that you can consider for your business. The best PIM solutions are Pimcore, Akeneo, EnterWorks, PIMworks, Stibo Systems, Agility Multichannel, Salsify, and more.

5 Reasons To Choose Flutter for On-Demand Grocery App Development

As the entire world is stubbing because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the globe are forced to be in a lockdown situation. Because of the lockdown, people currently spend more time on their smartphones. For many, the smartphone became their entertaining platform and also acted as a tool for connecting their loved ones. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has a severe impact on all industries, mobile app development is facing the mixed result of this coronavirus attack. Yes! You heard it right; the on demand grocery app development has been its peak during this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The main reason could be the shyness of people to contact another person in public due to the spread of COVID-19 disease.

Why On-demand Grocery App Development?

We all know how much impact created by the existing grocery app in the US market particularly Instacart, Bigbasket, Grofers, and so on. On analyzing those data experts have already predicted that the future of on demand grocery app development will continue to bloom. However, this COVID-19 pandemic has made that prediction come true. Now people around the globe are seeking the aid of online demand grocery apps for purchasing their groceries right from their home.

Believe it or not! In the entire United States, eCommerce sales the online grocery app manages to grab a 2.8% sale that makes the on-demand grocery app as one of the fastest-growing technologies. Meanwhile, the eMarket has released its research data which illuminate the total number of online grocery shoppers in 2018 as 18 million and estimated online grocery shoppers in 2020 could reach around 30 million. Now, this COVID-19 disease will surely make that prediction true well before the target period.

Why Do People Prefer On-Demand Grocery App?

Here are the lists of reasons which trigger people to go for the on-demand grocery app for their family needs.

  • Minimizing Shopping Time: The online grocery app eliminates the time spent reaching a traditional store and standing in line for billing purchased groceries. Now with the arrival of online grocery people can shop their grocery right from sitting on couches.
  • Easy Tracking: Apart from removing all those annoying things involved in a traditional way of grocery shopping, the online grocery app provides the convenience of easy tracking by which buyers can easily track their ordered items.
  • Easy to Analyze Customer Behavior: For every business customer behavior model is essential to deliver what customer exactly wants. This online grocery app helps business owners a lot to deliver the essential services which are needed by the customer after analyzing their behavior from their previous orders.
  • Easy Categorization of Products: Online grocery apps enable customers to view the products listed in perfect categorization which allows them to navigate easily across the thousands of grocery products.

Developing On-demand Grocery App

If you are planning to step into the business of mobile application development, then it’s the right time to make things done. Online grocery app could be the right category to pick to attract more target audiences around the world. However, you should be aware of certain factors before getting started into the development of on demand grocery app.

To avail of success in the mobile app development industry, the first thing you should concentrate on is the concept of the mobile app. The next thing should be the platform in which you decided to develop your mobile app. When it comes to developing on demand grocery apps, picking the cross-platform app development would be the right choice.

In the cross-platform mobile app development, Google’s portable software development kit Flutter is the most preferred one and also a game-changer.

Features To Include on Grocery App

  • Real-Time Tracking
  • Easy & Secured Multiple Payment Options
  • Live AI Chats
  • Easy Add-To-Cart Facility
  • Easy Order History Review
  • Easy & Beautiful User Interface

Why Choose Flutter SDK For Developing Grocery App?

Flutter is the product of Google introduced in 2017 and uses Dart language for developing an app. The dart language is almost similar to Java, so the learning curve of this dart language won’t be a tough call for the developers.

The coding processes of the dart language consist of both iOS and Android toolchain to develop apps in a specific mobile platform. The flutter app development does make developers feel more comfortable and convenient but also it delivers better-performing apps. In addition to that, here are the few more reasons that make flutter SDK the most preferred one for start-up companies.

  • Simple and Fast User Interface Design that can be customized easily.
  • Dart Programming Language is an open-source, because of that developers can develop apps in cross-platform.
    It offers a wide range of widgets that can be easily inherited.
  • The entire architecture of Google’s SDK is almost similar to the existing popular React Native SDK.
  • Using Flutter SDK developers can develop the same app on multiple platforms at a time, this eventually makes the app development process much faster than others.
  • Flutter allows developers to make use of the automated tests; owing to that building an app with flutter makes testing and maintaining operations at a cheap cost.

Wondering about how to make an app with flutter? Well here are the few things you need to be aware of developing an effective mobile application is cross-platform using Flutter SDK.

  • First, you need to pick the right Idea for developing a mobile application
  • Next, pick the right type of application to develop
  • Choose the essential features to be integrated with your app
  • Finally, do automated testing that leads to cheap testing cost

Moreover, as per the experts’ prediction, the approximate cost for developing an ideal on-demand grocery app using Flutter SDK might be around half of the price of hiring an app developer. In general, the cost of hiring a mobile app developer starts from $20k to $50K.

List of 5 Reasons That Makes Flutter As The Ideal Choice For On-Demand Grocery App Development

1. Open-source And Single Codebase:

Just like JAVA, Google’s Flutter is also an open-source language that makes it more User Friendly and can be accessed easily. Besides, Flutter SDK has a single codebase because of that writers can write coding once and are able to run it on multiple platforms. In simple words, developers can develop all using flutter and run it on both Android and iOS platforms.

2. Amazing Fabrications of Widgets

With the aid of the IntelliJ plugin, developers are able to integrate numerous beautiful and functional widgets to their applications. By using those wide ranges of widgets in a flutter, app developers create amazing UI/UX designed mobile applications.

3. Allows To Easy Editing

The presence of SCM services along with the Android Studio and Visual Studio Code, Flutter allows developers to edit their application coding in real-time at ease by using the Hot-reload feature and also it allows developers to do smarter and quicker completions.

4. Better Performance

Mobile applications that are developed by Google’s SDK Flutter deliver better performance than many SDK’s. This is mainly because of Flutter’s tendency of enabling mobile applications to provide native performance at 60FPS which is faster than several existing SDKs in the market.

5. Easy To Learn

Though Google introduced its Flutter SDK in 2017 which is the latest trend in the market, the programming language used in flutter Dart language is almost similar to open-source language JAVA. Because of that, developers won’t feel any difficulty learning. Moreover, developers are able to create native-like mobile applications without using any native languages for development.

Bottom Line:

Though flutter SDK is pretty young in the market, yet several developers across the world started to use it for developing better performing applications. To match the current trend prevailing in the market, several top companies like NineHertz, Google Ads, Hookle, Tallium Inc., Alibaba, and so had already switched to Google’s SDK Flutter for their apps. On considering those, we can easily conclude as flutter has a bright future in the coming days. Also, Google’s immense marketing tactics are going to be a massive factor for the upcoming success of Flutter SDK.

Frequently Answered Questions

1. Why Choose Online Grocery App Instead of Grocery Store?

Since, buyers can enjoy the convenience in using an online grocery app along with few other factors like timing and money-saving, easy shopping, a wide range of product categorization, and so prefers it over the traditional grocery store.

2. How Many Types Are There in Grocery Apps?

Here are the lists of most common online grocery mobile app

  • Aggregators
  • Marketplaces
  • Single Stores
  • Grocery Chains
  • Personalized Grocery Apps

3. How Long It Will Take To Develop an Ideal Online Grocery App?

Choosing Flutter SDK for on-demand grocery app development would cost less time. Well-versed developers can complete the development process in 1 or 2 months.

4. How App Owners Make Money Using Grocery App?

Depending upon the grocery app business model, owners can earn money by placing sponsored ads, adding delivery/convenience fee, paid listing, and so apart from the general grocery products revenue.

Android 11 – Important Features to Consider for Next Mobile app Development

We all love Android because it is amazing. With the development of mobile technology, the Android operating system has also been showing great improvement since its inception. Recently, Google the makers of Android has released its latest 11th version of its Mobile OS and the Android 11 features are just amazing.

Android 10 created a new era in the operating system environment and brought success to Google’s approach to the same. By applying the same principles, the Android 11 preview has been announced, which is likely to be launched in the mid of May 2020. The features are set as per the developer’s preview announcement and a lot more features can be set in the due course.

Android 10 features were amazing and let us see how Android 11 features are going to create excitement among users, stakeholders, app owners, and developers. It is expected that with Android 11, a new vision can be seen in Android app development. With new features in Android app development, the way developers build an app is definitely going to take a turn. This blog shows you what this new version can support Android new app development features.

List of Attractive Android 11 features

1. New and more improvements for messaging

Although the previous versions of Android have certain messaging features, Android 11 brings in few unique features that impress the crowd.

  • Now you can hide all your sent conversations inside a bubble with Android 11’s chat bubble feature. It appears on the side of your message window screen and you can move those bubbles around to reveal your previous conversations required whenever.
  • To ensure that all your messages are being sent and as a sort of confirmation, Android 11 gives you a dedicated conversation section in the notification bar, to view all your on-going conversations.
  • Wow! You can now send images while replying to a message from notifications with Android 11.

2. One-time permission

Android 10 gave users the privilege of controlling and managing app permissions. The same feature is carried forward to Android 11 as well. But this time, the app registers the user’s permission one time and retains it as long as the user stays and uses the app. Once the user logs out, the permission gets revoked.

3. Screen recorder by default

This feature is long expected by Android users and waiting for Google to launch it. Though it is a basic feature that Google could have launched in its previous versions, it did not happen. This time it is happening with Android 11 by providing a smooth user interface for audio call recording, though sometimes it is annoying.

4. Multi-screen adaptability

Until now in the Android era, there had not been any implementation of screen size adaptability for foldable smartphones, whereas Android 11 in this 2020 is going to bring that change widely. Now users will enjoy using foldable smartphones with a great enhancement of all running at different screen sizes and resolutions.

5. Getting ready to meet 5G

By this time, the world should have been running around 5Gtechnology, but with coronavirus pandemic, it has slightly taken a step off from its launch. Yet, Android 11 is making itself compatible to work on 5G when introduced. The special feature that Android 11 has for 5G compatibility is Dynamic Meterdness API, which will be auto-installed and later becomes adaptive when 5G comes into range. Your device automatically detects a 5G network and allows you to access the Internet with unlimited speed.

These are really amazing features that Android lovers were waiting for, and it is going to be available in real.

Benefits of Migrating your apps to Android 11

Android 11 features cater to three categories as per the developer’s preview documentation–behavior changes, privacy features, and new features & APIs. But these categories carry certain pointers that impact the performance of an application.

1. Users get the privilege of restricting app permissions when the dialog box appears

Android 11 has been developed by understanding the user’s mindset of accepting or denying app permission. If the user clicks Deny twice, then the app will never ask for permission and displays Don’t ask me again but lets you access the app features.

2. The usage activity of your app status will be maintained at the privacy

Security to users will be favored by Android 11 by protecting the user’s app usage statistics in an encrypted storage format with strong credentials. Neither the app nor any other system can access these statistics unless someone applies a strong coding to break it in.

3. Reduces data redundancy to a great extent

This is amazing because only developers were able to use this technology during developing the same type of app, somehow using the ReactNative and similar kind of application. They can use the same features for different platforms using this tool. Similarly, now similar types of app used by Android lovers take space of one app and feature the other.

4. Provides great clarity on app process exit reasons

Android 11 now brings proper reasons whenever an app crashes to the app owners so that it can be rectified immediately before it happens to other users.

5. Ensures fastest APK installation

If your app has a large APK file to be installed, the previous versions of Android could not cope with the speed of using apps. But Android 11 will break that hurdle and accelerates the installation process by providing enough APK files required to launch the app successfully.

6. Supports neural network applications immensely

If your app works on neural and network applications, then Android 11 is here to make it work smoothly. With Google taking its effort through Android 11 by running all your machine learning apps on all Android devices, you will be able to bring your AI project management process in scope and create more and more advancements in technology.

7. Has a great infrastructure allocation to avail benefits out of 5G once implemented

We all have been experiencing the fastest internet through 4G and now with Android 11 having space for 5G, going to offer you a superfast Internet with full support to technology. Businesses can reach their heightened level and users get a wonderful experience of using Android 11.

Conclusion:

Android 11 features will definitely amaze developers, businesses, users and Google itself. Companies have to prep themselves to adapt themselves to the new version of technology when released because they get enough time before it is launched. Companies should be able to face and be proactive with their competitors; otherwise, it is going to be hectic to get along with the updating trend in technology. Hoping you will feel joyous by knowing Android 11 features and feel free to share your comments anytime to our e-mail id. If you wish to know more technical updates, keep reading our blog site frequently or if you require clarity on any technology-related topics, write to us; we will come up with the relevant information.

Frequently asked questions

1. When Android 11 will be launched officially?

Though the exact date has not been known yet, Google has planned to launch Android 11 in the mid of May 2020, but due to the current pandemic COVID-19, it might be postponed to September 2020. So you can keep watching the Internet for a software update.

2. What are the best features of Android 11?

A few were explained in this blog previously, still to recollect, these are the few more exciting Android 11 features that you have to know about.

  • Scheduled dark theme
  • Chat head bubbles
  • One-time permission
  • Screen recording
  • Motion sense gesture
  • Share menu pinning
  • Airdrop-style file sharing
  • New APIs
  • Resume on Boot

3. How migrating to Android 11 will benefit developers?

Users always love to use apps that are modernized with technology because most of them live on their phones for almost 16 to 18 hours of time. So migrating to the better version from your current one is always going to give a better user interface experience to users. Users should not be disappointed and they always like to stay in tune with using the latest technology.

4. What are the new features, API & security that Android 11 contains?

Android 11 offers three different types of API into usage.

  • Display cut-out API: This API brings in curved and waterfall screens onto your phone which is new in Android.
  • Bubbles API: This API makes sure that your long conversations are protected inside a bubble. Messaging and chat apps on your device should use this in Android 11 when upgraded.
  • Neural networks API 1.3: This API ensures the smooth running of apps based out of machine learning on Android devices. It caters few operational APIs such as Quality of Service APIs for ensuring priority and timeout for model implementation, Memory Domain APIs for reducing copying of memory and transformation of the next model implementation and extended quantization support for enlarged coding.