Your Step-by-Step Blueprint for Integrating Large Language Models for Boosted Business Efficiency and Decision Making

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Your Step-by-Step Blueprint for Integrating Large Language Models for Boosted Business Efficiency and Decision Making

In today’s fast-paced business world, maintaining an edge over the competition necessitates quick decision-making, potent efficiency, and staying ahead of the curve technologically. Increasingly, businesses are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and specifically, large language models (LLMs) to have an advantage. It’s not just hype, either – these technologies are fundamentally transforming the way businesses operate, leading to increased efficiency and better-informed decision-making.

However, as with any transformational technology, knowing where to start can be daunting. It’s not enough to simply acknowledge the power of AI and LLMs; businesses must learn to integrate them seamlessly into their processes to fully reap the benefits. That’s where this guide comes in. From understanding the basics of LLMs to implementing them into your processes, we’ll cover it all. Sit back, read on, and start your transformative journey with AI and LLMs today.

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS: WHAT ARE LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS AND WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?


Large Language Models (LLMs) are a subset of artificial intelligence specifically designed to understand, generate, and respond to human language in a sophisticated and nuanced manner. With advances in AI and machine learning, these models can now process vast language inputs (be it written text or spoken words) and deliver intelligent outputs.

LLMs operation is based on analyzing massive amounts of data, learning patterns, and building complex contextual relationships between words. This approach enables them to not only comprehend the literal meaning of a sentence but also to deduce underlying intentions or sentiments. The amazing thing about LLMs is that they effectively “understand” the complexities of a language, contemplating its idioms, slang, and even nuances.

So, why should businesses care? The primary advantage of LLMs is their ability to automate and streamline operations. For example, they can assist in customer service as chatbots or digital assistants, respond to emails, summarize documents, and even draft reports. This not only saves time but also reduces the need for manual intervention.

In the context of decision-making, LLMs offer unprecedented insights by performing complex data analysis. They can sift through vast amounts of data, identify trends, and offer actionable insights, which would be practically impossible for humans due to sheer volume and complexity. This paves the way for data-driven decision-making, assuring decisions are not based on hunches but on solid data analytics.

To sum up, LLMs offer an innovative approach to tackling business process efficiency and decision-making bottlenecks, with their ability to understand and process human language at a vast scale. In a fiercely competitive business environment, integrating LLMs is increasingly becoming not a luxury, but a necessity.

MAKING THE FIRST MOVE: IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITIES FOR LLM INTEGRATION IN YOUR BUSINESS PROCESS


Deciding to integrate an LLM into business operations is one thing, but pinpointing where to introduce this technology can be a challenge in itself. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; businesses need to identify the processes most suitable for this innovation.

One way to navigate this challenge is to look into areas involving a large amount of text-based information processing. Customer support, for instance, often requires managing a vast quantity of text data through emails, chat platforms, and social media messages. LLMs can be used to automatically sort and respond to these communications, freeing up your staff for more complex tasks.

Similarly, the decision-making process can also benefit from LLMs. They could be used to analyse large pools of business data in textual forms such as reports, surveys, or customer feedback. LLMs can summarise these into digestible insights, so your decision makers can make more informed decisions fast.

Another ripe area for LLM integration could be routine and repetitive tasks, such as minute taking or report writing. LLMs can be trained to handle these tasks, maintaining consistency and precision, which human labour may falter in due to mental fatigue.

Lastly, remember that integrating LLM is a strategic move; it should add value and align with your overall business goals. Identify your business needs and target areas where process automation and faster decision-making could be beneficial. Evaluating your specific needs will help create a solid LLM integration plan for enhanced business efficiency and effective decision making.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTALLATION: IMPLEMENTING LLMS INTO YOUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS

 

Once you’ve identified the areas for LLM integration, the next step is the actual implementation, which can be outlined as a four-step process.

The first step involves setting clear objectives for your LLM implementation. This includes defining the specific tasks the LLM is expected to perform, establishing performance benchmarks for these tasks, and setting a timeline for achieving these goals. Remember, a well-defined goal is the first step towards successful implementation.

Next up is data acquisition and training. As LLMs rely heavily on data to learn and operate, it is crucial to supply them with high-quality, relevant data. This could be customer interaction histories, internal reports, or any other text rich data. Training an LLM with this data helps it understand the specific language patterns and nuances it’s likely to encounter in its operational environment.

The third step is to test the LLM in a controlled environment. Start by having your LLM perform its assigned tasks on a small scale. This prevents potential issues from causing major disruptions and allows you to monitor the LLM’s performance closely, tweak its settings, and optimize it for better results.

Finally, once you’ve confirmed that the LLM is performing up to expectations, you’re ready for full implementation. Start integrating it gradually into your business processes and closely monitor its impact.

Remember that this is not a one-and-done process; LLMs continue to learn and improve over time. Hence, it’s essential to continuously supply the LLM with new data and fine-tune the implementation as needed. With time and adjustments, your LLM can become a game-changing addition to your business operations.

MONITOR, ADJUST, IMPROVE: ENSURING LONG-TERM SUCCESS WITH YOUR LLM INTEGRATION

 

The real test of your LLM integration begins after full implementation. This is where the focus shifts to monitoring, adjusting and continuously improving the system. Consistent tracking of your LLM’s performance in the actual operational environment can provide insights into how well it’s aiding business efficiency and decision-making.

Yet, remember that even the best AI is not infallible. Bumps in the road can and will occur – inconsistencies may arise, and some tasks may not yield expected results. This is where your monitoring results guide you to make necessary adjustments. These adjustments could be anything from tweaking the LLM settings, retraining it with an enhanced data set, or even revisiting the original objectives if needed.

Finally, the beauty of AI and LLMs in particular is their ability to learn and improve over time. As more data feeds into the model and as your business evolves, the LLM should keep up, constantly learning and adapting. Therefore, assessing and refining your LLM is not just a one-off task but an ongoing process. It’s a journey to align the LLM to the shifting sands of your business landscape. It allows you to strive for continuous improvements, thereby paving the path for long-term success in your business.

FUTURE-PROOF YOUR BUSINESS: A CALL TO ACTION

 

Leveraging the power of Large Language Models can significantly streamline your business processes and decision-making strategies. If you’ve followed this guide meticulously, you are well on your way to harnessing the potential of AI for your business. These steps are not an event, they are the beginning of a transformative journey, one we at Attrecto Next Tech Digital Solutions are familiar with and have perfected over the years.

We have a track record in helping businesses achieve these transformations. Our dedicated team of AI developers, business analysts, and designers is poised to guide you through the process of integrating LLMs into your operations, from ideation to implementation, and to provide continuous support. With our end-to-end software solutions and AI services, amplifying your business efficiency and decision-making process is entirely achievable. Don’t wait – initiate your AI journey with us today and future-proof your business.

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Navigating the AI Revolution: A Business Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Potential

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Navigating the AI Revolution: A Business Leader's Guide to Unlocking Potential

NAVIGATING THE AI REVOLUTION: A BUSINESS LEADER’S GUIDE TO UNLOCKING POTENTIAL

 

In today’s fast-paced business world, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more than just a buzzword; it’s a revolutionary force reshaping how we conduct business. However, with this revolution comes a challenge – distinguishing the tangible benefits of AI from the surrounding hype. As a business leader, it’s crucial to navigate this landscape judiciously, leveraging AI not just as a technological marvel but as a tool for concrete business improvements.

THE AI OPPORTUNITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF HYPE


The opportunities presented by AI are truly limitless. From automating mundane tasks to providing insightful data analysis, AI has the potential to save money, increase efficiency, and significantly boost business performance. But there’s a catch: the hype. With endless news and possibilities flooding our feeds daily, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Without proper guidance, many businesses choose to sit back and wait, potentially falling behind their more proactive competitors. This paralysis by analysis is a real threat in the dynamic AI landscape.

 

EDUCATION WITH A BUSINESS ANGLE: SIMPLIFYING AI


The key to unlocking AI’s potential lies in education with a business-minded approach. It’s not just about understanding AI technologies but about appreciating how they can be harnessed to meet specific business goals. This approach demystifies AI, showcasing it as a suite of practical tools rather than an esoteric scientific concept. Our company plays a pivotal role here, offering customized AI solutions that align with your unique business objectives, helping you gain that competitive edge effortlessly.

 

GAINING A COMPETITIVE EDGE WITH AI

 

Take our LLM service as a case in point. It’s designed to enhance efficiency in reporting, document creation, and knowledge management. The outcome? Tangible business benefits like cost savings, improved efficiency, and a healthier bottom line. This is just one example of how AI, when strategically implemented, can transform the way businesses operate.

 

THE CHALLENGE OF CHOOSING THE RIGHT AI TOOLS

 

However, selecting the right AI tools is not always straightforward. The market is inundated with new tools and startups, each claiming unparalleled benefits. For business leaders, the challenge is twofold: identifying tools that offer genuine value and understanding how these tools align with their business strategies. This is where clear, business-focused guidance becomes invaluable.

 

FROM ENTHUSIASM TO PRACTICAL APPLICATION

 

We often encounter businesses brimming with enthusiasm for AI but lacking clarity on how it fits into their specific context. They know AI is important, but the path from excitement to practical application remains unclear. This is where our role becomes critical. Through our consulting, education, and AI development services, we help businesses translate AI enthusiasm into actionable strategies that align with and advance their business objectives.

 

THE FUTURE OF AI IN BUSINESS

 

Looking ahead, the intersection of AI, education, and business is poised for significant evolution. The most successful companies will be those that are ‘AI natives’ – seamlessly integrating AI into their business models, culture, and workflows. These companies won’t just use AI; they’ll think and operate in tandem with it, reaping benefits that are currently hard to even imagine.

 

CONCLUSION

 

As we continue to navigate the AI revolution, the distinction between hype and practical application will become ever more critical. Business leaders need to approach AI with a clear understanding of its tangible benefits and seek partners who can guide them through this complex yet rewarding journey. The future belongs to those who not only embrace AI but also understand how to harness its potential to redefine the very essence of their business operations.

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The Importance of Personal Touch in Business and Software Development Partnerships

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The Importance of Personal Touch in Business and Software Development Partnerships

As of 2020, we have entered into a new, far more digitalized age. Covid forced almost every area of our lives to adapt digital solutions or lag behind and suffer from the severe limitation of in-person interactions.

Before the pandemic, only a few experts had believed that digitalization would accelerate to the pace that we see today. As a result, we’re now living in a hybrid world where it’s still not easy to make sense of increasingly digitalized interactions and relations.

And this has affected sales, cooperation, and partnerships in the outsourced software development niche as well.

In this blog post, I look at how the shift towards more online and remote meetings have changed the way software developers and their customers connect and what ramifications it has on current business strategies, using some of Attrecto’s partnerships as examples.

MORE ONLINE SALES CALLS LEAD TO LOWER CONVERSION

 

Let’s start with the basic premise that we’ve discovered early on:

As the majority of meetings and sales calls were now taking place online as a result of the pandemic, the conversion rate of these calls started to decrease.

It wasn’t the lack of leads or prospects interested in outsourcing the development of their custom software. As the physical, in-person meetings were dropped, only to be replaced by online ones, it became increasingly difficult to convert these companies into partners and customers. Even in cases where a deal was eventually struck, the road leading to the signing of the contract was lengthy with lots of back-and-forth calls. When in-person was still available, one could progress much more smoothly and hammer out details in 2-3 meetings instead of half dozen or more online calls.

While you might already see where this is going, our business development team looked to the bottom of this to find out the underlying cause.

PERSONAL TOUCH STILL TRUMPS DIGITAL CONNECTIONS

 

The business development team managed to gauge our existing partners’ attitude towards online meetings. Then, they cross-referenced the results and what they established based on these observations was not surprising at all:

“Digital connections are tolerated, but neither embraced nor accepted.”

People of all walks of life – most of them without consciously knowing – are desiring the personal touch and are not satisfied or engaged by the illusion that is provided by the online replacements for meeting with and talking to others.

There’s a raw, instinctual need for a personal interactions that can be only realized and felt in-the-flesh. And if this need is not fulfilled, it affects the quality of connections and relationships negatively, even in the more calculated and logic-driven world of business. If the personal touch is not there to catalyse a connection, businesspeople will be less enthusiastic about the prospect of a deal and less trusting about the company they’re negotiating with.

 

THE COUNTERTREND AGAINST DIGITAL RELATIONSHIPS

 

“For every new trend, there’s a countertrend.”

The quote comes from a TED talk. And based on what we’ve seen from the trend of rampant digitalization, its wisdom is especially applicable to this situation.

As people crave connections both in their jobs and private life, and in turn are met with a trend that takes those away, replacing them with virtual ones that appear on screens and come across with slightly distorted voices, a new countertrend has emerged. One that seeks to counterbalance the sheer number of digital connections and online calls.

In business, it manifests as a drive to reimagine how partnerships can work in more natural ways and make business partners stay in touch and connect in-person as regularly as possible.

 

HOW PERSONAL CONNECTIONS LEAD TO BETTER BUSINESS


We have several such examples from the past; partnerships from the previous “age” that existed before the pandemic-induced wave of digitalization, and which show how a software development company can work as closely as possible with its partners.

For instance, our partnership with Telenor Norway dates back to 2013, when we began developing Mitt Telenor for them. We have been in constant touch with the team there as the project is a continues development of the software using our TaaS model. However, as soon as the cooperation began, our teams regularly visited each other’s offices to talk business and discuss the scope and design of the software, as well as the technologies and solutions that would be used to implement it. The product owner was basically working from Norway full-time.

Ultimately, the partnership has led to 120+ successful releases, and today there are more users of this app than that of the main corporate web platform, which offers the same functionalities. Throughout the partnership, we felt that Telenor Norway considers the TaaS team as part of their own team.

They also view Attrecto not as just another service (provider) but as a trusted partner and advisor in anything software related.

We’ve had similar partnerships based on mutual trust and close-knit cooperation. We didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight, we clearly see that these connections could be formed because the human need for personal touch and interactions was fulfilled, which built trust and demonstrated that the service provider has a full team of likeable and talented professionals who are ready to work on their problems. Just to name two such additional examples, for Aegon Hungary we’ve had an on-site team that worked from Aegon’s offices twice a week, while for E.ON, we’ve had our project manager in their office, constantly keeping touch with our partner and our tech team in our offices.

On the other hand, as I’ve mentioned this in the premise, even with some of the new clients that we’ve started working with during the pandemic, the scope of development was sometimes a lot smaller than with the partners mentioned above. Of course, the vast majority of our calls were online, and thus were mostly devoid of the personal touch. As a result, neither party could build trust as the client didn’t know us well enough to involve our teams in the more challenging projects.

 

CONCLUSION

 

As you can see, that personal touch is not something that’s only required in intimate relationships, as it practically determines the quality of business relationships as well, serving as a catalyst for closing deals and increasing trust as well as cooperation.

When the ability to cultivate these personal connections was taken for granted, we built connections that resulted in more business and enabled a more responsive, authentic, comprehensive, transparent, and real relationship with out partners. We could prove to them every day that some of the most talented individuals of the software development industry work at Attrecto. Professionals whose skills are in line with modern development standards and quality processes; they know them all as their talents have been honed at Attrecto. During the pandemic, because of the countertrend of people only tolerating but not embracing digitalization while desiring human touch, we couldn’t reach the level of trust where we could truly show off our teams’ state-of-the-art expertise.

Fortunately, now that the pandemic is coming to an end and in-person meetings happen more frequently once more, we’ve already seen an increase in enthusiastic engagement and a willingness to work more closely on the success of our newfound clients.

What were your experiences regarding the lack of personal touch in business during the worst months of the pandemic?

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Why Build High-Performing Offshore Teams?

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Why Build High-Performing Offshore Teams?

With a global shortage of ICT professionals, it’s becoming more and more difficult by the day for organizations to find developers and development teams that match their workstyle and deliver the solutions they need.

In a previous blog post, we explored how we counter this worldwide developer deficit and invest in the future. However, for companies that don’t have an in-house team yet, finding and recruiting tech talent to then build an experienced team from scratch seems like an impossible feat, especially with the current state of the IT industry in mind.

Outsourcing to nearshore or offshore partners certainly offers a feasible solution, but then again, it’s not easy to find the right partner that delivers digital solutions on time and in cost-effective ways.

In this blog post, we’ll specifically focus on building offshore teams, as we’ve had plenty of experience with organizations that chose Attrecto services from afar.

WHAT IS OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING?

 

Organizations usually require more than just a completion of software development tasks or a single project. In case of layered, long-term projects or complex systems of unique software products, they will most often look for an offshore development partner with years of experience and dozens of completed projects behind their backs.

In a nutshell, an offshore team serves as the organization’s extended, remote IT team. The offshore partner offers a cohesive team of software specialists, including cross-platform coders, UI/UX designers, QA professionals and support engineers, business operations experts, security auditors, and a project manager (if needed).

It’s no surprise that the offshore approach is hugely popular among international organizations with offices found across the world, as it allows these companies to boost development processes while ensuring that their high-quality digital products are developed according to state-of-the-art development standards at significantly lower prices.

PROS AND CONS OF OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING

 

ADVANTAGES

 

Employee retention

Compared to smaller development workshops, companies working on large-scale, custom software development for global brands offer their employees a lot more stability. IT professionals that join such teams are integrated into a solid development community with clearly defined roles. Additionally, substantial working benefits, consistent, “democratic” communication between teams, as well as extensive mentorship programs all ensure that the company can retain these people. On the client’s side, this is experienced in less employee attrition, quicker development, and more engagement from developers.

Improved commitment and transparency

As mentioned earlier, offshore outsourcing usually means long-lasting (and engaging) projects for software development teams. They’ll be working on these projects for years; from conceptualization through development to deployment, as well as post-release maintenance and development of new features. By achieving a deep understanding of client’s demands as well as the technologies and processes used to deliver products, these teams become experts in matching business requirements. Furthermore, regular review cycles and retros that assess progress, budgeting, employee performance, and business strategy among other KPIs help businesses acquire a detailed overview of the work done, allowing them to better estimate their expenses.

Reduced costs

Many leading, offshore software development companies can be found in Central and Eastern Europe where businesses who outsource their projects can reduce operational costs and other expenses due to lower labor costs or favorable government policies.

 

DISADVANTAGES

 

Language and cultural barriers

While certainly not a huge issue, and one that can be easily improved over time, both the contractor and the offshore company should be prepared for a few barriers that will have to be vaulted in the early stages of the partnership.

Time-zone differences

Just like with language or cultural barriers, finding and getting accustomed to the right work schedule between teams working in distant time-zones can be a challenge at first. However, it’s definitely not an issue that would affect development negatively.

Increased digital security costs

Harmonizing systems, development tools, and data storage and transfer methods will require additional investments in digital security. It is essential to make sure that data exchange between client and the offshore development team is safe and secure.

 

ATTRECTO’S ‘CASE STUDIES’ OF OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING

 

In our experience, large international companies and global brands are most likely to choose offshore outsourcing, as it is best suited for the layered, long-term projects they usually require. Moreover, it’s also preferable to these organizations because of the quick access to comprehensive software development teams, as well as the full control they can exert over development processes in a strategy and value-based model.

In these last 10 years, we’ve had several outstanding projects that we completed for our offshore partners in a Teams-as-a-Service (TaaS) setting. Below, you can glimpse at two of these product development projects and see how this model works in practice.

Centric Digital’s Internal Platform

 

We were tasked with developing a new platform for the client’s web application that models Centric Digital’s internal processes. In the beginning, we had two different tasks running side by side: establishing the foundations of a long-term project and delivering features with hard deadlines. Two new technologies had to be introduced, along with the team’s upscaling.

We recommended Angular.js, while CD requested Node.js technology during Sprint 0. It meant that the teams needed to be set up extremely quickly. Leading this highly diversified team – with in-house and external colleagues, backend, frontend, junior and senior developers – was also one of the greatest challenges of this project.

First, we developed a prototype to convince the client about our competences and, after that, we started product development. However, there wasn’t any tech lead on the client’s side in the beginning; consequently, they needed to rely on our expertise, which meant that the business expectations were adapted by our own technology experts. We dedicated a solution architect to manage these challenges, while also taking care of the infrastructure as well. Our automated deploy / build processes ultimately let us deliver the project quickly, and it also helped the QA team to provide the best quality code to the client.

When CD put their full professional trust in Attrecto, we established a smooth, productive, and highly cooperative working model that resulted in a scale-up operation of 25 developers over a 4-month period. Attentive planning ensured that the app’s modular design can be easily supported, maintained, developed, and extended. The primary business goal was successfully achieved: currently, the platform is the only app that CD uses internally for researching, analyzing, and planning processes.

Applied technologies and methodologies

  • Angular
  • Node
  • Microservice architecture
  • SonarQube for first-look testing
  • CI (continuous integration) and CD (continuous delivery)
 


Mitt Telenor – Telenor Norway’s Official Mobile Application

 

For Telenor Norway, we had to develop Mitt Telenor, a mobile application that provides the following functions:

  • Detailed cost-summary and overview on an individual or fleet (family) level
  • User-friendly dashboard for managing and administrating SIM cards and devices
  • Push notifications for device promotions and other service deals
  • Dashboard for subscriptions-related actions
  • Invoice payment
  • Recharging prepaid balances
  • And a shop-finder

The project started in 2013 and has been in continuous development using the TaaS model ever since. Within the same year, our team expanded from 3 to 8, with QA and a Project Manager included, as well as product owner working from Norway.

While we can’t say much about how we developed these functions, we opted to use agile processes based in the SCRUM methodology throughout these years, which allowed us to deliver deep integration with the client’s many mission-critical business processes and a pixel-perfect UI / UX design.

Currently, after 120+ deployed releases, there are more users of this app than that of the main corporate web platform, which offers the same functionalities. With approximately 700,000 unique users per month, and 100,000 daily users, the Mitt Telenor application is the main communication channel of Telenor Norway.

Applied technology and methodologies

  • Several iOS and Android versions built throughout the last 9 years
  • UI / UX planning and testing before any development tasks
  • Pixel-perfect UIs, identical on both platforms (app and web)
  • Currently in Swift and Kotlin, both being developed parallelly
  • Push notifications
  • Adobe Analytics, Audience manager, and Target integration
  • Unit test
  • MPV/VIPER architecture
  • Dependency injection
  • PromiseKit
  • Deep Linking, universal linking
  • CI/CD
  • Test-backend environment is unavailable, so we operate our own mock server
  • Continuous technical planning, building, and refactoring simultaneously at a consistently high quality 

 

WHY IS TEAMS-AS-A-SERVICE WORKING?

 

Ultimately, our Team-as-a-Service solution has proven to be a reliable and elegant solution for most of the problems CTOs, CIOs, or product managers face in the corporate world; namely, the lack of access to reliable developer resources. Here’s how we do it:

  • We provide skilled teams that work well with the client, not skilled individuals.
  • Our teams are quickly scalable (up or down).
  • We meet / beat US quality standards with a significant cost advantage (approx. 40%).
  • Teams optionally come with Project Managers, often with experience gained in multi-million-dollar projects.
  • Upon request and under certain restrictions, on-site resources are also available.
  • We provide not only the team, but the infrastructure and technology as well.
  • All teams are SCRUM-certified and use the agile approach, making the development process transparent, flexible, and efficient.
  • Monthly billing with transparent logging of hours per task.

If this blog post piqued your interest, and now you’re wondering whether your team (in-house or outsourced / remote) should work under the banner of a SCRUM master or a Project Manager, check out our high-level guide that will help make the right decision for the right.

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Building a Strategic Future with Next Generation Tech Talent

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Building a Strategic Future with Next Generation Tech Talent

What do you consider the quintessential element to building a solid, dependable future for a tech company?

 

Is it a steady stream of new clients and revenue? Or a sound, long-term strategy of expansion and the provision of high-quality services and state-of-the-art technology?

 

While both goals are required to ensure the growth of an IT organization, we believe that without a third element, these two cannot be implemented appropriately.

 

In our opinion, that element is raising the next generation of tech talent and securing a creative and skillful cadre of young professionals to carry on the torch and usher the company into the next era of digitalization and Information Technology.

 

How does Attrecto go about achieving this particular goal? Let’s take a look!

 

THERE ARE MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN AVAILABLE PROFESSIONALS

 

Currently, the world of Information and Communication Technology is gripped by a severe shortage of ICT professionals worldwide. By the end of 2020, more than 900,000 experts were missing in Europe alone, and that number was well above a million in the US. With the lingering pandemic and its transformative impact on the industry, as well as the ever-growing demand for talented developers, software engineers, and coders, these shortages have only become a lot more intensive.

The ICT industry was already extremely competitive, but now there’s a new gold rush for finding and recruiting these highly sought professionals before competitors do.

Some companies focus on well-established, experienced, medior or senior-level talent and try to bring them on board if they’re freelancers or convince them to switch workplaces.

On the other hand, some organizations are keeping an eye on the next generations who’re currently studying and taking their first steps in the world of coding and development.

Attrecto is one such organization that monitors these future generations and is willing to invest in their skill and personal development.

OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH THE SZÉCHÉNYI ISTVÁN UNIVERSITY

 

“The Greatest Hungarian,” Count István Széchenyi was an outstanding statesmen, politician, and a near unstoppable force for modernization and progress in 19th century Hungary. Bearing his name while honouring and continuing his incredible legacy, the University in Győr has become our committed partner in teaching and training students in the scientific art of software development.

Situated on the banks of the Danube, the university campus has recently undergone a massive infrastructural renewal including expansion of student accommodation capacities with the addition of two new, high-quality and well-equipped dormitories.

Together with the University’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Informatics, and Electrical Engineering, we are involved with helping students in Computer Science Engineering and Information Sciences programmes both in Hungarian and English.

Working with the university, we’ve created a unique university-industry collaboration where we host courses and step up as guest teachers and instructors. However, we’ve also established a unique, free programme, called Attrecto Academy for students who would like to go above and beyond the primary curriculum and hone their skills by solving IT problems and challenges in practice.

ATTRECTO ACADEMY

 

The concept of the Academy boils down to three main goals:

  • Teach the basics of IT to freshmen students and make them enthusiastic about continuing their studies
  • Help students master what they learn by applying that knowledge in a practical setting
  • Introduce Attrecto and show them how we develop digital solutions

Concerning the first point, we are focused on ensuring that these students experience success and the joy of coding and development. The goal here is not to push them into a crunch and make them professional developers in a single semester. On the contrary, we build these courses to help them develop skills while they grow to like the world of IT. And then, we can count on the fact that in 2-3 years, they will first join our team as valued interns for their mandatory internship, which is required for graduation, while after graduation, they become junior developers at Attrecto.

We’ve experienced an interesting phenomenon during our recruitment processes and the evaluation of new colleagues. Namely, those who have not attended the Academy need a lot more time and work to learn and understand the tasks of their position than Academy graduates, who have a much easier time getting up to speed as they settle in comfortably.

In the spring semester, we are launching four new, 6-week-long courses for students, focusing on the practical application of IT knowledge, as well as solving specific challenges that a developer usually encounters every day on the job:

  • Javascript / Angular (frontend)
  • NET (backend)
  • PHP / Laravel (backend)
  • Quality Assurance (software testing)

SECURING FUTURE TALENT

 

Ultimately, this is our “secret” recipe for building the company’s future: we help raise and secure the future talent needed for the industry-level projects we’re involved in.

Over the years, we’ve realized that it’s more beneficial for us to teach and train the next generations of IT professionals; to help them take their first steps in software development and give them the means to enjoy this profession profoundly.

We’re committed to investing in our talent – even 2-3 years before they become part of the Attrecto team – as it is also a significant investment in our future as a company, with an incredible ROI potential.

Whether they attend Attrecto Academy or complete their internships at us, they receive the same level of care, attention, and mentoring that our full-time colleagues do – which is a powerful incentive for many IT professionals to settle down with a company as they master technologies and development techniques.

And from what we can currently see, instead of trying to recruit the current best of best in IT, it’s significantly more advantageous for us to focus on and train the future best of the best who are currently attending university or professional training.

This is how we gain an edge over our competition; by securing future creative talent who will build the next-tech digital solutions. Digital products that delight end-users and prove that we are the strategic partners that stay to ensure that our partners remain at the top with state-of-the-art, customer-centric technology for years to come.

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Creating Impactful Personalization for Digital and Non-Digital Services

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Creating Impactful Personalization for Digital and Non-Digital Services

As the last installment in this review series of our final webinar from 2021, Leveraging Data to Drive Increased Personalisation and Empathy, we are going to see what is considered a good approach for creating a personalized journey in any industry. 

Our guest speaker for the webinar’s third and final presentation was Armin Gulber, co-founder and Design, and Digitization Lead at Nextwit, an agile start-up that helps companies big and small from a broad spectrum of industries in delivering intuitive data and digital initiatives. 

 And that’s the topic he chose to discuss quite elaborately, providing an insightful perspective on how to effectively personalize digital (and non-digital) services. 

THE CHALLENGES OF PERSONALIZATION

 

To better illustrate how most companies view personalization schemes, Armin used the analogy of a ship cruising the sea to find a bountiful island where it could land. 

Once it locates such an island on the horizon, it first has to navigate some treacherous, rocky waters before arriving at its destination. 

For a company initiating a personalization journey, the island is a combination of lucrative prospects, increased revenue, and improved organizational efficiency. And the rocks surrounding this place are the challenges and perceived obstacles that, if surmounted, will lead the company to achieve its business objectives. Such “obstacles” also include figuring out appealing offers for customers and designing a UI that users will love. 

However, most ships and their crews can’t see what’s going on under the waves and are oblivious to such factors. 

The same applies to most companies that are ready to embark on a personalization journey but are not mindful enough of such “hidden” challenges and aspects of personalization. 

So, what’s under the water, exactly? 

  • Open-minded culture: It’s one thing to get everybody on board with a personalization project, but people working on it have to feel that this is going to help and be open to change on an organizational level as well. Personalization is not exclusively about number crunching, and to succeed, companies must be perceptive and learn what their customers want exactly.
  • Explored and identified customer needs: Indeed, this is probably the most important prerequisite for personalization, yet it’s also the most overlooked aspect as well. The whole point of the journey is to provide a personalized experience to customers, yet it often occurs that companies focus too much on business goals without considering customer needs.
  • Robust and clean data: Whether our services are digital or not matters little in this regard, as well-structured and clean data sets will always be essential elements for transforming those services into personalized experiences.
  • Future-proof infrastructure: Legacy systems make it all but impossible – or highly difficult, at the very least – to achieve the desired business objectives. A spaghetti infrastructure will make the whole process much harder than it should be. Instead, a streamlined architecture design and some sleek, purpose-built tools of the trade will deliver results. 

RECOMMENDED APPROACH TO PERSONALIZATION

 

Now that we’ve scouted the waters surrounding the island and know what lies beneath, we need a course of action to reach our destination safely. 

Armin brought forward Nextwit’s suggested order for approaching personalization: 

  1. Business objectives: Define early on the “why” of personalization: what are the goals the company wants to achieve through this project? 
  2. Explore customer needs: Learn how your customers go about their business when using your systems right now, how they deal with their challenges, what their exact issues are. Then start mapping out ways you can help them with their problems and come up with viable solutions and alternatives. 
  3. Robust and clean data: Through well-structured data, you can understand what’s needed to build and deliver propositions that your customers want or provide them with trustworthy and relevant information.
  4. Appealing offers: Specific propositions that can be tailored to individual customers from the patterns of collected and processed data. These are the offers the company needs to communicate to its customers in a personalized way. 
  5. Loveable UI / UX: While highly important, and it helps immensely with Customer Experience and customer satisfaction, the deeper layers of system design have to come first. 
  6. Future-proof infrastructure: This stage is all about selecting the right tools and software that best serve the processes you want to create. 
  7. Open-minded culture: Last but not least, you need to figure out how to incorporate the mindset of personalization on an organizational level. What Nextwit discovered is that companies need early successes to change the company’s culture. Without tangible benefits and results that make people open and positive about these changes, it just won’t succeed. 

A FEW CAUTIONARY TALES 

 

Armin brought some case studies as well to show how the failure to meet these personalization perspectives can derail, delay, or disrupt a personalization journey entirely. 

Merging Service Providers

 

Missing aspects: Open-minded culture, Robust and clean data, Explored customer needs

Two service providers went through a merger and began looking for synergies straight away. As a business objective, they wanted to increase revenue by targeting and reaching each other’s customers. They implemented a rushed communication campaign and tried to provide appealing offers but didn’t realize that they’d had raw, unrefined data about their customers’ needs and interests. Offers were dispatched to the wrong segments, some customers received the same offer over and over again, which ruined personalization.

Their personalized eDM campaigns eventually failed due to low conversion rates and bad CX.

Digital Content Provider 

Missing aspects: Future-proof infrastructure, Robust and clean data, Explored customer needs 

The company sought to launch a new app and was very confident about its understanding of personalization. They were fully focused on creating a shiny frontend for the app but didn’t do much with the spaghetti architecture in the back. A jumbled IT stack makes the use of data in personalization schemes difficult and overcomplicates processes of measuring and monitoring results and KPIs. Furthermore, as customer needs were not explored, the company failed to realize that their users were more interested in the quantity of content than how it was presented through recommendations. 

In the end, the management seemed doubtful if the new app would deliver the financial results they’d hoped for. 

Financial Service Provider 

Missing aspects: Future-proof infrastructure, Robust and clean data 

A mammoth financial service provider wanted to increase operational efficiency by moving all its data to digital channels, as it was struggling with its legacy systems that also severely limited customer options. They intended to launch digital self-care solutions which required the presentation of personalized information, however, due to technological debt incurred through said legacy systems, it led to a host of issues, including cases where customers found misleading or incorrect data about services (e.g. billing). The company meant well, but its systems were so obsolete that it made the smooth transition to digitally personalized solutions all but impossible. Instead, they should have started the process with data cleansing; using data virtualization tools that could bundle up all the fragmented data and organize it, which wouldn’t be a huge investment when done smartly. 

Physical Industry (Agriculture) 

Missing aspects: Open-minded culture, Robust and clean data, Explored customer needs 

Slowly, most companies in physical operations are starting to realize they generate enormous amounts of data that can be utilized in their sales processes. Such was the case with a company dealing in agricultural products; at first, they didn’t want to understand that personalization could help their efforts. They knew they had the data and sought to provide a digital solution with great UI but overlooked that they could take it a step further, see what their customers are doing, and tailor the solution to their needs. In this case, by processing data about generations of seeds, soil composition, weather, and more, then comparing such patterns to data gathered from the fields of neighbouring farmers, they could help their customers pick the best seed, soil, equipment, and agricultural technique that best suits their unique circumstances. 

Data can be easily applied to digital surfaces for differentiating experiences , so prototyping with real data can help in these situations to get a better grasp on customer needs. 

AN ITINERARY FOR PERSONALIZATION

 

All in all, if you consider all seven perspectives of personalization, even those that are “hidden” and can’t be perceived as easily as frontend and coming up with good offers, the journey itself from inception to implementation and launch shouldn’t become a multi-year project.

As a closing, Armin explained Nextwit’s tried and proven approach that they suggest to their clients:

  1. Solution health check: New ideas or existing solutions can be reviewed from business, design, and data perspectives within 2-4 weeks.
  2. Rapid prototyping with data: Test your concept with data-driven prototypes and tools to learn what works well. Modify the concept if needed and plan the implementation.
  3. Launch, measure, and iterate: Create a culture that supports product innovation fuelled by customer feedback and data.

Nextwit can help in all three stages: workshop facilitation, research, and data modeling during the solution health check, by providing prototype construction and data virtualization when prototyping, as well as creating or tweaking decision-supporting tools and providing training post-launch.

If this last blog post on our final 2021 webinar piqued your interest and you’d like to learn more, head over here and watch the presentations at your own leisure!

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Brands Building Human Relationships with Customers

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Brands Building Human Relationships with Customers

During our webinar, Leveraging Data to Drive Increased Personalisation and Empathy, Lili Kunfalvi, Ynsight’s Market Research professional delved into the depths of the human psyche to see how people derive identity from the products they buy and the brands they prefer.

 

In this blog post, we’re going to go through some of her enlightening points to see just how human-like our relationships with our favorite (or most despised) brands can be!

PRODUCTS PLAY A PSYCHOLOGICAL ROLE

 

At this point, with Artificial Intelligence sifting through an innumerable amount of data every day, it is common knowledge that companies have at least a decent guess about your preferences about the products they offer.

Taking it a step further, however, we can see that today’s technology and understanding of psychology can also enable brands to guess some of their personality traits based on the consumer goods they buy or use.

They do this while most of us still think in a very practical way about our product purchase and use; I bought that car because it fit into my current budget, I ordered that winter coat for the skiing trip next month, I prefer that type of food because it’s healthy, etc.

But the thing is, even when choosing and settling on these products, we also make these choices based on the kind of identity we’d like to possess or show to the world. It can be a very conscious decision or it can hide beneath the practical thoughts on a subconscious level, however, there’s no doubt about the phenomenon that brands and products help us construct, express, and enhance our identities.

In other words, when we buy or use the products from a particular brand, the associations related to that brand are automatically transferred to us.

For example, when money is not a limiting factor, and someone is ready to buy a new car, he or she can consider a jeep or an elegant city car, like a Mercedes for purchase. The jeep generally exudes an aura of adventurousness; it is built for off-road environments, traditionally masculine features are associated with it, and it implies that its driver is probably going on exciting trips quite often.

On the other hand, the Mercedes looks sleek, elegant, and stylish. When we look at it and see its driver sitting inside, we can easily imagine the person having a remarkable record of successful businesses or career paths. And whether the driver is indeed a successful businessperson or not is kind of irrelevant in this consideration, since what matters is that he or she successfully projects that identity through his or her car.

All in all, the key takeaway here is that we as consumers take up roles and identities using the products we buy. But this is not a static phenomenon. Just because someone buys a Mercedes, it doesn’t mean she’s not adventurous. Once again, putting financial constraints aside, a consumer could go to work in a Mercedes during the week as an elegant businessperson, but on the weekend she hops into a jeep and goes to explore the countryside or drive up mountainous regions.

One additional note to make here is that the connection between our identities and our possessions can sometimes be so strong that an unfortunate loss of such object or possession might feel like a loss of identity as well. 

IDENTIFY  MANAGEMENT AND CONNECTION WITH CONSUMER PRODUCTS

 

To better understand which areas can be improved by the inclusion of AI technology, we have to first know what we mean by customer experience and what we can do about it to make it better for our target audience.

CX is the combined interactions and emotions that a customer has in connection with a company. It is the combination of both pain and pleasure when a consumer is using a product or service – or is inquiring about one.

And what we often see (as customers) from what CX is, we usually only perceive (or encounter) the very tip of the iceberg. And in the case of the technology involved, it is mostly the front end of it.

But there’s a lot more to CX below that we don’t see, even when we’re already using the product. Customer service, billing, technical support, account management, logistics, and many more can be found below the surface.

UX is still just one of these elements. It needs to be well planned out and executed, but in no way it is the only determining factor that can result in great CX.

And it’s very important to note that the majority of customer data necessary to discover impactful insights are hidden there, but AI provides the capacity to mine this data and leverage it in the delivery of superior customer experiences.

There are three ways products exert a psychological function over our identity:

  • Symbolic self-completion: Consuming products in order to compensate for self-perceived inadequacies in identity.
  • Symbolic group membership: Signifying group affiliation, e.g. first-year students buying university merchandise or mascots to show that they belong there, but can be associated with any kind of affiliation (political party, social class, sex/gender).
  • Symbolic differentiation: Picking products that reflect the person’s uniqueness.

Brands exploit these symbolic functions in how they portray and advertise their products. They create different associations that will attract specific customers. For instance, one watch brand speaks to more adventurous, young people, another for affluent, elegant individuals that want to show off their wealth through luxurious products, and another that combines a bit of both world: elegant, sleek, but can be worn in any setting.

The key here is that these brands want to portray their products as items that are integral to their consumers’ identity, where each watch symbolizes a different identity.

BRAND SCHEMA FOR CREATING ASSOCIATE LINKS 

 

A brand schema is a set of associations linked to a brand. In other words, they are the mental representation of brands; the qualities, values, and beliefs associated with the brand itself.

They work in the way of attaching highly human attributes to a product and its brand to show how they “behave” in the world. Touchpoints that these attributes are communicated through are varied; from advertisements through scandals to price and logo, it can be virtually anything that tells something about the product or brand.

For instance, when we buy a bottle of Coca Cola, we don’t know the people who produced that or decide on the company policies, but we can glean information about them through the packaging, the quality, the colors, the logo, as well as any news related to them.

HOW DO WE JUDGE BRANDS?

 

When making our minds up about people, we usually do it by measuring them through two perceptual dimensions: warmth and competence.

And we do the very same in the case of brands. With human-like traits attributed to brands, it becomes easier for our brains to judge those the same way as we measure other people.

So, warmth is connected to the intentions of a person or brand; how trustworthy, kind, generous, helpful, nice do they seem?

And the dimension of competence is their ability to act on these intentions. Subconsciously, we’re assessing a person’s or brand’s strength, status, resources, etc. compared to our qualities.

Interestingly, we use these dimensions to “judge” everything around us, including pets, friends, lovers, family members, strangers, politicians, celebrities, and the list goes on.

And where these dimensions meet, they together stimulate a predictable set of behaviors and emotions, which can also be directed not just towards people (or living beings in general), but concepts like brands as well.

Assessing a brand as warm and competent, triggers emotions of admiration and pride, which makes us attracted or want to be affiliated with a brand. While a cold but competent company brings forth envy and jealousy, which can either lead to the obligatory association or a form of sabotage. For instance, luxury brands often evoke such behaviors in consumers, and in this case, sabotage means talking about the brand as a symbol of affluent, uncaring wealth.

On the other hand, the emotional response of warm incompetence is sympathy and pity, which can make people approach a brand patronizingly. Ultimately, it either transforms into an intention (and action) to help that organization somehow or into social neglect. Many non-profit or international organizations (relief, wildlife protection, etc.), unfortunately, suffer from this brand image.

And lastly, there’s cold incompetence that evokes contempt and disgust in people. They will reject and avoid the products and services of such brands, wanting nothing to do with them.

HOW DO WE ESTABLISH HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS WITH BRANDS? 

 

Just like in the case of any other connections we create over our lives, our relationships with brands are malleable and dynamic. Brands can befriend or offend us, and then they can either do something that will make us forgive them or antagonize us further until our behavior is all about enmity to that particular brand (never doing business with it).

But what’s important to note here is that a brand is not a passive object of marketing transactions, but actually is a contributing member of a relationship dyad, where the brand acts through the actions (or inaction) of the decision-making executives as well as the marketing team communicating those decisions and the brand image itself.

We’ve collected an exciting sample of meaningful relationships a person can have with a brand:

  • Casual friendship: Sporadic but pleasant interactions with a brand with a few expectations for reciprocity.
  • Arranged marriage: Non-voluntary use of the brand, imposed by the preferences of a third party (e.g. spouse prefers a different coffee brand and we keep buying from that brand).
  • Secret affairs: While on a diet we’re supposed to drink only water, but we ‘cheat’ on the diet by sometimes drinking Coca-Cola.
  • Flings: Trying out something new for a short-term period (e.g. beauty products offered as gifts in malls).
  • Childhood friendships: When we were small children and loved a particular product that we’re not using anymore, however, seeing them again evokes nostalgia.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 

In conclusion, Lili presented the key takeaways of her presentation, the premise of which was that customers choose brands that match their ideal identity.

But to create brands that construct, narrate, and enhance their customers’ identities, they need successful targeting to collect relevant psychological data about them: if they have valuable information of their audience’s preferences, personality, attitude, and beliefs, they can draw insight about their needs, motivations, and even desires. Ultimately, it helps cement the brand as a cultural icon by empowering related associations between it and the identity the consumer wants for him or herself.

Lili recommended every participant think about their brand as a person and use social media to strengthen the likeness between brand and person. Last but not least, she had a great piece of advice on how brands can maximize customer loyalty!

Interested to learn this secret? Watch the presentation right here!

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How Can Machine Learning Technology Improve Customer Experiences?

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Attrecto team

How Can Machine Learning Technology Improve Customer Experiences?

In our most recent webinar, Leveraging Data to Drive Increased Personalisation and Empathy, our speakers discussed a great deal relating to relationships between brands and customers, personalisation, as well as the increased role of technology in driving CX initiatives.

Our very own CEO, Gergely Kiss was the one to speak about the vital role AI and Machine Learning play in shaping customer experiences. So, without further ado, let’s see what his thoughts are on this topic!

CX IN A NUTSHELL

 

To better understand which areas can be improved by the inclusion of AI technology, we have to first know what we mean by customer experience and what we can do about it to make it better for our target audience.

CX is the combined interactions and emotions that a customer has in connection with a company. It is the combination of both pain and pleasure when a consumer is using a product or service – or is inquiring about one.

And what we often see (as customers) from what CX is, we usually only perceive (or encounter) the very tip of the iceberg. And in the case of the technology involved, it is mostly the front end of it.

But there’s a lot more to CX below that we don’t see, even when we’re already using the product. Customer service, billing, technical support, account management, logistics, and many more can be found below the surface.

UX is still just one of these elements. It needs to be well planned out and executed, but in no way it is the only determining factor that can result in great CX.

And it’s very important to note that the majority of customer data necessary to discover impactful insights are hidden there, but AI provides the capacity to mine this data and leverage it in the delivery of superior customer experiences.

DOMINANT TRENDS IN CX

Currently, there are two major trends in CX that are in the focus for technological developments:

Individual customer management and predictive personalization.

And these trends create a cycle. With more and more customer data being generated because of increased computer and smartphone use, it becomes easier to provide personalized services. And because of smoother and more efficient customer management and the successful anticipation of customer needs (which are then subsequently met), companies receive more interactions from which they can gain more customer data to be processed and analyzed.

As for why companies are doing this is because they have realized that treating customers well is the best way to retain the ones who are already doing business with them, improve their satisfaction levels (also needed to bring in new customers), and increase cross-selling and up-selling. No wonder that these are the top three reasons for businesses that are proactively investing in improving their CX initiatives: if all three areas are addressed appropriately, the bottom line and ROI will be impacted very positively.

As for personalization itself, it helped with bringing in a new approach to customer segmentation. Instead of groups of people based on demography, we can now have a single person be a separate, unique segment, enabling much greater personalization.

Predictive analysis helps with this, as it anticipates what users will do within the system, and then provide them with useful interactions that they want and need at that particular point of their journey.
In other words, the company is trying its best to find out who you are and what you’d like to achieve… and then deliver that to you without having to tell it yourself

SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING IN CX

 

There’s an insane amount of data being generated every day. Several years ago, it was estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data was the daily figure and that got only ever higher since. Much of it is customer data, and whether we like it or not, hundreds of thousands of businesses could be storing data about us in data silos across the world. Data that is aimed at finding out who we are and what we are doing on a website.

While unfortunately, it’s easy to use this data for bad purposes, for now, let’s focus on how an ethical business can utilize it for understanding their customers better, building better relationships with them, and delivering them both the products/services and CX they prefer.
 

And that is why they need AI and its Machine Learning (ML) functionalities. To make sense of impossibly huge sets of data and use those for predictive personalization, for instance, ML is vital.

Let’s approach this from a practical standpoint and see some great examples of how ML can improve CX.

Credit Card Companies’ Anti-Fraud Algorithms

Visa or MasterCard, for example, are using online learning algorithms to detect fraud. They go through millions upon millions of data points each day with neural network systems running in the background. And these networks can ‘feel’ (or rather, compute) when something fishy happens. How? It basically ‘sees’ that the data points of a fraudulent transaction do not match the ordinary patterns that were compiled from those billions of data points.

Although the companies won’t know what the problem is in an instant, they will be alerted to the problematic incident and then investigate.

 

Netflix’s or Amazon’s Recommendations Engine

There was a story some years ago, where Netflix offered $1 million USD to the team that could best predict what the customers wanted to watch next after finishing a show.

Today, 75% of programs watched on Netflix are watched because they were recommended.

While at Amazon, 35% of purchases also happen because of recommendations either based on the customer’s previous choices or other people’s purchases who also bought the same item. Given the insane amount of revenue generated by purchases at Amazon, just imagine how much can be attributed to those suggestions!

Disney’s Magic Band

 
A physical example, but in Disney parks you simply put this band on and then use it for virtually any interaction: you can enter and pay with it, you know where you are at the moment, and you’ll also be recommended nearby programs and routes based on where you checked in previously

Progressive’s Telemetry System

 
By installing this system in your vehicle, you get a shot at driving down your insurance costs. It will monitor and analyse your driving habits, taking that into account when calculating your insurance premium. Drivers who engage in risky and haphazard behavior won’t see a decline in their costs, but if you drive carefully and mindfully, you will get to pay less!

Chatboss Chatbots

 
Attrecto sister company, ChatBoss develops chatbots for HR departments to help with recruitment and internal communication. Although chatbots are not the most sophisticated pieces of AI tech in the world yet, they can be a great help for more introverted job seekers who are more at ease chatting than making calls. This broadens the horizon for HR as well, as they get more applicants and with less work involved.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 

Gergely closed his presentation with these takeaways:

CX is becoming increasingly important for companies, as a major differentiating factor that makes them stand out as businesses is how they treat their customers. The focus of investments and technological advancements in all about treating the customer right, as not only that will result in satisfied customers who buy more often, but create a loyal brand image that is attractive to current and prospective clients alike.

While automation was a big thing in the last decade, in CX it wasn’t the best trend to follow. Fortunately, instead of going in the direction of over-automation, companies are moving towards making personalized experiences as unique and widespread as they possibly can.

If you’ll allow this personal recommendation, then we suggest checking out Gergely’s presentation and hearing him discuss this at length. And while you’re there, listen to Lili Kunfalvi as she talks about the way brands can build relationships that makes their customers happy, satisfied, and loyal, and Armin Gulbert as well as he dives deep to show what an effective personalization journey looks like.

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Celebrating Customer Centricity with ARCET Global

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Attrecto team

Celebrating Customer Centricity with ARCET Global

It all started with an apartment purchase.

Mark Hamill, the CEO of ARCET Global met our Chief of Business, Benedek, in our hometown and HQ of Győr. Mark was looking for an apartment to buy, and Benedek was incidentally selling his. Naturally, as business-minded people they discussed work, and they quickly realized that there’s a significant overlap in both organizations’ portfolio: customer experience forms the core of our companies’ mission, and a customer-centric mindset permeates both ARCET and Attrecto. It became obvious that there’s plenty of room for cooperation.

This story occurred last August, and since then much has happened. Yes, Mark bought Benedek’s apartment, but their meeting has set other things in motion as well.

We signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November last year, and today Attrecto is heavily engaged in helping ARCET in setting up two of the largest celebrations of CX in Europe and North America: the European and North American Customer Centricity Awards, organized by none other than ARCET Global

But before we jump into the awards, let’s see who ARCET Global is and what they do exactly!

Helping Organizations Do Better, Customer-Centric Business

 

ARCET Global was founded on the simple yet hard-to-master tenet of aiding organizations of all kinds become better at their business through learning, recognition, and the building of business communities. They enable clients and partners to create customer-centric business practices that lead to amazing, personalized CX, which ultimately makes customers come back for more.

They are a group of professionals celebrated for their expertise in CX-driven and customer-centric solutions; they are truly passionate about improving business through transformational events, awards, and training.

But how do they accomplish all this?

They run recognition programmes across the world and provide training as well as additional CX programmes. In our partnership, for example, recognition plays a major role, as we promote the Awards to our existing customer base, while ARCET promotes Attrecto (and other partners) at the Awards themselves – as well as during the marketing campaigns that lead up to them.

Specifically in Europe, ARCET works with a broad network of companies, including consultancy firms, financial institutions, media and marketing agencies, and even IT companies like us.

Challenges in Central Eastern Europe

 

We asked Mark about the common challenges that companies face in our broader region of Central Europe and Central Eastern Europe. With what sort of problems do companies hailing from around here approach ARCET?

The answer was hard-hitting: it’s the lack of customer-centricity stemming from a systemic and mentality-related structure of roadblocks.

Sure enough, we’re talking about a region that was part of the Eastern Bloc until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Customer focus was never a true concern of any business that operated in the bloc’s unique economic and political constellation. Nevertheless, the issue is rooted deeper than a historical heritage that is slowly being left behind.

When it comes to Customer Experience in the CEE region, it certainly falls flat as a result of a lack of empathy. This is systemic from the management who deem people as ‘workers’ as opposed to people. This lack of empathy is passed onto the customers in almost every customer interaction, which leads to friction and lowers the likelihood of complaints being dealt with properly or professionally, too.

As such, it comes as no surprise that this region is lagging behind in customer-centric solutions compared to the rest of the world. And yet although CX is quite new around here, and organizations still have a lot of catching up to do, they’re going on about it at a relatively quick pace.

And since those decades of experience that the rest of the world gained compared to this region is palpable, there is a desire in most companies in CEE to perform better and become customer-focused. However, another obstacle blocking progress is that CX professionals are still in shortage around here.

Mark told us that organizations from the CEE region come to them to learn how to accomplish a full-scale CX transformation. They want to become customer-centric from marketing through sales to operations in order to bring in a steady stream of customers. The problem is that they often get no qualified support from leadership – not because they don’t want to, but simply because they don’t know-how.

Educating organizations on CX and teaching how to acquire and retain new customers is one of the most sought-after services that ARCET offers. However, success in this regard is not possible without the proper recognition, which brings us to the importance of the Customer Centricity Awards.

The Customer Centricity Awards

 

ARCET Global organizes three Awards annually: the European, the North American, and the World Series Customer Centricity Awards.

In a nutshell, all these events are among the largest virtual CX knowledge-sharing events in both Europe and North America; 2 entire days of celebration filled to the brim with business practice stories, more than 100 real-world case studies, thought-provoking presentations, and incredible networking opportunities.

The idea is to get these organizations together – both big and small – and allow them to learn the best ways from one another and see how a CX transformation can make any company a truly customer-centric organization.

But how does it work exactly?

For each entry, a comprehensive case study is required that describes what the participant organization has been doing lately in terms of customer experience; what was that pioneering new strategy, practice, or trend that they initiated, implemented, and which led to a much more customer-focused operation?

After receiving all the entries, ARCET picks the finalists who are usually announced a month after the entry deadline. The finalists then have to bring their case study to life and show it via a video presentation.

As such, the conference itself becomes a veritable treasure trove of customer experience best practices (with over 30 hours’ worth of video content), stories, and ideas. During the finals, where all the video presentations are exhibited, an independent panel of judges score the finalists’ entries, picking the best of the best in customer-centricity.

With over 400 participants from well over 100 organizations, the conference presents an incredible opportunity to share knowledge and learn from peers from a multitude of industries.

Of course, due to COVID-19, the Awards have been forced into virtual space since last year, but that didn’t take away from the luster of the event. If anything, it made it possible for even more interested CX enthusiasts from across the globe to join the conference and learn. ARCET also brought an award-winning production house on board, who will be directing and producing the Awards Ceremony of both events this year. Furthermore, every video presentation will be accumulated on an online portal and made available for free to attendees for up to 7 days after the event. 

As for us, we will attend both the European as well as the North American Customer Centricity Awards, with a bit more focus on getting ready for the European CC Awards which is coming this September. Last year, the Awards boasted 32 countries from all over Europe, which meant that all European countries were represented. And that is actually not a big surprise, given that the European CC Awards is known as THE CX Awards conference in the continent.

ARCET is expecting the same number of countries, organizations, and participants this year as well from industries such as telecom, utilities, finance, insurance companies, retail, and even hospitality.

And what does the CEO hope from this year’s Customer Centricity Awards series?

Mark explained that education is the driving principle behind the Awards. They are aiming to provide as many opportunities for knowledge-sharing as possible in order to help all participants and organizations level up their CX and gain the recognition they deserve. The idea is to sit down and learn best practices in CX, which they then can use to achieve their business goals. And all the while, the entire conference is meant to be a pleasant, enjoyable, and captivating experience (could it be any other way from grandmaster CX teachers?) where participants can build new business connections.

The World Series Awards

 

That’s the gist of the Customer Centricity Awards that we’re helping to promote to our clients and partners. But what about the World Series event?

It’s the World Cup in customer-centricity.

The World Series Awards hosts winners from the two regional awards in spring each year – this means that the winners of the European and North American Awards in 2021 will have the chance to face off at the World Series event come spring 2022. However, you can also tune in to this year’s World Series Awards next month, on 18 and 19 May.

If you’re interested in any of the CC Awards, make sure to add these dates to your calendar!

 

European Customer Centricity Awards

North American Customer Centricity Awards

World Series Customer Centricity Awards

Registration / Entry Deadline

6 May 2021

3 June 2021

 

Finalists Announced

3 June 2021

1 July 2021

 

Virtual Conference

15 September 2021

27 October 2021

18 May 2021

Virtual Awards Ceremony

16 September 2021

28 October 2021

19 May 2021

Naturally, we are more than excited about the coming months and what they mean for us as well the world of Customer Experience. The scope of these CC Awards is breathtaking; they truly showcase the world’s most customer-centric companies as well as the practices that elevate them above all others in providing amazing CX.

In the meantime, we will be preparing and making sure our own CX-driven solutions continue to meet the high standards of these events.

Visit ARCET’s website to see how they can help you perfect your CX in order to bring in and retain customers!

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Scrum master vs project manager? A high-level guide for making the right decision.

Designer team's role in creating business value
Picture of Attrecto team

Attrecto team

Scrum master vs project manager? A high-level guide for making the right decision.

The Manager and the Master: Choosing Between A Scrum Master and Project Manager

If you’re transitioning from a waterfall to an Agile model of software development, you might be wondering about the roles of scrum master vs project manager.

What’s the difference between the two roles, and aren’t they basically the same thing? Isn’t a scrum master just an Agile project manager? In short: No, they’re not the same, and it’s essential to be clear what the responsibilities of each position are in project management.

While there are many similarities between the role of project manager and scrum master, the differences are more than just semantics.

You can’t employ one person to act as both scrum master and project manager. Similarly, if you’re moving from a waterfall development method to Agile, don’t just rename your project manager as “scrum master.” Adopting an Agile methodology is about much more than just changing the language you use.

Agile project management is quickly becoming the industry standard for good reason. But some web and app development companies are adopting Agile practices without having a sound understanding of the 12 Agile software development principles.

Likewise, the term “scrum master” has become somewhat of a buzzword, and more and more teams are employing one. But having a scrum master doesn’t necessarily negate the need for a project manager.

Scrum master vs Project manager. Color image showing the main differences between traditional and agile team building
The main differences in the structure of the agile and traditional teams.
The role of a project manager has fallen out of fashion somewhat, but it’s still a vital and necessary role for most teams. The project manager performs functions and responsibilities that are beyond the scope of the role of scrum master and vice versa. So let’s take a look at each of these specific roles, in turn, to get a better idea when each is needed and the individual skillset needed to excel in each role.

What Does a Scrum Master Do?

The scrum master sits between the development team and the customer’s requirements, supporting the product owner, and coaching the team.

Rather than acting as manager, the scrum master’s role is more facilitator. They act as “supports”, guides, observers, and protector and nurturer of ideas and processes within the scrum.

The scrum master is a servant leader for the scrum team, meaning that they focus on the needs of the team so they can serve the customer better.

The scrum master is not involved in decision-making, and so their role is narrower than that of the project manager. The scrum master is responsible for:

  • Making sure all members of the project team understand the scope and goals of the project.
  • Helping them to organize themselves and work together to get their jobs done as efficiently as possible
  • Helping to remove obstacles that are slowing the team down, such as slow or unnecessary approval or processes and outdated hardware.
  • Handling development tasks as requirements change.
  • Relaying information about development status and progress to the project stakeholders.
  • Supporting and guiding the product owner (who may also be the project manager) and working together to design product backlog items for the next sprint.
  • Facilitating the daily scrum meeting.
  • Promoting and supporting the scrum framework as defined in the scrum guide and helping everyone to understand and follow scrum implementation, theory, practices, rules, and values.
Colorful picture shows the four main responsibilities of a Scrum Master
Responsibilities of the Scrum Master.
A scrum master doesn’t plan, doesn’t manage, and ultimately isn’t responsible for the project’s success or failure. Their priority is to help the development team focused on their main priority: creating the best product they can.

What Does a Project Manager Do?

The project manager’s role, on the other hand, is to communicate directly with the customers, allocate tasks to the development team, and make decisions that affect the project.

Some of the key responsibilities of the project manager include:

  • Understanding the project scope and creating the project plan.
  • To manage the work, budget, resources, and project timeline.
  • Allocating tasks to team members and ensuring they get done in the allotted time.
  • Reporting to stakeholders and leadership on the state and progress of the project.
  • Communicating and coordinating with multiple development teams.
  • Managing and mitigating risks.
  • Managing the relationship between the customer and the stakeholders.
  • Ensuring the quality of the final project and that it meets the customer requirements.
Colorful picture display the main responsibilities and tasks of a Project Manager
Project Manager’s main tasks.
In many organizations, a single project manager works with several scrum teams, but each team should have its own scrum master.

Scrum Master Vs Project Manager - Which one do you need?

Project manager and scrum master are both important roles. But how do you decide which of these positions you need to hire for?

You need a scrum master if:

  • You already have a product owner in-house, and you want to break down the development into smaller tasks.
  • You are using an Agile methodology exclusively.
  • Your developers can self-organize and work without strong supervision.

You need a project manager if:

  • You want to give decision-making authority to a designated person.
  • You are using a mixed methodology or using Agile practices in waterfall projects.
  • You need someone who can maintain your backlog, task list, and administration.

    In summary, the two roles have fundamentally different focuses and viewpoints. To attempt to cross or merge the roles would produce a conflict of interest.

    The project manager’s focus is on the project and making it a success, whereas the scrum master’s priority is the team and ensuring their success.

    Ultimately, the project manager answers to the customer and must prioritize their needs along with the interests of the development company or organization as a whole.

    The scrum master, on the other hand, is responsible for encouraging, supporting, and enabling the team to produce the best product they can, shielding them from disturbances and threats. This includes any disturbances from the customer or other project stakeholders.

    Our approach:

    Regardless if it is a Scrum Master or a Project Manager who guides you through the project, here at Attrecto we always provide the most relevant support to our clients. Throughout the last decade we always kept up with the market changes and adopted the latest (proven) trends to best meet the business needs and requirements of our clients. That is why besides a waterfall approach, where the team is led by a PM, we also provide agile methodology (already since 2012), with seasoned Scrum Masters.

As at the “first step” at the very beginning of each project, we have a consultation phase, when we perform deep client interviews, with the purpose of finding out the most about the client’s business needs , the project’s complexity and the underlying tech-stack (if already available).

After we get a more comprehensive and accurate assessment, we can decide which approach best fits for the client and the project.

Generally, we go on with an Agile methodology when the requirements are not “set in stone” by the customer. In this methodology, clients may even ask for changes in the requirements during the development process. With this strategy and the comfort of the Scrum Master’s (SM) experience, we can:
– break down the processes into smaller parts
– respond promptly to the needs of any changes
– and provide faster review cycles, so the client is always up-to-date in terms of the status of the development.

With the guidance of the SM, the developer team can focus on its primary goal, which is to create an outstanding product.

The classic Waterfall methodology comes into play at Attrecto when customers have their exact specifications ready (and have no intention to change them later). After we agree on the terms of the engagement, the project kickoff is already set up by the designated PM, who also remains the point of contact to the product owner of the client. In this case it is our PM who makes sure the delivery team works well together and there is no communication barrier between us and the client.

Summing, when you have clearly defined roles and assign them appropriately, every individual in the organization can work efficiently and achieve their highest potential, depending on their individual skills. This results in a more productive team, better communication at all levels, and ultimately a better product – and a happy client.

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