DEV Community: Django Stars

How AI Helps in Decision-Making

Django Stars — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 15:46:51 +0000

The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in decision-making processes is becoming increasingly pivotal in an era where data is king. We've witnessed first-hand how AI transforms data into actionable insights at DjangoStars. We’re propelling businesses toward success.

This article aims to shed light on AI's impact on decision-making and share insights from our experience at DjangoStars. You can expect to learn about AI's role in gaining a challenging edge, real-world applications in various industries, strategic and operational decision-making, and the integral role of Python in this technological revolution.

AI-Driven Decision-Making: A Competitive Edge

AI is more than just a buzzword. It's a critical tool for staying ahead of the competition in today's fast-paced business environment. AI for decision-making systems enables businesses to quickly analyze vast amounts of data, identify trends, and make informed decisions.

Recent studies reveal that companies employing AI in decision-making outperform their competitors in profitability and efficiency. For instance, a survey by McKinsey & Company shows that AI adopters had a 15% increase in cash flow due to AI-enhanced decision-making processes.

Real-World Applications of AI in Business

AI's impact is evident across industries. In finance, JPMorgan Chase's LOXM program optimizes equity trades, enhancing client results. Starbucks uses Deep Brew AI in retail for personalized experiences and boosting sales. This AI recommends items based on customer history and increases engagement.

Siemens employs artificial intelligence and decision-making for predictive maintenance in gas turbines in manufacturing. This reduces downtime and saves costs by predicting faults early.

AI in Strategic Decision Making

Let’s dive deeper into how artificial intelligence helps in decision-making. AI is transforming how businesses make strategic decisions. It uses deep learning to analyze market data, helps companies spot new opportunities, and guides their investments. For instance, AI can pinpoint promising sectors by evaluating market trends and consumer behaviors.

AI for decision-making is crucial in scenario planning. It simulates various business situations, like market entries or responses to competitors. These models use past and current data to forecast outcomes. For example, AI might predict how the market will react to a new product launch. It assesses past launches, social media sentiment, and consumer trends to estimate performance. This helps businesses fine-tune marketing and pricing strategies.

AI also aids in long-term planning. It monitors market trends and internal metrics to suggest business model adjustments or new revenue ideas. This helps businesses stay competitive and adapt to market changes.

Overall, AI-driven decision-making helps companies react to the present and anticipate and prepare for future trends. This data-driven approach is critical to growth and long-term success.

Operational Efficiency through AI

AI significantly boosts operational efficiency, especially in supply chain management and HR.

AI can optimize decision-making in supply chain management. Amazon uses AI to predict product demand, optimize inventory, and reduce costs. Their algorithms analyze sales data, seasonality, and trends to maintain ideal stock levels. AI also helps optimize delivery routes, cut down on fuel costs, and speed up deliveries.

Retail giant Walmart employs AI for real-time inventory tracking and demand forecasting. This automated approach prevents overstocking and stockouts and enhances efficiency.

AI is transforming recruitment and employee management in HR. IBM's Watson, for example, speeds up hiring by matching resumes with suitable job openings. It uses AI to identify the best fit based on skills and experiences.

AI tools assess performance, suggest personalized training, and predict turnover for employee management. This proactive approach helps address skill gaps and boost employee satisfaction and efficiency.

We can also use AI for project management. AI tools can forecast project timelines and allocate resources, ensure efficient delivery, and maximize team productivity.
AI is reshaping how businesses handle operations, from supply chain optimization to revolutionizing HR processes. This results in smoother operations, cost savings, and improved business outcomes.

The Role of Python in AI Decision-Making Technology

Python stands out in AI in decision-making technology for its rich libraries and user-friendly nature. Its simplicity and flexibility are ideal for building a complex decision-making AI model.

Key to Python's role in AI is its ecosystem of libraries like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Scikit-learn. TensorFlow is famous for deep learning. It allows developers to build complex neural networks. PyTorch offers flexibility with dynamic computational graphing, which is ideal for AI research and model prototyping. Scikit-learn is known for its simplicity, it is perfect for implementing machine learning algorithms efficiently.

At DjangoStars, Python is our cornerstone for AI projects. Its efficiency and scalability are crucial for managing large data sets and complex computations. We've developed AI analytics tools using Python and enabled real-time data analysis and decision-making.

Another advantage is Python's compatibility with Django, which is our preferred web framework. This pairing lets us create AI-powered web applications smoothly. Additionally, Python's active community and open-source approach ensure it stays updated and relevant in the AI field.

In short, Python's capabilities make it essential in AI technology. It allows us at DjangoStars to craft advanced solutions that streamline the AI decision-making process.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence in business decision-making is revolutionizing. It offers a competitive edge, enhanced strategic and operational efficiency, and opens up new possibilities across various industries. At DjangoStars, we harness the power of Python to develop AI solutions that transform data into decisive action. We invite you to explore how AI can elevate your business.

Development of Voice bot with Generative AI: Ultimate Guide

Django Stars — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 16:49:14 +0000

Voice bot development with generative AI comes with its set of challenges. The most prominent pain points include achieving a high level of natural language understanding and ensuring the bot can handle a wide range of user queries. Some more include maintaining privacy and security of user data and creating an engaging and intuitive user interface.

The development of voice bot with generative AI that is both intelligent and user-friendly isn't a walk in the park. It involves tackling complex issues like natural language understanding, ensuring seamless user interactions, safeguarding data privacy, and creating an engaging conversational experience.

This article, infused with DjangoStars' wisdom, walks you through the intricacies of crafting state-of-the-art voice bots using generative AI. From the core functionalities of AI-powered voice chatbots to the steps in their development. Integration with platforms like Amazon Alexa and addressing future trends and challenges – we've got it all covered.

Functionalities of AI-powered Voice Chatbots

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities allow bots to interpret and respond to user inputs conversationally. It makes interactions feel more natural and intuitive. They possess contextual awareness that enables them to maintain the conversation thread.

These chatbots are designed for personalization. They learn from user data and interactions. They tailor their responses to suit individual user preferences and histories. This leads to each conversation being unique and more engaging for the user.

Another significant feature is their multilingual support. This allows chatbots to communicate in multiple languages. Voice recognition and response technologies are integral to these chatbots.

AI-powered voice chatbots are known for their integration capabilities. They can be incorporated into various platforms and systems. It makes them versatile tools for applications ranging from customer query service to controlling smart home devices.

Steps to Develop Voice Bot With Generative AI

The development of voice bot with generative AI is a detailed and intricate process. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you create an efficient and effective voice bot.

1. Setting Up Your Development Environment

Select Programming Language. Python is highly recommended for its extensive libraries and community support.
Choose an IDE. Options like PyCharm or Visual Studio Code can simplify your voice bot development with generative AI process.
Install Necessary Libraries. Consider TensorFlow or PyTorch. For natural language processing, you can check NLTK or spaCy.

2. Data Collection and Preprocessing

Gather Data. Collect diverse datasets including voice recordings and text data relevant to your bot's purpose.
Clean and Format Data. Ensure the data is error-free and formatted consistently for effective training.

3. Training Your Voice Bot

Choose an AI Model. Select a BERT or GPT-3 model for language understanding and response generation.
Train the Model. Use your preprocessed data to train the model. Adjust parameters for optimal performance.
Evaluate and Iterate. Continuously test and refine your model based on performance metrics.

4. Integration with Voice Platforms

Understand Platform Requirements. Each platform like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant has specific guidelines and capabilities.
Develop Skills or Actions. Create custom skills for Alexa or actions for Google Assistant to enable voice bot functionality on these platforms.

5. Customization and Personalization

Analyze User Data. Utilize user interaction data to personalize the bot’s responses.
Implement AI for Tailored Interactions. Use AI algorithms to adapt the bot's behavior based on user preferences and inquiries.

6. Testing and Debugging

Conduct Comprehensive Testing. Include unit testing, integration testing, and user testing to ensure functionality and user experience.
Debug and Refine. Identify and fix any issues. Focus on improving understanding and response accuracy.

Real-world Use Cases and Applications

Voice bots powered by generative AI are more than futuristic gadgets. They're practical tools reshaping industries today.

Customer Support in E-commerce

'ShopBot' by eBay uses AI to assist customers in finding the perfect item from their inventory. Customers can specify what they're looking for and the ShopBot provides personalized product recommendations.

E-commerce businesses can adopt similar AI-driven bots to enhance customer shopping experiences, leading to increased satisfaction and sales.

Healthcare Assistance

'Ada Health' is a voice bot that offers preliminary medical consultations. Users describe their symptoms and Ada provides potential diagnoses and guidance. This service greatly benefits those seeking immediate medical advice.

Healthcare providers can start with building voice bot with generative AI for preliminary diagnostics. It can reduce the strain on medical professionals and offer patients quicker access to care.

Financial Services

Capital One's 'Eno' is a voice-enabled assistant that helps users manage their finances. Eno simplifies banking through conversation.

Financial institutions can utilize voice bots to offer customers a more accessible and engaging type of managing their finances to enhance user experience and loyalty.

Travel Planning

'Mezi' was acquired by American Express. It assists travelers who intend to plan trips from booking flights to reserving hotels. Mezi makes travel planning conversational and personalized.

Travel agencies can start creating voice bot with generative AI to provide customers with efficient, tailored travel planning services, improving the overall booking experience.

Smart Home Automation

Google Home and Amazon Echo devices are powered by Google Assistant and Alexa respectively. They enable users to control their smart homes using voice commands.

Companies in the smart home industry can integrate voice bot technology to make their products more user-friendly and interactive, enhancing the appeal of their smart home solutions.

Language Learning

Duolingo's chatbot feature allows users to practice conversational skills in new languages. The bot simulates real-life conversations and makes language learning more dynamic and engaging.

Educational platforms can incorporate AI-driven voice bots to create interactive learning experiences.

Future Trends and Challenges

Voice bot technology is swiftly evolving. It brings new advancements and challenges.

Trends:

Hyper-Personalization. Voice bots will offer more tailored conversations by analyzing user preferences in-depth.
Emotional Intelligence. Future bots will recognize and respond to emotions making interactions feel more human.
Cross-Platform Consistency. Look for bots that work seamlessly across various devices and platforms.
Widespread Industry Automation. We expect more complex tasks in healthcare, finance, and customer service to be automated.
Focus on Ethical AI. As bots become more common, ethical use of AI and data privacy will be critical.

Challenges:

Data Privacy. Protecting user data in an era of extensive personal information collection is paramount.
AI Bias. Ensuring AI algorithms are unbiased and inclusive is essential.
System Interoperability. Seamless functioning across different ecosystems is a technical challenge.

Conclusion

Our journey through the voice bot landscape shows how technology is rich with potential. Voice bots are changing our interaction with technology. They promise more sophisticated features like advanced personalization and emotional intelligence. However, challenges like data privacy, AI ethics, and inclusivity remain.

Voice bot technology is a transformative force for businesses and users alike. It offers innovative interaction ways. Staying updated, ethical, and user-focused is key to leveraging the full potential of this exciting technology.

Top 7 Conversational AI Trends for 2024

Django Stars — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:23:15 +0000

By the end of 2023, AI became a lot more than a buzzword for business and tech enthusiasts, since it proved its efficiency in nearly any realm of business. The speculation about whether to introduce AI to business processes at all transformed into more substantial questions of where to employ it and what steps to take for smooth onboarding of the technology.

As the technology of conversational AI has established its place in many business modes, let’s discuss the most recent trends to do with it and how businesses can foresee and use these to their advantage.

Trend 1: Advancements in Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

NLU, a subfield of AI, is growing more capable of understanding the meaning and context of language in prompts thus giving more precise and personalized outputs. In this regard, conversational AI models are set to get more sensitive to nuances and acquire even more inherently “human” traits in their interaction with users. For businesses, this development means a chance to interact with their customers more intuitively and effectively at an optimized cost.

Future NLU systems are expected to show deeper contextual understanding, thus ensuring context-aware engagements with users.

Trend 2: Increased Integration with IoT Devices

Another advance in AI trends for 2024 is that it will make smart devices even smarter, as it also becomes a part of IoT. More elaborate and context-aware AI algorithms allow machinery and smart devices to communicate and make decisions without human intervention. This trend means an opportunity for businesses to automate operations at a reduced cost.

The AI-powered IoT makes it even easier for businesses to collect and analyze data in real-time and introduce more informed decision-making without involving much human effort. The current shifts in AI and IoT integration promise to revolutionize industries, from healthcare to manufacturing, by offering unprecedented levels of automation and insight.

IoT and AI-powered IoT process: AI facilitates more nuanced data collection and thus facilitates more customized outputs

Trend 3: Personalization Through AI

The more sensitive and context-aware AI becomes, the more personalized experience it can deliver to its users. Based on the available capabilities of the algorithm, AI can scale creativity and strategy, as it can tell what consumers truly desire. AI-powered personalization involves analyzing vast amounts of customer data to segment audiences and serve them with relevant content. However, this process goes beyond simple segmentation: it is headed toward hyper-personalization in real-time, based on demographics, purchasing history, and social media behavior.

This kind of personalization enhances customer engagement and increases sales. It can tailor the experience with the brand to one’s behaviors, preferences, and needs. Thus, IA-powered customer experience provides a more profound understanding of a business’s customers as well as tools to approach them effectively.

Trend 4: Expansion in Multilingual Capabilities

The tools AI provides for businesses remove another barrier toward globalization and expansion, namely, the linguistic one. Businesses with AI solutions up their sleeves have everything necessary for cross-cultural communication with multilingual text generation capabilities. It is now easier for companies to open up new global markets and reach a broader audience regardless of diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Trend 5: Conversational AI in Employee Training and HR

Marketing efforts and customer experience are not the only domains revolutionized by AI. Chatbots and virtual assistants aid in automating routine HR tasks. It is now easier to provide new employees with instant responses to their queries and tailor their personalized learning experiences for onboarding or corporate training programs. This technology promises streamlined HR processes, better employee engagement, and improved training outcomes for businesses. In the future, AI is about to transform the way organizations manage and develop their most valuable asset, their people.

Trend 6: Enhanced Security and Authentication

The development of security technology is always in competition with one for breaching security, which is why AI may be employed for both. Thus, it is actively used in improving security protocols and scenarios. AI can identify patterns in user behavior based on massive amounts of data, detect anomalies quickly, and enhance biometric verification processes.

For businesses, it presents prospects for improved data protection, reduced risk of breaches, and increased trust from customers. With the help of AI, organizations can create a safer digital environment for their internal processes and build reliable business operations.

Trend 7: Ethical and Responsible AI Usage

The concerns for ethical and responsible usage emerge as a crucial trend along with the evolution of AI capabilities. AI’s development is faster than the development of legislations that regulate it, which explains why it will be a challenge in the future. For businesses, this trend comes with the need to foster trust among users, mitigate legal risks, and enhance brand reputation.

Thus, companies developing and dealing with AI have established their ethical frameworks for effective yet ecological use of the technology.

The future of artificial AI: narrower targeting & broader reach

Regarding the current capabilities of artificial intelligence, it will continue to progress in terms of personalization and segmentation for customer experience, scaling opportunities for organizations, and expansion of its current potential across departments within an organization.

Hyper-Personalization Opportunities

As NLU technology improves, AI will gain a deeper comprehension of human language, contexts of interactions, and nuances of user intents. Another ongoing trend hinting at this tendency is the integration of AI with IoT devices: this technology both provides more insights about user behavior and facilitates personalized experiences across various platforms and devices. Thus, it gives businesses tools to provide more personalized interactions and elevate customer experience, as they can learn more about their customers and provide them with human-like services while saving on staff.

Easier Scaling and Expansion

With the opportunities provided by AI, businesses will expand faster. AI-powered automation can help companies can manage large volumes of customer interactions efficiently, reducing operational costs and improving response times. Plus, the multilingual capabilities of AI will break down language barriers, making it easier for companies to expand their reach globally. Thus, it will be a huge factor for businesses to scale up and expand their operations seamlessly and effectively.

More Automation in Existing Processes

Apart from kickstarting industries and AI-based products or services, this technology will continue improving existing processes within companies. Beyond customer service and sales, AI improves internal communications, employee training, and data analysis. As it gives space for automating routine tasks and providing valuable insights, conversational AI can enhance productivity in strategic or intellectually challenging tasks as well. Its versatility will provide organizations with even more innovative solutions to meet their evolving needs.

The top trends in conversational AI show that this technology is here to stay. In 2024, it is set to improve its current capabilities in terms of precision, nuance, and data handling. Plus, its current capabilities will expand across industries and departments that used to rely on manual labor or analog technologies.

How to Make Your Frontend for Booking Platforms Scale and Survive

Django Stars — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:54:47 +0000

Creating a high-performing and user-friendly front end for booking platforms is crucial for the success of hospitality businesses. This article aims to provide practical tips and best practices for front-end developers, enabling them to create scalable and resilient frontends that deliver outstanding user experiences.

Let's explore these strategies in detail.

The article Building the Frontend for Booking Platforms was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Mykyta Mazur - Frontend Software Engineer at Django Stars

Tip 1: Prioritize SSR for the Frontend Application Architecture

To boost your data's loading and rendering speeds, consider leaning into Server-Side Rendering (SSR). With SSR, the server crafts and dispatches the initial HTML markup to the user's browser, facilitating the swift rendering of data. In contrast, Client-Side Rendering (CSR) necessitates downloading JavaScript elements prior to rendering, which could slow down the initial load speed of your application. Opting for a development framework like Gatsby or Next.js that supports SSR is essential for peak performance.

► Gatsby, fine-tuned for static site generation (SSG), ensures that all pages are created in advance and swiftly delivered to the browser during the request. Every modification to the project leads to re-generating all pages or some of them when incremental builds are employed.

► Next.js offers greater flexibility. As a hybrid framework for SSG, SSR, incremental generation, and CSR, choosing Next.js makes your project adaptable to any changes in page structure and rendering throughout the development process.

Tip 2: Determine the Method of Content Page Creation

Page builders expedite page creation via drag-and-drop capabilities, pre-constructed templates, and real-time page previews, while CMSs populate a booking platform with content. They usually have a visual interface that allows non-technical users to update, modify, and publish web pages.

► When picking a builder and CMS for a scalable front end, companies must consider technical and business requirements. Having a pre-approved roadmap that delineates necessary functions for the long haul is crucial. Avoid complex tools for superficial reasons, which could result in redundant rework. Interoperability ensures the builder and CMS work in unison and can share data with other systems. Lastly, the chosen CMS and web builder should be versatile enough to accommodate changes in content management strategies as the business grows or shifts its focus.

Tip 3: Optimize Typography and Animations for a Better UX

Enhancing your booking platform's user experience is achievable through typography and animation optimization:

Maintain consistency across devices by using web-safe fonts and incorporating Google Fonts for a broader selection.
Implement adaptive CSS to keep a consistent layout when content changes.
Integrate smooth-loading animations, seamless page transitions, and interactive elements to engage users and provide instant visual feedback.

These visual enhancements will keep users engaged and increase the likelihood of successful reservations.

Tip 4: Properly Plan and Develop the Product Pricing Logic within the Project

Certain services might adjust the prices of other services added to the cart, or the total cost of the order could vary based on the number of services added. Each service might have its own unique reservation requirements and specific dates for reservations.

If your platform hosts many users that are adding services to their carts, calculations could put a significant strain on the server. In some cases, it might be advantageous to distribute such logic across microservices or pre-cache in others.

Tip 5: Consider Future App Localization from the Outset

Incorporating the logic for future content translations during the development phase will save substantial time and effort for the developers and costs for the clients. It's more efficient than adding localization to a finished product. Thus, address these considerations during the project planning stage.

Tip 6: Consider Utilizing the Cloud and CDNs

Cloud computing is the preferred choice for travel and booking services with customers from distant locations. A cloud resource geographically closer to the user boosts the application's loading speed.

Businesses might also want to invest in Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). These can store, cache, and distribute static assets (like generated HTML pages, images, animations, and videos) to nearby users, further enhancing load times.

Mixing and matching scalable front-end architecture patterns can lead to a booking platform that's both intuitive and high-performing.

Front-End Features That Make a Booking Platform Successful

Enhancing the front end of a booking platform is critical. It involves designing an interface that is simple, intuitive, and accessible for all users, regardless of their technical expertise. Clear and concise language and easy-to-navigate pathways contribute to a seamless booking experience.

It's paramount to optimize the platform for various devices. By utilizing responsive design principles, developers can ensure that the platform remains accessible and user-friendly across screen sizes.
Robust search functionality is a crucial feature that allows users to find properties, dates, and other relevant criteria. Advanced filtering options enable users to refine search results based on their needs.
An integrated calendar simplifies date selection and availability checks. Additionally, it can highlight special events, promotions, or seasonal offerings, empowering users to make informed decisions and seize attractive opportunities.
Displaying real-time availability boosts user confidence by offering up-to-date information about the services they intend to book.
Integrating a mapping service into the front end allows users to visualize and navigate to their desired destinations seamlessly.
Offering different payment options streamlines the booking process, making it more convenient for users and increasing the likelihood of successful transactions.
Implementing automated confirmation emails, notifications, and reminders enhances user satisfaction. These features help minimize no-shows, ensuring a smooth booking experience for all parties involved.

By prioritizing these frontend features, developers can create a booking platform that meets user expectations, enhances the user experience, and gains popularity among users.

Conclusion

Sticking to scalable frontend rules helps ensure consistency in user experience, performance, and reliability. The practices and technologies outlined can help create a feature-rich booking platform capable of handling large traffic surges. They also enable businesses to integrate new features and experiment with SEO without excessive rework or skyrocketing costs.

Boost Your Mortgage Software Security: Proven Tools and Practices

Django Stars — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 11:45:12 +0000

In an era where the financial sector, particularly mortgage businesses, is increasingly digital, the importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated. The risk of data breaches in this industry is high, with an average breach cost estimated at $5.72 million, according to IBM's 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Report. Prominent companies like Morgan Stanley and HomeTrust Mortgage have fallen victim to cyberattacks, emphasizing the urgent need for advanced cybersecurity practices and software.

This article about Cybersecurity for Mortgage Software was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Alex Ryabtsev - Backend Competency & Tech Lead at Django Stars

Benefits of Robust Mortgage Software Cybersecurity

Implementing robust cybersecurity measures can significantly reduce risks, ensuring financial stability. Key benefits include:

Excellent threat detection

Companies with security awareness training and streamlined processes can respond to threats 3.5 times faster than those without, as highlighted in Cisco's 2021 Security Outcomes Study.

Smaller attack surface

Role-based access control and network security rules help inspect and monitor all network connections, minimizing vulnerability.

Compliance

Compliance with industry-wide data security and privacy regulations, including GDPR, PCI DSS, and FTC standards, is vital.

Reputational integrity

IBM’s 2021 report shows that the most common types of stolen data were customers’ (44%) and employees' (26%) personally identifiable information. Safeguarding customer and employee data reduces the likelihood of reputational damage and potential lawsuits.

Lower cost of data breaches

Cybersecurity practices like zero trust can cut data breach costs by up to 42.3%.

Understanding the tactics employed by hackers is crucial to establishing robust measures to protect against cyber threats.

How Criminals Breach IT Security for Mortgage Products

Malware injections. Cybercriminals can run malicious software and scripts within a company's network. According to the OWASP Top 10, around 94% of applications have suffered from some form of injection.

Misconfigurations. Around 94% of applications have broken access control, and 90% of database breaches occur due to poor configuration or open internet accessibility.

Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. These attacks cause systems to overload, resulting in costly downtime.

Social engineering. Check Point’s 2022 Cyber Security Report shows that about 17% of breaches result from psychological manipulation tactics like email phishing and pretexting.

Ransomware. Ransomware attacks, which render data inaccessible by encrypting, increased by 13% in 2021.

Brute force attacks. Approximately 5% of breaches occur due to attackers cracking weak passwords and exploiting basic authorization mechanisms.

Cybersecurity practices can help mortgage companies prevent most data breaches and maintain business continuity by mitigating potential damage.

12 Practices to Maximize Cybersecurity for Mortgage Software

Typically, mortgage software cybersecurity has weak spots in four layers: code, third-party, server, and database. We pay special attention to these areas when designing and developing fintech solutions.

1. Secure password practices

Train employees to set long, complex passwords, use unique credentials for different accounts, and never share them with anyone.

2. Advanced authentication measures

Multi-factor authentication requires providing extra information to access business systems. This approach enables extra security layers and reduces potential fraud.

3. Device usage policies

Companies should enforce the BYOD (bring your own device) policy using business-grade VPN services and anti-malware.

4. Access control

Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to restrict access to systems based on user roles. This also helps trace the origin of data breaches, if they occur.

5. Zero trust policy

Companies can route traffic through a dedicated firewall, a secured web gateway, or secure access service edge (SASE) platforms. Cisco found that businesses practicing these policies are 35% more likely to excel at SecOps.

6. Request limits

Set limits on packet length and requests to prevent DoS attacks. However, it’s critical to separate real attacks from increased demand. We use rate-based, regex match, and geographic rules in AWS WAF to block malicious requests on the cloud level.

7. Hacking simulations

Regularly simulate attacks to anticipate and counter potential threats. Such an approach can give a 30% lift in security performance (compared to companies that practice it only once a year).

8. Cloud-based deployment

Consolidated cloud-based technologies are much easier to update than distributed, on-premise environments. Over 72% of companies with mature security technology integration and a high degree of automation prefer the cloud. 37% of these organizations deploy cybersecurity tools from a single vendor.

9. Proactive technical updates

Companies that routinely update security for mortgage products have 30% higher chances of meeting customer demands than those that only do so every few years. After updates, teams should take the time to delete any unneeded functionality, files, or dependencies.

10. Unified business architecture

Organizations must deconstruct their siloed technology and merge it into highly interconnected systems that act as functional units. This has been shown to improve security program success (11-15%) and threat detection (41%).

11. Cyber threat intelligence

Threat intelligence software plays a vital role in collecting, organizing, and analyzing security data to provide valuable context for identifying potential signs of compromise and effectively responding to possible attacks.

12. Prompt disaster recovery

A robust disaster recovery plan should encompass a minimum of 80% of an organization's critical systems. It is essential for the plan to address various attack vectors and incorporate a comprehensive strategy, such as secure data server backups of source code and critical data, as well as automated encryption measures following a breach.

Technologies to Improve Cybersecurity of Mortgage Platforms

The effectiveness of cybersecurity tools greatly depends on their seamless integration into the client's existing processes. Without proper integration, their efficiency may be compromised. To enhance the cybersecurity of mortgage platforms, the following tools can be instrumental:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools like GitHub code scanning and AppSweep scan repositories and check for license compliance.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tools like OWASP ZAP and StackHawk perform automated vulnerability scanning.
API security tools provide runtime security and detect malicious requests.
SQL protection tools like Django Object Relational Mapper (ORM) secure data exchange.
Code quality tools like MegaLinte and SonarQube check for errors and ensure code consistency.
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) like Datadog _and _Prisma Cloud inspect traffic for high-risk content, benchmark resource usage, and detect unidentified devices and potential network attacks.

Any mortgage product or financial software must prioritize proactive cybersecurity. Multi-factor authentication, cloud-based deployment, cyber threat intelligence, and other technologies can help keep key operations running and guard against a wider spectrum of attacks. There is no way to protect systems from all conceivable threats, but an experienced software provider can make them as secure as feasible.

The Best Data-Providing Services for Fintech Products

Django Stars — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 09:29:15 +0000

For many industries, data is the key to delivering better services and solutions. This is especially true in the fintech sector, where data is used in every field of application.

With the rise of open banking, many different options became available. For customers, it meant they could now manage their money without leaving home. For companies, it opened up a universe of new possibilities and technology solutions.

If you’ve been thinking about using third-party providers for your fintech project, stick around. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the topic of data-providing services for fintechs and the role these services play in the fintech industry.

This article about The Best Data-Providing Services for Fintech Products was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Soner Ayberk - Software Engineer at Django Stars

Why Do We Use Third-Party Data Providers?

Many companies use data collected by another organization because it saves them a lot of time, money and effort, especially when they need a way to easily integrate data into a product architecture.

As a fintech development company, we also use third-party data providers and have discovered that they also offer other benefits. And here they are.

The Benefits of Using Data-Providing Services for Fintech Products

Personalization

Fintech is gradually replacing traditional banking services and approaches. According to an Epsilon report, most consumers expect personalized services and are ready and willing to provide their personal information so that a company can serve them in the right way.

For a long time, the only way to deliver a personalized experience to customers was to divide them into groups based on geography, genre, age, etc. Now we have access to much more information, such as buying habits or even app-using behavior. It allows businesses to become intimately familiar with their customers and better able to hit the target with their offers and services.

Such personalization requires huge amounts of data that can be acquired more conveniently from third parties, as opposed to gathering the data on your own and developing the required software from scratch.

Customer Segmentation

In addition to creating personalized user experiences, third-party data can be used to segment a customer base for different purposes, such as marketing campaigns or product development. And one size can never fit all.

Especially today, when users have so much choice, the ability to tailor your app’s features to meet personalized meets is a powerful benefit that can lead to significant sales growth. For example, a company can segment consumers by parameters such as their monthly spending and feature requests, and offer services relevant to those customers’ needs.

Fraud Detection

According to the 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report, 55 percent of companies are seeing more cases of fraud. This comes as no surprise: more and more transactions are taking place online, so it’s logical that the fraudulent activity will also increase.

By using big data from third parties, you can better understand and analyze your customers’ spending habits and detect unusual activity that should trigger additional security checks.

Risk Management

Risk management is always important, but it’s vital in the financial sector, and especially in the investment sector, where risk managers always try to forecast changes in order to reduce losses and increase gains.

Thanks to big data, predictive decision-making is becoming ever more accurate. It enables you to significantly increase your ability to analyze and prevent potential risks – and third-party services can come handy in this regard. For example, you can analyze patterns in third-party data to identify sound investments and risky bets.

Automated Customer Service

Again, people always have options, so high-quality customer care has become another powerful advantage that retains users. And this is another sphere where data is king.

You can create a chatbot to handle some of your customer service workload, or buy software that helps your managers offer the most beneficial investment strategies. These are only two of many cases where using third-party data can offer benefits in terms of customer service, increased customer satisfaction and income.

Better Compliance

The financial industry is highly volatile. Laws and regulations, politics, medicine, new technologies — anything can cause fluctuations or even a worldwide crisis. And this is another case when it’s a good idea to use third-party big data. It allows you to have at your fingertips all the info you need, as well as the ability to analyze it.

The person or company that has more data has a great competitive advantage in the market, because they can always be prepared for events that are about to happen.

The Best Data-Providing Solutions for Fintechs

In our practice we often use financial APIs to develop efficient solutions for our clients. Some of them help to know your customers, some help to verify their credit data without excessive upload of their documents. Others let to transfer property ownership without bureaucracy but still secure. Below, the best financial third-party data providers are listed.

Experian

Experian, based in Ireland, is one of the world’s most popular fintech data providers, and we often use its products in our work. It gathers financial information and credit reports about more than a billion people and companies from all over the world.

In addition to the general third-party benefits we listed above, Experian offers its own Developer Portal, which provides easy access to its APIs, relevant API documentation and credentials, as well as test APIs. This makes it very easy for us to use their data for building fintech products.

Experian has three main products: CreditWorks, IdentityWorks, and The 3-Bureau Credit Report. Each product includes different types of credit reports, alerts, and identity theft protection for companies and users.

In our practice, we use Experian for different purposes and find it to be the best solution for customer’s verification. In the case of any fintech product be it mortgage or investment platform, it’s important for the application to ensure that it’s dealing with a real person. Also, data provided by the API allows to find out whether the info provided by the customer is valid ensuring fraud detection.

Thus, Experian helps to create a fully digital fintech product. For example, we used Experian to build solutions for Molo, a digital mortgage platform that enables UK consumers to gain easy and instant access to mortgages online without having to spend an inordinate amount of time or money doing so. Using our Experian integration, we created a life-cycle mortgage management module to schedule regular payments and track arrears.

Onfido

Onfido is another fintech data provider we used to develop solutions for fintech products. Specifically, we use Onfido to develop a tool used to verify and confirm photo identities.

This software company helps businesses verify people’s identities through selfies, photo IDs, and AI algorithms. The company has three main products: Document Verification, Biometric Verification, and Authentication.

We use Onfido for three reasons. The first one is the overall customer experience it provides: it’s user-friendly, and helps us reduce the time required for integration. The second reason is that it allows us to build identity profiles that are as robust or as shallow as we want via services such as database checking, document verification, and biometric verification. Lastly, we use Onfido’s extensive security features to help detect fraud.

Yodlee

Yodlee is an American software company whose product aggregates and consolidates the financial data of users — from credit card information to their travel rewards account balance — on one screen. It offers a number of products for data aggregation, budget planning, classification, a virtual financial assistant, and more.

Yodlee has over 1000 partners, both in the traditional financial arena and fintech, and an extensive data network. Its product also has API features such as rapid authentication, which reduce fraud and risk. Finally, since it’s an open-source platform, developers can easily use the latest APIs in their own fintech products.

We’ve used this software in two of our fintech development projects: Sindeo and Lendage. Here’s how:

Case 1. Sindeo is innovative digital mortgage software that uses technology to improve the property-buying experience. It consists of two portals: a Mortgage Consumer portal and an Internal Mortgage Advisor portal. We used Yodlee to develop Sindeo’s employment,asset-verification, and income-verification features.

Case 2. Lendage is a platform that offers data-based advice to people who are looking for the best mortgage options. One of Lendage’s most notable features is its ability to verify the incomes, assets, and employment information of users by means of several third-party integrations, including Yodlee.

Other Possible Integrations for Your Financial Product

We’ve just introduced you to our favourite data-providing services. But of course, there are more data providing companies on the market that may be useful for fintech development. Here are some of them:

Dwolla

Founded by two friends back in 2008,Dwolla is an ACH processor that provides a web-based platform for requesting, sending, and receiving funds in the United States. Today it serves thousands of users and includes various functionalities such as identity verification, account history retrieval.

Dwolla specializes in providing solutions to fintech companies, enterprise businesses, and online marketplaces. It also has integrations with such applications as Slack — you can set it up to get notifications about different types of events; QuickBooks — you can download reports to your QuickBooks account and present them to other people; and Sift — a Digital Trust & Safety Suite, which connects data from websites that belong to Sift’s network to prevent fraud.

Trulioo

Trulioo is a Canadian company that’s been operating since 2011. It provides users with access to data on more than 250 million companies and 4.5 billion people spread across upwards of 80 countries to help businesses authenticate financial data & verify identities. Its core focus is to differentiate between human and bot web traffic.

Trulioo has 3 main solutions: identity verification, business verification, and document verification. It has GlobalGateway, Trulioo’s own identity verification platform, which was created to help meet KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) requirements and reduce the risk of fraud.

SensiBill

SensiBill is another company that provides data services for fintech companies. Think of SensiBill as a virtual wallet, one that is overflowing with old receipts and loose change. What SensiBill does is simple, yet remarkably innovative: it provides banks and other financial institutions with the ability to give their customers access to receipts from their bank account. It has 2 integration models: API integration with a completely customized user interface, and a native, white-labeled SDK (for Android and iOS).

First Access

First Access is another example of data-providing services done right. The company provides custom credit scores to everyday folk who want an alternative to the credit scores given — and monitored — by traditional credit bureaus. First Access provides companies with information pertaining to everything from credit scores to the size of loans.

The company has many different use-cases, from routine online loan applications and optional site visits to digital appraisals for microcredit, rural business credit via mobile, and home improvement credit via API.

Conclusion

Technology and data play an enormous role in the financial services sector. Literally, the more data you own, the more influence, product development possibilities, and security you have. Of course, there are many ways to gather and classify data, but using quality third-party solutions and APIs makes it much easier to access the data you need. If you want to know more about the solutions we offer, contact us using the form below. You might save time, money and effort, and also enrich your product with new and beneficial features.

How to Launch a Digital Product and Win in a Crisis

Django Stars — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 13:11:48 +0000

Be it economic crises, or uncontrollable epidemics, they influence the world and bring about new rules that challenge communities and businesses to sink or swim. Within only recent years we’ve faced the spread of SARS, the Zika virus, Ebola, and now － COVID-19. Every time the outbursts are unpredictable and fateful. In response, every business must think strategically to be able to react in a timely way and adapt to the changes. In fact, it’s not only a matter of staying afloat. It’s about companies keeping up with the ever-changing modern world.

Digital products development and business automation are processes that have the power to be the business response to crises and shape the business future.

This article about How to Launch a Digital Product and Win in a Crisis was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Nataliia Peterheria - Project Manager at Django Stars

How the Crisis is Changing the World and Why You Should Consider Digitalization

Practically every routine human activity has moved online. Executives, managers, employees, teachers, and students are now managing their responsibilities remotely, as the virtual world is now the reality in which we function. For entrepreneurs, the main demand in this environment is to be adaptable and nimble enough to make weighted decisions at sonic speed.

We can already see changes and shifts occurring in the digital world and in related businesses. According to the findings of the 2020 Digital Marketing Expo & Conference report, digital industries will shift their approaches to work after the pandemic ends. The study indicates that remote work options will expand and become more widespread; the importance of digital collaboration tools will increase; companies will be more focused on digital transformation; online conferences and meetings will become an even more popular practice; and data security and protection will grow in importance and raise the bar to ever-higher standards.

The high-tech world, which creates an ecosystem for modern business, is itself a real-time tool for working. It makes it possible to communicate and interact with people who, on the one hand, are thousands of kilometers from one another, but at the same time are just a click away. It enables closed calls with a high level of security, allows us to send sensitive information quickly, easily, and securely, perform banking operations, and sign legally valid contracts.

“The world has changed in the last few weeks. The measures we’re now all taking to fight back against the coronavirus are affecting the way we interact, live, work, and take care of our finances.”

James Green, deVere Group’s Divisional Manager of Europe

The opportunities created by digital products and today’s real-world conditions prove that, without digital transformation, launching a product successfully is almost impossible. And his notion is becoming more and more applicable in realms that were once squarely situated in the offline world.

To Launch or Not to Launch a New Product During a Crisis

If your service is not online yet, there are many factors you have to weigh before launching it. Naturally, the gravest concerns will be associated with the rationing of finances in such a turbulent time. Money is often in short supply during the crisis period, and the big question is whether it is rational to finance a launch either with your savings or with the support from investors. Especially, when it is neither guaranteed nor even clear whether it will reap any profits.

However, there is a pragmatic way to face this Shakespearian dilemma. If we analyze the diagram of change in the industries currently occupying the market, we can see that online education, telehealth, and online software have become the demand leaders, while the car-sharing and sharing economy have largely failed.

If you’re going to work in industries in the green zone of the chart, you can assume it’s safe to launch your product right now. If not there, you should consider how to optimize the product. Just look at the current crisis as a chance to find new business opportunities.

According to Forbes, the list of sectors most affected by coronavirus are:

Air transportation, airports, and trucking services;
Event management, culture, leisure, and entertainment;
Fitness and sports;
Travel agencies and businesses that provide tourism services;
Hotels;
Catering;
Post-graduate and informal education organizations and non-governmental educational institutions;
Organization of conferences and exhibitions;
Domestic services (repair, washing, dry cleaning, hairdressing, and beauty salons).

As you can see, the businesses that are suffering the most during the lockdown are providing services that involve physical interaction with a client. The option here is to either innovate the service so that it is accessible online or (the safer option) offer products your user can access online.

Evidently, people tend to use more online services because there are simply no equivalent offline options. In this situation, it’s important to analyze and identify the needs of the people who have to stay home. They have been forced to change their routines and habits, as they have no access to their usual lifestyle.

In general, having identified the need, think of how to solve it. This is the standard rule for successful startups. Another reason that the time is right is that people’s needs have become much greater and diverse. There several reasons for this:

The crisis and the lockdown happened suddenly;
People were generally unprepared for such a dramatic lifestyle change;
The changes are so significant that they will not end after the quarantine ends.

We are on the verge of a new way of life, which means that any product that has been developed to deal with the needs of our present situation will probably be useful for a long time to come.

A good illustration for the said above is the list of recently funded products issued by TechCrunch: a network for healthcare analysis, a platform for deskless work, video chat API service － that’s just a few to mention. And all of them serve, improve or help to deal with the new reality we’re in together. This to be said, if the product fulfills the existing demand, it has chances to succeed both in investment raising and in gaining profit.

Why a Crisis is Useful

A business transformation or initialization undertaken during a crisis can have a good chance of success even though it can be a huge challenge － and there are good reasons why. The market is waiting for new solutions. The winners in this situation will be the ones who can work out strategies to launch new products during a crisis and offer cheaper, faster, better ways to solve problems for customers and businesses.

It should be stressed here, that we’re not saying about spending all your savings on the development of the product that probably will be successful (or not). We explore the opportunities the crisis can bring. It’s worth mentioning that our company was established in 2008 when the financial crisis crippled the world economy. But if you have a verified business plan, validated idea and a good nerve, your chances of success are higher.

To develop a roadmap, you may find it useful to research the upcoming tendencies pandemic crisis will end up with. We’ve performed analysis of what’s happening now, compared it to our experience and Here’s what tends to happen during and after a crisis:

People want innovation

To be sure, the Covid-19 crisis has caused a lot of problems. Investment in innovation has slowed because of them. CB Insights reports that VC funding declined for 9% in Q1 2020 if compared to Q4 2019. But it still is higher for 12% than the one as of Q1 2019. That opened up opportunities for bold and creative startups.

“Right now, the virus seems like an accelerator for digital change that was already underway . . . the surprise has been to see the resistance to this digital change suddenly evaporate. What organizations resisted for a decade is now core to survival and innovation.”

Michael Hendrix, partner and global design director, Ideo for Fast Company

People want to save money

If you’re a flexible and featherweight company, you can win over the clients of massive companies that aren’t prepared or able to adapt to change quickly and reduce their prices. People are looking for more affordable options. If you can adapt your strategy to this need, you have a chance to obtain a huge client base.

The incumbents are vulnerable

The heavyweight market players are in an extremely vulnerable state, as the stakes are higher for them and they can’t adapt as rapidly as agile startups. The Wall Street Journal notified that almost one-quarter of the U.S. economy shut down in the wake of the Covid crisis. Among the ones who struggled the most are representatives of an “offline” economy. Meanwhile, those incumbents who are eager to adapt may win over. Budweiser, for instance, is investing in e-commerce since the crisis affected offline demand. Thus, now there’s an opportunity for you to experiment and innovate, if you’re planning to digitize. While for startups, their flexibility and willingness to take risks may become a market advantage.

Good people are looking for work

Bad times force companies to sacrifice even the best people working for them. As BBC reports, in the result of the pandemic crisis 195 million of full-time workers left without a working place. If you’ve managed to introduce your product and scale your business, you will definitely have to expand your staff. Naturally, most of the talent is already taken when there’s no turbulence. Today, your chances of finding brilliant minds who are also available are much higher.

Things are cheaper

It will be cheaper and easier for you to bargain for everything you need for your business when all participants of the market are in the same boat and are more eager to make concessions for their partners, for instance, for the goods you might need to start or to adapt your business. Plus, you don’t have to maintain an offline office. The same idea works for your employees; currently, they are not demanding as many workplace benefits as they would in normal conditions.

You will have fewer competitors

Speaking about the startup field, every player is willing to introduce their products when the times are good, the economy is stable, and the investors are many. However, in a crisis context, the number of startup Bravehearts shrinks, which means you’ll have fewer competitors when your product is out there.

As you can see, although the economy is down, new opportunities come along with it. You need to keep them in mind as you devise your product launching strategies.

How to Launch a New Product During a Crisis or Digitize the Existing One

It’s time to think about digitizing your existing business or launching a new business based on global prospects and trends and the new directions that development is taking.

If you’re wondering how to launch a new product during the coronavirus crisis or digitize the existing one, the first thing to do is prepare. Before starting any project, do the planning and consider the following aspects to minimize mistakes, since any error can be fatal:

To be competitive and relevant in the current situation, the product must solve a problem or simplify a process; it must be useful to a specific group of consumers. The larger its audience, the more chances you have of becoming successful in a short time.
Identify your target audience and double-check that the problem that your product will solve is relevant to them.
Analyze the scalability of your product.
Think through a user-friendly interface. Make sure the product is simple. There is no need to overthink the UX at the start of the project. However, it must be understandable and easy for the user to grasp from the point when they start solving their problem. Get it tested － first by your own team, and then in beta-testing.

Clearly, to be competitive in the current market, you have to act at sonic speed, and you can’t make any mistakes. Further, we’ll reveal how to make it in the most efficient way with the smart resources allocation.

How Will the Discovery Phase help?

The big advantage of the discovery phase is that it precedes the development stage and provides an opportunity to validate the idea, analyze the market and competitors, and create a roadmap. As a result, you end up with a solid amount of targeted developed documentation and enough information to make decisions about the future of your product.

For people in the business world, it is often extremely difficult to think about the project through and through from the technology point of view. We recommend initiating a discovery phase at the beginning of your work with IT companies. Within a week, they will clearly understand what your product will look like, see the set of functionalities that is minimally necessary to enter the market (MVP), and figure out the terms of implementation. Of course, you need to get to know the company and the team with which you plan to develop your product.

The discovery phase must be concluded by solving one of the most challenging tasks: prototyping and forming a set of product features and a backlog – namely, its first version. At each stage of the product life cycle, the priorities can and should shift in accordance with the type and orientation of the tasks.

How to interact with the product after creating an MVP

When the first stage is complete and the product is available to the general public, you need to change your tactics for working with the product.

We suggest that at the first stage (Stage 1) of product delivery to the market, your efforts should be concentrated on developing new features following the Product-Market Fit concept.

After the second one (Stage 2), as the product begins to grow consistently, you should dedicate significantly less time to new features. At the same time, it’s important to concentrate on satisfying your users according to their feedback and using the metrics you’ve collected to increase conversions.

Stage 3 is characterized as the stabilization stage. Here, after successfully launching a new product, you need to pay equal attention to new functionalities and feedback, as well as concentrate more and more on technologies, technical solutions, and product quality.

How to Adapt your Existing Processes to Today’s Realities

The blessing and the curse of the coronavirus crisis is the fact that you’ve no choice but to adapt to brutal market conditions. One threat in this situation is that you may not have enough manpower because of the lockdown and your dwindling financial resources. Since it’s clear that your business must be digital to survive, it follows that it should also be automated and be easy to maintain.

That’s why you need to think about all the processes you can optimize or automate. Here’s what to consider if you want to optimize your business:

Articulate the needs of your business in terms of processes and resources;
Identify the goals for the optimization. Pinpoint what you want to see as results;
Prioritize the processes you plan to automate;
Define models of business processes and rules which the business automation software must apply.

Again, make sure to follow these steps so that they improve your business results and reduce costs. If you want more examples on how this can be done, check “Software” section in our case studies where we share our experience on CRM and other business automation software development.

Conclusion

As apocalyptic as it may seem at first sight, the Covid-19 crisis is actually a time of opportunity. If you don’t see any yet, look at it from a different perspective. The opportunities are not the typical ones businesses are used to seeing. The economic climate changed, and it definitely made the stakes and the prices of mistakes dramatically higher. However, it also created an entirely new pool of consumer needs, which always equals opportunities to create new products to address those needs. And if you do it right, they will thank you for it.

Finally, the competition among startups is lower, since not everyone will gamble and launch a new product during a crisis. So, if you do enough planning, summon up enough confidence, and assemble a team you trust, you have a great chance to capitalize on the new opportunities.

How to Survive In Crisis, Or Why You Need Business Automation

Django Stars — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 09:14:06 +0000

In these rough times, most companies remain in a sort of limbo. They’re trying to figure out how to keep their business afloat. One solution that is working for many is “business automation”.

Now, if business automation isn’t a new term for you and you’ve automated most of your manual processes – you rock!

If you’re unfamiliar with business automation, no worries! In this blog post, we’ll explain how to eliminate the effects of a pandemic by implementing automation in your business. You’ll learn what tasks to automate first, what mistakes to avoid, and what tools to use to achieve great results.

Let’s get moving.

This guide about How to Survive In Crisis, Or Why You Need Business Automation was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Kate Kryzhnenko - Business Development Manager at Django Stars

What Is Business Process Automation?

Business automation is the use of technology for automating repeatable and manual day-to-day tasks. It allows companies to carry out business processes without or with minimal human intervention.

To make it easier for you to understand, here’s a list of things you can automate:

You might be asking, “Why do I need to automate my business?” For answers, check out these examples of the automation boom in 5 industries during COVID-19.

As you can see, different industries use automation to respond to crises and improve their business performance. Do you still doubt the importance of automation? Then let’s look at some of the main benefits it can bring to your business.

Why You Need to Automate Business Processes

Most business owners are used to processes they use and treat innovation as a risk – until necessity comes along. The COVID-19 crisis, for example, is forcing businesses to review or completely refocus their strategies to survive. If you still doubt whether automating your business is worth it, here’s a list of the main business process automation benefits.

Enhance your online presence

COVID-19 has locked practically everyone on earth into their homes, so people are spending most of their time online.

This means that businesses have more chances to improve the online experiences of their customers by going digital and offering online products or services. The virus has also changed our buying preferences. For example, Americans have increased their spendings in such categories as online grocery, food delivery, meal kits, alcohol, and home improvement.

If your business serves these categories, it’s a great time to think about how you can go online. Remember, you need to be where your clients are. Do you see how relevant business automation is now?

Business process automation example:

The founders of Tito, a flexible platform for selling tickets online, have built a new live streaming platform (Vito) for facilitating online event experiences during COVID-19. Because the virus has had a drastic impact on the event industry, Tito had responded to it by allowing its customers to sell tickets to online events.

Improve customer service

Nobody likes slow, disrespectful customer service or long decision-making processes.

But hiring and maintaining a call center or customer service department is resource-intensive – and here’s when automation comes to help. The good news is that almost all manual document management and customer relationship processes can be automated.

Remember one thing: don’t make your customers wait! If you serve them quickly, they will reward you with loyalty.

Business process automation example:

Molo is a digital mortgage platform that allows customers to get instant mortgages online and provides automated advice on which products suit their needs best. Customers don’t have to deal with paperwork or wait in line – they can get a mortgage in no time, without leaving home.

Ensure Better Workflow and Employee Efficiency

Free your employees from tedious and time-consuming manual work, and turn their energy in the right direction. Did you know that 60% of occupations could save 30% of their time by automating such tasks as lead generation, document processing, and paperwork management? Automating your business allows you to make your employees more productive and responsible.

Business process automation example:

YourSales – sales consulting and outsourcing company uses Leadfeeder (online lead generation tool) to automatically identify leads who bounced from the lead form, send their information to the CRM, and follow them up. It saves time for lead generation managers and improves the sales process.

All in all, automation is about getting your business online. But before doing it – take your time and consider all the pros and cons of automating your business. Here are the main concerns business owners should take into account.

What To Consider Before Automating Your Business

Remember that business automation isn’t a piece of cake. Don’t treat it like a magic remedy that will work wonders at once. Here is what you should consider before:

Evaluate your resources and needs

Stop for a moment and think of where you are now. Ask yourself: What are my business needs at this moment? Do I have enough resources to automate my business? There is no need to bring your business online at once. Start by enhancing your presence on social media and building relationships with your audience there. Think about the channels that require less effort first and only then move further.

Create detailed goals for business automation. What do you want to achieve?

You won’t achieve success if you don’t know why you’ve started and what you want to get. Before investing your time into business automation, set specific targets that will help you to track your progress and optimize results. Ask yourself: What do I want to achieve by automating my business? It can be everything from increasing the productivity of your employees to improving customer loyalty. Define your main goal and make it specific and measurable.

Decide what processes to automate first

Create a list of your business processes that are time-consuming, repetitive, and don’t require any human interaction. It may include importing spreadsheets, sending invoices, optimizing images, or publishing posts to social media regularly at the same time. Don’t automate complex tasks that require creativity and human input. Start small.

To begin with, you can digitize all the company documentation with the help of ABBY FineReader 12. You can also sign documents online with DocuSign / DocHub. Then, think about how you will maintain contact with all your customers, If you still don’t have a robust CRM system – it’s just the time to incorporate it.

Do not depend on the automation too much

Try to keep the balance between automation and human touch. Automation should make the work easier for you, but not substitute the connection with customers and the public relations field. Think of your clients first and how automation can make their experience with you even better.

Emergency Step-by-Step Business Automation Checklist

When you’ve decided that automation is exactly what your business needs right now, it’s time to act. First and foremost, don’t rush to get your business “online”. In most cases, rushing results in low-quality products and websites.

The automation process is complex and somehow cumbersome. That’s why it’s important to prioritize. We understand that you’re pressed in time, and that’s why we have prepared a so-called emergency checklist that will help you automate your business.

Note: We recommend that you do 2 processes simultaneously: start growing your online presence while developing an automated solution for your business. That way, you won’t lose any time and will get better results.

Step 1. Enhance your online presence

If you still don’t have a website, don’t develop it in a hurry. Start your digital journey by growing your presence on social media. Fill your accounts with useful content and product reviews. If you don’t have social media accounts yet, it’s better to create both a company page and a personal account as well. We trust people more than brands, especially in such hard times.

Step 2. Build your PPC advertising campaign

A PPC campaign is all about hot requests and sending traffic to your website or landing page. Start gathering your keywords, analyzing demand, and planning your budget. Since your data and goals evaluation may take around a month, don’t postpone it to get results sooner

Step 3. Cooperate with opinion leaders and influencers in your domain

Most people’s online presence has increased significantly nowadays. People write blogs, stream live videos on Instagram, and grow their social presence in other ways. Don’t be a laggard! Create a list of influencers in your industry who can promote your product. Here’s how you can cooperate with them:

Write guest posts
Offer promotional posts
Cross-promote your products or services
Offer discounts for your product for their audience
Write product reviews

When you’ve started to build your “online presence”, it’s time to think about business automation.

Step 4. Automate the easiest processes first

Your first job is to automate cumbersome and repetitive tasks that don’t require human interaction. As soon as you see confirmation that doing so improves your business performance, proceed to more complex automation. Automation requires time, and your employees need to get used to it. Automate one process at a time and track the impact of the changes on your business.

Step 5. Build a team of “automation experts”

Find 1 or 2 experts in your company who will be responsible for automation and educate other employees. This will help you be confident that everyone is on the same page.

Step 6. Document your process

Always document what you do. Document all your expenses, actions, and results. In the future, this will help you to see the picture “from above” and track the results of your efforts.

Step 7. Choose a technology vendor

When you see that business automation is giving you fruitful results, it may be time to choose a technology partner and develop a custom solution for your needs. During the current COVID-19 crisis, a lot of development companies have adjusted their prices to retain more customers (you can book a meeting with us here and learn more about how we’ve adapted our prices to our clients’ needs). Always think long-term when choosing a vendor. Make sure your vendor has the right expertise and technology to support you as your business grows.

How to Stay Tuned – 7 Business Automation Tools

As a bonus for you, we’ve listed 7 business automation solutions that will help you stay tuned, work remotely, and retain customers.

Intermedia

A powerful online video conferencing platform built for businesses of all sizes. It offers a variety of products for voice and unified communications, security and compliance, productivity and email, backup, and file sharing. Wherever you are, Intermedia Unite communication and collaboration products are always with you.

DialPad

A cloud business communication platform for receiving calls, messages, videos, and meetings from anywhere. DialPad provides different features for call center productivity, calling and routing, messaging, and voice intelligence. And here’s some good news: During the COVID-19 crisis, DialPad is offering DialPad Talk Pro and UberConference Business for free to keep you connected while you work remotely.

Chatfuel

A chatbot platform that helps Facebook page managers increase sales, qualify leads, and automate FAQs. By automating your Facebook messenger with Chatfuel, you get a chance to increase your open rate and CTR, automate your sales, and improve customer satisfaction. Chatfuel clients include famous companies such as Adidas, TechCrunch, LEGO, and T-Mobile, so don’t hesitate to give it a try.

1password

A password management system that helps you save passwords and log in to your websites with a single click. You have to remember only 1 password; all other passwords are securely protected by the 1Password platform. During COVID-19, 1Password has removed its trial limits to help companies work from home securely.

Tufin

A security policy company that ensures your business complies with security standards. Tufin offers products for security policy management, network security change automation, application connectivity management, and cloud security.

Zerto

An IT resilience platform for data recovery, backup, and cloud mobility. It helps you reduce the cost and complexity of application migrations, protect your business from disruptions, and modernize it using the cloud. Moreover, Zerto is making their technology available for free for organizations impacted by COVID-19 to keep their systems protected from disruptions.

Qualys

An all-in-one information security and vulnerability management platform. With Qualys, you can analyze threats in real-time, rapidly patch critical threats, and prioritize the riskiest vulnerabilities. Qualis also gives you a chance to test the security of your public web servers for free, so don’t miss this chance.

Conclusion

Business automation is one of the best ways to improve your customers’ experience, reduce costs, and boost your overall workflow. The key is to automate processes step-by-step and know your goals and expectations. But, first of all, you as a business owner must be prepared to change. Give business automation a try – and see what results it will bring.

How to Develop a Real Estate App That Stands Out

Django Stars — Tue, 26 May 2020 09:33:45 +0000

Standing out isn’t just a problem for apps – it’s something every product struggles with. But, like mortgage or financial applications, an app that deals with real estate needs to be easy to use, transparent (as not all of the users are knowledgeable in the subject, or good with numbers), and absolutely bulletproof in its handling the confidential personal and financial information of its users.

So, how do you do that?

Main Problems In Your Market

Traditions are hard to break. In some industries, it’s hard to introduce something new and disrupt something else that’s been functioning for decades. For example, the financial and banking markets are slowly giving way to fintech, yet still some countries aren’t ready for it. People are just used to the way things have always been.

Another industry that struggles to accept innovation is real estate. For instance, in Germany, it’s hard to find a well-functioning real estate platform that will satisfy the needs of both property owners and buyers. There are some popular websites, but they don’t work properly. Listings only work if they’re posted by brokers. The service is free of charge for owners, but quite costly for buyers. Consequently, buyers lose money. So do owners, who could have sold their property at a higher price instead of paying a commission to somebody else.

Also, the existing platforms don’t provide property valuations. Owners don’t know how much their property actually costs, and have to accept the broker’s price. In turn, brokers tend to suggest more customer-friendly prices so the properties will sell faster. This problem was elegantly solved by Scoperty – a service that connects owners, buyers and realtors, and provides up-to-date valuations.

Another problem that both sides of a traditional property transaction encounter is the duration of the closing process. Shuffling paperwork back and forth can take weeks or even months. Private Exchange Australia (PEXA), for instance, has solved this problem in an innovative way. They use the cloud to fast-track this process and complete financial settlements digitally. Their solution even allows for electronic signatures.

To offer buyers a better view of the property, some companies now use 3D and VR. One of the leaders in this is Matterport, which offers “immersive” real estate tours using photographs, videos, and 3D experiences.

What you may learn from this is that to make a difference, you need to find a pressing real estate problem, and solve it.

How to Communicate With Your Customers

Our life is connected to the web at every turn. And it’s understandable, because digital processes make our lives easier. However, if you want to create a product that people will love, you need to know who your customers are and pay close attention to the customer journey. Users of real estate platforms usually can be lumped into in three groups, and you need to develop functions necessary for each of them.

Owners and realtors should be able to create listings, fill out property information, upload images, manage offers, and schedule meetings and open houses. At the same time, buyers should be able to filter and choose properties, get information on location and neighborhoods, add favorites, get alerts for their searches, and contact the owners.

The product team decides what the customer journeys for these roles should look like. Will the interface be different right after the user logs in? Or will the interfaces for both user types be similar, but with different functionality for each user type? For example, the “property owner” profile should provide functionality for uploading photos of the property and its description, while the “buyer” profile may provide advanced search and additional filtering options for more relevant search results. It all depends on the user’s role.

As a service provider, you have to find ways to efficiently communicate with your customers and let them communicate with each other. Be sure to provide access to all the platform’s functionality across all channels, web and mobile, and customer support either online or over the phone, or both. Create a direct and secure communication channel inside the platform that allows buyers to contact owners or realtors.

You’ll Need More Than Just Valuations

Why is valuation important? Because when it comes to real estate, large amounts of money are involved, and buyers want to be sure the property is worth it. In other words, it’s all about trust and transparency. Providing valuations for property shows your customers that you care about them and strive for being in step with real market prices. To get this done, you may integrate your product with third-party services that’ll provide necessary information about property value on the market.

This way, buyers and owners get more precise estimates than those that might be given by realtors, as the way they get paid often depends on how fast they sell a house.

To make the choice easier for buyers, PriceHubble, for example, uses criteria like street noise and shopping opportunities to value property. Scoperty, in its turn, provides a visual that shows whether the property in question is in an expensive part of town or not.

Showing additional information like this is your chance to get closer to your target audience, which will appreciate it. This is what a customer-oriented approach looks like, and it’s vital to any successful startup, real estate web and mobile app development in particular, and business in general.

For instance, another client of ours, Moneypark, which is the largest European mortgage advisory platform, also uses similar partner data for valuations.

The one thing you have to remember is that the market prices change regularly. If you’ve chosen to integrate with the third-party service that provides you evaluations, you should find out how often they update prices. On the other hand, if you’ve decided to go along with a self-developed algorithm, you should keep track of new data (find a reliable source for it) and keep the algorithm model relevant to real market prices.

This means that if a crisis like the one in 2008 is repeated, you’ll be able to re-evaluate all the properties and update prices. This is just not possible without the latest information.

Сontent Is King

It might be a challenge at the start, but you need as much content on your platform as possible. To bring buyers to the platform, you need owners and their listings – and owners won’t come if there are no buyers.

One of the challenges with content on a real estate platform is that users don’t always provide recent information.

For instance, owners and realtors don’t often update their property status or information. They can denote a status for their listing – Open for offers, or For Sale (with a defined price) – but may forget to fill out all the information fields or upload enough images showing the property. For that reason, be sure to remind users to fill the listings properly or show a progress bar which will encourage users to put more information as it increases their chances to be sold.

Another great example of the importance of content is Moneypark. It’s a mortgage platform where users can choose property from offers presented and either a) choose a property on their own and ask for a mortgage, or b) provide criteria for what they want, and let the platform find matches.

In both cases, it’s important to provide as much information as possible so the system can find the right property. In the first case, the more information about a property that a seller provides, the better the chances that it will catch the eye of a customer. In the second case, potential buyers should provide as much information as possible about their criteria and about themselves. This will make the property search easier, and the customer will get an answer concerning the mortgage faster.

Think About Security

Along with banking and financial applications, proptech platforms need solid security for privacy and customer data protection. For instance, when developing similar services, you might be interested to host it in the cloud, like AWS, because they provide everything what you need – starting from encrypted easy-to-scale RDS instances in Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to user authentication services like Cognito which handles sign-up, sign-in, email and phone verification almost out of the box. But even perfect tooling might be badly configured, especially a tremendous AWS cloud stack. That’s why you have to ensure that the responsible person who sets up your infrastructure really knows how to deal with it. As there’s no need to remind you that in terms of data security the stakes are very high.

Ever since the EU introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the game rules have changed. It has affected not just EU-based businesses, but businesses around the world. The GDPR applies to anyone who offers a service or a product to an EU-resident and plans to collect and use or share their personal information.

On one hand, the GDPR is a guarantee that platforms won’t be able to share or store user information without the user’s consent. Everything that can identify a person (e.g., name, email, phone number, etc.) is protected under GDPR. Users can edit or erase their information, whereas previously businesses were allowed to simply stop communicating with customers while keeping their data.

On the other hand, all this causes companies to make some extra moves concerning data processing and storage. For a real estate company, a data audit may be necessary to determine the legal or business rationale for collecting and storing data from buyers, owners, and realtors.

You Need A Map

Obviously, for a real estate platform, a map is a crucial element. This is the first thing any user sees – whether they’re an owner, a buyer, or a realtor. I can’t stress enough how important it is to carefully choose a map based on the price and on available tools and features, especially when you have a large number of users.

For instance, for product development you may use Google Maps as it has a great satellite view. But there are few drawbacks you should know before starting to work with them.

First, their API isn’t compatible with libraries that can work with any map. Which is why, if you don’t like the pricing or the map itself, you can’t just go and replace it with little effort and no changes to the application itself. Which isn’t really convenient.

Another drawback can be that, due to Google Maps’ use policy, it’s not permitted to use any other geographical services (like finding coordinates using an address). And using Google Maps features is costlier than it is with others. Thus, you may go for Google Maps if the satellite view is of a high priority for your product, but if it’s not, there are also numerous alternatives you can choose from.

Scalable Technology

At some point, any startup should be ready to scale. This means it needs to prepare for both changes in technology and in business. Here are some general recommendations from my experience, which might be helpful for the development of any product not necessarily related to real estate.

Learn to Use Third-Party Services

Don’t be afraid to get help from external services that can solve your problems. You can integrate with a CRM tool for your back-office, or use authentication and authorization services, business analytics, a chat, or anything else you can think of.

Having third-party services handle recurrent everyday tasks for you will win you some time, help you focus on the unique and authentic features of your product, and allow you to work on what really brings value to the market. This will also help you understand your product and your needs better, and, consequently, develop your own solution, or migrate to another service provider.

At the implementation level, make sure that there’s a certain interface that allows for easy changes to the client code that communicates with the external service. Note that some services have a vendor lock, which means you won’t be able to switch the services that are integrated with your app.

The authentication and authorization service AWS Cognito, for instance, is one of those services. It doesn’t support exporting user functionality via UI. You can still export it via aws-cli, but not the user password hashes. This means that if you decide to migrate from Cognito, you’ll have to move all existing user data to a new service or database and ask them to set up new passwords. Otherwise, clients won’t be able to log in anymore.

Calculate Expenses on Tech Stack Beforehand

Before committing to an outside service, review your financial capabilities. You don’t want your tech-stack bill to destroy your future business plans. Dip your toes into the market. There are services (for instance, authentication and authorization) that are convenient to use, when you don’t have many customers. They provide email/phone verification and reset password functionality out of the box – you can simply pick any of them and use their cheapest plan. But when your audience starts growing, this might put you in a tight spot.

I’ve already mentioned issues that may arise with Google Maps. To get into more detail, they significantly increased service prices since July 16, 2018. With about one thousand user sessions per day, the bill would reach approximately $1500 per month (the exact amount depends on which API you use the most – Places API, Geocoding API, or Map API). If you’re aiming at a minimum of 10,000 users per day, you have to be ready to pay about $15,000 per month.

You can save costs by caching requests or combining different geo/map providers, but be sure to check their terms of use and legal limitations before you do. It’s worth mentioning one more time: Google Maps doesn’t allow that.

Think About Bottlenecks

Imagine waking up one morning to discover that a prominent media outlet has written about your product. This might spark public interest in your app, and this is the chance you can’t miss. A good publication or a mention can cause a big spike in app usage, and it would be a pity if your product fails to handle all the requests.

To prepare yourself for a big workload, you’ll need to take a short break from feature delivery and have your tech gurus focus on product reliability. For a load test, you can use a wonderful tool called Locust. Depending on the results you get, there are several ways to go:

Refactor or simplify SQL queries. Check the ORM-generated SQL, but be careful with DISTINCT, ORDER BY, JOIN, and COUNT, which are time- and resource-consuming. Use the EXPLAIN command to see how a query planner is going to execute a query.
Move more calculations to the DB level. This might be more effective than iterating over retrieved data and applying adjustments to a code layer.
Create a read replica of the database. If you have a map where each user produces a lot of requests (which are mostly for retrieving data), they all could be propagated to a read-optimized replica and not slow down other app functionalities.
Move CPU-intensive tasks to serverless solutions. If you feel it’s necessary, you can use solutions like AWS Lambda, which is endlessly scalable. If it proves tricky to understand which code is the one that’s slowing down your product, try using Profiling tools.
Use auto-scaling of application instances. AWS Beanstalk might spawn more EC2 instances when it suspects a big load. It doesn’t happen immediately, and depends on thresholds you configured. But if frequently used parts of your application produce lots of requests to the server, it would be a good idea to have a tool like this in the stack. But first of all, you have to…
…use caching! If you properly configure the Cache-Control HTTP headers, only the first request will hit your server. All the identical subsequent requests will be handled by CDN, for example, AWS CloudFront. This means you won’t even need to configure auto scaling.

Caching for maps. If you’re returning data that dependent on the user’s viewport boundaries, consider passing “slippy map tilenames”. These are defined rectangles for each zoom level, versus unique coordinates of a user’s screen position. In the first case, the URL to obtain data would be the same for multiple users who observe the same region on the map. This allows you to leverage HTTP caching. However, these users may have additional filtering parameters which may be unique. But it would also make sense to generalize them. For instance, if a user filters properties by price or size, you can replace text input with a slider. Thus, instead of typing in their own prices or floor space, users will select ranges with predefined ‘steps’, which are easier to cache.

Consider Decoupling

When designing every new feature, developers should consider one thing: functionality has to be decoupled. Put another way, there should be boundaries between components. Why is this important? Later on, when you scale, you most probably will want to split a monolithic system. With boundaries, this will be easier to do.

On top of this, the codebase will be easier to maintain. Often, people stop working on legacy systems because they cannot be incrementally refactored. They decide to build a new app from scratch, which is actually bad for business, because a lot of money is spent only to get the same features they already have. Also, it means no new features can be developed before a new app is ready.

Last but not least, make sure the team understands the importance of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. I’ve seen talented engineers who were passionate about coding and perfect architecture, but a lack of such understanding might hurt your project’s success. To get into the right mindset, I highly recommend reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I’m sure the book will help to look at the product from another point of view and find the proper balance between speed and quality. Startups are not about coding and technologies. It’s about putting business goals first.

UX/UI

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works,” said Steve Jobs. Of course, in this day and age, visual content has to be more compelling than ever. If users don’t like what they see in the first seconds, they will just ignore whatever good content they’re offered. But the design, the way an app or a platform functions, makes all the difference. If users can’t figure out how to use your product, you won’t be able to solve their problems.

In real estate, bigger things are at stake. Buying property can be the decision of a lifetime for many people, which is why you have to make sure that your platform has a clear and intuitive interface and understandable texts. Even users with little technical or financial knowledge should be able to find their way around it.

Some startups place a lot of value on building a mobile app, but it’s only up to you. However, a mobile-first layout of the platform is a must. Those who look for good deals or properties in very particular locations will definitely want to use your app on the go, chasing their dream house or office as they travel or run errands.

In my opinion, development of a mobile app for real estate isn’t a priority, as it means you’ll have twice as much developing to do and spend twice as much money on marketing. So, an app probably makes sense only when your platform already has a large audience.

Stand Out In the Crowd

Wrapping up the guide, let’s come back to one of the most important topics in business in general. As I’ve said before, you have to stand out. The competition is high, as are the requirements and expectations both from the industry and from the customers. Which means, you have to deliver. To do so, you have to understand:

Your product’s goals, and
Why customers need your product

What I’m talking about isn’t even the USP – the unique selling proposition. It may be there, but it’s more about how the USP is realized in the product, and how it’s being presented to the customers. For instance, if you’re offering commercial property for young creatives or society startups, a web version of, say, Internet Explorer isn’t your priority. What you can do, though, is use a less conservative design, follow modern trends and experiment, which a younger audience will definitely appreciate.

To conclude, let’s look back at what we’ve learned. Real estate is a highly traditional industry, but this shouldn’t discourage you. If you correctly define the problems of the market and what potential customers really need, you can offer a product that people are going to use.

Here, the next step would be to learn more about your customers and the best communication channel to reach them. When you do that, fill your product with valuable and useful content, offer security that users can trust, and make sure your product has a clear and intuitive design. This way, you’ll create a product that people will not only use, but love doing so.

Last, but not least, make sure you choose a technology that’s easily scalable and maintained, so that you can keep doing the good work as the number of users grows.

This article about How to Develop a Real Estate App That Stands Out was originally published on Django Stars Blog. Written by Gleb Pushkov - Senior Software Developer at Django Stars

How to Write an Investment Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide

Django Stars — Fri, 22 May 2020 08:35:44 +0000

Roughly one-third of startups fail because of a lack of funding. They may have brilliant ideas, but not enough financial support to survive.

Besides, COVID is changing the startup financing picture significantly. As we see in the graphic, private market funding is projected to fall to $77B in Q1 ’20 – more than 16% less than Q4’19, and 12% less than Q1 ’19.

This means that the financing industry is becoming very selective and competitive. But don’t put your great idea on the shelf just yet. A compelling investment proposal will give you a good chance to source the funding you need.

But if you haven’t done it before, you probably have a bunch of questions. How do you write a good investment proposal? How long or short should it be? And what should you write about?

You’ll find all the necessary information in this guide.

What Is an Investment Proposal?

In simple terms, an investment proposal is a text document, PDF, or slide show presentation about your startup (product or service) whose purpose is to raise capital. It appeals to people who have money and may be interested in contributing financially.

A successful investment proposal delivers solid arguments as to why your startup is worth investing in, which requires preparation before you start writing. Also, the proposal should be presented at an appropriate stage of product development — that is, at the MVP stage.

Necessary Preparation before Writing

Before you start writing an investment proposal, you need to prepare, and do it in stages:

#1. Research Your Market and Competition

A startup’s success greatly depends on the pre-development, or discovery phase. This is when you gather data from a market analysis and use it to define the product-market fit. The discovery stage helps you eliminate many of the risks related to unexpected expenses, lack of market demand, and other potential issues.

Let’s take a detailed look at the different parts of the discovery phase:

Market Size, Potential, and Competitors

Identifying and scoping your segment of the market, customer and product demand, and competitors is half of the discovery phase. This is a vital part of the process, since it helps you figure out the size and potential of the market, find the gaps in the industry, and define your product-market fit. Along with that, it’s also useful in that it helps you figure out how to withstand the competition – and you might lure clients away from it.

Buyer Personas and Customer Journey

The discovery phase should yield a customer journey map. This map is based on your buyer personas – the marketing avatars of people who would use your product – and basically identify the touchpoints that your users will interact with. It’s a crucial part of the discovery phase, since the first contact a customer has with your product can make or break their experience. So does each contact after that.

A customer journey map will help you anticipate some of the difficulties your buyer persona might encounter, find the best ways to address them, and help ensure a better user experience.

#2. Review Your Product

As mentioned above, the best time to start writing an investment proposal is when you have your MVP — minimum viable product — or an early version of your product that has enough functionality to make it viable for users, but still requires some development effort and time. At this stage, you should also have figured out your business goals and buyer personas.

Presenting your MVP will show a deep understanding of your potential audience and demonstrate that you can satisfy their needs.

#3. Gather Information about Investors

First, you should identify what investors you wish to attract. They can be grouped into a few different categories:

Angel investors and angel groups. These are high-net-worth individuals and groups that fund startups in return for stock, which makes them just as invested in a startup’s success as they are in getting returns. Most of the time, they also have a wealth of entrepreneurial experience, so they can also mentor or coach you.
Banks. These are not the most common source of investments for startups, but you can still take your proposal to a bank once your project starts to show progress (e.g., by gaining customers).
Venture capital firms. These companies usually close more deals than angels, as they have more fuel to power startups. Your choice of VC will usually depend on your location, as most of them are created equal.
Corporate investors. Some corporations take an interest in funding startups as a way to acquire new assets and identify new technology, all of which can help them grow their revenue.
Peer-to-peer and personal investors. This group can include your close relatives and acquaintances, P2P lenders, and crowdfunding platforms. Friends and family are usually the first people on the list, and sometimes they can lend you a decent sum. However, you can also go straight to potential customers and launch a crowdfunding project.

Another source of funding is accelerator programs, which help develop your idea and gain traction. These can offer you from $10K to $120K in seed money, as well as additional startup resources such as industry or financial management knowledge.

After you determine the type or types of investors and form a list of target entities, you should do research on:

Their main field or focus
If they plan to venture into new territories
What projects they’ve already funded
What projects they rejected, and why
Any additional public information that might be useful (such as interviews, area of interest, etc.).

Also, keep in mind what kind of investor you will be writing for, and consider writing a couple of tailored proposals. For instance, if you seek help from bankers, they will be more invested in the financial side of things, while an angel investor will want to know more about your finances and marketing ideas.

What an Investment Proposal Should Include

As mentioned above, an investment proposal can be an ordinary text document or a PDF with graphics. It can also be a presentation created with software such as PowerPoint or Keynote. The format of your proposal largely depends on the type of investor you choose, but it’s always possible to go with all three formats.

However, there are certain must-have elements in every proposal. They are:

Investment Title

Everything starts with a name, and your proposal needs one as well. Ideally, it should be a few words that describe the value of the future product or service and the direction you are taking it, such as the market segment.

Example: Campervan Booking Platform

Catchy doesn’t necessarily mean enthralling. A title like our example gets straight to the point — in this case, you want to build a platform people can use to rent a campervan.

Executive Summary

A business proposal for investors starts with a cover page, followed by a table of contents. The body of the document should begin with an executive summary. In this summary, you should include your value proposition – that is, a short statement that conveys information about your target customer, their problem, your proposed solution, and the benefits your solution offers to the customer and the investor.

You should mention the ROI you expect to yield from the required investment right away. It’s also good to relate success stories, if any, of your experience as an entrepreneur or of your company (in case your startup is branching out from an established business) to further instill confidence in your competence.

Keep it realistic, and keep in mind a key question: What’s in it for the investor? Make your proposal scream out that your idea can actually make money by creating a convincing proposition.

Project Details

This section requires all the facts and arguments supporting you as an entrepreneur, your company (if you already have one), and your MVP – specifically, how you plan to bring it to life.

Company performance

If it’s an existing company, include a business description and provide historical and current financial data. If you haven’t yet established a business, share information about products you’ve been involved in and made a significant contribution to, the stakeholders in the current project and their achievements, and compelling market statistics that underscore your startup’s potential.

Planned marketing and sales methods

In this part of the document, present all the research you’ve done on your market and its competition.

This section should also outline your marketing strategies and channels, and your sales strategy. A key point here might be the pricing model you’ve chosen for your product and a rationale for why it’s the most profitable one.

Operational team logistics

Another piece of information that can help potential investors form a positive opinion of your startup and its potential is the structure of your current team – the one that will achieve your goals. This can include the location of your business, the number of employees you have hired/ plan to hire, the equipment and/or technology you need to get the project up and running, and any applicable operational expenses.

Project financing

Seeing how this is the entire goal of the proposal, make sure you use accurate numbers and include lots of detail. This part should specify the sources of funding, forecasts, timeframes, ROI, and the investment exit plan.

An exit strategy is a crucial point in an investment proposal that’s necessary in two situations:

When a business has met predetermined investment criteria; or
When a business has failed to achieve its defined profit objective.

Usually, it’s a contingency plan with information on what to do to limit financial losses if the business goes under.

Things to Avoid When Writing an Investment Proposal

The investment proposal can be a lifeline for any startup, so it’s crucial to make a compelling argument for your case. At the same time, it has to be straight to the point and factual to highlight your competence in your field. We’ve already discussed what will get you there, so here are some things that you should avoid along the way:

Don’t make it complicated. The text should be understandable to anyone who reads it, not just your peers. Besides, using a lot of jargon or complex phrases might sound like you have copied information instead of describing it in your own words. Simple wording also shows you can be on even footing with your potential customers. How can you attract someone’s attention if they don’t understand what you’re talking about?
Don’t be shy. Don’t beat around the bush when talking about the financial support you require. Be precise about the amount of money you want to raise, what you will do with it, and why you need it.
Avoid irrelevant information. Include only the information that is relevant. Your skills and experience may be impressive, but if they aren’t complementary to the business or the proposal, they’ll simply create information noise.
Don’t be obsessive. Don’t fixate on any information you provide in the proposal, as this might be viewed as unprofessional.
Don’t make it too long. A long proposal may not be read at all. Be considerate of the time someone will need to spend reading and assessing your proposal, as well as of your own time.

Three Diverse Investment Proposal Examples

Here are some excellent templates you can draw inspiration from.

1) The first investment proposal example is the form of a landing page accompanied by descriptions and illustrations of the startup and its competitive advantages. The proposed startup wants to build invoicing software for small businesses.

2) The second startup investment proposal is a presentation that can be shown to an audience or sent as a PDF. The template provides cues as to where you can insert in your own information.

3) The last type of investment proposal template is a traditional text document written as part of a business plan. Click this link to download an editable template.

Conclusion

A project investment proposal is a key document that every startup needs to obtain financial support. An ideal proposal provides accurate data and predictions that demonstrate to investors your competence and ability to profit, which ultimately will repay their contributions.

If you want to increase your project’s chances of success, don’t jump into creating a proposal. Take time to prepare the necessary information and make sure you write the proposal according to universally accepted guidelines. After all, an investor might not even read it if the title isn’t catchy enough. So, pay special attention to the proposal’s structure, and include only relevant information that creates a positive, but realistic assessment of your startup’s potential. Don’t make abstract statements, and be precise in your calculations.

This guide about How to Write an Investment Proposal: A Step-by-Step Guide was originally posted on Django Stars blog. Written by Editorial Team at Django Stars

10 Things to Remember When Designing your App’s UX

Django Stars — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 15:07:38 +0000

A certain number of UX guidelines apply to both mobile and desktop apps, such as the general requirements for convenience, functionality and content highlighting. But don’t be fooled by these similarities. The number of moments you can miss relying on this part is more than likely to make your app fail. Make no mistake: the first thing that differentiates a good app from a bad one is the user experience. After all, the happier the users, the more popular the app.

A modern human being spends five hours a day on average using mobile gadgets. Among other things, this means that users are exposed to a colossal stream of information, and you have just a few seconds to catch their attention.

That’s why the requirements are so high for modern UX. To help you meet them, here’s a checklist of tips that will help you design the best UX possible.

1. User Research

It’s not uncommon for teams providing a web development service to skip this step in the initial stage of the project development as a cost-cutting solution, assuming that its results are obvious. But it’s a huge mistake known as the false-consensus effect, which originates in the biased experience of the developers and designers. If you want to create a product that your users will appreciate, you need to know who they are and what they (not you!) expect from your future app.

User research can be conducted in a variety of ways. Here is a short list of steps that can help you achieve a proper result:

Analyze competitive apps and apps with similar feature sets. Define typical user groups and their typical behaviors.
Build User Personas. This is a stage when UX designers create personal profiles of real users in the greatest possible detail. It’s important to realize that you should start not from the app’s features and the strict patterns they define, but from real-world user behavior, which may not be obvious. By adding secondary details to your user personas’ profiles (such as their budgets, technical skills, professions) you can build much more accurate portraits.
Contextual Inquiry. Consult with 5 or 6 specific members of different user groups to survey their experience with similar apps, as well as their demands and expectations for your future product. During this inquiry, pay attention to the conditions around the most and least satisfying experience with the app. It will help emphasize the product’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses in future development.
Concept-testing. When you have a prototype (or parts of it), test it on users from different groups. It will help you make necessary changes to the UX or product architecture before development begins. You don’t need a finished or realistic product for this part — you only need to test its key features and scenarios. You can do this online or in person, using boards and stickers.

The more detailed your user research is, the more successful your UX will be. In reality, deep user research involving all of these steps isn’t always possible. But completing several or even one step from this list is better than nothing. (If you want more, here’s a list of recommendations on user research from Adobe.)

2. Using iOS and Android Guides

When developing an app (and especially its navigation) you need to factor in the platform you develop it for. But more importantly, you should consider the fact that platforms’ requirements change with every new version. Here are the latest iOS and Android UX guides to help you stay up to date.

Remember that the differences between the platforms your app is used on doesn’t divide your users into essentially different groups. When trying to keep up with the platform’s requirements, don’t ignore human-centered solutions in favor of following the guidelines. When you skip the “iOS user” and “Android user” cliches and think about the comfort of the person with a smartphone that uses your app, you realize there are more uniting than dividing factors – such as navigation that can be easily tapped with a thumb, finger-size tap targets, a universal checkbox, pin and arrow behavior, and other details we will discuss later on.

3. Eliminate Clutter

The more time a user wastes to separate useful information from chaos on the screen, the less satisfied he is. The “computing capacity” of a human brain needed to solve a problem (in this case, the problem of how to understand an app) is called the cognitive load. Minimize it!

Clutter is annoying on any app or website. But a mobile app’s limited space means that every needless button, link, or bit of text is one too many. The only thing the user should see on the screen of your app is the thing he needs at that exact moment. Here is a helpful UX design checklist to make sure that will always happen:

Use dropdown blocks that allow the user to see more options and information after tapping.
Default reuse of previously inputted data allows users to reduce the number of required inputs.
Prioritize structure and the visual weight of the elements. Arrange information according to fixed levels of importance, and give it a corresponding visual weight, from high to low. Depending on your UI, this can be done through font size and weight, block colors, etc.
Stick to the principles of visual and functional coordination. The layout of recurrent functional elements should be unified for the whole app.
Leave tips in spots where the user might feel confused. But don’t overload the screen with them.

Source: Dribbble / by Taras Migulko

4. Provide Feedback

For a user, nothing makes operating an application harder than not knowing what they need to do or what will happen after they take an action. For user experience to be successful, an app should communicate with the user person in clear, straightforward language and give him status information exactly when he needs it.

Unfortunately, you can’t design a hover effect on a mobile device. All you have is a tap that the element does or doesn’t react to. Your job is to use proper positioning, style, and short instructive texts to show what will happen after the user taps one element or another.

Other important parts of app feedback are dialog boxes and error messages. In the case of the latter, self-descriptiveness is crucial: the error itself is a stress for a user, so don’t make him even more confused. Make it clear to him what happened and how to handle this situation.

Source: Dribbble / by Den Klenkov for Fireart Studio

5. Take Advantage of the Device’s Capabilities

If we consider a mobile gadget as a minimized version of a desktop one, certain obstructions limit your opportunities to create a unique and outstanding application. But try to move beyond the “mobile-first” approach and use the perks of a mobile device that a desktop lacks. Include these features in your UX project checklist:

Push messages. When relevant personalized information from an app appears as a notification, it’s harder to miss. On the other hand, don’t overdo it, because 32% of users quit working with an app that sends more than 5 push notifications a week.
Voice activation. The screen and its elements are no longer the only forms of interaction between a person and his smartphone. Add a voice interface to make your app even more usable.
Geolocation. This helps personalize results displayed on the screen and eliminates the need to input the user’s address manually.
Accelerometer. This is a popular tool for mobile games. The smartphone reacts to its position in space, which defines the behavior of elements in the app. This expands its use beyond the game field — for example, for 3Dobject viewing.
Camera. This helps release users from unnecessary manual data input (when they can be scanned) and opens up new opportunities to implement AR tools, which are gaining in popularity.
Biometric data. Face and fingerprint recognition technologies have already replaced clumsy start screens that ask for passwords.

Depending on your app’s purpose and focus, you can use various combinations of these smartphone features to help users see your product as something irreplaceable and unique.

At the same time, don’t ignore the general principles of design for touch. The size of the clickable elements and the space between them should be comfortable for tapping and stay the same on all of the different smartphone screens (including the smallest ones). Aside from that, the screens of different devices have different sizes for the thumb zone (the area where you can drag your thumb comfortably). Consider this when positioning the elements on the screen. Here you can find the design-for-touch guidelines, supported by statistics.

There is one general principle underlying all these rules: use the device features, and let your app become something more than a website for a phone.

Source: Dribbble

6. Navigation Tips

Easy-to-use navigation is probably the biggest UX challenge. The functionality packed in your app must be easy to find and use. The fewer taps the user needs to perform to achieve the goal, the better your UX/UI design. Sure, to achieve this you need to understand your specific target audience and what navigation pattern is more natural for it. But it’s even better if your navigation is made of universal and standard components, so no one needs explanations at all.

Speaking of informational architecture – and, more specifically, the choice between flat and deep navigation for a mobile device – flat solutions are the obvious priority (at least, all the parts coupled with the main functionality). A user won’t be happy searching for necessary tools in the tree-like structure and constantly having to tap the “back” button.

Since the majority of navigation elements remain hidden in working order, make sure the user can always know where he is in the app. Aside from the obvious labels, a step-by-step structure and path display are useful here. At the same time, navigation shouldn’t distract from the content and clickable functional elements.

Make sure your navigation is visible at all times and stays in the same place on different screens. This will lend a sense of reliability and clarity, and decrease the user’s cognitive load.

7. Interactive Elements

Almost every interaction between a man and a device comes down to the user giving a command (tapping on a button, data input, etc.) and the program reacting to this action. Whatever your app is, interaction is its basic essence. Your goal is to make each one of these two steps easy and clear so users won’t encounter any problems.

All of the interactive elements should stand out from the other content and be predictable, so the user can understand how to perform an action he needs (“give a command”). Clear labels and proper UI can help with that. (Check out Adobe’s expanded guide on buttons design here.)

Feedback on interactions tells the user that the reaction to his action happened. Avoid empty screens and static buttons, which can make the user think the app isn’t working properly. Highlighting by tapping, load and progress bars, and other informative animated effects are always good solutions.

8. Loading

Let’s focus a little more on the screen loading process, or the wait time while an action is underway. Modern users have become accustomed to applications loading content instantly. If their wait lasts longer than a few seconds, users get impatient and might even quit the app. But sometimes a wait is unavoidable — for example, during the execution of transactions, or when there is low-speed internet. In this case, your goal is to make these miserable seconds less frustrating for the user. Here is a convenient mobile app UX checklist to address this issue:

Main screen first. Make sure your main screen (the one with the most important information) displays immediately, while information that will become available after the scroll keeps loading. In this case, users might even remain unaware that content is still loading. But try to avoid static load screens that lack functional elements — this UX practice is outdated, as it doesn’t align with the principles of human-centered design.
When you can’t avoid the load screen, make it obvious that the load is underway. An empty screen or an unchanging previous screen makes you think there’s something wrong with the app. Use loaders and load bars.
If a loader is animated and looks interesting, it will keep the user’s attention for a few extra seconds of waiting. At the same time, you should still follow the principles of simplicity and minimalism – in some cases, users might see this loader often enough for it to become annoying.
A skeleton screen is the screen of a loading page during an update of data. As opposed to the usual loader, this creates a sense that the page is already loaded and the data update is imminent. Plus, the image of an already filled page will hold the user’s attention better, since it will include a large number of different elements.

Source: Dribbble / by Ion Shipilov

9. Search Recommendations

Most apps include a search bar, and sometimes it is even their main functional tool (e.g., in internet shops, music apps, services and delivery searches). Use this UX checklist to make sure the search process in your mobile app is flawless:

Use a full-sized search bar if you can. Yes, you can save screen space by input extending after icon tapping, but this forces the user to take an extra step every time. Even more, a noticeable and recognizable search bar will always help a user if he gets confused.
Give default options. There’s almost no need to type a thing if a list of popular requests appears after the user taps his initial input.
Use auto-suggestions. If the previous step didn’t work in a specific user’s scenario, auto-suggestions can help minimize the input.
Memorize recent searches. People often search for something they’ve already searched for. Quick input of previous requests can simplify the job in the future.
Categorize results. Displaying search results by category in the form of tabs can help the user find what he needs faster.
Suggest alternatives when there are no search results. An empty page of search results shouldn’t be a dead-end and make the user think his problem has no solution. Offer him alternatives in the form of closest results or results with a similar spelling.

10. Test Your Design

Even the best UX won’t escape minor flaws without proper testing. But it’s easy to catch and correct them by following this universal UX testing checklist.

Test your product on different kinds of devices, including tablets on different platforms and smartphones with various screens. There is an extensive list of recommendations regarding user testing. Its main point is to divide the testing process into many stages, start as early as possible (which can save you time and budget on making changes), and conduct tests with different groups of people. One of the most helpful stages here is testing on real users — for example, on users who took part in user research or similar members of the same categories.

Conclusion

Every year, the mobile applications market offers up exciting new tools and technologies. As this happens, UX trends are becoming more and more focused on the availability and simplification of the interactions between the user and an app. To create a high-demand product in these conditions, you need to understand the user needs your app fulfills and what basic functions it should include. To do that, use the above recommendations to help you figure out which UX elements your app needs to succeed and stand out from the pack.

This article about 10 Things to Remember When Designing your App’s UX was originally posted on Django Stars blog. Written by Lena Kryshtal - UI/UX Designer at Django Stars

Top 11 US Lending Startups That are Disrupting the Real Estate Industry

Django Stars — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:50:35 +0000

The common pain of all millennials is having multiple debts — starting with student loans and ending (or not) with loans for their car, a house, and so on. This is the main reason why the lending market is on the rise:

Direct student loans equal $1.24 trillion, with over 35.1 million borrowers
Consumer credit reached a peak of $4.15 trillion in Q3 2019
Finally, mortgages comprise the largest part of the US lending market, with a total debt of $9.2 trillion.

As a result, numerous lending fintech startups have emerged to get a piece of the pie. Let’s look at why they are growing in number, examine other causes of their growth, the trends and challenges that small online lenders can face, and study the most successful examples of US lending startups.

This article about Top 11 US Lending Startups That are Disrupting the Real Estate Industry was originally posted on Django Stars blog. Written by Editorial Team at Django Stars

Online Lenders: An Accessible Alternative to Legacy Banks

Around 63% of Americans who own a home have a mortgage. At the same time, in less than 5 years, the number of traditional bank loans shrank from 40% to 28% of the market, while the share held by online lenders rose from 5% to 38%.

What caused such a surge in fintech lending? Look no further. Here are the top reasons why consumers prefer online mortgages and other loans to those offered by legacy financial institutions:

Accessibility. Online lenders (or nonbanks) are always on hand. You don’t need to adjust his your schedule to the bank’s business hours — to apply for a loan, you can simply browse a website or open an app.
Convenience. Again, compared to traditional banks, online mortgages offer customers a simple form to fill out instead of asking them to bring all their documents, including their pet’s ID.
No human factor. Lending fintech startups analyze the data a user submits without seeing the person behind it. This helps them make an unbiased decision based on a user’s credit score and other important information, not on someone’s judgmental attitude.
Speed. A consumer that requests a loan online can see the status of their application faster, since nonbanks can verify the information they receive in minutes, not days. Of course, the final decision can take more time. Still, the online loan application process is 20% faster than what a legacy bank can manage.
Lower interest rates. Since alternative lenders don’t need to comply with as many regulations as a traditional bank, they can offer their clients more flexible rates.

The numbers prove that online mortgages are winning big at the lending game:

Over 6.12 million houses are projected to be sold in 2020.
66% of those who plan to buy a home would rather work with an online lender.
The mortgage delinquency rate was only 2.35% in Q4 2019, and it continues to drop.
29% of borrowers cited the speed of receiving a loan as one of the top factors that influenced their choice of lender.
Just around 7% of legacy banks can handle the overall process of digital loans.

Challenges and Trends in the US Lending Market

Though the demand for loans is growing, a number of things can hold you back if you decide to launch one of the lending tech startups. There are challenges you might come across and trends you’ll need to keep up with. Still, there’s nothing extraordinary, so let’s put the negative thinking aside and get down to business.

Lending Trends To Watch For In 2020

So you won’t think of these trends as simple buzzwords, we’ll discuss only the most essential ones.

1. More digitalization and automation. In addition to round-the-clock availability for customers, going online offers benefits for alternative lenders as well:

Operating costs reduction. One of the most obvious advantages of having a tech-based mortgages company is the potential to optimize your budget. Owners of online lending startups don’t need to waste money on office rent or facilities or on hiring an army of in-house employees.
Faster decision-making and requests processing. The main reason why digital mortgages succeed is the speed with which application can be processed. The powerful technology behind that user-friendly interface analyzes the data a borrower submits, determines their eligibility for a loan, and provides you with a decision based on that potential client’s risk factors.
No human error. Even if you have a couple of people on your staff, automating routine tasks will reduce their chances of making a mistake. It will also empower your employees to focus on establishing long-term relationships with clients and/or investors.

2. An omnichannel user experience. Being only on one platform means losing customers in other places where you might have reached them. Covering multiple channels of communication is a better option, yet the optimal choice is to orchestrate every touchpoint you have with your borrowers. This means not just enhancing the customer experience for desktop and mobile users, but also making it smooth whenever your client switches from one platform to another.

If you’re unsure whether you should use more communication channels, bear in mind that 67% of those who seek mortgage brokers startups would prefer to request a loan from their laptop, while 29% would rather use their smartphone or tablet.

3. Turning data into actionable insights. As noted above, digital solutions allow you to speed up the verification of the borrower’s info based on the data he or she specifies when completing a form on your website or in your mobile app. The quicker you process loan applications, the more deals you can close. Additionally, faster processing times enhance the user experience and develop customer loyalty.

But having all the data is not enough. If you analyze it properly, you’ll gain a competitive edge over other nonbanks. Of course, it’s hard to do without the proper tools, and this is where artificial intelligence (AI) can come in handy. Because it’s a high-end self-learning system, AI can supply you with more accurate and client-oriented decisions over time.

The Most Common Lending Challenges You Can Face

Despite the rise in online mortgages, even the best US lending startups still encounter similar difficulties. Let’s look at some of them so you can be prepared:

1. Low mortgage rates. In 2020, APR is expected to remain at the same low level as in the last quarter of 2019. This is obviously good news for consumers, though nonbanks don’t seem to be happy about it.

2. Fewer homes for sale. The number of houses being built can’t meet the growing demand from young adults who want to buy their first home. Here are a few reasons for the housing shortage:

Homeowners refuse to sell their houses. They prefer to rent it to somebody and earn passive income from it.
People stay in the same house longer. According to the National Association of Realtors, in 2019, a typical seller had lived in their house for 10 years, compared to six or seven years before.
Homebuilders are under more regulatory pressure. Regulatory spending represents 32.1% of total house costs, which makes it too expensive for some developers.

3. Higher competition because of FHA loans. Traditional banks held back FHA lending over a couple of years because of tough regulations and penalties for non-compliance. Yet, the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development issued a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on October 28, 2019, that aimed to clarify the expectations to financial institutions in terms of the FHA program. Also, the MOU is intended to encourage banks to underwrite FHA loans. Thus, borrowers might have more options to choose from when selecting a lender, which can be troublesome for alternative mortgage providers.

You may consider these challenges critical, but we’re dead sure that there are no obstacles that can’t be overcome. Hopefully, at least mortgage rates might grow a bit after election year.

Top 11 Lending Startups

Now that we’ve touched on everything you need to know before launching your online mortgage company in 2020, let’s proceed to our overview of the best lending startups.

1. Sindeo

Country: United States
Year founded: 2013
Capital raised: $6.5 million
Services provided: Home loans, mortgage refinancing and advice
Technologies used: Python, Django, Node.js, Django REST framework, NGINX, Gulp, Loggly, PostgreSQL, Redis, AngularJS, Ionic, Ansible, Gunicorn, PhoneGap, Celery, Karma, Fabric, RequireJS.
Case study: https://djangostars.com/case-studies/sindeo/

Sindeo is a handy online mortgage calculator and sophisticated internal advisor portal that provides customers with an end-to-end solution for getting a first loan or refinancing. It offers:

An easy-to-use rate quote calculator that helps a customer preregister in a program and figure out their monthly payment based on details of their mortgage like home price, downpayment, taxes, insurance, and interest rates.
An advanced client portal where a consumer can finish their registration, provide all the necessary data to apply for a loan, get it verified, and receive offers from real estate agents.

2. Credible

Country: United States
Year founded: 2012
Capital raised: $25.3 million
Services provided: Mortgages, student loans, personal loans, credit cards

Credible serves as an intermediary between borrowers and lenders. It works with different loans, including personal and student loans, along with mortgages and refinancings. Credible enables customers to:

Search for optimal offers. Credible selects the best lenders according to the customer’s application details. Unless a client chooses a suitable provider, the latter doesn’t see his or her credit score.
Compare diverse lenders. A customer can check one provider against another and opt for the most attractive interest rate.

3. SoFi

Country: United States
Year founded: 2013
Capital raised: $2.5 billion
Services provided: Home loans, personal loans, student loans

SoFi stands out for issuing unbiased mortgages, even to borrowers with low credit scores. They also offer flexible downpayments — from 10% to 50%. SoFi provides:

All kinds of loans. They offer personal loans, student loans and their refinancing, as well as mortgages.
Fast pre-qualification. This feature analyzes customer’s basic info such as their credit score and minimum personal details to figure out whether he or she has a chance of getting pre-approved by a lender. The pre-approval requires a standard pack of documents that helps determine the final decision about issuing a loan to the client.

4. Reali

Country: United States
Year founded: 2015
Capital raised: $39 million
Services provided: Mortgages and refinancing

Reali provides a full range of services for both sellers and buyers, including:

Dedicated agents. Reali states they have expert real estate agents who take care of each step of home selling or buying.
Quick home loan approvals. If a customer finds a home they like but lack money for it, they can get a mortgage nearly instantly. The company approves loans within hours instead of three days or a month, like most banks do.

5. Lending Tree

Country: United States
Year founded: 1998
Capital raised: Not specified, the company mostly invests in or acquires other companies
Services provided: Mortgages and refinancings, personal loans, credit cards, business loans, student loans, auto loans

Lending Tree is a kind of marketplace that unifies various lenders and allows customers to choose the most suitable one. It offers clients to:

Compare different lenders. A user can submit his or her personal details and get quotes from the potential lenders.
Choose from multiple loan products. As a lending fintech startup pioneer, the company offers a wide choice of options for borrowers, including credit cards, mortgages, and so on.

6. Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans

Country: United States
Year founded: 2015
Capital raised: Not specified
Services provided: Mortgages, home loans, jumbo loans

Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans aims to make the loan application process easier and faster. It offers:

Both a web and mobile version. A customer can opt for a more convenient interface and seamlessly enter the required information either from their PC/laptop or from a tablet/smartphone.
Diverse types of loans. The variety of services includes not only home loans and mortgages, but also jumbo and FHA loans.

7. Better.com

Country: United States
Year founded: 2016
Capital raised: $205 million
Services provided: Home loans and mortgage refinancing

Better.com specializes in mortgages and refinancing, and covers any type of real estate loan for potential borrowers. It features:

An easy application process. The best thing about it is that a loan pre-approval doesn’t impact the customer’s credit score.
Optimal rates without extra fees. The company states it has no hidden payments. On the contrary, they show their rates (fixed or adjustable), depending on the loan term.

8. Divvy

Country: United States
Year founded: 2017
Capital raised: $180 million
Services provided: Mortgages, equity loans

Divvy allows its clients to buy a home while renting by building equity credits.

Savings during renting. This option help customers allocate a fixed sum from their monthly rent payment towards a downpayment. Thus, a customer can start saving to buy the house they live in.

9. Flyhomes

Country: United States
Year founded: 2015
Capital raised: $160 million
Services provided: Real estate brokerage

Flyhomes focuses on providing a full suite of services related to real estate brokerage. It provides:

Expert assistance with selling a home. The company helps homeowners conveniently trade their house on the platform. If the home doesn’t sell within 90 days, Flyhomes will buy it.
Cash offers. A great option for those looking for a house. This feature allows prospective buyers to select a home, bid on it, beat other offers, and win the building. After that, the company purchases it and the buyer can get a mortgage using any other lender’s services.

10. Homeward

Country: United States
Year founded: 2018
Capital raised: $25 million
Services provided: Mortgages, equity credits

Homeward enables its clients buy a new house before they sell their existing one, just like Flyhomes. The company offers:

An easy application form. A customer can get approved within minutes and start looking for a new home nearly instantly.
The possibility to move in before selling a house. As soon as a client chooses a suitable building, the company buys it and offers a 6-month lease. In most cases, this gives the client enough time to sell their previous home, get a mortgage, and close the lease.

11. Ribbon

Country: United States
Year founded: 2017
Capital raised: $555 million
Services provided: Mortgage, equity loans

Ribbon helps homeowners, home buyers, and their real estate agents to sell or buy houses. They offer:

A buy-before-sell option and cash guarantee. Similar to the previously mentioned companies, Ribbon empowers homeowners to pick a new house before they sell their existing one. In addition, it provides them with guaranteed cash, regardless of what stage their mortgage is at.
Faster closing of deals. For agents, Ribbon offers speeded-up signing of agreements (up to 14 days), which results in more clients within the same period of time.

To Conclude

We can assume that the demand for lending fintech startups will only keep growing as more people want to buy or sell a home. Despite the challenges in the current online mortgage market, the opportunities are still numerous — which is proven by a number of loans being processed by existing alternative lenders and issues the traditional banks have.

To find more relevant information about cutting-edge fintech solutions and to keep abreast of the latest industry trends, check out other expert articles on our blog.