DEV Community: SCD Company | Custom Software

Open edX Customization Services for EdTech and Educational Institutions

SCD Company | Custom Software — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 13:32:34 +0000

We’re proud to share that we are now an official Open edX Community Marketplace Provider!

Partnering with us for Open edX customization ensures you get a solution tailored to your specific educational goals. Whether you're an EdTech company, university, training center, or corporate learning team, we can make it fit your needs.

What we offer:

1) Full customization of Open edX LMS to fit your educational needs,

2) Specialized STEM and Math learning extensions,

3) Reliable hosting, platform maintenance, and ongoing support!

What you can get:

1) Launch of your own branded e-learning platform

2) Customized course structures, assessments, and analytics

3) Integration of third-party tools (based on your needs)

Learn more about our partnership via 🔗 https://openedx.org/marketplace/scd-company/

View our Educational/EdTech case studies 🔗 https://scd-company.com/portfolio_scd_company/?industry=EdTech

Email business@scd-company.com for a Free Consultation.

A Brief Introduction to AI Agents

SCD Company | Custom Software — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 08:21:40 +0000

What are AI agents, and why is everyone talking about them? Why are business owners and tech leaders so eager to adopt them?

Here’s a quick intro to help you explore AI agents, their types, common use cases, the latest advancements and more.

Click to read here https://scd-company.com/blog-item/3-2-2025-brief-introduction-to-AI-agents/

[Boost]

SCD Company | Custom Software — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:27:06 +0000

Semantic Math Editor

SCD Company | Custom Software ・ Jan 15

#edtech #softwaredevelopment #terraform #programming

Semantic Math Editor

SCD Company | Custom Software — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:26:40 +0000

MathEditor is a convenient, accessible, mobile-friendly WYSIWYG editor, developed by https://scd-company.com/portfolio-item/online-math-editor/ . The editor is designed to semantically process mathematical formulas and recognize their meaning. It's integrated with several server-side components that offer additional features, such as symbolic formula manipulation, graph plotting, and numeric calculations.

MathEditor is also accessible to persons with visual disabilities, making it easy to use for everyone.

The editor is API driven and extensible. Here are some unique features it contains:

➖ Understanding the semantics for math formulas!
➖ Error Checking and a Smart Assistant!
➖ Advanced accessibility for persons with visual disabilities!

Math Editor, unlike other editors, translates math formulas into a computer understandable format, thus every program it’s integrated into acquires the ability to provide contextually intelligent feedback in real-time similar to a human teacher.

Guide To Outsourcing IT Product Development

SCD Company | Custom Software — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 11:09:55 +0000

1. Introduction To Outsourcing IT Product Development

Some of the greatest products ever created were initially outsourced to offshore development teams, laying the foundation for their long-term success. Some of the examples include Slack, which outsourced its design and app development in its early days, WhatsApp, which relied on app development outsourcing to Eastern Europe, Skype, and many more.

The IT outsourcing trend still continues, with approximately 37% of IT tasks currently outsourced in the USA alone. Companies like SAP just recently announced reducing 8,000 positions globally while outsourcing some development functions to maintain profitability in challenging markets.

Outsourcing IT development is an advantageous step for companies or individuals who have business ideas but need external support to handle the technical aspects of development.

An experienced IT partner can guide you through the entire product lifecycle; from idea conceptualization, choosing the appropriate tech stack, prototyping, development, all the way to a successful launch.

Since your goals, needs, and expectations will vary, it’s important to determine the key factors essential to your product's development. What should you prioritize? What areas demand your focus? And how can you choose a partner who can deliver on your expectations?

2. Understanding Key Priorities for Your Product – What to Focus On

At first, when you have a product idea, it might feel like every aspect is equally important. But by considering your industry, the market you’re launching into, and your audience, you’ll notice that some aspects of IT product development naturally stand out as more critical based on your long-term goals.

A great product needs attention across all development stages, but prioritizing the right technical needs is key to staying focused and achieving your objectives. Here are some;

To continue reading, please visit https://scd-company.com/blog-item/25-11-2024-guide-to-outsourcing-IT-product-development/

The Role of Prototyping in Software Development

SCD Company | Custom Software — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 08:41:50 +0000

What do Slack, Airbnb, Instagram, and other industry giants have in common? They all started with a simple prototype and evolved into some of the most successful products we know today.

When the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, couldn't afford to pay rent back in 2007 in San Francisco, they decided to rent out air mattresses in their apartment and provide homemade breakfast in the morning to make ends meet. Needless to say, it was successful. Seeing the attention their idea was getting, they built a simple website prototype to test the idea of people paying to stay in a stranger's home.

A simple prototype quickly evolved into a successful web application in 2008. The site was officially launched, and the hotel industry was shocked by this innovative and fresh business model. Airbnb, which now operates worldwide, offers millions of listings in over 220 countries, and guests have checked into Airbnb more than 300 million times.

1. So what is prototyping in software development?

Even if you know what product you want and what it will look like, chances are the development and steps to achieve it are not laid out in every detail. And even if it was, the product requirements are likely to change in the development process to have it address the users' actual needs based on their feedback.

So how do you know what your users actually need and wish to see? This is where prototyping in software development comes into play. A prototype is a working software model that may not exactly represent the final product and initially has limited functionalities, thus using feedback from your target audience continuously to make changes until the final product is developed that addresses their needs.

Prototyping helps to strategize and solidify each development step, helping both the development team and all stakeholders on the client's side envision what the product will look like. By creating a prototype, developers showcase the core functionalities and user interface of the software, giving clients a clearer idea of what to expect.

And most importantly prototyping helps generate quick ideas, test them on target users, get feedback on what works and what does not, and improve, creating a repeated cycle. Generally, It's a lot easier and more affordable to make fixes at an early stage of development.

Do you wish to read the full version?

Visit https://scd-company.com/blog-item/29-10-2024-the-role-of-prototyping-in-software-development/

Top 10 Custom Software Development Companies in Dubai in 2024

SCD Company | Custom Software — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:08:07 +0000

How can you not get lost in the thousands of IT companies that offer software engineering services or IT consultations if you’re looking for a tech partner in the UAE?

We know it can be super challenging, so this month, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 custom software development companies in Dubai, based on extensive research.

How did we come up with this final list?

We went over hundreds of top IT companies in the UAE, looked at their client reviews on trusted platforms like Clutch and Techbehemoths, Google Business Page reviews or their websites to narrow down our picks. Finally, we checked out each company’s ongoing activities to make sure they’re still delivering on their promises.

Our goal is to give you a clear and concise picture of what each of these companies offers, their industry experience, and the unique challenges they can help solve. By the end of this article, we hope you’ll find an IT partner in Dubai that’s a perfect fit for your specific needs.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Click on the link below to read the article.

https://scd-company.com/blog-item/27-8-2024-top-10-custom-software-development-companies-dubai-uae-2024/

Looking to catch up on the latest software development blogs?

SCD Company | Custom Software — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:48:16 +0000

Are you on a summer getaway, enjoying your vacation, or perhaps still working but eager to discover some fresh and insightful tech blogs?

Discover our recap of top 8 most-read hashtag SCD blogs in 2024, packed with expert tips, resources and trends!

Click below to read! 📚

https://dev.to/scdcompany/looking-to-catch-up-on-the-latest-software-development-blogs-2eh5

2024 Recap of Software Development Insights: 8 Most Read Blogs From SCD

SCD Company | Custom Software — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:41:20 +0000

Introduction

Are you on a summer getaway, enjoying your vacation, or perhaps still working but eager to discover some fresh insightful tech blogs? Whether you’re looking to learn about new topics or deepen your knowledge in software development and the outsourcing scene, we’ve got you covered.

As we all enjoy the summer warmth, time with families and friends, it’s wonderful to find short reads to stay connected to the happenings of the world of software engineering and not feel left behind. This month, we bring you a list of the top 8 most popular and most read blogs at SCD of the year, full of insights from software engineering trends, life-cycle, software project management to finding a software development partner.

Have you been up-to-date with our blogs?

If you’ve missed something, now’s your chance to catch up! Explore the list below and enjoy these topics wherever you are!

1) 2024 Guide To Custom Software Development Cost Estimation

Our first and most in-demand article this year has been our guide to helping partners understand how their software development costs are estimated.

If you wish to learn what main factors influence how the cost of custom software development is determined for each project and how you can receive quality services within your desired budget, then you’re in the right place. You will also be able to find out why pricing offers vary among various software engineering service providers.

Some of the key takeaways you will get are:

How project-based vs hourly rate pricing differs from each other.
Explore an example calculation of a software development project.
Learn about key factors that affect costs such as your project complexity and size, development team location, composition, tech stack, etc.

To read, click on the following link: Guide to Custom Software Development Cost Estimation

2) Change Management in Software Engineering

By reading our article on “Change Management in Software Engineering”, you will gain a general understanding of how software engineering teams accommodate your evolving project needs, and how change requests are effectively managed to ensure your software projects remain organized, well-planned and high-quality.

We share with you practical insights into the change management process, highlighting key steps such as how experienced software development teams tackle your change requests, estimate the costs of changes, choose, classify and prioritize them, while communicating with you at all times to ensure the end-goal is achieved.

Additionally, you will also gain insights into the role of project managers and how they help to balance the change speed and your product’s stability as well as the integral role of project architects in software architecture refactoring.

3) Software Development vs Software Engineering: Is there a difference?

Have you always believed in the common notion that software developers and software engineers perform the same function in organizations?

If you answered yes, it’s time to tackle this common misconception. In this article, we break down the differences between software development vs software engineering, the roles of specialists in detail, the scope, and their involvement in your software development projects.

Business owners, managers who work with IT teams as well as technical recruiters can benefit from our guide and will find practical project examples on which specialists should get involved in specific software projects and the value each specialist can bring to your business.

By the end, you will be able to clearly understand which role to hire or partner with for your software engineering projects and what job requirements to assign to each. If you wish to gain new insights, especially if you’re going to deal with complex, large-scale software solutions, then click on the link below.

Learn the Differences between Software Developers and Software Engineers

4) What is the best country to outsource software development to in 2024?

There are many ways to approach the process of choosing a software development outsourcing partner. One of the most common approaches businesses take is selecting a partner based on their location; be it an agency or a freelancer.

Our guide explores the advantages and challenges of outsourcing your software development process to some of the most popular software outsourcing destinations in 2024 and helps you find the perfect fit for your business needs. Whether you prioritize cost-efficiency, technical expertise, time-zone or cultural compatibility, our informative guide can help you make an informed decision.

Some of the key takeaways you will get are:

Key Industries that outsource IT processes in 2024
3 main types of software outsourcing
Countries to consider outsourcing software development projects based on your region
Benefits and challenges of outsourcing to each region

Find the Best Countries in 2024 to Outsource Software Development

5) Most Exciting Software Development Trends to Expect in 2024

At the end of 2023, we looked back at the past year’s trends, technological advancements and most common IT technologies used and predicted what trends would be prevalent in 2024. You'll learn about the continued dominance of AI in various industries, the importance of ethical AI use, the rise of low-code and no-code development, and cybersecurity-first development practices.

Additionally, the blog explores the current 2024 trends of software development with a focus on sophisticated AI use cases, natural language processing, edge and quantum computing, multi-cloud technologies, and robotic process automation.

Whether you're a startup owner or part of an established enterprise, this article offers a front-row seat to the innovations that continue to shape the future of software development in 2024.

Explore Software Development Trends in 2024

6) Reasons Why Outsourced Software Development Projects Fail

Have you seen the KPMG statistics, showcasing that around 70% of organizations have suffered at least one tech project failure in a year?

We can’t ignore the fact that many business owners continue to have doubts about partnering with software development teams (be it nearshore or offshore) due to various reasons: losing control over the project, receiving poor results from the software agency, missing deadlines, and encountering communication issues, among others.

But it does not have to be that way. We gathered insights from our software engineers who have been in the IT field for over 15 years on how success can be ensured when developing software for clients and compiled a list of possible reasons for you.

The key takeaways you will get from this blog are:

How you can select a software development outsourcing partner
The importance of establishing a clear project management process
The importance of setting and agreeing on realistic goals and expectations

And this is not all. If you’d like to be more informed on this topic and explore ways you can ensure your IT projects are successful in the future, then click on the link here.

7) How to Choose the Ideal Software Development Outsourcing Partner in 2024?

In the previous point, we mentioned the top reasons software projects can fail and number one on our list was not choosing your software development outsourcing partner carefully. But did you know we have an entire blog dedicated to the steps you can take to partner with the RIGHT software development company for your business?

By reading this article, you will gain practical guidance on how to perform more targeted research and a clear checklist of what to look for in a potential software development partner, such as team size, client and employee reviews, relevant technical experience, soft skills, communication barriers (if any), project cost, and overall fit to your organization.

You'll understand how to set clear project expectations, conduct a thorough analysis, and ensure the software developers’ workflow, business orientation, predictability, and budget adherence meet your requirements.

Learn How to Select the Ideal Software Development Outsourcing Partner

8) Performance Testing in Software Development Explained: A Short Guide

Ever wondered what software performance testing is and how it can affect the overall performance of your systems?

By reading this article, you will gain a general understanding of how performance testing can significantly enhance the reliability and efficiency of your software systems. You'll discover the various aspects of performance testing, such as speed, stability, and response time, and how these factors ensure your software can handle high loads without crashing or slowing down.

Some of the key takeaways you will get are:

Top reasons for performance testing
Performance testing steps-by-step
Main types of performance testing
Tools for performance testing
To learn more about performance testing and its many benefits, click on the link.

Stay tuned for our upcoming blogs as we tackle common software development challenges, benefits and challenges of software outsourcing, insights into trends, new applications, technology use cases, etc.

Have a software project you would like to share with our team and receive a free consultation?

Email: business@scd-company.com

Reasons Why Outsourced Software Development Projects Fail | SCD Company

SCD Company | Custom Software — Fri, 24 May 2024 11:26:09 +0000

Introduction

It’s no secret that IT outsourcing is gaining popularity every year as more businesses emerge. According to Inverita, IT outsourcing reached $519 billion in 2023, marking a 22% increase over 2019. Outsourcing software development can be a fantastic step if approached correctly.

However, we can't ignore that many business owners have doubts about outsourcing software development to offshore teams due to various reasons: losing control over the project, receiving poor results from the software agency, missing deadlines, and encountering communication issues, among others. What’s more, a failed project or product can result in significant losses of time, money, and resources, making it challenging to recover from the damage.

Chances are as a business owner, you receive hundreds of emails weekly offering the same low-cost but best-quality service with similar promised results. So, how can you truly select a reliable outsourcing partner and ensure your experience isn't a disaster?

As most of our software engineers have successfully developed and managed dozens of complex software projects, we will try to help you avoid the risk of a software development outsourcing failure. So we've compiled a comprehensive list of common mistakes you or your team should be aware of.

So what are the main reasons that cause software development projects to fail when outsourcing?

Not Choosing Your Outsourcing Partner Wisely

It’s no secret that choosing the right partner is one of the first challenging processes your company might encounter. How you approach this process varies greatly depending on factors such as your company size, budget, location, complexity, and the type of software needed.

First and foremost, it's crucial to understand what your business aims to achieve through outsourcing. Are you seeking a high-quality product? Cost or time savings? Or perhaps you lack the technical skills within your internal team and require staff augmentation or a long-term partnership? Having a clear goal in mind ensures that your requirements remain consistent, allowing you to communicate your vision effectively.

Before reaching out to a development team, assess your business needs and honestly evaluate the desired outcome. When searching for a development partner, take steps so you don’t overspend and make profitable decisions.

When evaluating potential partners, examine the software agency’s portfolio, the variety of projects they've handled, their years of expertise, and the industries they specialize in. Platforms such as Clutch or Techbehemoths will help you with this information unless it’s displayed on their website. If you’re looking for detailed advice to help you navigate the vast sea of outsourcing companies, check out our short guide.

Not Establishing a Clear Project Management Process

Once you’ve found a reliable partner and both teams are ready to get started, the other most important step is to establish a transparent project management process. Why? Developing a software product or tackling a complex software challenge can easily get out of hand unless the development team establishes a controlled environment.

An experienced project manager plays a crucial role in maintaining a controlled environment. He/she needs to oversee deadlines, team dynamics, and costs to ensure timely and budget-friendly delivery. To sum up, the project manager is responsible for carefully planning and organizing your software development project.

Agile methodology is one of the approaches to software project management that emphasizes flexibility and collaboration. This methodology involves breaking down the development process into manageable sprints, typically lasting 2-3 weeks each. Through ongoing collaboration, refinement, and testing, the team steadily advances toward achieving your objectives within the designated time frame.

While having a clearly defined development plan is crucial, it's equally essential for the software development team to prioritize early adoption among real users. These users could be a select group of customers or even members of your internal team. This early testing not only verifies functionality but also facilitates prompt feedback gathering—sometimes even before the project is fully ready for launch, allowing swift adjustments.

Choosing More Than One Decision-Maker

There is one lesser-discussed reason for failed outsourcing attempts. It’s when the software development team deals with multiple decision-makers in your company with overlapping responsibilities to oversee the same project. Why? These decision-makers may not agree on the development processes, timelines, management strategies, cost distribution, and can eventually mislead the entire development team.

To refrain from chaos, the software developers and your team should establish clear lines of responsibility and communication. This clarity ensures everyone understands every step: who is assigning the goals of the project. In the development team who is accountable for leading the project towards its objectives, how goals will be measured, etc?

Not Defining the Project Scope Correctly

Your software development partner needs to clearly define the project scope as it stands out as one of the most critical factors contributing to project success in software development.

To convey the significance of the project scope, consider this scenario: You've entrusted the entire development of your product to an offshore development team. However, the development team fails to document or clearly outline the scope and the project kicks off with misalignments at every turn. From the number of specialists involved to resource allocation, delivery timelines, and growth metrics: everything goes off course.

This happens when software developers lack a clear understanding of your expectations, the product requirements, and the features to be incorporated. Transparent communication and thorough documentation are essential in preventing a potential product development disaster.

The opposite is also true when the software development team clearly defines and agrees on the project scope right from the start. However as the development process starts, your requirements may begin to shift or expand. With more and more scope change requests in the process and no clear vision, the development quickly spirals out of control and results in project failure.

Not Setting Realistic Goals and Expectations

Another common reason for outsourcing failure is not setting realistic goals. Both parties must come up with achievable objectives and understand the purpose behind the project. As the business owner or representative, try your best to clearly communicate your goals, why the project is necessary, and what you aim to achieve with the outsourcing team, along with deadlines.

Make sure the goals are doable and realistic. If you do have clear goals set up right from the start, make sure they do not change constantly in the development process resulting in confusion and loss of control. Constantly changing requirements or unclear goals are not the only problems that can sabotage your product or project development. Try to refrain from setting unrealistic deadlines.

On the other hand, your software development partner is responsible for making sure they clearly understand your goals, document everything, put together a strong development plan and a management process to achieve all your targets step by step. Once the deadlines are set, software developers and the management team should strive to use the right methodologies and communicate effectively with each and your team.

To read full article, visit https://scd-company.com/blog-item/24-5-2024-Reasons-software-development-outsourced-projects-fail-blog-scd-company/

Starting a Software Development Project As A Business Owner: A Customer’s Journey

SCD Company | Custom Software — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:18:20 +0000

Introduction

Getting into your first software development project as a business owner can feel like navigating uncharted waters. It's natural to be a bit puzzled about the whole process. This article will help you feel more prepared and tackle the software development part of your journey.

What are the various stages of developing a software? What is a workflow? How do you select the right vendor and assess the process? How do you set realistic expectations and communicate your vision?

So many questions but we have all the answers. We will walk you through the different stages of starting your first software development project, the importance of choosing the right partner and their responsibilities in turning your ideas into a reality in this and future articles!

Example: Automating business processes

As businesses fine-tune their processes, the need to automate several processes often arises. Some of the most common automation processes businesses seek are HR, Marketing or Sales automation.

The goal may be different for each one: to streamline processes, reduce manual work, have higher efficiency, etc. It ensures the processes will always be systematized, process related data are saved and managers have access to important metrics and reports. This is the point where business owners contemplate creating or procuring an information system.

Most business processes share similarities across organizations, leading many to opt for off-the-shelf solutions. Off-the shelf solutions are ready-made software solutions that allow picking a suitable and a less expensive option rather than having custom-built features or an internal software development team.

As expected, off-the-shelf solutions are usually not as expensive. By saying “expensive”, we are referring to the whole cost of ownership; the ease of starting the process and ways to support it, to extend and configure when required.

Yet, some processes are unique to your business know-how, covering specific activities that demand building a tailored software solution. And, let's not forget, the software development process needs to be adaptable as requirements evolve over time.

Embarking on a Software Development Project...

As experts in developing custom solutions, we’d like to guide you through the journey of starting a project, provide some insights and tips.

What business challenge will your product tackle? To answer this, gather insights from stakeholders: owners, technical staff, future users, and anyone interacting with the solution. This includes managers, employees, analysts, and even system administrators.

Business analysts will be in charge of gathering requirements from the above-mentioned groups. A good software development agency lets its business analyst(s) communicate with the customer before the start of the project.

A successful preliminary communication leads to a clear project vision — a document which defines key goals, priorities, project boundaries and limitations. At this stage, it’s best to define multiple approaches to building the solution, estimate the required time and cost for each one individually.

Once the most suitable approach is chosen, the business analyst crafts a detailed software requirements specification (SRS). Sometimes, you may not have the full picture of what the final product should look like. You might need to experiment with different prototypes to adjust the approach and finalize your vision. This approach is mostly required for innovative products, allowing to determine the final product’s vision in a cost effective way.
While a detailed SRS is vital, what's more critical is the software service provider keeps up and understands your business goals, limitations, and non-functional requirements, including data volume, protection levels, integrations, expected system load, 24/7 operation, legal requirements, and more.

Before diving into development, document this information, ensuring alignment between you and your software development partner. As a business owner, maintaining a clear picture of your goals is paramount.

A reliable software development company organizes the requirement gathering process, documents them clearly, and ensures mutual understanding throughout.

Conclusion

In conclusion, starting a software project as a business owner might seem overwhelming, but with the right steps, your software development partner can help make it manageable. We've covered key stages like understanding your business challenges, selecting the best development approach, and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Whether you choose off-the-shelf or custom development, it's about finding the balance between meeting your specific needs and achieving your business goals. By following these steps, you can start to confidently navigate the software development section of your product development.

Here's how to get started. Book A free consultation via www.scd-company.com

AI in Software Development: Common Applications | Guide by SCD Company

SCD Company | Custom Software — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:36:53 +0000

Introduction

Whether you are new to the world of AI or have been in this area far longer that it became a buzzword, chances are you have asked yourself the following question.

How do I know if Artificial Intelligence integration is right for my company and will not negatively affect my current workflow? What are some applications of AI that I can integrate into my workflow to improve overall efficiency?

In this article we will uncover common applications of AI in the software development industry to have a better outlook on ways it can be transformative for your business!

Applications- Common Artificial Intelligence Use-Cases

Speech Recognition

Speech Recognition helps turn human communication and speech into text. Speech-to-text platforms such as Speechmatics or Google’s speech-to-text engine allow their users to seamlessly access spoken content in a written form.

One of the many benefits of speech recognition systems is the improved productivity of humans, since we are no longer obliged to waste time on taking notes during online interactions, meetings or other virtual events. While going through daily or weekly meetings we retain too much information. So instead of recording each meeting, try using speech recognition systems to have reliable notes to review whenever you want to quickly rewind your discussions.

Virtual assistants

As you may have noticed, nowadays most basic computer-based interactions are initially carried out by virtual persons. Most computer programs such as AI-based chatbots are more than capable of completing administrative tasks: interacting with humans, answering basic support queries, coming up with recommendations, etc.

Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant or a lot of virtual or mobile chatbots are quick and effective when you need immediate answers to your questions that could take humans much longer to research and answer. It’s quick, easy and actually quite affordable. What more could we ask for?

If you're looking for a similar solution, visit our AI, Algorithm Research and development section.

Text Analytics Text analytics helps to extract meaning from a text. It also helps to uncover trends and patterns. One of the most common uses of text analytics forms is SEO which helps to analyze the positioning of the web page based on content, tags, descriptions, etc.

If you need information on word frequency, entity recognition (identifying names, locations, time period), tags then text analytics will be the “hero to save the day”. This can help your company better understand what your clients are looking for and how to have a competitive advantage to always remain on top.

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis or “opinion mining” helps to identify emotions or tones behind texts. Let’s try to think of a tone for this article. Is it negative, positive or neutral? Nowadays, most companies hire professional developers to make sense of critical information for their business with sentiment analysis.

“What does my customer think about my latest released product?” or “Are tourists satisfied with the newly-opened attraction park?”. Questions like these may contain hundreds, in some cases thousands of reviews.

Now let’s try to imagine us-humans going over, reading and trying to make sense of this data manually. It will take forever and our conclusions may turn out to be incorrect. Sentiment Analysis helps to analyze enormous chunks of data to help companies improve customer service and satisfaction.

AI-based recommendation systems

Recommendation systems use Big Data (referring to extremely large datasets) to recommend additional services (such as products) for your customers based on their online behavior.

Preferences, choices and characteristics of people all play a huge part in shaping an audience that may be interested in your product or services. Such data is crucial if companies want to make targeted recommendations to their consumers which is usually done based on information such as the user’s gender, age, geographic location, social or personal views, etc.

For more information on industry-specific cases, check SCD Company’s Case Studies on building successful hotel recommendation systems.

RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

Have you ever come across people complaining about bots flooding comment sections or displaying social media human-like presence on various platforms? Well, RPA is often misunderstood.

RPA performs to automate digital processes and certainly does not stand for the physical form of robots. Instead, it is an effective business system automation process which instructs the “robot” to mimic human activities. It’s most usually used to streamline processes such as performing time-consuming and mundane tasks that would take humans hours or days to perform.

Thanks to RPA, companies face increased productivity and less effort spent on trivial activities. In short, if you would like to improve the efficiency of your staff and help them focus on much more important tasks, leave the rest to RPA.

Marketing Automation

Every company wants to increase their ROI and the fastest way to achieve that is to automate repetitive marketing processes. Sending messages, updates, newsletters, campaigns manually would take hours for marketing departments, moreover lead management via CRM systems would become too overwhelming without automation.

According to Finances Online, marketers use automation 76% more than sales teams. Marketing processes can be easily streamlined through automation tools to better target audiences, nurture existing leads via various platforms and build closer relationships with customers. If you have not yet, we suggest looking into investing in that area!

Image Recognition It’s easy for us-humans to detect, identify and classify objects we see in our everyday lives. But for machines, it’s a highly challenging task. Image Recognition (also known as Object Detection) helps to identify objects in images or videos and recognize which category or class the image belongs to.

Nowadays complex deep-learning algorithms and AI models allow us to analyze even less discernible objects. This is achieved through training neural networks (an AI method that teaches computers to process data similarly to the human brain).

Start by collecting vast amounts of visual data and teaching the system how to annotate the image. How do machines learn to recognize the objects over time? Through showing different and many examples of the same image and training the algorithm to recognize many types, forms, angles, shapes or sizes of the same object.

In the end, based on your data input, it will eventually learn to make accurate predictions itself with high accuracy. Healthcare, AgTech, Sports Analytics, E-commerce, the benefits of image recognition over the years have helped these industries completely transform their business processes.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence has taken over the world and instead of diverting from it, we should embrace the positive changes it has to offer. After all, it’s the era of digital transformation and learning how to effectively integrate AI into the workflow can bring forth more pros than cons. As more and more companies are reaping the fruits of AI-based systems, we think it’s time for us to take that transformative road to remain competitive in today’s demanding market.

Will these applications be right for your business area? Should you consider investing in AI systems? What are some areas that AI can help reduce costs for your business? Contact SCD for custom recommendations.