Innovations in Software Development That Can Grow Your Business Share: Syndicode Date Published 15 July 2019 Categories Blog Reading Time 12-Minute Read Innovations in software development that can grow your business. The world of innovations is huge and mysterious. We know that something happens here every day but sometimes we don’t have time to catch all the trends. And here we go, they already determine and influence many industries. They change the shape of the future and business owners are already here to be the first to use their investments. In this article, we’re going to discover innovations in software development that can grow your business. The intelligent digitization is capturing all spheres of our life. Now we have robots, devices, services, content transformations. We already presented you some of the online marketplace development trends of 2019 that can help you improve your business concepts. But let’s take the innovations we use in software development today and talk more about how much they can change our business in the future. Not only marketplaces, but all the online digital business products globally. What Innovations Do We Use in Software Development Nowadays? If you run the business, you should know that you should constantly move and be aware of the new technologies to gain more customers and profits. So we gathered some trends and innovations for you that you should pay more attention while implementing in your business. Artificial Intelligence: Regardless of the industry, using AI will help you with large data sets, media, automatization and predictions. Progressive Web Apps: The main advantage of PWAs is the convenience it brings to developers. Unified user experience with no need in creating multiple apps across multiple mobile platforms. Mobile Payments: Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Blockchain Technology are now beneficial for the development of web-based marketplaces and business applications as they allow creating an experience for the customers in the process of checkout. Augmented Reality: AR brings the interaction to user experience which makes even the simplest online service fun and engaging. Voice Search: The voice technology brought a new dimension to human-computer interaction. A voice has become a tool of searching and purchasing products, managing smart devices and helping disabled people to use the internet. Use of chatbots: Instead of hiring many specialists to support your users online, you can add this option by using a program with a defined number of scenarios. If the question is beyond the knowledge of a chatbot – you can always address a request to a real person. But there is no need to spend more time on basic conversations and FAQ. Omnichannel Marketing: It means that all channels are connected to the customer and they all are connected. This option is more related to the quality of services integrations. We think that some details should be provided below. Artificial Intelligence (AI) According to a Forrester’s Global State of Artificial Intelligence Online Survey, 57% of companies use AI for customer support and 44% are using AI to improve their products and services. AI is widely used in innovative ways by plenty of startups from agriculture to medicine and beyond. Recently we covered the topic of how AI will affect UX design. On our blog, we also shared with you the list of the teams and technologies that are successfully using AI to solve big challenges. This is TOP 100 AI companies and there is something you can learn from their experience. Artificial Intelligence innovations are constantly bringing new breakthroughs thanks to the new technologies and data that are collected. Fields of Use and Examples for AI With the latest trends, we see that artificial intelligence soon will be implemented almost in every field of production. Looking back to 2017, we can find that AI has been widely applied in Uber’s self-driving car, Chatbots of customer representatives, Amazon’s delivery drones – people are getting replaced by robots. Artificial intelligence has many applications in society. It was used for a wide range of different fields including medicine, diagnosis, e-commerce, marketplaces, robot control, finance, healthcare, education, transportation, and many more. In agriculture, new AI technologies show some positive results in increasing the research of growing crops. Now it’s even possible to predict the time when a crop like corn or cucumber needs to be ready for picking. That makes the whole agriculture industry steps for another level of the development. Computer science is another field where AI researchers work hard to solve many difficult tasks. The examples of the newest inventions are time-sharing, interactive interpreters, the linked list data structure, automatic storage management, symbolic programming, functional programming, dynamic programming as well as object-oriented programming. The AI is influencing the field of education very much. One of the recent innovations is the notion of a personal tutor or assistant for each individual student that is possible with the implementation of artificial intelligence technologies. The field of medicine is another example where AI is needed a lot. The new AI startups working in this industry are appearing every day. Among the tasks that can be solved with the help of AI is the computer-aided interpretation of medical images, heart sound analysis, drug creation, prediction of death from surgical procedures. That’s a question who knows how far do humans go with AI development? There are many more fields you can use AI. But that’s a topic for a separate article. Virtual Reality (VR) Virtual Reality is a computer-generated three-dimensional environment where the user can interact, fully or partially immersing into it. Today, standard virtual reality systems use either headsets or multi-projected environments to create realistic images, sounds and other dimensions that create the effect of presence for a user. A person can become a part of the artificial world, move there and interact with other creatures that exist in that world. Virtual worlds are used not only in the gaming industry: thanks to the platforms such as 3D Immersive Collaboration and Open Cobalt, you can organize working and training 3D spaces – this is called “collaboration with the presence effect”. There are some features you need to focus on when dealing with VR: Credibility – supports the user’s sense of reality. Interactiveness – provides interaction with the environment. Machine-generating ability – based on powerful hardware. Availability to learn – provides an opportunity to explore a detailed world. Creating the presence effect – involves both the brain and the user’s body, effecting a maximum possible number of senses. Fields of Use and Examples for VR We’ve collected 5 real-world cases for VR, showing the prospects of this technology: VR-stories. VR-stories are filmed on special 360-cameras. You can find them even on YouTube: a parachute jump, swimming with the sharks or running in the jungles. Instead of moving the camera using a mouse, the user wears a virtual helmet and turns his head. It feels like you’re sitting there getting ready to fly or swim. Virtual fitting rooms. Shopping centers in the US and Europe are gradually moving to the use of virtual fitting rooms. So, customers can try things without touching them. The process is faster, plus to check how it looks on you, you don’t need to come to the store. You can apply the same method while purchasing the furniture for the house. Buying a property. No need to go somewhere far. There are already several competing companies in the market that offer apartment models combined with their real photos and added to the system. If you own a property rental business, this option will fit you the best. VR-soldiers. Since 2012, the US Army began training specialists using virtual reality technology. The idea is to give people the possibility to get as close to life experience as possible, learning how to react in difficult situations. In virtual reality, infantry, pilots and military doctors can train. Dangerous situations are worked out without risk to the life of the staff. Virtual Reality Parks. In the US, these VR-parks can be found in every big city, in other countries they also start to appear. The idea is simple, instead of making rides or making realistic dinosaur figures in full growth, it’s enough to buy a pair of Oculus Rift or Microsoft HoloLens. The whole park is a single room with a small labyrinth or some obstacles. The rest is being drawn by the VR helmet. Traps, cockroaches, portals to other worlds, enemies, friends, Saurons, Batman, flying on Aladdin’s magic carpet … You can create everything you want. Augmented Reality (AR) Augmented Reality is the result of the introduction in the field of perception of any sensory data in order to supplement information about the environment and improve its perception. With the help of advanced AR technologies, the information about the real world that surrounds you becomes interactive and digitally manipulated. Information about the environment correlates with the real world. The potential of augmented reality is great. From games to e-commerce. Fields of Use and Examples for AR In the technology world, IKEA is known as one of the first companies to use augmented reality. The shoppers now can use the app to see how tables and chairs would look in around your house. And you can scale there everything using your parametres. This is very helpful for people who aren’t sure if a piece of furniture will fit in their space. Another example is Pokémon Go app that allows users to catch their favorite Pokémon by looking through their phones in the real world. The game was very successful and resulted in the many people wandering through the streets staring on their phones. Several years ago Disney created a new way for children to see their favorite characters using augmented reality technology. They developed technology that projected colored images from a coloring book into a 3D image using a mobile phone. This technology has lots of perspective in creating someone’s imaginary world. Machine Learning (ML) Machine Learning is a field of artificial intelligence methods that help to apply solutions to a multitude of similar tasks. To build such methods ML specialists use the tools of mathematical statistics, numerical methods, optimization methods, probability theory, graph theory, various techniques of working with data. A lot of smart stuff, in a nutshell. The popularity of machine learning and artificial intelligence has dramatically increased in recent years, so each new startup is trying to use these technologies to change the traditional market. If you use the “machine learning” in the presentation of a startup, it can significantly increase the chances of attracting investments. Ask Syndicode to help you with ML. Fields of Use and Examples for ML Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms. Deep learning architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks and recurrent neural networks have been applied to fields including: computer vision (face recognition as well) speech recognition, natural language processing, audio recognition, social network filtering, machine translation, bioinformatics, medical image analysis, material inspection and board game programs. Blockchain Blockchain technology (that is mostly associated with cryptocurrency) is based on a chain of blocks that made up of digital pieces of information. Technically, blockhchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. There, each block of information contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Fields of Use and Examples for Blockchain Syndicode supports many blockchain events and tracks the use cases for this technology. Nowadays, blockhchain is widely used in: Cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology to record transactions. The most popular ones are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Smart contracts (computer protocols intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract). Blockchain-based smart contracts could be partially or fully executed or enforced without human interaction. Financial services implement blockchain to increase efficiency and reduce costs and to speed up back office settlement systems. In video games, blockchains can be used to catalog game assets. Supply chain in logistics, monitoring, transportation and management can be greatly improved with the help of blockchain. Monitoring systems. Blockchain technology can be used in transparent ledger system for compiling data on sales, tracking digital use and payments to content creators, such as wireless users or musicians. With blockchain, you can verify, check and track the existence of files as of a specific time. Voice Search Nowadays voice search is something more powerful than we used to think. Potentially voice search can do a lot more in the future. It might completely change the way we work with site optimization. Voice search requests are different from traditional: phrases are long (from 4 to 10 words), slang is used, questions are provided for short answers, most questions are about local content. Types of devices are different from traditional: most requests come from mobile phones, the answer consists of 1-4 results (not 1K results in 0.3 seconds), every deviсe use its own search engine and aggregator. But to use the advanced voice search for your online business you have to consider the next advice: Analyze your information sources, create an account in Google My Business and get more reviews, use links with local content. Work with low requests. Gather them with the help of Google AdWords and other available tools. Create content in conversation style, make texts more simple. Use micro-marking for your text. Check if your site is valid AMP. There are many advantages you can reach with an understanding of the voice search possibilities and prospects. Explore it! Fields of Use and Examples for Voice Search The main use case for voice search is voice browsing – this is a convenient way to ask about something to find when you can’t type. Among the other ways of implementing a voice search feature for your business are: Different productivity and management apps IoT Medicine and Healthcare Hire Syndicode to implement all the innovations to grow your business! We named many tech solutions that will definitely help you to reach new horizons. But we have more practical information on how these innovations can grow your business in our PDF document.