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“When you
pick up your
phone, the first
thing you see is
push notifications—maybe
there’s a breaking
news alert,
game update,
response from a
dating site, etc.”
shares George..
On an average, a person looks at his smartphone
80 times per day. Considering the frequent use of
smartphones, push notifications are the top driver
of app re-engagement. These notifications get users
into your app with a perfectly timed and highly
relevant in-app messages. Approximately, 52%
of app users subscribe to push notifications and
it consequently help boost customer loyalty by
interacting with people while your app is still fresh
in their minds, and can improve app retention by
27%.
large scale companies, George said, “Push is
leveling the playing field, allowing SMBs to compete
with large enterprises. In a customer survey,
we conducted of 700K users, 56% said that push
reduced spending on traditional engagement
channels like Google/Facebook for retargeted
ads, email CRMs, and SMS platforms.” He added,
“We want to help all developers delight their
In this fast-track digital age, no one likes pervasive
retargeted ads, robocalls, or email spam.
On the other hand, push notifications is the only
channel that gives users full control over who can
communicate with them. To get a notification, you
have to opt-in on an app or website you actually
use. If the notifications are too frequent or irrelevant,
one can easily opt-out.
To understand how push notifications are one of
the most popular drivers for every business, the
team of Corporate Today interacted with George
about how his company has started and emerged
to be one of the market leaders in push notification
service.
Push notifications are leveling the competition
because…
While speaking about how push notifications are
changing the competition between SMBs and
users through the most effective notifications
possible. We believe all developers should have
an intuitive platform for sending effective push notifications
to their customers, and we believe this
should not cost them five or six figures a year.”
Solving problems of users to get maximum
customer engagement
Previously, George started the company as a Y
Combinator-backed mobile developer called Hiptic
Games. As a game developer, he first became
frustrated with existing push notification tools,
so Hiptic built its own system, which eventually
became the company’s focus. George and his
team found that the push notification platforms
were not developer friendly and did not solve the
issues that they and many other app and game
developers were facing.
The rise of OneSignal platform to send push
notifications helped to solve the roadblocks that
the developer community faced. George said,
“Initially, the platform rebranded because we are
now targeting all app developers and marketers
instead of just game makers. We also worked
hard to change the perception of push notifications
from “spam” to a useful part of the customer
experience.” Through iteration, George and the
team of OneSignal ended up democratizing push
notification software. In the form of OneSignal,
they build a fast, developer-centric tool that enables
dreamers, tinkerers, and small/large businesses
to spread their services and ideas broadly.
An Intelligent way to get the most of push
notifications
OneSignal is one of the leading SDK used by app
developers, sending over 5 billion messages daily
across mobile and web platforms. It allows developers
to run automated campaigns to re-engage
users, with features like message localization,
personalization, and scheduling. Knowing a user’s
activity and behaviors aren’t helpful unless
you find a way to apply that data. Thus, to apply
correct data, OneSignal’s User Tags make sure
that the message will be something that a user is
interested in. These tags are based on attributes
such as subscription status, cart abandonment
history, and other user behaviors. After you’ve implemented
tags, users can also use segments to
create specific audiences for various messages.
We use smart delivery that enables users
to…
George shares, “OneSignal platform optimizes
notification delivery time based on when each
user is most likely to engage with your app based
on when a user opens your app over a 3-month
rolling average. With Intelligent Delivery, push
notifications are going to be sent and opened at
the most optimal times for users without relying
purely on time zones.”
Finally, let’s say you’ve
delved into your extensive
user data and
cooked up a successful
push notification strategy.
OneSignal’s A/B
Testing helps further test
its audience’s reactions to a variety of messages.
Therefore, by testing to see what works best
for every audience, you can analyze the results
and make changes to your strategy while testing
one variable at a time so you know exactly what’s
influencing the results.
Customer Engagement is dropping, email
is no longer effective way
Explaining the core challenges that OneSignal
team faced while delivering the best-in-class solution
to its users, George stated, “At present, the
prime challenge is understanding the real-world
behaviors of people so that businesses can send
updates at the most relevant time without annoying
them. Customer engagement is dropping year
after year, making lead generation and remarketing
increasingly difficult. Email open rates are in
decline. About 26% of consumers use ad blockers
on their desktops. Even LinkedIn marketing is getting
played out, which was something unthinkable
even a year ago.”
Hence, to keep prospects engaged in a world of
fierce competition and short attention spans need
more direct outlets like push notifications, which
are more likely to be seen than online ads and
emails. In such a fast-pace world, targeted messaging
like a specially curated push notification
cuts through the noise and places your message
directly in front of your target. Approximately 52%
of mobile users enable push notifications, but by
contrast, the average email open rate is less than
20% and email click-through rates average 1-3%.
That’s why, leveraging the power of push notifications,
the success path of OneSignal is continuously
expanding its way to offer one of the most
intuitive and personalized push notifications.
The Rise of Health Informatio
Sector
Healthcare industry is one of India’s largest sectors both in terms of revenue
and employment.
On the parallel side, information technology has engulfed most of the industries including the
ever-evolving healthcare sector. IT is empowering the growth of healthcare sector right from
design, development, creation, use, to the maintenance of information systems.
The automation of documentation tasks is simplifying the time-consuming procedures and
improving the traditional Indian healthcare
sector to a larger extent.
Moreover, to achieve quality improvement in
the healthcare sector of India, there is a sheer
need for health information management
which includes tools that automate time consuming
tasks.
These innovative and reliable Health Information
Technology (HIT) products are rising in
the Indian healthcare industry and helping to
streamline care delivery while improving quality
of care.
HIT in Health Information Management
The prime objective of simplifying and revolutionizing
the conventional healthcare procedures
is to eliminate the excessive processes that hinder the essential interaction between
doctors and patients.n heavily populated countries like India, maintaining patient records is a
real time-consuming work. In such countries, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) & Electronic
Health Records (EHR) are enabling healthcare institutions to seamlessly save records without
investing much time, and thereby helping physicians to focus on patient care.With EMR
and EHR, healthcare organizations can digitize patient histories and charts while maintaining
accuracy and timely access to critical medical information. Similarly, Medical Practice Management
System (PMS) helps clinicians to effectively handle their clinical as well as administrative
aspects during their practices. These systems empower healthcare solution providers
to invest more time on patients, resulting in better productivity and increased efficiency.
Advantages of IT Solutions in the Healthcare Sector
Proper application of HITs like EMR, EHR, and PMS improve data sharing and communica-
n Technology in the Healthcare
of India
tion. Healthcare organizations can use these technologies to access a comprehensive view
of every patient’s medical data, which helps them to have a clear understanding of patients’
needs. However, there are some prerequisites that can further upgrade the usage of HITs
and improve the quality of care to a large extent.
Workflow and Process Optimization
These high-performance IT tools should be considered to facilitate easy tracking and extraction
of data. To fully utilize the potential
of HIT products, the healthcare institutions
should practice optimization of workflows
and processes that incorporate efficient use
of patient data. At initial stage, prior to implementation
of IT products like EMR and EHR, a
clear understanding of workflow and process
has a huge importance. Such understanding
of workflow enables healthcare institutions
to choose the right IT solution depending on
their customer’s interest.
Culture Formulation
A culture with a strong commitment towards
health information technology and quality
improvement greatly assist the team to build
necessary skills, processes, and workflows. It
helps the company assets to prepare for new
upgrades. Furthermore, a continuous improvement
approach can also help healthcare
firms to embrace the improvements effectively.
In conclusion, the fast-growing countries like India demand a comprehensive deployment of
healthcare IT. The information technology is reshaping the healthcare sector in every way
possible. Likewise, the success of the healthcare industry highly depends upon the quality of
care and its price point. Therefore, healthcare firms in India have started realizing the need
for improving quality of care. However, the aforementioned products come at a high price
tag and require intuitive training and hands-on experience. Thus, considering the rising population,
poverty, demand, and price factor, the healthcare institutions in India are taking innovative
steps to tackle these problems with in-house software development products. Such
home-grown initiatives are enabling the sector to rise forward with Information Technology
and build a healthy tomorrow.
Nimble Established
in 2009, Nimble is a
new-age CRM built
for modern business
tools like Office
365 and G Suite.
According to Jon,
good CRM should
automatically and
consistently build
itself from the data
that the user is interacting
with. CRM
solutions should
assist users to measure and manage the relationships
with their prospects and customers
while enabling them to track the interactions at
the same time.
A CRM should stand for Customer Relationship
Management, but…
“I think, a CRM should stand for Customer
Relationship Management. But, in the current
corporate world, it stands for Customer
Reporting Management. Thus, we invented
Nimble to change that. We put the “R” back in
CRM—to bring the focus on relationships, to
empower the customer-facing team members
to engage more effectively because that’s what
will help grow your business,” shares Jon. The
invention of Nimble wasn’t a sudden decision.
Prior to establishing Nimble, Jon Co-founded
GoldMine— an award-winning Customer Relationship
Management tool. In 1989, when there
was no Outlook or Salesforce, GoldMine assisted
the users with a unified interface, where
all their customer contacts and history of interactions
were stored. Nimble is the next step of
GoldMine. Nimble CRM precisely focuses on
modern business tools and gathers the customers’
data from various platforms. Thus, it started
more than a decade ago when Jon and his
team clearly understood the need for a com
prehensive solution that will help businesses
to access their contact records and history of
interactions with their customers. Jon adds,
“When you go to a contact, in any of those
siloes places like Office 365 or G Suite, you
have no idea who the individuals are or what
their businesses are about or the interactions
that you or your team has had with them.”
This is where Nimble comes to the picture.
It gathers all your contacts, calendars and
communications from Office 365 or G Suite as
well as from social and other sales, marketing,
customer service, and accounting programs.
This helps users to access the simplified
contacts and interaction data wherever they’re
working.
One of the reasons for starting Nimble
was the changing social media and…
Nimble was started when people were not using
platforms like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn
for business. However, the decreasing use
of APIs and the rise of new business tools indicated
the change wave. Understanding the
shifting scenario, the team of Nimble moved
their focus from APIs and began to build integrations
for newly established and growing
platforms like Office 365 and G Suite. They
designed Nimble to automatically combine
contacts, social media connections, communications,
inboxes, and calendar appointments
with over 160 apps and CRMs into one integrated
relationship manager.
The Founder shares, “One of the reasons
why I started Nimble was because I saw that
social media was going to change the way we
buy and sell. We started to build integrations
with Microsoft and develop relationships with
key people that helped us gain access to Microsoft’s
programs.”
We try to hire smart people that have big
hearts
Behind every successful company, there are
people who work dedicatedly and uplift its capabilities.
In case of Nimble CRM, the continual
efforts of Jon and his team helped them to fight
the challenges and reform with the change.
Soon the positive outcomes started coming
to the surface. Recently, Nimble has marked
another achievement in its portfolio as the
company has signed a global agreement with
Microsoft.
Jon states, “Team is critical to your business
success and that you should always hire on
culture first. Thus, I always tried to hire amazing
human beings that resonated with me, that I
felt were people that wanted to grow and learn
and were interested in helping others.” To date,
many of the Nimble employees have completed
more than 5 years and some of them have
worked longer than 10 years. “We try to hire
smart people that have big hearts and great
souls and a strong desire to learn and help other
people to learn and grow,” shares Jon.
clear about what we do to keep our promises.
I think that if you truly listen to your customers
and iterate with them, they will help you steer
your product to where it needs to be.” Thus,
keeping up with changing scenario, the team
of Nimble is continuing their journey towards
meeting customer requirements.
To be successful, you should first start
with a plan and…
Finally, when asked the CEO of Nimble to
share his thoughts on how a person can be
successful and achieve desired goals, Jon
said, “I boil it down to what I call the three Ps
of life. Passion, Plan, and Purpose. If you can
figure out what your passion is, build a plan
to achieve it and then make it your purpose
daily, you could build a GoldMine and achieve
magic in this life. I know, I did it. A lot of it was
derived from a book I read called “Think and
Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. In this book, he
describes this whole process.”
Listen to your customers and iterate with
them
When it comes to understanding customers and
fulfilling their requirements, the team of Nimble
has adopted a customer-oriented approach.
They focus on what customers want and help
them with the best possible solution. Jon says,
“We try to listen to what our customers need to
do and build a product that does that and stay
“Cloud
technology
has replaced
the
Capital expenditures
(CAPEX) by
Operating
Expenses
(OPEX). It
allows organizations
to operate
at the speed
of business
and helps them to develop and innovate
IT around their business products
and services at a much faster pace than
traditionally possible,” shares James
Phipps.
What is the major purpose of utilizing
the cloud in IT?
James initially started BeCloud as a DataCenter/Hosting
business and later evolved into a
leading cloud service provider. James states,
“Due to the litany of benefits associated with
running workloads in the cloud, we now have a
strategic focus on moving as much as we can
to the cloud and running cloud-native workloads
when possible.” James and his team
have heavily customized their configurations
to fit customer needs while lowering cost, increasing
scalability, and efficiency. He adds,
“Although some of the tools have changed, our
core vision of providing market-leading IT management
services that keep our customer operations
running smoothly remains unchanged.”
Our vision is backed with client-focus
and partnerships
This vision is accomplished by reducing techni
cal limitations, shrinking technical debt and
providing dynamic capabilities enabled by
cloud technologies. The team of BeCloud is
more focused on customer needs. Likewise,
to initially understand clients’ requirements,
the team of BeCloud interviews stakeholders
and reviews their corporate goals. Once they
understand the business case, they build solutions
that are affordable, efficient, scalable,
and secure. James shares, “Our AWS and
Microsoft partnerships give us capabilities that
are market leading and feature-rich.”
Currently, businesses have specific requirements
for data science, containers, extreme
security, and 24x7 uptime. The team of Be-
Cloud design a cloud solution where all clients’
conditions can be met utilizing private,
public, or hybrid options. Using its core expertise
in cloud, BeCloud provides managed
services for AWS services running in the cloud
including security and cloud watch monitoring.
Moreover, the company is a Microsoft
Partner specializing in cloud solutions. It has
helped customers to transition applications to
the cloud on the Microsoft platform including
Office 365.
With BeCloud, a new level of secure,
anytime access is available for all applications
Digital transformation in the current age is
the profound integration of technology in all
areas of a business. It results in changes in
operation, business models and how value is
delivered to end-users. Because digital transformation
is a cultural change that requires
a combination of innovation, technical and
business workflows, many businesses need a
knowledgeable partner that can deliver results.
Thus, in the customers’ digital transformation
journey, BeCloud is that partner, which
knows its client needs and provides the knowledge
and innovation that will enhance
customer experience, operational agility, workforce
enablement, and deep technology
integration. To enable user mobility across all
locations and devices, BeCloud helps clients
to run applications across multiple servers in
different geographic locations, providing users
a new level of responsive access. Likewise,
the use of computing resources based on consumption
requirements brings another level
of efficiencies to cloud-based applications.
In terms of security, applications access and
utilization is very secure in the cloud as long
as security risks are accounted for during the
design and requirements gathering phase.
Reliance on AI, ML, and Software Robotics
are our key strengths
Speaking about how the team of BeCloud
uses the technologies to support customers,
James stated, “To keep our clients satisfied in
every way possible, we utilize advanced technologies
and keep our MANAGE IT service
prices affordable. We harness the power of
Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and
software robots “scripts” to boost our daily
tasks. This makes us more affordable, efficient
and scalable. Therefore, these efforts greatly
improve your organization’s Information Technology
Infrastructure by increasing your uptime,
reliability, and security.”
We are continuing our journey around
modernization
While speaking about how BeCloud keeps
pace with industry changes, James explains,
“We are continuing to build our consultancy
around modernization which includes successful
cloud technology utilization. Whether it is
helping our customers to setup data lakes, database
migrations or building machine-learning
models, we help our customers to realize the
benefits of the cloud by providing real and measurable
ROI. “Our staff achieves this with their
high commitment in customer service while
maintaining a
continual drive for self-improvement through
learning,” explains James.
Present investments in learning and development
for a better tomorrow
To better support client initiatives and goals,
BeCloud is making aggressive investments in
learning, implementing, and testing emerging
advances in BigData, IoT, AI, and containers.
James and his team are relying on more dynamic
and customer-focused modern solutions.
James said, “We are driving our success
journey with a total team effort to advance our
knowledge, expertise, and customer focus.”
According to James, to be a successful leader,
today’s technologist must be a constant learner.
The manual and mundane tasks should
be replaced with automation robots so that
high-value customer service and solution building
can be done by technical teams. James
adds, “Make sure your technical teams are
focused on providing customer value through
knowledge and comprehension, which ultimately
improves your organization’s reputation and
speeds-up growth.”
“Cybersecurity
is substantially
more than
a matter
of IT and
it is one of
the most
prominent
issues
worldwide
as digital
errors
and attacks
are
overwhelming. Attackers are frequently
utilizing increasingly refined methods
to focus on the systems,” explains Binoy
Koonammavu, the Founder and the
Group CEO of the ValueMentor group of
companies.
Binoy has over 20 years of expertise in the
area of cyber security. According to him, with
ever-rising rates of privacy violations and data
thefts, firms – whether IT or non-IT have realized
the significance of cyber security. Therefore,
many organizations are concentrating on
developing a unified solution to manage digital
issues and safeguard their digital infrastructure.
To create and implement the digital security position
of any firm, Binoy Koonammavu, together
with Angela Maria and Jobbin Thomas have
established ValueMentor consulting in the year
2012. The prime reason to incorporate Value-
Mentor is to provide various managed security
services to the organizations. Prior to establishing
ValueMentor, Binoy was the Head of IT
security at Burgan Bank, Kuwait and he holds
accreditations including CISSP, CISA, CISM,
CRISC, ISO 27001 LI, PCI QSA, PCI 3DS, AM-
BCI, CCSK, COBIT, etc.
Today, ValueMentor has become a successful
cybersecurity company having collective
experience of 400 years, spanning across
verticals such as FinTech, Banking, Healthcare,
Insurance, Retail, Ecommerce, Hospitality
and Government. ValueMentor operates
globally with operations in Americas, Middle
East, East Africa and India. At present, Value-
Mentor provides different IT security services
such as information security audit and consulting
services for compliance services like
PCI DSS, PCI 3DS, SWIFT CSP, GDPR, ISO
27001, HIPAA & HITRUST and Virtual CISO
Services. ValueMentor offers Managed Security
services like Logging & Monitoring, Threat
Intelligence and Incident Management and
MDR SOC Services.
ValueMentor services enable their clients
to identify potential weaknesses in
their digital environments ahead of the
adversaries
ValueMentor currently focuses on four areas
including Data protection, Infrastructure security,
Governance risk and compliance, and
Risk management. For each focus area, the
consulting firm executes four staged methodology
including evaluate, architect, implement,
and manage. Its center offering comprises
of security assessments and ethical hacking
(VAPT), corporate security awareness
training, ISO 27001/ISMS implementations,
virtual CISO services, and PCI DSS compliance.
Binoy shares, “Our security assessment
services give our clients information about
the potential security weakness in their web
applications/network and the ethical hacking
services demonstrates that it can be used by
fraudsters.”
We Provide Intuitive Services to Clients
from Start-ups to Enterprises
With a large clientele ranging from small to medium
enterprises to large corporates, ValueMentor
is securing and supporting clients with services
like Cyber Risk Management, payment security,
managed security services, and security testing.
ValueMentor has a pool of highly experienced
resources in the cybersecurity field.
“We are a leading Cyber Risk & Compliance Services
Company delivering services to customers
in all the regions we operate in. Our highly expert
team of Security Consultants has helped companies
in different verticals with their Security Compliance
Requirements.”, mentions Binoy.
Likewise, in terms of payment security, the team
of ValueMentor has helped major merchants and
service providers to adapt Payment Card Industry
Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). “I think,
in the era, where the eCommerce & FinTech is
exponentially growing, there is an extra focus on
payment security as the possibilities of cybercriminals
are also progressing. As a merchant or
a service provider, you have the responsibility of
providing the payment security to your customers
and securing the customer’s data,” states
Binoy. Thus, compliance with PCI DSS further
helps merchants to protect the Cardholder data.
Since its inception in 2012, the company has
provided payment security services to leading
sectors including Banking & Finance, Travel &
Tourism, eCommerce, FinTech, Hospitality, and
Retail.
We Assist Businesses to Create Well-coordinated
Incident Response Strategy
Binoy mentions, “Incident Response should be
part of every organization’s active defence system.
We help you create a well-coordinated Incident
Response strategy which would help you
in minimizing the repercussions of the incident
and incorporating measures to prevent future
incidents.” Additionally, ValueMentor’s team of
specialists in digital forensics & cybersecurity
investigations helps clients in uncovering every
aspect of the crime, right from digital forensic
evidence recovery to identifying the source
of the crime which can be presented for legal
proceedings. Likewise, the company helps
organizations in continuously monitoring,
fine-tuning and implementing security devices,
intrusion detection/prevention systems
and other security systems which would
detect and delay the internal and external
network attacks.
With the help of Proactive Threat Hunting
approach, ValueMentor identifies the attack
behaviours that aren’t detected by current
automated methods of prevention and detection.
Binoy adds, “With the Proactive Threat
Hunting, the ability to block advanced threats
improves each year, but we face adversaries
who are determined and creative, and their
techniques evolve just as quickly. This raises
a few questions: When prevention fails, what
do we have left to protect our organizations?
How can we discover gaps as fast as possible?”
Thus, Binoy and the team of ValueMentor
are enabling their clients to safeguard their
digital security while consistently improving
ValueMentor’s approach towards solving
customers’ security issues. In the coming
days, the company aims to serve over 800+
clients. ValueMentor looks forward to hiring
130+ security analysts in the USA, UAE, and
India in 2020, to expand its area and quality
of operations.