“Given today’s volatile and disruptive environment, supply chain organizations must become more flexible, and the solution is digitalization,'' says Dwight Klappich, VP Analyst at Gartner. A recent study underscores that 2 percent of supply chain executives suggested that digitalization is in the prioritization segment. Companies devote a great deal of effort in digitizing their supply chains, yet the business outcomes remain dormant. ​​While a McKinsey study says that with digitization in supply chain management, companies can increase annual revenue growth by up to 2.3 percent, but companies haven’t been as positive with their results.

This blog aims to discuss such questions which explains the gap between digitization efforts and actual gains, and elaborates on the technology vision with new digital tools available now.

Why is your digital strategy not materializing?

Two core reasons for digital strategy not materializing are- management choice, and technology gaps. Senior management of many companies have found seizing opportunities of digitalization surprisingly difficult. It becomes a problem when companies do not strategically align operations with improvements in complementary technology. Major hindrance is overlooking operational changes, which later do not allow businesses to employ digital technologies to their full potential.

The reason for technology gaps are tailed off technologies. Even when supply chain management was among the first business areas to grab the opportunity of digital upgrades, tailed off technologies failed to produce expected results after initial innovation burst. Despite being valuable, prevalent supply chain technologies failed to perform sophisticated functions  because of their limited capabilities. For example, lack of combining and linking data across functions like schedules, shipments, and inventory. There was also a lack of advanced analytics performance, forecasting demand, finding out origins of problems, and more. In the absence of such capabilities, the businesses cannot precisely plan and speculate problems for preventing them.

For instance, a medical company digitized its ERP system and aimed at reversing decline in service levels of the supply chain. Yet, the service levels continued to decline, until the company overhauled processes like forecasting demand. When companies rapidly work towards improving their operations, they must also ensure penetration of technologies that support these new operations. Therefore, the best practice would be to match the revamped operational changes with suitable technologies.

Articulating planning and vision into business and technical capabilities

Leadership and Technology Assessment teams at the company must establish a forward-looking vision for understanding the current status of supply chain, and developing a road map for digitization of supply chain management. The companies must consider if technology and operations are streamlined and integrated, or not. Is there an organizational structure and talent strategy that will support continuous improvement, and favor innovation? The road map for digitization will also include compressed deadlines, given that scalability is a majorly sought-out feature of digitalization.

Once an organization has defined its vision they must articulate it into effective digital overhauling for supply chain management. These can include-

• Decision-Making: Machine learning can help managers in dealing with situations like scheduling responses for new customers, and changing material planning.
• Automation: Digital solutions configuration for processing real-time information without manual intervention, thus reducing human effort for data accumulation, scrubbing, and data entry.
• Customer engagement: End-to-end customer satisfaction by ensuring transparency with track-and-trace systems, sending regular updates, and giving more control to supply chain managers for delivering great customer experience.
• Innovation: Strengthening of business model is possible through digital supply chain which collaborates with customers, and suppliers. For example, S&OP decisions can be based on automated information from customers’ ERP.

Digital technologies to support supply chain management

In the present times, the technological ecosystem has evolved to offer such digital solutions which meet complex management needs. There are solutions which make great improvements in performance of the supply chain. The developers have created exclusive applications that help in reaping benefits of data generated by ERP systems. Most of such applications help in focused improvement across- supporting warehouse management operations, sharpening analysis, and end-to-end planning.

User-friendly tools for analysis, artificial intelligence based applications for tracing the root of problems, and even anticipating declines- it is all possible now. There are also solid recommendation engines that suggest correction measures. Systems which convey cross-functional adjustments, have allowed managers to put into action the major decisions. For instance, cross-functional adjustments can dribble down from sales and operations planning to other business areas. Likewise, technological evolution has helped cross-functional integration and decision making from executive to location managers and business units.

Considering the operations, at enterprise levels digitization means employing robotics, analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and other similar technologies which help in collecting and processing information- all through automation. Digital transformation in the supply chain, hence becomes all about a vision setting which defines how digital applications help in service improvement, and refining agility, cost, and levels of inventory. It is also about consistent implementation of processes and driving operational excellence by defining technologies for organizational changes.

Latest technologies are also easier to implement because of simpler set up as compared to the earlier technologies. For example, cloud-based digital technologies help in piloting changes readily, while ensuring rapid extension across all levels of organization. A lot of technologies now are also easier to integrate with present systems. Off-the-shelf software packages, for instance, are easy to connect with ERP systems through standard APIs or application programming interfaces.

Conclusion

Digital overhaul of the supply chain requires a roadmap that is spread over years. Articulation of planning and vision into a successful digital strategy needs technologies around real-time data, advanced analytics, software & hardware, and talent who can carry out the digitization of supply chain management. While this blog explains about why you’re not generating actual gains from your digital strategy, and how vision must be set; in our continuing blogs, we shall speak about the roadmap for digital transformation in supply chain management, and logistics. 
 

Global supply chains have remained buckled with delayed deliveries and increasing costs under the unprecedented demands and constricted logistics capabilities over the last few years. Since 2019, there has been a 300% increase in the global container shipping rates, according to McKinsey, and even higher in key logistics routes like Asia–North America and Asia-Europe. Other key challenges that logistics companies face are failure to incorporate best practices and lack of coordination between warehouses and transport functions, inefficient use of vehicles and space.

To solve these challenges, digital transformation in logistics is now a much sought-after practice to increase rapid cargo delivery capabilities, improve last mile service, distribution network, supply chain execution, and most importantly, customer experience. Gartner suggests that “38% of organizations are improving supply chain technology to support end-to-end processes,” With digital technologies like advanced analytics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based data mining, Internet of Things (IoT) available with much improved implementations, logistics companies are ready to upgrade from status quo and be data-first enterprise.

60 percent of the respondents of Indian supply chain organizations said Industry 4.0 initiatives have now become more valuable, as per a McKinsey study. Industry 4.0 initiatives are defined as data and technology induced transformation of manufacturing and related industries.

Many early tech adopter companies are finding success in automating logistics already. Across e-commerce, the future of profitability lies in improved logistics. It is estimated that out of every $100 in e-commerce sales, e-tailers’ in-house logistics units are now collecting $12 to $20, which is a massive increase from the $3 to $5 spent on logistics in a typical brick-and-mortar-retail operation as per McKinsey.

Gartner suggests logistics firms need to adopt a three step process of Automation, Augmentation and Autonomy, leading to supply chain autonomy. Let us dive deeper to understand how. Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) and heads of strategy at logistics organizations can prepare their organizations with this strategy.(Fig. 1).

Roadmap to digital transformation in logistics

Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools can assist businesses having shortage of workforce to improve  operations without needing further manpower. In fact, transportation-and-warehousing industry shows the third-highest potential for automation, says the McKinsey Global Institute.

As AI overtakes a lot of repetitive activities that logistics perform, we speculate that automation could be a solution across several operations by 2025. Some key examples of the use of automation in logistics include autonomous vehicles which can navigate the aisles, automated high-rack warehouses, managers using AR goggles (augmented intelligence technology) to oversee the entire operations, and coordinating with robots and humans.

Wider use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in logistics companies can help them with self-monitoring of transportation fleets. Enhancing fleets with interactive navigation systems, adaptive cruise control, and autonomous vehicles can ensure accuracy and consistency in service, while enabling standardization.

Some of the logistics technology developments which are visible in the industry are reflected in the use of VR-AR applications, Advanced Resource-Scheduling System, and Advanced robotics. (Fig.2).

 
Augmentation

During this phase, the professionals should launch aggressive and more holistic initiatives which are also tightly packed with operations and business objectives. Cloud-based data mining, analytics systems, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are key digital solutions for improving customer experience, supply chain execution, and last mile service.

• Cloud-based solutions and advanced analytics tools can harvest real-time data, and convert it into business insights for supporting decision-making, and performance evaluation.
• AI algorithms can be used in logistics to consume geospatial, supply-chain, customer, and third-party data for taking decisions on next action, whether for customer interaction, yard management, or supply chain planning.
• Blockchain solutions in logistics can help in streamlining data. It helps in increasing visibility for shipments. 

This kind of digital ecosystem in logistics helps calibrate accountability, and ensures data security. Logistics companies also derive benefits of data latency elimination, and cost rationalization.

Autonomy

At this stage, Leaders should implement human augmentation strategies to digitize logistics and add key value from the perspective of logistics-technology (LogTech). Such gains will erupt from two sources-

1. From optimized efficiency due to improved operations, and
2. Better quality of data, which would create monetization opportunities

Algorithms would allow logistics companies to optimize pricing and current rates, which will especially help with active spot-market prices. Use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions will enhance customer experience due to improved supply chain visibility and better forecasting of customer behavior. While the algorithms create opportunities for improvements, logistics professionals can handle exceptions easily.

Recommendations

In spite of current disruptions logistics companies face, they can take well-informed futuristic technology decisions like below to improve profitability:

• Use a strong process for identification, evaluation, selection and deployment of innovative technologies
• Select technologies which align with your business objectives, operations, and which can positively impact your business performance
• Include factors like risk tolerance and maturity in your assessment
• Recognize bundled or sequenced technologies, which can work together to deliver results.

We hope our blog provided  clarity on the global logistics situation, and offered a useful perspective to the logistics executives on the digital transformation. Please get in touch with us to learn more on how we have helped companies in their digital transformation journey.

74% pharma companies reported paced up digital efforts in response to the pandemic, suggests a study, which means the spend on digital transformation in pharma could touch the $4.5 billion mark by 2030. On data analytics itself, pharmaceutical manufacturers would spend a whopping $1.2 billion in the next 7 years, ABI Research suggests. Even though pharma executives have already explored or planned to get the potential of digitalization in the sector, still a lot of them find it arduous to determine which initiatives they must adopt, and how.

Pharma digitization challenges fall under four main categories-

• Cash: like limited resources
• Competency: increased customer expectations, external competition, counterfeit medicines market etc.
• Capacity: data silos, and disparate systems
• Control: protecting critical and sensitive R&D data

Success of a digital strategy depends upon setting clear goals and strategy, followed by robust execution. In this blog, we discuss the challenges in selecting the right digital tools, define objectives and provide a roadmap for successful digitization of pharmaceuticals.

What does digitization mean for pharma?

Digitalization of the pharmaceutical sector includes implementation of digital technologies that can improvise products and services associated with healthcare like:

• Drug development
• Better R&D in drugs 
• Achieving better patient care and interaction
• Improved pharmaceutical distribution
• Achieving transparency in supply chain
• Reduced carbon impact, etc.

How to digitize pharma?

Enterprise digital transformations for pharma companies should ensure end-to-end tech capabilities across processes, experiences, and brand. Consolidated digitization spans across business units, value chain, therapeutic area, technology infrastructure, innovation, data, and strategic focus, which includes therapy, patient, and leadership.

By adopting such a holistic approach, Sanofi had “risen in digital maturity from below average in mid-2019 to among the top 10 percent of pharma companies globally, by 2021,” says Dr. Pius S. Hornstein, presiding over Sanofi's China business.

Setting digital strategy objectives

Deloitte suggests setting digital strategy objectives across six critical areas:

• Customer-focused models- Driving operations and strategies from patient and healthcare professionals perspectives.
• Agile model approach- Rapid response to predictable and unpredictable circumstances.
• End-to-End connected model- Getting enterprise insights through connected business and democratized data.
• Intelligent optimization- Continuous optimization of processes enabled through extensive data and tech tools like IoT, Blockchain, and intelligent workflow.
• Predictive and holistic insights- Helping with accelerated decision making.
• Virtual, flexible, and unbounded workforce and organization.

Four Pillars of Digital transformation Strategy

Partnership with organizations including tech experts

To thrive in an ecosystem with complex collaborations, it is essential to partner with tech vendors, and integration partners who can help with back-end data sources through IT solutions. Data integration is essential for business functions like financial reporting, product marketing. Tech vendors help pharma companies with new app launches, testing beta versions of digital products, and successful integrations.

Getting digital tools to significantly improve patient experience

Digital apps like disease management solutions working alongside medication significantly improve patient experience and value of treatment. Companies planning to scale commercially should begin their digital journey like a start-up, suggests Forbes. A key approach here could be to demonstrate value proposition by testing first, and then innovating on digital products based on patient feedback, and data.

Data integration, data analytics and insights plays a significant digital solution, because it helps in identifying market trends, forecasting shortage of resources, and identifying operational efficiencies. Developing and implementing CTMS or clinical trial management systems is another key aspect. CTMS enables streamlining data transfer, improving research documentation, adding transparency, and solving challenges of competency and capacity.

Scalability through automation

Mechanizing data exchange and automation creates cost saving and incremental revenue, thus driving a significant value proposition. Digital platforms and APIs help in real-time collaboration across channels, and stakeholders, and help in connecting different technologies at multiple locations, thus providing real-time visibility.

Applications that are designed to automate data exchange between electronic data capture (EDC) and electronic health record (EHR) can remedy the challenge of interoperability. For example, a SaaS based digital solution can remotely access a patient’s information, and provide automated, verified, accurate, and traceable data.

Journal Biostatistics suggests that AI and ML technologies can help pharma companies in selecting the most promising compounds among thousands of them for a drug role. This can narrow down the time span of drug discovery from 4-5 years to a few months, which reduces cost and speeds up chances of regulatory approvals.

Digitizing core processes of business

With virtual audits during pandemic, live-saving drug development could be kept on track. This method allowed pharma companies to meet virtually with regulatory authorities, global teams, suppliers, and customers. Automation and integration of the operational core helps in delivering intelligent operations, enterprise connectivity, and efficient management. For many pharma companies today, digitizing core processes like HR, training, and finance is a part of holistic strategy.

Key technologies enabling digitization in pharma sector

Some of the disruptive technologies in pharmaceutical sector include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, APIs and Digital Platforms, Real World Evidence (RWE), Wearable Technology, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and Robotics among others (Fig.1)

Internet of Things (IoT)  is a critical disruptive technology behind digitization of the supply chain, which particularly helps in overcoming the challenge of counterfeit medicines market. Use of sensors, mobile technology, blockchain, and cloud allows suppliers and customers to properly track physical drugs across the supply chain.

AI, Machine Learning, and Advanced Analytics assist in drug discovery and improving life-saving drugs production, disease diagnosis, predictive forecasting for analyzing large data for clinical trials, enabling drug trials, and getting real-time data for efficient risk management. For example, Harvard medical school collaborated with Novartis for exploring early drug reactions with the help of ML technology. Sanofi employed Advanced Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence for analyzing critical data, which led to higher productivity and efficiency.

Start with modern integration digital strategy with us

Pfizer addressed key challenges of data silos, limited resources, and disparate systems through building an integrated platform as part of its digital strategy. Through its API-led connectivity model, Pfizer accomplished 60% IT delivery cost reduction, omnichannel physical engagement, speed, agility, and secure data sharing.

If you’re looking for a holistics digital strategy, speak with us to learn how we leveraged APIs, and engineered digital apps for our pharma client in mapping complex processes.

You’re losing your leads and you don’t even realize it! That’s not what we’re saying. A recent MIT study suggests that “The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour. The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds to decrease 4 times.”

The education industry is at an exponential growth trajectory in the present times, yet the ed-tech firms face multiple challenges in scaling their business. Some of the key business pain points can be listed as

• Lack of lead tracking
• Lack of effective communication
• Poor customer experience due to improper customer query management
• Arduous paperwork which creates accounting errors
• Lack of coordination between product and project teams

Correct tools can strengthen a business’s relationship with its end-users and clients, while also improving the overall customer experience. In this blog, we list 5 tools to manage your edtech business better and efficiently.

Customer Relationship Management

Lead conversion is an essential aspect of business success. Lead management is dependent on different moving parts across departments including accounts, sales, and marketing teams. If your business is dealing with too many leads at a time, there are high chances that critical conversions may be lost. 

A CRM or a Customer Relationship Management software is a tool that can rightly handle and aggregate leads from across different channels like websites, calls, and emails. Integration of CRM in the business can help you to track and take action for each lead. A strong tech solution with CRM can help you with-

• Auto distribution of leads across sales team members with no manual intervention
• Availability tracking so that leads do not get distributed to co-workers who aren’t available
• Collecting lead data from multiple sources in one place to eliminate duplication
• Efficiency in management of callbacks and keeping records

Some examples of good CRM include Pipedrive, Hubspot, and Salesforce.

Communication Software – For seamless connection with customers

For product optimization, the business team must acquire and retain its customers. For this reason you need communication software so that your edtech company can connect with its customers seamlessly.

Therefore you must choose software that helps you solve customer queries or approach them directly over the sales call. Communication software can help you with-

• Remote ability so that you can make calls from your laptop or mobile with a simple click from anywhere
• Ease of use by making call entries, notes of customers, and tagging leads
• Call analytics and monitoring for the team to keep track of, or listen to live calls in real-time without interference
• SMS Automation for sending out bulk SMSs to communicate with all clients and contacts efficiently
• Auto dialing feature which allows automatic and direct connection to the suitable recipient based on previous interactions

Helpdesk & Shared inbox – For addressing customer queries better

Reducing the rate of customer defection by 5% can shoot up your profitability by 25-125%. That is why handling customer queries is an essential part of customer service in the edtech market. The most compelling reason why catering to your customers is essential is because a 2% rise in customer retention causes the same effect as lowering the cost by 1%.

Customer service is about learning and responding to customer queries in real-time, and increasing customer satisfaction. When customers send in queries, a tool like shared inbox can come in handy. It is popular among small, mid-sized, and big businesses alike. A shared inbox and helpdesk can help with-

• Promoting transparency among teammates to understand the best-dealt or failed query response
• Better e-mail management to filter out the priority mails, and comment or communicate efficiently with the queries raised
• Seamless integration by including several features of automation to increase productivity and reduce response time
• Solving query load through helpdesk by creating articles or answers around common queries and concerns

Some of the platforms that can help you with customer query addressing include Helpwise, Freshdesk, and Zendesk.

Accounting software – For efficient cash management

Accounting software for an edtech business can help the business owner assess whether the strategies are working towards profit generation or not. Good software in place will assist in making a correlation between cash flow and sales forecast. This is essential for business owners to strike a balance between raising revenues, releasing payrolls, and keeping track of expenses. Paperwork and spreadsheets in such a complex business model will make things clumsy. Having an accounting software will help you with-

• Invoicing with formal designing and tracking whether or not your client has viewed the bill
• Expense and bill management to improvise investments with analytical features
• Document management keeps a tab on customer sales and cash flow, while also monitoring customer journeys across schemes and promotions
• An informative dashboard allows you to track your business performance using charts and graphs; and also gives sales statistics to depict the performance of your company

Freshbooks, Quickbooks, and Xero are some good examples of accounting software.

Product Management Software – For overall management

At any edtech firm, there is a constant demand for developments to cater to the evolving market. With so many tasks and multiple developments going on simultaneously, there is also a need for overall product management. It is the role of a product manager to design a roadmap that the team navigates. Product management software can help a firm with-

• Task management to set weekly or daily targets, create a board for multiple tasks, set goals, due dates, and priority lists
• Team management to make the development process a waterfall model, and strategize the teams to make the process agile, and faster time-to-market
• Dynamic dashboards to bring in project flexibility and work visualization, monitoring the live progress, and real-time data

Some of the good product management software include Asana, Basecamp, and Microsoft Teams. 

In the active education industry, your business can make the customers and clients discover the benefits of digital learning with the rightly stacked tools. The tools mentioned above will help you in increasing business growth and team productivity. Let us know if you’re ready to get one or all of the tech stacks for improving your edtech business management.

The edtech sector is positioned for exponential growth as suggested by Forbes research. In the next 5-7 years, the edtech sector can reach $325 Billion by 2025 and a whopping $1 trillion by 2027. Building your e-learning platform can be an intricate process, sufficing the demands for more efficiency, security, flexibility, and scalability. Profit-making is the direct benefit of a platform that packs enriching features and addresses learners’ pain points.

Choosing the right tech stack for e-learning platform development is a decision that is taken before the development process is initiated. Before we dive into this topic, it is essential to focus on key factors to consider before choosing the best tech stack for developing an e-learning platform.

Factors to consider

Target User

Edtech is now not limited only to school education, even though it still forms the basis of the edtech landscape. Corporate e-learning is a fast booming segment with the market predicted to increase by $38.09 billion from a period of 2020-2024. Both of these segments and higher learning space have different and unique needs. Further, corporate platforms are different from formal education e-learning platforms. Therefore, before choosing the tech stack for an e-learning platform it becomes essential to know whether the end customer is a school student, learners from higher education, or a company employee.

Type of Platform Requirement

Should you be building an LMS (Learning Management System) or an MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform, or a customized platform? It depends upon your end user. Existing LMS systems traditionally offer restricted access with a limited number of end users, while MOOC is the kind of e-learning marketplace, which is open to any number of users. Choice of tech stack will largely depend upon the specific solutions for each kinds of platform.

Scalability

As mentioned earlier, it is also essential to understand the scalability of e-learning apps. This is done by estimating the demand for a product and speculating its future growth. Scalability at the corporate level may mean reaching various departments across locations deployed for different use cases. While MOOC platforms like Udemy, Coursera need to be scalable across geography for diverse types of course material.

Extensibility

Upgrading the launched app is critical to match the ever-changing requirements of your end-users. Choosing the tech stack also depends upon extensibility because you would want to use the technologies that are scaled up easily to match learners’ demands.

MVP

MVP or Minimum Viable Product is a product idea with core features that an e-learning platform offers. MVP allows developers to analyze and draft technical opportunities and budgets, which is one of the critical aspects of developing an e-learning platform.

Budget

The cost of your project will directly influence the choice of tech stack. Suitable options for e-learning project development include free and paid frameworks.

Choosing the best tech stack

• Front-end technologies: This is the part that is visible to the users. A plethora of new technologies keep coming up, so the challenge before the Technology leader lies in having the platform currently popular, robust, and also easy for the development and maintenance team. Some of the popular frontend technology stacks for building e-learning apps are Angular JS, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5. JavaScript is a flexible technology that performs well with different kinds of frameworks.
• Back-end technologies: Known as server-side development, this part is not visible to your users, but it helps in handling thousands of registered users, and courses offered. Popular backend technologies for building e-learning platforms include PHP, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. Python’s growing popularity as a backend technology comes from its great performance.
• Mobile: Even though most of the users take online courses and classes through the desktop version of the e-learning platform, it must also be optimized for mobile devices. The fastest way of creating a mobile app is by deciding on creating a cross-platform mobile development solution. Popular technologies used for developing this solution include frameworks like Flutter or React Native. These frameworks give a native feel and look. Their biggest advantage is that they require creating just one codebase for both operating systems- iOS and Android. This speeds up the development process and also makes it budget-friendly.

Turning your idea into full-fledged project

Building a valuable e-learning platform requires a team of experienced and talented people. It would be time-consuming and expensive to hire an in-house team to do this job within the tight time frame, which is likely to slow down the process of development while reducing the time-to-market. A talented pool of product engineers stands behind the success of any digital product. Therefore the role of project managers, product engineers, and product designers cannot be understated. That is why it is essential to entrust your project to an IT partner with proven digital expertise.

If you have a project idea and need an IT partner that comes with years of experience in e-learning solutions, explore why you should consider Valuebound. Call us or drop a hello to discuss your project details.

The Edtech space in India has gained much momentum, thanks to the increased remote learning environment since 2020. Some of the start-ups  catching up in the edtech space are Whitehat Education, Mindlogicx, Meritnation, Masai School, Practically, Skillmatics, Testbook, and Culturealley among others. In previous blog, we talked about top edtech companies that became unicorns for their unique platform and tech solutions. This blog talks about promising edtech startups soon to enter unicorn club.

Quizziz

Quizziz is a platform that is now being used in group assignments, pre-test reviews, classes, pop quizzes, and formative assessments and is known for creating and selling gamified student engagement programs. The edtech platform is customizable, available for all age groups, and accessible across any device and platform, with more than 10 million users, this edtech start-up is forecasted to soon make its entry into the unicorn club of India. While technology-based learning is only recent in India, Quizziz is also now integrating regional languages for wider adoption here.

What makes Quizziz unique and different from other edtech start-ups is that they do not pitch their product as a “supplementary education” beyond the schools. The USP technology of Quizziz is gamification and analytics. Speaking of the tech stacks, this engaging learning platform makes use of over 15 technologies, including Moment.js, jQuery, Node.js, Express, Google Workspace, Amazon Cloudfront, Amazon Web Services, and MoEngage, among others.

Cuemath

Focussing primarily on one subject, Bangalore-based Cuemath has over 3,000 centers in the country. Cuemath focuses on improving mathematical concepts. This edtech start-up was founded in 2013. What’s unique about Cuemath is its platform called LEAP which customizes each worksheet and class according to the student. The company claims that its students can complete courses 20% faster than other competitors.

Addressing the pain point of students, i.e. weak foundation in Mathematics concepts, Cuemath is now recognized for its unique math learning system. The company offers online after-school math classes, and also focuses on coding lessons. Cuemath has an AI-powered platform that helps students in moving at their own pace. Cuemath makes use of over 18 technology services and products and 50+ technologies on the website. Some of these include jQuery, Google Font API, Viewport Meta, and Google Analytics, among others.

Toppr

Mumbai-based Toppr helps K-12 students with online examination preparation and aiding students in classrooms. Toppr’s structured courses are powered through interactive video lectures, doubt-clearing sessions, practice question sets, and test series. Conceptual learning, application, practice, and comparison are four steps in which classroom teaching is done at Toppr. It also focuses on adaptive question practice and goal-based learning.

Toppr offers technology solutions by recognizing the problem of need-gap. Toppr Doubt is the solution for helping students clear their doubts at any time, in real-time through experts. Toppr is using its investments in developing an AI-based Toppr School Operating System, in an attempt to unify in-school and after-school learning.

The digital tools or technologies used by Toppr include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, for understanding students’ behavior.

Classplus

Founded in 2018, Classplus aims at digitizing the tuition/ coaching system through its coaching institute management software. The SaaS-based platform addressed a major pain point of teachers by helping them create their individual apps to provide coaching and course content to their students. Classplus platforms are mobile-first and offer unlimited cloud storage and data security features. Content of teachers may include video lectures, shared messages, online tests, and homework. Classplus offers ease of tutoring and digital payments. This edtech firm has over 200k users on its platform. In its tech stack are some of the popular technologies like React, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services, CleverTap, OWL Carousel, jQuery, and Bootstrap among others.

If you are brainstorming a new edtech start-up project, catch up with our tech team to make a product that’s pitched for long-term success.

The EdTech or education technology sector was among the least funded sectors in India till 2019, but with the rise in remote learning, the ed-tech sector saw more start-ups and investors’ money flowing in. Over the last two years, there has been an exponentially rising interest among investors in edtech companies. So, what makes an edtech start-up a success story?

The success of an edtech start-up depends on how satisfied a customer feels with the product and does this product has a long-term vision. Long-term vision can be defined well when a company identifies the pressing pain points of end-users and addresses them with the right digital solution, such as AI, machine learning, and big data, and combines it with the tech stack. In this blog, we list out the fastest growing edtech start-ups in India that address the unique challenges of their end-users through their tech solution.

Byju’s

Byju’s, one of the highest valued edtech start-ups in the world currently, provides personalized learning programs through advanced technologies like interactive 3D learning classes. Byju’s has leveraged its content by reinventing personalized curricula to suit individual students’ requirements. BYJU’s focus has been on delivering quality education with accessibility, use of technology, visualization, and creativity. To create unique solutions, BYJU’s cross-functional team brainstorms together to develop course content that is not yet available around the globe. BYJU’s attains its competitive advantage by building synergy between different global acquisitions, thus creating unique learning platforms.

On the tech side, Amazon Web Services is the cloud platform for its mobile and website app. For gaining a deeper insight into student behavior, BYJU’s uses Amazon Redshift for its data warehouse management.

UpGrad 

UpGrad enables students to achieve career goals by letting them learn higher education programs through top global institutes like IITs, the University of Arizona, and more. UpGrad had a learner base of over 2 million as of August 2021, which doubled in just 8 months, thus making it the largest platform offering higher education.

One of the biggest challenges for UpGrad was to overcome the stigma around the credibility of online courses for recruiters and students. The company invests in three core competencies- new programs, product and learning experience, and greater awareness. What sets UpGrad apart from its competitors is a hand-holding technique for each learner, which it bills as ‘student mentorship’. Upgrad makes its website more dynamic and enhances operability due to frameworks like Nuxt.js, in-house editors, and CMS.

Vedantu

Bangalore-based edtech start-up pioneered live online tutoring in 2014 to students aged between 3 to 18 years, with an aim of augmenting lessons from schools. Vedantu also helps students prepare for competitive examinations, primarily medical and engineering exam. Vedantu enables learners to access free recorded lessons through satellite TV, YouTube, and its app. Customized teaching patterns, interactive LIVE classrooms, and doubt clearing sessions are some of its key highlights.

Vedantu worked on the pain point by understanding that classrooms are never fully equipped to solve each query, or match an individual's ability and pace. Vedantu was thus launched to solve the challenge of offline learning model through its next-gen, instinctive platform WAVE (Whiteboard Audio Video Environment). WAVE is the AI-enabled platform, which uses more than 70 parameters to make classes more interactive.

Unacademy

Unacademy helps students prepare for the country's major entrance examinations. Unacademy’s uniqueness emerges from its LIVE classroom sessions through talented educators. All these class sessions are also available offline, which makes it simpler for learners to access videos at their preferred timing from the comfort of their homes. As of February 2022, Unacademy had over 750,000 active paid subscribers.

The company worked on the greatest challenge of democratizing education in India and making education accessible to all. At present, around 70% of the company’s active learners are from Tier-III cities where there is an absence of top educators. Unacademy is now focusing on adding more exams, teachers, and languages into its mixture. Popular tech stacks used by Unacademy include Google Fonts, Google Analytics, HTML 5, iPhone / Mobile Compatible, SPF, and Viewport Meta.

LEAD

Founded in 2012, LEAD acts as an enabler for schools where they can combine pedagogy, curriculum, and technology into their learning and teaching systems. The company claims to have over 5,000 schools, serving over 2 million students across 500 cities in the country. LEAD invests its resources in building integrated and exceptional learning environments.

Digitizing and transforming inexpensive private schools to cater to the students from moderate and low-income households is the challenge addressed by LEAD schools by creating an integrated system. LEAD schools’ business success comes from running school management software applications. It is the full-stack retraining, assessment, and education solution for the small towns. The unique characteristics of the software include course content delivery, teacher’s training, instructor performance management, and student learning surveillance.
 

In our previous blog, we talked about how adaptive learning and badging in gamification can have a critical impact on higher education. The rising demand for these digital tools amongst institutions has prompted edtech companies to focus on technologies that empower education. In this blog, we list our three core digital tools that can greatly impact and transform higher education.

Blended Learning

Also known as hybrid learning, it combines the best of online and offline worlds to deliver lessons to students. Blended Learning comes with a range of benefits including better opportunities for experiential learning, enhanced teacher and student interaction, a more flexible teaching, and learning environment, and time management and flexibility among others. About 53% of the students are willing to adopt the idea of online courses offered on a blended or university-owned platform, suggests a report by Pwc.

Popular models of blended learning are:

• Flipped model that enables educators to share education content before the class session. The instructors can share this content on LMS, or through e-mails.
• Face-to-Face Driver Model uses webinars or Zoom meetings to deliver a learning session. While the learning takes place online, assignments can be set later and shared using LMS.
• Enriched Virtual model of blended learning enables students to complete their coursework online, while also attending webinars. Here, the attendance is ad hoc and enables learners to grasp concepts at their own pace.

Apps supporting hybrid learning

• Edmodo app integrates with Google Apps and Microsoft Online and serves as a collaborative platform for teachers, students, and parents.
• Lesson Paths enables flexible and individualized learning and works on a playlist model. One can assign a playlist that already exists on the platform or can create a new playlist. Students are eligible to have their playlist as well.
• Voicethread enables the articulation of students’ thoughts, along with collaborative participation. The platform enables the uploading of over 50 different kinds of files. Students can comment through different means like a phone call, text, video, and chat.

Enhanced Classroom Technologies

The adoption of classroom technologies in higher education space is revolving around “Learning ready classrooms”, a word coined by Dr. Maggie Beers from San Francisco State University. The current focus is on designing and scaling equitable and inclusive learning spaces with tools for active learning like writable surfaces and wheeled furniture.

Apps for smart classrooms

• SCALE-UP rooms have circular tables along with displays. This allows students to work on their assignments, plug in their laptops, and simultaneously share screens. 
• Too Noisy is the app which monitors and controls the level of noise in a classroom.
• Class Dojo is a behavior tracking app where teachers can monitor students’ behavior.
• Teacher Kit is a class management app that puts multiple tools into use and organizes class data. It also keeps track of the students’ performance.

Learning Analytics

This digital technology is used with online learning services, where its application involves the implementation of new structures and methods that are dependent upon predictive modeling. Learning Analytics implementation in higher education brings in key strengths, such as the availability of multiple visualizations for staff and students, the ability to use powerful, pre-existing algorithms, large volumes of available educational data, precise models for adaptation and personalization of learning, and growing insight into learning strategies and behaviors.

Apps supporting learning analytics

• OnTask, an analytics solution, integrates data from learning management systems or other online learning tools and enables instructors to define progress indicators. The dashboard allows instructors to check students’ progress, both individual, as well as aggregated.
• The Threadz, a tool for developing network visualizations, makes use of learning analytics by giving instructors manipulable visualizations of students’ interaction and communication within forums. It uses reliable metrics which indicate students’ degree of engagement.
• Simple Reports, a platform that draws historic data of course registration from the past, and matches it with the current one, gives a clear understanding of students' data. This gives a clear demographic understanding of students to understand likely future choices in which a student is to major.

Investing in digital tools for transforming higher education can help institutes reap tangible benefits on operational and strategic goals. Digital tools mentioned above can improve the performance of institutions by redesigning the campus experience. In our coming insights, we shall focus on how the institutions can plan a successful roadmap around mounting revenues and operational and pedagogical challenges. 

About 13% of the universities and colleges are already engaged in digital transformation, while 32% of them are in the process of developing DX strategy, as per recent research. Another 38% of higher education institutions are exploring the possibilities and scope of digital transformation. The figures aptly suggest that the technological shifts through digital transformation and the usage of new tools are transforming the operating models, value proposition, and strategic direction of higher educational institutions.

In this blog, we’ve created a list of such digital tools which can transform higher education by ensuring extensibility, scalability, agility, interoperability, and data integrity across different platforms.

Adaptive Learning

Delivering custom learning experiences that match the needs of each individual through real-time feedback, pathways, and resources are called adaptive learning. Instructors can tutor students by making them understand unique and difficult concepts. Since the instructors adapt to the needs of learners, therefore it is called adaptive learning. Three core pillars of adaptive learning can be summed up:

Adaptive Content where students can answer questions by responding with feedback based on certain responses like review materials, hints, and more. This can be seen as an upgrade from just marking the question correct, or incorrect without reasoning.

Adaptive Sequence means a continuous process of collecting and analyzing students’ data to automatically alter what a student would see next.

Adaptive Assessment can change the questions presented to a student, depending upon what or how he/she has answered the previous question. This method can be seen as a benchmark for understanding a student's progress.

Adaptive learning digital tool focuses on the use of technologies that emulate educators’ talent to facilitate a great learning experience for each student. Adaptive learning technology adapts to students using various technical variations, which include algorithm adaptivity and design adaptivity.

Apps based on adaptive learning

• Leading ed-tech firm Byju’s offers unique learning journeys apart from guided learning paths, recommendations, and actionable feedback.
• Cerego, the adaptive learning platform for higher education, enables the improvement of students’ learning capabilities, and progress tracking.
• Quiklrn, is a part of the National Education Alliance for Technology (NEAT 2.0). It enables integrated AI-based Learning Services for a personalized experience.

Badging in Gamification

Badges are motivational digital tools that reward learners after they’ve achieved a set level of difficulty. collecting badges during gamification of education transforms the education process into fun, which stimulates learners’ response to newer learning materials.

Gamification badges are an alternative to the traditional grading system. Due to learners’ motivation to “acquire new badges,” gamification is among the top-demanded features in the Learning Management Systems of most higher education institutes.

Apps based on gamification

• Khan Academy correlates learners’ performance with score gains (badging) on standard achievement tests.
• Coursera, a platform with universal access to the top universities, also has this rewarding process, making learning fun.
• Udemy, a gamified education app platform, allows learners to access university courses from across the world. It uses progress bars to indicate a learner’s advancement.

In our next blog, we shall continue to speak about the other three key digital tools that can transform higher education. Our next part focuses on the blended learning model, enhanced classroom technologies, and learning analytics. 

Better customer experience is increasingly taking importance in  marketing decisions. As per Salesforce.com study, 75% of marketers now undertake Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, which is up 22% from last year. User-centricity, visual shopping, empathy, automation, and trust were among top themes that dominated customer experience in 2021. In this article, we are going to understand the top themes of customer experience in 2022 and beyond. After sifting through various data points and reports, we’ve distilled five core themes ranging from societal shifts, use of emotion analytics to data security and privacy for better customer engagement strategy.

Strategic Planning for better customer engagement

Budgeting, using resources efficiently, and ensuring returns are top considerations of  customer engagement strategy.  Some 53% of the 250 CX practitioners believe that they feel pressured around providing returns for digital CX investments. The Vice President of Customer Transformation at Quadient, Scott Draeger said, “If you spend marketing funds to create an expectation, you better deliver to the standard you set.”

Brands that have dedicated CX digital teams to create potent digital user journeys can produce consistent branding. However, major challenges arise around lack of rigid data infrastructure which can be used for full optimization of digital experiences.

Proper planning can result in a unified customer data view through a robust data infrastructure, which helps brands in making wiser decisions, and delivering quality customer experience. Integrated data ecosystems can lead to convenience and personalization in interaction felt by customers in DX space.

Understand Customer Journeys

The pandemic shed a light on societal shifts in customer experience. Now customers do not base their brand loyalty solely on product or price. CX teams cannot just rely on quantitative data for product delivery, or other decisions. Reliability, ease of communicating with a brand, features of product or services, packaging, and advertising- all these factors encompass customer experience. In the complex digital experience hierarchy, modern marketers must adopt a smart approach to map customer journeys.

Qualitative research at each stage of customer journey and innovation with the way the voice of the customer is heard is now seen as a primary battleground for higher competitiveness among brands. That is why the brands need to lay higher emphasis on customer journey analytics. To put this in context, by 2026 the market size of global customer journey analytics is expected to grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.3%. This will increase from 8.3 billion in 2020 to USD 25.1 billion by 2026, which explains the importance of tracking customer journeys for an excellent CX.

Emotion analytics

Emotion analytics use customer insights from different channels and customer touchpoints like social media platforms, emails, chats, texts, and calls.  There shall be a significant rise in real-time emotion analytics. In the next two years, market size for global emotion analytics shall grow to USD 4.6 billion at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.8%. Services and software catering to emotion analytics, such as speech, facial, text, and video analytics will continue to remain key tools that drive CX in 2022 and beyond.

Countries like Canada and the US are investing heavily in research and development of innovative technologies in emotion analytics. These countries continue to remain early technological adopters in different verticals like banking, retail, financial services, and manufacturing.

Figure 1 below shows that the North American region will hold the largest emotion analytics market by 2024.

As we reflect back on CX in 2021, there will be more emphasis on how well the communication specialists imbue technology with human emotions. Making interactive technology more accessible and usable, and celebrating the innovations in advertising in these segments shall be the dominating themes of CX in 2022 and beyond.

Consistent customer experience

The need of the hour is to deliver seamless, smooth and most essentially, consistent customer experience. When we speak of consistency, the key points we highlight include-

• Ensuring relevance, quality and context of experiences to avoid customer vanish
• Quick interaction and response are at a centre for excellent CX. According to Forrester, 45% of customers in the US shall abandon online purchasing if they do not get quick answers to their queries.
• Customers look for instant gratification which comes from personalised and immediate experiences across timelines, platforms, and channels.  
• Modern customers look for frictionless experiences from brands by way of round-the-clock communication. That is why 66% of the customers believe that they are more likely to choose brands that value their time.

Consistency means that brands do not abandon their customers after product or service delivery. However, in the digital landscape, the damage from poor CX can be repaired with technology innovations and human intelligence.

Transparency around data privacy & security

Cyber security statistics are alarming, which is indicated from the fact that around 30,000 websites are hacked globally on a daily basis. In such a scenario, dealing with customers’ privacy concerns, security, data breach, and transparency continues to remain a top challenge for brands. To deliver an outstanding customer experience, the brands must assure customers about what they’re doing to mitigate such risks.

The marketing teams collect actionable insights and comprehensive analytics through different touchpoints. Proliferation of numerous mobile and digital technologies has also led to data accumulation through external and internal sources. Lack of efficiency in managing this huge chunk of information can often lead to data loss, information misuse, and security breaches. As a part of excellent customer experience in 2022 and beyond, the brands must implement tighter cloud security and privacy practices.

In 2021 there has been an industrial change which affects the ability of marketers to accumulate and use customers’ data. From Google eradicating third-party cookies to Apple’s iOS15 updates there have been key reforms in the way customer data is being used. Yet, the vendors must instil a level of trust in customers by ensuring a higher level of data security.

Conclusion

Proper planning can result in a unified customer experience through a robust data infrastructure. This helps brands in making wiser decisions, while also delivering quality customer experience. Customer experience in 2022 is going to be focused on standardisation and consistency of communication across channels, understanding emotional analytics and customer’s journey, while having transparency about security and data privacy.