But the recent pandemic, COVID-19,  which has the whole world reeling from the repercussions of being locked down,  has made steady paychecks with health insurance benefits look a lot more promising. And while there are advantages to being in the gig economy, there are also disadvantages that cause incredible anxiety to the workers in the ecosystem, the biggest among them, undoubtedly,  being the payment question.

According to a Global Marketplace and Gig Economy Payment Satisfaction report, a survey of gig economy freelancers from various industries around the world found that 73% of gig workers are likely to leave the marketplace due to payment issues. Many gig workers and freelancers face delayed or even denied payments, and many spend weeks tracking down payments every year. And this is where companies who rely on gig-workers can make a difference and digital transformation can be a lifesaver. One could argue that adopting a digital transformation platform to meet employees’ requirements in real-time –  an instantaneous payment platform for instance – will help the gig economy thrive going forward. 

In a move that seemed understanding of this predicament, the US Federal Reserve officially announced in August 2019 that it plans to build a real-time payment service by 2023-2024 called ‘FedNow’. Hopefully, the changes that COVID-19 has brought upon the world economy spurs them on to develop and implement this sooner rather than later. 

In the announcement, the Fed Reserve invited extensive feedback from members of the banking and payment community and in a much-publicized response, Google wrote to the US Federal Reserve Board detailing the successful example of the UPI (Unified Payment Interface) based digital payment platform in India to build FedNow. 

UPI, according to the NCPI website “is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments under one hood.”  It also caters to the ‘peer to peer’ collect request, which can be scheduled and paid according to your convenience. 

Google listed three major qualities of the UPI worth emulating: 

• Interoperability – account to account transfer and not just an online wallet
• Real-time money transfers
• An ‘open’ system – standards are open-source so technology companies can build their implementation of the solution

Let’s look at these qualities a bit closer and understand how they can become game-changers for the gig-economy.

Interoperability

The diverse requirements of the US FinTech industry necessitated multiple channels for enabling payments. The payment systems currently in place don’t interoperate seamlessly. Private solutions are closed-loop systems too –  real-time transfers are possible only between those users who use their specific solution. This is arguably the biggest drawback of the multitude of perfectly functional payments systems that have organically sprung up over the years.

Now imagine a new platform that can now provide you with access to the funds lying in your bank account and can transfer money from your PSP (Payment Service Provider) to another party’s bank account without worrying about the PSP the other party uses. This would essentially convert all PSPs into portals to your financial world. This is what the UPI platform accomplishes.  

Real-Time Money Transfer

As smartphones are replacing physical cards and POS systems, any new system being developed should be able to authorize a payment using a pin or two-factor authentication to transfer cash instantaneously regardless of the platform the merchant uses. Without Visa or Mastercard needing to act as intermediaries. A system that combines all the existing payment rails and can transfer money to any of the nodes seamlessly, just like UPI does.

‘Open’ System

In the current payment ecosystem, different payment rails need different types of authentication information. The new system should simplify and standardize these operations – the different types of authentication for each payment rail should be handled under the hood by the new system.  The result would be an open and interoperable payment infrastructure, compatible with all the existing technologies and has the potential to integrate newer ones. 

This is what will enable any PSP to facilitate transactions to any other PSP instantaneously, leveling the playing field for banking and non-banking PSPs (Fintech firms) when it comes to managing payments. 

The Entrepreneur’s Advantage 

The biggest beneficiaries of such an instantaneous payment platform,  other than gig workers, will be small business owners and the low fixed-income individual who has to wait for a couple of days after a paycheck is deposited for the amount to reflect in their account.

If FedNow works with this kind of an open system, it will create opportunities for small and medium-sized banks, credit unions, FinTech companies, and large retailers to develop their version of PSP applications. And while developing such a system, firms must ensure that they create a simple, intuitive platform for P2P transfers and digital POS systems for their customers. 

It will also create an opportunity for payment and ‘payment adjacent’ solutions providers to develop their own version of PSP apps. For instance, even small FinTech firms can utilize their existing infrastructure and leverage digital transformation solutions to meet customer requirements, offering innovative, secure and user-friendly solutions that can compete with the likes of larger banks.  In this way, they can reposition themselves for continued success, even post COVID-19.

Having developed FinTech solutions for their partners, companies like Black Rock IT Solutions have a distinct advantage in developing PSP apps for their client partners, that companies around the globe can rely on to be top-notch.

To know more about Experion’s Fintech offerings, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com

The post How real-time payments may save the gig economy in a post pandemic world appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

Ideally, organizations should leverage their own expertise to build high-quality digital products for customers and handle their digital transformation journey. But at times, they may not have the desired knowledge and expertise to grow and thrive in a competitive market. Hence it becomes imperative that they have to collaborate with vendors who have the specific expertise to meet the business requirements. At times the objective behind partnering with another company is to reduce operational costs, to focus on core business, to provide enhanced service quality, to access the latest technology expertise, or to drive the digital transformation journey. Organizations must define a clear objective for selecting a software development company as they may make or break the future of the company.

In this article, we explore different factors that organizations should consider during the selection process of a custom software development company. 

1. Work with a team you trust!

   Reliability, dependability, and sustainability are three significant criteria while evaluating a vendor to partner with. These act as catalysts to meet the requirements in the long run. Assess the vendor’s team to understand their hands-on experience and expertise, their presence in the market, global certifications they hold, and the geographical presence or accessibility will help you find out if they’re the right fit. Having a look at years they have been in the software/web development business, the size of the company, the reputation they hold in the ecosystem, and growth since inception will help to determine whether they are dealing with a reliable partner.
   

2. Ask for client references & recommendations

   Hearing from the clients whom the vendor partnered with will help you assess the credibility & expertise of the company. Platforms such as Clutch, GoodFirms, AppFutura, are some sources that will help you to get some real/unbiased customer feedback, customer testimonials, and reviews. Clutch 1000  listing allows organizations to find answers to questions such as “Will they understand my company’s unique needs? Will the final solution help my company grow? Will they even deliver what I asked for on time?” from a single platform. It is always advisable and essential to request a reference call with their existing clients to get a clear picture of the vendor’s capabilities, their quality, and approach towards each project. An excellent vendor would proactively set up reference calls with their clients to testify their offerings. 
   

3. Evaluate the portfolio of offerings
   

   The vendor’s portfolio is a perfect reference point for organizations to evaluate the depth & breadth of their offerings. A detailed comprehension of services offered by the vendor will give you an idea to get prepared for all possible outcomes from this partnership. A deep dive into the challenges they faced, the solutions they offered will help to understand the in-depth knowledge the vendor possesses. Knowing the anticipated cost during the evaluation phase will help to assess the costs required for the current requirement. Organizations can ask for customer success stories, case studies, white papers to evaluate their exposure across different industry verticals and how they have offered and customized their solutions to best suit each client.

4. Ensure excellent project delivery process

   Quality, cost & time determine the success of any projects. During the evaluation process, the organization should evaluate these dimensions to make sure they have hands-on experience in handling projects like yours. Knowing the cost & time they take to complete similar projects will help to estimate and allocate budget required as well as plan for the delivery of services/products. A detailed look into the vendor’s perspectives and approaches towards project implementation can lead you to make better decisions. A right vendor will always come up with suggestions and advice the organization to adopt and follow specific strategies based on their experience with previous projects.

5. Choose a company that has the upper hand in cutting-edge technologies

   At times, companies easily get caught up in looking at innovative features that a vendor offers and lose sight of the real value additions or solutions to their problems. While evaluating the technology or technical expertise, companies can present the vendor with a real problem and ask them to illustrate how they would solve this problem. During the demonstration, their expertise in handling different tools and techniques, proficiency in using various programming languages can be gauged. The expertise and proficiency in solving the problem gives a glimpse of a vendor company’s culture as well, helps you to see if this culture goes well with your culture or not.

6. Have a look at the company’s industry recognition.

   While choosing an ideal software development partner, companies must have a look at the industry recognitions, awards & certifications of the vendor. In software development, many processes are subject to international certifications & compliances such as ISO, GDPR, HIPAA, FHIR. Organisations should ask prospective partners whether they possess the corresponding certificates. Quality international certifications and compliances will act as justification parameters, w.r.t project management, information handling, process management, & data security management. In short, it is essential to consider vendors who are compliant with industry quality standards and certifications to ensure the best quality services. International rankings & awards such as Clutch listing, Inc 5000 listing, Top Tech companies, Deloitte Top 50, etc. are few reputable ones in this field. An organisation can easily shortlist companies that have high visibility and credibility in the ecosystem from these listings.

7. Gauge the partner’s geographical presence

   Companies must evaluate the outsourcing partner location before signing off the contract. Favorable, convenient, and easily accessible geographical locations play a vital role in choosing software development partners. It is advisable to have a thorough evaluation of the vendor’s geographical presence w.r.t geopolitical stability, business environment & IT business landscape. Prioritise vendors who have a local presence and support systems like engineers, business analysts, implementation experts etc. to meet your business requirements precisely.  Companies with a global presence will have a comprehensive expertise, which will ease the process of software development from business requirement gathering until successful deployment.

8. Are you getting the right software development team on-board?

   Ensuring the vendor team’s qualifications, certifications, and experience is directly proportional to your project’s success. In addition to providing the right mix of talents, companies must keep track of the vendor employee attrition rate. This helps to know if the chosen team is going to be with the project from the start till completion.

Companies must evaluate a vendor’s ability to handle projects of different scale. Having a look at the number of employees will help you understand whether they will provide dedicated support to your business requirements. Choosing the right sized company will give a clear vision of the vendor’s ability to extend the development team bandwidth to meet immediate requirements.

Concluding Remarks

For building a successful partnership, companies must do comprehensive research on the vendor, its services, client portfolio, reviews, and recommendations. Based on these criteria, one can choose a vendor who meets all business requirements to build innovative products.

With over 13 years of experience, blackrock Technologies delivered software development services to more than 500 enterprises and startups across a variety of industries. blackrock is consistently ranked in Clutch listings, bagged industry recognitions such as Inc 5000 list for our relentless customer focus, results-driven approach, and technology innovation. With the help of the right software development partner like Experion, we ensure that your idea gets translated into a market redefining product. Talk to our expert today! 

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Here are the top 5 trends which will revolutionize healthcare

AI and Deep Learning

AI and Deep learning (often used interchangeably) will bring some of the biggest innovations in the healthcare industry. AI systems are being actively pursued for drug development, early diagnosis, treatment protocol, personalized medicine and patient monitoring and care. AI has been extensively used in the field of Radiology as evidenced from the New York Times story. Some of the notable industry leaders who are developing AI/ Deep learning-based healthcare solution include:

• IBM’s Watson:- It can diagnose, analyze scientific papers and even help in drug discovery
• Microsoft’s Hanover project:- It analyses medical research and predicts cancer drug treatment approaches for patients
• Google’s DeepMind:- Image analysis for cancer recognition and early health risk detection

The use of AI will help decrease the overall healthcare cost, as accurate diagnosis and preventive medical intervention using technological solutions become mainstream. Countries with very little access to experts can use similar technologies to democratize healthcare for the masses.

IoT/ Wearables

The tech industry has seen many devices being launched to satisfy even the most diverse of consumer needs. Devices now are so sophisticated, that it is almost as accurate as a professional ECG machine. Interestingly, IoT devices in the future will have much more potential than the off the shelf wearable tech available today.

Future devices could enable remote patient monitoring using smart sensors and integrate the data generated with the larger healthcare infrastructure wirelessly. 5G technology will certainly be a great boost to the infrastructure needs needed for the IoT ecosystem. When 5G becomes more common, IoT devices will get a lot more common and mainstream.

Let’s look at some of the examples of how IoT can influence the future of healthcare.

• For Patients: – Preventive medicine enabled by wearables will be the big buzz of the future. Wearable devices would be able to monitor blood pressure, heart rate and glucose levels with very high accuracy that it would be classified as a healthcare device.
• For Physicians: – Physicians can monitor and intervene more effectively by analyzing the data from wearable devices. Data collected can also be used to identify the best treatment approach for patients.
• For Hospitals: – Hospitals can use IoT enabled systems for monitoring equipment, tracking pharma inventory among other things. Post-operative monitoring of patients is also a new area of research.
• For Insurance companies: – Insurance companies are piloting programs which reduced health insurance premiums for people sharing data from their wearables and health apps. This will become common. Data from multiple devices can be used to calculate individualized risk profile and then corresponding premiums will be calculated according to a person’s risk profile.

Cloud Innovation

Even though the advantages of moving to cloud ecosystem are many, healthcare systems have been the slowest to transition due to the sensitivity of data and more importantly privacy legislations. As cloud becomes more and more acceptable in our day to day life, it is but natural that healthcare data would also transition to the cloud.

As HIPAA/ GDPR compatible cloud solutions become more common, it will become an essential part of the healthcare landscape.  Some of the use cases of Cloud solutions in healthcare are:

• Data Visualization tools would represent health parameters of an individual into usable forms for self & professional evaluation. Data for this can be collected from various sources including medical devices, wearables and even connected weighing machine.
• Counterfeit protection of drugs, medical equipment, and other consumables.
• EHR or Electronic Health Record could be used to track a patient history between physicians, hospitals and insurance companies.
• Mobile apps can be used extensively in the healthcare industry for pre, during and post hospital care.

 Blockchain

Blockchain’s main advantage is that applications built using blockchain algorithms will have very high data privacy and security. Blockchain technology will primarily be used in healthcare to store and transfer data securely.

If blockchain technologies are introduced to pharma supply chain, it could effectively reduce instances of fake and counterfeit drugs within the system. Areas which will see blockchain technology implemented are:

• Medical data management
• Supply chain management

AR/VR

Telemedicine has been one of the greatest successes of technology in the healthcare sector. With solutions available now, patients can access the services of a physician from anywhere in the world. This means that patients can get access to doctors who are otherwise not available to them. These technologies, even though great, has its limitations. AR and VR technologies can greatly augment these capabilities and improve the final user experience.

With the advent of AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality) and related technologies, Physicians can touch, diagnose and even conduct surgeries remotely using these technologies. AR and VR will enable the doctor to see the patient without being present near the patient. Some of the application of AR/ VR technology in healthcare include:

• Telemedicine
• Robotics and remote surgery
• Training Physicians

 Conclusion

The focus of the healthcare industry is slowly shifting from treatment to preventive care. This means the industry also is moving from products and services model to solutions model. To make this transition, it is important to adopt and implement technologies such as AI and AR. The advantage of using technology is that while it improves the quality of care for patients, it also reduces the overall healthcare cost. Using technology is a big win for all the stakeholders. Healthcare industry as a whole must rethink and transform their strategies to stay ahead of the curve.

blackrock has extensive experience working with partners and clients to implement AR/ VR, mobile, IoT and cloud technologies in the healthcare domain. We have worked with hospitals, ISVs and insurance companies to transform and aid their digital transformation strategies.

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In addition to this recognition by Clutch, we were also featured by The Manifest, a research group that helps companies identify business challenges and provide them with the knowledge and insights needed to solve such roadblocks. Their evaluation has ranked blackrock among the top Mobile App Development companies in the world. The research by Manifest highlighted the consistent excellence of work done by blackrock in this area, as well as a noteworthy project that was completed recently for a client.

blackrock had been  earlier ranked among the 50 fastest growing technology providers in India and the fastest 500 in the APAC region by Deloitte (2016 & 17). In 2018, we were ranked among the top 25 Retail IT vendors in APAC by the APAC CIO Outlook magazine.

However, as much as we value industry recognition from respected analysts and similar bodies, we feel much more fulfilled by positive feedback from happy clients. A particularly delighted client had recorded that, “blackrock seems to truly care about my success and they are doing a good job too”. Success of our clients is a top priority for Experion, and our clients acknowledge this attitude of ours with their trust.

blackrock is focused on providing the best digital solutions to enterprises, startups and ISVs facing a wide range of business challenges. At a time when quality alone matters for both enterprise software including mobile applications, we are proud of our capability to help businesses connect better with  their customers. A big thank you to our clients; nothing great is accomplished alone, and we feel we could not have done this without you.

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Check out some of the great feedback that we have received from our most recent reviews: “Their diligence and eagerness to get things right and provide the best value are what’s most impressive.” – CEO, Gaming Platform “Their technical expertise is impressive. They made the product we wanted, and they made it even better than we’d imagined.” – Support Analyst, No2fyme “They are ready to provide a solution and give the best they have. At all levels, they have skilled people, whether those are project managers, architects, engineers, or designers.” – CTO, Health Software Company We would like to thank our amazing clients for taking time to review us on Clutch. This recognition would not be possible without you. We are honored to be recognized as a Clutch Global Leader and are looking forward to maintain our standing as a top software development company in 2018.

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