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October 12, 2022

How Custom Software can Help Digital Transformation in Educational Sector

The Emirate of Dubai and in fact the entire UAE as a country is among the pioneers of the digital transformation in the region. It is the fore-sighting of the UAE Government who enabled the entire country to embrace digital transformation and technology. Thanks to the vision of the great leaders of the nation, the country has completely transformed in past decade. With innovation and customer satisfaction at forefront, the Government is not only adopting technology to itself, but also made excellent policies which enables the private sector too to easily adopt technology and digitalization.

The education sector is no exception. In fact the UAE government is investing huge in education sector as they know the key to success is education for the next generations. The education ministries all around the country are also helping education sector to transform and improve their outcome by leveraging technology and digital solutions. On top of that the government is also making very flexible and supportive policies to support service sector, manufacturing, financial and educational sector to be able to adopt modern technologies and practices. Which is supporting transformation across a multitude of business sectors in the country.

The educational sector is more traditional in nature, it is harder to implement innovation and transformation in the educational sector all around the world. However, things have drastically changed in UAE since past decade. The UAE is leading the entire region in the digital transformation in educational sector. Now a days’ the children, teenagers and young adults are very different from the previous era. The newer generations have born in the midst of technological revolution. Now a days, every child or young adult have access to the internet.

I was with my nephew yesterday, he is 3 years old but he know how to operate a smartphone and he can play his favorite cartoon program on it. That was something no one have ever imagined before. Especially the entire Gen. Z is much more advanced when it comes to the technology. On top of that the smartphones, easy internet access, e-learning and after the post-pandemic effects have also helped boosting digital transformation in the educational sectors.

Now the question is what exactly is the digital transformation for the educational sector? Well! The educational sector is not so different from other regular businesses and organizations. The management have to manage the employees, they have to develop strategies and adopt modern technologies and software solutions to improve internal processes and to maximize the experience of the students, parents, teachers and also their staff. Like any other business entity, the educational sector also require technological solutions to optimize internal processes and to maximize their efficiency.

The management needs supportive systems to improve their capabilities, the staff needs solutions to perform their daily tasks more efficiently, the students need better and convenient access, the parents want better interaction and experience, etc. All this can only be achieved when the school, collage, university or educational institute have proper systems and solutions in place. The software is the brain of any system or solution. In fact most of the enterprise tools are just a software only.

There are two types of software, the COTS or commercial off-the-shelf software and the customized software development. The customized software provide a tailor-made solution for the business needs however, the COTS are generic solutions. That is why the custom software development is much superior to the COTS. In this blog we will discuss how custom software can help digital transformation in the educational sector.

A Custom Software based Learning Management System

A custom software based learning management system at a school can digitalize a lot of internal processes. Mostly in schools and other educational institutions the basic operations is all done on paper and mostly it is manual. Which requires a lot of human resource and consume time. Another big disadvantage of a paper based system is that there is a lot of space for human errors, the discrepancies and errors are quit common in the paper-based systems. The amount and complexity of the data that schools and other educational institutes handle also result in poor performing internal processes and slower work flow.

In order to avoid all that, a custom software based learning management system can be a great help for the students, administration and also for the management. The students can access information online, they can apply for courses, check their mark sheets, status, etc. The registration and enrollment can also be done through online channels using a smart custom software based learning management system.

The administration can avoid a lot of time consuming paperwork which not only save time but also resources too. The custom software solution also help administrative staff to access and analyze data online within a few clicks. The intuitive user interface allow schools and educational institutes to easily train their staff to work on the digital system. The ability to host on cloud also make management easier, and help optimizing the cost too. Here are some major areas where a custom software based learning management system can help the schools and other educational institutions:

Student Enrollment and Registration Process
Providing Information via Online and Remote Channels (such as schedules, announcements, timetables, and any other relevant information)
The students can get passes, signup for various programs, register for extra curriculum activities via online student portals
Efficient and faster document processing tools for the administrative staff
Cloud-based student data enable the management to easily analyze the stats and monitor KPIs
HR tools help taking HR tasks online
Accounting tools minimize the paperwork and provide crucial data and stats via online dashboards
Student & parents relationship tools help improving their experience
Improved, easier and effective management

The custom software based learning management systems are a great companion for the modern schools in Dubai and all around the UAE. Acquiring all above mentioned digital features can help maximizing the student outcomes as well as the overall efficiency and performance of the school or any other educational institution.

Custom eLearning and Smart Classrooms Software Solution

Each school or educational institute is different from the other, however, most of the times the similar academic programs might be following the same course outline, but every institute have a different culture and different approach and methods of learning. Some are more conventional, some are innovative, some are somewhere in between. Whatever the case is a customized eLearning software can significantly improve their learning methods and practices. The eLearning is not a new term. Since 2020 the world realized that remote learning or eLearning can be extremely beneficial. However, most of the schools and educational institutions are not fully equipped for an efficient eLearning program. A custom eLearning software can not only enable the schools and educational institution to make their eLearning programs more effective and efficient but it can also help them improve their in-class experience.

The custom eLearning software can be linked with smart class room platforms, which includes, smart white boards, online lectures and online course materials that can help students in their regular day to day tasks and assignments. The schools and educational institutes can live stream lectures, post recorded lectures, supported content and materials along with any other relevant information that can improve the students’ learning experience. The custom eLearning software also provides a student dashboard where all of the lectures, relevant materials, assignments, home works, notes, quizzes, tests and anything can be published in a well-organized manner. This can help both students and parents to quickly go through the class work and home work of the students and it can significantly improve their experience. Moreover for the teenagers or young adults who mostly wants flexible schedules can leverage the system to maximize their learning as everything can be made available all the times.

The virtual class rooms not only publish lectures and course materials, but they are also used to deliver an actual class like experience. While students are participating in an online class, the teacher and students both can communicate efficiently so much so that the experience is equal to a physical class room and in some cases it can even be improved too. All the students can have more focus on the lecture, board or whatever the teacher is showing to them which increase their engagement and interest. The custom eLearning software and virtual class room platforms are a great tool to maximize the outcomes of the students. Such tools help teachers and students too. For children these tools can provide a better experience for the parents or guardians who will be helping them with their home works, etc. For youngsters and young adults these tools can provide them more flexibility and freedom. Ultimately the learning can become more effective and efficient which tend to produce better outcomes.

Customized Smartphone Apps Integration

A customized learning management system can also be integrated with the smartphone apps. It can not only help offering various services to the parents and the students, but it can also help rolling out innovative educational and learning programs. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE almost everyone have access to the internet and everyone also owns a smartphone. This make smartphones more convenient channel to communicate with parents and students. The smartphone apps can offer services, information and learning materials. The schools and educational institutions can also integrate online payment mechanisms to offer quick fee or any other payment via smartphones. Which is more convenient for the parents and students. Traditionally the parents or students will have to go to the bank or accounts of the school to make the payments, however, with the customized smartphone apps the same can be done by a few taps on the mobile screen.

Students can browse through notes, lectures, information and educational materials from their smartphones. The very common functions such as enrollment, registration, schedules, and even appointments with the admin staff or teachers can be done through smartphones. The schools and educational institutions can also publish full audio-video lectures on the apps along with tests and quizzes or homework details. Furthermore the smartphone apps can also provide a quick communication channel between the parents and the teachers. The learning itself can be done through smartphone apps, that is quite a modern concepts and is also known as the m-Learning. The main idea behind it is to meet the Gen. Z’s needs. Usually the children and youngsters prefer to consume information in a bit-sized portion. The smartphone apps enables teachers and trainers to prepare learning materials which is exclusively designed for the smartphone apps. The students can chose when to learn and how much they want to learn at a specific time.

The customized smartphone apps equipped with m-Learning features can significantly improve productivity, especially for teenagers and young adults. It also enable the teachers and planners to gain a detailed insight to the students learning patterns, behavior and it also provide analytical data which help the educators to design more effective and efficient learning programs for the students. The m-Learning is not just a digital transformation, but in fact it is a completely new education system. The informal education systems can help educators design more personalized student experience which tend to produce better outcomes. Furthermore the smartphone apps and the customized learning management software help schools and educational institutes to maximize the accessibility of their learning programs, such as ability to choose the color schemes, text size, and on top of everything the text-to-speech enabled platforms are a great tool to take a leap forward to more informal and more impactful education systems.

Custom ERP, Intranet or CRM Software for Internal Processes & Management

The custom ERP, Intranet or CRM are very useful tool to improve several internal processes. However, they all are different, the ERP is an enterprise resource planning software. The Intranet is usually a website or web-based app that is used to facilitate communication and collaboration among the employees within the organization. And the CRM is a customer relationship management software. All these have different application. However, the beauty of custom software development is that the businesses can get all the features they want only. ERPs are usually a large-scale software which requires a lot of research and is usually very expensive. The intranet software were designed to be available for the employees of an organization only when they are physically within the organization. However with time the Intranets also evolved and now a days an intranet is just like a website, but still it is only accessible for the employees of a particular organization. The CRM is a customer relationship management tool with a customer centric approach and help businesses deliver better services.

For schools and educational institutions investing huge amount of money and resources in all three solutions is a bit difficult. That is where the custom software development comes to the rescue. The schools and educational intuitions can leverage the custom software development to create a customized software with all the required features borrowed from the above mentioned three systems. For schools and educational institutes there are a lot of internal processes that are crucial. The customized software allow them to develop tools and features for all these functions and processes. For example, for the administration there could be an entirely different sets of tools and features are required comparing to teachers and examination departments. Same is the case with the HR and accounts, every department needs different tools and features. However, at some point or another one business function will have to collaborate with another one.

A custom software development enables businesses to maintain a centralized information center where all the data is stored and all departments can access to the required data through their dedicated portals and dashboards. A document processing system help improving the internal work flow. The custom software allow schools and educational institutions to develop a single software application that can meet all the needs of all the departments. Another great advantage of custom software development is that the schools and educational institutions can start only with the most needed features to optimize the cost of the project, and then on later stages they can add more features to finally digitalize all internal processes which will enable them to boost the performance and profitability. Such tools and features make management easier and more effective and provide valuable business intelligence data that can help schools and educational institutes to improve their strategies and plans for future.

Digital Transformation Help Reducing the Cost and Increase Revenue & Growth

A custom software development drives productivity and efficiency, which in itself result in improved products/services and better customer service. In case of educational institutions the digital transformation helps everyone, whether it is students, parents, teachers, administration and the management. The digital transformation help improving learning process and improve the outcomes of the students. Which in return help building a good reputation and attracts more students. Furthermore the dedicated parent portals, and smartphone apps significantly enhance parent’s experience too. Other digital tools help improving the in-premises experience of both students and parents. Integration allow several business functions to collaborate and communicate better which help improving the efficiency. The digital transformation also help automating several internal processes which reduce the need of human resource and help HR optimize the expenses.

The intelligent AI (artificial intelligence) based analytical tools collects valuable business intelligence data which help the management to make better and more informed decision and let them improve their strategies and planning over the time. All these features help schools and educational institutes improve efficiency & productivity, enable them optimize the cost and expenses and result in more profitability which lead to consistent and stable growth. The modern day businesses are heavily relying on data, it is crucial to establish a centralized information center for the business which help all business functions to perform efficiently and effectively. Furthermore the schools and educational institutes can also gather valuable students’ and teachers’ statistical and analytical data which help them evaluate the performance and enable the management to develop more advanced and effective learning programs. As per several studies and surveys the digital transformation can double the profits and revenue of a business if done effectively.

Conclusion

The digital transformation is a modern day’s need for all industry sector and businesses. The educational sector is no exception, the educational sector is usually the one following more traditional approach. However, with the help of digital transformation the schools and educational institutes can significantly improve their learning programs and the outcomes. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the schools and educational institutes are intensively using digital solutions and various software to facilitate their day-to-day tasks and operations. However, a more centralized approach can help bridging the gap between the strategy and execution. The modern day educational sector is rapidly evolving as the technology and innovation is integrating rapidly to our daily lives whether at all levels. The educational sector is the one that lags behind. There are two different approaches to bring digital transformation to any business. One is to deploy commercial off-the-shelf solutions or COTS and the second is to go for custom software development. In general the market is rapidly adopting customized solutions because of their superiority, flexibility, adoptability and cost-efficiency.

The biggest advantage of a custom software solution is that it help businesses design a tailor-made solution for their very specific needs. On top of that, the businesses can start with the most important of high priority needs and later on they can keep adding more features to obtain a full digital transformation. This approach is more cost-friendly and can also help schools and other educational institutes to gradually implement digital transformation. RSI Concepts is a leading custom software development company in Dubai, UAE. If you are a school, collage, university or any other educational institute, we can help you achieve your long term goals with our digital transformation solutions. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you bringing digital transformation to your educational institution, feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

October 11, 2022

Performance Management through OKR System

The technology have integrated far deeper in our daily lives than we can perceive. The businesses are no exception at all. The modern businesses face modern problems which requires modern solutions. For any business having everything in order is critical. When all employees and resources are aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives, only then the highest performance can be achieved. Usually businesses have enough resources, but they are either not properly using them or simply there is too much waste in the system. It could be both non-human and human resource which is underutilized or utilized incorrectly.

The biggest performance management challenge for the HR department is to ensure all the required skillsets and talent is made available all the time to all departments within the organization. However, that is not just a challenge, in fact that is the prime goal of the HR. In order to achieve this goal, the HR will have to face many challenges and obstacles. Furthermore the HR is also responsible to keep improving the workforce by implementing modern performance management strategies and plans for training, motivation, and employee development.

The HR is also responsible for hiring new staff to fill in the gaps that may arise down the road. This all can be done only if the HR will have clear visibility of the performance of the existing resource and understand the gaps between the workforce or skillset that are needed to meet the requirements. Businesses and enterprises in Dubai and all around the UAE are using a variety of performance management system to maximize the productivity and performance which ultimately translates into higher profitability and revenue. The biggest advantage of using an agile performance management system or CPM (continuous performance management) is that it provides a very effective framework for goal management. It improves visibility, accountability and help aligning teams and individuals with high-level organization goals.

The OKRs also help businesses achieve autonomy and let teams work autonomously by making them able to understand how their work is contributing to the high-level organizational goals and objectives. Most of the times businesses confuse OKRs with the Performance Management, however, the OKRs are a framework for the goal management and the performance management majorly tend to evaluate employee performance. This doesn’t mean the performance management and the OKRs are rivals or can’t work together, in fact if a business wants to enjoy the maximum of both, they should align and integrate OKRs within their employee performance management process.

What is the Difference between the Performance Management and OKRs?

The OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. The OKRs are set by teams and managers for the teams and it always have a clear goal and objectives which can be measured clearly by the outcome. This approach also helps For example. We will improve customer service by increasing customer satisfaction. The improvement in customer service is an objective and how much improvement is done, that can be measured by the customer satisfaction survey, or by NPS score or even by reduction in customer churn rate or even by all those factors altogether. To achieve the OKRs several different employees will have to work together. In our example, in order to improve customer service, many teams must have to work together to produce the desired outcome.

However, the performance management is entirely a different process with a different scope. It involves, high-level planning, continuous monitoring, reviewing or evaluation and then rewards & acknowledgements for the individual employees instead of teams. Although performance management also measures the teams’ performance but the main focus is at the individual performance. This is the reason the performance management system has profound impact on the organizational culture and help businesses cultivate a high-performing organizational culture.

The OKRs are not the employee evaluation, in fact it is the measure of the employees’ and teams’ contribution to the high-level goals and objectives. The performance management on the other hand is the evaluation of the performance of each employees for a given period of time. Hence the OKRs and the performance reviews should be kept separate and independent. Neither should dictate the other. The performance management system focuses on the outcomes and attainments while the OKRs focus on the outcomes. Most of the outcomes for a business are not an individual effort, but a collective and collaborative effort by multiple employees and teams.

That is why the OKRs focus on the outcomes instead of individual outputs. The OKRs inspire innovation and are designed to encourage teams to set more bold and stretched goals. Which encourage the entire teams to perform better and motivates them. The performance management doesn’t require collaboration as it is focused on individual goals, however, the OKRs encourage collaborations and demand collective efforts to maximize the outcome that is aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives.

How Businesses can Improve Performance Management through OKR System?

Now that we have established a clear understanding of the performance management system and OKR system, we will discuss how both can be used in parallel to maximize the results. The OKRs are also used to aid performance management process but unlike the traditional performance management system the OKRs focus more on broader goals and results. The OKRs have two parts, the objectives and the key results. Usually there are 3 to 5 primary objectives with additional 3 to 5 supportive or relevant objectives. These goals and objectives tend to be measured with quantifiable outcomes which are usually monitored through KPIs (key performance indicators).

The biggest advantage of the OKRs is that all the goals are communicated well with the teams they have their say in it, and all goals are aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives. The goals set under OKR framework are always achievable but challenging which is a key to maximize the outcome. The OKRs cycle is also more frequent, usually it is 2 to 4 months, unlike the performance management cycle which is usually 12 months. This also provide better visibility and much deeper understanding of the progress and the factors that are impacting the productivity.

Basically the OKRs are used to support faster growth and help businesses in more dynamic and fast changing markets. There are several multinational businesses and enterprises who have performed exceptionally with OKR system, such as:

Google
Intel Corporation
Meta (Facebook)

And many more. All those companies are well-known for their hyper-growth and global expansion. The OKR system helped them and thousands of others to effectively maximize the productivity of their teams and individual employees.

Here are some key benefits of using OKR System to boost the performance:

OKR System Align all Resources with your Vision and High-level Organizational Goals

Every organization have a long term vision, in order to achieve that visions businesses set high-level organization goals and objectives. On the bases of these high-level organizational goals and objectives, the management develop plans and strategies which help them achieve those goals and objectives. Usually these goals and objectives scaled down to lower hierarchies such as different business functions, departments, teams and even individual employees. The prime goal is to achieve the high-level organizational goals and objectives that led the business to achieve its vision down the road.

The OKRs are usually set in the same fashion. Start with high-level organizational OKRs, which later divided into departments, teams and even individuals. With a traditional performance management system a time comes when achieving the goals of the individuals, teams or even departments could become very difficult while performing daily tasks or work as per the respective job role or function.

However, with OKR System business can assign different goals to the teams and departments and different goals for the individual employees which ultimately aligns with the high-level organizational goals and objectives. This can significantly boost the performance and produce better outcomes.

OKR System Produce Better Outcome and Results

The OKRs can be written in many ways, however the most common method is to define objectives and key results that are the milestones and these milestones outline progress instead of activity. The employees or teams should met those milestones in order to achieve the high-level organizational goals and objectives. The OKRs are great at communicating the goals and required efforts with clear timelines which can help achieving the high-level organizational goals and objectives.

The founder of the OKR framework and former CEO of Intel Corporation, Mr. Andrew Stephen Grove once said about the OKRs:

“Stressing output is the key to increasing productivity.”

Google is another great example of stressing on the output and stretching the goals to achieve hyper-growth using OKR System. Mr. Larry Page, the co-founder of the Google once said:

“OKRs have helped lead us to 10X growth, many times over.”

When it comes to productivity, the output is what a team or individual does and the outcome is the effect of that output on the overall progress of the business towards their high-level organizational goals and vision. The OKR system can enable super-fast growth and transformation in any business. It support agile performance management and enable businesses to resolve problems and address issues midway. Which significantly reduce the time that is usually required by a traditional performance management system. Hence businesses can rapidly grow and expand while also maximizing their efficiency and performance.

OKR System Increase Employee Engagements

Studies have shown that only 1/3^rd of the employees are truly engaged in their organizations, and improvements in employee engagement could lead to up to 10% to 30% better performance. That is why the employee engagement is very important, it also reduce employee turnover and help businesses retain valuable talent. The OKR system allow employees to actively participate in the planning process of setting up goals and objectives for both the individual employees and the teams. When employees know they are accountable and they also participate in goal setting process, they become more attached and connected to those goals and objectives.

When communication is improved and the employees knows their voice will be heard, they feel more connected to the organization, this gives them a sense of purpose and make them more responsible. When the employee know what they are working for and how their efforts will add value, they become more efficient. The OKR System provides a very effective framework which enables managers to easily link the employee performance or their output with the outcomes or high-level organizational goals and objectives. Studies and surveys have revealed that 90% of the employees felt more connected to the organization after implementing OKR System.

OKR System Enables Quick Adjustments and Course Correction

Most of the times managers and employees both feel that they could have done something if they had time. This feeling is common after the traditional performance management cycle. If the performance is evaluated once in a year then only after that you will be able to understand what have gone wrong and where. Mostly smaller things, or easily avoidable problems cause huge damage to the overall performance of the organizations. The OKR system is much more agile and it can make managers more proactive, rather reactive. This is what make it superior from traditional performance management systems. The OKR cycle is usually shorter, the goals and objectives are shot-term but completely aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives.

Shot-term goals means more frequent performance reviews, the factor that all goals are quantifiable also brings transparency to the system and prevent several other traditional performance management problems. More frequent performance reviews enables managers to quickly take actions and provide guidance to the employees and teams to prevent them from deviating from the original goals. This ensures the high-level goals and objectives remains achievable and all the problems and unexpected situations are addressed with adequate actions and plans.

OKR Systems are Transparent in Nature

Transparency, biased reviews, favoritism and lack of context are some of the most common reasons of failure of a conventional performance management system. The OKR System is far much transparent, as the goals and objectives are set by the employees and teams so they are more accountable and they feel more responsible in achieving their goals. Furthermore the OKRs of everyone are visible to everyone. This means that every team member knows everyone’s tasks and objectives. This helps specifically when it comes to collaborative tasks, the conventional performance management system lacks this ability. When an objective is not achieved the managers and the employees are in a better position to understand the effects and impact of under-performing team members.

Another great advantage of the OKR system is that the employees and teams who will be performing the tasks are setting the goals and objectives. The employees who are performing the tasks are more aware of the problems and obstacles they might be facing, that is why the OKR system always yield better outcome. Unlike traditional performance management system there are only a fewer goals and objectives in the OKRs which keep employees and teams focused on the high-priority tasks which led to high performance and better results.

Creating OKRs: Best Practices

The purpose of OKR System is to provide better understanding of high-level organizational goals and to ensure the employees and teams will perform well to achieve those goals. Creating such goals and objectives that not only align with the high-level organizational goals but also individual and team development is a very tricky task. In fact inspiring someone is very difficult in itself and it requires a lot of skills. Most of the time when businesses and organizations adopt OKR Systems the first problem they face is the lack of understanding of the OKRs.

The employees could easily get overwhelmed when they have to create goals and objectives that are not only achievable and challenging at the same time but also perfectly aligned with the high-level organizational goals. Here are a few tips to create highly effective OKRs which can truly add value to the high-level organizational goals and objectives:

Simplicity: Keeping it simple is always good, employees and teams should focus on the objectives they can achieve in the given timeframe and with the current resources they have.
Prioritize Objectives: Employees usually caught up thinking they will have to contribute to every department’s objectives. This could drastically reduce the efficiency and performance. The employees and teams should only focus on what is most needed from them.
Make them Specific: It is important that you brainstorm different possibilities to achieve the objectives, develop a specific plan of action to achieve those objectives. Also write how the performance will be measured.
Create Cascaded Objectives: Cascading objectives from organizational point of view to department, then teams and then individual objectives will eliminate all ambiguities and help employees and teams to see how their objectives will contribute to the higher objectives.
Break Goals into Smaller Goals: Create highly specific smaller goals within your key results. This will clarify what exactly the employees and teams will have to do to achieve their objectives and it also keep them more focused and aligned with their and higher goals.
Make it Measurable: The worst scenario is when the employees or managers are not sure if the goal is achieved or not. That is why each key result needs a unit to measure the performance. It doesn’t matter what unit you use but the result should be quantifiable.
Set Stretched Goals: Stretched and ambitious goals are a good motivation. But make sure the goals are achievable and challenging at the same time. Too easy goals and unrealistic goals will demotivate the employees and teams.
Recognize Achievements: It is important to keep encouraging employees and teams during the time period of the key results. Even if the key results are not achieved yet, if a milestone or a smaller goal is achieved, the teams and employees should be admired and encouraged.

Never Link OKRs to Compensations

When it comes to OKRs it is a well-known fact that the 100% results are never achieved. It is majorly due to the nature of the goals that are set within the OKR System. As the goals are always stretched and made challenging so only 70% to 80% of the objectives can be achieved. That is why it is never beneficial to link the OKRs with compensations and bonuses. Linking OKRs with the compensations led the employees to only do the needful work to make their metrics and KPIs eligible for the bonuses. This could also led to malpractices in the teams and employees just to meet the minimum required KPIs for the bonuses and it could completely kill the innovation from the system. That is why the OKR System is never linked to bonuses, pay increments and compensations like that.

Conclusion

The OKRs and agile or continuous performance management (CPMS) are the modernized form of performance management. However, it is important to understand that the OKRs and the performance management are two separate frameworks. The performance management and OKRs can be integrated to leverage the additional benefits of the OKR system that a typical performance management system lacks. That is why the OKRs can be utilized as the gap between the typical performance management system and the modern needs of performance management. The OKRs are also not suitable as a mechanisms to design personal development programs. The OKRs are best at bringing the transparency in the performance management process which help businesses motivate their teams and workforce to perform exceptionally well. The OKRs also gives a sense of ownership, responsibility and help connecting employees with the high-level organizational goals and objectives which is a key to success.

Whether you are using a performance management system and implemented OKRs in it or whether you haven’t used them, a dedicated OKR system software could be a great help to boost your organization’s performance. At RSI Concepts we are helping our customers to bridge the gap between the strategy and execution. Our performance management system comes with in-built dedicated OKR System and it can also be acquired as a standalone software. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you improving your existing performance management methods and processes. Please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

October 10, 2022

Top 5 Performance Management Trends in 2022 – 2023

The Dubai and in fact the entire UAE is evolving and advancing on a rapid pace. The customer demands and market trends are also changing on a very fast pace, this requires businesses and enterprises to be more proactive and ready to adopt to those changes. The agility and operational capabilities are majorly driven by the employee performance. The skillful workforce and highly talented employees are a great asset for any business or organization. The employee performance drives profitability, stability and growth. However, the employee performance heavily depends on the performance management practices which increase employee satisfaction and employee engagement.

Here in Dubai and all around the UAE businesses and enterprises are following traditional performance management methods, which are gradually losing their effectiveness. Employee performance evaluation and reviews once or twice a year are not enough. Businesses need a more proactive approach to manage and improve employee performance. Thanks to the evolution in technology and software development platforms, now a days, a continuous performance management is possible and is proven to be very effective comparing to the traditional methods.

The traditional performance management methods are not capable of eliminating the waste from the system, however, the modern performance management system (PMS) is capable of monitoring the performance in real-time and it enables managers to immediately detect any deviation and let them course correct to ensure the progress is done in right direction, towards the high-level organizational goals and objectives. Furthermore the traditional performance management processes and methods are very time-consuming and cost a lot of efforts and expense. However, the modern performance management system (PMS) makes performance management process seamless.

Thanks to the digitalization, the data collections, KPIs and OKRs management can be fully or semi-automated. Which not only save time but also resources. The performance management system provides a full-fledged framework for the performance management processes. When it comes to performance management system, one-size-fits-all is not true at all. Hence businesses need a customized performance management system that help them mitigating their unique performance challenges.

Utilizing a digital performance management system, businesses and enterprises can effectively set goals and objectives with a top-down approach to make them more realistic and achievable for the individual employees. The continuous monitoring prevent any employee from deviating the course and keep all resources aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives.

In competitive business landscape where the competition is rising and the customer demands are skyrocketing, the performance management become the most crucial factor in success. That is not all, businesses should adopt performance management’s best practices and modern techniques to become more competitive. In order to progress and grow in such environment every business needs to maximize the performance of its human resource to achieve maximum productivity. The high efficiency and productivity drives profits and facilitate growth over the time. Here are some key benefits of a modern digital performance management system:

Accurate and automated (fully or partially automated) performance measurement
Improved employee training and personal development programs
Better communication and presentation of the benefits of organizational and individual goals and objectives
Increased employee engagement, motivation, morale and employee satisfaction
Transparent evaluation and fair performance acknowledgement processes
Encourage trust and improve relationship between employees and the managers
Reduced employee turnover and increased success rate of all the employees
Align all resources with the high-level organizational goals and strategic objectives to drive the outcomes that benefit the most
Improved planning, monitoring, reviewing and reward processes

The performance management system (PMS) not only ensures maximum productivity but also help to understand the employees’ strengths and weaknesses and allow the businesses to bridge the gaps with effective training programs, coaching, and mentoring. The performance management system (PMS) cultivate a culture of engagement and trust by ensuring high transparency in evaluation and reward processes which increase employee trust and minimize disputes and conflicts. The digital performance management system (PMS) also increase communication and allow managers to effectively and clearly communicate organizational goals with the employees and let employees also provide feedback which improve bidirectional communication and raise trust.

In this blog we will cover the top performance management trends that gain popularity in the late 2021 and continuously growing in 2022 and we are also hoping to see those trends continue for 2023 and even beyond.

Performance Management Trends: 1. Data-Driven Performance Management

The performance management is a process of evaluating the employee and then providing them adequate feedback in hope to improve their performance and efficiency for the next performance cycle. However, smart businesses and field experts want to transform the performance information in an analytical data which help them evaluate employee in a more personalized fashion. This enables managers to improve their training programs, employee growth and development processes and help them improve individual employee performance in a more effective and impactful way.

The data driven performance management is a process aided by digital tools which heavily relies on collecting and analyzing factual data to enable managers to take more effective and informed decision and help them build more effective employee performance management strategies. The data driven performance management process can significantly increase the transparency by reducing bias and discrepancies in the traditional performance management processes.

That is why the data driven performance management is gaining a lot of popularity since past few years, and this trend will continue for the rest of 2022 and the 2023. In fact the data driven performance management has become a new benchmark, and businesses will continue to use it until it is being replaced with another more effective method, which seems very unlikely at least for coming 4 to 5 years. A digital performance management system (PMS) is very capable tool to collect analytical performance data and it also allow managers to use this data through a very intuitive dashboard which makes performance management process simpler and more convenient.

As the technology have deeply integrated in our daily and professional lives, our daily live whether personal or professional have become nearly impossible without the technology. The same is the case with the performance management, present day’s challenges demand a more data driven approach. The performance management system help businesses setup realistic goals, collect and analyze in-depth performance data and also prepare them to effectively deal with emerging challenges, unexpected problems, and difficult situations.

Performance Management Trends: 2. Employee Satisfaction is Important

The employee satisfaction is important and even essential for performance management. Employee satisfaction depends on several factors and their experience at the organization. This also involves their work and their interaction with their managers and others. The main reason why employee satisfaction is so important is employee retention. The employee retention is a key to long term stable growth and success. A right employee performance appraisal system not only keep employee engaged but also help develop personalized training programs to ensure employee growth. Organizations with high employee turnover always face difficulties in achieving their goals.

The hiring process is expensive, new employees take time to integrate within the organizational environment, and they also need training and more focus from the management to reach to the pace of their predecessor. These all factors can seriously impact the performance of the organization. Studies have shown that the employee development programs plays a crucial role in employee retention. When employees knows their voice will be heard, they feel more connected and involved in the organization and form a bond with their employer which results increase employee loyalty.

When the employee feel comfortable within their work space and they have trust on their superiors they tend to perform well. There are a lot of factors that impact on the employee performance. The employee always listen to their managers if they have faith in them. A manager should be a good mentor and he/she should motivate the employees to perform well. This can only be achieved if the employees have faith in them and they trust them. The traditional performance management methods lack this due to inherited bias and poor transparency.

However, digital performance management system (PMS) is very transparent, it can provide highly accurate data for evaluation and appraisal. The managers can use that data to develop employee development programs. The performance management system (PMS) also help improving the communication between the employees and the managers which help bridging the gap between them and enable them to communicate more frequently and more freely. Which builds trust.

When the employees knows clearly what the organizational goal is and how their performance will contribute to that goal, they tend to perform better. A good training and employee development program help increasing employee retention as they know they will grow individually as well while staying at this job. The performance management system capture performance data from multiple angles, which also help building trust on the system. The employees receive more guidance and they are always rewarded and their accomplishments are always acknowledged.

These features of the performance management system (PMS) help businesses increase employee retention and reduce the employee turnover. The employee performance management with a PMS enable businesses to acquire deeper performance data and insights which improve and empower decisions. Furthermore the employee satisfaction is also crucial for productivity and performance. When the employees are happy and satisfied with what they are doing and their expectations with the employer are met, they tend to stay on their job. The long-term employees are a great asset of the business and they can significantly boost the performance as well.

Performance Management Trends: 3. Continuous Feedback and Monitoring

The modern enterprises and businesses focus a lot on employee performance and encourage their managers, HR and leaders to support the employees in achieving their goals and objectives. A continuous performance management strategy ensures a smoother development and growth of the organization. In today’s fast moving markets, businesses can no longer rely entirely on once or twice a year appraisal and evaluations. Those kind of traditional performance management methods only evaluate past performance and fell short when it comes to linking performance management with business outcomes.

However, a business needs to enhance current and more importantly future performance. Which is only possible with a continuous performance management process which includes continuous feedback and real-time monitoring. The continuous feedback and real-time monitoring enable the managers to keep a close eye on the employee progress and enable them to sense a slight deviation without any delay. That knowledge and data provide them with enough time to discuss the matters with the employees, provide them guidance, support and resolution of the problems they might be facing.

The biggest advantage of continuous feedback and monitoring is that the managers are always up to date with the ongoing progress and with the instant guidance, they can save time and reduce waste. The guidance and support from the managers are crucial for the employees it motivates them to perform better. The manager should clearly understand the problems and obstacles the employees are facing which can prevent them from meeting their targets and achieving their goals and OKRs (objective and key results). This way they can address issues and be more ready to deal with unexpected scenarios.

A digital performance management system help businesses adopt and implement continuous performance management which is ideal for fast-paced and competitive business landscapes. Regular and more frequent feedback from the managers not only motivates the employees but it also bridge the communication gap between the managers and the employees which is very common in the organizations. Better communication lead to trust and better relationships, which in itself is very crucial for the better performance.

Performance Management Trends: 4. Hybrid Work Environment

The hybrid work environment is a new business model which allow its employees to work from home/remotely or work with flexible work hours, and it improves work-life balance of the employees. Majorly the hybrid work model gained popularity during the 2020’s Corona Pandemic and the resultant lockdown. However, it seems that businesses and employees have adjusted themselves very quickly for the new demand. Now a days the employees experience and employee satisfaction have become ever more important. The work-life balance and flexible work hours are the key factor to drive employee happiness and satisfaction. The hybrid work models are a very new concept and are not yet fully integrated with the performance management framework.

Businesses adopting new practices tend to face many challenges in implementing a performance management system. That is why a digital performance management system is a way forward, as they are customizable and easy to modify as per emerging needs. However, it is not as that difficult to keep track of the employee performance. There are certain employees who are performing certain duties some of the duties are not even compatible with the hybrid work models. Apart from all such job roles, the businesses can adopt to a hybrid work models. With the aid of the technology, creating a highly productive hybrid work environment is easier. The hybrid work environment offers higher productivity and ensures better performance by improving employee satisfaction and employee happiness.

Performance Management Trends: 5. Impact of Gen Z’s Expectations and Behavior

What is Gen Z? Well, to simply put, the Gen Z is the most recent generation of employees entering the global workforce. Everyone who born from 1976 to early 2000 are considered from the ear of Gen Z. The corporate sector worldwide have witnessed various eras of demographics. Usually all these eras are referred to as a generation such as Millennial, Gen X, Baby boomer, etc. These are urban slangs that usually refers to almost 15 to 20 years of the time span. It is a fact that the employees are always replaced with the newer and fresher batches. Each younger generation is different form their predecessors.

Currently in the Dubai and anywhere in UAE or in fact all around the world the Gen Z is replacing or filling the positions rapidly and according to a study published in Bloomberg the global workforce would have been filled with almost 40% of the Gen Z workers by the end of 2021. You would be thinking why an enterprise or business should care about any of that? The fact is each generation is not just a demographic but it comes with a completely different ideology, values, cultural norms, needs and priorities which have significantly huge impact on the organizational environment and its performance.

Each younger or newer era is vastly different from their predecessor however, the Gen Z is much more different from any of its predecessor. The Gen Z people are born in a very fast-paced, technologically advanced and an internet-centric environment. This have changed their habits, preferences, needs and even behavior too. This is only the start of the era, the oldest of the Gen Z would be around 24 years old by 2022. Sooner they will replace almost majority of the workforce globally. That is not all, the Gen Z also brings a lot of benefits to the table. It is extremely important to understand and consider them within the organizational strategy and planning processes.

The digital performance management system is one of the core strategy that can unlock the true potential of the Gen Z. There has been several studies but the most common difference witnessed all around the world among the Millennials and the Gen Z is that the Millennial generation wants more job security, while the Gen Z wants to have a more diverse job experience, where they can perform multiple roles in a single job and they can gain diverse experience. These are some modern day performance management problems and the solution lies in adopting a modern performance management system equipped with advanced tools such as AI, real-time monitoring, advanced communication tools, etc.

There are a lot of other aspects that make Gen Z different from its predecessor such as the Gen Z prefer more collaborative workplace with tons of digital solutions and tools at their hand. In fact the Gen Z is truly embracing the technology and the automation at the workplace. The Gen Z is also much more effective at multitasking and prefer to work at jobs that allow them to multitask. The digital integration, social media, and much more adoptability towards technology the Gen Z can significantly impact the modern businesses and market trends. The Gen Z prefers more frequent communication and feedback from their managers. They prefer one on one discussion rather written or telephonic conversations.

The behavior of the Gen Z is also very different from any of the previous era. For example, the salary was is one of the most important aspect of job for any employee, however, for Gen Z the salary has become the least important aspect of their job. The also value personalization and personal development more. These are some of the main difference between Gen Z and any other previous eras. Business will have to consider these difference when it comes to performance management. Only then they will be able to fully unlock the true potential of the Gen Z.

Conclusion

For any business or organization its employees are its greatest asset. If the employees perform well the business grows and become more profitable. However, the performance management is not an easy feat. That is why the manual or traditional performance management and review processes are dying away. Now a days a technologically advanced digital performance management system (PMS) is considered to be an essential component of a modern data driven performance management strategy.

A performance management system is very capable of collecting performance data from within and even outside of the organizational network. It can be integrated with various other tools and system to get direct feds and it also allow manually inputting the data within the system. These features make it a perfect companion for the performance management process. In this blog we have listed 5 most popular performance management trends in 2022 and the market signals are very positive that we will be witnessing the same trends grow more in 2023 and coming years.

RSI Concepts is a leading performance management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about eh subject or if you want us to help you building your next-gen, highly effective and cost-efficient performance management system, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

October 7, 2022

Step-by-step Guide to Develop Custom Enterprise Software

Managing large scale enterprises or local/small businesses is not an easy task. Whether you are a manager or business owner you will have to deal with the software solutions and digital infrastructure for your business or enterprise. The present day markets are heavily data driven, the information technology have penetrated far deeper into our professional and personal lives than we can ever imagine. Now a days’ an ordinary employee can’t efficiently fulfill their duties and daily tasks without relying on technology.

Managing a business or an enterprise require monitoring, control and efficiency in too many moving parts. Think of it like a car engine, there are too many gears, motors, electronics and technology. An engine will only run if all those moving parts move in harmony and proper synchronization. Same is the case with the businesses and enterprises. They can only function well if all of the internal business processes and employees works in a proper synchronization, harmony and supportive manner. That is too much to manage, one wrong move and everything could collapse. That is why business and enterprises needs software solutions and IT infrastructure to improve business efficiency and to operate properly.

Now when it comes to software there are two major categories to choose from. First is the commercial off-the-shelf solution or also known as COTS and the second is customized software development. The COTS were a great success in the market and still widely used, however, things have changing since past few years, and especially since 2012 to 14 the customized software market have expanded a lot. This is because the markets are moving at a rapid pace, the customer demands are skyrocketing, and the competition is getting tougher day by day. The COTS or commercial off-the-shelf software solutions are unable to keep up with the pace.

On top of that the COTS are general purpose tools, they are designed for mass users. Hence lack personalized experience which is required to meet some very specific needs. Every organizations or enterprise have a unique environment which means the business practices and internal business processes are also not the same. This is what can’t be full filed with COTS and a customized tailor-made enterprise management software solution is required which can fulfill such exclusive and unique needs.

However, custom software development is also not an easy feat, it requires intensive research, adequate technical knowledge and more expense. The custom software development initially looked expensive comparing to the COTS, however, in the long term the custom software development have proven to be more beneficial and businesses can yield higher ROIs over a long period of time. The exponential growth in market also results in great cost reduction in custom software development. In this blog we will enlist all steps that are necessary in order to produce a high quality product from a custom software development project.

Step 1. Custom Enterprise Software: Discovery Phase

For any project whether it is customer enterprise software or any other project the discovery phase is the most important part of the project. It help businesses understand what their requirements are and what they need to fulfill those requirements. Usually the custom enterprise software development project’s discovery phase is a series of open-ended discussions, formal meetings, presentations, etc. To kick start the discovery phase the first step is to appoint a project manager or a team who will be responsible for outlining the project requirements and will take part in the project execution phases.

The project manager should conduct these discussion, meetings and presentations. The participants should be the end users, the department or team who have requested for the software, the stakeholders, technical experts, and any other relevant person who can give inputs on the subject. The best way is to enlist all the problems and challenges the users are facing for which they need a customer enterprise software. This step is a crucial part of planning your custom software development project and it could make or break your project’s success.

Divide these challenges into three groups, critical, high priority, normal and low priority. Discuss all these points with everyone and take their opinion and also request them to suggest an appropriate solution. Dividing all needs/features in three groups will help you on later stages. For any custom enterprise software development project the cost is one of the most important factor. Whenever a demand is raised by a department, team or group of employees for a new software solution, the management evaluate the solution in terms of value it will offer against the cost or financial strain it will put on the business.

That is why having three different priority level will help you optimize the budget and technical needs on the bases of importance of the features that are needed. By now the project manager would have already gathered all the required information. Now it is time to formulate a charter document or requirements document. This also happen to be the biggest advantage of custom software development as businesses can incorporate all the features they want. The custom ERP software development offers great many advantages and one of the biggest advantage is to customize each feature and function to behave or respond they way user wants. All this should be mentioned clearly in this requirement charter to avoid any confusion or misalignment.

Step 2. Custom Enterprise Software: Software Requirements Specifications (SRS)

The software requirements specifications (SRS) document is the most important document for custom enterprise software development. The software requirements specifications document provides a full roadmap to all the parties involved in the custom enterprise software development, mainly for the software developers and programmers. The verbal communication or information shared in chunks can be disastrous for the custom software development project. Such practice leads to a very incoherent communication which results in a lot of problems during the implementation of the software. A typical SRS or software requirements specifications document includes:

The goals and objectives of the custom enterprise software
A detailed description of the software from the user’s perspective
What problems should be solved by the custom enterprise software
Features and functionalities of the custom enterprise software
The performance and efficiency of the custom software in terms of workload, users, etc.
The roadmap for the integration and data sharing, if required
The limitations and liabilities of the custom enterprise software
The administrative work flow, data protection and access policy
Detailed Definitions, descriptions, assumptions and dependencies of the software and the limitations of the production/live environment
Functional and non-functional requirements and user’s needs
Details and design needs of user interfaces, user dashboards, administrative control panels, etc.
Complete details about the system users and what value it will add to the existing or new business processes for those users

The important thing to understand is that the software requirements specifications would serve as the agreement between you and the development team whether in-house or outsourced. The final outcome would be exactly like the SRS document. It is also crucial to describe each and everything in a language the software developers can understand, that is why adding descriptions, glossaries, definitions, references, etc. is important.

For example you are developing a customized CRM software and you want to personalize the customer journey, which is not available with popular off-the-shelf CRMs. The developer might be familiar with the standardized CRM functionality, but your SRS document will tell them exactly what customization is needed and what outcome users will be expecting from any process. That is why it is critical to compose your SRS document in a very simple and easy-to-understand language.

The SRS document also includes all of the user cases. A user case is what defines how the end-user will interact with the software and how the software should respond. There would be a set of users who will be performing different tasks on the intended custom enterprise software. Each user or user group would be needing different sets of functions. Even if there is only a highly focused group of users and they all need to perform same tasks, there would be a lot of tasks that can be performed. In any case all the tasks and different users will define the use cases. A use case is how the user will interact with the system for example, if they upload a file, what should happen next, if they input some data where it should go and what the software should return, etc. These all includes in a use case.

Here is how to define each use case:

Chose a set of users or a single user who will be performing certain task
Define that tasks in full details and try to add goals if necessary
Now enlist all use cases of that user or user group
Define all the user interactions and what response is required from the software
Include all alternative actions and their corresponding responses too
Repeat the same processes for all of the users or user groups

The use cases are aimed to define the custom enterprise software and its features from a user’s perspective. A detailed SRS document also gives you a chance to consider the top trends in custom software development and incorporate high-performing, market-proven features in your application. This provides the software developers a to-the-point visualization of the features and functionalities of the custom enterprise software and it also serves as a guideline for different stakeholders. That is why it is extremely important to write a detailed software requirements specifications document before starting the custom enterprise software development project.

Step 3. Custom Enterprise Software: Chose a Right Software Development Team

Choosing right vendor in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE is a very difficult task. There are so many custom software development agencies out there. It is important to choose the right vendor for the project. The best approach is to search in the local market and find a reliable company with relevant experience and good portfolio. However, outsourcing to offshore companies is also very common in UAE. Which is not a good practice. The biggest disadvantage of outsourcing to an offshore company is that it is not bound by local UAE laws which provide protection to the both the customers and the vendors.

Anyway, as for local custom enterprise software development companies, it is important to verify all the details before getting into an agreement. The best is to analyze multiple vendors, make a list of all vendors that looks good. Then check their portfolio, examine their website, view their complete company profile. After that short list at least five of them and request them to submit their proposal and select one of them. This way you can get a better vendor for your custom enterprise software development project.

Step 4. Custom Enterprise Software: Chose Right Technology Platforms

When it comes to software development there are a lot of technology platforms which can be used to build those apps. The first and foremost important is the compatibility of the technology, for example, if you need a native software app which is usually installed on an operating system such as Windows, Linux, etc. Then whoever will be using that software must first have to install it in their computer. However, if you need a software that can be accessed from a web browser, then the users only need a laptop and a browser.

Similarly all other features determine the technology that you might be needing or what platform is compatible with your needs. It is better to engage the vendors at this stage. Vendors usually appoint a business analysts who work side by side during the requirement gathering stages and then help finalizing the scope of the work for the custom enterprise software development project. If the technology stack is aligned with existing digital eco-system it will make custom software development more cost-effective and beneficial in long term.

However, here are a few popular trends of the modern technologies that enterprises are utilizing all around the world and the signs are those trends will grow in coming years:

Blockchain Technology

The Blockchain is a buzzword all around the world, especially since the BTC (Bitcoin) hit its ATH (all time high price) last year. The electronic media and social platforms start talking about BTC since, even very well reputed media outlets dedicated several shows on the technology. This has built an image of the Blockchain and most people thinks that it is some kind of digital currency that will challenge the fiat. However, that is only partially true, the Blockchain is more than just a currency. It is a technological platform that allow enterprises and individuals to develop software, applications and much more on the Blockchain.

It is a great technology to develop software with shared workflows. In the Blockchain the networks are called consortiums, it is a shared network and each connected user can track all transactions. The Blockchain is the most secure and transparent platform and can offer great features. The blockchain in custom software development offer great potential for efficiency, digital transformation, transparency and security.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

The Artificial Intelligence or AI and the Machine Learning or ML is very commonly used all over the internet and we daily came into contact of the AI or ML without even realizing it. For example, the Google uses AI and ML to run its several algorithms which are connected to its advertisement platforms. If you are using internet on regular bases, you might have noticed that if you searched for something suddenly it start appearing on several different platforms, such as if you searched for iPhone 14, then you start browsing your Facebook or Instagram and suddenly you start getting ads related to iPhone 14. This is what is being done by AI and ML.

The AI and ML are widely used in various enterprise software and solutions such as data analysis, decision making processes, personalization, customer experience management, enterprise performance management and many more. There are endless possibilities of using AI and ML in custom enterprise software to improve their efficiency and user experience.

Big Data

Big Data is not a new technology however, with the increasing levels of digitalization and our reliance on the data the big data is also gaining much rapid adaptation. The big data is a large amount of data coming continuously to a system or enterprise which they need to store and process efficiently. Majorly the data is coming in large volumes and it comes continuously hence the software should be able to handle the large amount of stored data as well as the large volume of continuously coming data. The biggest advantage of using big data technologies is to improve the data processing and analytical processes.

The big data is very helpful in understanding and analyzing large volume of data which otherwise is either very difficult or completely impossible for humans to process. Especially B2C enterprises, large organizations and government sector utilizes big data. However, now a days SMEs are also adopting big data technologies to improve their internal processes and capabilities. The adaptation of big data offer great improvements and efficiency in the key features of an enterprise resource planning software (ERP) and other business tools.

Cloud Computing

The main reason behind rapid adaptation of the cloud computing is that it offers great value, low cost, high performance and high availability. The businesses don’t have to manage the very expensive in-house IT infrastructure. The cloud offers great benefits for the system users as well. The custom enterprise software tools can offer better user experience and high availability with the help of the cloud computing. Another most useful feature of the cloud computing based custom enterprise software is that users can access the data from anywhere through the internet. The cloud service provider manages the actual infrastructure and ensures high availability.

The cloud is very flexible in terms of cost as well. The business will only have to pay for what resources they used, which can significantly reduce the cost. The system deployment is relatively easier and much faster. The high redundancy, flexible costing, easy access and ability to integrate open-source tools and frameworks make cloud more superior. The cloud computing offers unmatched security and and risk mitigation. The cloud computing is playing a crucial role in developing secure custom software in a growing cyber threats landscape. The cloud service provider have advanced monitoring and threat detection tools, security experts and professional and maintain up-to-date software stack, which helps maximizing security and minimizing threat.

These are some of the technological trends of the year and we have witnessed a steady growth in all above mentioned technology platforms. The rapid market adaptations, innovation and highly efficient products are signaling that these trends will go on for a couple of more years.

Step 5. Custom Enterprise Software: Design and Development Phase

The custom enterprise software design and development phase is when the designers form the UI and UX and the developers program them by adding source code to them. The custom enterprise software design should be started with a wireframe so all the necessary changes can be done in time. Then the actual design is formed. Which also should be approved by the end-users and stakeholders. Once the software design is approved, it should be handed over to the development team.

Each custom software development company have its own project management methods, some follow agile and sum follow scrum, whatever the project execution method is it is important that the final product should align with the software requirements specifications document. The project manager and business analysts should make sure that he entire development phase is going on track. The updates and progress should be shared with all stakeholders and feedback should be collected if necessary.

Step 6. Custom Enterprise Software: UAT, Launch and Post-launch

Technically as soon as the development phase is completed the project is completed however, there is always a testing phase. There are multiple different ways to test a custom enterprise software however, there are two major testing phases. First one is the QA testing, or quality assurance testing. The QA testing is always done by the technical teams and staff. Businesses can also hire a third part to evaluate the software in terms of security and penetration testing. The quality assurance and the security teams sometimes take a longer time.

However, whatever the case is the next step is the UAT or user acceptance test. This test is conducted by providing software to a certain numbers of users. Mostly end users, higher management and a lot others too. After the UAT, there is launch which also consists of two stages, one is beta launch and the final stage is full launch. The post launch activities are majorly related to the user feedback and the performance of the custom enterprise software.

Conclusion

In the present day the markets are heavily relying on data and IT. The digital and IT infrastructure could be your much needed competitive advantage. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the businesses and enterprises are adopting to customized software solutions and business tools. When it comes to custom software development the biggest concern of the managers and business owners is the time and resources needed for the project. The custom enterprise software development starts with a discovery phase or internal research to understand the audience and their needs. Then on the bases of those needs a tailor-made custom enterprise software can be developed. However, it is not as that simple as it may sounds.

The custom software development is not an easy feat. It is a very crucial process and it requires full attentions form the project manager and the relevant stakeholders. That is why in this blog we have discussed the important steps to execute a successful custom enterprise software development project. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you with another software develop please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you.

October 6, 2022

Waiting Line Problems and Solutions

All businesses face queuing and waiting line problems. In fact here in Dubai and all around the UAE the service based industry is struggling very hard to minimize waiting line problems. This is because the market is very competitive, people usually have a busy lifestyle and no wants to stand in waiting line for hours. Let us admit, we don’t want to wait in a queue even if we have time, and in case if someone had to reach somewhere or short on time, the waiting could get more frustrated. That is why the businesses invest huge number of resources and hard-earned profits into solutions that can solve their queuing problems.

No matter what service you offer there would be a time when you will have to deal with long queues. Extended waiting time could destroy customer experience, it cause stress and frustration which later also impact on the service. It is extremely harder to satisfy an already stressed or annoyed customer. That is why we have decided to write this blog to provide our audience and customers a basic understanding of the waiting line problems and how a digital queue management system can solve them.

What are common Waiting Line Problems?

The waiting lines doesn’t only impact your customers but they also cause frustration in your staff. Extended and longer wait time is one of the biggest and most harmful problem any service based business face with their waiting lines. The long waiting time cause stress and unrest among the customers and visitors, people tend to start line jumping, crossing one another, which results in verbal confrontations and dispute among the customers themselves as well as with the staff. Furthermore with poorly managed queues, people usually end up at wrong counters, which cause additional issues.

The long waiting line result in higher customer churn rate, when a customer leaves without getting service, they most likely will never return which cause business a great loss. The long waiting line put employees on their toes, everyone have to do multitasking in order to maintain the order and keep customers calm. Which put extra strain on employees and effect their efficiency and performance. Businesses will have to assign more employees to manage queues which increase their expense and further squeeze their profits.

The mismanaged queues and long waiting lines can directly or indirectly impact each and everything in an organization and impact their overall growth. Here is how a digital queue management system can not only solve their problems but it can also help businesses in improving customer experience, customer satisfaction, employee efficiency and productivity.

How a Digital Queue Management System can Solve Waiting Line Problems?

A digital queue management system is a technological solution to solve waiting line problems. It consists of two parts, the software and the hardware, these two can further divided into multiple categories on the bases of features and functionalities. A basic digital queue management system consists of the following components:

Queue Management System Software:

Queue Server Software/Application
Agent Interface
Administrative Dashboard and Control Panel
Customer Interface

Queue Management System Hardware:

Ticket Dispensing Kiosk/Printer
Audio Visual Announcement Tools
Digital Signage
Counter Displays/Plates

The operation is fairly simple. The queue management system is installed at the business premises. The server software/application could be hosted online, or at cloud on even in local in-premises data centers. The agent dashboard could be a well-crafted intuitive web-based interface which can be accessed by any computer with a web browser on it or it could be as simple as a push button. The ticket dispensing unit is usually an interactive self-service kiosk but a simpler ticket printer can be used at the reception to issue queuing tickets to the customers and visitors.

The audio visual announcements system consists of a speaker system and a display which are installed at strategic places within the premises. The counter displays or counter plates are used to assign number/names of the counters. The counter displays also allow displaying more useful information. Since the primary language here in UAE is Arabic and there is a huge expat population so having an Arabic queue management system, which supports both Arabic and English and even more languages can greatly improve customer satisfaction.

That is a simplest form of a digital queue management system. There is a wide range of all sorts and types of digital queue management system available in the market. Some follows a bit more traditional queue management methods and some are modernized and offer more value to customer experience. Here is how a digital queue management system can help eliminating the waiting line problems:

Queue Management System: Organizes Waiting Lines

The queue management system help organizing the waiting lines which itself can solve a lot of common waiting line problems. All the customers are required to get a ticket. Their ticket number corresponds to their turn in the queue. Moreover the queue management system can also ask customers to choose their desired service which prevent confusion and ambiguities. Since the ticket number is already assigned to everyone, so the line jumping is completely eliminated. Everyone will be served on their turn only no matter where they stand in the queue.

Usually when the customers are standing in waiting lines, they think that the line next to them might be moving quickly, which cause line jumping. However when the tickets are already given, then there is no point in jumping lines. Similarly when people are in waiting lines, they feel the staff is favoring someone, especially familiar customers, which cause unrest and stress and sometimes led to disputes between customers and the staff.

As a queue management system is a digital system and everyone knows that all the tickets are issued by a computer program which is unable to distinguish between different persons, so they don’t have any concerns about favoritism or unfair treatment. That is why the customers trust it and knows that everyone will be treated fairly. This make waiting line more organized and also help reducing the work of the staff who usually engaged in managing waiting line and solving problems. Moreover the businesses can also utilize the queue management system to segregate different customers on the bases of their required services, their priority levels and much more.

All businesses have different services and different priority levels for the customers. For example, usually at banks the retail customers and the corporate customers are served at different counters or service windows. Similarly for expecting mothers, people with special needs, or elderly people there could be different service counters and so on. The queue management system help organizing the waiting line according to the needs of the business.

Queue Management System: Reduce Customer Wait Time

One of the biggest advantage of a digital queue management system is that it has ability to significantly reduce the customer wait time. The customer wait time is single most influential factor in the waiting line and longer the wait time make your customers unhappy and in some cases very stressed. The longer wait time is also a major cause of the customer churn. The customers tend to leave when they feel they will have to wait for a very long time. This happens when the waiting lines are moving slowly, the queues are managed poorly, the staff is fully engaged with customers and the service agents are also busy in managing customer flow and solving other waiting line problems.

Which distract them and cause further delay in the service. All these things add up to the waiting time. Studies have shown that on an average a customer is only willing to wait for around 14 minutes, this is the maximum limit, for several other businesses the average tolerable wait time is even less than that.

More wait time means more stress and frustration, if a customer reach to the counter in a stressed mood, it would be hard for the service agent to satisfy them. A digital queue management system can solve all these problems. It can streamline customer flow and lift unnecessary work from the service agents and other staff. Which allow them to focus on their primary tasks. Thus the service agent can have a better interaction with the customers and they can also minimize the service delivery time. Furthermore the well-organized waiting lines and queues also help reducing the wait time and improve customer flow.

Smoother customer journey means better customer experience and higher customer satisfaction. Since most of the customer journey is managed by the automated queue management system this means there would be no delays, errors or complaints from the customer. The queue management system also ensures each customer arrive at the right counter and it can also support service agents in the service delivery process which maximize their performance. All these improved processes significantly reduce customer wait time and ensure a smoother and happier customer journey.

Queue Management System: Improves Customer Waiting Experience

Another most important aspect of customer satisfaction is their waiting experience. The human brain works in a very peculiar way. When we are waiting for something we feel like the time is passing slower than usual. When we are excited we feel like the time passes faster than usual. This phenomenon is called perceived time. In service industry the perceived time is always a problem for the managers. Even though a proper queue management system is in place, the average wait time is reduced and the service agent are performing well, still the customer complains for long wait time.

This is due to the fact that they started to get bored after just 8 to 10 minutes. For that the queue management system offers multiple solutions. There are large digital displays used with the queue management system to publish the queuing information. The same can be utilized to play multimedia content or adverts or anything interesting. This can distract them from the waiting and keep them engaged.

Usually a standard queue management system comes with in-built digital signage tools which allow the managers to push content on the signage screens in the waiting area. The screen can be divided into two or more sections to display the queuing information and the multimedia content side by side. Furthermore the audio announcement system also helps engaging the customers. For each ticket the audio announcement system announces the ticket number and corresponding counter number/name and this announcement is made in multiple languages, usually English and Arabic in Dubai and all around the UAE.

This also keep users distracted from waiting and increase their engagement. All these features help reducing the perceived wait time and improve customer’s waiting experience. The queue management system also comes with a smart software engine, which has capabilities to analyze the historical data and it can predict the expected wait time for each ticket based on the historic data and current queue status. Printing that time on the ticket is also helpful in reducing the perceived wait time and help improving customers’ waiting experience.

Queue Management System: Provides Valuable Business Intelligence Data

The modern businesses are heavily relying on data and information. The market trends, voice of customer, statistical data, performance data and such information are the backbone of the decision making process in the modern business environment. The waiting lines and the customer flow are one of the crucial factor for any service based business. It is extremely important to gather valuable business intelligence data from your queuing processes. A queue management system is a digital tool with an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based software. Its algorithms are programmed to collect data from each and every customer touch point and from all relevant internal business processes.

The queue management system records customer journey details such as average wait time, busy hours of the day, and busiest days of the week or month and so on. Such data helps manager to form strategies to effectively deal with the waiting line problems and help them in improving the queuing process. The queue management system can capture and provide data in real-time the branch managers, head-office or any other concerned person can have real-time access to the ongoing queuing processes from anywhere through dedicated dashboards.

The queue management system can also capture the wait time for each service and each priority level of the customers along with the service delivery time. The in-built analytical tools can provide full details of each individual process as well as average wait time and service time. The same kind of data can be captured for the service agents. This data provides a deeper insight to the queuing process and relevant staff work performance.

The managers can easily understand the strengths and weaknesses of their staff. For example, if a service agent performs well when delivering 5 out of 12 services and he/she slows down when working on the others, which mean he/she needs more training for the remaining services. The queue management system can also capture time between one service delivery and next customer call. Along with all these details a lot of the parameters are also captured and direct KPIs can be set and monitored for the performance.

The performance data helps the HR and the customer flow data helps the managers to build new strategies and plan resources accordingly to maximize the efficiency. Better resource planning, improved productivity and individual performance help businesses reduce the resources for the operational needs. Which help them reduce the expenses of the branch thus improve profitability. Satisfactory customer experience also help gaining their trust and drive customer loyalty which further add up to the profitability and growth.

The loyal customers are a precious asset for any business, it is 5 to 25 times less-expensive to sell to an existing customer than acquiring a new customer. The voice of customer or customer feedback collection capabilities also help businesses getting in-sight to the customers’ minds. Which help them understand customers’ liking/disliking, demands, needs, problems, and also help them in product development process. All this business intelligence data can significantly improve various internal processes and have huge impact on customer experience and customer happiness.

Queue Management System: Offers Virtual Queuing and Mobile Apps

Waiting line problems are not new for the service sector. Businesses are dealing with waiting line problems since the very beginning. However the market trends have been changed. The customer behavior and their expectations have changed drastically. Especially in the past decade, the technology have integrated far deeply to our daily lives. Now a days if you are living in Dubai or any other part of the UAE you must be utilizing some kind of technological solution to interact with businesses, organizations and even with government entities too. The UAE government specifically is very advanced comparing to other government in the region.

The UAE government is in a transition phase to replacing the traditional service practices with the modernized and digital e-Services. This is due to the advancements in the smartphones and their usability, these days the smartphones and mobile apps have become an essential part of our day-to-day activities. Whether it is communication, work or entertainment, the smartphones and mobile apps are helping us making our lives better. The queue management systems are no exception.

The queue management system mobile apps allow customers to utilize modernized queuing methods, which is more commonly known as virtual queuing. The virtual queuing is a modern and most efficient queuing method. It enables the customers and visitors to sign-up for virtual queues using remote channels and it has capabilities to completely eliminate the wait time. The customers and visitors can use queue management system mobile apps or any other remote channel such as SMS, Email, Call, Online Customer Portals, Appointment Booking Portals, WhatsApp, etc. to sign-up for the queue.

An e-ticket or digital ticket has been issued which act as the queue number and allow customers to sign-up for the queue without physically arriving at the branch or standing in the waiting lines. The queue management system also allow the customer service agents and staff to communicate with the customers via digital channels such as WhatsApp, Customer Portals, SMS, Email, In-app Alerts & Notifications and much more. The customers always get updated queuing information through their preferred communication channel along with the expect wait time.

This allow them to plan their visit as per their convenience and arrive only when their turn comes. The virtual queuing and queue management system mobile apps literally reduce the wait time to zero and offer a more personalized customer experience. No wait time or very low wait time in itself is a remarkable achievement. Furthermore the queue management system mobile apps and the online appointment booking portal also help customer gaining access to the valuable information which help them plan their visit more conveniently. Customer can view live queuing information at all branches, hence they can sign-up for the branch with less customers and so on and so forth.

The queue management system mobile apps also provide branch locator which allow customers to view real-time location maps and traffic updates and let them plan their visit according to their convenience. Such features can significantly improve customer experience and help businesses obtain higher levels of customer happiness and customer satisfaction. The virtual queuing also reduce the workload of the staff and help improving their performance too.

Conclusion

For any service sector the customer waiting lines are always a big challenge, especially when the footfall is high the customer waiting lines could drastically impact customer experience. A bad customer experience can repel your customers. Furthermore the businesses also have to allocate more resources to deal with the waiting line and queuing problems. A digital queue management system not only help businesses is solving all waiting line problems but it also add value to customer experience and raise the levels of customer satisfaction. The queue management system also help businesses optimize and improve staff efficiency and performance which also results in better customer experience. As it is a digital tool so it can effectively capture valuable business intelligence data which can be help businesses and management in decision making and strategy building processes.

The queue management system not only solve waiting line problems but it also help improving various internal processes and overall productivity of the service center. The virtual queuing, integration with third-party tools, mobile apps and such modern features help businesses and customers in many ways. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE there are many different types of queue management systems available in the market. It is crucial to choose an appropriate queue management system with the correct set of features to maximize your service center’s performance.

RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about waiting line problems and their solutions or if you want our help to deploy an effective and cost-efficient queue management system for your business, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

September 26, 2022

How to Reduce Software Development Cost in Dubai, UAE?

The businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE heavily utilize modern technologies and digital solutions to boost their operational capabilities, performance and productivity. No matter if a business is small or large, if it is a B2C or B2B business, or what industry sector it belongs to, the software solutions and tools are playing crucial role from day-to-day tasks to implementing long-term success strategies. As businesses grows their software needs also grow. There are two major types of software solutions that are available in the market, commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) and customized software development.

The commercial off-the-shelf software or COTS are designed for mass audience and usually follow general standards, hence the COTS are generic solutions. The COTS are easier to deploy and initial cost is low, however, in longer run they might unable to fulfill the needs of the business. That is why businesses need customized software development. The customized software are tailor-made solutions designed exclusively for the business to meet their very specific needs which can’t be fulfilled by the COTS and custom software solutions offers many benefits both in terms of maintenance, control, security, and scalability.

Obviously when a business needs to develop a customized software solution they also have to invest more resources, that is why the initial cost of the custom software development is relatively high, but in long term the custom software development can yield better ROIs than COTS. The markets in Dubai and all around the UAE are very dynamic, businesses will have to be more reactive and proactive in order to beat the competition. For that they require cutting-edge software solutions and technology that can provide them a competitive advantage and help them boost their capabilities and performance. This makes custom software development an essential tool for digital transformation and modernization.

The cost of custom software development is increasing day by day as more and more businesses are preferring customized solutions over COTS. Usually businesses have limited budget for such procurements hence it is very difficult to go overboard for custom software development projects. Usually due to several common mistakes by the managers and the software development team the cost can go several time more than what it can actually be. In this blog we will enlist key factors that can significantly reduce the cost of custom software development and help businesses get the best value out of their project. With inherent benefits of enhanced user experience, the custom software development offers better adaptation, integration and staff efficiency.

Start with Making a Plan and Setting Goals for the Custom Software Development

Many custom software development projects cost more time and money due to poor planning or no planning at all. For any project the planning phase is crucial. If you make a proper plan before starting a customized software development project you can save a huge amount of resources, cost and time. Usually in Dubai and all around the UAE businesses tend to allocate budget first then initiate the project. The best approach is to make a project plan first and then decide the budget limit for it. If that is not possible, which in some cases isn’t possible, then the project manager should create a proper project plan to keep everything within the given budget and time limits.

Usually the customized software development projects exceed their estimates in terms of cost and time. This is because the project managers doesn’t make a proper plan and skip the research and discovery phase. In addition to that most of the time the project managers and development team disregard crucial factors to consider to optimize the custom software development cost. Any software serves a particular purpose, if you have a need for a new software then there must be a purpose and goal for that. The custom software development project plan starts with the product goals.

The first step of making a project plan for a custom software development is to clearly understand the business goals of the project. It means what problems the custom software will be solving in future? How it will help improving certain things or processes. The best way is to sit with the users and understand their problems, their desired solution or their expectations from the project. This will help you clearly understand the business goals of the custom software development project. Obviously the custom software will be designed to support certain work flows and processes, it would have certain features, better to list them all.

Then rearrange the list as per the priority or importance of each feature. The project manager can also engage a business analyst at this stage to further refine the list. The next step is to prepare a scope of work or software requirement specification document. The document will outline the technical details of all the features that are needed and will provide you a better understanding of the final outcome. Here is a step-by-step guide to planning your custom software development which will help you to make a better plan for your next project.

Prepare Requirement Documents for the Customized Software

Preparing a software requirement document is the best way to eliminate the ambiguities and confusions. It can significantly reduce the cost of the custom software development. Usually what happens is that the businesses don’t specify clearly what they need, instead they loosely asked for certain features. On later stages when the software start gaining a form and structure or in some cases after the full development, the businesses then realize that they are missing certain things, or what they got was not intended to be like that, hence they require changes, iterations and in some cases wants to add more features, which not only increase the cost but also delay the project completion.

That is why it is crucial to prepare a detailed SOW (scope of work) or SRS (software requirement specification) document. Usually the project managers or business analysts prepare this document as it have in-depth details of the specifications and functionalities. Along with the SOW or SRS the Vision, Backlog and User Story Mapping is also important. Without all these details the project execution will be extremely difficult and the chances of failure are too high.

Without proper documentation you can face following issues:

Incorrect or wrong functionalities and features
Problems, disputes and revisions during the custom software development process
The developer might get confused about the most important and least important features
Additional time and cost for the changes and iterations during the development phase
The work flow, user interface and user experience will fail to satisfy the software users
The software might failed to solve the problems ort to boost the performance as anticipated
Additional cost would be added to modify/upgrade software which will impact the ROI too

Most of the custom software development companies in Dubai, UAE faced these problems or regular bases. Sometimes the businesses failed to communicate their exact needs, sometimes the final outcome is different from their expectations, sometimes incomplete information are provided and on later stages the project manager and the business analysts realize it which disrupt the development process and cost additional time and money. That is why a proper and detailed scope of work (SOW) or software requirement specification (SRS) is absolutely essential to minimize the cost of the custom software development project.

Chose the Best Technology Stack and Software Development Platforms

The technology and the development platforms plays a crucial role in the cost of the customized software. It is best to choose the right technology stack and the platforms at the beginning, even before starting the development process. This can save a lot of time and cost too. Incompatible technology or wrong technology selection could lead to large revision and improvement costs. If the integration is involved the technology should be able to support the required integration with the existing systems and tools. It is important that the technology you are selecting is also capable of delivering the required features and functionalities.

There are few major components where the technology has to be selected carefully such as front-end, server-side or core app platform, database and coding language and platforms. These key components can have huge impact on the cost of the customized software. For the technology you have selected you also need the skilled team or individuals, different technology platform have different levels of popularity and in market they have different value which determines the cost of the development.

For example here in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE an average PHP developer will cost you at least three time less than an average Python developer. This doesn’t mean the Python is superior to the PHP or the PHP is superior to the python. It only depends on the simple rule every market follows, which is supply and demand. The PHP developers are easy to find in UAE however, the Python developers are rarer. Furthermore the businesses should also consider the long-term impact of the technology on the ROI. If a right technology is chosen which is widely used, acquiring vendors and getting support would be easier and cheaper.

Another impact of the technology is on the overall development time which also impact the cost of the project. Reliable and widely used technology and platform usually tend to offer great products with less issues, and more cost-efficient support and scalability. The right technology can significantly reduce the cost of the custom software development project.

Chose a Good Custom Software Development Team

For custom software development it is extremely important to choose a right vendor or outsourcing partner. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE there are a lot of vendors who offer custom software development services on top of that there are several offshore options are also available. The offshore companies could be 10 times cheaper but 10 time riskier too. We never recommend offshore vendors, the offshore vendors doesn’t abide by the UAE laws, they usually take advance payment, they are located in a far distanced place where usually customers don’t go and if they have to go then they will also have to bear extra travelling expense.

The offshore companies are problematic. However, here in UAE there are so many options available, some are good some are not as that good. Dealing with a local company will mitigate the risk and businesses can have the protection of law as well. However, the cost is our main agenda for the article. But the cost is not the only cost that a custom software development company quote you at first. In fact the deployment, maintenance, upgrade, scalability and service all are included in the cost of the project.

Here are a few steps to select a right outsourcing partner or vendor for your custom software development project in Dubai, UAE:

Step 1: Start with internet search, ask your friends, coworkers and other people to recommend you a software development company in Dubai or anywhere in UAE
Step 2: Make a list of at least 10 custom software development companies in UAE and rank them on the bases of their portfolio
Step 3: Check for the relevant experience and short list the top 5 companies, consider their physical location too, this would make meetings more convenient
Step 4: Evaluate these five on the bases of their work, partners, customers, experience in relevant field, relevant services, project execution practices, and consider other positive traits
Step 5: Request them to submit their quotes, short list the best 3 and negotiate with them about the timeline and budget
Step 6: Get into agreement with the vendor with best offer

See More: How to Choose the Right Software Development Vendor for Your Business

A good software development team with adequate knowledge and experience can make a huge difference. The biggest advantage of hiring an experienced and well organized team is that they will take less time and their work will have better quality too. Due to their experience they will be able to offer better assistance and will help you improve features and functionalities too. A good custom software development company can significantly reduce the time and cost of the project.

Start with Developing MVP First

When businesses make a plan to develop a very sophisticated and elaborate custom software they usually end up spending much more than anticipated due to the sophistication, multiple revisions and changes followed by multiple testing phases and feedback from stakeholders and users. Whenever a software concept is developed it is developed to solve certain problems. However, when it comes to drawing board, a lot of cosmetic features are also added. Which can increase the scope of work and specifications as well. That is why it is a common practice in custom software development to build an MVP or Minimum Viable Product first.

The MVP is simply a scaled-down version of the actual product. It can have all essential features or limited features of the actual product. Once the MVP is built, it is provided to all the stakeholders and the system users who evaluate the product and provide their feedback. The MVP helps businesses understand if the final product will be able to deliver the value they are expecting from it. The success or failure of the MVP will determine if the business should invest more in developing the complete customized software solution or if they will have to rework on the concept to come up with a completely different idea altogether.

The MVP or Minimum Viable Product have major features that allow the users to interact with the software which help them understand what they will get with the full product. This will help the businesses to understand if the product is going in the right direction or not and help them further fine tune the final product. More importantly it is very cost-efficient and prevent a lot of risks. Usually when a full-fledged custom software is developed it is difficult to make changes to it, it also take more time to make those changes which definitely impact the cost and can increase it by a lot.

However, with an MVP the businesses can start with the limited features and down the road they can add more features one by one to minimize the cost. This also help them to integrate the product more effective into the organizational environment and IT infrastructure. Here are some key advantages of developing an MVP first:

Highlight the core functionalities and focus on them most
Evaluate and assess if the product will be compatible with the vision
Early introduction to the end-users help integrating the software more effectively
Fewer changes to made and minimal work is required to build an excellent UI
Minimum risks and more space for course correction and upgrades in future
Low initial cost and with ability to control future investment in the product

The MVP or Minimum Viable Product help businesses segment all the features and specifications in three segments essential, passible, and desirable or cosmetic features. On the bases of these segments the business can decide which features they would be needing the most which help them optimize and reduce the cost.

Leverage Automation and Utilize Pre-built Features

The software development is a very time consuming task. It requires a lot of efforts and work hours to complete a single feature of a software. Obviously each custom software is different from the one another with different product goals. However, when we are using certain technologies they offer certain features and functionalities that different software developers utilize in their programs to achieve different types of goals. The programming languages that are used to build the software usually builds them in form of blocks and functions.

Each block of code serves a purpose and if the software developer utilizes these blocks it could save them a lot of time and a lot of man hours. Which definitely help reducing the cost of the product. If the developer build each code block from scratch then they will have to put a lot of time on it, which definitely raise the cost of the product. There are pre-built templates which can be used as the foundation and the customization can be done on the top of it as an additional layer, this could significantly save the development time and efforts.

There are certain frameworks which can save a lot of time and effort, the software developer can utilize these templates and frameworks to save a lot of time. Such templates and frameworks came with in-built libraries and pre-build functions which allow the software developer to effortlessly add features in the software. Such tools and methods can reduce the custom software development cost from 10% to 80%. That is huge, and it have huge impact on the cost of the custom software as well. The custom software development team can use low-code or no-code environment and platforms to work on the development phase of the custom software which can save a lot of time and resources.

Furthermore the testing and various other steps can also be done utilizing the automatic tools. These days a huge variety of automatic testing tools are available, which can perform several tests on your custom software such as user experience, user interface, performance, load and stress test, and even security testing. The open-source platforms can help the businesses to build low-cost customized software applications. The open-source platforms offer a large variety of free libraries and support a lot of customization which gave us a great advantages.

API-First Approach can Significantly Reduce the Custom Software Development Cost

The API or Application Programing Interface is not a new term for the software developers. However, the API-first Approach is a relatively new term and it got traction since past few years. The API integration allow a software or application to utilize the database, functions and features of another software, application, operating system or services. This is what made them super-efficient and very convenient for the custom software developers. The API-first development approach can significantly reduce the development time and also efforts. Since the developers can utilize pre-built functions and features which are already tested hence the chances of errors and bugs are also reduced.

On top of that the development teams can work in parallel on multiple APIs which also help reducing the timeframe of the development phase. The APIs can be used in multiple projects simultaneously and they also help developers getting advantage of the other software and system via integration. Hence they don’t have to program a lot of features, instead they can utilize those features from the existing software and tools. This simplify the custom software development process, reduce the development team effort thus the cost is reduced.

Better Project Management Help Reducing the Cost

The project management of a custom software development project is crucial. Usually the outsourcing partner or vendor appoints a project manager/business analysts to oversee the work. Same is done at the customer end too. The businesses usually appoints a project manager for their custom software development project. The core responsibility of the project manager at both parties is to maximize the performance and the quality of the outcome. For that the project manager or business analyst builds a project plan which include all major and minor details along with milestones and all variables that can impact the progress.

The project manager has to closely monitor the progress and performance of the custom software development team to assess if everything is on track and made course correction whenever needed. The performance management is also a crucial aspect. It ensures all team members achieve their respective goals and contribute to the completion of the project. All these aspects ensure a timely and satisfactory delivery. Moreover considering all these important points will help you optimize and minimize the cost of custom software development.

The best approach is to segment the software and set milestones on the bases of stages and features this help both parties to align with the scope and ensure a timely project execution is made by both parties. The project manager and the methods he or she uses to execute the custom software development project matters a lot. If everything goes as plan there are very less room for errors, revisions and repetition. A professional project manager has ability to complete the project in time by boosting the morale of the software development team and by solving the problems and disputes to ensure a timely project execution.

The project manager also keep an eye on the progress and keep checking everything which help them reducing the errors and bugs from the system which costs a lot. Furthermore the project manager appoint different team members for different tasks to maximize the performance which reduce the required work hours and the cost too. The project manager also ensures that the scope of work or software requirement specification documents are followed correctly which minimize the risk and cost.

Conclusion

In this modern time the businesses have to rely on various technological solutions in order to keep up with the fast paced markets. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the software tools and digital solutions are very common among businesses for both internal and external use. The customized software development started gaining momentum since past few years and the market is rapidly growing. This means more and more businesses are acquiring custom software and more companies have started offering custom software development services.

When it comes to a custom software development or procurement of any such solution, usually businesses allocate a certain budget for the project, which make it very difficult for the project manager to achieve desired solution within their budget limit. Furthermore we also noticed that due to some very simple and easily avoidable mistakes, the project manager end up paying many times more than what they should pay for the custom software development.

In this blog we have highlighted those mistakes and tried to provide a road-map or guide to custom software development projects. If you want to learn more or if you want us to help you with your custom software needs, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

September 24, 2022

The Risk of Poor Performance Management and How to identify it?

Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the performance management has become a major concern for the businesses and organizations. Businesses whether small or large have started adopting to modern performance management systems and processes. The continuous performance management help managers effectively boost the productivity and outcome of their teams and departments, which is great. But sometimes the managers are failed to obtain the desired results and sometimes the performance management system can even have negative impact on the overall productivity of the business.

It is easier to identify the negative impact of poor performance management, however, it is harder to realize if the performance management system improves the outcome but still the organization is less than the maximum performance level they can achieve with an effective performance management system in place. In this blog we will discuss what the major consequences of poor performance management are and how managers can identify them?

Poor performance management can cause a lot of problems for the managers and for employees too. It impact the productivity and also have significant impact on your customer facing channels. In short the poor performance management impact almost each and every aspect of the business including cost, expense and sales. Here are a few key aspects which you should notice if you want to understand your current performance management system and strategy:

Poor Performance Management Risks: Lack of Employee Engagement

One of the biggest problem with any performance management system is the lack of clarity. When the employees are not clear what is the primary goal or high-level organizational goal then they lack motivation to achieve it. Another reason is the lack of communication. When managers failed to communicate the individual goals, daily tasks and responsibilities to employees they get confused and don’t know what to do or how to do. This results in lack of employee engagement and eventually employee loose interest which can have devastating impact on their performance and productivity.

When the managers failed to explain employees that how their daily tasks and individual goals will contribute in achieving the organization’s mission, they have no reason to grow or put extra effort. Furthermore if the employees feel the performance management system and evaluation methods are unfair or less-transparent they tend to loose motivation for the hard work.

The employee need emotional connection with the goal, which is impossible without a proper communication framework, when employees are engaged in goal setting processes, in evaluation and reviews and everything else, they feel emotionally connected with the goal and strive harder to achieve it. Furthermore the employees feel important and they feel their work is important too. The performance management system not only let them understand the importance of their own goals, but it also help them understand the weight of their efforts in the high-level organizational goals and vision.

An effective performance management system always have award and training programs, which keep employee engaged and motivated. It also emphasize on the impact of achieving their goals on their personal development and individual growth. Professional and talented individuals need feedback, the managers should be able to provide them guidance and highlight them their strengths and weaknesses.

The performance management system should include the training and personal development program to upgrade the personal and professional skills of the employees. If they don’t find options and opportunities to grow and improve, they will lose interest. In such circumstances employees usually left, which also have negative impact on the performance and productivity. The poor performance management grow your employees disengaged and make them unattached from the high-level organizational goal and vision.

Poor Performance Management Risks: Inability to Deal with Common Performance Problems

Whenever managers set a goal for the individual employee or teams or multidimensional project teams there are some very common problems that they have to deal with. Such as:

Identification and arrangement of the required resources that the employees might be needing to achieve the goal.
Evaluation of the employees on the bases of required skill set and identification of required training to make them able to achieve the required goals or to produce the expected results.
In-depth analysis of required job roles. This is required to understand if each component of the employee job role matches with the required task, or what is their level of compatibility with the required task/goal.
Reassigning of the poor performers or incompatible employees. If the employee is not compatible or if he/she is performing poorly then they should be reassigned to another role, and should be replaced with a more suitable employee with compatible skillset and knowledge.
The last resort is to layoff the poor performing employees. The poor performing employees also demotivate others and put extra strain on peers who have to carry them.

All the above mentioned decisions are common occurrences in any business. However, it is extremely important that all these decisions are made on the bases of in-depth and highly accurate performance data. Without an adequate performance management system the managers can find these decision very difficult and often tend to be wrong. These are very crucial decision and as such activities help boosting performance if not done correctly can have devastating effects on performance and productivity.

Poor Performance Management Risks: Ineffective Reward Program

The poor performance management processes lead to poor communication, less employee engagements and unclear objectives. When the manager fails to communicate what is to be expected from the employees, what is the scale of measuring the success, and how the employee should improve themselves, the employee tend to take no interest in reward program as well. In such circumstances mostly the employees are not sure what the reward criteria is and how their work will be measured for rewards and recognition. Poor understanding of employee performance appraisal and success criteria lead to chaos and uncertainty. This make them confused and doubtful about the reward program.

Employee often not trust on reward program and instead of motivating them the rewards make them insecure and anxious. It also lead to negative perceptions of the managers and the entire performance management program. Such things discourage employees and create a sense of hopelessness in them. Which impact their performance very badly in longer run. That is why it is crucial that a perfectly clear and completely transparent reward program should be implemented by the performance management system to inspire and motivate employees for better performance.

Poor Performance Management Risks: Biased Reviews and Rating

Whenever it comes to performance reviews and rating, the most common complaint every employee have is the biased reviews. Most of the time the biased is unintentional but with the poorly managed performance management the right review framework is not in place which results in inaccurate rating and reviews. This lead to distrust among the employees and also the managers. The distrust on the rating system further cause hopelessness and stress among the employee and grow them disengaged. The performance management system enables businesses to conveniently conduct 360 degree reviews and evaluation.

On top of that a good performance management system continuously monitor the performance of the employees. Traditionally the reviews are only conducted once or twice in a year which also result in inaccurate results. Most of the time in yearly or biyearly reviews the reviewer only focus on the most recent performance and incidents, which also impact the overall accuracy of evaluation process.

Furthermore the personal relation, morale values and other human emotion can also impact the judgment of the reviewer. However, a good performance management system includes continuous review process which increase employee engagement, reduce biased and improve transparency.

Poor Performance Management Risks: Low Job Satisfaction and High Turnover

Poor performance management, unfair/biased reviews and low or no recognition lead to employee dissatisfaction. When employees are not satisfied with their job they don’t take much interest in their work, resultantly their performance declined. They don’t feel motivated toward their work, their morale and self-esteem deteriorate and they do not see growth or personal development in their current job role. Eventually they will leave and find another job which increase employee turnover and also raise the hiring cost. The HR department should keep working to fill in the gaps by hiring new talent, which obviously is a costly process and the new employees also take some time to get integrated in the organizational environment.

This all could have further toll on the performance. That is why it is crucial to have a good performance management system in place. The performance management system increase employee engagement, communication between employees and managers, it connects employees with the company vision and high-level organizational goals which help boosting their performance.

The performance management system help bridging the gap between the management and the employees, it make employees more confident and expressive, it also help managers identify the problems and obstacles that employee might be facing. The performance management system help building a very productive environment which makes employee happy by solving their problems, fairly rewarding them for their achievements and allowing managers to arrange very effective training and personal development program. All these efforts encourage employees to perform well and also increase their job satisfaction. Employee satisfaction drive employee loyalty and reduce their turnover.

Poor Performance Management Risks: Unhappy Customers and Negative Impact on Brand Image

The repercussions of poor performance management are not limited to the internal environment, in fact the poor performance have more impact on the external stakeholders such as customers, business partners, suppliers, investors, etc. When the employee failed to perform and when they are unable to achieve their targets, the customers also get effected. It is not only the customer service or support department that have direct impact on the customers, in fact when a business or organization fails to perform well, each and every business function got effected. The customer don’t get satisfactory service and they don’t get high-quality products.

The entire customer journey got impacted by bad performance. Businesses will have to offer excellent service and high quality products in order to obtain a competitive advantage if they failed to do so, the customers start leaving. Which have very negative impact on the brand image and brand reputation. When customers get bad experience and a bad interaction they start talking about it too, sometimes on social media and sometimes with their peers, which promote negative popularity and badly impact brand image.

How to identify Poor Performance Management?

One of the biggest and most common reason of poor performance management is following traditional and very basic performance management processes. Traditionally the performance of an employee is measured at the end of each year. And the managers tend to focus more on the recent events rather than evaluating the entire year progress. This is a big flaw, which eventually failed the annual appraisal process. Now a days, the markets are very vibrant and dynamic, the businesses have to adopt a proactive approach instead of reactive approach. That is why continuous performance monitoring has become an absolute necessity. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE adopt a variety of different performance management strategies however, there are some mistakes that are very common:

	1. Unstructured Process: An unstructured performance management process is one of the biggest cause of the failure of performance management strategy in present day. A well-structured performance management process monitors performance continuously which help employees to understand their goals and progress more effectively and help them to move forward in right direction to achieve their goals.
	2. Ineffective Goals: One of the most accurate indicator of poor performance management system is its inability to create impactful goals and objectives. When the individual goals are selected wrongly, the employees loose interest in them. The performance management system help businesses to set up SMART goals and objectives and monitor the performance on the bases of SMART KPIs which help managers to take timely decision, fine tune goals, arrange training, solve problems and achieve higher performance.
	3. Lack of Communication: With traditional performance management systems the managers are failed to communicate the goals to the employees. When the employees doesn’t fully understand what their goals are and how their performance will contribute to the high-level organizational goals and objectives, then tend to perform worst. A clear communication and understanding of what is expected from the employees and how it should be done is a key to achieve a goal.
	4. Ineffective Employee Reviews: The ineffective performance reviews can have devastating effects on the performance and productivity. Usually traditional employee reviews are biased and lack transparency, and studies have shown that due to lack of trust, the employees and managers both loose trust from the performance management process.
	5. Inability to Course Correct: The course correction is something that plays a crucial role in optimizing and improving the employee performance. The traditional performance management lacks ability to course correct. The modern performance management system have continuous monitoring capabilities which can be leveraged by the managers to correct the course during the performance cycle and make sure every employee puts efforts in right direction.
	6. Lack of Understanding of Employee Pain Points: The traditional performance management processes lack another important aspect of the modern performance management which is the understanding of the employee pain points. The modern performance management system with real-time monitoring can alert managers as soon as a deviation occurs, which let them a chance to discuss and analyze the problem directly with employees to understand the limitations, obstacles or issues they are facing. This help mangers to rectify such problems with a proactive approach to sustain the progress and performance.
	7. Lack of Trust in Reward Program: The reward programs are essential to keep employees motivated and passionate about their work. The traditional performance management system lacks transparency and lacks ability to rectify bias which eventually result in mistrust on the reward programs. As employees feel the rewards were given on unfair evaluation, so they don’t trust the performance management system and doesn’t get motivated. In fact it could have reverse impact on the employees and the other employees got demotivated when they believe the rewards were not given on fair evaluation.
	8. Less Effective Personal Development Programs: The traditional performance management systems doesn’t provide enough data or understanding to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employees. When employees feel their job is unable to contribute to their personal growth, they eventually leave and cause higher turnover which also raise cost of hiring and cause other problems which have negative impact on the performance and productivity.

If any of the above problem is present in your performance management system then you must have to revisit your performance management strategy. It is better to adopt a digital solution that can help your performance management process.

Conclusion

The Dubai and in fact the entire UAE is a very competitive market. The businesses will have to attain maximum performance in order to compete with the others. The customers always seek competitive cost, however, they are also not willing to compromise on the experience and service quality. This lead to higher competition which demand businesses to maximize their performance in order to sustain growth and progress. This is when the businesses started building and implementing performance management strategies. For that some follow traditional methods, some follow modern methods and utilize a digital performance management system. Understanding your true potential is not as that easy, sometimes when businesses implement a performance management system they witness reasonable increase in the performance, but is it the maximum limit? That is very hard to answer. In this blog we have mentioned some key aspect of the modern performance management systems along with some comparison with the traditional performance management methods.

We have also listed the key indicator which can help businesses to identify poor performance management. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you setup a highly efficient performance management system, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

September 23, 2022

Employee Performance Management Process with PMS

No matter what your business goals are, effective performance management process is absolutely necessary for any business to sustain and grow. The primary objective of performance management is to maximize the employee performance which drive productivity and profitability. In the modern business landscape, where the competition is tougher, the customers’ demands are skyrocketing, and hiring skillful staff is becoming more difficult, the performance management have become crucial for the business. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE, businesses tend to follow traditional performance management methods. A PMS or performance management system/software provides a modern and highly advanced framework to track, monitor and improve performance of the business. Another great advantage of the performance management is that it make businesses agile, responsive and help them deal with the rapid changes in the market and customer trends. The performance management system help businesses effectively build top-level objectives and goals and implement strategies to scale them down up to individual goals and daily tasks of the employees. This align each and every individual employee with the high-level organizational goals and objectives and ensures progress in the right direction.

What is PMS?

PMS or performance management system is usually referred to a software application which help organizations to implement various performance management processes and strategies. The manual performance management requires a lot of resources and it is time consuming, however, when done with the help of a PMS it become simpler, easier, and more impactful. Usually the manual performance management processes have annual appraisal or sometimes biannual evaluation, however, the performance management system (PMS) enable businesses to monitor and manage performance in real-time, it collects data in real-time rather once or twice a year, which make it more impactful. The PMS is also referred to as performance management software, basically it is a software exclusively designed for the performance management processes. The biggest advantage of using a PMS is that it can automatically collect performance data, monitor KPIs, and it also help streamlining the reviews and other appraisal processes. The digitalization and automation reduce the effort and make process more convenient and impactful. The managers get more visibility with the real-time performance data which enable them to take actions in time to maximize the outcome for the performance cycle.

The managers can view all the performance data such as Balanced Score Cards, KPIs, Reviews & Ratings, BARS data, and other performance matrices at a single dashboard. There are penalty of in-built analytical tools which allow managers to perform several analysis with just a few clicks. The intuitive UIs and simplicity of the system makes it a perfect tool for performance management needs. Furthermore it capture the data in real-time and it is also capable of performing several automated analysis, which allow management to set triggers for alerts and notifications. Every user dashboard gets real-time updates, so the managers can get the very recent performance data which help them understand the current performance, progress and it also help them easily identify the obstacles and areas of improvement. Hence the managers can take decisions in real-time and do course corrections instantly. This also help them rectify the problems and boost the performance of the employees for the performance cycle.

That is the reason the modern performance management is incomplete with a highly efficient technological solution. The PMS or performance management system or performance management software is exclusively designed for the businesses to maximize its impact and to increase the convenience. The PMS supports almost all modern performance management processes and methods. Here are some of the most important and commonly used performance management processes in Dubai and all around the UAE.

The Pain Points of Traditional Performance Management Process without PMS

The markets have changed drastically in past decade, the businesses have to adopt to new practices and modern processes in order to keep up with the pace. The modern business environment is continuously evolving, the customer behavior and the employee behavior is also changing. This left traditional decades old performance management processes ineffective and prone to errors and mistakes. Businesses, large enterprises, government sector and private sector in Dubai and all across UAE have realized that the modern problems require modern solutions. The PMS or Performance Management System/Software help such businesses and organizations to leverage the technology to improve their performance management processes. Here are a few notable pain points of a traditional performance management methods that can be avoided with the modern performance management processes through a PMS:

Course Correction: The traditional performance management processes such as annual or biannual evaluation doesn’t give enough time to the employees to do course correction. The PMS on the other hand ensure real-time monitoring and performance evaluation, the managers can instantly understand if an employee is deviating.
Rating Mechanisms:The traditional performance management processes have poor rating mechanisms, which led both employees and the managers to not trust the rating process. The PMS makes monitoring simple, effective and highly accurate with modern KPIs and performance tracking mechanisms.
Transparency: The traditional performance appraisal processes lack transparency, due to no check and balance on the employee’s actual performance and heavily rely on the reviewer’s point of view. The PMS resolve this problem effectively and provides a framework to monitor the performance and it also provides universal rules and criteria to measure the performance.
Goals and Objectives:The traditional performance management processes lack ability to set achievable but challenging goals for the employees. The PMS allow businesses to setup effective goals and objectives on the bases of the employee capabilities, strengths and also ensures the employee’sgoalsand objectives align with the high-level organizational goals and objectives.
Employee Engagement:The traditional performance management processes lack adequate employee engagement which make them less productive and in some cases counter-productive. The PMS encourages more frequent discussion, reviews, feedbacks and evaluation which encourages both employees and managers to improve communication and engagements.

The modern performance management with PMS (Performance Management System/Software) help businesses avoid all of the above. The ability to digitalize the performance management process and automated data collection allow businesses to effectively execute their performance management strategies to achieve their high-level organizational goals and objectives.

PMS Helps Setting up Goals and Objectives

Setting up goals and objectives is one of the most important and crucial aspect of performance management process. PMS help business set up realistic goals and strategic objectives and scale them down to individual employee. This help businesses align all the resources with the high-level organizational goals and objectives. The goals and objectives are basically the criteria to measure the performance of employees, teams, departments, managers, and the overall business. Here are the three most common types of goals:

Purpose Oriented Goals: These goals define what performance target or success will mean for each individual employee, hence key performance indicators are set accordingly. The purpose oriented goals are monitored continuously. For example keeping customer happiness and satisfaction equal or above 80%.
Project Based Goals:These goals are set for a precise outcome of a particular project along with the timeline. These goals are set for the individual employees as well as for the project teams/departments. For example, the IT team should be able to launch new mobile applications within 3 months.
Employee Personal Development: The employee personal development or professional growth oriented goals define the performance level an employee needs to outgrow itself. Majorly these goals require employees to learn new skills & abilities and acquire new knowledge.

The goal is a long term achievement, however the objective is a short term measureable action/outcome required to achieve a goal. It is important that these goals & objectives are clearly communicated to the employees so they can set target for their performance and try to outperform themselves in the next phase. That is how the performance can be improved and optimized gradually over the time.

PMS Helps Implementing SMART Framework

SMART Framework is a modernized method to set up goals and objectives. The SMART goals tend to produce maximum results. The SMART is acronym, it stands for:

SMART – Specific: The goals should be clear, understandable and must point to a particular outcome.
SMART – Measurable: The goal should be able to produce the measurable data that can be tracked in order to measure the performance and progress.
SMART – Achievable:The goals should be achievable, mostly businesses aim too high, which results in demotivating the employees when they know they can’t achieve them.
SMART – Realistic/Relevant: The goals should be realistic and relevant to the employees and teams, so they can achieve them.
SMART – Time-bound:Each goal should be time-bound with a clear start and end date, so the employees know when they will be evaluated and in what time they will have to achieve them.

When employees get SMART goals they can focus on a certain thing and improve their professional and intellectual skills. Most of the time when the goals are not set properly the employees doesn’t feel growing, they are performing their tasks aimlessly, and when they look back they think they have achieved nothing. This results in employee turnover which is another factor that impact the performance of a team, department or sometime the entire organization. When employees start achieving their goals which also add value to their experience, skills and capabilities, they got motivated and try to perform better.

PMS Streamlines Performance Review Process

The employees always have concerns about the performance reviews, there are several surveys and studies which suggested that the manual performance reviews are not a good criteria to measure the performance of an employee. The manual reviews could be biased and the reviewer usually only consider the most recent performance or incidents to measure the performance of the entire year. Which is never accurate. The transparency and accuracy are some of the major causes that large enterprises have started ditching the traditional performance management and review processes since 2010. Here in UAE businesses have just started adopting PMS (Performance Management System/Software) that is why it is relatively easier for the market to embrace the change. Earlier it was just the large enterprises, organizations, government entities and multinational who had an effective performance management system in place, however, now a days, medium and small sized enterprises and private sector too is rapidly adopting performance management processes to maximize the performance and to gain a better competitive advantage.

Although the traditional performance review processes are failing, but that doesn’t mean the performance reviews are ineffective. In fact the performance reviews can help maximizing the performance by providing valuable feedback to the managers and the employees which help them boost performance and employee engagements. If done correctly with a proper performance management system the performance reviews can help businesses bridging the communication gap between the managers and the employees, it brings more transparency and produce highly accurate performance data. The main objective behind implementing a digital PMS (Performance Management System) is to improve the employee performance review process to promote constructive criticism and acknowledge the achievements of the employees. When employees are rewarded or acknowledged about their good performance and the areas of improvement are highlighted to them, they tend to get motivated to perform better. This way the employees start focusing more on their weaknesses and tend to put efforts to upgrade their skills, knowledge and even behavior.

Highly Effective 360 Degree Feedback and Reviews with PMS

The 360 degree feedback is one of the most important aspect of performance management. It is a modern method help boosting the performance by increasing employee engagement, motivation and by identifying the problems and obstacles which can impact the performance. The 360 degree feedback is a multi-dimensional feedback mainly collected from the managers, peers, customers, sub-ordinates, stakeholders and any other concerned person or manager. This provide a 360 degree view of an employee’s performance from multiple sources which reduce the inaccuracy and maximize the transparency. There are five major components of this performance management process:

Managerial Feedback: The feedback and reviews from managers are the traditional method of performance management process. This review included feedback from the supervisor or manager, and it can also include feedback from line-managers or higher management.
Peer to Peer Reviews: The coworkers can provide a very unique and precise prospective to the employee performance. More importantly the peer to peer reviews are a great process to evaluate the ability of an employee to perform in a team.
Customer Reviews:The customer’s reviews help businesses understand the performance and behavior of customer facing employees. The customer reviews could be taken from internal and external customers, stakeholders and any other relevant person who interacts with the employee.
Subordinate Feedback:The upward feedback and reviews are not common in traditional performance management processes however, they are critically important. It help evaluating and improving the performance of the supervisors, managers and senior staff.
Self-Appraisals: The self-appraisals are when employees review their own performance. The PMS provide a structured feedback mechanism that let employees look back at their performance and rate it. Usually the self-appraisals are biased, but they allow employees to see their strengths and weaknesses.

The 360 Degree Feedbacks and Reviews are a great process to increase employee engagement and awareness. The employees can easily learn what is expected from them and how did they performed and what impact their performance have on the stakeholders. Furthermore the 360 Degree Feedback and Reviews serves as a bedrock for the training, counselling, and employee development processes. The PMS itself encourages employee engagement but the 360 Degree Feedback and Reviews are the best method to boost employee engagement. Employee engagement motivates them to perform better.

Implement Management by Objectives (MBO) Process with PMS

TheManagement by Objectives or MBO is one of the modern performance management process. The PMS enable managers and employees to make plans, set objectives, performance matrices and everything for the upcoming appraisal period. After setting up clear goals and objectives that align with the high-level organizational goals, the manager and the employees have multiple discussions or feedbacks to understand the ongoing progress. After that the manager and employees can readjust their performance goals and objectives to make sure they remain aligned with the high-level organizational goals and objectives, this is also called course correction. Furthermore the Management by Objectives (MBO) process allow the managers to constantly improve the performance and resolve any issues or problems that employees are facing to rectify them in time. This kind of performance management have higher success rate. The Management by Objectives (MBO) also increase employee engagement and raise their level of trust on the managers as well as on the employer.

The management by objectives or MBO is one of the best way to align the individual goals with the high-level organizational goals. The goals are set under the SMART framework so the success is rewarded and the failure is dealt as per the company policy, usually by more training and counseling or transfer, etc. The Management by Objectives (MBO) can be easily implemented all across the entire organization with the help of a PMS. This ensures the higher levels of success. When employees also got involved in the decision making process such as goal setting, evaluation, etc. they feel more emotionally connected to those goals and objectives. This raise their morale and motivates them to perform better. On top of that the frequent assessment also ensures the employees remain on track throughout the entire performance appraisal period which also amplify the success rate. The MBO is also a great process to maximize the communication and provider maximum understanding of the goals and objectives to the employees and it also tells them what is to be expected from them and how they should do it in order to achieve the goals. That is why MBO has higher success rate.

PMS Improves Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) Process

The BARS of behaviorally anchored rating scale is a very common performance management process. The management set behavior examples, and anchor them to a numeric or measureable value/rating scale. This allow businesses and organizations to effectively measure both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the performance. However, most of the performance management processes only focus on the quantitative aspects of the performance. The BARS or behaviorally anchored rating scale is linked with multiple BARS statements that are according to a specific behavior which employee exhibit during a certain situation. These BARS statements act as a measuring tape to measure the performance of the employees. Several market studies suggest that the behaviorally anchored rating is extremely important for the overall performance management. Usually the employee behavior can have 40% share in the overall performance and the rest 60% is their technical competencies and professional skills. Each employee is evaluated against the standard associated to their job role.

The behaviorally anchored rating scale statements are refined several times to set standards for expected behavior against every job role. The BARS is a very effective process to clearly explain and communicate the requirements from each employee. When employees clearly knows what is expected from them, they tend to perform better to achieve their individual goals. The behaviorally anchored rating scale is not like other rating mechanisms, in fact it starts from 5 up till 9, where 5 represents the worst performance, 7 moderate and 9 best performance. Another great advantage of the behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS) is that it have different statements and rating mechanisms for different job roles, rather a universal rating or evaluation process. This can significantly increase the accuracy and effectiveness of the performance management process. The employees know exactly where they will have to improve their performance and what is expected from them in the next performance cycle. The only drawback of the BARS is that it require a lot of time and effort from the managers and executive administration.

PMS Allow Creating Precise KPIs to Improve the Monitoring Mechanisms

The PMS or performance management system/software is a digital tool, it has capability to integrate with any other third-party software, tool or database. Which enable businesses to effectively create KPIs or key performance indicators for each and individual employees, teams, managers, departments, and even for the entire organization. The KPIs allow the businesses to monitor the performance against strategic and high-level organizational goals and objectives. The KPIs enable businesses to implement a more effective data driven performance management process. The KPI also link the organizational goals and objectives with the individual action. The PMS or performance management system/software allow businesses to set up KPIs in a cascade format where the move from level to level until reached at the individual level. This approach is top-down and often also called pyramid KPIs structure. The SMART Framework works on KPIs too, each KPI should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. The PMS allow businesses to effectively create KPIs either by customization or using the in-built templates.

The KPIs can significantly boost performance by providing real-time monitoring capabilities. Furthermore the KPIs also help managers to explain employees about their goals and how their performance should be evaluated, this help them perform better.

Conclusion

The traditional performance management processes have proven to become ineffective in the modern business environments. Now a days’ businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE require a highly advanced technological solution for their performance management processes. The performance management system/software or PMS is a software tool that enable businesses to perform performance management tasks in a more intuitive and effective way. Rectify all pain points of the traditional performance management methods and allow businesses to include innovative and customized features to their performance management system. Moreover the PMS allow businesses to implement the modern performance management processes and methods to maximize the outcome of the performance management cycle. The PMS provide dedicated user dashboards for the employees, supervisors, line managers, senior managers, high-level management and stakeholders who can monitor and track performance of the individual employee, team, project, department or the entire enterprise at their dashboards.

The PMS ensures the management get a comprehensive view of the entire organization and each and every single resource. This provide them a better control over the progress and also enable managers to do course correction, make adjustments to ensure the high-level organizational goal is achieved at the end of the performance cycle. In this blog we have listed only a few advantages of the PMS or performance management system/software to provide our audience an overview of how the PMS can meet the performance management needs of the modern businesses. If you want to learn more or if you want us to help you building a modernized, intuitive and cost-efficient performance management system please contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

Check out this:How Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Happiness with a Queue Management System?

September 14, 2022

How Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Happiness with a Queue Management System?

The Dubai and in fact the entire UAE is a business hub of the entire Middle East. The markets are growing rapidly attracting more businesses to the country. This raised the competition to very high and also results complete transformation of the business customer relationships. The global trends are also influencing the evolution of business practices in Dubai and all across the UAE. According to a several studies and market researches the 84% of the customers thinks the customer experience is equally important as the products/services are. The same have impacted the insurance market as well.

Here in UAE the insurance market have grown a lot which also result in high competition, more products/services which have huge impact on the customer behavior and market trends. Now a days an average insurance customers have become more sophisticated, knowledgeable and demanding. Every business knows this very well, if they failed to meet customers’ expectations, they will lose them. That is why it is important for insurance companies to make strategies and take steps to improve customer happiness and satisfaction.

Not only the insurance companies, but every business needs customer happiness and customer satisfaction. The customer happiness drives customer loyalty, the customer loyalty helps businesses get more repeated business. It is almost 5 times to 25 times more expensive acquiring a new customer comparing to selling to an existing customer. On top of that the loyal customers are tend to be a good brand advocate, especially in the modern digital landscape businesses need good endorsements, rating and positive reviews from the customers to build stronger brand image. That is why businesses have started putting customers at the center of all their strategies and goals.

Because this is the key to long term success. Now when it comes to customer happiness at insurance companies the biggest impact is from the customer experience at the branch or office. The main factor in customer experience are customer wait time at branch, staff performance and service quality. Which is why a queue management system is the best solution to maximize customer experience and to achieve higher customer happiness. In this blog we will discuss how a queue management system can improve customer happiness and customer satisfaction.

How Queue Management System Improves Customer Happiness?

A queue management system consists of two parts one is software side and the other is hardware side. The software could have multiple features or accessories and the hardware side can also have multiple accessories, add-ons and features. A standard queue management system have a ticket dispensing unit, which is usually an interactive kiosk, from where the customers can sign-up for the queue. The queues are managed automatically by the queue management system (QMS). The QMS also have a digital signage and an in-built audio-visual announcement module.

All modern queue management systems comes with a large digital signage screen, which are placed strategically in the waiting areas to provide live queuing information to the customers waiting in the queue. The queuing solutions are digital tools and are very capable in collecting valuable business intelligence data which help businesses in further analyzing their current strategies and policies and let fine tune them in future. The insurance companies can significantly improve customer experience by deploying an efficient queue management system to ensure the maximum customer happiness and customer satisfaction.

Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Waiting Time with a Queue Management System

For any service based business the crowded service centers and angry customers are the worst nightmare. The insurance companies and businesses are also no exception. The unmanaged queues or manual queuing, crowded waiting areas, and employees working under immense pressure are the absolute customer happiness killer. The very first thing an insurance company needs is to streamline its customer flow and to manage its queues more efficiently. This can’t be achieved with manual queuing, no matter how well trained staff you have or how many resources you allocate to manage the queues, the manual queues are prone to disputes, complaints, stress and dissatisfaction.

A queue management system digitalize the queuing process and automate queue management. It allow customers to sign-up from an interactive self-service ticket dispensing kiosk which doesn’t require any staff help or supervision. As customers knows the queues are managed by the computerized system, hence they don’t complain much as they know the staff have no control over the process. This help businesses minimizing customer complaints too.

Furthermore the queue management system is a very capable tool, it has in-built AI (artificial intelligence) based smart algorithm which can manage the entire customer journey automatically as per the business’s policy. For example, the customers are asked to select their required service at the self-service ticket dispensing kiosk, at that time the system put them in the most relevant and quickest queue. That is not all, the queue management system can also reroute customers if needed. The customers are only given a ticket number, and the announcements are made on the large digital signage and audio announcement system. Which means that the customers are assigned the counter only when their turn came.

Hence the queue management system have full control over managing the customers and their queues. This allow the system to intelligently manage queues, and on the bases of real-time data it can take decisions which allow it to maximize the performance and minimize the customer wait time. When the customer wait time is reduced it automatically reduce the level of stress and discomfort a customer endures during the customer journey and help increasing customer happiness.

Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Experience with a Queue Management System

As the queue management system can streamline customer flow and ensures the minimum wait time by improving queuing process and performance, the customer experience automatically get improved. With manual queuing the customers have complaints about management, poorly organized waiting lines, line jumpers, staff favoritism, and much more. However, with the queue management system all this can be prevented, and the customers never think anything like that as they know the queues and customer flow is managed by automatic program. This significantly improve their experience and give them a sense of trust.

Furthermore a queue management system help insurance companies to improve their queuing efficiency during the busy work hours as well and provide them data which help them prepare for such scenarios. Collectively these all things help improving customer experience. Furthermore another essential component of the queue management system, the digital signage screens also help improving customer wait experience. When we wait we feel boredom, we feel stuck in the situation and this results in stress and anxiety.

A queue management system on the other hand can help businesses dealing with all such problems. As it has capability to automatically manage the customer flow it reduce a lot of wait time. Furthermore a queue management system offers several features that keep customers and visitors engaged while they are waiting and reduce their stress. When we are waiting and bored at the same time, the time feels slower. It is because our brain perceived it that way. For example when we are waiting in a line the time feels more but when we are watching out favorite series on Netflix the same amount of time passes so quickly.

This is just our brain that is tricking us into feeling more or less time. This is what is called the perceived time, and it pretty much depends on our state of mind. The queue management system can significantly improve it. For example, the digital signage displays which are installed strategically on places where everyone in the waiting room can at least view one always. This means the displays will get more attentions, the queue management system allow businesses to leverage this attention by playing multimedia content, advertisements or marketing materials which keep customers busy and distracted from the wait time.

The continuous announcements on the digital signage also keep customers busy, furthermore the multi-lingual audio announcement system also keep announcing upcoming tickets which also attract customers’ attentions. When there are so many things to keep the customers distracted from the wait time, they feel less bored, their stress is gone and the perceived wait time also reduced. That is significant, and it have huge impact on customer experience. Customers feel less stressed which increase their tolerance toward wait time.

When customers reach to the counter with less stress at their mind or in a comfortable state of mind, they are more understanding and it also make it easier for the service agent to satisfy them comparing to the customer who is reaching at the counter already annoyed, stressed and anxious.

Insurance Companies can Improve Interaction of Customers and the Service Agents with a Queue Management System

Since the customer sign-ups, customer flow and entire queuing operation is managed by the queue management system, the employees and staff doesn’t have to focus on any of it. They don’t have to face a lot of complaints and angry customers. That is not all, a queue management system is a very capable tool. When it is integrated with the central information center or other relevant databases it can offer innovative features to help service agents with the actual service delivery process as well. This can be achieved by several ways, for example, the self-service interactive kiosk is already taking basic information about the requirements, hence the service agents knows clearly which next service they will be dealing with.

They can prepare for it accordingly and save some time while the customer is coming to them after the announcement. Furthermore when the customer arrives at the counter, the service agent have enough time to communicate with them. As the service agents are not being dragged in the queue management process, so they have a lot of time to focus on their primary tasks, the system enable them to perform pre-service activities in-time which left them with more time with the customer, this can significantly improve customer experience and customer happiness.

Insurance Companies can Improve Various Business Processes with a Queue Management System

One of the biggest advantage of a queue management system is that it help businesses to improve several internal processes. The queue management system improves the customer experience throughout the entire customer journey. It help improving interaction at all touch points. One of the biggest problem that insurance companies in Dubai and all around the UAE face is the wait time and crowd formation at the branches. The queue management system not only help preventing these problems but also provide features to effectively deal with such situations. The queue management system Furthermore the queue management system can be integrated with third-party enterprise tools, software and systems which let businesses leverage the automation and digitalization to improve several internal business processes.

The queue management system can fetch and push data to any other connected system in real-time which means all the relevant personas, departments will get instant update. The queue management system can also capture data from each and every touch point in the customer journey and is also a very capable of collecting customer feedback data. It help service delivery process as well and help service agents in pre-service and post-service activities as well. With integration capabilities business can also include innovative feature to further improve their internal processes.

Insurance Companies can Integrate Appointment Booking System and Customer Portals with the Queue Management System

The queue management system can be integrated with a separate appointment booking system as well as it can also provide a dedicated online module for the appointment booking management features. Insurance companies in Dubai and all around the UAE usually doesn’t utilize an appointment booking system, mostly they rely on traditional appointment booking methods such as by email or phone call, etc. However, the appointment booking system can help them improve user experience as well as it also help reducing the workload of the staff. As everything is done via an online appointment booking module or customer portal and everything is automated, so no need to assign any additional staff for these tasks.

The appointment booking system or customer portal when integrated with the queue management system it can provide additional information which help the customers to book the most convenient slot for their visit. The queue management system capture data which help it to push certain information to the appointment booking system or customer portal such as current queue status, expected number of customers in any slot of time, it highlights busy hours, days, and help customers choose the most appropriate time to visit. The customers can plant their trip accordingly which means they don’t have to wait much. Such features help improving customer experience and raise their happiness and satisfaction.

Insurance Companies can Offer Virtual Queuing with a Modern Queue Management System

All modern queue management systems offer features for virtual queuing. The virtual queuing is not as that new, in fact it is present since many years now, however business in Dubai and all around the UAE have recently started adopting this technology. Especially during and after the pandemic in 2020. The biggest advantage of virtual queuing is that it allow businesses to manage the queues in a way that each customer can be served instantly, hence there is literally no wait time. Furthermore insurance companies can utilize virtual queuing to control the number of customers and manage the workload accordingly.

The virtual queuing offers several remote methods to allow customers and visitors to sign-up, such as smartphone applications, online appointment booking system/customer portals, SMS, email, QR Codes based links, call, etc. The customers can utilize any available channel to sign-up for the virtual queues. They don’t have to physically present in the queues, in fact all the queues are managed virtually. This means they are also not required to come earlier than their turn. Hence the customer wait time can be reduced to literally none. When the customers get instant service as they arrive, they feel happier and it is easier for the service agent to satisfy the already happy customers.

The virtual queuing also allow the insurance companies to effectively manage the customer flow and queues as per their branch’s capacity, hence there will be no extra visitors, as all will be given a time slot in which their term is expected, hence the number of customers in the waiting areas can be reduced significantly. When there are no much customers in the waiting area, the business doesn’t have to assign much resources, and the staff also felt less workload. This motivate your staff and result in better service quality and customer experience. Furthermore the customers and visitors are always informed using multiple communication channels and some of them also allow the service agent to communicate with the customer.

This ensures no customers misses any update, alert or notification. If anything unexpected happens, the service agents can instantly inform the customers and visitors about any change to prevent any inconvenience. The virtual queuing help businesses effectively manage their footfall and customer flow with more control and convenience. The queue management system mobile app is also a very useful tool to maximize customer experience. The customers can sign-up for the queue on-the-go, they can get real-time queuing updates, notifications and alerts in the mobile app. They can also communicate with the service agents and they can submit their feedback too.

The mobile app can provide branch locator functionality which provide users with all available branch details along with navigation capabilities via Google Maps or any other navigation application on their smartphone. The list goes on and on. The virtual queuing is a modern form of queue management systems and it offers great features to maximize performance, customer experience, and customer happiness.

Insurance Companies can Collect Valuable Business Intelligence Data with a Queue Management System

The queue management system comes with an intelligent software which is very capable of collecting business intelligence data. It can help businesses capture the statistical and analytical data from each and every touch point and enable them to utilize that data to assess and improve their on-going strategies and to make plans for future. The queue management system can capture a variety of details about the customer journey, such as which service(s) is most popular, which day or time get the most footfall, what are the least busy hours/days, what service agent is serving most customers, what is average customer wait time, average service time and even the quality of service and experience through integrated customer feedback module.

The queue management system can accurately capture a variety of employee performance KPIs and other performance data which help the management and HR to identify the areas of improvement and rectify the problems. The queue management system is capable of capturing the complete customer persona and also behavioral data which help insurance companies understand their customers and also allow them to collect direct feedback from the customers.

All this data is called business intelligence data and it help management in many ways, it let them make informed decisions, enable them to do better resource planning and management, help them to understand the customer’s needs, expectations, problems and market trends and much more. The modern market landscape is formed by the influence of the digital and cyber technologies. Now a days the businesses heavily rely on the data. The business intelligence data help businesses understand their internal processes and their efficacy, and also enable them to identify the problems and obstacles for both the customers and the employees. Such information is vital for strategy building and planning.

If a business is proactively collecting business intelligence data and utilizing it properly only then they could be able to achieve their goals. The ability to collect customer feedback also help insurance companies in product development and help them understand the market trends, customers’ demands and needs. A good queue management system not just collect business intelligence data but it also help businesses to analyze it and generate actionable reports in any required format so these reports can be shared with decision makers, higher management and stakeholders. Business intelligence data can provide a great competitive advantage to the insurance companies.

Conclusion

Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the competition among insurance industry is very high. The customers are also very savvy and demanding. This means that if an insurance company wants to sustain growth and profitability they must have to ensure customer satisfaction and customer happiness. The customer happiness is crucial for any business but in the current market scenarios the insurance companies need a better customer happiness strategy, as the customers also have a lot of options available. Furthermore the studies have revealed that 84% of the customers think the experience matters a lot along with the quality of the product or service. That is why the businesses should seriously invest in customer experience management strategies.

A queue management system is a perfect tool to maximize customer experience, increase customer happiness, evaluate and improve your business strategies and processes and collect other valuable business intelligence data. RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you with a tailor-made queue management system, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

September 13, 2022

Harmony Medical Center Acquire Customer Feedback Kiosk Stand from RSI Concepts

Harmony Medical Center is one of the leading dental treatment facility in Abu Dhabi aiming to offer a wide spectrum of services and treatment. The Harmony Medical Center is well-known for its modernized facility with high-tech treatments and luxury services. Over the time the Harmony Medical Center builds a reputation of excellent 5 stars standards in every aspect of service and treatments. This reputation is built over the time due to the adaptation of modern treatments by highly qualified staff, integration of technology and exceptional customer care services. The Harmony Medical Center have evolved into a highly patient-centric model by implementing customer-first policies at all their strategic decisions. The Harmony Medical Center is far superior to its peers due to its internal professional environment that is driven by technology and modern customer service practices. The Harmony Medical Center rigorously follow the social, cultural and traditional norms and put patient at the center of their every decision which make them the most popular healthcare facility in Abu Dhabi and beyond.

The Harmony Medical Center is always eager to listen to its patient in order to align its treatment, methods and practices to ensure the best possible patient experience. For that the Harmony Medical Center have decided to improve its VOC strategy by deploying a few customer feedback kiosks in the premises. The VOC or voice of customer is considered to be the backbone of customer experience and customer satisfaction strategy. It helps healthcare facilities to understand what patients perceive of their interaction with the staff and the facility, what patients like and dislike, what are their preference and expectations and how they would want the medical facility to do in order to raise their satisfaction and to improve their experience. The customer feedback is their opinion about anything and everything, the facility, the equipment, the service, the staff and each and every touch point at which a patient interacts with the brand.

The Harmony Medical Center is one of the leading brand in its niche so they are very eager to listen to their customers in order to keep improving their services and methods as per their customers’ liking and market trends. That is why RSI Concepts were approached by the Harmony Medical Center to provide them with a customized design for the customer feedback kiosk stands. The aim was to create a design that blends in the exquisite interior yet at the same time it should be able to attract the patients. If the patient will notice it while passing by, only then it will be able to intrigue their curiosity. Attracting patient and their attendees toward the customer feedback kiosk is crucial for the success of the customer feedback campaign. The success of any customer feedback campaign is measured by the two factors the quality of the data and the quantity of the data. That is why it is very important to attract your patent towards the customer feedback kiosk. This was achieved by offering a well-crafter kiosk stand along with customized branding to attract more people.

Here are the remarks of our Sales Manager, Ms. Maheen Waheed who were responsible for the delivery of the project:

“It was truly a great experience working with Harmony Medical Center team and management. Meeting the highest standards of the management while ensuring the technical and functional requirements are met was a bit challenging tasks. However, thanks to our skilled design team we have managed to deliver an excellent product. The stands met and exceed all standards of the Harmony Medical Center and the response was great. We are always willing to go an extra mile to make our customers happy and satisfied.”

Indeed our team of highly trained and experienced professionals are always eager to support our customers with their needs and demands. We offer a multitude of services and products to offer our customers a one-stop solution for all their digital and IT needs. It is truly an honor for RSI Concepts to have Harmony Medical Center in our clientele list. We have successfully met the requirements of Harmony Medical Center and we are hoping to assist them in future with more such projects.

Check out this: Brand for Less Group Have Acquired RSI Customer Feedback System

BLOG OF RSI CONCEPTS

A Custom Software based Learning Management System

Custom eLearning and Smart Classrooms Software Solution

Customized Smartphone Apps Integration

Custom ERP, Intranet or CRM Software for Internal Processes & Management

Digital Transformation Help Reducing the Cost and Increase Revenue & Growth

Conclusion

What is the Difference between the Performance Management and OKRs?

How Businesses can Improve Performance Management through OKR System?

OKR System Align all Resources with your Vision and High-level Organizational Goals

OKR System Produce Better Outcome and Results

OKR System Increase Employee Engagements

OKR System Enables Quick Adjustments and Course Correction

OKR Systems are Transparent in Nature

Creating OKRs: Best Practices

Never Link OKRs to Compensations

Conclusion

Performance Management Trends: 1. Data-Driven Performance Management

Performance Management Trends: 2. Employee Satisfaction is Important

Performance Management Trends: 3. Continuous Feedback and Monitoring

Performance Management Trends: 4. Hybrid Work Environment

Performance Management Trends: 5. Impact of Gen Z’s Expectations and Behavior

Conclusion

Step 1. Custom Enterprise Software: Discovery Phase

Step 2. Custom Enterprise Software: Software Requirements Specifications (SRS)

Step 3. Custom Enterprise Software: Chose a Right Software Development Team

Step 4. Custom Enterprise Software: Chose Right Technology Platforms

Blockchain Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Big Data

Cloud Computing

Step 5. Custom Enterprise Software: Design and Development Phase

Step 6. Custom Enterprise Software: UAT, Launch and Post-launch

Conclusion

What are common Waiting Line Problems?

How a Digital Queue Management System can Solve Waiting Line Problems?

Queue Management System: Organizes Waiting Lines

Queue Management System: Reduce Customer Wait Time

Queue Management System: Improves Customer Waiting Experience

Queue Management System: Provides Valuable Business Intelligence Data

Queue Management System: Offers Virtual Queuing and Mobile Apps

Conclusion

Start with Making a Plan and Setting Goals for the Custom Software Development

Prepare Requirement Documents for the Customized Software

Chose the Best Technology Stack and Software Development Platforms

Chose a Good Custom Software Development Team

Start with Developing MVP First

Leverage Automation and Utilize Pre-built Features

API-First Approach can Significantly Reduce the Custom Software Development Cost

Better Project Management Help Reducing the Cost

Conclusion

Poor Performance Management Risks: Lack of Employee Engagement

Poor Performance Management Risks: Inability to Deal with Common Performance Problems

Poor Performance Management Risks: Ineffective Reward Program

Poor Performance Management Risks: Biased Reviews and Rating

Poor Performance Management Risks: Low Job Satisfaction and High Turnover

Poor Performance Management Risks: Unhappy Customers and Negative Impact on Brand Image

How to identify Poor Performance Management?

Conclusion

What is PMS?

The Pain Points of Traditional Performance Management Process without PMS

PMS Helps Setting up Goals and Objectives

PMS Helps Implementing SMART Framework

PMS Streamlines Performance Review Process

Highly Effective 360 Degree Feedback and Reviews with PMS

Implement Management by Objectives (MBO) Process with PMS

PMS Improves Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) Process

PMS Allow Creating Precise KPIs to Improve the Monitoring Mechanisms

Conclusion

How Queue Management System Improves Customer Happiness?

Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Waiting Time with a Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Experience with a Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Improve Interaction of Customers and the Service Agents with a Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Improve Various Business Processes with a Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Integrate Appointment Booking System and Customer Portals with the Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Offer Virtual Queuing with a Modern Queue Management System

Insurance Companies can Collect Valuable Business Intelligence Data with a Queue Management System

Conclusion