10 Reasons: Why SMEs should have CRM?

10. Memory Limits

The human brain is simply amazing, but, like everything, it has a limit. A businessman might be able to keep with 5, or 15, or even 30 clients information in memory, but there comes a point where it seems difficult to track all of them and their associated tasks and important events. No one will really want to limit their business by what information he/she can store in his/her head. Managing only 20-30 clients successfully in memory will stop business from growing. With a CRM software, a person will be able to manage hundreds of clients and let the system handle the task of remembering and recall. It is a fact that a business will be able to success more quickly by taking advantage of technology.

9. Emails are Decentralized

Growing business means growth in inquiries, conversations, feedbacks, suggestions, and bulks of mail in the mailbox. Quickly growing business will face the problem of an unmanageable mailbox. Unable to find a sent mail is a problem and makes it difficult to track what has been said to individual clients. And this will lead to a great day to hire employees, resulting in higher operational cost. A person will never be able to remember to CC or BCC to the team on every important mail sent. Now, what? Email not a solution? The team may be spread absolutely apart and communication channel gets interrupted, and clients suffer. A CRM system, helps in centralizing pertinent client information at one location which is easy to update and easy to see when team members update. A centralized system will keep update team member with all the communications going on.

8. Need of Metrics

Metrics are very crucial for business growth and success. A business must be able to visualize the difference between what was predicted and what is achieved. One might be able to figure out the things with the common sense of with the help of Excel Spreadsheet formulas- but it is not a good idea when it comes to TIME. Time is more valuable than that, and the possibilities are high enough that a single mistake will wash away all the plans. A CRM will help you with quick metrics on numbers of aspects of a business, and there will no need of human efforts. Plus with a CRM offered 9series, generating custom reports to track metrics will far better and easier. Configure it once and use it forever.

7. Statuses are Important

Missing a lead is missing a customer. No one can predict which client is ready for a quick call back. It's very important to know what is stage buyer's journey(Lead Status: New, Working, Hot, Connected, Cold, etc.). If a salesperson knows which prospects are in which state, that would help him to pitch accordingly. A CRM at its basic level will deliver those statuses. Whenever a salesperson is making a call or sending an email or contacting that customers or prospects he can update their current status. As stated earlier, none has a perfect memory, the CRM system will help to review and see where each customer is in the sales process.

6. History is Mystery

Managing good relations with customers is the core motive of any CRM software. If anyone ever wanted to see everything on a specific client, the stream conversation between him and them and other team members of a business then CRM software is a must thing. CRM systems help retain all those communications in one place and make it easy to quickly look back and see how things have advanced. Every time it's not necessary that a customer is upset because of his only- a well-maintained record of progression of clients and their conversation as well as company's notes and responses are key to retain more customers from leaving by improving things missed otherwise. History teaches us a lot.

5. Competition is Within

A well-managed business always goes ahead with its employees. Well-defined business goals of helping to define the team as well as personal goals. CRM software helps small businesses define these goals based on metrics and reports. An organization can stage friendly internal competitions to see who can crack the most deals, carry on the most conversations or earn most dollars.

4. Never Lose Data

Using memo books, notepads, calendars, and other systems track data has high possibilities of losing all the data at once. Even storing everything on a laptop is not a good idea, it can be stolen or get corrupted sometimes. A web-based CRM System enables effective data protection from being lost. However, there are chances that the server can crash and hard drives fail, but with a proper web host and data backups, data can be secured forever. That's just one of the advantages of the 9series' CRM gives complete freedom to select the hosting provider. Data is completely of a business organization only. On top of that, cyber security measures are taken care at the programming and configuration level.

3. Predict the Future

Every business wants to forecast perfect future. If only, there was a way to know what to expect. 9series' CRM helps with that. But obviously, a CRM software can't predict the future, after all, it's not a crystal ball, but a good CRM can provide a reliable data and expectation of the future depending on the past events and performances. If history (business data) is stored correctly in CRM system (see history is very important) then a good CRM can forecast that information to deliver a dependable result of what is to come.

2. Track Tasks and Events

To keep up with everything important calendars is essential, way more essential than emails with dates in them. A person won't be able to keep track of each task need to do and events to attend without a reliable system. A CRM can help not only to stay on track with every task and event, but also to associate them with relevant leads.Our CRM renders a classy calendar system that comes with reminders for all team members' tasks. With that, 9series' CRM has a special feature on the dashboard that gives a swift overview of future events and tasks. Device sensitive design allows access on the go over multiple devices like phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop (we know it's simply amazing).

1. Be Organized

A business may not be able to see the big picture if it is claiming that it is able to manage the business with a task, email, and calendar management features. Managing all the business information into a unified system gives that big picture. A CRM system integrates emails, tasks, events, calendars and so many things in a single easily managed and maintained the place. Access all important information from anywhere in the world from any internet enabled device. By being well-organized and putting the thing in a central location brings all the pieces together.

All organizations may not be perfect, but it’s ok, add right resources and technology to make it perfect. 9series provides easy to adopt, user friendly and cost effective, customized CRM solutions according to the nature of business and its requirement. Get started today, be well organized and let 9series help you to get there.

What’s New to Laravel 5.2?

PHP is known to have a less than desirable syntax, it is easy to deploy, easy to use and is actually powering countless modern websites which are used day-to-day. Laravel is a free open source framework available for developers which is based on PHP programming language. It provides beautiful shortcuts, tools, and components that assist in accomplishing all web based projects. Laravel aims to fix some of PHP’s flaws as well.

The beauty of using Laravel is that it has a creative and semantic syntax that makes it outstanding among various frameworks available for the programming language. It is a perfect choice for amateur projects as well as enterprise solutions. There are continuous improvement & enhancements in Laravel framework by the community developers. The recent announcement of Laravel 5.2 update contains few excellent new features. It continues the improvements made in Laravel 5.1 by adding multiple authentication driver support, simplified eloquent global scopes, implicit model binding, middleware groups, opt-in authentication scaffolding, array validation improvements, rate limiting middleware, and more.

Have a look on new features Laravel 5.2 are:

Authentication Scaffolding

Laravel already makes it simple to handle authentication on the back-end; however, Laravel 5.2 provides a handy, lightning-fast way to scaffold the authentication views for front-end. Simply execute the make:auth command on terminal:

This command will generate plain, Bootstrap compatible views for user registration, login and password reset. The command will also update routes file with the relevant routes. (Note : This feature is only meant to be used on new apps, not during application upgrades.)

Authentication Drivers / “Multi-Auth”

In former versions of Laravel, only the default, session-based authentication driver was supported out of the box, and a user could not have more than one authenticatable model instance per application.

However, in Laravel 5.2, a user can define additional authentication drivers as well define multiple authenticatable models or user tables, and manage their authentication process independently from each other. For eg, if an application has one database table for “student” users and another database table for "admin" users, a user may now use the Auth methods to authenticate against each of these tables individually.

Implicit model binding

Implicit model binding is the latest feature which automatically binds a model to a route. Below is an example in code:

What this does is behind the scenes call and inserts it into the $post variable. In Laravel 5.1, it would need to practice the Route::model method to instruct Laravel to inject the App\User instance which matches the {user} parameter in route definition. Therefore, in Laravel 5.2, the framework will automatically include this model based on the URI segment, allowing to quickly gain access to the model instances user require.

Array Validation

This is very excellent feature. For example: you have a form with an array of input fields like this:

While in Laravel 5.1 to add validation rules, it required looping through and adding the rules separately. Instead of having to do all that it’s been “Laravelized” into this:

Middleware Groups

Middleware groups enable to group many route middleware below a single, convenient key, allowing to assign several middleware to a route at once. For eg, this can be useful when building a web UI and an API within the same application. The user may group the session and CSRF routes into a web group, and possibly the rate limiter in the api group.

Rate Limiting

A latest rate limiter middleware is presently included with the framework, facilitating to easily restrict the number of requests that a given IP address can make to a route over a particular number of minutes. For eg, to limit a route to 60 requests every minute from a single IP address, user may do the following:

Collections Wildcards

When utilizing a collection and wanting to pull out data, user can now pass a * as a wildcard:

Eloquent Global Scope

In earlier versions of Laravel, global Eloquent scopes were complex and error-prone to implement; though, in Laravel 5.2, global query scopes only require to implement a single, simple method: apply.

Database Session Driver

The database session driver now covers user_id and ip_address so user can easily clear all sessions for a given user.

Hence, Laravel helps the application to stay alive and relevant utilizing established software development patterns. Using Laravel framework is definitely beneficial to your business from technology point of view. 9series Laravel developers have successfully developed software solutions employing Laravel framework. Our efforts are always focused towards exploring business problems, identify it and fix it using the latest & right technologies such as Laravel. You can contact us for your Laravel Development Requirement.

Image source- Laravel blog

 

Unmatched Coding with Python Development

Without any doubt, Python is one of the most talked programming languages in the world. It’s gearing up due to it is simple to learn – many beginner programmers start their career with Python. The Python's syntax is very alike to that of the English language, with the exception of a few extra characters here and there, but surely “future Python” is going to be easier to learn and use for daily tasks.

Community

Python has active user groups all around the globe, commonly named PUGs, and does major conferences on every continent except Antarctica. The Python community is marvelous at sharing detailed resources and assisting beginners to learn in programming with the language. Python is backed by lots of helpful resources, but it is a bit tricky to hunt that resources.

Libraries

There are many libraries and tools for Python that can be used based on the app domain to get the task done in short time, for eg, we can use a GUI framework like wxPython, PyQt, PyGTK or PySide to develop rich GUI apps. We can use a web framework like TurboGears, Django, web2py, or Zope2 to create web applications. Whatever the domain may find python frameworks to assist in any task. For becoming skilled at all-in-one language, a developer should begin learning Python language that has the ability to expand web applications, data analysis, user interfaces, and many more, and frameworks are available for these tasks. Python is utilized by companies, mostly which can evaluate vast data sets, therefore, this is a huge chance to learn it and be Python programmers.

Programming Without Coding Technology (PWCT) is a freely available open source general purpose visual programming framework. Inside PWCT, programmers can create programs utilizing visual programming without typing text-based source code. This appears to be an attractive feature for novice programmers, but PWCT is designed to take in mind some of the expert programmer requirements (Customization and Productivity). When python developers create applications using PWCT, can edit/see the generated source code (optional). PWCT system contains more than one visual programming language (Python PWCT, Harbour PWCT, C#PWCT, CPWCT & Supernova PWCT) from the name of the visual language. Python programmers can guess the text-based language which is used in the code generation process. Python PWCT is a visual programming language which generates source code in the Python programming language.

Python Web Development Frameworks.

There are various Python web application frameworks available for free are-

Django

Django is the python web development framework for perfectionists along with deadlines. Python web development with Django is perfect suited for developing database driven web applications with amazing features like automatic admin interface and a templating method. For web development projects which don’t require extensive features, Django may be an overkill due to its strict directory structure and confusing file system.

Flask

It is a simple and lightweight solution for a freshman who want to get started with developing single-page web apps. This framework does not support for validation, data abstraction layer and several other components which include various other frameworks. It is not a complete stack framework and is used only in the development of small websites.

CherryPy

It highlights on Pythonic conventions so that programmers can create web applications just the way they would do it utilizing object-oriented Python programming. CherryPy is the base template for another successful full stack frameworks like Web2py and TurboBears.

There are so many other web frameworks like Pyramid, Pylons, and Bottle etc. but regardless of the fact, whichever web framework a python programmer use, the challenge is, he/she should pay close attention to detailing on the tutorials and documentation.

So what does it take to bring Python skills to further level? Like for any other skill, all need is to get a lot of practice, to connect with a similar-minded companion, and to learn the ropes with passion. We at 9series provide Python Development services with hourly based facility to hire.

 

It’s Not just SEO Anymore, It’s Online Marketing

In the world of marketing SEO is not a new term but for digital marketers (specifically for international marketers) definition has changed. Let's have a what was SEO and what is SEO?

What was SEO?

All major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing have basic search results, where web pages and other content such as local listings or videos are displayed and ranked based on what the search engine considers most appropriate to users. Payment is not involved, as it is with paid search ads. It is commonly seen that Internet users don’t click more pages to search results (in simple terms, you will click on any of the results which appear on the first result page), so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The higher a website easily ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user.

What is SEO?

Apart from traditional SEO techniques social media and technological advancement are more responsible for the drastic change in SEO tactics development. After a boom of social media and smartphone technologies, users have handy access to the internet all the time. It’s a noteworthy point for every marketer that Online marketing and social media help to have a better and instant relationship with the potential customers. These channels will help to engage with the customers directly wherein a strong relationship created and they become personally interested in brands and services. This will further enhance the brand visibility and loyalty among customers. It will be a great advantage to have active internet audience to spur up the marketing activities and will also give higher RoI for the marketing budgets.

Business owners must understand that offline and online marketing are becoming co-dependent nowadays. People's behavior can affect presence online and offline, also impact brand and overall marketing results. Digital marketing has influenced people’s purchasing power these days, and one of the most significant strategies being implemented is right SEO(Search Engine Optimization) strategies. SEO is one market which consist ton of tools to help. Whether for researching or competitors’ backlinks, trying to identify keywords and occurrence terms, or simply trying to monitor how the site is ranking. Here are the most prominent SEO tools and platforms on the market.

Some key features of search engine optimization platforms nowadays:

• • Keyword Research & Ranking Keyword research is the initial step to a successful SEO strategy. Those successful with SEO know what people are searching for when discovering their business in a search engine. The keywords use to drive targeted traffic to their products. Start brainstorming latent keywords, and see how the competition seems by practicing Google AdWords Keyword Tool. If some keywords are too competitive then go with long-tail keywords (between two to five words) than will be easier to rank. The longer the keyword, the less competition for that phrase in the engines.
  • Scraping & Internal Analysis – Tools that analyze site hierarchy, page speed, page construction, and other related issues are fantastic for correcting issues which might be less obvious but that may cause great problems in ranking.
  • Content sharing – It’s right, content is king. Search engines have stated that creating quality content is the best way to not only for keyword ranking but also create positive user experiences. Content is the perfect grail of search engine optimization. Great content answers the question which users are seeking for, ranking on search engines is very difficult. It will also go a long way with making sure that it will educate the consumer, and will lead to boosts sales. So as a business owner, one can market their content in form of presentations, infographics, case studies, press release, blog, videos, newsletter, etc.
  • Email marketing – A targeted email marketing campaign could be all that stands between transforming one-time buyers into regular purchasers. An experience in designing and implementing targeted email campaigns, results in a positive ROI for customers.
  • Social Media Marketing – Nowadays, Social Media is the online marketing superstar. Social media marketing is more than having a LinkedIn or Facebook Page and a company Twitter account, it is about commitment and two-way communication. There is no one size fits all strategy while social media can work for small, medium and large businesses similarly. From establishing brand awareness and efficiently managing customer service to reputation management and communicating the advantages of a new product, social media can help to convey the message in a unique way.
  • Pay Per Click – For some business, Pay Per Click marketing may be a suitable method of gaining targeted traffic. This is where one can create an ad or multiple ads and bid on related keywords. This makes it a good short-term source of business for websites that have just launched or for those which may be new to the SEO process. Whilst PPC is frequently used in this way, for some enterprise, it may go hand in hand with SEO on an on-going basis, or for those not likely to invest in SEO, can be a standalone revenue stream.
  • Link Building – If a site is linked with such sites with poor search engine authority, will result in a terrible time ranking. Being able to analyze the quality and volume of the links that are pointing to domains is imperative for advanced troubleshooting of competitive analysis and ranking issues.
  • Data Analytics – Strangely missing from many of these platforms is the ability to aggregate, tag, categorize, data mine and develop reports across huge sets of keywords.

It is high time to give importance to online marketing as this will help business owners to reach out a large set of customers. It is essential to make use of all forms of medium to have effective marketing and advertising. Social media and networking sites play a crucial role in improving the brand visibility. There are infinite people stick to the computer screens and this number is expected to go higher at a faster rate year on year.

When it comes to perfect online branding and marketing pitch, don’t fly blind. It require the team efforts which requires people from diverse expertise such as content writer, branding developer, marketing executive, search engine & social media optimizer. Get experts to help you with this. We at 9series are having all-rounder SEO experts, who are the champ when it comes to SEO & online marketing. We are delivering highly efficient result over traditional SEO services with our Online Marketing expertise.

 

Top 7 Strategies of Mobile App to Achieve Success

Mobility has permanently changed the way business operates. It has multiple types of devices (tablets, wearables, phones) and the volume of devices which connect to the company’s enterprise resources. There are over six billion smartphone subscribers across the world and rapidly expanding Internet of Things (IoT) market promises to join tens of billions of devices to the Internet in coming years. These mobile and IoT devices have new operating systems which change how we built services and software. These technological shifts also contribute an enormous opportunity to change how every company will employ and transact business with its customers, employees, and partners. Here are some strategies for mobile application to make it successful.

1. Keep User Awake: Continuous Interaction

If your application is not able to interact with the users, it won’t stay much longer on the fingertips. Using Social Media Integration and push notification can help with that. This is a must have kind of feature for any new or existing business mobile application.

2. Encourage Users To Rate Your App

A good rating in the various application stores is more prominent than ever. Usually only people who want to give an app a low rating end up on application store rating pages and rate your app down. One can encourage users who love your application to rate by pointing them in the right direction. The second time a user uses your app is a perfect time to ask them to visit the rating page for an app on the app store of your choice.

3. Stunning Interface: Device Specific UI/UX

Rewarding your users with a prominent responsive design is the key to winning their hearts. Device Specific applications tend to adjust their design dynamically according to the screen dimensions of the device they are running on. Remember that a wise way to build a great user experience in the app is to count on a development platform that assists you with an automatically adjust the UI model and thereby generates an optimized experience on all the devices from a single code base. For that perplexity, you can seek the help of an expert mobile app development company that are well-versed with responsive development tools.

4. Don't Fly Blind: Add Analytics to Your App

Implementing analytics using several third party analytics libraries like Parse Analytics, Game Analytics, Flurry Analytics and Google Analytics to name a few. Analytics providers have their private Android, iOS, and REST SDKs that you can blend. Track significant data points like how long a user uses your application, which screens do they use the most, and where they may get stuck and leave your application. Most important of all is to take appropriate actions on the information that the analytics deliver you. Iterate and test. Iterate and test.

5. Optimise your App-Store Search (ASO) and Online Marketing

Choose a utilitarian name, descriptive, or a unique title (or a combination of all) to help your app succeed. Stay aside from trademarked terms. A sound description that lays out what your application does, who your adversaries are and what technologies you employed to build, it will help people find your app. Building your application is just the beginning. Distribution is also key to a successful app so, make sure if your application runs on both Android and iOS that you extend it to the largest app stores like Google Play, Apple App Store, Samsung Apps, and Amazon Appstore. Each store has their individual submission method and guidelines, but the extra boost in users you get is worth it. In-app sharing on social media and other relevant platforms will also help you with online Marketing of and optimising usage of your application. It’s a best practice for any application to have this sharing feature in order to increase the users.

6. Welcome Suggestions: Set Feedback System

Implementing user feedback is not just necessary but mandatory for that matter. If you are providing your users a platform to engage with, then they definitely deserve an opportunity to express their mind and convey their unbiased evaluation of your app. Make the process as easy and quick as possible for the users. Consider it as you've got another specialist to identify problems and work around to make your app even better.

7. Context Sensitive: Adaptive Behaviour

Recent trends suggested that applications are expected to be aware with context. It uses various device capabilities i.e. BLE, Location, Proximity etc. Apart from that application & user state plays very important role. Further, it can lead to adopting resource capabilities i.e. Hardware, Network, Server Response etc to improve upon user experience. For example, 4G network, the High-end device user may expect better user experience; compare to moderate network with the low-end device.

These are some tips to be taken care before developing an application and helps to make it successful. 9series is one of the leading mobile app solutions and services provider company in India. We develop and deliver services for iPhone/Android applications. We are complete IT solution provider company and handover unique and robust application beyond client expectation with advisable suggestions.

 

Intensify Student Experience with Educational CRM Software

Universities and Schools have a reputation for being decentralized, with various departments operating individually of one another. This decentralized structure has arguably been nourished for decades in aid of faculty independence and the resulting academic freedom which drives new thinking and research. In addition to serving several functions, many of these departments also build and manage their own IT systems and communication channels.

In the face of current economic conditions, institutions are frequently using Constituent Relationship Management to develop and manage their base of both students and potential donors. For the latter, this comprises mapping out highly defined fundraising campaigns, applying targeted messaging to particular audiences, managing the campaigns in real-time and generating incremental methods to encourage progressive and recurring donations. Using new Constituent Relationship Management systems, automation and techniques for revenue enrichment represents a considerable change in many schools, who are shifting from paper-based systems, or possibly Excel spreadsheets, to an integrated database approach and measurement system.

CRM for higher education is a huge market offering solutions to many colleges and universities. It is an efficient tool for schools that needs to develop and maintain relationships with current students, prospective students, and alumni. Features of CRM include analytics, mobile access, web portals and campaign management.

The other major use of CRM in higher education today, is to track applications and admissions process and communicating with students once they register. The advantages of Education CRM are:

• • Reduces cycle times
  • Increase Institutional Revenue
  • Errorless Lead tracking
  • Intensify Parents/Students Satisfaction
  • Centralizing students recruitment databases
  • Constituent management has the latent to streamline and automate much of the enrollment paperwork which runs a modern university.
  • Email automation
  • Facilitating institutions to do Follow-ups on students inquiries
  • Helps to get reports, graphs and analysis of the provided data

For example, a properly-managed student system makes it effortless to keep track of who has applied to the school, systematically advance their application and automatically coordinate with financial aid, housing, scholarships and other similar programs. For most schools, this can draw major savings in time and labor.

Another relevant use of CRM is to provide a more self-service abilities for students in dealing with the administration. With the CRM software, web and apps, the schools can let students get the information they require online and manage routine jobs unassisted. This simplifies students life and takes a load off administrators.

With powerful solutions for customer relationship management and feedback management, we help to automate, systematize and perfect student and alumni-facing processes. 9series is one of top educational CRM development company in India. We provide Education Software solutions for Private and Public Schools, Educational Institutes, and related educational entities, enabling them to influence targeted prospects with Information Technology. Simple and easy deployable Educational mobile app and web-based software implements all the features to privately manage data and functionality to obtain the right information at the right time. Our solutions benefit in decreasing capital and operational costs with higher performance utilization.

 

Proximity Sensors to Direct Guests

Beacons are small, usually low-priced devices that detects more accurate location within a limited range than Wi-Fi and GPS proximity. Beacons transfer small amounts of data via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) ranging between 5m to 70m (230 feet) depending upon the beacon type, and, as a result, used for indoor location technology, although it can be used outside as well.

The basic thing that any customer would do upon entering the hotel is to check-in, that is made far simpler utilizing beacon technology. The hotel staff receives all the relevant information which results in check-in process being as smooth as possible (information such as name, ID, room preferences and other notes that may have been received from a former stay). This enables the staff to attend to customer's needs in a much more personalized manner, making feel like a V.I.P.

People use various apps to book their hotel stay, check-in and choose the favorite hotel room before their arrival. The Beacon development can be a true game changer for a seamless customer experience. The hotel front desk can be notified as early as the guest arrives at the gate, basic steps can be taken to ease out the check-in formalities and enter keyless accessing to a phone. While at close proximity to the room-door, Beacon can activate unlock door automatically. Here, the Beacons can be employed to permit access to specific people in specific areas of the hotel. Finally, the guests can use it for room services, special coupon distribution, Room preferences, check-outs, rewards, feedback and so on. Through an interactive self-guided tour of the hotel or fed with notifications while roaming around the hotel premises the guests can be guided – giving required directions/prompts, one can easily understand without the need of unnecessary intercommunication with the hotel staff

Due to increased penetration of Mobile enabled technologies, the acceptance of Beacon will surely grow. There can be many applications that may not be visualized and can take a prominent place in the future of Beacon. It’s just a matter of time before we learn to adopt them and prepare ourselves for exploring the unexplored! Many IT Companies are available to hire as Travel & Hospitality mobile apps developers in India to get a unique and robust application.

9series is one of the Top Travel & Hospitality solutions provider company in India. We develop and deliver best Travel & Hospitality Solution to increase your business traffic using the latest technology. We not only deliver the solution but give appropriate suggestions to increase your business revenue. Drop us an inquiry, we will be happy to speak with you.

 

Beacon Technology is Giving New Edge To The World of Marketing

What is buzzing Beacon Technology?

Beacons have been buzzing since 2013 when Apple first launched iBeacon technology. iBeacon is Apple's innovation of Bluetooth low-energy (BLE), a wireless technology to develop a unique way of presenting location-based information and services to iPhones and other iOS devices. iBeacon landed in iOS 7 that means it functions with iPhone 4s or later, iPad (3G and onwards), iPad mini and an iPod touch (5G or onwards). It's nothing much, the same BLE technology is also congenial with Android 4.3. and beyond. Apple’s support for Bluetooth (iBeacon) has brought the technology on the map and driven its growing adoption.

How it works?

• Using the Bluetooth low energy signal, beacon activate an application to deliver targeted offers which are meant to encourage customers to purchase more during their visit to a restaurant, business or retail store. Beacon marketing can also be utilized to compensate frequent visitors and convey helpful content to consumers during their shopping or wait for service. You should be know how one can use beacon in their business here is some examples for that.
  • Access control / Security
  • Asset Monitoring / Tracking
  • Auditing / Task Management
  • Augmented Outdoor Advertising
  • Automated Check-ins
  • Content / Media Delivery
  • Coupons / Offers
  • Feedback / Rating
  • Customer / market research
  • Indoor Mapping
  • In-store Customer support / service
  • Online / Offline retargeting

Uses of Beacons in Various Industries:

• Beacons are a beneficial new twist on location awareness, tying an uncommon ID to a small device that applications can use to discover not just location but another relevant context about the beacon's location or what it is connected to. It seems like that this new and best way of connecting with customers. Let's see how beacons technology is helpful in different fields:
  • Beacons to Retails: This technology has tremendous potential to intensify the shopping experience, making it quicker and effortless for customers to access the products and its information that they are looking for or offering special discounts to loyal shoppers. It can also give retailers with invaluable data about their customers’ shopping habits along with the activity of their staff, enabling them to make advancements to the store layout by recognising store flow, maintaining service standards and operations which will benefit both customers as well as retailer.
  • Beacons in Education: Beacons can be used as digital bulletin boards for courses or structures for students. Can know if your child is in class, he is skipping or if he arrived late or not. Teachers can publish information about their classes or exams.
  • Beacons in Banking: When a customer walks into a branch, their device would give a welcome message. It will display the summary of services; maybe a personalized map of the office, or possibly a special offer reflecting the customer’s personal bank history. Customer analytics can be used further by the bank, as they can collect data on traffic patterns to assist them manage their business.
  • Beacons in Marketing Research: Market research firm strength is steering the use of beacon tech to gather automated data regarding shopper interests and behavior for its retailer customers. To date, a handful of its consumers—typically, huge supermarkets, and other retailers—are serving as test sites for the technology, that consists of beacons installed around store counter, entrances and sale counters, as well as an application to help the company collect data about the locations and actions of shoppers who are members of its research panel.
  • Beacons in Entertainment: Using Beacon in Entertainment, Customers will likely be able to receive rewards in games they play, depending on their activity within a shop. When passing by a cinema, receive vouchers or information about it. Augmented laser tag games.

Our 9series team of beacon application developers has wide expertise in developing beacon application for various industries such as hotels, malls, education institution and many others. Our design experience, that is vigorous and engaging for your customers. Our ibeacon developers develop smart mobile apps which are compatible with beacon technology to deliver value added content to customers, across the world.

 

Augmented reality: The Future of Virtual Technology

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are the hot trending talk in the tech ecosystem. TechGiants are promising advancement and investors are gushing capital into the place.

Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. Internet Giant, Google has been showcasing its G-Glass since 2012 and continues to invest in Glass, contrary to widespread belief. Microsoft, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony have proclaimed their own smart glasses. Nearly every major TechGiants in Silicon Valley invested in Magic Leap, and the emerging players such as Atheer, Recon, Vuzix, Epson, Meta, Optinvent, ODG, and others are also developing smart glasses. The Space is on fire.

Must be wondering, why Augmented Reality is buzzing in Silicon Valley? Let's understand what, how and why of Augment Reality.

What exactly Augment Reality is?

To define in layman's words, Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology supplementing the real world with media and digital information, such as videos and 3D models, superimposing in real-time the camera view of your Computer, smartphone, tablet or connected glasses.

The key to Virtual or Augmented Reality is the software. Augmented reality programs are coded in special 3D AR programs such as FLARToolKit, Unifeye Viewer or D'Fusion. These programs allow the developers to bind contextual digital information or animation in the computer program to an Augmented Reality Marker in the real world.

How Augmented Reality works?

On a technical level, the methods through which AR is achieved can ordinarily be split into two broad divisions: Markerless and Marker-based. What are Markerless and Marker-Based?

Let's understand. Marker-based System first:

This technology uses real-world representations as a stating point for device graphics to be superimposed. For instance, a 2-dimensional imprinted marker is placed in front of a webcam. Then, the Computer renders this symbol to overlap an on-screen visual as if it were right on top of the marker in the physical world.

How Markerless System works:

By contradiction, this technological method has given birth to ‘mobile augmented reality’, signifying use of the technology with gadgets such as smartphones and tablets.

This approach uses a unification of an electronic device’s compass, accelerometer, and location data (such as GPS) to discover the location in the physical world, which way it is aiming and on which axis the device is functioning. This Position data can then be correlated to a database to ascertain what the device is looking at, and thus allows machine information/graphics to be displayed on-screen.

Augmented reality Can be used in:

• Education
• Medical
• Real estate
• Military
• Marketing
• entertainments
• Cinemas
• Museums

Augmented reality is transforming the way we see the world -- or at least the way its users perceive the world. Every single move is shaping Augmented reality more precise and accurate, giving a whole new experience to the users at least by transforming the way they see the world.

As you can conclude now, Augmented Reality is the new future of marketing, education, entertainment, medical, and will cover more industries in near future. 9series in one the IT solution provider company who is having expertise in mobile application development based Augmented Reality. Feel Free to contact us, to find best suitable IT solution for your company.

 

Things You Need To Know Before Going For iOS 9

The iOS 9 update for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch brings a lot of improvements to iOS users. Along with it, it also brought some problems. Keeping those complaints in mind, we discussed some of the most common iOS 9 bugs with possible reasons.

1. Apple iOS privacy FAIL: Again Lock screen unsafe Description: A 'serious' security flaw has been discovered in iOS 9 which enables anyone to gain access to users' personal data. To replicate, just enter four different incorrect passcodes, and enter three digits of the fifth. Then, tap the home button to fire up Siri as you enter the fourth. [Now] anybody can access Photos and Contacts on the device.

2. Performance Hit: Description: A device was running smoothly later in iOS 8 builds yet iOS 9 has made the platform feel sluggish. It's only a small difference - maybe milliseconds though it gets in the way of smooth operations, especially for actions which are burned into muscle memory and don't depend on much conscious thought.

Possible Reasons: Maybe it's because of the OS is running for the first time it generates file caches.

3. Crashes and Freezes: Description: Again it has swapped security in iOS 8 for instability in iOS 9. This issue is mostly limited to a third-party application but not entirely and so is likely something that will be sorted out with application updates still nonetheless it's an unwelcome speed bump.

Solution/Fix:Developer should replace those deprecated methods with the new methods.

4. Apps Flash A Black Screen prior to loading: Description: The title much says it all. Fire up an application and sometimes displays a black screen for a second or so before the app goes on to load. When combined with the crashes and freezes it results in a momentary feeling of "has this crashed or not?" which is annoying.

5. Cut/Copy/Paste Pop-ups are erratic: Description: Sometimes this works perfectly while other times it's a challenge to select a small text and get the cut/copy/paste pop-ups to appear. Many times it happened where it had just not been able to get them to display at all.

6. Keyboard Hide and Seek: Description: The keyboard appears to be erratic, popping up and down by its own. It's precisely bad when trying to fill out web forms, can make accidentally tap on a link and move away from the form that loses whatever user has typed.

7. Jittery Orientation Control: Description: Coming across some weird behaviour with regards to the way iOS 9 handles device orientation. One of the weirdest is when an application shows in one orientation, but switching to the Home screen triggers a shift to the other orientation. This means user wildly shaking his iPhone from one to the other orientation for the past few days.

8. Beware of upgrading Notes: Description: iOS 9 gives the option to upgrade Notes to the new smarter Notes which allow annotations that is very cool. But by using Notes on Mac and it if is not running OS X 10.11 El Capitan, then upgrading it on iOS will make them unsupportable till it is not upgraded.

Possible reason: Because in iOS 9 the notes have much more functionality than the older version so whenever adding some pictures or adding something except the text in iOS 9 notes app, it will not identify the device that do not have the notes application with the same capability(e.g OS X Yosemite).

9. Alarm/timer not buzzing/Notifying on the scheduled time: Description: Some user complains that they have set an alarm for a particular time, but iPhone did not buzz/notify them at all.

Possible reason: Maybe there is code error that do not trigger the notification sometimes for the user.

Our professional and experienced 9series iOS team can help you to understand these issues in details and guide you in how to avoid the same. Being a technology service provider company, we at 9series help to develop end to end iOS iPhone/iPad Application.