People invest in apps a lot. Just for a reference, people spent more than $85 million on apps in 2017, and this number keeps on rising. By looking at these amazing numbers, you can quickly tell that creating a mobile app and monetizing it could be a great way of earning huge revenue. There are several minimum viable product examples out there that have reached their maximum potential just by focusing on data analytics.

If you’re thinking about developing a paid app, then don’t expect to earn a lot as there are hundreds of free substitutes to almost every paid app, and people would go for them instead of yours.

So what other options can you consider for your app monetization? We have the answer. Data Monetization!
With the humungous amount of data being processed daily, developers and business owners have realized this non-traditional and yet innovative strategy for measurable economic advantage.

In this article, we’ll talk about innovative ways of data monetization for your app. But before we dig deep into that, here’s a brief overview of data monetization and how it can benefit you.

What Is Data Monetization

In simpler words, Data monetization can be referred to as leveraging data for a company’s economic advantage. Let me elaborate on it further for you.

Data monetization involves trading or selling direct access of user data to third parties to increase revenues or cut down expenses. It is especially helpful to marketers, telecommunication companies, advertisers, and research companies. They use these insights to gather solid stats and provide the right ads to the right audience.

Now for those who’re wondering if their data is being sold to third-parties for benefits, that’s not the case. Your personal information like name, age, address, interests, income, etc., are anonymous and secured. The kind of data that is being monetized usually includes

• Your device
• Devise Version
• Your mobile operator
• Your network type
• The screen size of your device
• CPU Core metrics
• Your device’s storage
• Country

How Can Data Monetization Benefit You

• It is a scalable and safe model of revenue.
• Unlike in-app advertisement, the data collection takes place in the background, so there is no effect on the user experience.
• You’ll get paid monthly for every user’s data who have agreed with data collection. The higher your DAU is, the greater revenue you can earn.
• Data monetization doesn’t affect your existing monetization models.

Now you have a strong understanding of what data monetization is, so here are some great methods of executing it.

Data Monetization Methods

Data As A Service

This is quite a straightforward approach for data monetization as the data is sold directly to the consumers. The data that is being shared is raw or anonymized, and the buyers could mine it for creating insights. Buyers cannot benefit from this data directly as they create these insights from themselves and use it further to reach the right audience for their business.

Insights As A Service

Now this one quite similar other than the fact that instead of raw data, insights are sold that are created by combining external and internal data. Either these insights are directly sold or provided in formats such as analytics-enabled apps to provide updated data. The insights are limited to specific sets of data or contexts that the buyer has purchased.

Embedded Analytics

This is perhaps the most progressive form of data monetization and provides the most value to those who purchase it. In this method, features associated with BI software are added, for example, dashboard reporting, data visualization, and analytics tools – to existing applications

Leveraging these integrations, product teams can build and scale custom actionable analytic apps and integrate them into other applications, opening new income streams and providing a powerful competitive lead over the others.

For embedded analytics techniques, you can use the Sisense platform as it is built to provide performance and agility with scale. Moreover, it lowers the TCO and offers fully customized embedded analytics solutions for specific needs.

Analytics-enabled platform as a service

Now, this is quite a flexible approach towards data monetization and provides notable value to the customers. In this method, analytics and BI platforms are leveraged to provide customers with highly-scalable insights and data analytics in real-time. They’re available both on-premises and on the cloud and are compatible with all cloud-based warehouses. In simpler words, the data can be used from any source and in any format. However, to get maximum benefits from cloud-based sources, you’ll need an expert setup and support.

Conclusion

Today, there are tons of methods for monetizing your app and earn revenues. However, using data monetization strategies have made this job much easier than ever. Since you understand how beneficial data monetization is for you, you can leverage these methods above to reap maximum benefits out of it.

The advancements today are gaining significant momentum. There is no doubt that the artificial intelligence is getting hold of technology that leading us to the new era of digital revolution. A major element of the artificial intelligence is machine learning that has proven to have an extensive impact on the future of security; the biggest example of which lies with modern virtual private networks (VPN).

VPN are now using a number of machine learning technologies including logistic regression, support vector machine, naïve Bayes and random forest (RF) classifiers. These technological integrations have set a new standard of cybersecurity and have played a vital role in the pulling off new solutions for VPN. The machine learning is expected to progress further in future. If you are interested in knowing the role of machine learning algorithm in making a VPN stronger, roll down your screens to have the whole read.

Working of a VPN

The information you share over a network could be easily accessed by the cybercriminals. Therefore, to keep your information secured, you need a proper safeguarded connection. If not, then your online activity could be tracked through your IP address and then your data will be under their reach through direct interference. A VPN in this regard prevent such attacks and provide secured and private online browsing.

A virtual private network as its name suggests, keep your online connection encrypted and private. It ensure that your network is impenetrable by the third parties thus prevents the data leakage. A VPN conceals your IP address and eventually making it impossible for a person to trace you. A VPN keeps your data and online activity private even from our internet service provider and other third parties.

Newer VPN Solutions by Machine Learning

As you read above there is no doubt in the fact that a virtual private network is the most productive way to keep your information safe. Not only it hides your IP address to prevent hackers to track you but also keeps your online activities private. Even a cheap VPN will do the needful in such a case. But when it comes to the security of acorporate, there definitely is needed a solid solution for cybersecurity. In such a scenario, one need to rely on the latest technology and this is where the role of machine learning comes in.

Machine learning basically teach a computer to make decisions using the relevant data. Being a method of data analysis, it is crucial for the computer to understand patterns without undergoing fully programming. The demand for machine learning therefore is very high as it automates analytical model building. It is a skill set that everyone needs in this digitized era.

Cybersecurity is definite to go through the process of constant change and evolution. This is why there is always a chance that your company is lacking some of the latest means of protection against cybercrime to keep your sensitive information secured. Machine learning algorithm allows the VPN to provide effective protection form online threats.

To get a full proof data security especially in coporates, machine learning and virtual private network goes hand in hand. They even have application in web security for ecommerce and digital marketing. Furthermore, a VPN integrated with machine learning is able to achieve accuracy up to 90%. It does this by developing a private tunnel over connection that is open. It basically encrypting and encapsulating everything that you send through this network. This way if anyone tries to interrupt your data packets, they could reach the content.

Your network may get infected by malware. These malicious pieces of software could even infect your device. These malwares comes in many types such as spyware, Trojan horses, worms etc. in case of infection, your data will be at risk regardless of your virtual private network connection. This is where the machine learning plays its role. It will help VPN discover malware variants to stay protected against them without the need of inputs from cybersecurity experts.

Furthermore, machine learning can also identify the viruses that are capable of invading and eventually taking over your network. The infection of such viruses cause slowing down of your internet and even makes it vulnerable for further attacks.

The internet is innately insecure and therefore you definitely needs protection while sharing files or communicating over the internet. A VPN service will protect and secure your activity. The designing of a virtual private network is processed in a way to send the data reliably in chunks. The method of communicating designs was not based upon securing the data. Instead, the design was to prevent failure.

Most commonly used applications such as web messaging, Facebook or email are built on the top of the method of communication. Incorporating some improvements and advancements for cybersecurity that are driven by machine learning, few of internet apps are secured. A VPN equipped with machine learning algorithms is great to stop the threat. Their application lies among a vast field such as marketing, research for foreign markets, researching the sites of competitors, accessing Google queries, ratings and much more.

The Bottom Line

As the data theft and raging hacking is on peak these days,the virtual private network is literally indispensible. Digital protection solutions were lagging behind for a while but now with the integration of machine learning, the security of a virtual private network is transformed at a rapid pace. Machine learning being the primary element of artificial intelligence is getting in demand for digital protection with each passing day.

Companies that are aware of the data theft and are conscious for their protection are adopting the latest virtual private network solution integrated with machine learning to gain the benefits of data protection. The multi-layer protection by the VPN and machine learning combo has no doubt become a necessity. Very soon will be witnessing newer technologies that will further revolutionize our way of living.

HR is a critical discipline, which is too frequently simplified and set aside. Importantly, human resource management is not about all internal issues that are resolved or show a beautiful work atmosphere in the presence of prospective candidates. Management of human resources is about creating the organization’s citizens. It is about maintaining employee involvement, fair market practices, and the overall wellbeing of the organization. With the help of an hr consulting/manpower company, the HR professionals are entrusted with recruiting the best talents for the company. Not only that, a human resources manager will typically have to take a look at every department of an efficient organization.

Every company has a lot to invest in the form of a human resource management system. It is highly economical, as the disengagement of workers costs every organization a lot of money.

Best 10 HR management tips to run an effective business

Check out the best 10 HR management tips to assist you in maintaining the engagement of your employees in your company. Continue reading to find out the fundamental elements, like being open to hearing suggestions on strategies, using social media to expand your network.

1. Empathize with the people

The key is to be tough, but at the same time be empathetic. You should be comfortable with the personal and professional lives of the workers as an HR professional. If an individual employee wants to retain discretion, you can leave them. Otherwise, at least knowing about the important personal and professional information is important for an HR leader since these details influence the everyday performance of employees at some stage or the other.

It is also important to be in daily contact with your employees as an HR leader or a specialist. Whenever they are in trouble and are unable to find a way or concentrate on their job, you have to be their shoulder to lean on. This is where your experience of HR and skills is helpful and useful in getting back your employees’ trust. It is, therefore, necessary to monitor the strengths and weak points of your employees in order to improve their performance as HR leaders.

2. Recognize your place

HR managers are every organization’s strategic business partners. As an HR Manager, your focus should be on talent management, employee engagement, creativeness, and business teamwork. This is all about effective control of human capital.

Therefore, you need to align your position with the business objectives and vision and develop an HR business plan that complements the company’s planning, which is guided entirely by performance.

3. Be savvy with tech

Today, knowing technical know-how and making working plans based on them is a must for any HR professional. If you want to integrate end-to-end HR software, you need to have technical skills. This is because to handle payroll, monitor leaves and attendance, manage employee records, taxes, scheduling, and more, you would have to know the different offers and functionalities of the HR application or portal.

4. Boost the network

Networking is the best way to increase your awareness and capacity and broaden your business connections. This is how you get to know other business professionals, how they navigate the HR practices, and how they work to ensure that their workers are satisfied, inspired, and willing to work more on a quarterly basis. With this understanding, you will have sufficient faith in engaging in the preparation and implementation of HR strategies in your company.

5. Stay organized

The greatest obligation of any HR leader and practitioner is to remain organized. You need to involved in scheduling interviews, engaging with applicants, assisting staff with their job and personal problems. You also need to assess and prepare business plans, perform on-time and fair assessments, and more. All this is only achievable when you remain coordinated and stay organized.

6. Leading by example

You must set company-wide examples as an HR leader or a practitioner by leading by examples. So, if you want your staff to be at work on time, you have to be in the office yourself before you meet them. If the organization as a whole requires its workers to act and govern their actions in a certain way, then as an HR chief, you must comply with these rules and encourage staff to do the same.

7. Document the entire process

Consistency counts, all the rest is secondary. If you would like to train and help others grow their careers, the sharing of the standard documents with them should be the primary task. New Human Research practitioners will be able to focus and deliver in the right direction as they learn more about corporate culture and processes using the document.

8. Hire individuals better than you

In most situations, the interviewee is being negated by the interviewer whenever they think that they attempt to play too clever. However, HR research shows that those who disagree with you will allow you to get a new view of your business and working community. The difference of opinion is, has to be in harmony with your company’s vision and goals.

9. On-boarding, training, and growth plan

A significant feature of creating a smooth candidate experience is to pay close attention to an employee’s onboarding, training, and progress. Since that individual is now surrounded by a new work environment, the first few initial months are critical for developing the newly onboarded employee. It takes time to relax and accommodate into a new environment. Therefore, helping them get acquainted with daily meetings, learning materials, and first-hand experiences is an important aspect of human resource management.

10. Be a cultural adviser

HR leaders are no less than consultants with technical knowledge. In order to maintain continuity in the work culture and ensure that the work climate is safe, they are the ones who develop HR policies for the organization and for their employees. It is also very critical that HR leaders see themselves as cultural advisors, who are interested in developing a great organizational culture for their workers.

Final words

Building healthy professional relationships with their staff is critical for HR leaders. A personal and emotional connection is what keeps them working and makes them better concentrate on their job.

Hope you find these 10 tips and tricks helpful in the art of management of human resources. Adopt these with the help of an hr consulting/manpower company with your normal working style to create a distinguished employer and HR brand.

Managed IT services are now in action for the last few years but have recently come to a point. Small businesses are taking full benefits of managed IT services and the technology they are offering.

Hire managed IT, a service provider to provide you with a single function called outsourcing and that you cannot handle in-house—the tasks like disaster recovery, backup, etc.

What is managed IT services?

Managed IT services is about the outsourcing of IT services for meeting your specific IT needs and functions. Managed It services is a company that fulfills your IT requirements and enhances your business operations and IT expenses.

Small businesses don’t have the budget to meet their IT needs, leading to security breaches. Therefore it is essential to hire a managed IT service. They are responsible for meeting your entire IT needs like monitoring, repairing, data handling, backups, recovery, etc.

Advantages of managed IT services

There are several significant advantages of taking the help of managed IT services. The benefits range from cost to security to flexibility, to scalability, to customer services, etc.

Here is the list of all benefits that you will get by outsourcing the MSP’s-

Cost-Effective

By taking services of an managed IT specialist co-op, you will be paying just for the administrations utilized and not for fixed pay rates for in-house IT staff, paying little heed to the proportion of utility.

An oversaw specialist co-op renders a particular and specific group of IT experts whose administrations are accessible on interest according to the association’s prerequisites. Aside from being opportune helpful, MSP groups outfits with a predominant arrangement of abilities and skill; You cannot obtain such specialization from an inside asset without strong pay rates and serious representative advantages.

Accordingly, re-appropriating administrations reduce down faculty expenses yet also permits you to spend a plan viably. It gives unsurprising month to month expenses to the arranged administrations, like this making costs of doing business more predictable and more straightforward to figure.

24*7 customer Service

With Service Level Agreements set up, you’re probably going to get more prominent client support, and along these lines, smoother and more liquid IT the board. Clinging to tight cutoff times and full division at their customers’ expendable, utilizing an MSP implies that issues react rapidly and vacations decrease. 

Not exclusively will you get incredible help coherence, MSPs additionally evaluate, review, and screen frameworks on a continuous premise to forestall more difficult issues emerging. With day in and day out administration, you can be sure that your framework is getting the most consideration and management conceivable all year long.

Less Risk

Since their agreement reevaluates them, they are continually hoping to create apparatuses and measures to improve your business. They’ll additionally decrease hazard with a large number of the things we’ve just referenced, yet also guaranteeing you meet IT security consistency with any medical care, business, or government guidelines. Being proactive about potential dangers is preferable and more affordable over getting somebody to fix an issue after it’s now happened.

Improved operational Efficiency

Sending an MSP to fortify your in-house staff is an excellent method to build your business activities’ proficiency.

As a company advances, IT service needs to deliver oneself to IT significance’s growing capability, which would fall past their assigned occupation jobs.

MSP’s help unburden the tedious yet essential IT assignments and exercises from the inside group’s shoulders, permitting them to zero in on crucial arranging commitment and creative undertakings. A reevaluated master group committed to keeping up and screen framework organization, ventures, and their workers liberated from worries over day-to-day administration and observation assignments.

Since MSPs are enhanced with prepared information on the most recent headways and with broad involvement with the foundation the executives, MSPs, when utilized prudently, would fill in as a supplement to your inside staff.

Business continuity

Is it true that you are at present squandering your consideration on IT issues instead of on center business? With a confided in MSP close by, you can continue ahead with your job while the IT specialists continue forward with theirs! You will not burn through anything else of your time, energy, and benefit on IT issues. You’ll additionally reduce pressures on HR. Reevaluating your IT implies that while you are utilizing the assistance, they aren’t your workers! So you will not need to stress over additional finance pressing factors.

Reduced Downtime

Overseen specialist organizations continually screen and keep up your IT foundation to diminish the probabilities for personal time. By utilizing proactive ways to recognize dangers and complex types of gear to impart security, MSPs are one particular approach to decreasing business interferences and increment profitability!

Expertise

By taking services of an managed IT service provider, you can have confidence that the entire office will be thoroughly prepared and qualified and manage various issues. From network safety to IT reviews and facilitated IP answers for far off help, and oversaw supplier will want to tailor your administration and utilize their broad information and experience to best comprehend and support your association.

Ontime Updates

The endeavors engaged with following and introducing updates and performing ordinary reinforcements may appear to be an extraordinary arrangement of responsibility on challenging work and extravagant obligation, especially for SMEs.

MSPs work as an immediate substitute to physical work accountable for overseeing updates and reinforcement for such SMEs whose assets focus on center income creating business activities.

Focus on core Activity

You might be missing a lot of important business hours by focusing on IT needs. MSP’s will deal with routine migraines of running your normal IT activities smoothly, and you can focus on your center errands better without agonizing over pointless IT issues. This sort of action also permits you to get too big business-level innovation for a portion of the actual expense.

Conclusion

Utilizing an managed IT services extraordinary method to improve your business profitability, cut expenses, and realize your IT framework’s ensures. Recruiting a Managed IT administrations accomplice encourages you to meet your IT needs substantially more productively. Your IT office turns out to be more proficient and spry to satisfy cutting edge business prerequisites.

What is PhoneGap?

PhoneGap also known as Apache Cordova is an open-source framework designed specially for mobile application development. PhoneGap is a software development framework by Adobe System that is used to develop mobile applications. It is the solution to a lot of mobile app developers’ problems, as it offers a streamlined way to develop an app from scratch. This framework gives developers the opportunity to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create complete apps, which will be considered as supreme applications once they are published for download on phone. While the framework cannot create every kind of application, it is useful for making mobile with full access to following features:

• Notification 
• Geolocation
• Compass
• Storage
• Network
• Contacts
• Camera

PhoneGap is an amazing cross platform framework, that lets the developers to develop applications that run evenly on multiple platforms like iOS, Android, windows and more. Now let us go through an excellent features of PhoneGap Frameworks

• Strong and Robust Backed – PhoneGap has a robust backend system that highly speeds up the development process and decreases developers efforts.
• Open Source – The PhoneGap community compiles new codes and modules which are available for free because of its open source license.
• Flexibility – It offers significant flexibility to the developers as they can develop any class of mobile application without any crucial efforts. Developers who have basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can get started with PhoneGap, there is no need to learn additional languages.

Why to Use PhoneGap? 

It is very essential for developers to know the reason why they should choose PhoneGap when there are so many frameworks available. Let’s go through some points:

• Cost Effective : If there is a shortage of budget and want to get maximum advantage with less investment then PhoneGap is perfect. One can write a single program for an application to run it on various platforms.
• Large community Base : The Cordova development community is one of the biggest communities and is growing continuously. There are plenty of examples and so many experienced members with good support. 
• UI Libraries improve the user interface : With UI libraries present in PhoneGap, the user interface of the apps and web pages are highly improved. This assists in providing a better visual experience for targeted users. 
• Easy sharing of Apps :PhoneGap allows users to share the app as soon as it is ready, by sending a link to friends and family. Recipients can download the app directly to their mobile devices without accessing the laptop. 

Advantages of PhoneGap

• Compatible on all platforms – An impressive uniformity can be maintained when the apps are developed for different operating systems. An app developed for iOS platforms frequently functioned and looked different from one developed for android platform. PhoneGap effectively nullifies this problem by giving the app an uniform look and feel across all platforms.
• Easy Development – PhoneGap works on HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. This makes it simple and easy for business owners to use their own firm’s development as all these browser-based skills do not require expertise or professional.
• Two advantages in one go – PhoneGap is the most popular cross platform. PhoneGap plays an important role in both business and development. By using PhoneGap, the business and developer products are on a roll within the shortest possible time to market less effort and less cash.
• Each application can act like a Native application – When PhoneGap applications take advantage of utilized properties and cell phone’s equipment then they work as native applications. They use some properties like geolocation, accelerometer, camera, etc. This system provides fabulous UX across all time. And in fact users will hardly realize that it is cross-platform.
• Simple to Work Plugins – The PhoneGap and Apache Cordova plugins help to expand native functionalities while developing applications.

Drawbacks of PhoneGap 

• Doesn’t Support Plugins with hook – PhoneGap doesn’t support plugins with hook, so at some point they can block with functionality. For example, WordPress has hooks that encourage developers to connect their code with the centre code base, plugin and themes in WP.
• PhoneGap may not align with Hardware Intensive App – PhoneGap with all its complications of plugins and APIs may fail to deliver while building up a game application. The developers of the games are possibly going to encounter ‘drop’ and ‘stop’ issues after messages pop-up from their application.
• Lack of UI widgets –  Users want native app experience but the due to lack of availability of compatible UI widgets raises a challenge for PhoneGap Developer. The PhoneGap frameworks provide limited pre-built UI elements and thus mostly they have to rely on external resources. This many times fails the delivery. 
• iOS development requires a Mac – The reason that iOS requires a mac in building iOS applications and this cannot be designed without downloading its SDKs which is mandatory in PhoneGap.
• Plugins could be outdated – The plugins in PhoneGap could be outdated, and this could obstruct with application functionality. For certain features, we don’t have related plugins.

Conclusion

As discussed above, phoneGap boosts up resourceful stages, which enable web developers to create code using current aptitude and send it to multiple stages. The PhoneGap hybrid technology is best for creating mobile applications that are cross platform compatible and are cost effective because the framework uses a single code base to build apps for a variety of mobile devices. When it comes to building multiple native apps that do not require heavily built graphics and animation and also don’t use native features, then PhoneGap is a great choice. 

Of all the different types of issues that a business might face, perhaps none can be as devastating as legal ones. This is perhaps because of how they can take a business by surprise and severely hurt its bottom line. As a business owner, protecting your business from litigation should be at the top of your priority list, even though research tells us that as much as 90% of all businesses are engaged in litigation at any given point in time.

The following is a list of seven potential legal issues every business owner could be faced with and how to handle them.

1. Intellectual Property: Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents
Intellectual properties like trademarks, copyrights, and patents are all essential elements of running a business and in some cases, can play a significant role in making or breaking that business if not handled properly. From being sued for infringing on a copyright or trademark, to earning vast sums of money from a held patent, there are numerous business and legal ramifications that a business could be faced with from improperly handling any of these elements.

More often than not, a business owner will unlikely be able to handle such matters on their own and will need the expert advice and guidance of a business attorney who also handles trademark issues.

2. Taxes
Taxes are unavoidable and every registered company has to pay them. To ensure compliance with all relevant tax laws that are applicable to your business, a business owner must have a thorough knowledge of which business taxes to pay, when to pay them, how to calculate the tax rate and amount, and more.

While some people often decide to avoid or evade paying their taxes, such actions can have dire consequences if it runs afoul of the law. Given that many people often find paying their tax burdensome, it behooves them to rather find what legal and legitimate options are available to them to reduce their tax obligation (tax avoidance,) rather than going the more illegal route of tax evasion. This without a doubt is something that an experienced tax attorney can help with.

It should be noted that anyone dealing with tax matters should always consult with an accountant. For one, they have the know-how and experience when it comes to helping you save as much money on the taxes that you may otherwise owe the IRS. For instance, they will be able to advise that a simple thing like creating an LLC instead of a Corporation for your business means that you will not be subject to double taxation that Corporations are subjected to.

3. Discrimination/Harassment Cases
Discrimination or harassment can be a serious problem in an integrated workplace with workers from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as social classes. A company’s ability to handle such complex human interactions can play a key role in limiting the potential damage that can be done if cases of discrimination or harassment are ever brought against it.

It is exactly for this reason that the company must be well equipped to handle co-worker disputes when they arise. Holding regular meetings and feedback sessions with staff will allow for the “policing” of these transgressions and ensure that it does not occur in the office, or that it is nipped in the bud as soon as it does.

4. Signing a Commercial Lease

While a growing number of people are starting to run their businesses from their homes, therefore not needing to lease an office space, the fact remains that the vast majority of businesses still operate from leased commercial space. Thought must therefore be given to the needs of the business in terms of office space, amenities, infrastructure and layout of the building, and much more, to make sure it satisfies the operational needs and regulatory requirements of the business.

Signing a lease puts a business owner into a fixed arrangement with the building owner for a specified time period, often involving a substantial amount of money. It is, therefore, preferable to seek professional help in reviewing both the facility you are considering leasing, and the attached lease. Doing so will ensure that there are no unfavorable terms hidden in the contract while making sure that the property meets all legal and/or regulatory requirements before you sign.

5. Employment Agreement with Non-Competes

A non-compete agreement is a written legal contract between various parties (oftentimes an employer and employee) specifying that the one-party will not enter into or start a business similar to that of the other party. The non-compete agreement lays out binding terms and conditions about the employee’s ability to work in the same industry and/or with competing organizations upon employment termination from the current employer.

Employers benefit from non-compete agreements because they keep a former employee from sharing company knowledge, trade secrets, client lists, potential clients, strategic plans, and other information that is confidential and proprietary to the employer with competitors.

Employees on the other hand benefit from non-compete agreements because they receive something of value in return for signing the non-compete. In most cases, the item of value is the job offer. A promotion or raise in return for the signature also qualifies as something of value.

However, it is not impossible that some terms in a non-compete might be unfair, or perhaps even outright unlawful, therefore a potential employee must be sure that he or she is not being put in an unfair situation by signing such a contract.

6. Non-disclosure Agreements

A business owner will often need to use one of two types of Non-disclosure agreements (NDA)- a mutual or general NDA. The general non-disclosure agreement will usually stipulate that only one side can share confidential information with the other side. On the other hand, a mutual non-disclosure agreement states that each side may share confidential information with each other.

An improperly drafted NDA that leaves a lot of scope for (mis)interpretation, which could then lead to litigation, is perhaps one of the main reasons to use professional legal help in getting such document drafted, to ensure that it adequately serves the purpose for which it is needed, as well as protecting the interests of all parties involved.

7. Vendor Contracts

Subcontractors and vendors help businesses boost productivity, and oftentimes at a more cost-effective rate than full-time employees. Sometimes, they are simply unavoidable. Some of the things that a vendor or a subcontractor agreement will outline include:

• The scope of a project
• Payment terms
• Terms and conditions.

A properly written contract agreement can help reduce the risk of dispute because it defines the relationship and sets clear expectations that both parties can consult as the job progresses. And even when a dispute does arise, such a contract will provide the basis upon which mediation or litigation will be based, barring any other external considerations. This is exactly why each party to a contract must read and properly understand all the terms of a contract, including any fine print, before signing it. Otherwise, consult with a contract lawyer for assistance.

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the eCommerce industry is rapidly booming, now more than ever. There are an estimated 12 million to 24 million eCommerce stores worldwide, but only 1 million of them make more than $1000 a year!

Hence, there is plenty of room for growth for eCommerce stores around the world. If you want your eCommerce store to stand out amongst the millions of other stores, you should follow certain best practices that will increase the chances of your eCommerce store’s success.

Let’s look at some of the best practices you must follow and the mistakes that you must avoid to create a successful eCommerce site.

1. Simplify your Payment Process

Smooth payment experience is the primary expectation of most buyers. How many times have you decided not to purchase from a website simply because you were not sure of their payment process? Plenty of times, I’m sure! You can simplify your eCommerce store’s payment experience by:

• Offer risk-free payment options such as money-back guarantee and easy return policies.
• Make your payment process hassle-free by reducing the number of steps and increasing the number of payment options.
• Disclose any additional costs upfront. Try not to add additional charges such as taxes or duties during the last step of the checkout process.
• Ensure that your payment pages load quickly (preferably within 3 seconds) to stop your users from getting frustrated.
• And most importantly, ensure that your website and payment gateway are highly secure. Use an SSL certificate or Wildcard SSL(for Unlimited Subdomain) for your website and take all necessary security measures that safeguard customer data privacy.

2. Prioritize SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enables your website to rank on the 1st page of Google’s organic search results. This can be highly beneficial for your eCommerce store as around 49% of buyers start their journey from a search engine.

Perform keyword research for your website, and optimize your product pages and content for these keywords. Start blogging on your eCommerce website and implement content marketing strategies for your content. This will be super-useful for your website’s SEO as it will bring in a lot of traffic for the initial stages of your sales funnel. Also, build backlinks for your site using strategies such as guest posting, email outreach, broken link building, etc.

3. Adhere to Web Accessibility Guidelines

Around 20% of Americans are known to be disabled in some way. This means that 1 out of 5 visitors will leave your website if they encounter accessibility issues. Moreover, numerous eCommerce sites, both small and large, have been filed with web accessibility lawsuits because of non-compliance with ADA regulations. Hence, it is imperative that you adhere to web accessibility guidelines for your eCommerce site.

The frequently changing accessibility guidelines and numerous product pages on your website can make it challenging to keep up with web accessibility compliance at all times.

An AI-based automatic web accessibility software can be the best solution to save your company from expensive web accessibility lawsuits. On top of that, it’ll open your store to more revenues from web surfers that could not purchase prior to making your website accessible.

Such tools will scan your website for accessibility issues and fix them automatically.

4. Build an Email List

Did you know that effective email marketing can yield up to 4400% ROI for your eCommerce business? Many eCommerce companies overlook the possibility of email marketing. You can avoid this by taking proactive steps today.

• Collect email lists and build a base of email subscribers.
• Do not always send promotional emails. Instead, share your blog posts or other valuable content that add value to your consumers also once in a while.
• Offer special discounts to your email subscribers.
• Always personalize your emails. Segment your subscribers into different lists based on demographics, buyer journey stage, interests, etc. and send personalized emails to each list. This will rapidly improve your conversion rates.

5. Offer Easy Navigation and Searchability

Easy navigation around the website and ease of searchability are no brainers for eCommerce websites. Complicating these will definitely leave your visitors frustrated and result in increased bounce rates.

Hence, offer intuitive navigation options such that all the pages on your website can be accessed within 2 to 3 link clicks. Offer enhanced searchability using features like auto-complete.

6. Improve your Website’s Speed and Performance

Website speed is super-important for your eCommerce store. Ensure that all your web pages load within 3 seconds or less. Implement strategies such as page caching, browser caching, JS and CSS minification, and lazy load for images to improve your website’s speed and performance. You can check the speed of your website using Google’s Page Speed Insights tool.

7. Use High-Quality Product Images and Videos

Low quality, blurry, and inaccurate images are a huge no for modern-day eCommerce sites. In fact, studies show that 33% of buyers prefer to view multiple photos and 60% prefer a 360-degree vision of products before making a purchase!

Provide top-notch experience to your website visitors by adding high resolution and accurate images to all your products. You can take your UX up a notch by adding demo videos for your products.

8. Add Comprehensive and Accurate Product Descriptions

Accuracy of product descriptions is again crucial for improving your eCommerce sales. When potential customers land on a not-so-popular eCommerce site, they are likely to have a lot of objections before making any buying decisions. Providing thorough and accurate product descriptions can remove such objections to a great extent.

Ensure that you include all the specifications and features of products. Also, ensure that the information you provide is 100% accurate.

9. Ensure that your Site is Mobile-Friendly

It’s no news that most of your website visitors use mobile devices to browse and make purchases from your site. 82% of internet users in the US have used mobile devices for shopping online. If your store is not mobile-friendly, then you are missing out on a lot.

• Ensure that your website design is responsive and adapts to all screen sizes.
• Take efforts to reduce mobile page load speed.
• Ensure that all the elements of your site are the same for both the mobile and desktop versions.
• Use Google’s free test to ensure the mobile-friendliness of your site.

10. Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to build credibility and popularize your eCommerce store. Unfortunately, very few are taking advantage of this strategy.

Analyze and make a list of social media influencers, thought leaders, or celebrities relevant to your industry. Reach out and collaborate with them by campaigning on major social media platforms where your target audience tends to hang out.

Such influencer collaborations can significantly add to your eCommerce store’s credibility. You’ll gain quick popularity and will ultimately achieve massive success.

11. Personalize the Buying Experience

Personalization is vital for attracting new customers and retaining them as loyal customers. You can personalize your eCommerce website by gathering information about the users’ demographics, interests, buying habits, etc.

Using these data, you can provide an ultra-personalized shopping experience to your customers by customizing your home page based on recently viewed products or featuring products that users of similar demographics tend to be more interested in.

You can also consider using an AI-powered fully-automated eCommerce personalization and conversion optimization platform like Dialogue that generates personalized messages automatically based on your audience’s specific preferences and sales patterns.

The platform tracks and analyzes user behavior on-site to provide the best possible custom journey that’ll increase the likelihood or purchases.

To Conclude

Building and running an eCommerce store can be quite daunting for many store owners. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost amongst millions of other eCommerce sites.

By following these strategies, you have a chance to stand out and beat your competitors with ease. Hence start your journey towards building a high-successful eCommerce website today!

As a programmer, you would know exactly what technical skills you should learn to have a steep career growth. But are these technical skills enough? Of course not!

Professional and soft skills might not have a direct impact on your learning, but they do impact any programmer’s career significantly. Unfortunately, such non-programming skills are often overlooked by programmers.

Today, being skilled in your programming niche is not enough. To survive and thrive, you also need to develop strong relationships with people and build your personal brand with the help of digital marketing. Both of these are not possible without learning professional skills.

In this article, let’s look at some of the essential non-programming skills that you need to possess as a modern programmer.

1. Communication

As a programmer, you can only be as good as your communication skills. Without the ability to communicate your thoughts and listen to others, your success will be limited. Communication doesn’t just refer to a good command of your language. There’s a lot more to it.

In your day-to-day life, you’ll have to interact with clients, fellow-programmers, program analysts, solution architects, managers, stakeholders, and the list is endless. If you are not able to express your thought process and opinions in the right manner, there might be a lot of misunderstandings.

Lack of communication skills might lead to the development of wrong solutions, and your voice might get lost amongst the crowd. Hence, good communication skills will always help you to progress a couple of steps further than the other programmers.

Good listening skills are also an essential part of communication. With good listening skills, you will be able to understand and grasp what your peers have to say, and you’ll be respected more in your workplace.

2. Openness

In your career as a programmer, you would have faced many challenges and situations where hiding somethings might seem to be the better solution. You’d also have faced situations where you found yourself hesitating to put across a point.

As a programmer, an important skill to develop is being open about your thought process with others at your workplace, while being polite. Not expressing yourself and holding back on things may lead to unnecessary conflicts and misconceptions.

Also, not being open about things can seem right at the moment, but might lead to disastrous consequences later on.

Hence, always know what level of transparency is expected from you at your workplace or with your clients. And, try to stick to it no matter what. To start with, being open might be a little difficult for you, especially if you are an introvert. But, over time, it’ll become an easy habit.

3. Empathy

Empathy is also a must-have skill for modern programmers. This is because, as a developer, you are at the core of building any design. Hence, working with empathy can prove to be helpful to develop applications that encourage inclusivity and user-friendliness.

It is easy to get caught up in your own programming world. But, when you are developing a piece of code, try to empathize with the users and think from their point of view.

For instance, if you are a SuperOffice CRM developer, you ought to give thought to the usability of the tool and how the target audience would be impacted by your code. How user-friendly is the design you are implementing? Is there a better way to go about it?

You should also think about accessibility. Accessibility and inclusivity are things that can be inculcated right from the development stage. Empathizing with disabled people will help you develop more thoughtful and sought-after applications.

Empathy is also needed when you are working with your clients, your peers, your managers, and other people who are involved in your work. Just thinking about why they do what they do, can help you make better decisions and have harmony at your workplace.

4. Leadership

As a programmer, you’ll be faced with various situations where leading other developers and team members would be essential. As your career progresses, you’ll have to take up some leadership roles in your workplace. Hence, leadership is also an essential skill to acquire as a programmer.

Right from guiding fellow-developers, training others in your expertise, sharing your opinions, to reviewing other developers’ codes, leadership skills play a role in every step of your career. Hence, you should start focusing on developing leadership skills right from the initial stages of your programming career.

Patience, confidence, decision making, self-awareness, interpersonal skills, integrity, are a few of the skills that will help you emerge as a good leader.

Final Thoughts

Remember that these non-programming, but essential know-hows are necessary for the growth of your career as a successful programmer. These skills will brilliantly complement your technical skills and give you the much-needed nudge in the right direction.

It is also good to have in mind that practice makes perfect. Unlike technical skills, these professional skills cannot be perfected with the help of courses and training.

You have to be self-aware and practice these skills every single day. And, over time, these will essentially become a part of who you are. So, take inspiration from the ideas in this article and work towards making these a part of your programming life.

Artificial intelligence and facial recognition both have become quite popular among industries for enhanced security. Facial recognition technology is enabling companies to track their customers in order to prevent fraud from happening. Either it’s a financial industry or online gambling industry, the applications of facial recognition are numerous. Artificial intelligence and facial recognition are not only protecting customers and companies from scams but also automating processes. There is no industry that can not benefit from the growing technology of AI and facial recognition. 

Below are the top 7 companies that are making their mark in the AI sector. So let’s dig in:

Accertify
Accertify, Inc. is a subsidiary of American express (It is a financial services corporation). Accertify provides services related to fraud prevention, chargeback fraud management, intelligence devices, and various getaway solutions to global industries. Accertify helps businesses around the world to identify and eliminate frauds pertaining to transactions that would, on the other hand, provide a frictionless experience to customers during and after onboarding. Not only this Accertify’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning system helps online businesses to evaluate transactional patterns to identify crimes such as account takeovers, payment fraud, etc. It also provides customized solutions to its customers. 

Shufti Pro
Shufti Pro offers an AI-based identity verification solution including KYC and AML services. It allows businesses to verify customers using: document, address, age verification followed by facial biometric authentication and ongoing AML checks to prevent money laundering activities within financial institutions. Shufti Pro’s Saas product offers a multilingual platform and the ability to perform verification from more than 3000 document types and is available in 230 countries. Recently, Shufti pro has introduced video KYC, which uses the applications of facial recognition, liveness detection, and AI to identify the real identity of individuals to prevent sams. Shufti Pro has also received BIz award 2020 in the category of best customer services. 

Gridsum
This company is a leading provider of AI-based solutions for global industries and governmental agencies in China. It also provides cloud-based big analytics solutions to its customers. It is built on the foundations of a distributed computing framework. Based on its real-time multi-dimensional correlation analysis, the company helps customers to make informed decisions after gaining new insights within their data. The goal of this company is to assist big corporations and government organizations to be more productive by making informed future decisions.

Third eye data
Third eye data, like the above-mentioned companies, also provides AI-based software designed specifically for security cameras. It offers a very versatile software with remarkable features to address various issues across networks. The third eye’s solutions are helping the retail industry in improving its services. This security product can prevent retail businesses from incidents such as theft detection and can be easily integrated with the existing CCTV systems. The company was founded in 2016 and have 11-50 employees working for it and is located in London, UK.

Data Robot
DataRobot is an AI-based platform that automates entire data science processes. It offers various core products of automated machine learning, machine learning ops, and automated time series. The products have the ability to solve complex problems and caters to all business sizes. Managed AI cloud, private AI cloud, on-premise AI cluster, and hybrid AI cloud are some of the models available for deployment. The company was founded in 2012 and has around 1000 employees onboard. Lenovo, Panasonic, and Accenture are some of their biggest clients. The company is located in Boston, USA.

Sertis
It is one of the most renowned companies working in the field of data science and AI research. It is working with some of the tech giants namely Microsft and google to build custom solutions for driving business growth. The remarkable team of engineers, data scientists, and Artificial intelligence are collaborating together to build cutting edge technologies according to each business’s needs. The focus of the company is on the technologies of machine learning, Artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and data engineering among others.

Wise AI
Wise AI specializes in KYC and smart city solutions along with providing AI-based products and services to customers and businesses alike. The goal of this company is to make lives better and easier for individuals and businesses in the ASEAN region. Their Facial recognition software offers a biometric system that analyzes facial features for identification. It can also check the liveness of individuals through liveness detection using 3D models and measure a package for it’s box dimensions.

Google India Digital Services operating the Google Pay app, has informed the Delhi High Court that it is legal to share transaction data of the customers with third parties. It is possible with the prior authorization of payment service providing (PSP) and NPCI banks.

Before a bench of Justice Prateek Jalan and Chief Justice D N Patel, this report is submitted by Google in its affidavit filed in the response to a PIL looking for action against Google Pay for supposedly violating the RBI’s guidelines linked to data storage, localization, and sharing.

The next date for hearing the case is on November 10 by the high court. The reason is that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not filed their replies yet. In an affidavit, Google has challenges that under the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) technical guidelines, approved by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). An application such as Google Pay is allowed to share the transaction data of the customers with the third parties and group companies without prior permission of PSP and NPCI banks.

It has also stated that Google Pay can store the normal data of the customer such as name, address, email ID, and transaction linked information according to the guidelines made by NPCI and not payment sensitive information such as UPI PIN or debit card number. It has been claimed that the sensitive data of the customer payment can be stored just to servers of the PSP bank.

The affirmation was filed to answer to the petition made by advocate Abhishek Sharma who has wanted a direction to Google not to allocate any data from UPI switch with more parties. Google has challenged that it was meet the terms with the NPCI procedural guidelines which administer the functioning of third-party application providers (TPAPs) such as Google Pay.

It has also claimed that the appeal was not maintainable as Sharma has accessible to him numerous interchange remedies such as the customer care characteristic in the app or contacting the NPCI according to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007 or asking RBI to work out its decision-making authority.

Google has additionally contended that there are additional TPAPs such as Google Pay, but the appeal has been “selectively filed” favored it.

In his appeal, Sharma has also sought after a direction to Google to provide a responsibility to not store information on its app under UPI bionetwork and additionally not to share it with any third party which includes the parent of the holding company. The appeal also claimed that the company was storing the sensitive personal data in breaking of the UPI procedural strategy of October 2019, which permits the data to be stored just through PSP bank systems and not through the third party application.

Google has withdraw the claim, saying customers’ reimbursement sensitive data is stored with the Google Pay and PSP banks to access it as per the guidelines. Moreover, it has even denied the claim that it accesses the location of the customers’ to increase revenue from providing the best personalized and targeted advertising opportunities to promote.