Difficulty finding talent

Finding those exceptionally skilled software engineers has always been an ongoing challenge. Just take a look at almost any agency or tech company in and around the capital and you would notice what seems to be an endless round of vacancies for developers, testers, analysts etc. This shortage has been escalated by Brexit and COVID, with the surge in job vacancies and a significant decrease in applications per job compared to pre-pandemic. According to Reuters, there were 1 million job vacancies in August of 2021, which was at an all-time high.

With a very limited local talent pool, some companies have been recruiting and sponsoring talented engineers from abroad. In addition; Google, Facebook and makers of Snapchat, Snap Inc. have recently announced the expansion of their UK (London) operations with the creation of 3,500 new jobs. We would have to assume a fair few of those would be tech jobs, further increasing competition in an already crowded space. 

This could all be a major boon for contractors, freelancers and off-shoring, all of which have their positives and negatives. 

Outsourcing certainly does present the greater rewards through bigger returns on investment, more stability and the greater potential to scale up based on needs in the longer term. It also has the biggest challenge, especially if you are a start-up or SME who may not be in a position to work with the larger (and potentially safer) managed services providers of this world.

What to look out for when outsourcing a software development provider
Quality

How much control do you have over the skills and experience of the developers? Are you involved in the recruitment process? Will you retain the same resource and skill level throughout the contract? What allowances are made for training and continuous professional development?

Security

With GDPR in place, fines up to €20 million or 4% of a company’s global annual turnover, if you are not compliant, data security needs to be a priority. You must be particularly vigilant of processes in place to support quality and always look to companies who have accreditation such as ISO 27001 to credit claims about data security.

Communication

How easy is it to communicate directly with your developer? Software development is usually an iterative process with changes and refinements made throughout the project delivery process. The ability to communicate directly with your development team is vitally important. What processes are in place for feedback and meetings? Are you able to (remotely) join stand-ups?

Timezone

Dependent on your requirements, you will definitely need to have as much of your working day crossed over with your chosen supplier. There are obvious advantages to working with companies in a different timezone. For example, batch tests can be done on a daily bases and reports will be ready and waiting when your local team arrives. On the other hand, support technicians can come online when your local team clock off. 

Legal recourse

If things go catastrophically wrong, what are your options? We recommend where possible, choosing a supplier with an established local presence.

Talk to us

Ardent are an ISO 27001 accredited data and software solutions company, headquartered and established in the UK since 2008. We have the flexibility to deliver a full service or complement and support your internal resources with a full-time extended team. We serve a range of clients from well-funded start-ups to large enterprises.

If you are looking to resolve your data engineering or software development challenges, please get in touch.

The post Finding skilled, experienced software developers appeared first on Ardent.

At Ardent, we have used Microsoft Power Platforms to deliver fully integrated, automated software solutions. Some of the solutions we have delivered using the Power Platforms include a HR onboarding and performance management system for a leading food manufacturer client, as well as, a case management system for communication with clients for a leading accountancy and law firm.

Here we will look at Power Automate and give an overview of the suite including the benefits on offer and the limitations it has.

What is Power Automate?

Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow facilitates the automation of workflows to save businesses time by streamlining their processes. It helps businesses reduce manual, repetitive tasks to allow them to boost productivity and improve efficiency. Low code, drag and drop platform enables all users to easily build automated processes.

The great thing about Power Automate is that it enables the apps within Microsoft Office 365 to communicate with each other to automate processes, and this can be done easily without any expert technical or data engineering skills. However, with advanced skills, businesses can leverage the Microsoft Power Platform to enhance business processes further.

Benefits of Power Automate

There are several benefits that Power Automate offer if you are looking to automate and streamline your business processes and they include:

• Easy to use for beginners – Power Automate is built with beginners in mind so it is aimed at a variety of users who may not have expert technical skills.
• Advanced capabilities – Although, it’s made for beginners, as part of the Power Platform it can create powerful solutions with advanced capabilities.
• A high number of connectors – It can be connected to over 200 external connectors such as Facebook, Salesforce, SQL Server and Dropbox.
• Cost-efficient – Power Automate is considered cost-efficient, especially for its capabilities with the starting price of $15 per month per user.
• Automate and streamline processes – Businesses can reap the rewards of increased productivity in the workplace with automated and streamlined internal processes.
• No-code app builder – Adding to the ease of use, anyone can easily build an app without any coding knowledge making it easy to use for all employees.
• Easy integration with Microsoft Office Apps – Power Automate is easily integrated with Microsoft Office Apps including the most commonly used Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more.

Limitations of Power Automate

There are also some limitations to consider when looking at Power Automate for your business automation solution and they include:

• Restriction on number of actions – You are restricted to 250 actions per workflow. Although this may seem like a large number, this can be problematic when workflows have several loops.
• Only consecutive workflows – You are not able to take a step back in a workflow process. You can work around this with loops, however, this will require further work.
• Coding knowledge required for complex solutions – You will need coding skills and expertise if you are looking to build solutions that are more complex.

Ardent Power Automate services

Ardent’s highly experienced engineers have leveraged Microsoft Power Platform to deliver fully automated, robust software solutions to many clients. If you are looking to develop software to automate your internal business processes, get in touch to find out how we can help.

Explore our software development services.

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What is Power BI

Data is being produced at exponential rates every day. Businesses now more than ever rely on that data therefore; they need to be able to make sense of the data to make well-informed business decisions. Power BI is a data visualisation tool that enables businesses to understand, analyse and report on data. It has become of the leading business reporting tools in a short span of time to rival some of the biggest data reporting technologies such as Tableau. According to Slintel, Power BI has a market share of 12.86% compared to Tableau’s market share of 15.77%, taking into consideration the much shorter time it has been around, we can expect the technology to dominate the market in the near future.

Our engineers have worked on a number of data engineering projects leveraging the Power Platform technologies to deliver powerful data reporting and analysis platforms.

Benefits of the new Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is continuously evolving and as it stands today the software is much more powerful and robust and offers granular level customisation. It offers a number of unmatched benefits which is why it has gone from strength to strength in the market and include.

• Easy to use – It is considered easy to use as compared to its counterparts. It is suitable for a variety of users and does not require advanced data analysis or technical skills.
• Cost-effective – Offers a free version for personal use. Additionally, it’s a lot more cost-effective than Tableau in terms of pricing.
• Data source integration – You can access data from multiple data sources including Excel, SV, PDF, JSON, XML, databases, apps and more.
• Real-time analytics – Enables you to connect with data sources such as social media to get real-time analytics.
• Visual capabilities – One of the key selling points of any data reporting and visualisation tool is the stunning visual capabilities and Power BI does not disappoint. With easy to digest and visually impressive capabilities, it presents data so it can be understood through graphs, charts and more.
• Machine learning – Built-in machine learning features can help users spot trends and make educated, informed predictions.
• Large volumes of data – It is a powerful software tool that can handle huge volumes of business data.
• Highly customisable – Users can customise their dashboards, interfaces, reports to access reports they need quickly and easily, saving time and increasing productivity.
• Microsoft backing – It’s a relatively new technology, however, it has already secured a good portion of the business intelligence market share. With a powerful brand backing the technology, we can predict it will continuously evolve and improve with investment

Limitations of the new Power BI

There are some limitations you need to consider if you are looking at Power BI and they include:

• Messy UI (user interface) – Some consider the user interface crowded and messy rather than a clean look with fewer icons.
• Dealing with large volumes of data – You will be required to take out the premium package if you are dealing with large volumes of data.
• Slow data processing – Some have found that processing large volumes of data is slower than usual.
• Table relationships – It can fully understand simplistic relationships between tables, however, anything complex will require the creation of unique fields to avoid confusion.

Industry experts and what they think

Microsoft Power BI has been regarded highly by the likes of Gartner and Forrester. Gartner has recognised Microsoft as a leader in Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for fourteen consecutive years. Forrester has also recognised Microsoft as a leader for Augmented BI Platforms for Q3 of 2021.

“It is hard not to consider Power BI as your top choice for an enterprise BI platform.” – Forrester Q3, 2021 Report

Laxman Amrale, Data Engineering Expert at Ardent commented: “Microsoft first introduced the technology in 2014 and released the tool to the general public in 2015. Initially, it didn’t provide all of the capabilities for customised solutions and lacked the ability to peel away different layers. For example, you couldn’t leverage the data ingest portions of Power BI with custom visualisations, forcing exclusively the use of Power BI’s visualisation technology with no ability to customise it to client needs.

Now Power BI can be leveraged for all data ingest and can create custom data visualisations to render the information. We have complete control of the user experience with Power BI handling all of the data intakes. Charts can be directly taken from Power BI and integrated into our custom solutions.

With Power BI, clients do not require developers to add charts for them, they can use the tools to create the charts independently. Over time, Power BI data visualization has become much more powerful, robust, and customizable to specific needs.”

Explore our data engineering services.

Recent updates to Power BI

There have been some stand out updates that have evolved and improved the platform significantly and they include:

• Performance improvements to backup and restore operations for datasets in Power BI. Benchmark tests with 1GB, 5GB, and 10GB datasets show backups can now be completed up to 22 times faster than before, and the time required for restore operations can also be reduced by more than 30%.
• Public preview of new mobile formatting options. Now you can choose to have two separate designs for the same visual, one for each layout.
• General availability of Export Power BI report to file API. This API allows you to export Power BI reports to the following file formats: PDF, PowerPoint and PNG, by using a REST call.
• New admin APIs to retrieve email subscriptions and widely shared reports.
• Asynchronous refresh is now available for public preview. The asynchronous refresh REST API for Power BI brings built-in features for reliability, such as auto retries and batched commits.

Ardent Power Platform services

Power BI is a technology that has continuously evolved and improved over time. With a number of benefits it offers as a rival of Tableau and other business intelligence and data reporting technologies, it stands firm in the market. Our data engineers have worked with Microsoft Power Platform tools including Power Apps and Power Automate to deliver fully integrated, automated business intelligence solutions to several clients. If you are looking to utilise these powerful tools for your next project and are looking for credible, experienced data engineering experts, then get in touch to find out how we can help.

The post Expert insights on the new Power BI appeared first on Ardent.

Most organisations will not have the expertise in-house to build and develop their software. It can be difficult to find a partner that can provide you with the right people, the right experience and the right skills and expertise. However, taking into consideration key factors and asking the right questions will help you choose the right software development provider.

Technical skills

You need to make sure that you work with a software development provider that has the right technical skills to bring your vision to life. You need to get a good understanding of the technical expertise the company has to offer. For example, you may require technical skills in a specific programming language such as C# or Python, or a combination of other technologies. Does the company you may potentially partner with have a variety of skills and expertise on offer? For example, at Ardent, our team of software development engineers are trained and experienced in using world-leading, innovative technologies such as AWS, Microsoft and more.  

More on our technology partners.

Communication

Communication is vital for the success of a project. You need to work with a software development provider that has set up communication channels that will enable you to get in touch as and when needed and get a quick response. It’s also important to have various contact points, for example, at Ardent we have two contact points for all projects, a dedicated business manager and a technical account manager. The business manager ensures that client requirements are been fulfilled and the technical account manager makes sure that the day to day functionalities and delivery of services are in line with agreed terms. Another thing to take into consideration is language barriers, are the contact points fluent in your language? Some questions to ask potential software development providers if you are looking to work with them are: 

• What is the best mode of communication?
• Who are the contact points throughout the project?
• How quick is the response time?
• Is there any time differences that we need to take into consideration? 
• What are the escalation points if things go wrong

You may also want to consider if you require local contact points when working with a technology partner. For example, Ardent have offices based in the UK, US and India, offering clients local contact points to give them peace of mind.

Business culture

The business culture of the company you are looking to work with is also key. Do they have a culture and teams that match yours, are your views and ethos along the same lines? If a company inhabits a similar sort of culture, it will enable and facilitate a collaborative environment between your team and the software developers. As technology is always evolving and new technologies emerge all the time, you may want to find out how the software development company is keeping up with the changes. Do they ensure regular training for their developers? Do they invest in accreditations? At Ardent, ongoing training and development are at the core of our company culture, we provide a learning environment that enables our developers to improve and increase their skills.

Get to know Ardent.

Experience in successful projects

If you are working with a new partner, it’s important to note the experience they have and how many successful projects they have delivered. If a software development provider has experience dealing with a wide variety of clients, then they will likely be able to cater to your needs. Experience in projects and years in the industry will provide peace of mind and reassurance when it comes to choosing the right software development provider. For example, you may want to ask about client success stories to find out about the type of clients the company has worked with.

Read our client success stories.

Certifications and accreditations

A company will invest with a software development provider so they should validate any claims made on skills and experience. You may want to ask the software development company for any certifications and accreditation they have acquired. For example, Ardent has certifications in Microsoft and AWS. This solidifies any claims made by software development companies and developers because to acquire industry level certifications and accreditations the developers have to pass rigorous exams to earn their certifications.  

Security

Security is a concern for organisations across the globe and you will need to work with an organisation that places security as a priority. Your software needs to be built with robust security measures in place to prevent any data leaks that could occur. It is worth asking the software company about any experience working with sensitive data or the type of technologies they used to build secure software. Also, ask about any security certifications, for example at Ardent is an ISO 27001 certified company as well as acquiring and certification in Cyber Essentials.

Support and maintenance

You got a great piece of software, now what? Does the company offer post-project support? Will they be able to add any features or expand the software in the future if you require it? Companies that value your relationship and offer long term partnership opportunities are more likely to be able to provide you with any additional support required.

Ardent software development services

At Ardent we have worked with a wide variety of organisations across the globe, from local start-ups to internationally established companies. We have been providing bespoke, tailored solutions to help business face their challenges and achieve their objectives for over a decade. If you are looking for a trusted, credible and reliable software development provider, then get in touch to set up a discovery call. 

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