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Embrace the indispensable features in the Zoom clone app

Amid the pandemic, people mostly heard words like social distancing and lockdown. They stayed indoors and worked from home. Adopting the new normalcy, they shifted to video conferencing apps for business meetings to interact with their team members virtually. There is no surprise that a video conferencing app like Zoom becomes more popular among business people within a few days. And, Zoom is one of the most downloaded apps from the Google Play Store during the lockdown.

As Zoom is a video conferencing app, it will let people conduct meetings or sessions through video and audio calls. Apart from business meetings, this app is also preferred in various sectors such as education, religion, sports, government sectors, and so on. Additionally, people use this app to have a video chat with their friends and family members.

A Zoom like app can be developed using the Zoom clone script as it is an economical and cost-effective solution. One of the major benefits of using this app is that it is 100% customizable with multiple features. Make sure to collaborate with a trustworthy mobile development company for Zoom like app development.

Incorporating essential features in the Zoom clone app

While developing the Zoom clone app, you have to consider some features and functionalities to make your app compete with other video conferencing and succeed in your business. Adding advanced features makes your app unique. Despite this, you should not miss adding the required features. Below are the most important features that a video conferencing app like Zoom must possess.

Registration

Ensure that your app registration process is simple as users who install the app feel it more convenient to sign up with the app. You have to give both manual and automatic registration. It is up to the user’s choice to decide which registration process to prefer.

The manual registration will let the user enter their email address or mobile number. The automatic registration will facilitate users to signup/register with the app using their Google account or other popular platforms.

Most importantly, make sure the authorization process is as simple as it can be.

Synchronization of contacts

Chatting with others in the app is possible only when contacts are synced with the app. Therefore, provide the option to sync the user’s phone book with the app. This enables users to find others easily using their phone numbers. It is easy to integrate the Google Contacts API into your app.

User profile management

This feature will let users manage and edit their profiles. While incorporating this feature in your app, make sure the information they provide is organized in a structured way. Also, allow your app users to leave some fields blank as it is not compulsory for them to specify.

Video and voice calls

Obviously, it is a video conferencing app. Apart from offering the video call feature, offer voice calls as these are the basic functionalities of the app. The video call’s quality should be clear and the audio must be very clear and loud enough to hear. This feature is the essential one to focus on as it covers the entire function of the app.

Screen sharing

This feature you should not miss while developing the video-conferencing app as it is essential for giving online tutorials, streaming games, watching movies, presentations, and much more. However, users can use this feature for their official and personal purposes.

Group calls

In recent times, many businesses depend on video conferencing apps for conducting team meetings. Therefore, group calls are as essential as one-on-one video calls. This is one of the main reasons for the success of video conferencing apps.

Push notifications

Users receive messages about the new/unread messages, calls, and update notifications via the app.

Virtual background and hand-raising

Business professionals need to have a professional background. Using the virtual background feature, users can change their background according to their preferences.

During a virtual meeting, it is not good if anyone interrupts the conversation all of a sudden. In such circumstances, individuals can express their urge to talk using the virtual hand-raising feature. This feature is helpful for business professionals as it prevents many people from talking at the same time.

Chat

Unstable internet connection is the one most common problem experienced by many people. In such a situation, people can prefer the chat feature through the app. Sometimes, people use this feature during meetings.

Video call preview

This feature facilitates users to enable or disable the video before they join the video call. It is up to their choice.

Video recording

It allows users to record the online meeting and save it on the cloud or local device. Meanwhile, you should not provide access to unauthorized people for security reasons.

Mute participants

This feature is used by the host who initiates the meeting. The host can enable this feature when they do not want other participants to talk in the middle of the meeting. Based on the host preference, they can mute one or more participants who attend the meeting.

Closing note

The need for video conferencing apps has surged to a greater extent overnight. It is projected that the demand for this will not go down. Therefore, considering the Zoom clone app development will be beneficial and you can make a profit revenue from your app in the long run.

What is FinTech and Why is it Important?

Financial Technology, aka FinTech is the implementation of innovative technologies to bring disruption in the banking and financial sector. It consists of a new form of banking and a financial system. What is FinTech and why is it important is a big question nowadays because it is the current trend and everyone wants to know about this. Many companies offer different kinds of digital products for the financial services industry; the most common one is e-wallets.

According to IDC’s research, global FinTech spending is projected to grow at an enormous growth rate over the next 3 to 4 years, in the past, the spending grew from $462-million in 2014 to $5.5-billion in 2018.

People use FinTech applications for various financial activities like money transfers, depositing a check, and raising money for start-ups. All these facilities make the FinTech applications the most preferred means of accessing financial services.

FinTech companies are able to create an advanced banking and financial ecosystem like driving financial inclusion in developing nations, providing financial assistance to the MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises), Enhancing customer experience and transparency. FinTech innovation has so many active areas like:

1. BlockChain2. Cryptocurrency3. Cybersecurity4. RegTech5. Open Banking6. Smart Contracts

So now you know what FinTech is and why it is important. Let’s discuss how FinTech companies make money and help businesses to grow.

How FinTech make money?
Making money is the main thing that every business wants to do for themselves.I’ve already described what FinTech is and why it is important, so now know how FinTech apps help your business grow and make money.

As you know, customers always get attracted to free trials, some FinTechs try to provide their customers with free trials of their app. This users test the app’s effectiveness and innovative features. You can charge your users for further use, after they’ve completed the free trial period; this will increase your customer base and build trust between you and your potential customers.

If you want to make good money, you can do this by having the best FinTech apps developed. So many strategies are available for making the best app in Tech Market like:

1. Subscription2. Robo-Advisors3. Peer-to-peer lending4. Market maker rebates5. Advertising6. Crowdfunding7. Crypto

By using these revenue streams, you can make good money for your FinTech business. Some of FinTech will use only a few strategies for app development, some use all, or some maybe stick to a particular one. You can get your app developed in any way you want, but the most preferred thing is using the maximum number of strategies mentioned above to earn ample money.

In the FinTech app, it is essential to have direct revenue from your digital online users. There is no need for third-party integration in your FinTech app. Customers across the globe have become more comfortable working with FinTech apps because they satisfy users’ requirements and bring operational efficiency for businesses.

How much is the FinTech industry worth?
FinTech is a combination of technology and innovation to provide financial services through various means. FinTech companies can offer many services like fund transfer, P2P lending, crowdfunding, and payment services.

The FinTech industry is worth a lot because it is used to bring financial inclusion in areas where banking and financial infrastructure is not so vivid. Hence, the market size of the FinTech industry is increasing continuously.

Based on data provided by The Business Research Company, the worldwide FinTech market reached a value of nearly $111,240.5 million in 2019, having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9% since 2015, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2% to nearly $158,014.3 million by 2023. Also, the market is predicted to grow to $191,840.2 million in 2025 at a CAGR of 10.2% and to $325,311.8 million in 2030 at a CAGR of 11.1%.

According to a research by Statista, in 2018, approximately 70 percent of senior banking executives said that collaborating with FinTech to create a new service was an important and essential opportunity for the banking sector.

The FinTech sector has rapidly grown. Every banking and financial institution wants to invest in FinTech development. The yearly profit of global venture capital financing in Financial Technology companies increased and doubled between 2017 and 2018, though it demolished in 2019. Furthermore, it increased again in 2020.

The worldwide growth of FinTech is dependent on its growth in individual markets, which differs greatly. As of February 2020, North America was the most popular location for FinTech start-ups. However, FinTech adoption rates in different financial sectors show that U.S. consumers lag behind Chinese consumers.

Source: Statista

These statistics clearly show how fast the FinTech industry is growing.

Why is FinTech so popular?
FinTechs are thriving consistently because of their fundamental strategic combinations between technology and finance. Market realities encourage short-term thinking, and incumbents in the market are robust and resistant to change.
FinTech technologies are flourishing because they are innovative regarding technology and employ a forward-looking business model. They also help banking and financial institutions take care of customer-centricity, simplicity, lack of legislation, and many more.
FinTech is in trend because it provides solutions for fast and inexpensive payment cards, whether online or offline.
Examples of most popular FinTech applications:

Lending Club
Nerd Wallet
Robinhood
Wepay
Stripe
Square, Inc.
How does FinTechs Work?
FinTech evolved very quickly around the world. Financial technologies continuously vary from application to application, a project to project, and seamlessly work on this process. FinTech apps make use of advanced technologies like Blockchain, Machine Learning Algorithm, Artificial Intelligence, and data science to streamline the banking and finance operations.

Regulatory technology is dubbed as “regtech,” It’s designed to navigate the complex world of compliance and regulatory issues of industries like FinTech.

RegTech helps Tech Companies in solving challenges arising from a technology-driven economy because of Automation. It use big data and Machine Learning Technology to reduce risk to a company’s compliance department by offering data on money laundering activities.

FinTech Works on these kinds of complex systems to provide security and proficiency to your business. FinTech should practice onIt refers to integrating technology into offerings by financial services companies to improve their use and delivery to users. It mainly works by decoupling offerings by such enterprises and creating a new marketplace for them. FinTech funding is consistently on the rise, but regulatory problems are plentiful like GDPR, JOBS Act, PAyment Platforms, E-sign Act, EFTA, and many more.

What is the future of FinTech?
Future of the Fintech industry looks amazing and growing rapidly on the back of the rise of start-ups in the Financial Technology industry, penetration of mobile phone users, continuous build-up of the digital infrastructure and overall streaming of the financial process in many industries.As the banking and financial services world is undergoing a radical transformation, here is a list of 6 key trends that are most likely to enhance the future of the FinTech industry.

1. Blockchain and BigData2. Regulations3. OPMS (One platform, Multiple Services)4. Communication and Consumer Education5. Investment services

In a recent report, by Research and Markets, as of March 2020, India, alongside China, accounted for the highest FinTech adoption of an enormous rate 87%, out of all the world’s rising market. FinTech offers a lot of benefits and the potential for its inclusive future.

Conclusion
FinTech development will eliminate data breaches, keep you up with regulations, exceeding customer expectations, keeping up with technology. incorporating AI into Their Firms, and can easily organize big data. FinTech brings increased exposure to regulatory requirements, sanctions, and legal actions.

The rise of FinTech has provided a lot of possibilities. Banking and Financial institutions can offer more attractive services than ever with very least costing.

Ultimate Guide for Expense Manager App Development

In this world of digitization, nobody would like to dig through a stack of receipts to track and manage their expenses. Still, it is vital to keep track of personal finance, since saving is an important matter of financial stability.

Personal expense manager apps are the best remedy to make personal finance handling efficient and effective. Personal finance management apps like Money Manager Expense and Mint deliver substantial value to the users by streamlining the expenses. Considering the number of downloads that they have on app stores, it can be derived that expense manager apps are trending nowadays and it is therefore worth investing in expense manager app development.

In this article, we’ll discuss the best approach to expensive manager app development and the features that you should incorporate in your app. We’ll also learn how to calculate the expense manager app development cost.

But first, let’s understand the market trends:

Current Market Scenario
A recent survey of 1,039 US millennials by Credit Karma, discovered that most of these individuals (almost 85%) feel too burned out to think about and deal with personal finances. This presents a huge opportunity for personal finance manager apps to tap in with a blue ocean business strategy.

The Existing Players
The app stores already have a few successful apps that are dedicated for personal expense management. Still, there is a room for more personal finance apps when considering the increasing global demand. The following are the top 5 expense manager apps in 2021:

Money Manager Expense & Budget
Money Manager is the editor’s pick on Android play store and is the #1 personal finance manager app. The app operates on a double entry bookkeeping accounting system. The app allows users to define the type of expense and mode of payment, which ultimately reflects in the expense visualization charts. The app also allows users to manage their debit and credit cards within the app.

AndroMoney
Once recommended by Google Playstore, AndroMoney is a personal finance manager app that supports multiple currencies. The app gives users an option to visualize their spend data via multiple charts. As the app is based on the cloud, the users can access their profiles from any device.

Mint
Mint is a free money manager and financial tracker app that even allows users to check their credit scores. The app allows users to create several spending goals i.e. transportation, leisure, food and beverages, rent, etc. having access to the data from each category allow users to become more aware of their spending habits.

Although I have a couple of more expense manager apps that are worth looking into, I’ll skip to the next part where we’ll discuss several other things that you should know before you opt for money manager app development.

Banking Apps are entering the market
Conventional banks are increasingly adopting innovative technologies to improve operational efficiency and offer new product/service lines. Modern banking apps incorporate many features that help users manage their finances. The budgeting and expense management is also one of the features that banking apps utilize to increase customer retention.

For example, Alliant Mobile Banking App has an expense management feature that allows users to track where they’ve spent their money. This increases competition for your app idea.

AI-powered virtual assistants steal users
In addition to the Banking Apps being your competitors, there are some other apps that fall into the FinTech ecosystem, which also compete with personal finance management apps. Apps related to messaging and payment integrated AI-powered chatbots can be very effective in helping users with finance management. These virtual assistants track user’s spend, offer budget options, and provide personalized assistance. I recommend you to consider implementing chatbots into your expense management app. Plum, Digit, Cleo are among the best FinTech chatbots that you can keep in mind when analyzing these features.

Target user base is getting younger
Around 26% of the world’s population is under 15. For that matter, many FinTech apps are targeting a younger audience. Greenlight, BusyKid, Plan’it Prom are among popular apps that educate teenagers about managing their personal finances.

Crypto is the future
With the rise of cryptocurrencies, it has become essential for FinTechs to consider support for digital currencies during expense tracker app development. You can gain competitive advantage, if you allow users to track and manage their digital currencies such as bitcoin. For example, Mint users can easily manage and track their Bitcoins. Some other solutions like Coinbase and OSOM specifically focus on managing and trading crypto currencies.

Features You Should Incorporate
Gamification
Although gamification was considered to be a gimmick a few years ago, it is now an integrated part of mobile app strategies for several industry verticals. It’s not uncommon for people to think of money as a game. Banks often offer prize-linked accounts, where instead of giving interest, the bank encourages customers to deposit a minimum amount to obtain aggregated interest.

The similar concept can be applied to the expense management mobile apps. You can offer several deals in return to your users for meeting their goals.

Personalization
Every individual has their own financial goals. With personalization, your app users will be able to create their custom spending goals. Nobody likes generic functionality. In fact, the personalization feature will improve user retention. Also note that the personalization shouldn’t be limited to finance handling. You can also allow users to personalize notifications and several other things in the expense manager app.

Virtual Assistant
Among several other applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Chatbots or virtual assistants are the most suitable use cases of AI for money manager app development. By analyzing user’s spend habits and financial goals, the virtual assistants can suggest areas of improvement. A virtual assistant helping in finance management is effective to keep users on track.

Bill Organization
Bills organization by week, month, and year will empower users to keep track of their past spends. The users should be able to search bills by category, status, payment method, description, or tag. You should also allow users to download the bills in CSV, HTML, PDF, or Excel format.

Financial Goal Setting
As stated previously, the financial goals for every individual are different. Some may want to reduce their spend on food while others on liquor. Allowing users to customize their financial goals will make them rely on your expense management app more.

Notifications
Every app has the notification feature, with the result of this being users receiving tons of notifications on their mobile phone. It becomes challenging for them to attend every single notification, considering the high stream of notifications from several apps. Users often disable notifications from apps, and if you don’t want them to do the same for your expense management app, allow them to pick the type of notifications that they would like to receive. For example, it will help if you notify the users about their daily financial goals.

Steps to Develop an Expense Manager App Like AndroMoney?
Developing an Expense Manager App Like AndroMoney is quite simple. You should have a clear understanding of what values you want to deliver to the users. The following are the steps to a successful expense manager app development.

1. Define Your Expense Manager App Concept
Considering that several expense manager apps are out there already, you must be clear about your app idea. One thing to remember is that your idea has to have a differentiator about it in terms of features, functionalities, cost, or effectiveness. Your answers to the following questions will help you formulate your app concept:

Which customer pain point will your app solve?
What is the USP of your app?
Why will people use your app?
How you’re different from your competitors?
2. Conduct Market Research
When you have a clear idea of your expense manager app, it’s time to identify the market trends. I’ve already covered the industry trends in the earlier part of this article. However, you can dig for more information on the internet and with primary research.

This phase of mobile app development also requires you to conduct competitor analysis. I recommend you to do a quick SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. SWOT will help you compare your app concept and strategies with the competitors. Try to find the USP of top expense manager apps. However, your USP should be unique and clearly defined.

3. Design User Interfaces and Experience
Many FinTech developers skip creating mockups before they jump on UI/UX designing for FinTech applications. Mockups are very helpful for your development process. They’ll allow you to identify user flow. The technical term for this is ‘information architecture’, which shows all the possible user journeys. Our designers at Nimble AppGenie use Axure and Mockingbot to create astonishing user interfaces.

4. Create Technical Architecture and Develop Backend
Your app’s performance and security heavily depends on the technical architecture. The architecture involves all aspects of your expense manager app, be it programming language, technologies, database, user interfaces, or features. Refer to the following illustration to understand technical architecture better.

After building the architecture, you should develop your expense manager app backend. It is a lengthy process to set up the environment and build internal APIs to ensure smooth backend implementation. This step is very crucial for your expense manager app development.

Developers can either use a SaaS solution or develop the backend from scratch. We at Nimble AppGenie prefer using SaaS solutions including Firebase, Cloudkit, and AWS Mobile Hub. It allows us to save time and money for our clients. Also, for apps that require more personalized features and have specific and rigid requirements, we build the backend from scratch.

5. Frontend Development
This is the part of your expense manager app that users interact with. The UI/UX designers will realize the designs that you’ve created during the UI/UX design process. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are among the mainstream technologies used by developers to replicate the designs. The thing to remember during this stage of expense manager app development, is that you should ensure that your app’s responsiveness performs to a high standard. No user will enjoy a slow user interface, even if the app has many useful features.

6. Testing
Testing is an inseparable part of every software development process. Irrespective of the software development methodology you’re going with, testing will be there at the end of every development sprint or process. In the testing process, the quality analyst team tests the app functionalities, and compares them with the specifications in the detailed requirement document.

With successful completion of the testing process, the QA team shares their insights with the development team, and asks them to fix errors/bugs. The development team makes the required changes and afterwards, the quality analyst team retests the code and functionalities. With a green flag from the QA team, the software product is ready.

Conclusion
It is true that expense manager app development doesn’t require much effort in terms of deciding the necessary features, required technology, and platforms to develop the app for. But, considering the entrance of other banking and finance apps into expense management, it is essential for standalone expense tracker apps to improve on existing functionalities.

For instance, these apps can partner with mobile payment apps to gather data about the customer expenses. This way, no matter which payment service the customer uses, the expense manager app will get the expense data and can provide users detailed insights about their spending.

If you’re confused about whether you should develop the expense manager app in-house or outsource it to a software development company, I would recommend going with the latter. If you can form a clear requirement document, it is better to get your software developed with outsourcing. However, I’ve written an article on this subject –In-House vs Outsourcing Software Development

At Nimble AppGenie, we’re experts in developing FinTech applications. Not every development company will be able to help you integrate your app with several payment apps. You need experts on this task. We’ve been developing FinTech solutions for more than 6 years and are familiar with industry standards and regulations.

Container & Truck load Planning – The key to Successful Logistics Service

The way companies calculate their logistics cost is very specific to them; however majority of them consider transportation, labor, warehouse expenses, and administrative costs to arrive at their logistics costs. Of these transportation and storage costs contribute to the bulk of these expenses. When companies try to optimize their operations cost it is important to ascertain that performance and timely delivery do not take a beating. In short we must evolve at a strategy to optimize logistics cost and at the same time ensure performance and timely delivery.

Keeping this in mind let’s look at the list of the factors that greatly affect logistics costs :

Fuel costs
Delayed arrivals at point of loading (ports / airports), leading to higher transportation fees
Subsequent delivery delays and increased warehousing expenses
Glances at all of these factors clearly indicate that ensuring the best utilization of the space of containers and freight would be the ultimate solution to all of the issues. Optimal container space Utilization would eliminate repeated trips in the same route, would ensure timely delivery of goods at the destination or ports/airports for further dispatch, and would eliminate increased warehousing expense by reducing the stock at hand. Efficient container space utilization requires the following :

Consolidated shipments
The obvious fact is that shipping goods in FCL (full container loads) is preferable to LCL (less than a container load), for FCL are safer and more cost-effective and also ensures that your goods are loaded according to your specifications in a space that is not shared with other vendor goods. While sharing container space with other logistics provider we may end up experiencing customs delays for no fault of ours. Basically everything boils down to efficient Container and Truck load planning with maximum container space utilization, reduced container shipment volume, and minimum logistics costs and delivery time. Hence it is essential to arrive at an optimal loading plan using optimization computer software which reduces transportation cost and order cycle time. The optimization software achieves this by eliminating time wastage in the process by improving supply chain collaboration. This also enhances customer satisfaction and enables the company to become more competitive in the market.

Maximizing Trailer Loading Efficiency
The process of loading the goods in the Trailer is a race against time which demands great planning & execution with accuracy. So continuous monitoring of the process is required with real-time insights, in the absence of which multiple challenges surface -

WASTED SPACE – Truck / Trailer space is expensive and inefficient usage of it leads to wasted fuel, maintenance and personnel expenses each year. This leads to more trucks plying on the road leaving a negative impact on the environment.

IMPROPER LOADING – Apart from empty trailer space poor loading techniques also leads to some undesirable goods arrangement like stacking packages in unstable arrangement, placing heavy boxes or cartons on top of lighter ones, etc. This often results in damage of goods and resultant expensive damage claims.

LACK OF VISIBILITY INTO LOADING – Dock managers cannot view all the dock doors they are responsible for managing without physically visiting each door. This results in errors in the loading operations being simply missed, eventually resulting in costly delays. This lack of visibility into loading operations also leads to cargo theft problems which in the global scenario estimate to $50 billion annually.

What is the answer to these issues??
The key is to adopt a Smarter Way to Load Trucks using automated software assisted container and truck load planning.

Determine the best way of loading mixed size products into vehicles and containers with an automated Load Calculator that is Quick and effective. Choose a comprehensive Logistics ERP Software that offers an integrated ‘Container Load Calculator’ that simulates the process of container loading and determines the optimal load positioning based on important parameters like the type of cargo, its input dimensions (width, height, length, weight and number of units), the container specification and weight. The application will display the most optimal way to position the goods using 3D images which clearly let you plan and devise optimal positioning of goods inside a container or truck. This careful scrutiny and evaluation of cargo helps to eliminate many undesirable situations like

ODC – Over dimension consignment Fine: Over Dimensional Cargo is a consignment that projects/extends outside the loading deck of the vehicle transporting it. Consider a truck with loading platform length of 20 feet, if it is loaded with cargo like iron bars of length 23 feet, then the iron bars qualifies as Over-Dimension Cargo. If the same cargo was loaded on a vehicle with platform length of 23+ feet, it would have been classified as Normal Cargo rather than ODC. Similarly if a cargo of height 7 ft. is loaded on a vehicle having a platform height of 4 feet, the cargo will qualify as ODC. The whole purpose of the government for qualifying a cargo as ODC and imposing regulations over carriage of ODC is to avoid any unsafe practices and accident. An efficient container load calculator examines the cargo dimension and ensures that over dimension consignment are not allocated to the vehicle, thus avoiding the over dimension consignment fine.
Excessive Wear & Tear of Vehicle Tyre – Under the effect of the heat originating from excess load there could be excessive degradation of Tyre’s rubber. Also the tyre pressure is impacted due to heavy loads above the permissible limit. It is proved that an error in pressure of 20% will reduce tyre life by up to 25%. Equally, one tyre operating with less air pressure causes a reduction in fuel economy of up to 5%. All this can be averted by the optimal container load planning which ensures that the vehicle tyres are not put through increased wear and tear due to excessive cargo weight. Thus it directly impacts the fuel cost and maintenance expense of replacing worn out tyres.
These desirable benefits of the container load planner originate from the fact that it devices the best way to load mixed size & weight products into vehicles and containers keeping in view all the concerned parameters specified above. You can continuously monitor & alter the manner & position in which your crates, cartons, boxes or other types of cargo are loaded in the container. The entire evaluation process executes in a considerably short span of time and the load plan can be examined latter and report can be printed or shared.

Container space utilization is the key to fuel reduction for it eliminates repeated unwanted trips; ensures efficient utilization of manpower & machinery and devises better logistics service and results in increased profit. Choose the right Logistics ERP Software that lets us effectively manage your container / truck space utilization to ensure better business results.