Mobile apps are everywhere nowadays. More and more businesses are using this digital tool to corner the mobile market. The number of customers who use mobile devices to access the web and shop are on the rise. It’s anticipated that the number will continue to rise in the future. However, mobile apps are unarguably not suited for all businesses. If your business is currently considering developing a mobile app, here are several benefits that your company might be able to enjoy:

Sell Directly to the Rapidly Rising Mobile Market

As mentioned above, the mobile-oriented customer base is on the rise. So, if you want to sell to this audience, a mobile app is the best way. Mobile responsive websites won’t cut it. Apps are faster, and they are specifically designed to be optimally interactive on smartphone screens. Also, you will be able to gain ground on competitors who have yet to launch mobile apps.

Increased Availability

The average Canadian spends more than an hour using his or her smartphone or tablet, according to market research data. People rarely spend time browsing on desktops. On mobile phones, however, people spend time checking out sites and products. This is mainly because people tend to use phones while en route to somewhere, or waiting in line at the dentist. These are prime time to capture a customer’s attention. The customer will be interacting with your company more if you have a mobile app, rather than just a website. So, don’t wait and find an app development company to be available to your customers 24/7, regardless of whether they are in front of a computer or not.

Create a New Marketing Channel

Apps are more than just a tool to get customers to interact with your business. They are also lucrative direct marketing channels. Customers interact in many ways with businesses and online stores via apps. Whether it’s reading news, connecting to a forum, filling out a form or playing a game, there are plenty of opportunities to directly market to a potential customer. Apps can be where customers learn about special promotions or new products. If someone is already using your app, then that means they are already interested in your business. Thus, conversion rates for mobile app ads tend to be far higher than on any other channel.

Execute Loyalty Programs

Mobile apps are the best way for a business to execute a loyalty program. Customers who use apps are already loyal to some extent. You can solidify this loyalty, and drive conversions, with an app-based loyalty program. It can be a fun and interactive way to keep customers coming back to your business.

More Brand Awareness

Social media is at the forefront of creating brand awareness nowadays. But apps can promote brands as well. A great app can make a relatively little known brand famous on the continent. Customers who use your app will have no trouble recognising the brand name after a while. So, if your business is struggling with creating brand awareness and getting social proof, try again by creating a great app.

Mobile apps in general vastly improve customer engagement. The benefits to a business can be many. Some companies are built on great mobile apps. Think Uber. So, your business may be able to generate new revenue with a mobile app as well. But first, you will have to invest in creating a truly great app.

With the introduction of CMMS, accounting and payroll departments no longer have to rely on notepads and calculators. The way managers perform maintenance operation is now completely different, and this is due to the introduction of computers.

CMMS is short for Computerized Maintenance Management System, a system used to simplify the way people manage maintenance.

The Basics of CMMS

A maintenance system helps make maintenance management operations a lot easier. It is currently in use by a number of industries for their operations.

When implemented properly, the system is capable of helping users maintain their assets effectively. It also allows them to distribute the workforce and allocate personnel to appropriate operations. As a result, industries can significantly increase their productivity while decreasing breakdown as much as possible.

How You Can Benefit from CMMS

It’s not easy to manage a plant with tons of assets. The process is complicated and time-consuming, to say the least. With a CMMS, everything becomes a lot easier. Here are some of the benefits companies can experience by using the system:

• Enhanced Productivity – a good system can help you schedule preventative maintenance with ease. It will also provide you with detailed instructions necessary for successfully completing the operation.
• Less Downtime – the occurrence of a machine failure or breakdown can lead to downtime issues. It gets even worse without the availability of required parts to fix the machines. With a maintenance software, you will be alerted when certain parts are necessary before a machine experiences breakdown. This, in return, leads to less downtime.
• Prolonged Equipment Life – since you can perform maintenance quickly and easily with a maintenance software, it means you can prolong the lifespan of your equipment. At the same time, it will also help you save on costs and replacements in the long run.
• Easy Management – the system can update and record information about your equipment. As an equipment breaks down, it will be easy for the employees to troubleshoot the problem. Moreover, it also allows them to add and manage information easily.

Is It Worth It?

Even though a maintenance software is not a one-for-all cure to any maintenance issues, it can help promote a more efficient and productive workplace. It strengthens your maintenance operations by gathering every maintenance information you need into a single system.

It is also capable of checking available labor, spare parts, equipment status, and any other important data depending on your setup. The process of getting information which took minutes or hours to complete can now be done in just a matter of seconds.

As a result, maintenance managers can get an even better control of their respective department. It also allows them to prevent any administrative or scheduling mistakes from taking place sometime in the future.

The Bottom Line

The cost-saving opportunities that a maintenance software offers can be huge. However, it’s important to pick the right system featuring the right functionality. You also need to work with the right partner in order to get the highest ROI possible.

As the IoT becomes a large part of our lives and in the tech sector, we must learn how to embrace it and use it wisely. The IoT is being incorporated in many areas today. The IoT is becoming quite common in the maintenance industry.

Are you ready to incorporate the IoT into your maintenance strategy? Read below to learn three applications that smart maintenance managers are utilizing across the industry.

1.) Connected Machines

Communication is much more than just written and spoken word. Take it from connected machines, which systematically work together via machine-to-machine  (M2M) communication.

Maintenance managers use M2M techniques to collect data on KPIs, such as assets, which are most likely to breakdown or the main causes of unscheduled downtime.

Coupled with IoT sensors, M2M data helps maintenance managers gain understanding into how often an asset is underperforming, or how long it’s been since the last work order was performed. Using this data, managers can map out when interruption will occur and tie this data back to their preventive schedules to improve uptime.

Examples of strategies maintenance teams can use to collect M2M data include:

• Vibration analysis: Gauges machine vibration to identify potential failures.
• Infrared thermography: Detects radiation to measure and analyze the heat of objects.
• Ultrasound: Helps to hear issues that we normally cannot like a gas leak.
• Tribology: Measures particles in fluids that prove mechanical wear.
• Motor circuit analysis: Analyzes motor health through detection of electrical imbalances.
• Laser alignment: Assists in the aligning of rotating machines.

2.) Improved Inventory Management

Using the IoT, maintenance managers can connect their stockrooms to track orders, incoming shipments or low stock.

For instance, the maintenance team has the ability to collect data remotely via sensors that tracks when certain inventory may be low. From there, they’re able to connect this sort of data collection to a software device to produce alerts when certain stock may be close to out.

If you depend on the power of a cloud based CMMS, connect your stockroom with your tool to automate reorders, generate inventory reports and track costs to avoid shortages and improve budget. This results in fewer emergency inventory orders and less downtime due to out-of-stock inventory to fulfill a work order.

3.) Preventive Maintenance Strategies

By now, you’ve certainly heard the benefits of a preventive maintenance schedule. But with time constraints and downtime occurring on the daily, it probably seems like an overwhelming task to implement.

The IoT is helping the maintenance industry bust out of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality to improve operational efficiencies, reduce costly downtime and better predict equipment failures.

Managers can depend on sensors to track certain KPIs and gather the best hard data like average technician response times, average length of downtime or technician efficiency into their preventive maintenance schedule with the help of the IoT. Try embedding sensors on devices to track abnormal conditions. From there, generate alerts when unscheduled downtime is approaching to implement an easy preventive maintenance schedule.

Use a CMMS? Make sure to take a look at the reliability centered maintenance guide. Coordinate these sensors to communicate with your CMMS to auto-generate work orders or notifications that a repair is needed soon. The benefits of your connected CMMS range from less unscheduled downtime to more efficient technicians.

Despite trailing behind expectations for a number of years and harbouring a laggard approach to shifting its retail industry online, the Canadian e-commerce industry is picking up the pace. With a host of technology companies equipped with technical expertise and funding, it is predicted that 10% of all retail spending will be performed online in 2019, a leap from the 6% predicted in 2014. In 2013, only 13% of business was conducted online, as illustrated by the most recent year which Statistics Canada surveyed trends on digital technology and Internet use.

With the aim of re-invigorating shopping methodology, which had become stagnant, and simultaneously enabling merchants to improve productivity and optimise costs, online business transformation has reverberated over the Canadian e-commerce industry. Four companies, spanning four categories of transformation, lead the pack:

1. Digital Shopfronts

Merchants can focus on ideating more important strategic pathways from knowing that the online infrastructure of their store is handled by these companies. Digital customers increasingly require aesthetic appeal from the platform they are using to purchase products. Shopify allows a multi-channel retailing experience which handles marketing, payments, secure checkout, shipping functions whilst allowing a customisation of personalised store theme to suit the ‘look and feel’ of shopping in your online website. Entrepreneurs are enabled to manage a limitless number of products and keep track of inventory levels and reviews of products, thus boosting sales traction and potential.

2. Consumer Direct Experiences

Instead of comparing and contrasting products physically, customers can purchase a widening range of goods and services from websites replicating the traditional ‘look and feel’ of a bricks and mortar store. Busbud shortens the effort needed to research and book bus tickets by providing a clean user interface. Their vision, to arm travellers with the technological know-how to efficiently obtain information like bus schedules, reviews, prices, service classes and stopping points, paves the way for more mobile intercity travel and a more acceptable environmental impact. Imagine arriving at a foreign country and having to negotiate your way through a labyrinth of streets and intelligible words to be overcharged on an incorrect bus fare! Luckily, Labyrinth services over 60 countries.

3. Customer Metric Optimisation

Technology in this category allows customers to shop with more information on hand through the targeted promotion of special offers. These special offers are determined from devices such as Aislelabs’ marketing software which analyses and provides estimates of passenger flows (e.g. for airports). Wi-Fi tracked metrics behaviourally analyses in-store shoppers, in turn empowering merchants with information to target promotions to particular demographics and product preference trends. With Aislelabs’ deep learning engine, social media campaigns (engrained in today’s shopping OOTD experience) are re-configured and improved from the return on investment data provided.

4. Processing of transaction

The focus is on streamlining financial payments, on the side of both merchants and consumers. SelfPay SDK expands the scope of product information available to shoppers whilst in store, and allows them to purchase items using a mobile checkout without having to wait in line. With research by Deloitte showing customer sentiment favouring self-learning of product details rather than speaking to a sales associate, this is a highly efficient alternative for merchants looking to improve customer convenience and accelerate sales revenue.

The tech scene in Canada has been growing rapidly and many new companies are coming to the forefront all the time. We whittled down our extensive list of startups in the highly competitive ecommerce space to four that we really think are going to set the world on fire in 2018. Each one in their own way has beaten a path to success by finding a problem and then developing a new and innovative way to solve that problem.

Askuity

Askuity is a new startup aiming to bridge the information gap between retailers and their suppliers. Their web and mobile based software platform connects retailers and suppliers and through data and analytics allows them to collaborate, plan and execute strategy. By accessing all the retail outlets where their items are sold, suppliers can quickly understand what is selling and what is not and adjust production accordingly. Askuity is a favourite of the venture capital community and has successfully completed three funding rounds.

Hopper

Hopper is a price prediction app that can tell you when it is the best time to fly to save money. Available on both Android and IOS is has been a runaway success not just in Canada but has taken off worldwide. In its latest iteration it takes its price prediction technology and applies it to hotel bookings as well. It uses big data to predict future events and has collected 10 million price quotes from 500 hotels in New York. Initially this feature will only be available for the New York market but plans are afoot to begin a roll out globally sometime in 2018.

Lodlois

Lodlois is a site that offers comprehensive reviews of ecommerce sites. The growing online review market has become increasingly important as consumers search for trusted sources to help them make purchasing decisions. Survey show that 92% of people read online reviews prior to making a purchasing decision and that young people. An important demographic to marketers. Are more likely to use an online review to make a decision than any other source. The firm has recently expanded and is gaining a strong reputation as a discount offers site. The site has been steadily building a following and we expect good things in 2018.

Stack STK

Stack STK is a pioneer in POS cryptocurrency payments and is in the process of rolling out the world’s first contactless payment system that utilizes a multi currency crypto wallet. The beauty off their offer is that you will no longer have to convert your cryptocurrency in advance of your shopping trip. You can keep all your money safely in Bitcoin and only convert the part you want to spend instantly at checkout. This may very well be the application that brings cryptocurrency to a much wider audience as it makes it much easier to purchase things. Stack STK is currently doing an ICO and will be making their product available in Canada in the first quarter of 2018 with a US debut around mid year.

Some observers say that technology will affect real estate in much more challenging ways than the logistics industry. This includes all players in the industry including real estate powerhouses.

Whether you like it or not, the real estate industry is rising to these challenges by fully embracing technology and if you are an agent, that may render you obsolete as owners and developers soon may be able to engage their customers directly, leaving you in the lurch.

But instead of retreating into a dark room reading anti-technology diatribes by John Zerzan or fighting against the tides like certain big hotels taking shots at the home sharing industry, fret not. If the findings of The National Association of REALTORS®’ 2016 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers survey are anything to go by (more buyers are using agents now compared to 1981), you are not in any pertinent danger…yet.

Nevertheless, it won’t hurt to stay in the know about what you may be up against. Here are 5 technological innovations that you should be wary of.

1. Listing and Search

Let’s talk about the first part of your process, finding tenants.

With search and listing technology from 42floors to Liquidspace, listing your property on a property listing website is a no-brainer and SEO techniques as well as paid advertising mean that you no longer need to run around finding tenants.

2. Due Diligence

As if the owner sidestepping you wasn’t enough, tenants now no longer need an agent to tell them what they need to know. The real estate space now has digitized access to information. Just check out homesnap! Neighborhood statistics? No problem. With dwellr you can find out about schools nearby as well as crime rates.

3. Enhanced viewing

With YouVisit, Google’s instant street view and Pix4D , the viewing aspect of your job can now be handled by the customer online and virtually. Partnering with Matterport, Sotheby’s International Realty has introduced VR and 3D tours online. Virtual tours transport customers into the property where they can walk around and even stretch their limbs to get an idea of the space without having to be physically let in with a key. They can even customize the property by making structural changes or alter furniture.

4. Property Management

Using platforms such as AppFolio or ClickNotices, you may no longer be required for interfacing with tenants. Through technology, tenants can submit maintenance requests through mobile and owners get real-time updates and can manage rent rolls…etc. They can even incorporate smart home systems and IoT devices to control the facilities of a multistory office building, manage multifamily properties and more.

5. Digital Contracts

When it’s time to ‘seal the deal’, meetings to sign documentation (or even conduct home inspections) can be done digitally with digital contracts that can incorporate hyperlinks and other interactivity. Signing digitally also saves time.

Ever since American biologist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick first discovered DNA in the 1950’s it has held out the promise to revolutionize medicine and the treatment of disease. The potential to screen for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cancer and a myriad of other diseases with a genetic component meant that science would for the first time be able to treat disease even before the first symptoms had appeared. It is only now, over 60 years later, that we are seeing the first use of genetic testing to screen people for disease that they may develop later in life.

These developments in our technological ability raises all sort of ethical questions that have not yet been answered. Some of the companies that are pioneering the widespread use of genetic testing are trying to answer these questions. Geisinger Health System of Pennsylvania has launched the MyCode Community Health Initiative which aims to test the DNA of 166,000 participants. The study is not only doing the sequencing in the hopes of gaining greater understanding of how to prevent and treat disease. Geisinger also hopes to answer the questions surrounding how primary care physicians deal with telling patients about defective genes and the challenges of the follow-up with relatives who could also be at risk.

Many genetic testing companies have emerged that will screen your DNA for a host of genetic diseases for a fee. The most widely known being silicon valley startup 23andMe. There is an ongoing debate about the efficacy of genetic testing when it is not supervised by a Doctor and conducted solely by a lab. Many in the medical community see the potential for genetic testing done by companies who can back up the results with strong scientific data but caution that without the proper supervision this could end up being easily abused.

This also pales in comparison to the opportunities for abuse that arise when we extend genetic testing into the area of human reproduction. We have witnessed the effect that just being able to determine the gender of an embryo has had in promoting selective abortion in the developing world. We may be about to witness something similar as genetic testing of embryos becomes routine. Would people chose to abort an otherwise viable embryo if the genetic tests shows a predisposition to Type 2 Diabetes? Alcoholism? Or just the wrong eye colour? Where do we draw the ethical line? When you start to get involved with people and their future children you open up a potential legal and ethical minefield were the right answers may not come only from medicine but also the courts.

Genetic testing has great promise and will in all likelihood become as routine as today’s standard blood test. Though currently it can be quite expensive and not all medical insurance currently will cover it. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about how we deal with the information that this testing gives us and how that information should be treated and who should have access to it. Hopefully in the next few years those questions will be answered.

You don’t have to be a business owner or a university student to have a lot of important files stored on your laptop. Today, we are relying on our gadgets more than ever before; paper files are quickly becoming a thing of the past since it’s so much easier to simply access everything that we need electronically.

But, what happens if your old laptop suddenly isn’t so reliable anymore? If your laptop has given up and come to the end of its life taking your files with it, then you might be feeling a little bit desperate. Thankfully all is not lost; here are some top tips to help you get everything back and prevent it from happening again in the future.

#1. Speak to the Experts:

In some cases, you might be able to retrieve files yourself from a laptop that hasn’t quite given up just yet. But, if your computer is completely dead and won’t even start up, you’d need to know your way around the inside to successfully recover your data.

So, the first thing you should do if you’ve lost your laptop data, is contact a good data recovery company. The professionals will know exactly what to do to get into your hard drive, unless there’s been an irreparable issue with it, you’ll usually be able to quickly get everything back.

#2. Check for Other Issues:

Sometimes, your laptop hard drive may well be perfectly intact; it’s something else that’s broken, such as the battery or the screen. So, it’s a good idea to check this out before you pay anybody to recover the data.

If you haven’t damaged your laptop accidentally, then you might even be able to get it repaired under your warranty. You’ll probably need to pay for breakages or water damage caused by an accident, although if you’ve been forward thinking and insured your gadgets, this will usually cover the cost.

#3. Check for Software Problems:

If you are using a Windows device, you can re-boot your computer in Safe Mode, which will only load up the minimum requirements to get your device back up and running. If this is successful, you’ll then be able to locate your lost files and run anti-virus software to deal with the problem.

#4. Move to the Cloud:

Whether you’ve been lucky enough to get your files back from your damaged device or not, it’s a good idea to let the situation be a learning curve. Storing all your files on your laptop hard drive might be convenient – but this is only the case if it’s working!

Today, there’s no need to store anything physically; cloud services such as iCloud or Google Drive offer plenty of space for all your important files and documents. What’s even better is that you’ll never lose them, no matter how many times you replace or break your laptop.

There is a quote floating around the internet that sums up what an entrepreneur is: entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week. And while that might put most people off, there are benefits which are not just monetary, when you are a business owner.

1. Strategy becomes a game

You will become better at making any kind of decisions purely because you have been placed in a situation whereby you call the only shots that matter. Any fumble could prove disastrous, but you will also learn that there is a viable solution to every problem.

2. Better creativity and imagination

Now this is where your inner child comes in. How do you keep people interested in whatever services or products you are selling? You might come up with promotions or brand new products and create a market for it. All this requires being able to brainstorm and think up fresh, interesting ideas. Contrary to popular belief, it is nurture, not nature,that allows certain people more creativity over others.

3. The world becomes your oyster

Once you have mastered the art of being in control and playing by your own rules, you will soon realize there is so much untapped potential around you. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it grows on people who are more than happy to give it to you for something in return. It might not even be something they know they want, but you can make it so it is irresistible. You will see opportunities at every turn, learning, always learning about something new. Such as how to work social media and technology seamlessly through case-studies like AirBnB. They allowed their hosts to cross post onto Craigslist, effectively reaching more people with the ad and also publicizing the app on the company’s behalf – for free!

4. Limitless extra income

You reap what you sow, and if you have executed a great idea flawlessly, it will give you boundless returns. However, it is not always about the money. It is about challenging yourself and having the satisfaction of a job well done. A job done for nobody else but yourself.

5. Fine tunes your social skills & up your confidence

If there is one thing being your own boss will give you, it is to teach you to respect yourself. You never have to worry about meeting someone else’s requirements, one of the many reasons why there are courses teaching prisoners entrepreneurship. Furthermore, you will be exposed to people from all walks of life, from people who might give you a leg up to those who will reject you and all those experiences will teach you how to be better at pitching ideas and inspiring others.

Most people might turn to entrepreneurship to escape the tedious repetition of a desk job, others might have a bright passion that absolutely refuses to shut up and while there are those who are complacent working for a corporation whose CEO will never even learn their name, everyone will benefit from being an entrepreneur regardless of whether they fail or succeed. Although, entrepreneurs will never see failure as one, but merely a learning experience.

With the advent of the internet, the way we spend has changed dramatically, especially in the last decade in which Facebook grew to unparalleled acceptance. As the rules of branding and selling adapted to social media marketing practices, businesses too shifted from their traditional paradigms. Brick-and-mortar shops made way to ecommerce and payments were accepted online. In fact, online real estate has become as competitive as its offline counterpart. To further illustrate, we have listed five industries that have successfully shifted online, thereby reducing dependence on traditional paradigms.

Travel

With all the information available at a click, internet has delivered the power of pricing to the hands of the customer. It is now possible to travel internationally on a limited budget without standing in queue for visa, accommodation or tickets. Reviews by like-minded travellers have taken the place of recommendations by travel agents. Travel agencies now offer products that are personal and unique in experience, instead of just tour packages.

Newspaper/Media

An online newspaper is not just an additional advertising revenue source for the publication, but also a convenient option for the reader on-the-go. Media organisations are now training journalists in ways of digital writing and video streaming. The rise of vernacular media and citizen journalism owe a lot of internet and seamless connectivity over smartphones. The most prominent example being the Arab Spring of 2011 when Facebook and Twitter were used by citizen journalists to send information during curfews and censorship.

Leisure and Casino

Casino enthusiasts now do not even need to leave the comforts of their room to test their luck. Unlike a brick-and-mortar casino, online casinos are not bound by geographical limits and even offer higher payback percentages. Many online gaming companies offer slots can be accessed anytime. These online slots can be accessed on both tablets and smartphones without needing any download of additional software. For example, Merkur games at Lapalingo.com are among the most popular casino games on the Internet.

Retail

The movement of retail industry from brick-and-mortar to online in the last decade came as a blessing for both marketers and customers. While companies benefitted from the ease of accessing customers anywhere and realizing payments instantly without straining coffers on commercial rentals, consumers loved the comfort of home delivery and ability to compare rates from alternate vendors. Higher levels of education and increase in personal income has increased demand for online shopping options significantly.

Banking and Finance

The internet allows banks and other financial institutions to operate on moderate operational costs, with easier integration of services and minimal overhead costs among other benefits. There are many “virtual banks” that operate only on the internet. Every major bank now permits its customers to operate from anywhere and perform many banking transactions using their computer or mobile. In fact, the next big internet phenomenon that is poised to disrupt the banking and financial industry is the IoT (Internet of Things – connectivity using everyday objects that are embedded with internet-enabling devices.)