Exploring the Different Types of Software Development

The modern financial world dictates its own rules. By including the critical success factors in this area, one can distinguish effective management of relations with the client. Reliable CRM solutions guarantee this goal because they contribute to optimizing many processes, thereby increasing productivity and taking customer interaction to a new level. In this article, we would like to share with you the best CRM systems that have been created, taking into account the characteristics and needs of modern financial companies.

What Is CRM for Financial Services?

CRM for financial services is software designed to manage customer contacts and improve comprehensive business performance. The main goals of financial CRM software are to automate processes, provide detailed analysis of client data to understand customer requirements better, reduce financial costs, and increase the effectiveness of strategic planning. Thus, all of the above in the complex helps to boost profits and strengthen the company's and brand's positions in the market.

How to Choose a CRM for Financial Services

Let's not argue that choosing CRM software for banking industry is difficult. However, we are ready to help you with this task by providing detailed tips.

First, you should clearly define the specific goals and the needs you intend to achieve/satisfy using CRM in financial services. Do you need only a system to manage customer relationships, optimize marketing campaigns, or increase sales? Or do you want it all together? Once you decide on your own goals, you can automatically narrow down the range of potential options. 

Regarding security, you have to be sure that the CRM system fully complies with modern data protection standards and is designed considering all reliable encryption mechanisms. This not only reduces the risk of data duplication but also maximizes the efficiency of your work processes.

It is also worth checking the CRM provider's support and training. Reliable support and the opportunity to receive professional training guarantee rapid business growth without downtimes and human-made errors. That’s why you should research reviews about your chosen service provider to see how comprehensive their support is.

In the end, the cost of the CRM system should not be devalued. Conduct a comparative analysis of various CRM systems, taking into account both initial costs and, accordingly, future costs, including further maintenance and updating.

Therefore, the main recommendation is to choose a system that offers the best balance between its cost and the quality of possible results for your company in finance.

Top 5 CRM solutions for Financial Services Businesses

It's time to share the top-5 CRM solutions for financial services known for their versatility, reliability, and power to manage customer relationships. However, note that each CRM for fintech from our list has its own features, which you should pay attention to while choosing the best option for your business.

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce is one of the leading CRM solutions, and its development team is confident in bringing its expertise to the financial services industry. This system includes tools that have been designed to meet the needs of many private equity firms, as well as the needs of companies working in related fields (banking, mortgage insurance). Within its core is a vast database to better understand customers' needs, habits, and behavior patterns. Other distinctive feature of this software solution is the ability to create custom modules adapted to the individual tasks and goals of a specific business (however, it is important to understand that the cost of deploying and supporting such a customized system will increase significantly). Moreover, it is equipped with AI-based analytics, helping consultants obtain even more valuable customer insights in no time. Among its other benefits are the ability to consolidate disparate data and optimize lead management, as well as almost unlimited scalability and flexibility.

Its disadvantages include that its work fully depends on the stability of the Internet connection and that its price may be too high for growing businesses. In addition, this CRM has a lot of modules, and the initial setup of the system often requires the participation of a narrow-focused specialist.

Envestnet Tamarac CRM

This fintech CRM focuses on helping independent financial advisers provide more personalized investment expertise to individual clients. Envestnet Tamarac CRM offers intelligent real-time reporting to help track customer progress toward their financial goals. The presence of optimized business adaptation processes for new customers is worth noting, as it allows you to quickly and easily create new accounts through Salesforce. This system is built entirely on the Microsoft Dynamics platform with a familiar Microsoft Outlook interface. Also, in the mobile version, consultants can enter the system «as a client», which enables them to see the dashboard exactly as their client would see it.

The cons of this solution include poor collaboration functionality because, as we mentioned above, it was designed initially for individual consultants.

Wealthbox CRM

This platform is flexible enough to be suitable for a wide range of users – from financial consultants to custodians and large firms combining the functions of broker and dealer. CRM data management, multi-channel client communication, and integration with social networking platforms like Twitter. With it, you can customize «under yourself» business processes or rely on business process templates using conditional logic to automate routine tasks. Also, it provides the ability to use Kanban dashboards to track potential financial transactions and keep abreast of how to work with potential clients. Wealthbox CRM is popular because of its low entry threshold.

However, along with all these benefits, this solution has several drawbacks, too. For instance, some users are dissatisfied with the poor householding functionality. In addition, Wealthbox may not be suitable for people who need to sync with Outlook calendar.

Zoho CRM

Zoho financial CRM software helps collect and organize all customer data, including basic CRM-related information, financial documents, financial policy information, and insurance records. This fintech CRM software offers tools for working with so-called «assets under management» to track all your transactions with financial institutions and other companies (here, we mean AUM tools where AUM is Assets Under Management). With built-in support modules (case modules), you can match your customers' needs with more financial data to provide efficient support. It is worth mentioning «Zia» – the Zoho assistant based on artificial intelligence, which adds a thoughtful layer of forecasts and suggestions for customers and helps you know when and how best to contact them.

At the same time, some Zoho users complain about limited customization features, poor reporting capabilities, and inconvenient dashboards.

NexJ CRM

NexJ is an intelligent financial services CRM with highly specialized modules for financial and banking consultants (specifically, they can use the private equity management module). This CRM system focuses on the specifics of the regional market with experience in more than 60 countries, and all this is thanks to the active use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics. These technologies, properly implemented in this solution, allow consultants to concretize their financial recommendations. 

In general, NexJ looks and feels like a highly professional system, but some users note that they feel confused when they have to leave their requests on its pricing. 

Conclusion

The range of financial services available today requires the integration of automated software solutions that are practical, flexible, and more affordable than traditional consultants, whose services were only affordable for some.

CRM for financial services, private capital management, debt resolution, and pension planning are sophisticated tools that go beyond conventional databases. They are designed to foster trust and build long-term relationships with your clients. As all financial services are future-oriented, financial CRM systems help you provide brighter and more profitable prospects for your customers, your company, and, of course, your personal and professional success as a consultant. Thus, the financial CRM system allows you to achieve the best financial results for your customers and provide them with the best service.

Nowadays, AI technology is significantly changing the different industries and the healthcare industry isn’t an exception. One of the additions – chatbots – has the potential to save time and money.

But should the healthcare industry use a bot service, it is a question many medical workers ask. However, we can define healthcare as a service that happens when patients visit the doctors, we will strictly limit our potential productivity gains. Chatbots can help healthcare providers with customer service and interact with healthcare consumers through text conversationally. So it is one of the most effective solutions to increase patient satisfaction.

According to surveys and researches published by IBM, up to 80% of routine questions could be answered by a chatbot. And it isn’t a surprise that the big part of these questions are asked by the patients and a simple chatbot can help with that.

For being in a win-win situation in healthcare, the providers should think about how to give patients, prospective patients, and other site visitors a way to answer questions, find the important information, and even book appointments as soon as possible without calling in. It’s easier and more convenient for people. It’s more efficient and successful for providers. And it can save a tremendous amount of money and time. That’s the dream, right? In the healthcare sector, the patient’s experience and satisfaction continue to be the top priority.

Chatbots in healthcare can offer the best health care service.

So the real question for clinics, hospitals and other private practices looking to improve the patient experience: Is it worth it?

Will chatbots really help and make a difference for your staff and patients?

At the end of the article you will find the answers to all your questions, so let’s have a look at how healthcare chatbots actually work, their benefits, and potential use cases.

We can divide chatbots into three categories:

Rules-based: Rule-based chatbots can also be named decision-tree bots. This type of chatbot uses a series of defined rules. These rules are the basis for the types of problems the chatbot is familiar with and can deliver solutions for. Usually, there are very simple or complicated rules. They can’t, however, answer any questions outside of the defined rules. These chatbots do not learn through interactions. They only perform and work with the scenarios you train them for. They follow pre-defined, if-this-then-that “playbooks” that automatically respond to a list of pre-populated queries and questions. These chatbots might answer common questions with simple and canned responses. They might also lead people to dead-ends like “I’m having trouble understanding” due to their limited technical capacity.

Adaptive: Using machine learning (ML), adaptive chatbots can learn patterns the more requests they receive.

AI-powered: An AI-powered chatbot is a smarter version that uses natural language processing (NLP) and ML to better understand the intent of the human and provide a more natural, near-human-level communication. An AI chatbot can quickly determine intent and context, move through more complex and nuanced conversations, and deliver the look and feel of chatting with an actual human being.

Chatbots are created to mimic human conversation. Using chatbots, patients can ask health-related questions, check on their appointments, or explore treatment options without calling in.

Why chatbots are perfectly suitable for healthcare

The chatbot is useful for any type of business. But for the healthcare field, they are especially valuable, because chatbots can provide the required information and actions to patients.

24/7 Service

Anytime chatbots can provide patients service and support. According to this, patients can get immediate engagement and answers.

Follow-up medical care

Quality and results are the most important goals for the patient experience. In many cases, it is difficult for doctors to provide quality care once a patient leaves the hospital. Chatbots could be a good solution for this challenge, and they can give follow-up care by prompting patients to record their symptoms or track their progress.

At-home care

Chatbots can be used anywhere, especially at home. The patient can use the range of actions that include not only looking up symptoms and scheduling appointments, it could also use chatbots for the patients after they are discharged from the hospital. The chatbot could help patients take their medications in time and connect with their doctors.

Keep patient update

This is a new way to address any patient. This will keep the patient and family to remain updated till the last moment. Do you need to go to the appointment? The chatbot will remind you via text message or email. Will the surgery for which you need to be prepared? A chatbot can help patients prepare for any size of surgery or operation beforehand.

Better Patient Experiences

In the end, chatbots no doubt can enhance patient satisfaction. They help improve patient satisfaction scores by providing the convenience of care and reducing wait time. The providers have the opportunity to offer services to the patients and make it convenient for patients to receive medical attention. Chatbots can also facilitate surveys and other patient feedback mechanisms to record and track sentiment.

Use cases in the healthcare industry

• Let’s imagine the patient needs urgent help and information on what to do? The chatbot could quickly quiz users on the health problem they’re facing and recommend a sequence of actions until the ambulance arrives.

• It can be used as a mass email by local or national health organizations. Nowadays, it is especially relevant to people to get to know important details about vaccinations or epidemics.

• It can help patients track their moods or feelings that can be discussed with the psychiatrist or therapist at the next appointment. It could offer tips, notifications and advice between therapy sessions. Furthermore, it even can act more like a personal assistant. It can remind patients to take their medication, help them stay motivated to stick to their schedules and provide other relevant medical information.

• The hospitals and clinics can use the chatbot to allow patients to learn more about their health by asking questions, check symptoms or conditions, and find relevant specialists if they need them.

• The E-commerce industry that sells medical equipment or supplies could build a bot to recommend products to undecided customers. It is one of the ways to increase the visitors on the websites, directing the users to buy the products from it.

• A doctor could set up a chatbot to let users schedule their next appointment easily.

• The bot can be built to help users find in-network providers near them based on city or zip code.

• A medical spa can increase lead generation and user satisfaction using the bot. It is a great idea to ask what users expressly request. Based on the feedback from the users, and add only those services and products which your users have expressly requested. Finally, it could help the best matches schedule a consultation.

Final Thoughts

The chatbots can significantly replace the great part of live chatting with medical personnel. The main advantage that chatbot can provide is improvement in the patient experience. These chatbots are created to be conversational, so they are more responsive and personal than search engines. Chatbots can pull more specific and relevant information for patients rather than search engines. But they can not completely replace a human medical professional’s expertise, but they can reduce the time and money and make it easier for hospital staff to perform their jobs.

As the practice shows, no idea, even the most brilliant one, when embodied in a digital product or service, will become successful without quality assurance. It, in turn, always includes two non-intersecting procedures that occur before software is launched: the first of them is aimed at obtaining a clear understanding of whether development is moving in the right direction, and the second of them clarifies whether the solution being created meets end user needs. So, how are they called and performed? Let’s find it out right now.

What Is Verification Testing?

In a nutshell, it is a procedure aimed at checking whether the solution being created meets its predefined specifications and generally accepted design and development standards. Software verification testing is performed throughout the entire creation process and involves the use of various automation testing tools and verification methods, such as modular, integrational, and system testing.

What Is Validation Testing?

Unlike the previous type of testing, this one involves planning real-world scenarios that allow the development team to make sure that the solution being created meets its audience’s needs (for this, you can apply, for example, the alpha- and beta-testing validation methods). After that, the solution has to be compared with its specifications. If any discrepancies are found, they need to be eliminated before this solution is released to the public. Actually, that’s why validation testing is repeated until the team achieves full compliance.

Purpose of Verification and Validation

The main goals of verification and validation testing are to fully satisfy the needs of the software solution owner and the audience as well. As soon as these procedures are successfully completed, the project can be launched.

Difference Between Verification vs Validation Testing

So, what about the verification and validation difference? Generally speaking, while verification is aimed at checking the compliance of a product or service with its list of requirements agreed upon between the development team and the owner, validation allows teams to make sure that this service or product will be positively accepted by its end users. 

In this regard, the first procedure starts from the very beginning of the development process and lasts until the final testing stage and the second – only after the product/service is completed. This also imposes certain differences on the test data used: during verification in software testing, QA engineers use sample data (in this regard, automation methods are often applied), and during the software validation – real data (usually, manual methods do a great job here).

How Are Verification and Validation Testing Performed?

Now, let's look at the four most popular approaches used for validation and verification in software testing:

• Peer reviews, which involve providing a software solution to focus group representatives for a certain period of time in order to obtain feedback on their experience of interacting with it;
• Assessments, which are left by focus group representatives after checking the solution for functionality and identifying errors and inconsistencies in it;
• Walkthrough, which implies a preliminary explanation to focus group representatives of how exactly to interact with the software solution, after which the latter leave their feedback on how well everything was clear and whether they think some areas need to be optimized;
• Desktop-checking, which includes reviewing the software code by specialists (in particular, software engineers).

Tips for Successful Verification and Validation

To ensure these two procedures go smoothly, follow these guidelines:

1. Define the tasks and goals you are pursuing through these procedures and what the results should be upon their completion;
2. Choose the specific tools and approaches you are going to use – they should cover all possible scenarios of user interaction with your software solution, as well as generally accepted software development standards;
3. Create a testing plan, where you will specify deadlines, available resources, and evaluation criteria (along with the acceptable minimum compliance);
4. Proceed directly to testing in order to identify bugs and inconsistencies that will need to be fixed before the project is released;
5. Involve representatives of the potential target audience and stakeholders in the testing procedure to get the most objective assessment of the quality of your team's work;
6. Don't forget to document and monitor the testing results from one bug fixing to another to understand the dynamics of improvements.

Popular Test Automation Tools For Verification and Validation

Although automated testing is considered a standard approach for verification testing only, sometimes, it also brings benefits when implementing validation testing. In this regard, we have compiled a small selection of popular tools that you can use for quality control in software:

• Selenium, an open-source web solution that supports a lot of programming languages, such as Java, Python, C#, and so on, as well as integrates with different frameworks;
• Appium, an open-source service for automated testing of mobile apps on iOS, Android, and Windows (both native, cross-platform, and hybrid ones);
• Robot Framework, an automation framework aiming at implementing acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development;
• Jenkins, an automation server used for continuous integration and continuous delivery that streamlines the build, test, and deployment stages;
• TestNG, a popular testing framework that is actively used for testing Java-based software solutions;
• Cucumber, an environment for running automated acceptance tests written in Java, Ruby, etc.;
• JMeter, a perfect solution for performance testing of web apps.

Conclusion

We hope that we have helped you understand the difference between validation and verification testing, and now, you can also assess their importance in creating high-quality and competitive software solutions. You can also check out our blog to learn more about software development and design.