FAQ
1. What is software development?
In software development, we design and build by programming (or coding) a software or application to automate and digitalize a business workflow. It may be standalone or an enterprise-wide application.
2. What is data analytics? What is geomapping?
Data Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns towards effective decision making, hence analytics is critical in decision making within an organization. Using an organization’s information, analytics is the art and science of using statistics and computer programming to provide insights and quantify performance. There are 3 types of analytics – descriptive – to describe business operations and status, predictive – to forecast future performance, prescriptive to improve future performance. In addition, are risk and fraud analytics are also popular especially in the finance industry.
Geomapping is the process of visualizing and analyzing data by geocoding and overlaying the information over a geomap the most popular and readily available of which is that developed by Google called google map. Geomapping is very versatile in that data can be mapped at various levels of analysis from worldwide to very specific locations just as some of the analysis we have done e.g. location of the poorest of the poor households or location of hospitals with number of Covid-19 patients. A related concept is geocoding which is the process of assigning latitude and longitude to location-based data.
3. What is hosting and database management?
Hosting and Integrated Database Management Services enable businesses to protect and manage large databases. The databases and other applications are hosted on servers on-cloud (e.g. Google, Amazon, Azure and many other hosting providers) or on-premise (or business’ own data center). Businesses with enterprise software such as Customer Relation Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software or other custom-built applications which typically require high bandwidth memory and large number of users who are geographically distributed benefit from these services. Hosting solutions increase the speed and reliability of large applications therefore help improve efficiency and productivity, while integrated database management allow businesses to conduct meaningful data analytics and therefore help improve overall business performance and profitability.
4. Why is data analytics important in business performance?
We have defined data analytics, but what is business performance? Business performance is the ability of the business to use its resources effectively to produce its products or services. One can’t define business performance without referring back to the concepts of efficiency and productivity. Efficiency is the ability to use materials and resources with least wastage and with optimum output. Whereas, productivity is a simple ratio of input per unit of output e.g. patients per doctors, students per teachers, customers per day, tourists per year, transactions per hour, etc. Both efficiency and productivity need to be measured, analyzed and reported to monitor how the business is performing. Without data analytics, it will be close to impossible to measure performance which makes data analytics a key process in managing the business. To measure performance, one of the known methodologies used is for management to identify a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs define the success of the organization.
Performance measurement is not only applied to businesses, similarly, not-for-profit organizations are required to measure their performance, usually by their sponsors and donors, to determine whether they are achieving their targets, whether their programs are reaching their target beneficiaries.