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E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

As quarantine continues to disrupt our daily lives, schools have gone online and schoolchildren are learning from home in unprecedented numbers. E-learning platforms and are suddenly overwhelmed with the amount of traffic and need quick solutions to keep their services up and continue to improve. While some industries can work remotely, interacting with colleagues, friends, and family has gone virtual. However, online teaching or digital learning in general— and keeping children engaged is the latest challenge.

For many edtech apps, this means a rapid expansion of capabilities to keep up with surging demand. Here are a few of our tips how to improve your online learning app.

 

How to improve your e-learning platform:

Table of contents:
Technical improvements

  1. Data security
  2. Cross-platform
  3. Operational reliability
  4. Improve UX

Improvement of features

  1. E-learning analytics
  2. In-app chat with fellow students and teachers
  3. Gamification

Technical improvements

 

1. Data security

One major consideration in online teaching is how to protect sensitive data. User credentials, information about payment and personally identifiable information need to be secure also in the learning management system. Users should always have the rights reserved to manage their own data and exclude themselves from data collection at any point.

In e-learning there is all kinds of data, such as confidential personal user information but also public and shared educational materials. Parents need to understand how the online learning platforms use the data. The platform might collect data for pedagogical purposes, for example. Explaining it and being transparent helps all involved parties feel safer. In the European Union, GDPR regulations give a good framework for data protection.

Like with all applications, we should make sure that the data transmission of the platform is as limited as possible and the data cannot be accessed by any unauthorized party. For example, the Finnish education supervisory bodies have very high standards and require the servers to be kept within the European borders.”

says Bartosz Kuczyński, one of Espeo’s tester for quality assurance
 

2. Cross-platform  

If your learning management system is not cross-platform conform, now is the time to upgrade. Accessibility in class and outside is vital. It’s important that students can log into their accounts on personal laptops but as well on their smartphones to make it easier to view information quickly and from any device. Especially in times like now, when students are only able to complete assignments, go over learned material and prepare for tests from home. Offering the online learning experience from mobile and web is one of the easiest way to reach users and to meet their demands. This also makes sense when thinking about the communication between educators and parents. A mobile app with instant push notifications can help to parents to stay up to date with course content, general administration and data management.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app
 

3. Operational reliability 

Performance tests ensure operational reliability. These tests simulate typical user activity and can model high traffic times. These can either be general performance tests to indicate the speed of the system’s reaction and therefore sport where improvements are needed or we can undertake stress tests to see how many users can use the app at the same time within the current setup.

When we talk about reliability you have to know current metrics related to your application. It helps you estimate how the potential increase of users may affect the server performance. It’s important to find potential bottlenecks within the e-learning platform. The first step is to gather all data that help to investigate, such as application logs, which includes eros and data traces. Server logs such as the number of requests, the frequency of requests, rush hours, and CPU/RAM use also fall here. Finally, database logs identify slow queries and a number of queries. As logs give you the information about such metrics, it is wise to aggregate them and analyze them.

There are many tools on the market that measure and aggregate these metrics and be ready for critical situations. One of these types of tools is application performance monitoring, or APM.

“Using APM you will be able to identify application weaknesses, find out the most used parts of the application that may be worth improving. Sometimes, changes in a few parts of an application can affect general performance positively.”

said Bartosz Michałak
 

4. Improve UX 

UX research is not just important when launching a new product but also once it’s on the market. In edtech, complex updates often fall in a new semester, when students and teachers are the busiest. If the new release is complicated and confusing, this might cause negative feedback. Involving professionals can help to understand problems and prioritize where to improve first.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

Edtech apps can consist of great media traffic, like sharing documents, instant chat, etc. So the UX is also related to the performance of all these kinds of third party layers. We should always be thinking about the complexity of the app. The heavier an app, the more it will affect the UX. For example, lots of animations can drop the frames in mobile in a similar heavier HTML structure can reduce performance on web applications. You can improve the UX by trimming down the amount of data that is transmitted to the bare minimum. Possible other tricks such as caching and offline persistence may be used.

Pro tip:

“I would implement a feedback inquiry, so the users could tell you directly what their needs are. Then I would sort those opinions, categorize and prioritize them for the implementation,”

suggested UX designer, Mateusz Małys

With more users, you might want to consider how it affects the UX and how much it will suffer under the increased strain. From a frontend perspective, content can load gradually, using techniques like lazy loading which is a general rule for all learning platforms, not only edtech. If your e-learning platforms are used in more than one country, you should consider using content delivery network services to serve images and other files. CDN allows you to reduce network latency by using various techniques. For example, when the teacher shares a heavy file to the entire class, a CDN service can cache it and your server won’t need to serve that file anymore.

Improvement of features

“It is hard to tell what modifications are needed. Every client has their own idea of what’s important. From the backend side, it can be simply a general performance improvement. Sometimes the app does not need to be fast or fancy but rather reliable, meaning no server downtimes, strict data protection. We can deliver what the client needs,”

explained edtech developer for tools like TinyApp, Tomasz Maka

Many learning platforms would benefit from interaction options such as live chats, conference calls and video conferencing. But these are also ambitious features and we always need to test how strenuous they would become for the servers, so that it won’t affect the learning experience negatively.

Live classrooms, file sharing, online tutorial, interactive worksheets for students, timed testing systems, various messaging and conferencing options are a few of many possible features.

Below I prepared just a couple of additional features an educational App can benefit from. It does not mean that these are the only or most important features and that everyone learning platform needs to have these. In the end, the sort of features an application should have, depends on what is relevant from a business perspective to the product owner and what problems he wants to solve for teachers, students and parents.

 

1. E-learning analytics

By collecting data about the activity of a student, e-learning can help deliver insights about the performance and detect fields where improvements are needed and can in turn help with defining the best online trainings. A comprehensive analysis of big data can be valuable for online education and e-learning impact. Teachers can improve instructor effectiveness by tailoring their plans and training paths to individual needs and also share information with parents easier and based on data rather than on simple observations.

Thanks to that, educators can use the data to develop behavior-model algorithms through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. It ensures that students receive the best possible assistance.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app
 

 2. In-app chat with fellow students and teachers

One rather basic feature which can have an enormous impact is the option for in-app chats with fellow students. During remote schooling, kids can easily feel isolated and lack contact with fellow students. Enabling students to get in touch with schoolmates and teachers to discuss homework assignments or just chat makes a big difference. Viable options can be the possibility for instant messaging, forums and video conferencing. Besides that, it helps children learn how to navigate as a digital citizen and how to virtually communicate with each other.

 

3. Gamification

Point scoring, competition, leaderboards — gamification has a wide range of use in e-learning. It’s not surprising that it is an element that is more and more added to learning management systems. Don’t confuse gamification with wasting time. Play is a fundamental principle of early childhood development and it can be easily implemented for e-learning. But when I talk about gamification, I mean a tool for driving motivation.

E-learning platforms development. How to improve your educational app

It is not about online geography puzzles or anything else that simply is just a game and its secondary objective is that kids are learning something while having fun. In fact, it rather means that it is a way to bring a bit more fun into things students normally don’t like to do and in turn to increase their internal motivation. So, the question gamification answers is how to make learning more engaging. It also is a tool to track student’s progress and introduces a competitive spirit as students try to improve their rankings. There are many possibilities on how gamification can look like on an e-learning platform.

Final thoughts on how to improve e-learning platform

When it comes to learning platforms, teachers, students, and parents need one platform for all as a pedagogical assistant.

Whether you’re looking for developers who can help you upgrade your learning platform for the upcoming challenges or would like to create your own applications, our team of edtech experts and developers can help you prepare the best online learning platform. Drop us a line if you’d like to get a free consultation.

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Entrepreneurship Software Technology

5 vital traits of a great product owner (from the dev team perspective)

Ask ten project managers what the ideal product owner looks like, and you’ll get ten different answers. This vital role in any software development project or team leasing job helps guide development and serves as the go-between among developers and project sponsors. This person needs to be available to the team, know the backlog very well, and has decision-making power. 

Below is a list of the most valuable features from the point of view of the development team. While working in a software house, you can meet many product owners from various organizations. We at Espeo usually work in agile, we often use scrum, but cooperation with the product owner looks different due to different rules in the organizations we work with. Agile methodologies give businesses the flexibility to adapt products to the ever-changing needs of the market. 

Time and time again companies have trusted us as a software development provider. Read more about some of our projects and find out why.

5 Most important product owner traits

Extensive knowledge about the product and the product vision

Product owners should be people who answer the team’s questions during development. They’re also the people who know the vision and purpose and are able to present it to others. They’re a hub collecting requirements from stakeholders and manages requirements accordingly. Being able to distinguish must-haves from nice-to-haves is essential. For this, they should have a lot of domain knowledge in the field. 
 
I can’t imagine a product owner who doesn’t know what we’re doing. Of course, this does not mean that he must immediately know the answer to each question asked, but he will know where to go to receive this information. One of the worst things that can happen in a project is the team’s question: why are we doing this? This is one of the biggest reasons for falling motivation.

Availability to the team

A product owner should be available to the team on a daily basis. He cannot be the person who answers after two days. Usually, we work in two-week sprints. If he is a person who is difficult to contact, he will definitely have an impact on the result of the sprint, and may even lead to its failure and some stories/tasks will not be delivered.

If a question arises from the developer and he doesn’t receive a response in time, he may either proceed with his own ideas, or wait for the answer — both situations are not ideal, and in the long run they will cause low team velocity/performance or will miss business assumptions.

If you need a better team or just a good product owner – let us know!

Final decision making power

Remember that the product owner is always a final decision-maker! We have many stakeholders and project sponsors in the project —  they can all propose new tasks to the backlog. However, it’s always up to the product owner to decide what scope the team should address. For the development team, his words are more important than other stakeholders’ ideas. 

That implies that there should always be one product owner! There’s one product backlog, one review session after the sprint, and one person who’s responsible for it. I heard a sentence paraphrasing The Lord of the Rings: “One Product Owner to rule them all” —  it’s so true. 

Prioritizes the product backlog 

Prioritizing the product backlog is one of the key responsibilities of the product owner. Sometimes he has to make more ad-hoc decisions, for example when prioritizing print items. Members of the development team very often ask the question of which task is more important and need a specific answer.

Communicativeness 

There is a need for effective communication. And by being communicative I don’t mean that he’s talking all the time. So not only speaking but also listening, watching, and writing precise reports.

Empathy with both the business and tech team is important because the product owner is a bridge between business and tech. 
Also, face-to-face contact happens when he or she has a conversation with a developer about the details of the user story.

The communication aspect is also important during the sprint when providing early constructive feedback related to the work done. A good product owner always knows the current state of the implementation and isn’t waiting till the end of the sprint. 

With 14 years on the market, we have gained valuable expertise in various areas. Read more about what we excel at.

And a few other appreciated by the team

  • Understands the domain
  • Knows business model and can sell it to the team
  • Understands tech issues — for sure it’s not a must, but in general, it helps when communicating with developers
  • Understands agile

Conclusion

Software development is a near-constant work in progress. There is always more to do and tinker with. But to set clear goals and set a team up for success is perhaps one of the most important things to do to ensure a good product comes out of it and on-budget.

Appointing a product owner who can serve as the person between the development team and the client and who can help keep a team on track can mean the difference between a project that lags and one that succeeds.

Product owners are a vital part of any agile development project. Good communication, the power to make decisions, and prioritizing tasks are some essential traits every product owner needs.
 
See also: 

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Blockchain Entrepreneurship Financial Services Supply Chain

Leveraging blockchain for enterprise applications

More and more technologies keep appearing to make life easier, and the entrance of blockchain technology has brought in a new approach to managing and creating enterprise systems. At the moment, blockchain is at the same position as cloud and big data were some years ago. Most people think bitcoin or cryptocurrency when they hear the term blockchain, however, that’s not all there is to it. If you have started using blockchain or have only heard or read about it, then you would have one basic question. How is it possible to use blockchain for enterprise applications?

Blockchain is a network of a decentralized system, a global network of computers jointly manage a database that collects and records transactions. For the past fifteen years or so, businesses have experienced significant changes as a result of open-source software, cloud, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). These terms are not jargon anymore, because various businesses have adopted the use of these technologies. I’ll review the current state of blockchain for enterprises.


Blockchain for enterprise applications?

This innovative technology can be useful for other things besides creating a digital currency. Blockchain for enterprises can mean, for example, developing new financial technologies. It can serve a wide variety of other purposes as well. These include keeping track of physical assets or voting rights, digital assets, tracking ownership. A business can even use it for locating the source of a document.

Blockchain technology has been defined as an effective way to reduce costs, increase transaction speed, and establish trust between transacting parties. A study by Santander Innoventures claims that Blockchain technology has the potential to reduce banks’ yearly infrastructural costs by $15 billion to $20 billion by 2022. The Santander fintech study (produced in partnership with Oliver Wyman and Anthemis Group), showed that distributed ledger technology (DLT) would save banks some money by removing central authorities and evading slow and expensive payment platforms.
Beyond payments, the authors also noted that in time, distributed ledger technology could support smart contracts. These are computer protocols that implement or verify contracts. This will lead to blockchain for enterprise use in security, trade finance and other areas where risks relating to counterparties arise. 
Aside from bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general, the adoption of blockchain for enterprises is growing in other industries faster than you might think.


Blockchain adoption in various industries


Financial Services

Blockchain activity became relevant in the financial services industry a few years ago. It has advanced through various tests, pilots and proofs of concept. Santander, RBC, JP Morgan, Citibank, American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Goldman Sachs, and BNY Mellon, are some financial services firms that have started directing efforts towards blockchain-related researches. These companies have groups working internally, and professionals dedicated to blockchain technology.

Despite the increased use of blockchain technology, financial institutions are limited in their efforts at testing blockchain as a result of restraining regulations. Hopefully, as more fintech architects continue to unravel the revolutionary technology, this challenge will become history.

Finance — examples and cases

Here are some examples of financial institutions that are currently working on blockchain technology.

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has started a trial blockchain in cross border funds transfer dubbed project Jasper.

Goldman Sachs is on trial to developing its own strategy. Information related to this attempt by the firm hasn’t been made public, and little is known about it. The firm has a group dedicated to blockchain for enterprise applications and working internally. It has investments in Digital Assets Holdings, a company which itself is an investor in distributed ledger technology companies that supports financial institutions.

American Express filed for a patent in April 2017. This was a patent for a new customer reward program that relies on blockchain technology for record-keeping and rewards customers in cryptocurrency. The firm announced its successful use of Ripple to help corporate customers from US banks to UK Santander branches. Just as a sidenote, we’re also working on customer loyalty management on the blockchain.
Visa is also working on blockchain for enterprise applications. It launched its blockchain-based business-to-business payments service platform known as B2B Connect in November 2017. The platform was initially announced in 2016 and it was developed in collaboration with Chain, a blockchain infrastructure-focused enterprise.


Retail

This industry seeks to utilize blockchain technology by using it to improve the supply chain. Walmart has already started a blockchain trial for monitoring the movement and origin of pork in China.

Alibaba, a retailer from Asia, announced late last year that for the past two years, it had been working underground to develop an in-house private blockchain network system. Its goal is to track the authenticity of products and to prevent product counterfeiting. Head of Ant Financial’s Innovation Lab, Geoff Jiang, stated that with blockchain for enterprises, they would be able to tell where a product is coming from, which retailer it is coming from, and its source. This, in other words, will ensure that products collected are from tested and trusted suppliers.
An Espeo client, Luxify does this as well. The Hong Kong firm uses blockchain to verify the authenticity of luxury items.

Increasing Productivity In Logistics

This is a perfect example of where an enterprise can use blockchain to simplify and solve complex industry operations. Port of Antwerp in Belgium has recently started a joint project with the startup T-mining. Their project is set to make using blockchain in handling containers at the port is more efficient and secure. By setting this up, the harbor will able to safely digitize transactions between various members including carriers, drivers, forwarders, terminals, and shippers. All this without any intermediary. This will lead to cost reduction as a result of reduced paper works. It will also minimize the possibility of fraud.

Tourism

TUI Group, a multinational travel company, recently invested one million euros in blockchain for enterprises. In fact, the company is in the phase of transforming its hotel networks into its own blockchain named BedSwap. The new model is expected to save up to 100 million euros yearly. Another example is Jessica VerSteeg, the CEO of Paragon Coin, is an advocate of cryptocurrencies and a supporter of legitimization of the cannabis industry. She’s now working on applying blockchain principles in legitimizing pure-grade cannabis suppliers.



Health data

American multinational technology firm, IBM, and the US Food and Drug Association (FDA) has signed an agreement to utilize blockchain for enterprise applications. Their plan is to create a scalable health data exchange that will address the lack of transparency in health data and improve on patient privacy trust. The two organizations have explored the blockchain scope since announcing their partnership in January 2017. They kept looking into how they could use blockchain to support information exchange through different data types, ranging from clinical trials to evidence data. The initial trial was on oncology-related data. As at this time, Shahram Ebadollahi, IBM’s chief science officer for Watson Health, noted that the healthcare industry was undergoing significant changes as a result of the data being generated. Ebadollahi also said that since blockchain technology supports a highly decentralized framework for data sharing, innovation will accelerate throughout the healthcare industry.


Humanitarian sector

Karl Hoods, the chief information officer for Save the Children, said he had sent notes to the board telling them about the potentials of blockchain for enterprises in 2016. The organization recently started thinking about introducing the proof of concept that would help in the verification process of volunteers in the field. As they mention, sometimes there isn’t enough time to carry out background checks on each individual. On a smaller scale, token-based businesses also use blockchain for charity for tracking donations.

Blockchain for enterprises — the bottom line


We can go on naming important cases where blockchain technology is used for enterprise purposes. 2017 saw a significant increase in the adoption of blockchain technology by big businesses. There has been a notable rise in pilot testing, patent applications as well as proof-of-concept forms of research and design. Blockchain can really be the difference between maximizing profits and falling below standard.

The only obstacle to the adoption of blockchain for enterprise applications would be how new it is. People still don’t understand this technology all that well. However, different organizations and countries offer training and development programs for young people – and more seasoned businesspeople. I myself run one of these as part of Espeo’s blockchain training services. Hence, understanding how the technology works and using its full potential will help save billions of dollars year after year.

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Blockchain Finance Financial Services

Ways blockchain is solving the credit gap for SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of economies worldwide. They play an essential role in the global economy and social development, with more than 50% of the world’s population working in these enterprises. In the Netherlands, for example, almost 90% of Dutch businesses are SMEs, and they account for 60% of the Dutch economy’s revenue. Blockchain innovation for SMEs is opening up new models of finance.

However, SMEs face a lot of challenges in their operations. In this article, I will review five significant challenges confronting SMEs namely: difficulty in securing loans, and trade finance, cash flow issues, limited alternative financing, and personal identity concerns. We will then discuss some solutions provided by blockchain technology.

Though many people relate blockchain to big companies, the technology also opens new prospects to SMEs in various sectors to solve existing issues and empower them to optimize their operations and create new business models. Until recently, many hindrances caused slower adoption of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies by SMEs. But that is slowly changing.

Current challenges facing SMEs

Several challenges hinder SMEs despite their status as the lifeblood of world economies. They encounter difficulties in sourcing finances, scaling their businesses, processing payments, and adding other supplementary services that are both necessary to operate and expand.

Bank Loans

Securing a loan to start or expand a business is one of the major problems facing SMEs. More than 30% of SME businesses close in the first three years of operation because of inadequate funding.

Since the banking crisis of 2008, financial institutions are naturally risk-averse, hence their tolerance for SME lending is relatively low. The World Bank report of 2018 estimated that 70% of SMEs are unable to access essential credit. While the global demand for SME credit stands at $2.38 trillion, the truth is, just a portion (about 15%) of businesses actually receive loans from banks.

Trade finance

The second challenge, especially for globally operating SMEs, is access to trade finance. Trade financing, just like many types of credit provision, is a primary ingredient of the success of SMEs, but this ingredient is not always easy to secure. SMEs encounter numerous hurdles in their funding efforts, especially when it comes to accessing traditional finance services.

The industry still relies heavily on paper and uses outdated processes and procedures. Most trade finance operations are, as a result, still time-consuming, bureaucratic, and a bit expensive for most SMEs.

Cash flow

Failure to cash in capital continues to cause adverse impacts to SMEs, creating growth and cash flow problems. In fact, 40% of SMEs reported cash flow challenges in the last two years. Companies need steady cash flows to purchase raw materials, run production processes, pay workers, and cover other business costs. For smaller businesses, a late payment can be the difference between success and failure.

Limited Alternative Financing

Nowadays, SMEs often go for alternative forms of financing to secure capital and sort out cash flow challenges. In the past decade, peer-to-peer lending platforms emerged as an alternative to bank loans. Additionally, crowdfunding has also appeared to fill the gap in the market, though tech startups are the primary targets of crowdfunding. However, SMEs from other industries cannot access alternative financing.

Personal Identity

Personal identity and data management are the main concerns for e-commerce businesses as they rely on centralized platforms to store user data and most of their communications and payments. Such parties are vulnerable to hacking, and fraudsters can steal user data.

Blockchain as a Solution to these Challenges

Blockchain technology can solve SME challenges in the areas of funding and trade finance. So far most uses for blockchain center on finance. It can also transform other inefficient sectors. Safe and secure data transactions and smart contracts may improve their supply chains and improve customer satisfaction by automating their services.

Expansion into new markets

Blockchain can be a way for SMEs that want to venture overseas in their quest for trade finance. Trade finance products are more efficient because of blockchain’s transparency and consensus mechanisms that replace multiple requests of verification and auditing.

A study carried out by the World Economic Forum, and Bain & Company shows that blockchain could play a crucial role in minimizing the global trade finance gap, supporting a trade that otherwise could not happen. The second finding is that the effects could be significant in emerging economies and for SMEs that will embrace the technology beyond developed markets and establishments.

The Asian Development Bank states that currently, the global trade finance gap stands at $1.5 trillion, and project it to increase to $2.4 trillion by 2025. However, findings from another study show that the gap could be condensed by $1 trillion with the effective use of blockchain technology.

Supply chain finance

Blockchain can also solve the issue of tracking supply chain finance. Many businesses are currently creating open account solutions. But, due to the problem of tracing the supply chain system, financing is limited to only a few companies. Since blockchain is more flexible with data compared to existing digital systems, it opens up the prospect of this level of financing.

On a blockchain, both sellers and buyers can access all transactional information in real-time. Each step of the supply chain system is time-stamped and verified by all members, implying that it is accurate and immutable. This extra level of visibility also depicts that parties will enjoy more invoice financing solutions.

Smart contracts

One of the primary aspects of blockchain technology is the ability to provide SMEs with smart contracts that define the terms and conditions of agreements, just like traditional agreements do. Besides, smart contracts automatically implement and enforce all the pre-agreed terms and conditions without the help of third parties. Smart contracts can replace many labor-intensive and costly business operations with cost-effective costs.

The major benefits of blockchain emerge from smart contracts, single digital records for customs clearance. Smart contracts can represent an invoice, or any other financial document, and be utilized as collateral to secure a loan. They can help alleviate credit risk, lower expenses, and eliminate barriers to trade. To avoid the initial development expenses of developing on Ethereum, Espeo blockchain makes it easier to build and launch smart contracts.

Funding

Blockchain can reinvent SME funding. The P2P lending sector, which the traditional banking system has locked outside, can be revived blockchain technology by digitizing what was once a manual process.

Through disintermediation, blockchain technology is useful and faster for SMEs- not only technology companies- to raise funds through equity. The eradication of these obstacles minimizes the requirement for complicated paperwork. Besides, the automated nature of the system eliminates commissions, exclusions, excessive brokerage charges of selling shares, and other overheads.

Identity management

Another field where blockchain could be a gamer changer in the field of online identity verification. Many SMEs carry out their operations online, increasing the demand for enhanced online security. Decentralized identity through blockchain can reduce the threat of identity theft and fraud. These systems bring a more robust and reliable form of identification of people without the need for third parties. Decentralized identity management also has extra benefits, such as the reliability of the verification process and quick operational speeds. In this way, SMEs will speed up their operations and make them more reliable.

Blockchain for SMEs

Several collaborative blockchain companies, like Hyperledger and Ethereum, have mushroomed to raise the adoption of blockchain across various industries and inform SMEs of the technology’s potential.

Their primary objective is to enable businesses to create customized blockchains that solve particular problems instead of letting enterprises solve issues on their own. In the last five years, we have experienced a rise in platform-based platforms focused on SMEs.

We.Trade platform

Nordea has created a blockchain-based platform designed to make it easier for SMEs to trade with other firms in Europe. All Nordea SME customers can access the we.trade platform. Trading is regulated through There is a set of rules meant to secure the process. By enabling more businesses to enjoy more effective access to trade financing and credit across Europe, the Nordea SME customers will expand their activities by reaching out to untapped markets and creating new trading partnerships.

Karma

Karma is a P2P firm that is fully decentralized and designed to give SMEs access to alternative funding. The platform leverage the power of blockchain to enable business clients to invest in any SME. It offers its users a wide range of investment opportunities. For instance, it allows investors to lend to SMEs anywhere all over the world.

Blockchain identity platforms

Already, several blockchain firms are exploiting blockchain’s identity tools. The decentralized and security aspect of blockchain to offer better and more transparent identification features is an excellent way for businesses to identify themselves and access certified data in their e-commerce sites.

Instead of purchasing expensive, centralized server architecture or “paying hefty fees” to firms like Amazon Web Services or Google, SMEs might instead decide to rent custom-sized decentralized hosting space from a blockchain company. Renting brings high data integrity and a more effective cost plan.

Conclusion

It is easy to understand why an increasing number of SMEs are willing to invest more in blockchain technology, just from the potential of blockchain technology. With decentralization and related features like smart contracts, SMEs may expect to experience a total transformation of how they operate.

However, blockchain is still at its infancy stage. The mass adoption of this technology by SMEs has not yet begun, and widespread adoption calls for more time. For blockchain companies to realize this dream, they have to rally SMEs behind this revolutionary technology and drive customers toward blockchain solutions. Mass adoption requires trust.

For SMEs to fully realize the benefits of blockchain, they must begin trusting the process. SME trust will, in turn, prove to the world that there are numerous benefits of using blockchain technology for everything related to business. Considering how blockchain could boost trade by more than $1 trillion in the next decade, according to the World Economic Forum, this may be a call-up to blockchain companies to offer SME-based solutions. 

Reach out to us to find out more about how to use blockchain technology to grow your business.

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