2017 has been a tremendous year for us: large projects in IoT, FPGA, AI, Blockchain; awards; new clients!
Enter 2018 with Velvetech
10% OFF PROJECT COST
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It’s a good habit, as the year is ending, to look back at the company’s achievements in 2017, cherishing the most exciting moments and sharing them with you. Join us as we reflect on our journey through 2017 and let us know if it resonates with you. As a bonus, we got you a holiday special offer!
Growth Metrics
Bpm’online Partnership Development
Last year we became partners with bpm’online — one of the largest BPM & CRM software system providers. This year, we have seen a considerable growth of projects related to configuring and customizing bpm’online CRM for businesses: up 25% compared to 2016.
In 2017 we significantly improved our skills and knowledge of bpm’online system configuration, customization, and administration. Five more Velvetech employees successfully passed bpm’online’s certification making our bpm’online development team stronger. The advanced-level certification we received allows our team to develop custom solutions on top of the bpm’online platform.
The synergy we are enjoying with the bpm’online team has brought about three new products to the CRM’s own marketplace:
These custom add-ons developed by Velvetech are available (moderation pending) in the bpm’online marketplace for all bpm’online users.
The “Outstanding Engineering Skills” award, which Velvetech received at bpm’online Global Tour in Boston, has become the cherry on the cake in our partnership with bpm’online and the sign of recognition of our efforts to innovate the bpm’online CRM system.
IoT Consumer Electronics Platform
Velvetech is proud to have seen a public release of a personal security product in 2017 — an IoT project developed by us. The developed IoT platform includes several innovations proposed by Velvetech. The blend of software and hardware ideas increased the overall operating time of the smart devices and had a positive impact on the BOM.
The product is basically a wearable smart device integrated with a cloud monitoring system intended for the enhanced personal security in everyday life. This case marks a new area of expertise for Velvetech as the first consumer electronics project in the IoT sphere.
New Technology Frontiers
FPGA
We have successfully delivered an FPGA-based platform for a high-frequency trading (HFT) firm. Due to its parallel architecture and deterministic nature, the FPGA hardware allows the lowest possible latency in the process of order execution.
Accelerating the HFT engine to nanoseconds, FPGA has enabled our client to increase their trade volumes and gain higher profits. Our team has obtained an invaluable experience of working with the cutting-edge FPGA technology that we can now implement in various projects.
Blockchain
2017 has been a very prolific year in terms of our engagement with FinTech companies. Velvetech has participated in and developed several trading solutions from the ground up. This experience has nudged us to embrace a new technology — blockchain, that we first tapped into with a couple of our internal projects in 2016.
As of recent, smart contracts and blockchain development have extended our pool of services.
Speech Recognition Module
The speech recognition module that Velvetech has recently developed integrates with Cloud Speech API by Google and RingCentral. One of the biggest technical challenges we had to overcome was the need to “train” the module to discern different speaking parties. For example, the software decodes speech of a customer and, let’s say, a sales agent as separate chunks of text.
One of our clients uses the speech recognition module integrated into his platform to speed up the training process for new employees. It also helps increase sales by advising sales assistants more context-fitting dialog variations.
Currently, we are finishing development of a stand-alone speech recognition module that can integrate with any other existing software systems. We can’t wait for more partners to get their hands on this speech recognition solution in order to optimize their existing processes and increase ROI.
“This is another example of innovation where Velvetech has been critically important to our success is in our B2B business”
Ted Devine
CEO, Insureon
Advances in Mobile
This year Velvetech has switched from Objective-C to Swift on all iOS app development projects. The cornerstone of this process was the porting of a large iOS trading application from Objective-C to Swift.
We also continue development of Android applications with Java and Android Studio, as well as offer cross-platform mobile development based on Xamarin and Titanium.
Velvetech also gained invaluable experience of going through Apple’s certification process as a part of developing a mobile app for a personal security solution. We now know how to take the pain out of passing MFi certification tests for all our customers who plan to release an iOS app for a smart device or an appliance.
Continuous Education
Velvetech assisted our six .Net developers with qualifying for and receiving Microsoft certificates. Our reinforced all-around talented team of 24 certified .Net developers can help with various projects: from cloud-based enterprise solutions to mobile apps.
Another area of expertise we invest in is bpm’online CRM certification. Our software engineers have received “advanced” certificates from bpm’online in order to provide customization and development services on top of bpm’online CRM.
We have held over 40 in-house seminars and master classes, where our specialists shared their experience in software engineering, IoT system’s architecture, call center automation, QA best practices, effective communications, UI/UX, etc. to level up the corresponding competencies in the company.
This summer Velvetech opened its doors to a summer coding school. Velvetech coding experts offered participating Erlang and .Net developers a few real-life projects intended for the internal company use.
The participants were asked to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of the respective programming languages and solve some specific issues in a couple of modules for Velvetech’s internal CRM. Two of the interns continue to work on commercial projects for Velvetech.
Under-the-Hood Progress
Velvetech team has been really busy with its in-house projects in 2017. The tip of the iceberg is obviously the refreshed website, yet there are also several other under-the-hood coding initiatives that improve our internal processes by a long way. Some of these are:
- Improvements to our CRM system
- Rearrangement and customization of our ERP system
These changes will definitely bring our services to a whole new level. Stay tuned.
“Big Talk” Time
We love to hang out with industry experts, share our expertise, and discover new connections and tech trends.
Drop us a line if you are visiting any particular conference or trade show in 2018. We’ll be happy to meet with you!
We generated a lot of buzz at FinTech, Insurance, IoT, and Healthcare trade shows this year. 2018 will become the year of transforming many of our new business connections into successful projects.
For all early birds in 2018
10% OFF PROJECT COST
Get in touch before January 10, 2018, and mention “Secret Santa”
to get 10% off the cost of your project.
As you can see, 2017 has been a great ride for Velvetech, and we are fully geared for the promising and exciting 2018. We’ll be happy to hear from you how 2017 was for your business and discuss plans for 2018.
Happy Holiday Season!
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