2021 has made all of us face the realities of the “new normal” and truly adapt after the whirlwind that the previous year had brought. However, with challenges come opportunities and learnings that are bound to make us stronger in the new year.
As the 1st of January approaches, many of us start to reflect on the past year and review the highlights that made it special. At Velvetech, we’ve also embraced this tradition by looking over the exciting projects, noteworthy achievements, and productive collaborations that took place throughout the year.
Our team is already looking forward to ushering in 2022 and continuing to work diligently on our software development services to help companies from all kinds of industries grow their business. Yet, before we make our wishes, let’s take a quick look at what 2021 has brought us.
Highlights of 2021
2021 has certainly been a fruitful year all around, but there are a couple of key highlights worth pointing out as we close this chapter and start looking forward to the next one.
Growing the Team
First of all, we are extremely proud of Velvetech’s growth and reaching a new milestone number of employees. As of today, there are more than 130 team members working in a totally distributed manner without sacrificing productivity and quality of work. In fact, embracing remote work has enabled our company to have specialists working across a wide range of time zones and effectively supporting clients from all parts of the world.
Acquiring New Certifications
Besides maintaining steady company growth, we’ve also placed a large emphasis on enhancing the level of services we deliver and got certified as an Endorsed Education Provider by IIBA. Thus, enabling our team to provide internal training programs for Business Analysts to attest their skills at ECBA, CCBA, and CBAP levels.
Building UI/UX Expertise
This year, after analyzing client requests and listening to feedback on how Velvetech can further cater to a wide range of client needs, we’ve decided to double down on UI/UX design services to help businesses develop and implement impactful visuals.
Given our extensive expertise in building responsive web solutions as well as captivating designs for native and cross-platform mobile apps, it was only right to embrace these skills and offer them to clients seeking unique and intuitive user experiences.
Expanding the Tech Stack
Another key highlight of 2021 centers around the expansion of our tech stack. As our clients already know, Velvetech specialists are well-versed in a multitude of technologies. Thus, enabling us to consistently choose the best tech stack for each project.
This year, we’re proud to extend our capabilities further and add the programming language “Go” to our existing technology stack. Hopefully, soon in the coming year, we will be able to showcase the various projects where Go was leveraged and the benefits it had brought.
Focal Points of 2021
Velvetech provides an extensive range of services to clients from all kinds of industries. Thus, every year the number of projects within a certain field or requiring a specific technology differs. So, let’s take a look at the focus areas of 2021 to see what this year was all about.
Internet of Things
In 2021, our team has concentrated on building scalable IoT systems that leverage connected devices to deliver meaningful, sensor-driven data.
IoMT for a HealthTech Company
For starters, we helped a healthcare software provider develop a real-time, indoor location tracking system for hospitals and other medical facilities. As a result of our successful collaboration, the Client acquired an IoMT application that currently delivers up to 95% accuracy of location detection and has a processing speed of 10-60 seconds.
IoT App for an Automotive Branding Manufacturer
Another project worth mentioning was in a completely different industry. Automotive tire manufacturing, to be precise. Here, we helped our Client design and develop hardware, firmware, and software components for the world’s first intelligent tire solution.
The resulting IoT app now allows drivers to view advanced tire analytics, the cost of inefficient tire conditions, and even recommendations for tire pressure adjustment. All in all, the Client was happy with the partnership and was named a finalist in the 2021 SEMA Industry Awards in the Innovator of the Year category.
IIoT for an Engineering Firm
The last IoT project we’re proudly looking back on today took 16 months to complete. Dinamic Oil, an engineering company, was looking to amplify its gear with an IIoT system for processing core data and monitoring helical pile installation.
Velvetech eagerly took on the challenge and helped with the process of torque and speed sensor development. Moreover, we complemented the hardware with mobile and desktop apps that ensured transparency and effective monitoring of essential data.
Healthcare
In 2021, we got to expand our portfolio with new healthcare projects while also continuing collaboration with some existing clients from the medical sphere.
As you may know, strict regulatory adherence is imperative in the healthcare industry. Thus, with extensive expertise in building compliant solutions, Velvetech was eager to participate in a project for a HealthTech firm seeking regulation-compliant onboarding and underwriting software.
We also continued our work with PPO Advisors from the previous year and helped the dental insurance consultant stand out from the competition through document processing automation, effective report generation, and the implementation of a CRM and a Client Center for an enhanced customer experience.
“The solution implemented by Velvetech uniquely positioned PPO Advisors to stand above the competition in the Dental Provider Credentialing and Insurance Contracts negotiation industry in the US. It ensured the Company to be the only one who is process-driven from start to end.”
— PPO Advisors Team
Blockchain
This year, we had a couple of exciting blockchain development projects that tested the skills of our team but still produced great outcomes for our clients.
One such project was for Keyqo Security, a cybersecurity healthcare startup that wanted to harness the power of blockchain to develop an intrusion detection system for monitoring user activity and being alerted of potential data breaches or hacker attacks. Thus, minimizing risks associated with fines, reputation damage, and legal consequences.
Another blockchain-related venture we were thrilled to partake in this year, centered around a highly trending subject in the software development sphere — NFTs and DeFi. Our Client, an NFT marketplace, was looking to build a decentralized exchange and approached Velvetech’s team to complete the undertaking. As always, we were up for the challenge and are looking forward to continuing our collaboration in the future.
Business Intelligence
Knowledge is power, and businesses can certainly thrive from gaining actionable data insights to drive organizational decision-making. This year, we’ve focused on helping our clients do exactly that with the aid of innovative technologies.
First, a client whom we’ve had the pleasure of working with for over 10 years already, was seeking help with new projects relating to real estate data aggregation. Velvetech’s team was excited to support a long-standing client and quickly dove into the subject matter to enhance business intelligence through data lakes and data warehouse systems.
Additionally, we’ve enjoyed helping a turnkey reverse logistics firm, track and analyze current relationships between the company and its clients. Specifically, by implementing various BI reports that depict inventory levels, shipment statuses, and other relevant information pertinent to each vendor.
CRM Customization
In 2021, we of course continued delivering our highly demanded CRM development services. Plus, we didn’t slow down on Creatio CRM integration and customization initiatives that allow clients to get valuable solutions that fit each of their unique business needs.
One such tailoring project was completed for CAASA, a trade association company that was looking to improve internal lead management processes to speed up efficiency. Within a month, our team quickly customized the low-code CRM Creatio and simplified the entire lead management workflow. Thus, leaving the Client happy with a well-structured, easy-to-use CRM system.
FinTech
FinTech software development has always been one of our sought-after services, and this year was no exception.
First, YellowTunnel, a company that’s developed its own Trade Intelligence platform approached us to update its design and perform SEO optimization. Yet, after this quick task, we also moved on to updating the Client’s technology stack and introduced TypeScript in order to make website support easier in the future.
Another FinTech project we are proud of this year involved a collaboration with a Chicago-based brokerage company. The Client was looking to improve its online brokerage platform by implementing new, compelling features that would prove valuable to its users. As a result of our collaboration, the company achieved great brand recognition thanks to the new functionalities we deployed.
Contact Center
As the end of the year draws closer, we’re proud of how successful our AI-based Contact Center solutions have been in 2021. We continuously work on improving the product, and this year we’ve even expanded our team with new specialists to help drive innovation.
We were thrilled to enhance call analytics through the addition of automatic missed calls tracking, support of Amazon S3 and Transcribe, as well as the development of our own STT engine. All in all, it’s been a fruitful year for our contact center solutions, as is evidenced by the range of projects that were completed.
We’ve helped a business funding company, TwinFold Capital, switch to a new CRM and implement our contact center solution with specific features like follow-agent, call queues, IVR, and local presence. Thus, resulting in a stable functioning of the telephony and higher business efficiency.
“We found that our previous business requirement for scripts and dialer queues was no longer needed. All thanks to the features of the Velvetech calling structure integrated into Creatio. The process of working with Velvetech can be trusted, as can the product. The collaborative culture of the team has been an important factor in our success.”
— Cricket Noyes,
CRM System Manager, TwinFold Capital
Additionally, Velvetech worked on an initiative for a telecom company called Audian to help win more clients. This was achieved through the development of a CTI screen pop app that was integrated with a phone system and CRM platforms. The venture resulted in improved telephony services which enhanced the product experience for Audian’s customers.
In the coming year, we intend to continue improving our contact center product suite and helping clients from all kinds of industries boost their sales and customer service department performance.
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Maintaining Our Partnerships
At Velvetech, we understand the importance of partnering with like-minded, skilled professionals in order to deliver software products and development services that truly cater to the needs of our clients. So, this year, we’ve continued to solidify the relationships with our long-standing partners.
In 2021, we maintained our status of a Microsoft Gold partner and kept providing organizations with an array of Microsoft-related products and services. In fact, one of the FinTech projects we worked on for an online trading platform specifically required our Microsoft tech stack expertise which helped us deliver a great level of service.
This year also proved to be exciting for another one of our partners — Creatio. Besides delivering numerous successful projects, Velvetech greatly improved its Contact Center Product Suite for Creatio and boosted the platform’s capabilities with an Amazon Connect Connector integration.
From then on, users were able to make calls via Amazon Connect telephony while accessing the relevant contact information which is a proven way to elevate efficiencies of sales and marketing teams.
Last but not least, we can’t wrap up this section without mentioning this year’s partnership expansion with RingCentral.
First, we released a Creatio app integration for RingCentral that allows storing communication with clients and colleagues in one place while also providing extensive call analytics.
Then, in August of 2021, we released an AI-Powered Call Analytics solution on the RingCentral App Gallery. It’s a tool that was built on RingCentral’s open API platform and integrates with a CRM of your choice to enable thorough monitoring of inbound and outbound calls. Overall, it accelerates the delivery of call analytics to support client initiatives and advance digital transformation.
Participation in Industry Events
With the world slowly settling in with the realities that the pandemic had brought, some industry events resumed while others remained virtual or blended. Either way, our team was happy to leverage this mix of opportunities to further improve our expertise, stay in the know on industry best practices, and keep up with emerging trends.
We were excited to participate in RingCentral Connect and discuss the world of business communication. We also enjoyed the Creatio Low-Code Marathon and ACCELERATE Global where we got to talk about digital-first organizations and the value that technologies like artificial intelligence can bring to sales and marketing departments.
Industry-specific events also didn’t pass us by. This year, we made sure to attend HIMSS, Becker’s Hospital Review, and ATA Edge 2021 for the latest healthcare insights and ITW to stay on top of the innovations going on in telecoms.
Additionally, we kept up with the latest VoIP best practices at Cluecon and discussed the potential of emerging technologies at Channel Partners. All in all, it turned out to be a networking-filled year in spite of all the remaining restrictions.
Looking Forward to a Fruitful 2022
Going down memory lane as 2022 approaches is imperative to help remember where we’ve been and to set a course for the upcoming year. At Velvetech, we’re already looking forward to more growth, great partnerships, and fruitful IT projects that contribute positively to our clients’ businesses. Our team can’t wait to collaborate with you and deliver meaningful results. See you in the new year!
At Velvetech, we wish your business,
Prosperity and continuous growth,
That internal IT systems,
Stay modern, and act not like a sloth.
That CRMs and Contact Centers,
Help keep customers content,
And that AI and Blockchain
Your capabilities augment.
We genuinely hope all of your software
Stays in tip-top shape.
But not to worry — if there’s an issue,
Our specialists — it won’t escape.
Enough about business,
It’s holidays after all,
But do keep Velvetech in mind,
And in January, give us a call.
Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones!
Get the conversation started!
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