Digital Transformation in Banking

Banks and financial institutions have been using digital channels quiet for a while. This allows them to reach and engage new customers, reduce costs and improve their overall performance and services. The financial sector, in particular banks, understands that well and seems to be ready to play the big digital game.

The importance of digitalization in finance

Technology and online services continue to penetrate our lives, and the financial industry is no in any way immune to this trend. Whether it’s ApplePay, PayPal or banking applications, digital transformation is here to stay. Clients are getting used to the simplicity of the almost instantaneous digital service and providers are motivated to react fast.

Currently, more than 50% of finance organizations are redeveloping their approach. So it is no wonder at all, that the amount of the financial organizations that will develop a mature strategy in the next 2-3 years will double. According to the Hackett’s Group Digital Transformation Performance Study, it takes digital leaders about 2.5 years to change their strategy.

The 2019 Key Issues Study shows that at this time those resources are only available to 24% of financial organizations. So it is no surprise, that according to the study, IT budgets for the transformation will rise in the next year. To name a few things: higher standardization, automated processes, improved performance, and customer experience.

Advantages of digitalization in business: banking sector

According to the new report from Accenture, retail and commercial banks have invested globally over $1 trillion in the past 3 years to transform their IT services. Digitalization is different for every industry, but it seems to be crucial for the banking industry because it is one of the most data-driven fields. As Gartner estimates, as many as 80% of traditional banks will go out of business by 2030.

Therefore, the challenge to make this information easily accessible and at the same time provide meaningful insights is so much bigger. But digital transformation can also contribute to the engaging and fulfilling customer and employee experience.

That is why it is time to start educating the new generation of workforce and recruit new talent. Going digital has really affected the workforce. Yes, automation can result in staff reductions, but it can also increase the demand for data scientists.

The industry already uses mobile apps, IoT, card readers, and sensors that made real-time financing a reality. All of that will make a possible further business transformation, adding technologies like AI and blockchain to the common instruments of the industry. But the next step is at least as much important. According to Boston Consulting Group, even a few key improvements can have a great impact on the overall performance and can potentially increase revenues up to 20%, while reducing costs by as much as 25%.

Digitalization of banking: Where do we stand now?

Banks all over the world spend billions of dollars each year to enhance their digital performance. More and more banks are starting to realize that their online presence is as important as their branches or ATMs, sometimes even more so.

Forrester’s report also found that 81% of banks understand that digital transformation needs to happen soon or their future success can be greatly compromised. But, despite the digital transformation trend being in the focus for years, less than 10% of banks really went through with it to achieve sustainable results.

According to Forrester, one of the most important trends in the industry is online banking, 73% of U.S. adults use this service at least once a month. More clients than ever rely on multiple channels. Around 20% of consumers visit a bank, use online service and banking apps each month.

Challenges of digitalization in banks

The banking industry is also subject to high-security risks due to personal information and transaction records, while the necessity to meet the compliance requirements makes it even harder to implement any changes.

According to the 2018 Retail Banking Trends and Predictions report, 69 percent of banks are unable to innovate due to this problem. So this undeniably is the key factor that is standing in the way of successful digital transformation for every bank. The most difficult problem to overcome on the road to digitalization in banking is legacy systems and systems integration challenges.

Digital transformation is not a project with a deadline, but an ongoing journey of change. Hopefully in the near future banks will be able to overcome the challenges, shape new business models with the help of IT, and get one step closer into the new robust digital tomorrow.
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Top 5 productivity tools in 2020

At the dawn of a new year, it's an important question to ask, and if you're honest with yourself, the answer will very probably be yes. Are there one or two productivity tools that can help you get the routine and boring parts of your job done more quickly, and allow you more time to spend on the creative, imaginative and fun sides?


In this post, we round up some of the best productivity tools for creatives and explain what they do, who they're aimed at, and how they can help you in your creative work. We recently found some of the best web design tools to help you work smarter in 2020.

1. Trello

Trello has been widely adopted across the graphic and web design professions, so your collaborators stand a good chance of being familiar with it already. Best of all, Trello is free for most purposes, and you’d only need to graduate to the paid-for versions for large-scale enterprise use.

Trello is basically a to-do list that you share with others and update in real-time, so everyone on your team knows what’s going on at any given moment. Based on a system of cards, which are essentially like virtual Post-it notes, the system is very flexible and easy to adapt to however your project is structured.

It lacks some of the advanced features of a fully-featured project management tool, such as time management and reporting. But that said, its beauty lies in its simplicity and we’re not sure we’d want its interface to become too overcomplicated.

2. Adobe Creative Cloud

The Adobe Creative Cloud is a subscription service providing a full suite of desktop apps, mobile apps, and services from Adobe. The best known of these are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Photoshop Lightroom and Premiere Pro, but there are plenty more you may not have heard of, such as notably Prelude, Flash Builder and Story Plus.

While there are some decent alternatives to Photoshop and other Adobe apps these days, there’s quite simply nothing to rival the Creative Cloud ecosystem, and as the industry standard, it’s a no-brainer for most professional graphic and web designers, not to mention photographers, digital artists and illustrators, and increasingly, 3D artists and animators.

Your subscription also gets you access to typefaces via TypeKit; cloud storage for your projects; Adobe Portfolio, a tool for building your portfolio; and stock images, videos, and templates with Adobe Stock.

3. Apple Pencil

Are you struggling with an old-school stylus that suffers from a lot of lag? In short, it's the best experience we've had drawing on the IPad and the closest to using a real pencil on real paper. It looks pretty darned stylish too. Then you'll likely get a huge productivity boost by investing in a newer model, and if you're an iPad user, we'd highly recommend the Apple Pencil for its accuracy, speed, and precision.

4. Surface Pro 7

The Surface Pro 7 is a tablet that’s powerful enough to run full Windows 10 programs while remaining sleek and light. It also doubles up as a laptop with the separately sold keyboard. While this device is still no match for the performance of a powerful Windows desktop, it does offer a superbly flexible way to stay up to date on the move, for anyone who needs to run full Windows 10 tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, rather than lower-powered Android or iOS alternatives.

Using Intel’s latest 10th generation processors, the Pro 7 is a step up from previous models in terms of performance, and the more expensive model does a great job at handling graphic-intensive tasks, such as video rendering.

5. Procreate

Closely replicating the feel of physical drawing in a digital format, it supports a range of styluses, including the Apple Pencil, along with hundreds of high-quality brushes and a suite of innovative features. In short, everything you need to create sketches, paintings, illustrations, and animations while you're out and about.
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Top best graphic design jobs in 2020

If you're looking for a brand new challenge in a different discipline, head over to our design jobs board, which has lots of active job listings from awesome employers just waiting for you to apply.
You might want to stay close to home or have an adventure elsewhere. Either way, we've got the hottest new job opportunities in the UK, USA and worldwide for you to explore.


Is it time you found a new graphic design job? If so, you'll want to find out what exciting opportunities are around. We will keep adding the newest graphic design jobs as soon as they become live, so if you don't find your perfect new career straight away, keep checking back to make sure you don't miss out.

Graphic design jobs: US

Motion Graphic Designer
  • Location: New York, NY
  • Salary: DOE
In this role, you'll design and create playful, colorful and inviting animated elements/assets, carrying them from concept to completion. A Motion Graphic Designer with excellent creative and technical skills is wanted for a three-month contract with a premier beauty brand.

Art Director – Games
  • Location: Atlanta, Georgia
  • Salary: DOE
You will execute and produce game art yourself, in this hands-on role. If gaming is your passion and you both love and consumes anime, don't miss this opportunity. An experienced Art Director who won't just direct, conceptualize or share opinions on their games is needed by Lionheart Games.

Senior Art Director
  • Location: New York, NY
  • Salary: DOE
You should have 5-8 years of relevant experience and a minimum of 3 years agency experience for this full time, contract position within a New York Agency. A Senior Art Director is required for this role within the spirits industry.

Junior Art Director
  • Location: New York, NY
  • Salary: DOE
The company is a baby care startup on a mission to make parents' lives easier by providing them with the best performing products. The ideal candidate will lead and manage the creative vision for Coterie. An experienced Junior Art Director is needed by Coterie. This position will report directly to the VP of Marketing and will be based out of its headquarters in NoHo.

You should also be an independent, action-oriented thought leader who works well in unstructured, fast-paced environments. This job will suit an original thinker with a passion for developing evocative and disruptive creativity.

Junior Graphic Designer
  • Location: Greater Los Angeles Area, CA
  • Salary: DOE
As a Junior Designer, you will work very closely with production and creative leads to develop engaging motion, still and multimedia content that inspires and delights audiences across platforms. This agency seeks a Junior Graphic Designer to join its team. This is one of the largest privately held agencies on the West Coast and it offers a holistic approach for brands in search of creative solutions to their marketing challenges.

Graphic Designer (Sports)
  • Location: Pittsburgh, PA
  • Salary: Competitive plus perks
The ideal candidate is capable of creating digital designs and graphics to tell the story of YinzCam's mobile fan experience through both print and digital channels.

If you have an eye and a talent for graphic design for sports and want to work in a career that involves sports and digital design on a daily basis, this entry-level designer position might be for you. Recent college graduates with a love of sports and design are encouraged to apply.

Graphic design jobs: UK

Head of Art
  • Location: London, UK
  • Salary: £55,000 - £60,000
As the Head of Art, you will oversee all creative content output across the account, from conception and ideation, through to creation and delivery. One of the most exciting creative content agencies in London wants a Head of Art to work on the most recognizable technology brand on the planet.

Graphic Designer
  • Location: The Lanes, Brighton
  • Salary: £10 per hour
A high level of graphic design skills is essential with the ability to work with customers discussing and interpreting the design brief quickly & efficiently. A Graphic Designer is required for a busy Brighton design and print company.

Art Director
  • Location: Leeds, UK
  • Salary: DOE
If you have knowledge of current game art production pipelines and workflows, plus experience working in game development as a senior member of an Art Department, this is a fantastic opportunity and an exciting role. An Art Director is needed at a northern-based, highly acclaimed company that makes mobile and console games whilst specializing in VR/AR.

Freelance Creative Director
  • Location: Shoreditch, East London
  • Salary: £250 per day
Your job will be to curate the client’s social media presence, ensuring every touchpoint of the brand is consistent and in-line with visual identity as outlined in brand strategy.

The OK COOL studio is turning UP. It's inflow state; winning dream clients on an international level. The team is tight. The vision is to move away from the fixed team model and continue sourcing and partnering with the hottest young freelance social media creatives in the world.

Creative Artworker
  • Location: Folkestone, Kent
  • Salary: Up to £26,000
You’ll be developing brand identities and campaigns using all types of media, from web graphics to print campaigns. This is a great opportunity to expand your skills as part of a growing, dynamic team. As a Creative Artworker at this agency, you’ll need 2-3 years’ agency experience in online and offline art-working and design.

This includes repositioning internal messaging to creating new experiences, exciting pan-European communications, destination branding and the curation of memorable live events. This agency has a reputation for high-end creative delivery.

Creative Video and Motion Designer
  • Location: Cardiff, Wales
  • Salary: £18,000 - £22,000
The ideal candidate should be passionate and self-motivated, with excellent video editing capabilities along with a strong motion design skillset. A creative video editor, with proficiency as a motion designer, is required. You'll be working in a fast-paced, demanding, but relaxed environment within the health, fitness and lifestyle market.

Junior Art Director
  • Location: London, UK
  • Salary: Up to £35,000
A rare and exciting opportunity to help shape and grow an agency's creative output from the very early stages – you will set the tone, not follow. A talented Junior Art Director is needed by an exciting new agency, to join its burgeoning creative department.

Creative Graphic Designer
  • Location: London, UK
  • Salary: £35,000 plus pension and healthcare
An experienced and versatile Creative Graphic Designer is required. They will also have a creative eye to enable them to produce beautiful content, but also a knack for data visualization and infographic creation. The ideal candidate will have previous B2B SaaS brand experience on either the client or agency side.
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7 Stages of software development cycle

The software development process is lengthy and needs step-by-step techniques following. So let us engage in detailed consideration of every stage of the software development process to once and for all understand this important IT fundamental.


The development of app, website, or software is a complex process, and a wrong step in any stage of software development will cause the inevitable outcomes both for the quality of product and the entire business. It involves hard work, dedication, and expertise in software development.

1. Software Design

The software design is the major aspect of the software development services cycle. The design should be creative and clear. It involves overall product design along with data structure and database design. Software designing uses many different strategies.

2. Planning

The developers should understand the clients’ requirements, namely, what exactly they want and what issues can occur in the development process. It is the phase of brainstorming when specialists gather requirements and analyze all the aspects of a future software product

We care about the graphic interface of each product we work with. This is why QArea is recognized as a top Software Development Company on DesignRush. This stage involves communication between stakeholders, project team, and users.

3. Implementation and Integration

During this software stage, the project team checks whether the software product runs on various systems. Normally software contains a great number of programs, which require careful implementation and step-by-step integration of the software product.

4. Software Testing

Before the launch, a product needs verification which includes software testing and debugging done by testers. When the testing department ensures that software is error-free, it goes to the next stage. 

Quality Analysts test software using various test cases. After completing of coding, the software is sent to the testing department. The work of testers plays the crucial role for the quality of software and its performance.

5. Feasibility analysis

The team divides the workflow into small tasks, so that developers, testers, designers, and project managers can evaluate their tasks. At this step, the project team defines the entire project in detail and checks the project’s feasibility. They define whether it’s feasible in terms such as cost, time, functioning, reliability, etc.

6. Installation and Maintenance

Finally, the software is handed over to the clients to be installed on their devices. After the installation, if the client needs any modification, the product is to come under the maintenance process.

7. Programming

SDLC can be shaped depending on the project requirements. Agile methodologies and Scrum offer a bigger amount of flexibility and cross-functional teams. Feel free to contact us for more details! This is the critical phase of SDLC. A lot of brains work for coding and deliver the desired software.

The featured stages of software development procedure are followed by the majority of IT companies in order to provide high-quality services in the development of all sorts of software. Usually, a company assigns a team of programmers for a particular project. The tasks are subdivided into sub-phases called Task Allocation, so every coder has their own task.
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Python vs Golang: Which language is best for AI Programming

Recently we have examined Golang web programming capabilities comparing it to other languages. Python and Golang are the most popular programming languages for AI. As a company that has worked with both—we know it can be difficult to choose the right one.


You may check our discoveries as for Golang vs Node JS, Go vs Ruby, and of course, Golang vs Python comparison. Now, it’s time to see which language, Go or Python, is better specifically for AI programming.

What Python brings to AI programming

You can hardly consider any programming language perfect, but certainly, Python has its strengths in the context of AI. Here are the most significant ones.

Language accessibility

Besides, this language is widespread. Recently it’s been ranked by the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers as the top programming language of 2018. Python is an accessible programming language, and it keeps gaining more ground. For businesses, accessibility means a vast market of Python experts.

Well established community

According to GitHub annual statistics, last year the global Python community sent over 1 million pull requests. The community and the ecosystem around Python are vibrant and active. The community contributes much into creating new libraries, updating documentation, and extending toolset.

The extensive set of libraries

Not to mention Tensorflow, the most popular open-source library used for many of Google’s machine learning applications. Python libraries help engineers build new algorithms (LightGBM), do model prediction (Eli5) and datasets processing (Keras), work with complex data (Scikit-Learn), and more.

Python’s downsides

However, while Python is sometimes referred to as the best programming language for AI, it has its disadvantages.

Too many versions of Python available

One more challenge that adds developer's confusion is packaging systems. Packaging systems in different versions are broken down in different ways which are hard to manage and document. In turn, different packaging systems may require installing multiple environments.

Even the most dedicated Python programmers find this point painful. The transition between versions and disconnection between Python 2 and Python 3 are just several issues.

Bad for large-scale engineering

When it comes to work involving a few hundred programmers, Python clearly losing to Golang scalability. It’s also challenging to use Python if you require a very ordered and disciplined way to do programming. The same is true when you are going to deploy very complex AI systems.

Codebase may be difficult to maintain

Python offers many libraries, supports multiple systems, and third-party integrations. But, such variety often plays against Python.

From many projections, developers state that Python is not easy to maintain. How so? Python lacks several language features like static type system. Plus, libraries related to different versions of Python often conflict with each other. Such conflicts cause problems with configuring a specific cluster or even leads to a general stop of working code. Also, its syntax is confusing and goes against assumptions that other programming languages make.

Lack of performance and multicore processing

Another challenge with Python is its performance, specifically CPU and GPU processing. There are ways to get around this challenge, but they are mostly tweaks. What works for specific use cases often just can’t be applied for most common uses.

Golang advantages for AI programming

Does Golang have what it takes to beat Python? Let’s take a look at Golang advantages.
Libraries written in Go comfortable for Go developers

Programming a purely Go solution means having fewer pieces from different languages. Golang developers don’t need to call out to libraries written in other languages. But the main advantage of having these libraries in Go isn’t deployment, but developer comfort.

Covering vast AI purposes

Go libraries cover the need for data handling (GoLearn), binary classification problems (Hector), and passing data (Goml). The number of libraries Golang offers is small (but consistently growing) and addresses a wide range of purposes. Also, Golang has Theano, a library similar to Python’s TensorFlow. Theano provides Go developers with pieces of algorithms that can be reused.

Good at scale and computations

Unlike Python, Golang scales and performs well within large-scale projects. To compare, Go copes with complex math problems up to 20-50 times faster than Python. Another reason to use Golang for AI programming is its speed, especially when it comes to the speed of math computations.

Minimalism and good code readability

For instance, when there’s a need for recursive algorithms, which can run slower due to the absence of tail-call optimization.

Most of Go’s algorithms stick to a minimalist approach. This allows developers to create very readable code after algorithm implementation. Yet, this minimalist approach can also be a weak point.

Golang downsides for AI programming

Talking about weak points, we suggest looking at these two.

Golang toolkit extension in progress

Basically, it’s in the process of extension along with the Golang community itself. So far, Golang developers have performed about 285k pull requests globally, according to GitHub. Of course, Go has its libraries for AI and is capable of covering the most essential purposes, yet the toolkit is not as extensive.

Need for deep AI expertise

For instance, default multithreading is helpful for Golang web development. Some Golang advantages for web development can play against it regarding AI programming. However, using multithreading for AI purposes requires seasoned Go developers with deep expertise in data science.

Final thoughts

Clean codebase, reused algorithms, and good scalability makes Golang a great technology for AI. As Golang company, we truly believe its growing community will contribute much to overall AI programming.

Python keeps striking the list of the most demanded languages for AI programming. However, Golang is expanding its territory gradually. So far, Go has served great for web apps. Now it also has good potential for AI programming.
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