Malcolm Carroll, Director, BlueFinity
The year 2020 was a year of rapid change. The prolonged nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that businesses are no longer practically able to wait for things to get back to normal. Not only is there the time factor, but “normal” is changing quickly as well.
By necessity, businesses have had to adapt to new ways of working and new ways of engaging with their customers. The introduction of apps is now seen to be key to achieving this—to MV users as much as anyone.
During 2020, we saw that MV users became far more aware of their ability to respond quickly to evolving customer requirements by introducing modern systems without having to migrate their systems wholesale to SQL/.NET environments. As a result, the year saw an ever-growing number of MV users adopt Evoke for low-code app development. This has provided them with the platform to introduce these apps to work seamlessly with their existing MV databases and enterprise systems and has allowed them to introduce apps to update their business models and significantly change the way they deal with their clients.
Throughout the year, we saw MV customers employ Evoke to develop apps across multiple industry sectors. Probably the most prominent is in the retail sector where multiple MV customers are now finding an effective way of engaging directly with their customers and are introducing apps to support and enhance in-store operations, warehousing, logistics and providing completely new online retail experiences.
The more up-to-date way of working has included far greater use of the cloud for MV users and, as a result of expanding direct access to customers and employees, security has become a critical component, as has privacy with respect to the information available. We have even experienced a slow but significant adoption of AI technologies such as chatbots amongst our MV client base.