Why Hire a Software Development Company in Canada?

Next to a giant like the United States, Canada can often get lost in the background thanks to its smaller population and unassuming reputation. However, there’s a lot to be said about the potential goldmine Canada has to offer, especially in terms of tech talent.

Software development is a crucial aspect of any business that wants to stand a chance in today’s world. There are countless processes in any given company that can benefit from being automated.

Hiring within North America can be very expensive—if you don’t know where to look. Some benefits to hiring a software development company in Canada include:

Talent

Curious about what Canadian tech talent can bring to the table?

Growth

Canada is known as the Silicon Valley of the North. Thanks to its rapidly growing tech sector still being somewhat untapped, businesses have the opportunity to utilize top talent at a relatively cheaper cost while remaining within North America.

Education

Canada is home to some of the top universities in the world. Canada is constantly building up highly-talented tech workers, and it shows: “The Toronto-Waterloo corridor is the largest tech cluster in North America outside of Silicon Valley.” It’s crucial not to overlook the huge pool of talent waiting just North of the United States. This corridor is also recognized as the #1 Startup, Cleantech, and Fintech ecosystems in Canada.

Skill

The expertise within a Canadian software development company is guaranteed to deliver beyond the expectation. Software companies grown in the environment of a newer Silicon Valley is shaped to take software solutions to the next level. It’s no coincidence that our tech scene is booming with a tech worker density comparable to Silicon Valley, and way above that of New York and Seattle. According to the Waterloo Economic Development Agency, the Toronto-Waterloo corridor is home to 15,000 tech companies, including 5,000+ startups, and more than 300,000 employees in high-tech industries.

Next-level Outsourcing

Nearshore outsourcing is a great way to continue to lower costs of software projects. A Canadian software company that prioritizes training outsourced talent to the same standard brings all the benefits of homegrown skilled workers to the forefront of any project.

Time Zone

When looking for software solutions, it’s tempting to outsource to countries like India, China, or the Philippines. There are many talented engineers outside of the continent ready to work, and while the world has largely moved to working entirely online, there are still too many negatives when it comes to outsourcing so far away.

Offshore Cons

The biggest setback, of course, is the massive differences in time zone. When you have teams that are anywhere from six to twelve hours off from your local team, it can wreak havoc on your projects. This can cause issues and delays, as communications break down easily and time is lost to waiting on days-late responses. Too much time is lost trying to wait or accommodate to offshore teams.

Language barriers can also be an unfortunate setback. When outlining the needs of a software solution, there can be no room for misunderstandings, lest there be more delays and missed deadlines.

Nearshore Pros

When hiring local or nearshore, work is efficient thanks to a shared eight-hour workday. Building a software solution is highly collaborative in nature; any successful project demands a fast-paced and responsive communication approach, which is made simpler when working with engineers in your time zone.

Culture

Canadians have a reputation for being really nice. While there’s debate on how true the stereotype is, it’s true that Canadians tend to be more altruistic when compared to their American neighbours. Isn’t that ideal when working on something as important as the backbone of your business?

Canadian talent also offers a wide worldview, as the immigration system allows for people from across the globe to gather in one place and collaborate on shared goals. The diversity and openness of Canadian culture encourages the melding of ideas, leading to unprecedented creativity and innovation.

This also creates opportunity for empathy, an important element to working with any software development company. It’s crucial to work with a team that truly understands the ins and outs of your business, while also seeing beyond the verbalized wants and into the needs of any software solutions.

ISU Corp calls this practice the Owner’s Mindset. Our teams are trained to see beyond the specifications of a project to cover all of a clients’ bases. Our experts are ready to analyze a businesses’ needs and deliver software tailored to suit its needs.

The Takeaway

Hiring a software development company in Canada is a strong choice for any business to make. Canada is home to globally reputable universities, which means a constant stream of new, highly-talented engineers, tech workers, and entrepreneurs. Canada’s technology sector is growing exponentially, and with this comes the opportunity for businesses to hire skilled software development companies at prices well below their American counterparts, while still upholding a level of standard that can only be brought from teams in North America. Consider working with ISU Corp, a world-class software development company that participated in the creation of Canada’s Silicon Valley. You can learn more how ISU Corp can add massive value to your business by watching this 2 minute video here.

ISU Corp is an award winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost effective custom software development, technology management, and outsourcing. Our unique owner’s mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines up to 70%. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Talk to us.

Written By Natalie Mansilla

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ISU Corp is an award winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects.  Contact us here.

Learning to Code For Beginners: Tips From Professional Software Developers

When you hear the term “coding,” you likely correlate it to an image of a programmer with headphones on in a dark room typing their fingers to the bone. To someone who isn’t familiar with the process, this may make coding seem like a robotic task consisting of nothing but numbers and letters. There’s a lot more to it than typing colourful lines on a black screen; the process itself is not for the fainthearted. Everyone interested in technology should at least have an understanding of coding, especially as society moves to a dominantly digital consumer landscape. 

Coding in its most basic form can be defined as people communicating with and teaching computers how to function. When a developer goes into the system, they use code to instruct what actions the computer and other relevant hardware must perform. The apps, websites, and technology you use daily are brought to life through coding languages and frameworks. As technology becomes more relevant in people's everyday lives, the need for programmers grows.

Today, over 50% of jobs require skills in technology which has placed coding in high demand among those skills. We expect that number to reach nearly 80% in the next decade. This will trigger the vast majority of businesses to rethink their digital landscape and search for talent that is keeping up with/exceeding the demands of today.

So now that we’ve established what coding is, let's go into the specifics of what it takes to adopt the practice as a complete beginner:

Mindset

Coding is a problem-solving task that not only challenges but requires you to use critical and logical thinking. You have to see problems from a different perspective and then break that problem down into digestible tasks (Examples: Make a flowchart or divide it into sub-problems). In forming those tasks, the programmer is observing the situation and uses their knowledge of languages and frameworks to find a solution for each. 

The code you're writing is meant to serve a purpose, this purpose needs to be in the front of your mind the whole time so you understand not only what you're doing but why you’re doing it. This will mean keeping a calm and collected attitude as you navigate the programming process. Essentially, coders need to understand that every problem has a solution and they have to do whatever it takes to find it.

Learn one language

To understand coding, it will be useful to master one coding language to the best of your ability. Some examples would typically be Java, Python, C, or Ruby as your best starting points. Aside from being among the most commonly used, they are easy to learn. Once you know one language, there will be carry-over concepts and knowledge that will make it easy to learn others. Additionally, it’s best to have one language that you’re more proficient with as your go-to since you’ll likely use it often.

Coding doesn’t require you to be a genius computer scientist. If you are a serial problem-solver, then you can learn the rest. One tool that will be a great resource is Harvard University’s free introductory to computer science course (CS50) that all first-year computer science students take. In this course, they teach you the basics of coding such as Algorithms, Data Structures, CSS, Python, JavaScript, and more. As you learn the fundamentals, you’ll move to execution, leading us to the next point.

Identify the purpose of your coding

When you build an understanding of coding principles and feel ready to put them into action, the next step is identifying your “why”. What needs are your solutions going to fill? We use coding to find ways of bringing concepts to life. Who in the 1970s would’ve thought you could send a text or FaceTime someone? These big changes in technology start with small advancements which will be a beginner's best friend.

Start coding something small such as crafting a simple message like “what is your name?” There are numerous methods to do even this specific task such as reverse alphabet letter correlation, manipulating the orientation of letters, or even using symbols to represent letters.

When one has built a solid understanding of software methodology and embraced a coder's mindset, one will see these simple tasks in different ways. It starts with an idea that becomes a vision. Essentially, when coding, you want to identify and try to solve your problem before you begin using algorithms. Seeing the solution and having it clear in your mind will stick with you as you find ways to fill in the gaps. 

Get your hands dirty

Branching off of the last point, no experience will compare to what a great team can teach you. The coding community is very welcoming and will not refrain from sharing their knowledge and advice with a beginner. As you network within the settings where you are learning, find out if there are hackathons you can participate in. A hackathon is a big coding project crammed typically into a 24-hour window. Beginner-friendly hackathon events use basic coding languages which would be a great learning experience. 

In addition to building a network and becoming active as a developer, it will be helpful to look into pair coding. This concept is rather self-explanatory as it is two programmers at one computer. There is the old saying “two minds are better than one” which is relevant in software development teams and why they use pair programming as an agile technique. But in a strictly learning-oriented manner, you will learn more from others than from tutorials or books. 

Challenges to expect

Now, while this section has depicted learning to code as a bed of roses, there are several challenges you can expect to encounter on your journey. In this section, we’ve outlined 5 key areas to look out for:

• Not knowing what to focus on: There are so many aspects that go into coding which can make a developer's road map seem chaotic. As a beginner, this can be overwhelming and, in some cases, discouraging. However, a key characteristic of a good programmer is acknowledging and accepting that there is a lot you have to do to succeed. 

• Can’t understand what the user wants: When working as part of a team and faced with an outsourced task, you may run into difficulty understanding the user's intent. Programmers specifically run into this issue since they are not typically the ones sitting down with the client. Project managers make it less stressful to update software with scrum/agile approaches. However, this can only get you so far as a programmer when there is minimal interaction with the end user.

• Lack of communication: When you’re newly working as part of a team and haven’t established relationships with others, you may be reluctant to ask questions or coordinate with team members. When working in IT, this can be a significant downfall since communication needs to be a consistent force within the team.

• The time it takes: Becoming a developer that someone would want to hire (whether as part of a team or to handle an outsourced project) takes a significant amount of practice as well as establishing credibility in your craft. Everyone wants the shortcut, but just like anything worthwhile, coding takes time. You can’t learn these concepts in a week. Beginners need to understand the information and see it in action while acknowledging that there will be failures in the process.

• Panic after failure: Being a great software developer means you consistently interact with problems. As you implement your attempt to solve these problems, you will not have a 100% success rate, which means things will go wrong. Finding out what went wrong is called “debugging” which is a process that scans for errors to determine their cause. Though sometimes it can be hard to admit mistakes, having this form of debriefing will make you better. Instead of letting emotions get in the way, finding the source of what went wrong and learning from that will be much more valuable.

The Takeaway

At the root of all these challenges and the learning processes remain the focal point of having the will to not only succeed but use technology to create an experience. Google wouldn’t be the platform we utilize every day without its codebase, and even that started out as a concept. If you take your time to learn the fundamentals, you will have this as a competitive advantage when working with technology.

Written By Ben Brown

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ISU Corp is an award winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.

This is How Software Developers Build a FinTech App

Between 2020 and 2030, the global FinTech market value is expected to grow sixfold from $110 billion to nearly $700 billion. In this section, we’re shifting the focus from the services offered to the technology that provides an application to deliver them. We’ll start with the basic understanding that putting together a FinTech app is not an overnight process. Many components go into its construction to ensure both the quality and security of back-end data processing and front-end user experience. 

The IT technologies used in the development of FinTech services are what have pushed the industry to succeed. When consumers experience the convenience aspect of FinTech, the front-end functions are a mere puppet. The digital mechanics behind those functions pull the strings and interconnect to provide that convenience. These mechanics and their intended results are what we’re going to cover in the following sections.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

AI and ML are two technologies that are dominantly used in the development of FinTech applications. The main reason is because of their ability to assist with processing large quantities of data. This data is collected from both consumers and global trends which, when processed, determine the service that is delivered. Here are some of the results from these processes:

Security and Identifying fraud: FinTech platforms work while processing a very high volume of data 24/7. This raises the risk of criminal activity which could easily slip by traditional processing methods that lack the resources of AI and ML. With these modern advancements, they can trace and detect patterns in the data, allowing them to flag a cyber-criminal when irregular data is recognized. Research has shown that this technology can reduce fraud by 70% with a 90% accuracy rate in detection.

Options: Users of FinTech apps have access to insights that will give them the advice to manage their finances. This is broken down into easy-to-understand visuals such as pie charts, monthly spending tracked on a progress bar, and organizing payments to be made. Users will then get insights based on this data for how to put themselves in a more beneficial financial position.

Managing Assets: As stated previously, AI and ML stay in tune with global financial trends which they use to make predictions for investment opportunities. Users have access to this info and can choose to make investment decisions based on the advice provided.

Personalizing Customer Support: AI and ML data tracking collects user information which benefits the platform in tending to the needs of consumers. This ties back into the technology that keeps up with user habits. Ultimately, it makes customer support much easier and keeps access consistent through automated bots. 

Microservices

In software development, microservice architectures are a trend that developers have recently been utilizing in their work. Microservices are large-scale applications that are condensed into smaller autonomous blocks. This makes it simple for developers to work on areas of the system without disrupting the entire application. When it comes to interfaces and operations in FinTech, it is necessary to ensure users have access to the latest and greatest.

Here are some specific areas of coverage:

Agility within the application: You can add or remove as well as innovate any solution to keep up with changes in the market.

Highly reliable: When several components are operating autonomously within an application, it reduces the risk of system failure. When one component goes down, everything else continues running and the owner is notified that it needs to be fixed.

Transferable between systems: Once a microservice is developed, the components of the application it was developed for are reusable for various FinTech solutions. This is because a microservice architecture can connect to other systems through API. The API will act as the intermediary that allows the applications to communicate.

Increased development speed: A software developer would not have to start from scratch when building a microservice. Going back to transferability, there are unique aspects of microservices that may not be used much but can be added to developing solutions. Developers can create a minimum viable product (MVP) with these microservices and adjust the system based on how users react to it. 

Blockchain

The central spot for storing data for FinTech is in the Blockchain. This technology has risen to popularity in recent years for its ability to send secure transactions and utilize cryptocurrency instead of fiat money (money made legal tender by the government). The decentralized and encrypted structure of the Blockchain makes the management of transactions safe and highly efficient. When AI meets the Blockchain in an application, it allows the processing and supervision of data to operate easier and smoother in addition to avoiding potential mistakes. Companies have turned to this pairing for these specific reasons among others, and FinTech is no exception to the shift.

Here are some ways FinTech uses Blockchain to its advantage:

Easily pay peer-to-peer (P2P): This can be compared to Whatsapp’s encrypted messaging system that allows users to send messages around the world instantaneously. Blockchain processes payments similarly, eliminating the need for any middleman services in the process. 

Digital ID: To eliminate fraud in the Blockchain network, every user needs to validate their identity, like most other platforms. As soon as they’re registered in the system, tracking their activity is very simple and tracked regularly.

Cryptocurrency Exchange: Applications like Coinbase or Crypto.com use Blockchain to allow users to trade cryptocurrency assets.

Critical Components of a FinTech App

Every FinTech app is going to serve a different purpose. You can be a digital payment service, online banking, InsurTech, online lending, or even a crypto wallet or platform. Whichever service you’re fulfilling, you need to assess what aspects are critical for your application. To get you started, here are some sought-after features often used in FinTech apps:

• Visual data display: Breaking down information regarding income, expenses, and transactions.

• Flexible UI: Your application should be easy to navigate and understand, as well as have a way to engage users. For example, the crypto exchange application Coinbase uses a “learn and earn” feature where users are taught and quizzed on crypto assets in exchange for virtual currency.

• Gateway for payments: This basic feature allows users to make money transfers and payments. This is commonly the main selling point to get users to download a FinTech app.

• Virtual assistance: Users are increasingly interacting with virtual assistance (especially those that use a voice) for the unique experience it offers. Additionally, applications need a front-facing support system to help customers.

• Security: FinTech as an ecosystem is locked down and secure, yet one of the areas still in need of innovation is the security of FinTech apps. Additionally, studies have found that hackers attempt to break into computers connected to the internet every 39 seconds. 

So now that we’ve covered the details of what your FinTech app should consider in its development, what's left is how to do it. We’re going to break this down into a three-step process:

Step One: Study your market

Determine whether or not there is a need for your service. To do this, you’ll start by finding services similar to yours and evaluate how well they’re doing. What could you do better? Also, how are users interacting with these services? You want to determine if there are limits on the existing services and/or if your vision is something people need.

Step Two: Determine your project's logistics

Once you’ve analyzed the market you want to enter, you will have an understanding of who will use your application and what components you will need to generate appeal. This will then lead to evaluating the timeline and budget needed. Of course, both timeline and budget will vary depending on the technology stack you go with which will be determined after speaking with your software developers.

Step Three: Build your team

A FinTech application is highly complex and will require a team of experienced developers with the tools for the task. Typically, outsourcing this kind of development is a company's best bet when they don’t have an in-house team. Additionally, outsourcing would help save on your budget as you’re only paying for the results that the software development team produces. It’s ultimately going to come down to finding a team you’re comfortable with and that understands your vision and who can then make that vision reality. 

Finally

When putting together a FinTech application, the process is going to be subjective based on your business's goals. It’s going to be a bit of trial and error especially if you take it on in-house, but that will provide answers as you go. The great thing about developing a FinTech app is that there is so much variety in terms of how you offer your service and how you innovate it. With the right software, your application can scale and fulfill the needs of millions of users.

Written By Ben Brown

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ISU Corp is an award winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.