Experts predict that global retail sales will grow to nearly $30 trillion by 2023. This means that not only will the industry continue to grow, but also the challenges for retailers. What does the industry expect in the future? What do retail companies need to pay attention to in order not to be left behind? Looking at innovation within retail, three trends are grabbing the industry's attention: the metaverse, C2M (consumer-2-manufacturer), and drone deliveries. In this article, we focus on the metaverse, explaining what it is and its impact on the retail business, as well as the great opportunities that its use represents.

The pandemic has greatly accelerated the process of digitalization in the retail sector and presented the industry with major challenges. How important is online commerce for retailers today? What requirements do retail customers place on online store operators? And which technologies have proven themselves in the digitalization of retail? This blog has the answers!

In the first two parts of our IoT series, we discussed what the Internet of Things is, along with the potential applications and benefits set to be gained by different industries. Let's now move on to the implementation of IoT. How can businesses develop an IoT strategy? What challenges do they need to overcome when implementing the Internet of Things? Andreas Rehmann, Head of IoT solutions at mimacom, answers key questions in this interview.

In the first part of our IoT series, I have explained what the "Internet of Things" (IoT) is and how it can be used in companies. Today I want to expound on industry-specific cases and benefits. We look at applications, challenges, and solutions in healthcare, finance, retail, and the manufacturing industry. What benefits does the Internet of Things hold in store for companies and their customers from these industries? This is what we focus on in this blog post.

The past years have been characterized by constant change and have made companies realize that such changes must no longer pose a threat to their business in the future. They now know the importance of being agile and adaptable in order to be able to react and master change as quickly as possible. This challenge has led companies to accelerate the implementation of their digitization strategies and give a key role to application development. The question of how companies create and use their applications is increasingly coming into focus, drawing attention to the concept of composability. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at this and focus primarily on composability in process management.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become an integral part of our everyday lives, whether at work or at home: it is literally everywhere. Our homes and offices are equipped with smart devices, in our free time we measure our performance using smart sports equipment, and we know our children are safe thanks to IoT tracking bracelets. In the first part of our IoT series, you will therefore learn what exactly the Internet of Things is, how IoT works and why the Internet of Things is so important for the future of companies.

Since in a digital world data drives the modern customer experience (CX), businesses need to understand the importance of cloud computing services for an excellent CX. The challenge is that far too many have yet to use the cloud effectively to eliminate data silos and maximize CX. In customer projects I hear a lot about technical debt, which leads to the storage of data in closed-off legacy systems. The problem: Without the ability to share data across a business, it's impossible to work cohesively and anticipate — not just respond — to customer experience demands across customer-facing applications, web portals, and all channels. This blog post is about how to meet CX demands in a digital world using cloud computing services.

How does the selection of a low-code or no-code BPMS impact your organization? The technological implementation of Business Process Management presents a company with a strategic decision: both the current situation and the future of the company and must be taken into account. For some years now, there has been a tendency among companies to focus on low-code or non-code platforms when selecting BPMS software. But how does the choice of a low-code or no-code BPMS affect a company?

On the occasion of the recently celebrated International Day for Safety and Health at Work, we should ask ourselves how much we have paid attention to working conditions at home or wherever we work remotely so far. Considering that some professions, like developers and programmers, show a clear preference for remote work, this topic becomes even more critical. How to maintain a healthy working environment at home? Find out in the blog post!

The mechanical engineering industry is one of Europe's most important businesses. Looking at the mechanical engineering market shares by region, we can see that Europe holds more than 30 percent of the shares. Yet, digitalization and automation have not yet established a foothold in many places despite the huge market size. This became particularly apparent during the Coronavirus pandemic. Find out in this blog post why process automation is crucial for smart manufacturing and learn about its benefits for the industry.

Today, companies see, on the one hand, a growing need for data streaming, but on the other hand, they have to follow new privacy regulations. This dilemma challenges businesses to find intelligent data management techniques that allow them to meet both ends. Therefore, many industries are under pressure to keep the utility of data high while ensuring data security and privacy at all times. The promising techniques they are looking for are called data privacy concepts. This blog post will focus on these concepts and explain how to combine data privacy with the approach of data democratization.

The (near-)real-time business insights based on continuous data streams are in ever-growing demand. Stream processing and analytics have the potential to improve companies' competitiveness considerably. However, this trend is challenged by the need for data security and privacy. Legacy approaches to data security, used extensively in the single data silos setups, are not suitable for modern data platforms, which leverage streaming architectures. New and strict regulations like GDPR, HIPAA pose additional challenges for data-centric companies. This blog post highlights relevant concepts for successful privacy-preserving data platforms.

In the second blog article of the metadata blog series we explained why previously proven approaches are no longer suitable to handle today's metadata management. As Gartner has highlighted active metadata management as a new trend and a crucial concept in modern distributed data architectures, we highlighted the essential parts of it. In this third and last article about metadata management, we will explain the principles of metadata management in data fabric architectures.

In our previous blog article about metadata management, we explained why the way of handling data has brought up a need to change the way we do it. In order to continue describing data in a meaningful way, cataloging it and visualizing it to make it understandable for business, a new, more advanced approach is needed. Learn in this article more about strategies that meet the requirements of today's data velocity, volume, and structure in metadata management. Find out how to tackle the new challenges of metadata and see how the approach of active metadata management can help you.

Things can't carry on this way for much longer. Developers are highly sought-after talents in the labor market because of their ability to write code and thus to develop new digital services. The immense demand makes them a rarity. This is already a problem for many companies – and it's going to get worse. Citizen Development is a (new) approach allowing companies to quickly turn new ideas and concepts into market-ready applications despite the shortage of developers. This blog post explains what it means and what advantages it brings.

Metadata management comes with various challenges for companies. Over the years, multiple approaches to resolve these challenges have been created. Their focus: to deal with collecting and cataloguing data, describing it, governing access, and supporting data discoverability. However, most of the approaches could not serve as generic solutions: they turned out to be narrow scoped, vendor- or technology-specific, difficult to integrate and expand or they required tremendous manual maintenance effort. In this first of three blog posts, we will have a closer look at what metadata is. We will examine what it is used for and see how metadata management has been handled so far. Lastly, we discuss why we need a paradigm shift to find a new, sustainable metadata management approach.

Have you heard the term “Team Topologies”? A relatively new approach to organizing business and, in particular, technology teams, to maximize software output. And relatively easily too. Find out below in our blog post exactly how Team Topologies works, what the benefits are, and how the approach can be leveraged.

Starting the new year, we asked the mimacom CEO Alain Sahli three questions about his perspective on the digitalization business and mimacom’s role in it. Alain Sahli is part of mimacom since 2011 and has been active in different positions. Starting as a Software Engineer, thanks to his continuous diligence and strong commitment he took over the role as CEO of the four autonomous mimacom country companies in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and the US. Because of his clear view of the dynamic and rapidly evolving world of IT and digitalization, we asked him three questions about his opinion on mimacom and its current evolution. Read more in the interview to find out, where mimacom is going in 2022 and what counts most at our company.

Do you know a team that takes a very long time to complete its cloud journey? Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. When deciding to move to the cloud there are a few steps to take that can be summarized under the following stages: Planning, building, and finally managing the cloud. Of course, there are organizational and technical challenges that come with a cloud journey making it a complex undertaking per se. In this blog post, we look at 5 pitfalls that you can avoid in your cloud journey and explain how not to add additional obstacles to your journey.

A brand new product, packed with modern features – yet users are frustrated by something that no one thought of. This is what happens when products focus mostly on the technology rather than on the people who are supposed to use the application, machine or device. Find out in this blog post why it’s crucial for UX to focus on people and what human-centered design has to do with it.

The business world has a new favorite word: Automation. The automatic execution of business processes optimizes existing workflows, increases competitiveness, and enables new business models. What is the potential behind this development and what does automation mean for enterprises?

After-sales services are an important component of customer loyalty in the manufacturing industry. They enable quality assurance of the purchased machines and products through spare parts, maintenance and updates. In addition to user contact, they thus represent an important source of revenue for manufacturing companies. Today, manufacturers of machines, systems and devices offer their users a wide range of information and services via so-called B2B portals.

The classic products and services that have made machinery and plant manufacturers successful today are no longer enough. Machinery and plant manufacturers strive to continuously boost the efficiency of their customers with services that are tailored to their needs. This requires technologically well positioned companies that can give their customers flexible and swift support. Offering online services via IoT cloud platforms is thus a crucial success criterion in the ongoing digital transformation.

Sprint, Swimlanes, Kanban - anyone who believes that these are new disciplines from the backlog of the Olympic Games, which the product owners review in dailies on the basis of story points, is mistaken. The aforementioned terms are, in fact, buzzwords of the concept of "agility" - a way of thinking and a form of collaboration within companies that is intended to master new challenges such as flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness. The aim is to address situations of constant change through new processes, structures and strategies.

The coronavirus pandemic has become the main driver of digitalization processes over the last few months. The healthcare industry in particular is now increasingly turning to digital solutions to work both faster and more efficiently. The Medical Device Regulation (MDR) is setting the course for this change. All processes can be digitalized and automated, provided that they are revised in each case. Digitalization expert Tim Weinmann, CEO of mimacom, is well aware that digitalization opens up new possibilities – and therefore creates a competitive advantage.

The concept of self-managed teams in companies is a relatively new concept, and despite all the advantages and benefits it brings, its full potential is yet to be realised. What characteristics should distinguish a self-managed team? What are the pros and cons? And, the most important question: What steps must we follow to create self-managed teams? We’ll tell you about it in this blog post.

Online retail is booming – information about their customers has become a valuable commodity for e-commerce operators to ensure they can successfully meet growing demand. Innovative technologies such as real-time data processing help retailors analyze their customers’ behavior and tailor-make offers according to their wishes. What benefits and what opportunities does this create for B2B and B2C companies?

A digital agent workstation is currently revolutionizing customer support at a large Swiss insurer: over 1,000 agents in more than 50 branches are now benefiting from a modern, workflow-based document management system for customer support and closure of sales on-site which offers the perfect mobile assistance on an iPad. In this blog entry, we provide an overview of the exciting project!

The concept of data transfer is nothing new to most of us – yet few understand how exactly data exchange works. At mimacom, we are intensively involved with technological solutions such as APIs, which are the interfaces that transport data between different apps and applications. How does digital data transport work with APIs? And what does this have to do with your company? The blog has the answers!