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Monthly Archives: May 2016

  • May 23, 2016
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Best online payment gateway services in the Middle East – a comparison

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

As our previous post on ecommerce trends and statistics in the Middle East has shown, the sector has immense scope and is already witnessing rapid growth (read the entire story here: Ecommerce trends in the UAE and rest of the Middle East).

Infrastructure to aid this growth is quickly falling in place, and that includes the rise of online payment gateways local to the Middle East. For an ecommerce business about to launch in the Middle East, what are the benefits of integrating a payment gateway provided by a Middle-East based company?

  • It’s easier to transact in local currencies of the Middle East countries (Emirati dirham, Saudi riyal, Bahraini dinar…)
  • It reduces the time taken to integrate and implement the payment gateway on your ecommerce webstore, a procedure that can take an extended amount of time in a scenario where policies are still in the process of becoming ecommerce business-friendly.

So which company provides the best online payment gateway services in the Middle East? Here’s an analysis and comparison, read and decide which suits your business best:

logo_blue

PayTabs – a Bahrain-based payment gateway service provider

PayTabs has operations and services spread across the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait…).

In our comparison of payment gateways, we found following two differentiating features of PayTabs:

  • Payment gateway integration and activation on your digital commerce webstore in as little as 24 hours.
  • It’s one of the early gateways to offer integration with SADAD accounts-Saudi Arabia’s national bill presentment and payment system that allows customers to pay with one touch of a button.

logo-network

Network International LLC – a Dubai-based payment services and solution provider

Incorporated in 1994, HQ in UAE, Network International is a complete payment solutions company. It is chosen as a payment gateway partner mostly by the large businesses and conglomerates of the Middle East due to the high security deposit requirement.

networks-ecommerce-payment

Telr Innovate payments – a one-stop ecommerce solution for emerging markets of MENA

In 2014, two UAE-based payment gateway companies announced a merger to concentrate their efforts in the Middle East region and thus Telr Innovate was born.

With its transaction-based licensing model and low upfront costs, this gateway attracts startups, and midsize and small businesses in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and other emerging markets in Southeast Asia.

payfort

Payfort – a trusted online payment gateway in the Middle East

One of the most popular payment gateway providers in the Middle East, Payfort processed $817 million worth transactions in its first year of operations in 2014.

Their setup fees make them appealing to small and medium businesses and they provide additional services such as protection from fraud at an additional cost.

2c0-checout

2Checkout – a leading global payment platform with localized payment options

Though it is based in the USA, 2Checkout is popular in the region as it accepts payments globally, in 87 currencies and 15 languages.

But transaction costs are high, so SMEs (small and medium enterprises) may face budget constraints.

 

UPDATE (06/06/16): Payfort also offers payment through e-Dirham, NAPS and Sadad).

 

    What is a payment gateway?

    A payment gateway is an ecommerce application service provider service that authorizes credit card payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets.

    Source: Wikipedia

  • May 23, 2016
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Embitel Technologies appraised at CMMI Maturity Level 3 for the second time running

Category : Press

 

Embitel is pleased to announce that, in a nod to its commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, it has been successfully appraised at CMMI Level 3 Maturity for the second time running. The rating is for its Digital Commerce and Product Engineering Services, and the appraisal was carried out by QAI.

cmmi-aturity-level-3

As a world-class technology services provider, Embitel has always strived to enable fruition of the plans of its clients with success. To this effect, the organization has been diligently getting evaluated for its processes by a recognized third party.

“For a decade now, we have been passionately working towards delivering results while maintaining global standards,” says Sharad Bairathi, MD, Embitel. “With this rating, we reaffirm to our customers our adherence to result-oriented processes and the quality of the output they will get on completion of the project.”

“At Embitel, we have our own EmbiQ model based on CMMI’s process areas,” shares Nancy Nithya, Quality Assurance manager at Embitel. “We carry out regular internal audits and monthly quality assurance checks within projects to ensure continued observance of the set guidelines for software and hardware development processes,” she adds.

For Embitel’s clients this rating, as per CMMI Institute, means that we take a proactive approach to managing projects and processes, and are dedicated to the continuous improvement needed to deliver predictable results.

CMMI Institute is the global leader in the advancement of best practices in people, process, and technology. The Institute provides the tools and support for organizations to benchmark their capabilities and build maturity by comparing their operations to best practices and identifying performance gaps.

    What is CMMI?

    The Capability Maturity Model Integration, or CMMI, is a process model that provides a clear definition of what an organization should do to promote behaviors that lead to improved performance

    Source: Broadswordsolutions.com

  • May 17, 2016
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What is heads-up display (HUD) for Cars? Learn about the embedded software, device drivers and stacks

Category : Embedded Blog

The latest in series of Automotive Innovations at Embitel Technologies, an embedded software and hardware design house, is the Head-up Display (HUD) for cars.

According to a report recently released by Credence Research, the automotive head-up display (Car HUD) market is expected to reach US$ 2.09 bn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 24.3% from 2015 to 2022.

Global-automotive-head-up-display

This report also identifies the HUD market as highly technology-driven where manufacturers are required to make substantial investment in R&D.

(Image source – Credence Research. Representative image)

Our Embedded Automotive team has developed a proprietary software and hardware design for Car HUD.This being a production-ready design you can launch your HUD display product in 6 months (down from industry average of 2.5 years) and hence reduce the R&D costs and efforts.

We spoke to our automotive embedded software team who has designed this innovative product to understand the basic software components of an HUD for cars.

What are the basic embedded software stacks and drivers of the Car HUD system :

This embedded HUD system is built on Android Kitkat version 4.4.3., powered by Linux kernel 3.10.53 with Universal Boot Loader.

The Board Support Package (BSP) is developed on Ubuntu 12.04.The HUD embedded system is ported with essential drivers like USB 2.0 OTG drivers, SD and NOR memory drivers, HDMI driver, Keypad driver, Audio Codec drivers and more

car-hud-features
 

Receiving and Making Calls/Messages through HUD system of the car:

The Phone App in our Car HUD displays call/message info on the head-up display combiner or car windshield. The cell phone’s contact list can also be accessed through In-car HUD.

The driver can make or receive calls and messages by touch-less commands (voice recognition and gesture control features)

The BlueZ stack and essential BT (Bluetooth) drivers have been integrated in this embedded system to support the phone app features.

Android has in-built support for following BT profiles that facilitate device access and data transfer:

  • Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
  • Device ID Profile (DIP)
  • Hands-Free Profile (HFP)
  • Message Access Profile (MAP)
  • Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP, PBA)
  • SIM Access Profile (SAP, SIM, rSAP)

‘Touchless command’ – Voice Recognition and Gesture Control

To ensure driver safety and mitigate driver distraction while driving, our Head-up Display (HUD) design is armed with voice recognition and gesture control features

To enable the gesture control feature, our embedded software team has expertise in integrating either an Infrared (IR) camera or a gesture control sensor as per the requirement

PocketSphinx, a third party library for processing voice commands has been integrated for the voice recognition feature

Other third party stacks like Google VR or Nuance can also be integrated as per the application or use-case requirement

Wifi cameras activated with reverse gear and left/right indicators

This heads-up display for cars is integrated with 3 IP-based Wifi cameras. When car activates the reverse gear or turns on left or right indicators, these wifi cameras are switched on.

The cameras capture the rear or left/right view outside the car and display the same on HUD windshield display or the HUD combiner display through projector.

To enable this feature, Wifi 3rd party drivers have been ported and Android Hotspot feature is integrated. Also, camera drivers are ported.

To fetch vehicle data,CAN drivers have been ported and an application to communicate with OBD II stack has been developed.

The turn-by-turn directions feature for the driver assistance in the HUD works in the following way:

  • The OBD II application identifies if the reverse gear or left/right indicator has been activated by the driver
  • The respective IP-based camera is then activated by parsing the username and password through the url of the corresponding wifi camera
  • Images captured by the wifi camera are then sent to the car HUD system with the help of CAN in-vehicle network
  • These images are displayed either on the HUD windshield or on the combiner display

Instrumentation cluster/Virtual Gauges on Heads-up display

Depending on your target audience and use-case requirement, the vehicle data available from the OBD-II port (vehicle speed, battery management, fuel data and more) can be displayed on the virtual instrumentation cluster on the HUD in-car system

The OBD II data is captured by the OBD application interface. This data is then sent to the Car HUD system through CAN drivers

Visual alerts are displayed on the HUD windshield or HUD combiner when the driver exceeds speed of 90kmph (this can be modified as per your requirements)

Maps and Navigation for driver assistance

This feature also provides assistance to drivers and helps reduce driver distraction. The location map and destination driving navigation are displayed on the HUD system

Sygic Maps stack has been integrated and the required drivers and interfaces have been developed

Texas Instruments (TI) Pico Projector for HUD display

I2C interface and drivers have been developed to send data from the car HUD to the projector.

i.MX6 platform sends data in RGB format to DLP, which can project the data at a maximum resolution of 864×480

For more information and to schedule a demo of our Android based Car HUD system, connect with us at sales@embitel.com




 

    What is Board Support Package (BSP)?

    In embedded systems, a board support package (BSP) is an implementation of specific support code (software) for a given hardware (device motherboard) board that makes a device to work with a given operating system (OS).

    (Source – Wikipedia)

  • May 17, 2016
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Top Magento Marketplace Module – Medma Module Case Study

Tags :

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

magento-marketplace

Magento, an ecommerce platform, has built its reputation as a robust and cost-effective digital commerce solution for mid-range businesses.

When it comes to implementing the ecommerce marketplace business model on this platform, there are some Magento plug-ins and extensions tailor made to support some of the must-have features for a marketplace webstore.

For Medfirst India webstore, India’s first online marketplace for hospital equipment, clinical and patient care equipment our Magento developers deployed one of the best marketplace extensions: the Medma Marketplace extension.

A multivendor marketplace module, the Medma extension ensured that Magento marketplace implementation for Medfirst India stayed within the client’s budget while still facilitating sale through multiple vendors.

But multivendor marketplace extensions are dime a dozen, so what makes Medma better than the rest?

The Medma Marketplace Magento Extension Advantage

“It’s a reliable and easy-to-use extension with Magento-standard coding,” says Vivekanandan S., a Magento Ecommerce Consultant at Embitel Technologies.

Considering this module has been developed by Magento-certified developers, that’s only expected.

But Medma offers a host of features that make store management easier for the administrator and shopping more convenient for the buyer. Some of these features are:

  • Bulk import and export of products by vendors
  • Vendors can enable and disable products
  • The admin can disable or delete products on the vendor page
  • Reviews from customers, which aids automatics creation of ratings for the vendor
  • Real-time SKU check while creating or editing products
  • Generation of vendor account statements

The need for more

But Vivekanandan and the Medfirst team wanted more than what the Medma Marketplace extension offered, and Embitel’s Magento team innovated to develop the desired conveniences.

The marketplace model encourages true competition and offers solid benefits to buyers by letting various players influence the market. “The Medma app allows for many products, and many vendors. But it doesn’t the make the same product available from multiple vendors,” shares Vivekanandan. “So we customized the extension to enable that.

“To facilitate vendor management, we changed the UI port and have allowed the creation of a separate admin page for each vendor, which allows the administrator to allow selected privileges for each vendor.”

The operational success of a marketplace webstore depends as much on ease of shopping for the customer as on effective backend management. So the Embitel digital commerce team has made order management easier for both parties. “When a customer purchases items from multiple sellers at a time, he receives an acknowledgement for one consolidated order. But for logistical purposes, this order for items from 3 different sellers gets logged as 3 separate orders in the backend,” says Vivekanandan.

One of Medma’s advantages is that it allows the marketplace administrator to set commission rates for each seller. But this has been customized further on the Medfirst India implementation to allow different commissions as per various product levels.

“This is one of the biggest advantages of Medma Magento Marketplace module: it’s a great basic marketplace extension, but it also is easy to customize,” affirms Vivekanandan. “Each extension, no matter what its purpose, has its pros and cons, but Medma is easily one of the best in its category.”

    What is the marketplace business model?

    An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce site where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties, whereas transactions are processed by the marketplace operator

    Source: Wikipedia.com

  • May 11, 2016
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What is AUTOSAR Development Partnership and AUTOSAR MCAL Layer

Tags :

Category : Embedded Blog

AUTOSAR Development Partnership

AUTOSAR, which stands for AUTomotive Open System Architecture, is a partnership at a global scale between Automotive OEMs, Tier-I suppliers, semiconductor vendors, embedded hardware design houses and embedded software engineering service providers

This worldwide strong partnership has its roots in one common belief – “Cooperate on standards, compete on implementation” as mentioned in the AUTOSAR charter.

Goals of the AUTOSAR Development Partnership

  • Standardization of basic software functionality of automotive ECUs
  • Scalability to different vehicle and platform variants
  • Transferability of embedded software
  • Support of different functional domains
  • Definition of an open AUTOSAR architecture
  • Collaboration between various embedded partners
  • Development of highly dependable systems
  • Support of applicable automotive international standards and state-of-the-art technologies

(Adapted from www.autosar[dot]org)

What is AUTOSAR MCAL Layer?

MCAL (Microcontroller Abstraction Layer), conforming to the microcontroller abstraction layer of AUTOSAR specifications, is the driver module of the infrastructure software. MCAL realizes notification mechanism to support instruction, response and information distribution to different processes. The main components are DIO, ADC, PWM, PWD, EEP, FLS, CCU, WDT, SPI, IIC etc.

(Source – www.automotivetechis.wordpress.com)

Learn more about the software architecture, device drivers and tools configuration related to AUTOSAR MCAL (Microcontroller Abstraction Layer).

Related Posts on AUTOSAR Software Development

  • AUTOSAR Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL): Learn about the fundamentals of the MCAL layer from our AUTOSAR team. Know more about the various device drivers and the layered architecture of the AUTOSAR MCAL. And get the details about how the Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL) works

  • AUTOSAR Communication Stack (ComStack): Our AUTOSAR development team explains what are the different software modules of a Communication Stack (ComStack). Also, learn about the software modules of CAN based Communication Stack in AUTOSAR

  • AUTOSAR Memory Stack (MemStack): Get introduced to the various software modules of AUTOSAR Memory Stack (MemStack) that provide basic memory management services to the upper layers. Our AUTOSAR development team shares the basics of AUTOSAR 3.0 and 4.0

AUTOSAR Migration Services | AUTOSAR MCAL Drivers Development Services

As a CMMI Level 3 organization, we, at Embitel Technologies, have partnered with global customers and gained extensive project experience and in-depth understanding of the AUTOSAR standard.

We have also developed a robust implementation and quality model – the EmbiQ Model.

How can we add value to your AUTOSAR roadmap? See our service offerings:

autosar-migration

AUTOSAR Migration

autosar-embedded-platform

Platform(s) Evaluation

autosar-mcal-services

AUTOSAR MCAL Services

autosar-migration

RTE, BSW integration

autosar-embedded-platform

Application Layer – MBD and implementation

autosar-mcal-services

AUTOSAR Tools

 

For more details, you can refer to this link – AUTOSAR Service Offerings

Also check our AUTOSAR customer success stories: MCAL development and testing for a Freescale Power PC Controller (MPC5554) based system

 

More Details of our AUTOSAR Service Offerings:

AUTOSAR Migration Strategy

Technical and business workshops to analyze your product roadmaps and assessment of AUTOSAR migration strategy across product lines

RTE and BSW integration

Integration of RTE (Run-time environment) and AUTOSAR BSW stack (basic software) with the application.

Embedded Platform(s) consulting

Technical assessment and evaluation of embedded platforms across product linesto identify the one best suited for the customer’s applications

Application Layer – MBD and implementation

Model-Based Development (AUTOSAR, DaVinci Developer) and logic implementation for application layer of the AUTOSAR Software Stack

AUTOSAR MCAL Drivers – Development, code generation and testing

  • Development of Microcontroller Drivers (MCU, GPT), Communication Drivers (CAN, LIN, FlexRay, MOST), I/O Drivers (ICU, PWM, ADC, PORT)
  • Code generation for all the standard tools
  • Automated MIL and SIL testing of the AUTOSAR MCAL(Microcontroller Abstraction Layer) drivers

AUTOSAR Tools – Configuration and Code Generation

  • Configuration and code generation (exe file) for Comasso, Vector , ECU Spectrum, KSAR AUTOSAR.
  • DaVinci Developer tool for AUTOSAR software architecture design
  • Expertise in Code generation tools based on Pearl and Python.

 

What is AUTOSAR Layered Architecture?

AUTOSAR uses a three-layered architecture:

  • Basic Software (AUTOSAR BSW): Basic Software is the standardized software layer, which provides services to the AUTOSAR Software Components and is necessary to run the functional part of the software. It does not fulfill any functional job itself and is situated below the AUTOSAR RTE (Runtime Environment). The Basic Software contains standardized and ECU specific modules.
  • Runtime environment (AUTOSAR RTE): Middleware which abstracts from the network topology for the inter- and intra-ECU information exchange between the application software components and between the Basic Software (BSW) and the applications.
  • Application Layer: application software components that interact with the runtime environment (RTE).

Source – AUTOSAR.org

  • May 9, 2016
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Magento webstore & mobile app for BMMI Shops – Bahrain’s leading beverage retailer

Category : Digital Commerce , Food & Beverage

BMMI Shops, a well-known beverages distributor and retailer, is a division of the industry giant BMMI Group in the Kingdom of Bahrain, in the Middle East.

Business challenge:

BMMI Shops already had a live ecommerce webstore when it approached us in 2013. However, their existing Magento implementation was not to their expectation and failed to make an impact on their overall sales.

The Group sought our support in designing a webstore with a UX that added value to the shopping experience for their customers and served as a high-impact online sales channel for the organization.

In 2015, emboldened by their experience with Embitel Technologies and the success of the webstore, BMMI also decided to be accessible to customers anywhere, any time through a mobile app.

Ecommerce solution:

  • Our Magento ecommerce team developed a webstore on Magento 1.12, with a completely new design and UX and optimized the webstore to deliver on an agreed SLA of improved page-load speed and overall performance.
  • The inventory, catalogue and CRM data were migrated to the new site. As part of our collaboration with BMMI Magento support services partner, we also upgraded the webstore to Magento 1.14.
  • Development of ERP interface and integration of the ERP system with the Magento commerce store for inventory management across BMMI’s brick-and-mortar stores, the online channel and the mobile app.
  • Implementation of an age restriction entry page upon loading of website due to the nature of product being sold.
  • Integration of marketing module to manage offers and promotions to boost sales.
  • Creation of a ‘consumption calculator’ feature to estimate the required quantities for social events and place bulk orders.
  • Improvement of customer UX with implementation of features such as
    • Suggested cocktail recipes using the Recipes extension
    • Tiered pricing across multiple products to encourage larger orders
    • One-step checkout
    • Promotional gifts on purchase
    • Facility to choose delivery slots
    • Store credits
    • Search tool implementation with Sphinx Search Ultimate extension
    • Integration of the Bahrain’s Benefit Payment Gateway
  • May 6, 2016
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Why Magento Enterprise Edition is one of the best digital commerce platforms for SMBs: Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report (free download)

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce evaluated 21 ecommerce platforms across 4 categories based on the completeness of their vision and their ability to execute.

One of the digital commerce platforms that gave a tough fight to the Leaders (who really are an affordable option only to those with large businesses and deep pockets) is Magento Commerce.

We aren’t surprised. Here at Embitel, we offer digital commerce implementation on Magento because we recognize the stability of the platform and the scope to customize it to each customer’s unique business needs. And all our clients can vouch for the versatility of Magento.

The Gartner report says the Challengers are “often highly respected within a narrow range of industries, business models or deployment option” and are “innovators that use their R&D resources, access to investment, profits and market reputation to grow quickly.” That’s Magento Commerce!

Magento’s Strengths

The report recognizes what makes Magento platform, which is an open-core B2B and B2C digital commerce solution, such a good performer.

  • New company focus: Originally, Magento was spun out of eBay, but then launched as an independent company called Magento Commerce. Working as an independent company should enable it to focus on its core set of products and partner ecosystem, strengthening it further.

  • Cost-effectiveness: Magento Enterprise Edition offers a cost-effective path to a digital presence for small and medium businesses (SMBs) and midmarket commerce firms. As per the Gartner report as well as in our own experience, “Magento provides a strong value proposition.”
  • Broad partner ecosystem: Magento has more than 70,000 developers globally, and over the past two years it has made advances in certifying its implementation partner network. The company has also worked with its implementation and extension developer partners to ensure certification and readiness for its latest release, Magento 2.0.

You can read the entire report on the Gartner Magic Quadrant here.

If you have any queries about Magento development or would like know how digital transformation can add value to your business, write to us at sales@embitel.com

    What is digital transformation?

    Digital transformation is the profound and accelerating transformation of business activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way.

    Source: www.i-scoop.eu/digital-transformation

    What is digital commerce?

    Digital commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services using the Internet, mobile networks and commerce infrastructure.

    digital-commerce-magento-gartner

    Source: Gartner

  • May 5, 2016
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SAP hybris – a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce (free download)

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

Gartner has released its ‘Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce’ for 2016, and SAP hybris commerce has emerged as a ‘leader’ along with IBM, Oracle and Demandware.

The quadrant splits digital commerce technology vendors into 4 categories-leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players-on the basis of completeness of vision and the ability to execute.

The Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, 2016

hybris-digital-commerce-report

Leaders “demonstrate the ability to provide a depth and breadth of commerce functionality; to deliver commerce capabilities across multiple industries and business models; to deliver commerce platforms that can scale up to support large transaction volumes and high levels of GMV for online sales; to provide sales and support services both directly and through an ecosystem of application, services and integration partners; and to deliver additional application functionality that integrates with their core ecommerce platform”.

Source: Gartner (March 2016)

Hybris checks all those boxes!

What makes SAP hybris a leading digital ecommerce platform

The Gartner report states that hybris “offers robust support for both B2B and B2C business models and has customers in a wide range of industries around the world.”

Why? It lists these strengths of SAP hybris:

  • Growth and vision: Hybris has become one of the more frequently evaluated and deployed digital commerce solutions in multiple industries, including manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, wholesale, high technology and life sciences.

  • Rich functionality: SAP hybris offers strong localization capabilities, including the ability to detect the appropriate currency and language for a site. Reference customers commended the relative ease of localizing sites in multiple languages. The platform also handles the sale of digital goods through more native functionality than some of its larger competitors.
  • Accelerators: Reference customers observed that “hybris accelerators,” used as starting templates for commerce webstores, can shorten and simplify implementations.

It’s all true.

Embitel’s hybris team has successfully delivered several B2B and B2C hybris projects for conglomerates and leading industry players, and it’s tough to find as agile a platform.

If you’d like to channel the strengths of hybris for your business, write to us at sales@embitel.com to help you out.

You can read the entire report on the Gartner Magic Quadrant here.

  • May 3, 2016
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What are the Trends and Challenges of Telematics Remote Vehicle Diagnostics

Tags :

Category : automotive-insights

 

Telematics Wire, a media and market research firm in the domain of Vehicle Telematics, recently interviewed Aneesh Adkadkam, Head Automotive (Product Engineering Services), Embitel Technologies.

In this conversation, Aneesh shared details about the trends and challenges faced by Telematics and Remote Vehicle Diagnostics market.

 

Following are the details of this conversation:

 

How the use of Telematics & Connectivity is continuously changing the way we manage our vehicles?

One of the key challenges for an OEM to provide aftermarket support is the limited access they have to the vehicle. Any remote diagnostics or preventive vehicle maintenance is possible only when the vehicle is taken to the service station for a scheduled service or repair.

The error/fault code memory in electronic control units (ECU) helps to certain extent only when the vehicle is in service station, but the whole vehicle diagnosis and maintenance is constrained with lack access to vehicle parameters, limited expertise available in the service station and lack of knowledge of how the vehicle is used (driver behavior).

This is where automotive telematics and connectivity helps. An OEM is able to get real-time access to the vehicle.

This helps the OEM to drastically improve the aftermarket vehicle diagnosis and maintenance by providing alerts on potential problem, tips to correct wrong driver behavior, to improve mileage based on the usage pattern and remote support in case of on-road breakdown

 

What makes telematics-driven vehicle diagnostics useful for a cost-sensitive market like India?

The incremental cost of providing remote diagnostics is not huge. BOM cost of the device will be less than $50. There is an additional cost of setting up cloud-based IT infrastructure and services; however OEMs already have similar infrastructures that connect multiple service stations in place.

The preventive vehicle diagnostics and remote support will also reduce the cost of maintenance of the vehicle.

This particularly helps commercial vehicles market where the opportunity cost of a vehicle under service/repair is huge. In addition there is advantage of getting access to lot of data which can be monetized and this can reduce the overall cost.

 

Traditionally, Indian fleet managers have been using telematics in its very basic form (track and trace). Do you anticipate a widespread adoption of telematics services by them in future?

Traditional automotive telematics is limited to access to vehicle location information and few other parameters like vehicle speed, engine data.

Connected Car technology helps in accessing a whole gamut of data.

This helps in fleet-management by reducing the cost of operations through preventive vehicle maintenance, remote vehicle diagnosis and support from OEM service team, reduction in fuel consumption, analyzing and correcting driver behavior

These cost advantages should trigger wide-spread adoption of telematics driven remote vehicle diagnostics.

 

What are the various metrics that are crucial for OEMs (or fleet managers) under remote diagnostic services?

For the OEM, the key parameter is to improve the customer satisfaction through better aftermarket support. The challenge is to make this available at low or no additional cost.

Advantage for the OEM is access to real time data which can be used for improving the product reliability.

Once the vehicle is on-road every vehicle acts as a test vehicle – any vehicle can be monitored for any parameter. This can help in product planning and design, improving the vehicle performance and reliability.

In addition the data can be used for other commercial purposes like targeted sales and marketing, customized insurance plans

 

Could you share with us details of any recent Telematics or Connected Vehicle project/pilot done with OEMs in India?

Embitel has delivered multiple projects in this area. We have readily available reference design, which can be customized for remote diagnostics implementation and help in reducing the time-to-market.

The reference design includes device (VCI- Vehicle Communication Interface) to access vehicle parameters and DTCs (diagnostic trouble codes), connectivity over 3G/4G and Blutooth, GPS and cloud connected apps (Iphone and Android)

 

When it comes to vehicle preventive maintenance, what is the value-addition that Embitel offers to the customers?

Our value proposition is our expertise across the entire value-chain of remote vehicle diagnostics from getting the data from the vehicle, making the data available to the cloud servers and application programming.

Embitel has extensive experience working with various control units like engine control units (ECU), body control units, ADAS, Chassis systems and this gives us a good domain knowledge on making these data available for remote diagnostics application.

We have worked on all the major technologies in vehicle networking and diagnostics like CAN, OBD, KWP2000, UDS, J1939 .This along with expertise on embedded technologies like GPS, 3G/4G module integration, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. helps us in providing connectivity solutions.

We also have a strong team working on cloud and mobile technologies, which creates webapps and smartphone apps for both business and consumers.

 

Globally, there has been a buzz around “autonomous vehicles” . What is your take on this?

Health of the vehicle and subsystems will be a key concern in autonomous vehicles. This will call for real time monitoring of the vehicles for any safety issues and makes remote diagnostics mandatory for such vehicles.

 

When do you think telematics features would become “must-have” in new vehicles, rather than a nice-to-have feature?

It is NOW, as already some OEMs started offering connectivity solution and using this as a marketing tool especially in passenger car segment. OEMs are already working on various platforms to offer this and partial adoption is likely to happen quickly. Key challenges will be connectivity issues, legal aspects, privacy concerns and cyber security.

 

  • May 2, 2016
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Magento Ecommerce Success Stories: Brands from the Middle East

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

The Middle East is a burgeoning region for the ecommerce industry. With the highest penetration of internet users per capita, the rapid rise of m-commerce and eagerness of the population to avail of the conveniences of online shopping, it’s a market waiting to be tapped.

Yet there are reasons why the market is in its current nascent stage:

  • The customers’ reluctance to pay before receipt of the product,
  • Last mile logistics and delivery challenges,
  • Red tape and lack of regulations for ecommerce

But the lure of rapidly-evolving commerce is irresistible and even as market conditions become more welcoming of ecommerce in the Middle Eastern countries, the early players have already taken the lead in the race.

Embitel is proud to be associated with some of the early successful ecommerce brands of the Middle East across various sectors.

This is a round-up of some of our successful Magento implementations, where we partnered with some of the reputed business groups of the Middle East to help them leverage ecommerce technology and achieve their business goals.

middle-east-ecommerce-customer-list
 

Magento customizations, integrations and mobile responsive design

Alosra Supermarket, Bahrain’s leading retailer in the high-end grocery sector, was looking to offer a quality online shopping experience to match its long-standing legacy.

Alosra, on their journey of digital transformation, faced following issues with their existing Magento implementation:

  • The existing Magento set-up did not support various business functions due to faulty customizations and system integrations
  • Slow website response time as the webstore was not upgraded to the latest Magento Enterprise Version
  • The webstore was not designed to be mobile responsive

To overcome these problems, the Embitel team upgraded the webstore to the latest and stable enterprise version of Magento, re-built the required customizations and system integrations and also implemented a new responsive design theme.

 

Making Magento work for your unique needs: Managed IT services for infrastructure management and support

Malabar Gold & Diamonds is a leading India-based precious jewelry retailer with a large customer base in the Middle East.

Though Malabar had a shopping portal on Magento 1.7, their business requirements called for extensive customization:

  • dynamic pricing as per the fluctuating gold rate,
  • ordering custom jewelry,
  • group buy, gift cards,
  • a separate website for global shoppers…

These features and more were implemented with the required extensions as well the ability to scale up for festival-related offers and promotions.

Embitel has helped Malabar increase sales and the order value per customer with a website that functions efficiently and is suited to the needs of the niche jewelry business.

Malabar has continued its collaboration with Embitel by availing of our managed IT services for its webstore.

 

ERP integration and omnichannel webstore implementation

Jarir Bookstore is a leading listed company in Saudi Arabia, selling school and office stationery and supplies.

As ecommerce consultants, we partnered with Jarir in their omnichannel journey in two phases.

The first phase involved resolving ERP and UX issues to manage the inventory as well make an easy-to-use Arabic language version on the webstore.

In the second phase of the project, Embitel and Jarir collaborated to deliver an omnichannel retail shopping experience to their customers across the webstore and brick-and-mortar outlets.

Implementation of the following features resulted in an increase of over 100% in traffic within a year and organic increase in sales.

  • Consistent Returns and Exchange policy across channels: Webstore customers can return and exchange in-store
  • Integration of Jarir discount program for web-store customers
  • Webstore cataloguing: Entire catalogue is managed in ERP and synced with Magento.
  • End-to-end integration of webstore with Aramex Shipping partner for seamless fulfillment
  • Integration of shipping manifestation process with the webstore powered by Magento Enterprise Edition

You can read more about Embitel’s work on these projects on their case study pages:

 

    What is m-commerce (mobile commerce)?

    M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices such as cellular telephone and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Known as next-generation e-commerce, m-commerce enables users to access the Internet without needing to find a place to plug in.

    Source :Search Mobile Computing

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