In this week’s edition of Shifted Perspectives, we delve into the dynamic realm of BluShift. Co-founded by Sheldon Nossel and Daniel Hesp, BluShift is a pioneering force in digital product development, renowned for its cutting-edge solutions and fresh perspectives. We sat down with Sheldon and Daniel to uncover the technological marvels driving BluShift's success, breaking down what is changing the game in tech - as seen through the lens of BluShift's innovative approach.
In the bustling landscape of digital innovation, Sheldon stands at the forefront as the Head of Product Delivery at BluShift Consulting, while Daniel serves as the Head of Growth and Partnerships. Daniel is passionate about harnessing technology to propel business growth and empower clients in navigating today's digital landscape, leveraging his expertise as a data analyst. With a passion for data analytics, automation, and app development, Daniel is constantly seeking out new ways to leverage technology to solve complex challenges and enhance operational efficiency. Sheldon brings a wealth of expertise with diverse developer certifications and diplomas in Software Architecture, Robotics, and Machine Learning. His mastery across the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) has empowered him to navigate through various sectors, including Education, Insurance, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Media, Financial Services, and the Public Sector. Together, Sheldon and Daniel epitomise BluShift's commitment to driving innovation forward, leveraging the agility of Low Code technologies and a passion for transformative digital solutions.
Q: As founders of BluShift, what do you see as the most disruptive forces shaping the future of digital product development? How is BluShift positioned to capitalise on these changes?
Sheldon: Building products has become easier than ever before. It requires less capital, fewer resources, and the barrier to entry, in terms of skills, has become lower than ever. With the advent of AI tools, the proliferation of easily accessible software development courses, and the rise of powerful low-code tools, founders and businesses of all sizes can build, scale, and release products at massively increased speed and at a fraction of the cost of traditional product development. We’re seeing this impact across industries, with new competitors and products being released every single day. There are even many examples of products scaling to thousands of users with a single operator at the helm. It’s becoming a truly difficult landscape to compete in if you’re unable to match your development process speed and cost efficiency to that of your competitors. What we’ve seen is that being able to rapidly adopt and successfully deploy the kinds of tools and techniques enabling this speed and cost efficiency allows businesses to maintain a competitive advantage and importantly to compete in new markets.
BluShift, as a next-gen first agency, was founded with the vision to help companies continuously adopt the latest and greatest practices and tools, allowing them to experiment and implement without losing their edge. We’ve built a team of innovation experts, consultants hungry for knowledge, and the ability to quickly deploy best-in-class solutions before others have even understood the applications of these newly emerging technologies. We’ve carved out a niche by continuously scouring for the next best thing and figuring out how we can help our clients get ahead of the game by quickly understanding what it takes to adopt new tech, how it can be leveraged, and then ensuring the longevity of these adoption programmes through skills capacitation and enterprise enablement.
Daniel: The most disruptive forces shaping the future of digital product development are the rapid advancements in technology, changing consumer behaviours, and evolving market dynamics. Technology, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, continues to push the boundaries of what's possible, enabling new forms of innovation and product experiences. Meanwhile, shifting consumer preferences and behaviours, driven by factors like increased connectivity and a preference for personalised experiences, demand agility and responsiveness from product developers.
We understand how much easier it is for businesses of all sizes to use technology and learn new things nowadays. At BluShift, we use these changes to help our clients succeed. With a team of experts, we stay ahead of the latest tools and ways of working, so our clients can, too. This means they don't just keep up with what's happening in their industry—they stay ahead.
But we don't stop at just setting things up. We know that for new technology to really work, a company needs to change how it works. That's why we offer lots of help and training to make sure everything runs smoothly in the long term. Our focus on always finding new and better ways to do things and making sure our clients can do the same, makes us the perfect partners for navigating the fast-paced world of digital business.
Q: One aspect that sets BluShift apart is its commitment to embracing innovation. Can you share some examples of how BluShift has integrated emerging technologies or unconventional strategies into its projects to deliver transformative solutions?
Sheldon: Considering our vision in starting BluShift, we took the approach that if we are to be experts and help our clients adopt emerging technologies, we have no option but to experiment and successfully implement these technologies internally. From our early adoption of the Microsoft PowerPlatform, we’ve been able to develop internal solutions across our finance, project management, and sales functions without relying on costly SaaS alternatives. Our development teams deliver best-in-class cross-platform mobile and web applications using one of our favourite tools, FlutterFlow, bringing our delivery times down from many months to a mere couple of weeks. Lately, we’ve been having a lot of fun building AI agents, deploying them as sales and analyst co-pilots, ensuring we never miss a beat in our requirements gathering and enhancing our client experience through the delivery of detailed status reports and project insights.
Daniel: At BluShift, our commitment to embracing innovation goes hand in hand with our dedication to using the best tools for each unique problem. Rather than sticking to familiar tools, we constantly explore emerging technologies and unconventional strategies to deliver solutions. For instance, when tackling a project, we don't limit ourselves to tools we're already familiar with; instead, we assess the problem at hand and choose the most suitable tools, even if they're new to us. This approach allows us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements and deliver innovative solutions that truly meet our clients' needs.
An example of this is our recent project where we leveraged AI-powered chatbots to enhance customer service for a client in the retail sector. While chatbots themselves are not a new concept, we opted to explore cutting-edge AI algorithms to develop a chatbot that could understand and respond to customer inquiries with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency. By investing in AI research and development, we were able to create a chatbot that not only improved customer satisfaction but also significantly reduced our client's support costs.
We've embraced low-code development platforms to accelerate our application development process. By using platforms like FlutterFlow, we've been able to build cross-platform mobile and web applications in record time, allowing us to meet tight deadlines and deliver solutions faster than ever before. This approach not only increases our efficiency but also enables us to innovate more rapidly, providing our clients with more value.
Q: In what ways do you think low-code platforms will evolve, and what impact will this have on the industry?
Sheldon: The obvious next step for low-code platform evolution will be the integration of AI in everything. We’re already seeing it with Copilot being baked into the PowerPlatform as well as their introduction of AI flows. This will no doubt bring down the skills barrier even further. However, I see a possible divergence happening. Low-code platforms have had a bit of a bad rep amongst the traditional developer community, being seen as less than capable or less flexible than traditional methods. I think we’re going to see platforms rise that will try to make converts out of traditional developers, with a greater focus on developer experience and a greater alignment to traditional development practices whilst still bringing the obvious efficiency gains of a low-code platform. On the other hand, the clear benefits of having easier-to-use tools for those who don’t come from a technical background will not disappear. So I think we’ll start to see a bit of a split in the market between tools targeted at developers vs tools targeted at citizen developers. The major issue this would present, however, is what platforms businesses decide to adopt.
As for the impact of the platforms on the wider industry, my simple answer is that I don’t see a way for founders, businesses, software or citizen developers to avoid this adoption. There’s no doubt that the capabilities of these platforms paired with their obvious benefits will easily overtake traditional methods in popularity - further increasing competition and speed of delivery.
Daniel: Low-code platforms are set to evolve in some exciting ways, and this will have a big impact on the industry. They’ll get better at integrating with a wide range of third-party services, legacy systems, APIs, IoT devices, and advanced data analytics tools, making it easier for businesses to bring together different systems and data sources. With AI and machine learning features becoming a part of low-code platforms, we’ll see more sophisticated automation, predictive analytics, and smart decision-making, with AI-driven recommendations boosting efficiency. User experience will also improve, with more intuitive, user-friendly interfaces, better drag-and-drop functionalities, and comprehensive templates making these platforms accessible to everyone, even those without technical backgrounds.
Improvements in scalability and performance will allow the development of enterprise-grade applications that can handle heavy loads and large user bases, supported by advances in cloud infrastructure and edge computing. Enhanced collaboration features will help teams work together more effectively, and integration with DevOps tools will streamline the deployment process, making continuous integration and continuous deployment practices easier. As low-code platforms evolve, they’ll democratise app development, lowering the barrier to entry and allowing non-developers to create functional applications. This will drive innovation, speed up development cycles, and reduce the dependency on traditional IT departments, ultimately transforming the industry by fostering a more inclusive and agile development environment.
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