Facts, DevOps, figures, Blockchain and quotes from the financial industry leaders. We have collated them all together to bring you the most important trends shaping financial services today.

The last 20% of developing an Android mobile app is 80% of the work. That is what the Pareto principle tells us. This last 20% is making the app store page so beautiful that users who find it install your app. That’s where app store optimisation comes in. Using research on how users navigate through app stores, you can improve download rate of your app drastically. This process is called App Store Optimisation, or ASO for short.

We’ve talked to Eddie Dubiel, a representative of Finstreet, about the future of one of their project, the difficulties of operating in the highly regulated German financial sector, and about bringing innovation into large fintech organisations. The insights we gathered shed light on doing business on this highly desirable and competitive market.

Behind every great product stands a long story of very hard but yet right decisions. Right after the question “What should we do?” comes another important question: “How should we do that?”. We’re not able to make this decision for you, because there are so many ways and tools for implementing things that it’s impossible to even know all of them. But we will try to help you just a little and compare two of the available technologies you can use in your next web application: Ruby on Rails and Laravel.

Every person who has ever worked in software development can agree that estimating work is one of the key pain points in IT. Often the tasks and projects are underestimated, there are a lot of (unpleasant) surprises, the deadlines are not met, the client is stressed out, and the pressure put on the team is almost tangible.

We’ve all been there. A usual Saturday at home, you’ve got your vacuuming done, and you’re in the middle of making pie crust now. With your hands covered in dough, you look around searching for a salt shaker. And then you hear the vibrant tone of an incoming call you’ve been waiting for the whole morning. A crazy race around the house commences. You’re running around spilling dough on the floor, looking for your phone in desperation. Your dog is running after you, making even more mess. Luckily you find the phone and pick it up. Then another ordeal starts – talking on the phone holding it between your arm and head with a dog tripping you up is never a good idea. What if we told you you could bring some peace into this chaotic scenario? Image a home robot that would answer the call for you and let you talk to people hands-free. Here comes the Israeli company, Roboteam, that used to make life saving robots for the defence. Now, it can save millions of domestic heroes during their home battles with their new product: temi, the personal robot.

A typical day at Netguru looks as follows: One team is building an app for one of the biggest banks in Europe. Another team is working with Volkswagen to help them create a unique customer experience for their first boutique store. Yet another team is sitting at one table with a group of designers and developers experienced in creating cutting-edge unmanned ground vehicles.

ClickMechanic brings a revolution to the car repair and automotive industries. People uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge when leaving their car at a garage no longer need to worry thanks to ClickMechanic’s vetting system for mechanics and a fixed price for repair services. Mechanics can sign up to the platform to get more work and save on the costs of customer service. The result? 18,000 mechanics already on board and prices 50% lower than those of franchise dealers. I had the chance to talk to Andrew Jervis, ClickMechanic’s founder, about what inspired him to create this project, what they offer to customers and mechanics, and how they stay competitive on this highly specialised market.

Agile project management is still going strong in 2018, and since it’s a big part of our daily work at Netguru, we try to stay up-to-date with the best tools and techniques out there. Here’s a list we’ve compiled of the best tools for PMs, some of which we use across the company, and some, we think, do a great job in certain circumstances.

From this interview, you will learn: How Peter Grosskopf, solarisBank’s CTO, scaled up a tech team How having no financial background was actually the prerequisite in his leading role in the banking platform What Lego bricks have in common with digital banking What the recent investment by BBVA might mean for the Berlin-based fintech startup. For anyone not yet familiar with the company: solarisBank is a Berlin-based, 150-person tech company with a full banking license, serving 60 corporate customers. It all started with the concept of building solarisBank as the first banking platform native to the digital economy – a platform that would enable any company to offer financial services. A few years ago, fintech startups used to working in the agile way, were struggling with lengthy and inefficient setup processes with traditional banks.