ITS Campus, ITS News – Without stopping, the academics of the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) have again initiated an innovation that is beneficial to society. Seeing that there are marketing problems for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) entrepreneurs, ITS students have successfully designed an influencer marketing platform that can provide a different experience to its users.

They are Muhammad Asad Al Balad, Firwam Al Ayubi Rachman, and Aurelius Ian. Through the guidance of lecturer Rully Agus Hendrawan M Eng, three students of the Information Systems Department, Faculty of Electrical and Intelligent Information Technology (FTEIC) joined the Digifilux Team.

The head of the Digifilux team, Muhammad Asad Al Balad, explained that the initial idea for the application came from his two friends who both came from the Information Systems Department, namely Muhammad Rizaldi and Achmad Zaenuri. They observe that in today’s technological development trends, product promotion services by influencers on social media or commonly known as endorsements are often chosen as a marketing strategy.

This strategy is widely applied by business actors, including MSME players who want to increase sales of their products. But instead of getting an increase in sales, some MSME players, who are generally considered laymen in the marketing sector, have to give up their money just burning because of the poor endorsement performance.

(from left) Aurelius Ian, Firwam Al Ayubi Rachman, and Muhammad Asad Al Balad who are members of the ITS Digiflux Team

“Thus, of course, questions will arise from the MSME actors, namely how to get the right influencers at a friendly price, without zonk results,” continued the 2019 student who is familiarly called Asad.

Answering this question, Asad said that the application designed with his team could be a solution that makes it easier for business people in Indonesia to market their products with influencer services through three different experiences.

The three different experiences are influencer recommendations that match business preferences through the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a payment feature that will adjust nominal to the influencer’s performance, and also analytical data reports on influencers’ performance which are continuously updated based on real-time.

A view of the three main experiences that the Digiflux application offers

Furthermore, Asad explained that Digiflux was designed using the Design Thinking method, which is a framework for solving problems using a user-centered approach. “Based on the results of testing the application prototype that we tested on several users, they can run the application and complete their tasks well,” he said.

The innovation they initiated also won a silver medal in the User Experience Design (UX Design) competition in the prestigious competition, the XIII National Student Performance for Technology, Information, and Communication (Gemastik) in 2020, some time ago.

Within two months of work, establishing a relationship with the user became a challenge in itself when participating in the competition. Moreover, pandemic conditions limit activities to gather and meet in person. Asad and the team also had to race against time constraints.

The reason is, when the Gemastik final took place, lecture time was also running. “We have to divide our time and extra hard work to catch up,” added the student from Kediri.

When asked what his motivation was, this student born in 2000 admitted that he and his team wanted to test their abilities and ideas to compete in three different competition categories, namely design, technical, and business. Previously, Digiflux had won two types of competitions outside the UX Design branch, namely ITS Youth Technopreneur (IYT) and FIND IT Hackathon. “Apart from that, we also want to continue to add to the achievements of our beloved alma mater,” he said optimistically.

Having succeeded in achieving achievements at the national level, Asad admitted that he felt happy and very grateful. For him to be able to complete the challenges he made himself is a matter of pride. “In the future, we hope Digiflux can truly be a solution for MSMEs to solve their marketing problems,” he concluded. (rys/far/ITS Public relations)