Toptal Blog

Salesforce is probably the most popular CRM platform, with various products giving you the power to put your business thoughts into action.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Developer and Salesforce Certified Application Architect and Platform Developer (II) Jayant Nathani explains how Salesforce can help automate your business processes for a more efficient business.

Overdue receivables are one of the most common and serious frustrations entrepreneurs face. The hidden costs can be staggering, from lost time dealing with the problem to the cost of hiring dedicated experts, to the serious and long term damage to a business’ reputation with its clients.

In this practical and comprehensive guide, Toptal Finance Expert Scott Hoover shows that overdue receivables are actually easily avoidable. Scott outlines six steps all businesses should take, which will make a material difference to accounts receivable and tackle any issues up-front.

There’s much confusion and hyperbole surrounding chatbots. The tech is promising, but the user experience is lacking. We examine five chatbot fails and share practical tips to improve their UX.

The Python language has the functionality to consign many a VBA-filled spreadsheet, held together with sticky tape, to the recycle bin. Its ease of use and suitability for iterative development lends well to finance-based workflows. This article delves into this and provides a brief tutorial.

Bringing a digital product to a new market can feel like navigating uncharted territory. Cultural differences are hard to identify but essential to understanding when developing a localized user experience.

In recent years, React went from being an also-ran in the JavaScript universe to the most popular JS library. However, how does React stack up against Angular and VueJS in 2019?

In the first part of our React tutorial series, Toptal JavaScript Developer Kamil Jakubczak outlines the reasons behind React’s popularity and explains how to get started on your first React app.

The right color palette encourages people to behave in ways designers want them to, while the wrong palette can turn visitors away before they take any action at all.

Without proper state management, your Angular app will become a UX nightmare. But even with that solved, persisting state across sessions and devices can be tricky. This tutorial shows how to leapfrog that challenge using Firebase.

As a venture investor, Natasha Ketabchi spends most of her day evaluating tech startups as potential investments. In early-stage investments, Natasha finds that the three things that matter most are team, product, and sales and marketing approach—including their go to market strategy. In this article, Natasha lifts the veil on what venture investors look for in a solid GTM plan.

Data-driven UI design is both art and science. Understanding how to collect and analyze data and implement designs based on it is an important skill for beginner and expert designers alike.

As simple as your RESTful API may be, even internal users will want a JavaScript package that will do all the heavy lifting for them. Why build each CRUD request by hand, or worse, deal with related resources using custom code for every scenario? With ActiveResource.js, you don’t have to.

The Elastic Stack is constantly releasing new and amazing features, and often delivers two new releases every month. However, even though the Elastic website maintains clear and detailed documentation, every upgrade involves a series of tedious steps. That is why one engineer decided to automate the whole process.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Linux Developer Renato Araujo walks us through a series of Ansible Playbooks he developed to auto-upgrade his Elastic Stack installation.

We can achieve better user experiences with mobile UX design by following best practices, understanding constraints and facilitating a solid working relationship with developers.

When does it make sense for a business to consider hiring a part-time CFO? Are there situations in which it doesn’t make sense at all? What attributes and criteria should businesses use to filter and select candidates? This article by Toptal Finance Expert Scott Hoover looks at answers to all three questions, and is intended to be a practical guide based on nearly a decade of experience as a freelance CFO for privately held companies.

The role of Agile coach has been gaining popularity in recent years. In this article, we will talk about the different types of Agile coaches and their responsibilities. We will discuss how to effectively work with them as a project manager and give suggestions to PMs who want to become Agile coaches themselves.

Nielsen’s heuristic principles have stood the test of time, and have been revisited to be further integrated with human-centered design for mobile—including clear definitions and design examples.

Are remote-working and freelancing viable options for designers? We interview Toptal designers to discover how they’re forging freelance careers with meaningful work for high-impact global companies.

It’s easy to get entangled in spaghetti code, fuzzy responsibilities, and opaque architecture. It is just as easy to write crisp, clear code that is just as easy to write, maintain, and update with a little forethought.

Join Toptal Android Developer Tomasz Czura as he guides you through the process and the reasoning behind creating clean architecture on Android.

Great features and seamless integration with the Adobe ecosystem makes Adobe XD a powerful design tool that competes with industry favorites like Sketch and Figma.

Using the 2016 Wells Fargo Banking Scandal as an example, this article dissects the situation according to the principles of the three classic ethical theorists: Plato, Kant, and Mill. It then offers some suggestions on how to improve ethics in business.

Pricing strategy is one of the most important functions that any business engages in. Prices are a foundational element of a company’s revenues—If managed carefully, they can generate high profits and consequently cash. But setting prices appropriately is tricky, and when mistakes are made, companies suffer.

In this article, Toptal Finance Expert Dalibor Pajic draws on his 15+ year career in corporate finance to outline seven practical examples of when pricing strategy plays a crucial role, with the aim of illustrating how pricing decisions can be approached in different situations. Pending