#29 Discussing Low Code benefits with the automation guys

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. We had a couple of weeks now on the chatbots and RPA technologies, and today, yeah, we like to to look a bit closer again what's happening at low-code and no-code and why development, local development, is gaining a lot of traction right now. And yeah, for this, yeah, we have an episode of 14, 14 benefits to share with you. Yeah, local development, especially local app development, is gaining a lot of traction right now. And we believe for a really good reason. The local technology makes it really easy for everyone who is not like a programmer, not a techie, so has limited experience. And yeah, this allows everyone with that limited experience to build applications for both the web and the mobile versions, building enterprise applications and, yeah, for small businesses as well. So it's not just enterprise focus. Yeah. And Yeah, we have really seen over the last month and years, actually, we have seen the evolution and benefits of low-code development really firsthand. We're doing this day in, day out, Arno and I, working with several vendors in the low-code application market. And yeah, now we have a lot of benefits we'd like to share with you. Yeah, let's get started. Arno, what, what is your first one on the list?

Well, so the first one is really just to do with the barrier of entry, the cost and deployment time associated with low-code apps. And you know, it's one of the top reasons why tech pros love it. So local development will really lower that barrier of entry and the cost and time it takes to deploy these types of applications compared to conventional approaches. So, you know, since no longer do you need all of these sort of expert coders in the background that is in IT, you know, for full development. But, you know, you could use a field of experts in the field to do some training on your low-code platform. I mean, and, you know, allow them to build out some of these productivity apps. I mean, we've seen an example where we've deployed a low-code application for NHS Trust, and even people like doctors and nurses gets involved and help to configure their workflows and some of their electronic forms, you know, and that's instead of sort of programmers that does this. And, you know, and obviously with programmers, they don't have any medical training, whereas you look at this medically trained staff, and they know their problem domain. So solving their problem using a low-code application is really quite easy as long as they understand the constructs of how application is put together using low-code.

Yeah, that's— yeah, I think it's the real hype in companies. Every department really likes to get started on the low-code, especially. Yeah, Microsoft is doing lots of lots of publicity and then IT has to deliver that low-code, but everyone can download it very quickly as well and then see results. But it could be as well, it has to be still managed within the company. So with the right governance and IT involvement, I think then it doesn't get out of control. As we all know, The next point is all about legacy integration. We know that low-code development really, really can increase agility in app development. So Forrest mentioned a while ago, so you can speed up development by 10 times, 10 times to original or just usual software development. So the typical coding as we all know it. So if you think Look at this. Yeah, so it can be used for all sorts of stuff and they can also be used for integration of legacy mainframe systems. So instead of sort of connecting to it complicated, so you can use sort of this low-code application as a new layer on top of it to connect to your mainframe systems and make this new stable, faster, resilient solution. Solutions available. And, and with this new layer which you're building with your low-code applications, you can very quickly adapt to your new requirements. So it could also be seen, maybe make an ERP system more accessible. So not necessarily really legacy, but there are some really old legacy ERP systems out there. Instead of replacing them completely, you could keep the core out there and then use your app development, your low-code app development as a nice layer on top of it and, um, yeah, and put this innovation in.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times we see that, uh, people don't want to replace their legacy systems. Um, and, you know, a lot of times people have got more than one of those systems. So I think low-code is really a good means to actually provide a facade in front of that and provide this really, really good way to put a sort of digital workspace that's tailored around the persona of the person that uses it. And rather than having very complicated sort of legacy system interaction, what you could do is actually reuse your legacy system, integrate with it, and really provide this very easy-to-use interface that is kind of persona-driven. That you understand the kind of user journey for the person that uses that, and it's to the point. And I think that really, with the fact that development can be expedited quite quickly in some cases, you know, like you said, up to 10 times quicker than conventional methods, it's a very attractive way to actually bring out these productivity apps to, you know, users to solve problems very quickly for them and hiding complexity and noise behind the scenes. And again, I think low-code is not trying to replace these legacy third-party systems. Of course you could, if you wish, but it's really, the game is to simplify it and to kind of bring it into a realm where it's kind of easy to bring these complex features to users without compromising functionality, but also just to hide certain things that's quite complicated. And again, the point I want to touch on today is the ability for low-code to allow you to rapidly assemble solutions. And assembling these solutions doesn't necessarily have to mean that you have to have a technical audience to do so. We live in a very hyper-personalized world, and creating new solutions very quickly that behave similarly across all of these omnichannel ecosystems is a game changer for organizations. And low-code software platforms fast-track this sort of digital programs by enabling a wider non-technical audience to rapidly assemble these solutions. And aside from the availability of platforms that are growing, You know, the excitement is that it breaks down traditional organizational barriers, which is really exciting. And I think, you know, it kind of brings us to the next point where it speeds up these development cycles for us.

Yeah, absolutely. So if you have ideas, especially last year, we all had to react as well, and everyone had to put forward ideas how to manage a situation where maybe business is very disrupted. And so, yeah, with all these new new ideas coming in, these new innovative ideas maybe from within the business. I think the desire is there usually to put these ideas into action very quickly, and instead of going to IT asking for implementation, that might take ages. So this was not really the right approach. So this is why everyone looked at low-code, because with low-code development, Yeah, you can really lower this barrier to entry for innovation because of this, this, this easy drag-and-drop visual kind of programming. Everyone really without coding experience can now really create this, this web applications or digital products. So everyone with an idea can mock up very quickly functionality. So, so then instead of looking at an implementation maybe historically took maybe a couple of weeks or months, you now can really reduce these development cycles to sometimes just a day. So you have an idea in the morning, in the evening you already sit together and brainstorm on the next steps. So, and because it's— these platforms are so powerful, you have then immediate, so nearly flawless applications put together with no work. So these building blocks are there, very very, very well put together. The design, user interfaces and all that usually is very, very appealing already out of the box. So in, in, in a matter of minutes, actually, you can get really good things going. And that's absolutely game-changing for lots of companies.

Yeah, I mean, you know, and you talk about exploiting business ideas, but you could really use low-code to automate, you know, a new business idea within minutes. You know, we are living in a world where business ideas pop up, new opportunities, and with low-code, you know, you can literally automate that in very, very quick time. And that's one of the most exciting benefits we think of low-code development and what it provides for, you know, for organizations. And, you know, looking into the future, I think you know, a lot of people will look at it and say, you know, I can do that. I can take a problem. I'm not a developer, but I can use this technology to actually create an application that I can solve the problem with, with inside my business, you know, without IT involvement. And, um, you know, and I think low-code is one of those capabilities that can equip any employee inside a business to create powerful tools to improve operational efficiency. And I think that's really important. And this is not just from a sort of a fact that we want people to be able to create capabilities to solve problems, but also it's a really good place for ideation. If there's a particular problem, Rather than reaching for a spreadsheet, why not use a low-code platform to actually try and make that problem go away without reaching for that dreaded spreadsheet? I think this is exactly what these platforms are designed for. What we're seeing is that a lot of this, the people that adopted the so-called citizen developers actually do use it, maybe sometimes for ideation, and then the bigger ideas, can then turn into quite strategic systems that IT involvement can then be used to actually embed it deeper with inside the organization with all the governance. So, so it is a really, really good place to innovate. It's a really good place to fast, quick, to fail quickly. You have an idea and it's not going to work, um, without a massive cost burden, right?

Absolutely. I think we all know generally software development goes through lots of testing cycles and lots of quality assurance, end-user testing, all that. So this is quite expensive in general and tedious and slow. So this is why low-code can help here as well. In low-code you have these ready-to-go components, these Lego Lego bricks where you can use, and these ready-to-go components are already tested. So they are put forward by vendors and partners of these platforms, and they just work out of the box, and you can just plug them in. And yeah, you can build these applications super fast, you have fewer bugs, less integration issues because these connectors and interfaces, API interface, already already developed. And so yeah, this is, this is a much, much more enjoyable process really for not just for the developers, I think for everyone being involved in this, in this innovative project work. Yeah. And overall, yeah, I think not just developers like it, everyone in the business likes it because it produces faster values and better value.

Yeah, exactly. And also, you know, I think what we allow people to do is to be creative, and it's the sort of so-called rise of the citizen developer. And I think, you know, again, my analogy with an Excel spreadsheet still stands where, you know, shadow IT was born out of the fact that conventional IT systems couldn't do what business people wanted it to do. So a lot of these sort of business users taught themselves really good skills using Excel, perhaps a bit of VBA. And, um, you know, what we want to do is kind of bring those people into this domain where we give them the ability to have a better alternative. You know, there's a constant demand for software and applications, and, you know, most IT departments simply cannot keep up with this. And this is where the citizen developer comes into play, where we've got these non-professionals building these business apps with existing low-code tools that is obviously sanctioned by IT because they still have the governance responsibility. So we provide the guardrails for these citizen developers to create these solutions. Again, without actually having to resort to using Excel, they can build applications that's available online, centralized in nature, available to all their colleagues, for example. So, and again, with the reason why this works is it's, there's less or no code involved for this type of development path. So citizen developers can quickly create these much-needed apps to make them more sort of productive and more efficient. And this building block approach that you talk about, this so-called kind of Lego blocks, really cuts down on development time, and that translates to faster time to value where it's needed. So if you have a form that needs to go through a specific workflow, maybe it's a document approval, stay out of Outlook, you know, create the form, ensure that the document can be attached to that form, create a workflow that can actually route the form to the various signatories or people that needs to review it. Automatically you get tracking, automatically you get all the stats, automatically you get the ability to change your workflow, embed business rules with inside that workflow, and potentially grow that into something larger with inside your organization and adopt these best practices as a blueprint going forward to install some of these operational efficiencies again without having dark data in Excel and these dark processes with inside Outlook, right?

Yeah, that's very useful. Yeah. And everyone really should look at that. Everyone who's listening today should look out for what we have published on our podcast so far about low-code, because not just low-code apps, isn't it? This is really something we see in other areas as well. So low-code RPA, so robotic process automation, digital workforce, digital workers. Could be built as well with low-code approach. We cover chatbots with the low-code approach. So many areas. So these are typically areas where you looked at before and thought, yeah, we need experts. We need experts coming in to do all these things, these automations, these applications. And experts are rare. And because of this huge demand for automation everywhere, I think no one can really keep up with skilling up people on these technologies in general, on these expert skills. With low-code now, we can bring all that stuff to really everyone, and that increases the productivity across teams really. Businesses and business teams can create their own applications, as we mentioned already, without waiting for the developers. You just need some, maybe some developers to do like checking if best practices have been followed, that kind of stuff, before maybe deploying. But generally, if the rules are clear to everyone, you don't even need a developer. And then, yeah, and if, because there's no complex code to look at, yeah, really every team member can really contribute, and that enhances productivity enormously. And yeah, you mentioned that was the idea creation. I think that's the key really. Everyone can feel empowered to contribute with new ideas. So we talked about maybe a few times this idea management process. Yeah, I think this is a very important thing which comes up more and more. How can you improve the business in general? And I think something like this, low-code, a powerful tool for everyone. Yeah, I think it's not just writing down business ideas. You can actually start up a business idea within the business and get everyone excited. That's really, really nice. And yeah, and if you put this out to like chatbots, RPA, and some other areas, I think the possibilities are Yeah, really, really enormous.

Yeah, it is quite broad. And I think, you know, if you do have— if you do take away the kind of the complexity of development from people, you know, low-code really increases, you know, access for more people to, you know, to use ideation to create more apps. And so it really brings me to the next point. And that's really, you know, we trying to democratize software development for users. So we want to grant users access to, you know, technical and business expertise such as, you know, data analysis, machine learning, or even app development, you know, without having a very steep learning curve. So with low-code, it's quite easy to grasp some of the constructs to put an application together and even use quite sophisticated tools, like I said, machine learning, learning, and incorporate that into your, your apps. So, so, so really it's, it's no longer necessary to, to be a senior technical developer, you know, to use these highly specialized tools and systems with inside your work. And of course that, you know, that accelerates the ability for yourself as a non-technical person to solve these problems very rapidly using low-code.

Yeah, I think that's, uh, um, that brings us to the next one, uh, something you might have heard before, bridging the tech divide. Um, yeah, so local platforms, um, really enable us to be more agile, faster, and, um, yeah, to, to really get our development, um, cycles down. Um, we mentioned this earlier in a few points. Yeah, so with these latest visual programming techniques within these platforms, I don't know which one is one you prefer the most.

Oh, I like them all.

You like them all. Yeah, exactly. We work with so many, so just get in touch at some point on the automationguys.net website to learn more about what is available. We can give you good insight on that one. But with this visual programming techniques offered by, by these local platforms, you can really directly build and very often directly in the cloud, so you don't even have to set up servers for that. So you can sign up and after 5 minutes you can start building and iterating on solutions very, very fast and Yeah, I think that's a big efficiency and productivity booster. I think really every business should look at everything else. Sure, there are very complex situations you might need to look at, but typically probably it's this 80/20 rule again where you probably can solve most of the business problems today with low-code applications. And then for the remaining 20, go through the traditional coding, maybe. This is why it's called low-code. You can still code when it's needed, but otherwise, yeah, it is really an efficiency and productivity booster. And yeah, we love all the low-code platforms.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it is just a concept of it that's appealing to me. And, you know, it kind of brings me to the next point. It's, it's the ability to to rapidly prototype out a solution to a problem. And, you know, that's one of the strongest benefits of using low-code is that it allows sort of, you know, non-coders to prototype solutions to real-world problems very quickly. And like I said earlier, to fail quickly, you know, you might face a particular problem. Like I said earlier, rather than kind of carving out a manual process using an Excel spreadsheet or Word document you download somewhere from the intranet that gets emailed across Outlook. It's very easy to actually assemble an automated solution, you know, using low-code if you're a non-technical developer. You know, these solutions can be tested, evaluated, and then, you know, redefined or refined, you know, as you, as you, as you progress. And you don't have to have any involvement from formal kind of software development staff within a site IT, for example. And you can compare competing solutions and you can discard some that's not relevant or that you feel doesn't work well. And also you could merge certain solutions at some point that you feel is mature enough to be passed on to the, you know, for more formal development and, you know, for more kind of optimal implementation. So I think the name of the game here is let's solve a problem quickly, let's bring value very quickly. As it scales and grows, let's involve the right stakeholders, you know, the people in IT, and show them what we've done. And, you know, assist, you know, get their assistance to sort of bring that into the business and build that further. So I think it is this kind of this ultimate ideation platform where instead of the ideas kind of just being in your head or floating around somewhere in Excel, you know, it's kind of bringing it out to a centralized place and, you know, we could pick the best of the bunch and progress them forward to really invest further in them. And like I said, you know, take some of those best ideas and turning those into really, really good strategic solutions and potentially scale that out across the business. And the good thing here is that, you know, if you have people that, you know, are sort of sharp-minded and they like solving problems, I think this is a great platform to put in front of them. To allow them to solve those problems and to look inside that area where they solve the problems and pick the best ones that you think could potentially be a sort of game changer across your business and then scale that out and, you know, and roll that out. And it is about innovation, right? But it's about quick innovation. Fast innovation with inside the business is really key. I think that if you do innovate the technology should be appropriate for that. You can have really great business ideas, but if you then rely on antiquated technologies, then that actually provides a handicap for, for that innovation. And I think low-code is a, is a means to eradicate that because what we achieving is that we can bake those really good innovation ideas into something that is by default scalable, and also by default that could be, you know, evolved into something better and bigger. And I think that is really the key. And doing all of that, you know, 20 times or 10 times quicker than conventional developments, really, really powerful capability with inside business.

Yeah, usually what we hear when it comes to this, so we want to be faster and we want to develop faster, then very often IT comes, ah, but, but you can't just develop something. It needs to be secure, it needs to be scalable. Not just the idea needs to be scalable, actually what you're developing as a solution needs to be scalable and needs to follow certain sort of rules, etc. So, and this is where these low-code platforms also supporting developers or the low-code developers, because these vendors have thought about making security easy, high, highly, obviously on high level enterprise scale security, sort of easy. And you don't have to worry about building security modules and all that stuff. There's out of the box available these platforms when you go to the cloud with these vendors directly. So they usually give you sort of a development environment, a testing environment, a production environment, and that production environment then scales automatically like most things in the cloud these days. So if you have then a wider adoption across your business, so the infrastructure behind that or on that production system, the live system is then growing, the security around that is, you know, you can trust. So suddenly then IT can also look at this bit more relaxed, should I need to know about these vendors in general, Generally say, okay, yeah, they are fine, they're supporting this and this and this kind of standard. So now, yeah, you're all good to go. And then with this in mind, you can really faster innovate within the business because, yeah, you can be rest assured everything will be fine. You will not have a data breach and you can just concentrate on business value.

Yeah, exactly. And I think low-code solves all of those technical IT problems for you. Like you say, scalability, um, because, you know, most, uh, low-code software we use has got obviously cloud offering. There are some on-prem offerings as well if security is of concern, or, you know, you need to keep your data on-prem. But either way, you know, you, you fundamentally solve a lot of those IT-centric problems immediately. And what you could focus on then is really just to, to focus on that problem you want to solve. And, you know, and it kind of brings us to our next point, which, which low-code provides you the freedom to, to focus on, um, you know, business development. So providing ability for, for, uh, people to actually build apps that actually solve problems for themselves. So, you know, like you've seen with, with modern website builders, for example, um, you know, low-code allows people to build, uh, you know, in the same fashion, simple applications that are actually quite surprisingly complicated to code if you didn't use, you know, low-code, for example. And, you know, this allows people to focus more on their the business side of things and solving those business problems. And, you know, you could build a minimal viable solution or minimal viable product very quickly, get it out, get feedback, adapt it on the fly, and you don't necessarily have to escalate cost in doing so. So it's a very exciting and agile way to introduce solutions with inside your business very quickly and then evolve them into long-term solutions and long-term capabilities that scaled across your business.

That's very powerful. I think the last point we want to address is it's not just for businesses or for larger businesses. Low-code can be really for everyone, for for every entrepreneur out there. So with a good business idea in general, or if you, if you feel like you're an entrepreneur within the organization, you can look at it that way as well. So you can just take that and build something. If you, if you're just starting out with your own business idea, let's assume you're a startup, you need to put something together. You can use low-code to just come up with these ideas and these applications. You probably can get your first version of your SaaS offering also already built on, on some of these low-code platforms very easily. You can prove the, the vision you have. You can build your MVP as a SaaS platform potentially already with the low-code platform without really putting this huge investment in external IT companies potentially, or when you're within the business, you're reducing the expenditure of maybe expensive external consultants. Basically, you can get just more things done with less capital and then less time spent. I think that's very powerful in general. If you'd like to learn more about low-code, not just low-code app development, and no-code app development. If you'd like to learn more about everything, just visit our website, theautomationguides.net. There you find lots of resources, lots of content. I think, yeah, we have— what else do we have? Clubhouse. We have a weekly Clubhouse session. You can chat about low-code with us and all things automation. We, yeah, I think we have a community, Let's Talk Automation community. Everywhere where you search, I think on Google, you will find it. You can be part of it and join in. And yeah, and hopefully you take a few inspirations from this, from this episode. I think the most important thing is, I think the takeaway is you can just do, do it and get started. I think there's no barrier really anymore. There's, there's anything, there's software, there's software out there on any sort of price range. So there's no reason to not get started and get, get the benefits out of low-code. Any, any final thoughts?

Yeah, like you said, Sasha, it's obviously, um, low-code is a discipline where traditionally we see it as workflow automation, electronic forms, and make this available in various devices— mobile, desktop, tablet devices. But what we see is that, of course, most of the technologies with inside the hyperautomation space, and this includes Chatbot, robotic process automation, what we call low-code automation, or, you know, traditional workflow, artificial intelligence. You know, all of these are or do leverage low-code principles. And it's really exciting to get started with, you know, all of these different elements of automation to assemble business solutions very quickly. And you could start very quickly. A lot of these platforms allows you to sign up, get started, trial it out, and, and really kind of kick the tires to get started. And I think for me, it's all about innovation. It's all about taking these business problems and looking at these platforms and, and, and looking at a way to get started, really to dip your toe in that, and, and really just to, to, to get a good direction, um, of travel for, for solving problems. That, you know, you have with manual processes, for example, and sort of automating those repetitive tasks using RPA or getting rid of that Excel spreadsheet that gets sent around the office, for example. So it's a very exciting time. I think there's a lot to talk about, Sasha, in future episodes, which we're obviously looking forward to. Like Sasha said, you know, please reach out to us us. If you have any questions or suggestions, or if there's anything on your mind that you perhaps see a problem with inside your business that's noteworthy to, to, to, um, to talk about on this episode, feel free to reach out to us. Um, you know, like I said, there's a lot of things in the future that's, that's going to be very exciting. We're going to continue the conversation and hopefully, um, you know, get people to automate. You know, I think that, that's the goal, right?

Absolutely, yeah. And yeah, if there's any, anything you'd like to share with us specifically, submit a topic on our website theautomationguys.net, and there we, yeah, we collect all the feedback and all the suggestions for future episodes. And yeah, we had tremendous feedback so far, and lots of these ideas of this podcast come from from your suggestions. So yeah, if you want us to talk about something or you like a specific interview guest on the show, or you would be interested to hear from that person, just let us know. And yeah, I think that's it for today. Again, thank you for joining in. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, episode, please give us a 5-star rating and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time and until then, let's automate it.