#5 How to Leverage Low-Code to Stay Afloat & Sail Ahead in 2021

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you're planning to cut costs, boost efficiency, and run more processes digitally this year, low-code automation can provide you with the tools for success. Today, Arno and I will be discussing how businesses can leverage low-code to stay afloat and sail ahead. We have collected 7 top tips we would like to share with you today. So Let's dive in. So Arno, I think, um, because not everyone is familiar with low-code. We should maybe very quickly give an overview on what low-code is and what, what, what is sort of your definition we can pass on?

Yeah, so thanks, Sascha. So my view, low-code is really a visual development approach to build business applications and process automations. And it's very easy for developers and business users to collaboratively solve business challenges using low-code. And it's a very user-friendly way to build custom web and, for example, mobile applications with minimum coding or training for that matter. Low-code is really the good analogy we always use It is like Lego blocks. It has got a lot of pre-created widgets, and what you can do is you could very rapidly assemble application, a business application, by assembling the various building blocks together to produce an application, really.

All right, yeah, that sounds, sounds very interesting. And Yes, it remembers me a little bit about building a website these days, so, but we probably, um, yeah, go into some of that detail further down the line. So, um, I think that brings us to the first top tip we have selected today: bring remote teams together. So with the low-code approach, Anna, you mentioned earlier, so now this This will, and with the visual designers, we can then really, really build process automation apps that connect data within our businesses, which is in all these different data silos in all our SaaS applications, for example. And connects that data with the people in the business. So that means wherever they are, if home-based or not home-based, some of us have to be in the office. And, but I still need to work on common goals and common processes. So, so with low-code and putting these applications together, we can allow colleagues and people in the business to work together seamlessly. And yeah, and obviously that, that will help to streamline communication and it will not produce any bottlenecks or roadblocks when it comes to approvals. So, so yeah, with low-code low-code. Yeah, I think that's, that's a way for us to orchestrate everything and manage everything digitally and really produce that productive teamwork even in a remote working world.

Yeah, and I guess it is just connecting people, their data and systems together and have it available to them, you know, no matter where they're working, you know, from the home office or from the actual Office itself. And like you say, workflow automation really helped to streamline and speed up communication and collaboration between staff. And once your process is digital and it's with inside a low-code tool, staff stays productive and the teamwork where, you know, between themselves happen smoothly. So that pivots nicely into our second top tip, which is to pivot process or processes quickly, rather. Now, what we want to have is the ability to avoid very complicated development life cycles when you are building out process automation applications. And low-code really allows you to, to redesign and, and develop and update your processes at lightning speed. You know, it's very easy to digitize manual tasks, to perhaps replace paperwork with digital forms, to automate your document management and your document approval, and also to integrate workflows with inside your existing business software. And low-code platforms give you that capability so you can pivot quickly We talked about the pandemic and processes prior to pandemic, how these processes look like. We always think about onboarding, for example, and onboarding process pre-pandemic looks totally different to what it looks like today because of course, when you onboard somebody, you have to ship a laptop to their house, right? And this is the ability to really pivot your processes quickly. That's key to what low-code offers.

And what do you, what do you think when we talk about complexity and low-code? How complex can we be with low-code? Low-code sort of seems to suggest, yeah, I can just put this together, pretty much everything very easily.

It's both sides of the spectrum. With low-code, you can automate one task If you have a document approval that needs to be routed to colleagues, that's a very simple example of something that you can probably build in a couple of hours, or you can use low-code to replace enterprise-grade systems and everything in between as well. So the word low-code doesn't suggest simple as in small. It just means it's simple to develop. Because you're using this visual development approach where so-called citizen developers, somebody that can be trained, that is probably quite good with Excel, that understands Excel macros, for example, people that is perhaps familiar with SharePoint, these citizen developers could really after a bit of training, easily get started. More advanced applications, enterprise applications, can also be configured, but of course more technical expertise is required, you know, to make that a success. But again, it's not always about, you know, going for the biggest thing out there. For low-code, I almost think it's for the masses and if we solve a lot of little problems, that frees up a lot of little bits of time and span across the organization. You know, that's a massive cost saving and a huge increase in efficiency with inside a business.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it doesn't need to be always the big one. So there's the, there's the concept of the power of one. So if you do 100 little things, um, you over time you, you improve by 100%. So that, that sort of similar kind of view on it. Yeah, very interesting. So yeah, the next point we have here is delight customers digitally. As we currently, you know, not allowed to go into shops and interact with businesses in a normal way, so there's a shift to more contactless customer service and customer interaction. So similar like pivoting Yeah, or by pivoting into new business models, or we had to pivot because of the pandemic and change our way how we interact. Yeah, I think with the local platforms we can use, we can now build these applications, we can build in digital forms for our customers so they can really interact with us more seamless. And similar things like chatbots come into the picture so we can be available for our customers and then bring that data as well seamless into all our systems internally. So they do not necessarily end up in shared mailboxes. So if that information comes in from a customer, maybe a request for a quote or so, so that can be immediately routed to the right person in the business. So, and can be processed accordingly. So that's what we these days have. With the power of these low-code tools, we can put the whole process, how things are working, into the system. And yeah, so get the solution to our customers even in that very difficult time.

Yeah, I mean, that's— it's always very easy to, to forget about the end customer in all of this. You know, we always talk about process automation and we always think it's something that happens in the deep back office, but I think the reality here is that we are serving customers. We want to delight them. We want to stand out from the competition. We want to ensure that customer retention is very high. And the only way to really do that is to delight them digitally and to provide them with a good experience so that when they do engage you, it's really efficient. They feel like, you know, you know what you're doing. They feel like their queries get resolved very quickly. And that's really, really important, you know, customer attention and really You know, in my opinion, it should be a key benefit of using low-code, which brings us now to the fourth point, which is to improve internal communication. And what we want to achieve using low-code is really to coordinate digital communications between colleagues. So rather than actually managing task allocation through emails or instant messaging, and, you know, it can be very easily, a particular detail can be very easily overlooked, like a critical instruction when you send an email or instant message, because not everybody, you know, remembers to put in the correct details consistently. You know, with low-code, you know, we can create those alerts and reminders and tasks very structured. And in one place. And, you know, all the relevant documents and data that we need to fulfill a process, you know, gets automatically routed, you know, to the right people at the right time. And in this way, you know, there's no bottlenecks or delays in achieving the process outcomes because everybody knows what they're doing and everybody's got a work list You know, people are not scuttling around in Outlook trying to figure out the things they need to do, right?

Yeah, that's a very important point, to get that streamlined as much as possible. So I think working Working efficiently and improve comms is also something for our next tip: onboard new staff remotely. Arno, you mentioned that earlier, so the onboarding process has changed. Pre-pandemic, it was like a very— yeah, so you come into the office and you meet people and you sign documents, you pick up your hardware, your laptop, and you Yeah, you get onboarded face-to-face and induction meetings and all that stuff. But yeah, obviously, that's not possible anymore. So everyone is working from home mainly, and that requires that all these steps for onboarding and to produce this very exciting, still an exciting onboarding experience, requires a system change as well. So we have to pivot on that. And yeah, with low-code we can build environments and systems who can, which can actually make that happen. So, so for, for processing contracts, for filling out specific information in the beginning of your employment, making sure that specific steps are performed by the HR department, performed by the IT department, facility management, facility management not too much anymore, but to really cover all the steps which are required for onboarding a new member of staff. Yeah, we need a structured process in place, and then a system can give us, and a low-code system can give us that capability. So we can make sure that all data is as well recorded in the right systems. And yeah, the key thing is that it is a very smooth process for everyone and that the new member of staff really feels appreciated even if they are not onboarded physically. And yeah, because it is very important, similar like acquiring new customers, to get that really spot on. Otherwise you will have already dissatisfied new employee joining the firm.

Yeah, and I think, you know, it also saves a lot of time for, for the HR people when you create a very seamless employee experience, you know, right from the get-go. You know, you want to have the right information at the right time sent out to the people to make that journey as efficient as possible and as frictionless as possible, um, so that when the new member of staff is onboarded remotely, they do feel that the process went very smoothly and they can get down to business, right? And again, I think when we look at onboarding and we talk about it and people generally ask, we want to get started with process automation using low-code, where do we start? And I would say onboarding is probably in my top 3 all the time because most people do it, or all companies do it, big or small. And most people we, we talk to that hasn't got automation in their business, their onboarding process is highly manual. And, and I think it's, it, it is one of those processes that's, that's probably, uh ones that should be on your target list to automate.

Yeah, that's a good point. So as soon as you hit a specific number of people you have to onboard, your HR department usually is quite static. It's not really growing too much. But we're currently working with a startup and they are growing from 400 to 800 people in one year. Can you imagine doing that onboarding manually? There is no way they can do that. So the first 400 people they have onboarded over a period of, let's say, 10 years. They, they, you can see, okay, it's, it's manageable. But now 400 to 800 was sort of similar size of HR department. And once these 800 people are onboarded, you don't necessarily want to have, yeah, you wouldn't increase your HR department permanently, only for, for just this peak. So yeah, it just makes sense to implement something quickly on the, on the low-code level.

Yeah, and that kind of takes us to the sixth point, which is to manage your operations virtually. Now, obviously in the current climate, a lot of people are working from home, and low-code really provides you this ability to rapidly, rapidly develop solutions that automates a whole range of routine repetitive finance processes, for example. So finance is a good example. If you look at the accounts receivable, accounts payable, accounts reconciliation, invoicing, remittance, all of these are really excellent use cases for low-code automation. And, you know, in addition, the efficiency gains you'll, you'll get from this will be phenomenal. You know, it's paperless, and also you would have access to process metrics and also deeper insights to allow you to look into your processes. If you take accounts receivable, for example, you want to have that as streamlined as possible because that optimizes your cash flow, and that's a really, really important, you know, thing at the minute for businesses to protect their cash flow, right?

Absolutely. Yes, it's equally as important as making sure that your staff is healthy and especially healthy when they come back to the workplace. So our seventh point is all about helping staff returning to work safely. So when the pandemic started, obviously everyone went quickly into home office mode, but now more and more especially after the vaccinations are all done, everyone is returning to work. Some of us are already returning to work because there, there's no home office capability. So in these instances, employers need to make sure everyone who's coming back to the workplace is going through a set of checks. So there's this typical health questionnaire when you go back to work where you certify that that you're fit for work, you haven't been in contact with anyone for a couple of days, and you haven't been treated with COVID symptoms recently, you don't feel sick. All these things, they have to be asked again and again when you come back to the office every time, and they need to be stored securely for auditing purposes. So, so yeah, low-code was, was an answer for this situation already last year. So something had to be put in place for businesses. If you assume 20,000 employees, lots of them coming back to work every now and then, how do you manage that? So you need to put a system in place very, very quickly. So with low-code platforms, most of the vendors put these templates in place and some functionality, but that was always just a starting point. And yeah, with low-code As we mentioned earlier, we can make changes lightning fast and we can, we can adapt it to our specific needs, especially when we look at organizations who have maybe offices in the UK and have offices in Germany. There are different rules in different locations, so now you need to suddenly make your application work for, for that circumstance in the UK and Germany. And rules, government rules, we know that they are changing super fast. And so yeah, it was a low-code application. You can really react to these new regulation changes coming in. You can't really wait for your IT department to, to make these changes next year. So, so yeah, these, these platforms are really making, making a big, big difference and bringing, bringing everyone back to work safely. And yeah.

That's great. That's great.

Let's bring us to the, to the end of the session today, our podcast. And yeah, it's with no doubt, Arno, I think the world is changing super fast at the moment.

Yes, it is. And I think the flexibility of what low-code automation can provide can really help businesses, you know, move with these changes and stay competitive and, you know, stay afloat. And, you know, hopefully these top 7 tips would help everybody if you're not familiar with low-code to get started and, you know, start automating processes and start, you know, being more efficient and effective in the workplace.

Unfortunately, that's it again. With this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you like this 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!