Sascha: Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Process and Automation podcast with The Automation Guys. I’m here again with Arno, as usual. And we will talk about low-code, one of our favorite topics, isn’t it?

Arno: Yes, that’s right. Sascha. And what we want to do today is really run our listeners through a bit of a low code checklist. It is a low-code platform, your best option for software development. Currently when, when you’re in the market for, for technology, that will help your business run better. You will go out to vendors, and they’ll make pitches to yourself that focuses on, the current features and functionalities and all the capabilities they provide perhaps their roadmaps.

So it’s all very impressive things. Um, but yeah. They still might not deliver that sort of outcomes that you need. Right. So, what we’re going to discuss today is really just a checklist of when you evaluate your options, um, you know, what is it that you look for and, and can low code perhaps, be an option for technology choice to meet your needs in a very fast-paced world where we’re sort of, um, uh, the speed of, of, of software development really needs to be quite quick. Tons of market needs to be quick, so it is really just running through that checklist today with our listeners, giving them a few tips if you’re out there  and you are sort of in the early stages of your research into technology options. So perhaps this is a chance for you to perhaps, look at those options and perhaps if low code is something that, that might need those requirements it’s worth looking into.

Sascha: Of course, yeah. Low code is, as you mentioned, uh so big in the market and there are lots of vendors out there and they’re of course they all say they are the best and low code is the answer and it is definitely an answer. But yeah, let’s go through the list and if you sort of, can relate to some of those then yeah, let’s reach out to or you can reach out to us and then we can go deeper into that low-code market together with you. And we have probably over 40 episodes on the podcasts already. So, there’s probably a lot of information you can already get from there as well. But of course, always reach out to Arno or myself.

So, the first one is speed to market, it is critical. So, if that is something you can relate to, maybe low code might be the answer. Um, if you operate in a highly competitive market, um, sort of faster, you can stand out, uh, and come up with some new applications, new solutions to meet your business needs the better, I think there, there are lots of businesses out there. They have to be super-fast with innovation. Um, so that’s one thing. Arno, do you want to jump on the next one directly?

Arno: Yeah, I’ll do the next one as well. So again, if on your list is for your organization to have more agility and also to be able to change very quickly, low-code is definitely something you need to look at. Of course we always talk about agility, this even terms like hyper agility and, you know, I think the ability to be agile is true now for virtually every, every business on the market. And you know, like they say it is an environment which, is the new normal and low code obviously provides you, your organization, that the ability to rapidly change, rapidly evolve, create new applications, respond to challenges, um, exploit the opportunities. So very fast paced way of developing software.

Sascha: If you have complex business processes you want to automate, or that must be automated, this is maybe also a good reason. So if you want to allow your staff to focus all the energy on activities that will add value to your business, rather than non-sort of the tedious, repetitive manual tasks, so with automation, those can be handled more easily and more efficiently. So, if that’s the thing for you, then low code might be the answer.

Arno: The next one is, if you look at sort of approving paths and routine in your business, where stuff goes to for approvals and what input people must provide, um, Again, if that that’s part of something that’s really important for you, that just adds to the case to look at low code, of course, with the low code platform, you can build, very advanced orchestrations in your process, routing options, tasks, inputs that’s captured from various people based on business rules. So again, uh, you know, one of the items on the list that certainly jumps out to warrant going to a low code or low code vendors to look what’s out there.

Sascha: Yeah, if sort of coding errors, security vulnerabilities and, data quality are sort of a concern, then yeah, it might be good to look at local platforms, so there’s normal coding. There might be a lot of effort in and getting, getting your coding done and you might not be aware of all the latest security things as a coder. All these things, if you’re not aware of that, they might be a big problem for your solution. So. Yeah, with low code you can address those things easier because with its prebuilt components, etc., you might not need to worry about those things at all. It just works and you can get on with different things.

Arno: Yeah. And the next one is probably one of the bigger ones that you might be interested in and it’s um, do you need to increase your developers or your development teams productivity? Um, you know, and obviously we always hear about, um, business or putting pressure on it teams to, deliver software and you need to deliver application fast. Um, so low code could be one of those where you can increase the developers productivity, and actually deliver these applications faster and alleviate the pressure on these teams.

Sascha: Yeah, the next important one on a checklist is, for example, if your stakeholders don’t have the sort of data necessary available to make sort of informed decisions, that could be a very negative impact on the business. So, if you have bottlenecks slowing you down, and you don’t know about them as long you down with your ability to make sort of all these informed and rapid decisions then bringing in a low code platform with those capabilities sort of easily are built-in, is definitely a good option.

Arno: And the next one on the list is if you have multiple data sources that needs to be integrated without migrating data, if that’s on your list in, again, it’s, worth looking into low-code platform because, you might have data stored in a variety of systems and formats. And you know, if it’s essential that all of that data, is sort of accessible from a single interface, low code platforms actually provides you with those connectors to connect all of these data sources together and surface them in in single interfaces, quite quickly and easily.

Sascha: Um, if your organization operates in any regulated environment, there’s a lot of compliance involved and with all these compliance needs and governance you need to have in your systems, out of the box, um, that’s very nice. And then  a low code platforms very often have those, um, uh, those technologies, um, and elements already built in.

So, um, you will not be caught out, um, with most lots of these compliance problems. Um, yeah, so. Uh, it’s, it’s good to jump on a low code platform for those reasons as well.

Arno: Yeah. And the next one talks about technical debt and if your IT department have got a lot of technical debt and that needs to be reduced or eliminated, of course, what we, what we talk about is there is a massive backlog that needs to be looked at and, you know, it just becomes longer and longer if it’s left unchecked.

Um, so, you know, obviously low code provides you with that, you know, rapid speed to market for, for your apps. So, so it is an opportunity to, to, to eliminate that technical debt by focusing your efforts in building these applications very quickly and responding to business requirements and end users their needs very quickly by using a low-code platform.

Sascha: Yeah, another really important one is the maintenance of your technology and your platforms in general. Um, some, some older technologies could be quite tedious to, to maintain and to control, updates and upgrades and all that stuff. So, It is a good thing to look at low code platforms.

Um, if you, if you’re wasting a lot of time on that maintenance and, um, you can’t really concentrate on that innovation. Um, yeah, because, um, we want to be fast agile, and we want to have something easy to maintain these days, a local platform might be, might be the right answer for, for you.

Arno: Yeah. I mean, these are just some of the, kind of the technical or the typical I guess items that people might have on their list, when they evaluate new technology vendors. And I think these checklist items cover such a broad range of points that you need to consider, you need to evaluate, you know, actually we talk about security and we talk about sort of elimination of technical debt, getting a rapid time to market when it comes to app development, alleviating pressure. So for all of these things, a low code platform satisfies those requirements and challenges.

Um, because of course, what a low-code platform does, it creates a lot of that coding in the background. And it has two very, very good and high security standards. And because it takes care of that coding, um, you know, it, it is something that, that is also very cost-effective to use. Um, so it’s not just the speed of execution, but in terms of the investment in it, it is a lot lower than conventional high code, um, sort of development approaches.

Um, you know, it’s fast. They say it can be up to 10 times faster than high code solutions. Uh, it’s very powerful. Um, you know, you can create very comprehensive automation, uh, Uh, automated applications, um, uh, that integrating to, to other core businesses. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s easy to maintain everything is in one platform.

Um, you know, we talked about security, but all of the security standards and the device standards, all of that is, is, is built into the platform. It doesn’t need to be coded. You don’t need to be security expert. Um, Use these blocks to, to, uh, to build your applications and make your business a lot more profitable.

Sascha: And then a low code cover so much these days. Isn’t it. So some, some, some of our listeners might have heard just about building low code apps, just a normal, typical sort of a business apps that are like our holiday request apps, etc., but actually low code can reach far wider, so it can be, um, low code automation, low code process mining, low-code versus software robotics.

So all these tools, some of these tools are more complex than others, and there are lots of vendors out there. They, they offer those technologies sort of on the low code level. And, um, Yeah, so sort of, we, we, we talk and talk in a, in a podcast around sort of several pillars of automation. And we mainly look at the, the low code elements of that here, and it goes to a low code AI, so AI doesn’t need to be complex. Difficult anymore. Um, a few episodes back, we talked about how easy it can be, um, to do text natural language processing with AI and computer vision and all those things, and that that’s all available on low-code so very powerful and it has to be fast, powerful, and easy to maintain.

I think then everyone, will have lots of success with low-code.

Arno: Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, you talk about, um, bringing in quite advanced tooling, uh, to solve business problems like erratic manual processes. Um, you know, there, there is so many, um, commodity based AI engines out there that you could just subscribe to.

It’s very easy drag and drop, very low code environment to creative solutions, uh, robotic process automation that automates repetitive mundane tasks to take that robot out of the human, very, very powerful traditional workflow automation. And of course,, we, we talk about chatbots a lot, that in itself is, quite a big area. Um, and all of those platforms are low-code platforms. So there’s no need to, um, hire very specialist people to create these solutions and maintain them.

Sascha: And I guess everyone who’s now looking at low code, won’t be sort of one of the rare species out there.

So, um, so in, in previous episodes, when we discussed the Forrester in general, the SNS analyst and the Forrester waves, and one of those analysts predicts that by the end of 2021, um, sort of 75% of development teams will, will use low code platforms, development teams with in sort of business as well. That’s a huge increase of sort of, they say 44% increase from last year to this year.

So it is really in trend, but, um, yeah, with that checklist we did cover today, you should have something on your hand to quickly see if that works on as needed. And if that’s the case Arno and I, we are here on the podcast and to answer all your questions and you can reach out to us on all the social channels.

Um, you can, uh, visit our website, theautomationguys.net to join the community, become a member and become strong with low-code.

Um, yeah, I guess, Arno anything to add on this? Otherwise we can wrap up.

Arno: No that was very good. Thank you, Sascha, for, for sharing your thoughts as well on that, of course you have for all our listeners, um, if you require any help to de-mystify all of this, uh, low-code business, you know, feel free to, to get in touch with us.

Um, we’ll take you through. The very easy steps to explain perhaps by an example, what it is, um, and how you can use it. Of course, between myself and Sascha we’ve got hundreds, if not, thousands of use cases of where low code has been deployed, which types of projects it’s good for and you know, it’s a good way to get started with software development, if you don’t want to have huge investment in if you compare that to conventional high code development.

So yeah. Feel free to contact us, reach out to us and, uh, thank you for listening to our podcast. And thank you, Sascha.

Sascha: Thank you. Let’s automate.

Unfortunately, that’s it again, with this episode of The Process and Automation podcast. If you liked this episode, please give us a five-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.