Less code, more agility

New development platforms are going to speed up competitive transformation, says Nigel Warren

New low-code development platforms are displacing traditional methods; traditional BPM suites will be less in demand as companies switch to less technical alternatives.

BPM suites promise greater agility than ERP systems from the likes of SAP and Oracle, but users have found that in reality they are still highly technical products that rely too much on highly trained programmers.

This gravely restricts the speed of project delivery.

BPM suites have acquired a reputation for complex and lengthy implementations too. The idea behind low-code development is that you make it easier to power business improvement without needing to cut code.

Thanks to cloud or private cloud deployments, businesses are no longer dependent on the IT department to install servers and software before a project can start.

There is now a choice in how automation gets built. Businesses can talk to their central IT department and see how they can help – or they can turn to a low-code development platform and build it themselves.

There's little or no programming involved; one can learn how to use a low-code platform very quickly. A low-code platform is just like WordPress.

It has a lot of wizards and templates built in that help you create workflows, databases, user interfaces, reports, service-level alerts and communications without having to do any programming. It's lower risk, because you configure a solution by filling in forms and selecting options – a kind of drag-and-drop alternative.

When people are attempting to collaborate on spreadsheets on a daily basis, and the spreadsheets are more than 20 columns wide, often what's really needed is a relational database.

When people are using email as a workflow system to seek approvals or pass tasks to colleagues, or copying and pasting from one system to another, or when Access databases start to mushroom, a low-code development platform could be an option.

When you've tried to build something bespoke on SharePoint, but it's not really doing what you need, or when you're keen to automate communications to third parties, it could be worth a try – especially when you want to streamline processes and improve collaboration with customers and suppliers.

Nigel Warren is head of marketing at MatsSoft