The long development cycles of software production are often seen as an impediment to an organisation’s ability to respond quickly to change. Software development teams are keen to adopt techniques and tools that make their work more efficient – like automated CI/CD workflows, for instance – and accept that there will be challenges in implementing any new systems.

Renown for reducing the time-to-production of application development, low-code platforms have different requirements from many other developer-focused tools. For low-code to produce the best value for the business, there’s plenty of deep system ‘plumbing’ to be undertaken in a successful implementation.

In fact, many of the required changes are the same alterations in infrastructure and operations required by the activities known as ‘digital transformation.’

Infrastructure changes necessary to get maximum effectiveness from low-code include:

– The breaking down of siloed data,
– An API-first approach to connect disparate systems,
– A consideration of the scalability of core systems, with an option to refresh/update/replace,
– Application of so-called ‘cloud-native’ technology where appropriate.

In addition to the technical considerations, there are some operational changes that need to happen too, and some of these might cut right to the heart of the way the organisation works and even thinks about itself.

It may seem strange to stipulate that a new set of software development tools may instigate wide-reaching changes in a large financial institution or a government organisation. But we have to remember that the ways organisations work and the goods or services they offer are, and have been, dictated in scope by their underpinning technology. If we are looking to change the technology, everyday operations are set to change accordingly. As new possibilities from rapid production of enterprise software become apparent, the organisation may want to change to take advantage.

What might low-code offer?

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s look some particular examples of low-code implementations.

An organisation decides to offer its customers (or service users in the case of a government body) a new portal of information drawn from internal data sources.

It implements a series of APIs that allow several data sources to be queried securely, making it possible to present a unified data set on a customer-facing app, for example.

The low-code development environment allows the IT team to quickly discover and join data, process it appropriately, and present it to the customer. Line-of-business experts, in collaboration with the development team, can determine the exact nature of the data and the ways in which it can be interacted with.

For their part, the developers can quickly produce proof-of-concept and MVP releases for the other stakeholders, iterating quickly on the application to create the required functionality. The low-code platform abstracts both the data connectivity layer and application code, making the development cycle tremendously shorter than in traditional development workflows.

Low-code is, therefore, more than proof of concept; it’s proof that change works. With the necessary changes to the data infrastructure, the organisation now has a greater range of possibilities at its fingertips, which can be realised quickly and put into production in relatively short timescales.

Each new instance of a low-code app brings immediate value, plus it informs the business of the steps it needs to take to enable change anywhere in the business.

The power of imagination

As organisations explore new markets or ways to serve their customer base, the possibilities open to them are less limited by their technology infrastructure and the traditionally-long software development cycle. It becomes possible to create software proofs of concept quickly, engendering a more creative approach to ways the business can offer better value to customers.

For example, in partnership with other businesses or organisations, companies might deploy low-code applications that quickly interface with their partners’ systems. In traditional coding environments, producing this facility would be time-consuming and come with data governance concerns that would hamper the project. With low-code capability and supporting infrastructure, for example:

– A financial institution could offer its products via partners’ portals (travel companies, FOREX operators, international marketplaces), which are accessed by low-code applications presenting the required product. That product could be insurance, FOREX, or investment packages, for example.

– A logistics provider using low-code can supply real-time tracking of its vehicles to the customers of an online retailer and offer live available options for speedy or low-cost delivery, depending on its fleet availability at the moment of purchase.

– An official government identity provider could create in its low-code environment a simple authentication service for multiple third parties to extend their KYC capability. The governmental organisation can verify identities with a series of low-code applications specific to each third party (or category of partners—public sector, private sector, small local businesses, etc.), thanks to the speed with which software is created.

Think low-code, think Appian

Appian Portals is part of the suite of tools available to users of the Appian Low-Code Platform. It connects external partners to information available in Appian low-code apps.

LIUNA, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, used this technology, for example, when it built a public portal entirely with Appian products. The portal allowed delegates to its five-yearly convention access to all necessary information, and interact with the organisers, without having to create new customer accounts.

Instead of having to build a portal site and then manually populate it with delegate data, the low-code application allowed the use of existing data. This created massive savings, both in terms of building the portal but also exporting data from the organisation’s repositories and manually importing it into the customer-facing property. LIUNA reported [pdf] it saved two months of manual data entry and validation, totaling 640 employee hours.

Conclusions

Low-code development produces significant advantages to the enterprise in several fields. The most obvious are the time and resource savings of the internal development function. Low-code enables teams to produce and iterate quickly on applications created collaboratively with line-of-business experts.

Underpinning low-code capabilities is the need for a refreshed approach to the enterprise’s technology infrastructure. However, this can be approached on a case-by-case basis, with data repositories and access to them refined on a per-project basis, if necessary. In this way, digital transformation—which relies on the same kind of infrastructure changes—can be achieved not in one huge, disruptive project but on a schedule determined by what changes will bring immediate value.

Thirdly, low-code applications enable the exploration of and action on new business opportunities, whether in partnership with third parties or internally. They create an environment where thinking and creativity go unrestrained by the technology stack and long development cycles.

To learn the specific advantages your organisation will gain by using low-code application development, check out this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast which features Appian, and our previous editorial.