Low-code is a visual approach to application development, enabling users of various experience to create applications for web and mobile using drag-and-drop components and model-driven logic via a graphic UI. Low-code platforms relieve non-technical users like Business Systems teams, analysts, and App Admins from having to write code while still supporting professional developers by removing tedious infrastructure tasks required in app development. It is through this approach that app development is democratized, elevating digital transformation. It is only when such processes are available to all users that stakeholders across business can build their own solutions and transform the organization at scale.
But have you considered that the same principals should be applied to your integration and automation tool, or iPaaS? Integration and automation is notoriously difficult, but today’s technology allows the process to become much more accessible. By democratizing access to building integrations and automations between apps and systems, lines of business can have greater control over their own processes, allowing IT to focus on more complex projects and business as a whole to benefit from transformation. Together Low-Code and Enterprise Automation platforms can revolutionize your business systems.
Why Low-Code Development and Automation Platforms Excel Together
Both low-code app development and automation grant a level of autonomy to business users not previously seen before – but when two forces join together, they can enable work automation, linking custom solutions with automated tasks and creating connected customer experiences across the apps and channels most used today. In short, they empower digital change.
“As established organizations attempt to compete with and leapfrog the digital challengers, they have to think differently,” said Gonçalo Borrêga, Head of Product at OutSystems, a leading no code app development platform. “We are seeing customers view their technology portfolio more as a collection of parts or platforms. In some cases, where their needs are a commodity, they can be satisfied by SaaS or COTS. But in many cases, they need to build unique solutions to support their business and remain competitive.”
“With a low-code development platform, they can do this at the speed of deploying SaaS…and orchestrate processes that span different parts of business, while maintaining a consistent 360° view of the customer, with a low-code integration and automation platform.”
Related: Why a no-code approach to automation is critical
Enabling Connected Customer Experiences and Accelerating Time to Market With Low-Code
In joining low-code app development and automation platforms together, customers can quickly build solutions that best work for their business – mimicking data from other services and extending it with their own attributes – and automate the processes around it, providing the swift yet seamless experiences that end users demand today.
“These connected customer experiences can be unified across different channels by, for example, having replicated data inside of your custom app from different SaaS services or COTS. Customers can then extend that data with their own very specific attributes, and use it to provide immediate transactions to their end users, synchronizing changes back to the disparate systems near real time,” said Borrêga.
“With so much of the customer’s journey happening digitally, organizations have to make the most of every channel,” he added. “There’s no tolerance for a poor user experience and this combination provides exactly that—allowing customers to build exactly the integrated experiences they want, down to the individual pixel, across all the data silos that support it.”
“For mission-critical backends,” he added, “we can accelerate time to value through rapid third party integrations, orchestrating multiple integration processes with enterprise automation.”
“Large enterprise core system integrations can take advantage of an automation platform’s messaging, API management, EDI, and bot-assisted file transfer capabilities, while being able to manually handle exceptions in custom developed apps whenever a business exception occurs in the integration.”
Borrêga concluded: “There’s also a huge opportunity within lines of business with self-service enablement, extending access to app development and automation platforms across HR, sales, marketing, and support to develop their own solutions.”
Empowering Low-Code Solutions With OutSystems and Workato
Gautham Viswanathan, Cofounder and Head of Product at Workato, echoes Borrêga’s sentiments of the value the two solutions bring together. “Low-code is revolutionizing time to market and app development and enterprise automation are at the forefront of that. Together, they bring the power of building great experiences to customers with endless possibilities, fueling faster time to market across departments and industries.”
It is because of this expedient ability to create custom solutions and accelerate time to market through rapid third-party integrations that Workato and OutSystems are partnering together to connect with thousands of applications to automate your work and deliver real value to businesses faster.
Hemant Ramnani, Senior VP of Sales at Persistent Systems, also sees the value in this changing landscape:
“We are going through interesting times where our enterprise customers, and even services companies like Persistent, have to either disrupt, or face disruption. This means organizational changes across the board. Agile sales and marketing, agile engineering, agile customer service, and more.”
“Aggressive and candid communication is important with all your employees as this affects the way we work today, the tools and technologies we use, and requires upskilling of teams. For example, at Persistent today we are running a wave of AI/ML training across our entire company. If automation is the key to avoiding disruption and becoming the disruptor, then the combination of OutSystems and Workato is a formidable weapon.”
