Low-code automation is changing the way businesses and citizen developers approach workflow transformation.
Enabling rapid development and deployment of applications, low-code platforms allow organizations to streamline their processes efficiently. This transformation process accelerates time-to-market while empowering business users to contribute directly to application development.
As a result, businesses can deploy innovative solutions faster, ensuring they remain competitive and agile in a rapidly evolving market. Learn more about low-code automation in this article.
Low-Code Automation: Meaning and Importance
A low-code process automation platform is a visual development tool for professional and citizen developers to analyze, design, and automate end-to-end business processes across the organization.
Low-code platforms enable IT teams to build new apps and processes without extensive research, significantly reducing the need to write code from scratch. They utilize a visual approach by providing pre-designed templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface to build apps.
Investing in a low-code platform is beneficial if your developers have numerous software requirements. Your department heads can leverage a low-code programming environment to create efficient tools and applications. These platforms offer a standardized approach to process modeling and automation, allowing business users to help themselves while ensuring IT can be confident that best practices are being followed.
Furthermore, low-code technology enables users to reuse components as needed, significantly shortening development cycles. Users follow the predefined processes, users can select and reuse the necessary components, leading to automation. These standardized operations are conducted without extensive lines of code. Automated low-code processes develop adaptable solutions at speed and scale.
Managers, executives, and business owners must thoroughly assess the advantages and disadvantages before settling on a low-code platform. It's important to evaluate its compatibility with your specific business use case. Integration challenges can arise, as not all low-code solutions connect with existing business applications and systems.
The ideal low-code platform will greatly expedite the development of sophisticated enterprise applications. These applications should handle complex business logic, automate workflows and case management tasks, integrate with current information systems, and deliver a seamless user experience.
3 Low-code Integration Application Types
Integration is one of the most important goals of a successful automation process, requiring various tools for different integration types.
Depending on your needs, options range from real-time data integration to synchronization through iteration. A low-code approach can be the key to successful integration, addressing diverse requirements effectively and efficiently.
Here are some low-code integration application types and a brief description of how they work.
Low-code Application Platform As a Service
iPaaS, or 'Integration Platform As a Service,' is either a no-code or low-code integration platform that provides a web-based, user-friendly interface.
It allows users to create, monitor, and manage application integrations without custom code. Additionally, iPaaS solutions enable real-time data synchronization and workflow automation, facilitating the rapid creation of integrations using API interfaces. As a key strategic tool, iPaaS helps businesses optimize the Value Chain and build future-proof IT ecosystems.
The low-code iPaaS platform, with its graphical user interface, lets you work intuitively. Moreover, users can increase their productivity by utilizing templates or 'assets' within the iPaaS environment, which can be reused multiple times.
Low-Code Rapid Application Development Tools
Low-code Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a software development approach emphasizing the rapid creation of a prototype based on user input and frequent iterations. Often considered the precursor to Agile, Rapid Application Development aims to involve users early and frequently by using their feedback to create a better product. This iterative process continues until the final product is achieved.
Numerous low-code RAD platforms aim for developers to accelerate the software development process and significantly improve productivity. This efficiency allows more time, money, and focus to be placed on user feedback, ensuring the software is tailored to users’ needs.
Low-code tools, combined with the RAD approach, result in speed, high-quality feedback, lower costs, and enhanced product quality. RAD is particularly effective for projects where user feedback is the most crucial factor. By emphasizing rapid prototyping over extensive planning, RAD allows teams to expose end-users to prototypes early and often, even if they have incomplete or missing user flows. This approach requires dividing the project into modules that can be built and presented incrementally, rather than waiting to deliver a complete product.
Businesses prefer the RAD approach because it minimizes the focus on the planning phase, enabling teams to quickly design, review, and iterate features and functionalities. This rapid development environment ensures that the end product is closely aligned with user needs and expectations, ultimately resulting in a more successful and user-centric software solution.
Low-code Enterprise Microservice Solutions
Low-code microservice applications can digitize data aggregation, enforce data validity, and respect existing business logic and ecosystems, creating a cohesive and efficient business environment.
Enterprise microservices have become fundamental. They are a cohesive element for building open, extensible, and reusable solutions. Unlike monolithic architectures, microservices employ small, individually deployable services, rather than a single-tiered, centralized unit. Each microservice functions as an API governing a consumable module. If you are facing complex integration scenarios, the solution might be integrating numerous microservices/APIs.
Low-code platforms typically leverage reusable components, or "building blocks," to iterate and customize cross-platform apps. These reusable components are a key aspect that makes low-code projects particularly beneficial when combined with a microservices-based framework. By using microservices, businesses can build adaptable, scalable, and high-performing applications that meet the demands of modern enterprise environments.
This approach empowers users to create business applications quickly and with less effort. Thousands of companies are leveraging low-code platforms to develop business-critical solutions, accelerating their development processes and improving productivity.
Benefits of Low-Code Automation
Low-code automation offers successful integration, faster time-to-market, and increased agility. With user-friendly interfaces and pre-built components, empowers business users, alleviates the burden on IT departments, and fosters closer collaboration across teams.
Low-code solutions make it possible for both technical and non-technical employees to contribute to app development. This democratization of development allows organizations to quickly adapt to changing market demands while ensuring a cohesive and efficient operational environment.
High Performance
Low-code platforms offer the advantage of high performance by enabling advanced automation to be up and running quickly, with a minimal learning curve. IT teams can focus on visual modeling instead of dealing with green screens or command-line interfaces, significantly expediting the application development process by reducing the need for extensive hand-coding and tedious tasks. This streamlined approach allows for the creation of sophisticated enterprise-level applications or core systems, which can be updated efficiently as needed.
Moreover, high-performance low-code platforms excel during product development, as they face no limitations in this area. These platforms do not require additional licenses, eliminating extra costs. They also avoid adaptability concerns, ensuring that applications can evolve without the need for a complete user data reformation. This flexibility makes low-code platforms an excellent choice for businesses aiming to enhance their IT capabilities and maintain high performance in their software development processes.
Scalability of Applications
Rapid deployment is a key advantage of low-code automation, allowing businesses to quickly bring applications to market. Rapid iteration and prototyping, automated dependency verification, and AI safeguards simplify the process of modifying and enhancing applications to meet evolving requirements. The drag-and-drop functionality enables quick construction of process models, which can then be integrated with existing applications and systems using pre-built connectors and APIs. These processes can be automated and applications deployed with just one click, significantly reducing the time typically spent on coding and development. This approach ensures that businesses can adapt swiftly to changes and maintain efficient, high-performance operations.
Security
Low-code automation enhances security by enabling real-time detection and analysis of malicious activity. This approach improves your security and compliance posture by mitigating identity risks, enforcing minimal access, and tracing attacks across your entire environment. Standardizing processes allows businesses to reduce risks, accelerate issue resolution, and enhance communication efficiency.
Integrated Access
Citizen development through low-code automation alleviates the pressure on IT departments. By enabling business users to model and automate their processes, organizations can make the process more efficient( which are often burdened with an overwhelming volume of requests). This approach eliminates the need for time-consuming briefings and reviews with developers, leading to increased productivity and faster time-to-value.
Moreover, low-code platforms enable the creation of cohesive ecosystems by integrating disparate systems, unlocking data silos, and facilitating efficient data flow across the organization. This holistic connectivity ensures that all parts of the organization can work harmoniously together, further enhancing overall efficiency and performance.
Business Agility
Low-code automation enhances business agility by increasing the speed at which teams can respond to competitor activity, customer feedback, and market changes. With visual interfaces and accessible features, these teams can quickly create, automate, and adapt their workflows and processes. Low-code automation platforms significantly lower obstacles with their intuitive development environments. To accelerate development, these platforms offer one-click deployment, ready-made templates, and pre-configured components, significantly reducing development costs and time investment. This efficient approach ensures that teams stay nimble and effective in a rapidly changing market landscape.
Empowering Citizens
Low-code automation empowers citizen developers, allowing employees beyond the IT department to assist in tackling the challenge of staying abreast of new developments by sharing the workload. Low-code automation provides rapid development, ease of use, AI assistance, and a shorter learning curve, enabling junior developers and tech enthusiasts with limited development backgrounds to build applications like seasoned full-stack developers. This fosters close collaboration between business teams and IT. Business users possess an in-depth understanding of the challenges their teams and customers face, while IT brings the expertise required to address the most complex issues.
Low-Code Automation Use Cases: The Rise of the Citizen Developer
Different approaches to software development have evolved. Initially, the waterfall or linear model was common, followed by agile development models like rapid application development. However, the landscape shifted with the emergence of low-code development. Low-code represents a democratizing approach that empowers individuals with limited software engineering experience to create software. It leverages automation to develop customized workflows and uses customizable applications to achieve specific business objectives.
The prevalence of low-code tools is high Data is the ingredient that citizen developers seek in their projects. A range of application types that respondents work with have been developed outside of IT or contracted services, either written or installed by business users. Data analytics apps top the list.
Data is the essential ingredient that citizen developers seek in their projects. The prevalence of low-code tools is high, empowering business users to develop a range of application types outside of IT or contracted services. Many of these applications, either written or installed by business users, include data analytics apps, which top the list of projects undertaken by citizen developers.
According to a Gartner statistic analyzed by “The Solutions Review”, 41 % of LCAP users were business users. In addition, 42 % of users were business analysts or business unit developers. Notably, 66 % of LCAP users were professional developers within an enterprise IT department. Despite LCAPs typically being targeted towards citizen developers, professional developers dominate their usage. Gartner also assessed low-code application development, noting that most LCAPs require some textual inputs for business logic and process flow descriptions.
This data indicates that business users are increasingly in need of information and tools to efficiently develop applications. LCAPs can bridge this gap by providing user-friendly interfaces and robust functionalities that empower business users to create sophisticated applications without extensive coding knowledge. The next section will present strategic features for the adoption of LCAPs, highlighting how these platforms can meet the evolving needs of business users and facilitate seamless integration into enterprise environments.
Low-Code Automation Tools for Developers
Comparing OutSystems and Composabase is useful for businesses looking to adopt a low-code platform tailored to their specific needs. Both platforms offer robust solutions for rapid application development, but understanding their unique features and strengths can guide organizations in making informed decisions.
OutSystems excels in providing a comprehensive suite for enterprise-grade applications, emphasizing integration, user-friendliness, and broad customization capabilities.
On the other hand, Composabase offers a highly specialized approach with its focus on GraphQL simplified integration processes.
We hope this comparison helps businesses identify which platform aligns better with their development goals, resource availability, and technical requirements, ultimately leading to more effective and efficient adoption of low-code technologies.
Comparison between Outsystems and Composabase
Low-code development has led to a variety of products, from Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAPs) to model-driven applications. In this section, we’ll focus on Low-Code Application Platforms because of their composability with existing backend systems leading to core software innovation. Will analyze each of them to provide a guide for their usage in a variety of situations in a business lifecycle.
Outsystems
Outsystems provides a high-performing low-code platform designed to meet the application development needs of organizations worldwide. This platform supports businesses in creating enterprise-grade applications and accelerating their business transformation. By merging design, coding, and deployment, OutSystems significantly streamlines development and fosters innovation.
The platform allows organizations to construct a wide range of critical applications, from customer-oriented apps to internal business solutions. It enables the creation of responsive, web-based apps that are cross-device compatible by default. However, it does not enforce coding standards, so recommendations may be ignored, necessitating manual code quality checks through reports.
With OutSystems, businesses can efficiently develop and deploy applications, driving their digital transformation efforts and achieving greater agility and innovation.
- A Suite of Development Capabilities: Develop mobile apps that are deployable and functional on both iOS and Android devices.
- Built-in DevOps: Start building from day one using the fundamental DevOps practices and patterns built into the OutSystems core.
- Pre-Built Integrations: Utilize pre-built software connectors or integrators developed and maintained by third-party providers. While using third-party providers, be aware of feasibility risks, technical uncertainties, and time limitations.
Composabase
Composabase provides a high-performing platform designed to meet the development needs of organizations worldwide. This platform supports businesses in creating applications and accelerating their digital transformation. By integrating GraphQL, and automatic GitHub documentation generation, Composabase significantly streamlines development and fosters innovation.
The platform allows organizations to construct a wide range of critical applications, from customer-oriented apps to internal business solutions, with an easy setup for small to medium-sized projects. It features a composable architecture that enables adding building blocks to enhance security, performance, and functionality with just a few clicks. Moreover, advanced users can develop custom resolvers using Composabase's powerful typed SDK for seamless integration.
Composabase enables the creation of responsive, web-based apps that are cross-device compatible by default. Additionally, the platform unifies data sources without the need for third-party solutions, providing a cohesive and efficient operational environment.
- A Suite of Development Capabilities: Composabase offers a composable architecture, allowing you to add building blocks to enhance security, performance, and functionality with just a few clicks.
- Built-in DevOps: Advanced users can develop custom resolvers with Composabase's powerful typed SDK, ensuring seamless integration.
- Pre-Built Integrations: Composabase unifies data sources without the need for third-party solutions.
The Future of Low-Code Automation
As low-code automation continues to gain traction in the business world, understanding the nuances between Digital Process Automation (DPA) and Business Process Automation (BPA) becomes increasingly important.
Both approaches play pivotal roles in streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency, but they serve different purposes and offer unique benefits. DPA focuses on automating digital processes across various applications, emphasizing the reduction of human intervention in repetitive tasks. In contrast, BPA aims to optimize and automate entire business workflows, often integrating multiple systems and processes to achieve end-to-end automation.
Comparing DPA and BPA, businesses can better to strategize their adoption of low-code platforms, ensuring they leverage the right tools to drive innovation, reduce costs, and improve overall productivity. Here’s a quick description of both:
Digital Processes Automation (DPA)
Digital process automation (DPA) leverages low-code development tools to streamline processes that may span multiple applications. This approach targets the automation of tasks within various business practices that typically require human interaction.
The benefits of DPA include significant time and cost savings, increased efficiency, and enhanced customer satisfaction and experience. By automating repetitive tasks, DPA allows organizations to complete tasks faster and frees employees to focus on more critical aspects of the business. DPA is particularly effective in automating machine-centric processes, including complex workflows and tasks with many sequential steps, which are handled more efficiently with advanced automation technologies.
Business Process Automation (BPA)
Low-code platforms are revolutionizing Business Process Automation (BPA), routines and workflows. These platforms present a comprehensive strategy for end-to-end process automation, encompassing a range of capabilities beyond traditional robotic process automation (RPA), including process modeling, API integration, and workflow automation.
Users can create workflows and applications using a combination of visual modeling and coding, allowing them to leverage pre-built components and templates while incorporating custom logic and functionality. Low-code platforms typically offer a range of integration options, enabling users to connect with various data sources and APIs to build more complex and tailored solutions.
These platforms are ready-to-use and require only a basic knowledge of process digitalization, making them accessible to many users. Low-code platforms empower organizations by simplifying the development process.
Low-code automation empowers organizations to streamline workflows, enhance security, and integrate diverse systems with ease. By leveraging low-code automation, businesses can accelerate development, improve efficiency, and maintain high performance.