The economic downturns that come with a recession can be tough on businesses. In such times, companies need to find ways to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and maintain productivity to stay afloat. One way to achieve these goals is by implementing low-code development. Low-code development can recession-proof your business by enabling rapid application development, faster time to market, and more efficient use of resources.
Low-code development is a method of software development that relies on visual modeling and configuration rather than traditional coding. With low-code platforms, businesses can develop and deploy applications faster and more efficiently than traditional software development methods. This approach can help companies cut down on costs, reduce the time required to develop applications, and improve the productivity of their development teams.
During a recession, businesses need to be agile and responsive to changing market conditions. Low-code development provides companies with the ability to quickly create and deploy new applications to meet evolving business needs. With low-code platforms, companies can develop applications in a fraction of the time it would take with traditional development methods, allowing them to respond quickly to market changes and maintain a competitive edge.
Furthermore, low-code platforms allow businesses to optimize their resources. Low-code development requires fewer development resources than traditional software development, allowing businesses to allocate their developers more efficiently. Additionally, low-code platforms enable citizen developers, or non-technical users, to build applications, freeing up IT teams to focus on more complex tasks. This allows businesses to get more done with fewer resources, reducing costs and improving overall efficiency.
In times of recession, many businesses are forced to cut back on their technology budgets. With low-code development, companies can continue to innovate while staying within their budgets. Low-code platforms have a lower total cost of ownership than traditional software development methods. The platforms require fewer developers and less time to develop and deploy applications, reducing costs and increasing ROI.
Low-code development is also beneficial for businesses that need to maintain legacy systems. As companies look to modernize their applications, low-code platforms offer a cost-effective and efficient solution. With low-code development, businesses can build new applications that integrate with existing systems, providing a modern user experience while maintaining the functionality of legacy systems.
In conclusion, low-code development can recession-proof your business by enabling rapid application development, faster time to market, and more efficient use of resources. During a recession, businesses need to be agile and responsive to changing market conditions. Low-code platforms provide companies with the ability to quickly create and deploy new applications to meet evolving business needs. With low-code development, businesses can optimize their resources and continue to innovate while staying within their budgets. By adopting low-code development, businesses can emerge from a recession stronger, more efficient, and more competitive.
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If you want to learn more about how low code can help you adopt a successful digital conversion strategy, you can contact BAYPM. However, if you are more interested in learning about the pros and cons of leading low code platforms, check out Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise low code implementation platforms.
Low-code platforms are gaining popularity in the software development industry as they allow developers to create software applications with minimal coding requirements. These platforms provide a visual interface that enables developers to drag and drop components to create applications, reducing the time and effort required to develop software applications. However, choosing the right low-code platform can be a challenging task for organizations. In this essay, we will discuss how to navigate low-code platform project fit.
The first step in navigating low-code platform project fit is to define the requirements of the project. This involves identifying the business needs, technical requirements, and user expectations. The requirements should be clearly defined and documented to ensure that the low-code platform can meet the project’s needs. The project requirements will determine the type of low-code platform that is required, such as a platform for web or mobile applications, or a platform that can integrate with other systems.
The second step is to evaluate the low-code platforms available in the market. This involves researching the features and capabilities of the platforms, such as the ease of use, scalability, security, integrations, and customization options. It is important to evaluate the platforms based on the requirements of the project, as not all platforms may be suitable for all projects.
The third step is to test the low-code platforms. This involves creating prototypes or proof-of-concepts using the low-code platforms to determine how well they meet the project requirements. Testing the platforms allows developers to identify any limitations or issues with the platform, such as the inability to integrate with other systems or limited customization options. Testing also provides an opportunity to evaluate the user interface and determine if it is user-friendly and intuitive.
The fourth step is to consider the cost of the low-code platform. This includes the licensing costs, implementation costs, and ongoing maintenance costs. It is important to evaluate the costs of the platform in relation to the benefits it provides, such as reduced development time and increased productivity. It is also important to consider the scalability of the platform and whether it can support future growth and expansion of the project.
The fifth step is to consider the support and training provided by the low-code platform vendor. This includes the availability of technical support, training resources, and community forums. The level of support and training provided can impact the success of the project, as it ensures that developers have the resources and assistance they need to use the platform effectively.
In conclusion, navigating low-code platform project fit requires a thorough understanding of the project requirements, evaluation of the available platforms, testing of the platforms, consideration of the cost and support provided by the vendor. By following these steps, organizations can choose the right low-code platform that meets their project requirements and delivers value to their business.
There are a number of excellent benefits that your business can get out of building a mobile application for its needs; whether that be for internal communication, marketing to new clients, or communicating with existing ones.
The objective that the mobile app you are building is meant to fulfill will have a major impact on the type of app you are developing; particularly with reference to its architecture.
In such a situation you have a choice.
You can either build a standalone native app that must be downloaded from an app store and take advantage of the features of a user’s device; or you can opt to build a simpler, more cost-effective and less resource-intensive progressive web app.
In this article, we will explore the differences, benefits and drawbacks of each of these.
This should give you a better idea of which framework would best meet the objectives of your business, no matter what reason you are developing an app for.
Native Apps
Native apps make use of a specific codebase and are developed to be compatible with certain devices that use that framework.
For instance, if a native app needs to be released for both Android and iOS systems, the app will need to be developed for each of those frameworks separately.
This allows the app to take advantage of the hardware and features of that specific device, and also enables it to stand alone as a functional application.
This gives them a number of unique advantages over web apps, but also means that they require specific skill sets to develop, and as such, generally come at a much higher cost than the other two.
Still, if you need to develop an app that is fast, highly functional and complicated, the native approach is generally the best bet thanks to the way they excel in terms of intuitiveness and functionality.
Benefits
From the above description, a few of the top benefits of native apps should start to show themselves.
Let’s take a look at some of the top advantages of choosing native development. These include superior performance, app store support, an enhanced user experience, the ability to use features on the device using the app, as well as higher levels of trust between potential users.
Best Performance
Out of the three approaches mentioned in this article, native apps provide some of the best levels of performance. These builds are generally more stable, reliable and efficient in the way that they use device resources.
This, in turn, creates a more pleasant experience for users but also provides the only viable option for particularly complicated or functional apps.
App Store Support & Discoverability
Because native apps are generally only downloaded from recognised app stores, they are also given more comprehensive support from platforms like the Google Play and iOS App Store.
On top of this, having a presence in these app stores also makes native mobile apps more discoverable than other types, which means that there is a much higher chance of users finding and using it, as opposed to other types that are not hosted on stores, and therefore may need additional marketing to get them into the hands of your potential users.
Smooth & Intuitive User Experience
Because native apps are built using compatible code for specific devices, they are built within a framework that accentuates best-practice guidelines for that specific device.
This means that navigation, usability and functionality all come with a sense of recognisability for users, who will find using the app an intuitive and natural experience without much of a learning curve.
By allowing for a framework that is familiar to your users, these types of apps make them more accessible to users, regardless of the devices they were developed for.
Make Use of Device Features
One of the top advantages to native mobile apps is that in being built with code that is compatible with specific devices, these types of apps are able to make use of the features and hardware on that specific device.
Consider the way Google Maps uses your location through GPS, how Apple Music can send you a notification when your favorite artist releases a new album, or how Instagram can make use of your phone’s camera and apply filters to it.
All of these are examples of how native apps use the functions of a device to provide a unique and seamless experience for users.
App Store Approval Raises Trust
As media consumers, we are all quite a picky lot. If we smell a rat, we are likely to keep our distance. Having native apps listed in the various app stores requires them to first be approved by the stores themselves.
This means that by simply being listed, there is an added layer of trust between the app and its potential users, which means a greater chance of users confidently downloading it.
Drawbacks of Native Apps
Of course, if native apps were just a list of benefits there would be no need for web-based ones. So, let’s have a look at a few of the disadvantages of building native apps.
Requires Experienced Developers
Because each platform that a native app is being developed for differs completely in their coding and frameworks, native apps need to be developed separately for each operating system it is released on.
This means that different developers will need to be used for each platform since each will specialise in a specific coding language.
Even when finding a developer that works across a few Operating Systems (such as Android and iOS), the app will still need to be built independently for each different OS, which can raise the price and time of development substantially.
Higher Cost of Development
Because of the reason mentioned above, and also because of the specialised skill set needed to develop native apps in various forms, these types of apps come at an extra cost to other types.
But when you consider their added functionality and superior performance, this extra cost is worthwhile for apps that need to take advantage of native development.
Not Ideal for Simple Apps
Because of the monetary and time costs of developing native apps, and because they work within a complicated framework of specific coding languages, they are not ideally used for simple apps with limited functionality.
While they can be used for more simplistic apps, the approach isn’t always practical, especially when web apps can facilitate them at less of a cost, and with less time in development.
Web Apps
Now let’s move to an approach on the opposite end of the spectrum, progressive web apps.
These types of apps take a much more general and simplistic approach to development, albeit one that offers far less functionality.
Still, cost-effectiveness and relative ease of development makes web apps ideal for simpler apps.
Web apps are generally used in browsers like Opera or Google Chrome. This is because they are developed using coding languages similarly used for websites like C++ and HTML.
Because of this, web apps only need to be built once. Since web architecture can be used seamlessly across multiple devices, it can be employed to be used on console, PC, Android and iOS all at once; as long as the device using it accesses the app through a browser.
In this way, the app itself is stored on a server rather than a device, from where it is accessed by users when they open the app through a browser. When changes occur on the web app, there is no need to push updates to users’ devices, since the changes will automatically be applied when they access the web app.
It does this, however, while sacrificing on the added functionality of native apps.
Benefits
The fact that they are somewhat simplified doesn’t make web apps worse than native ones. Just different. There are still a number of advantages that they can bring when used in specific situations:
Easy to Use Across Device Types
Because they are developed within a web framework, the same web app can be accessed, as is, across multiple devices, regardless of the operating systems they use.
This means two things: firstly, it means that the app only needs to be developed once, and secondly, it will be able to reach a wider perspective audience.
Less Costly to Develop
Because they are built for the web, these types of apps don’t require as specialized (and rare) a skill as native apps do.
They also only need to be developed for one platform that can be used across devices.
This results in remarkably lower development costs and times when compared to native apps.
No Need for Marketplace Approval
Since these apps behave similarly to websites, they are hosted in the same way as well.
This means that they don’t have to go through the sometimes-lengthy approval process that native mobile apps have to face. This is as true for hosting as it is for when the app needs to be updated.
Because of this, they can be made available to users in much less time than the other types of apps.
Easy to Update
When you update a native app, it needs to be done on the store. At that point, your users will be notified of the update and prompted to do it.
Progressive web apps on the other hand, only need to be updated on the host.
Since these apps are not necessarily downloaded to the device that is accessing it, updated features will show immediately when users access it.
This makes things a lot more convenient for your users, and also gives you more control over which build of the app they are using.
Drawbacks of Web-Based Apps
Limited Use of Device Features
Because web-based apps make use of a C++ framework, they do not contain any of the code that allows the app to take advantage of device-specific features. This means no camera, no GPS and no access to your contacts or storage.
Because of this, web-based apps are only really suited to very basic functions.
Difficult to Collect Usage Metrics
Collecting information on how many users are accessing your apps is straightforward enough with native apps since all of that information is readily available through the respective app store.
Since progressive web apps are hosted independently, that is, away from app stores, getting usage statistics that you can use to improve your services is a little more difficult, and not as detailed or accurate.
Poor Discoverability
Discoverability is also a concern when apps are not hosted on app stores. They will have to be marketed much in the way a website is if you want to attract in users.
This is perfectly fine and well if you are using an app to communicate with existing clients or offering them a service. But when you want your app to build its own success, native apps on stores are far more discoverable.
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If you want to learn more about how low code can help you adopt a successful digital conversion strategy, you can contact BAYPM. However, if you are more interested in learning about the pros and cons of leading low code platforms, check out Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise low code implementation platforms.
By now, we’re all too familiar with the saying “every company is a software company” but scaling and delivering quality software is — to put it simply — hard: software development complexity keeps growing, with tech stacks constantly changing and new cloud services popping up. Yet, there simply aren’t enough software engineers available in the market: IDC quantified that the shortage of full-time developers is currently 1.4 million people (2021) and that will rise to 4 million people in just 4 years.
At the same time, the revolution of hybrid work and the pandemic acceleration of digital has exploded the backlogs of software dev teams in every industry. These last two disruptions may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back on the old approach for conventional development.
This new reality demands that software engineering leaders must review their 2022 assumptions and make plans to modernize their teams, practices, and tools to address the 4 core pillars of their software engineering:
Developer experience: aiming to reduce technical complexity so that teams can innovate rapidly.
Development workflow automation: removing friction and handovers among all platforms and tools from the different stages of the development lifecycle are integrated holistically.
Security and compliance: developers shift left everything that can be tested during development, and right everything that’s better tested later, making it easier for developers to write secure code.
Deployment and operations: focusing on user adoption to enhance service reliability and performance.
Based on these pillars, we predict 7 software development trends that will be key in 2022 and that software engineering leaders should consider to modernize their dev teams, practices, and tools and achieve their business goals:
DevSecOps
API-led Integrations
Low-code for Pros
Cloud-Native Platforms
DesignOps
Universal Observability
PWA-First
#1: DevSecOps
Security, unfortunately, will continue to be the #1 concern for IT executives and software engineering teams. Between an uptick in ransomware attacks, lack of clear boundaries for organizational data, and increased risk with collaborative citizen developments, the data privacy, and regulatory requirements are threatened more than ever before. This led to an increased demand for DevSecOps, where security and compliance requirements are validated at every step of the development lifecycle.
With this increasing pressure to protect development environments from supply chain security threats and harden software delivery pipelines, we’re seeing CISOs and CIOs gradually preferring to create new web&mobile apps on platforms that manage all stages of app development and delivery for each new app — instead of depending on the non-systematic nature of different people with different practices in secure development.
The ultimate goal is for dev platforms to promote and make it easy for dev teams to create secure code, assuming a Zero Trust security model, instead of relying mostly on security testing methodologies.
#2: Hybrid Integrations
According to The State of SaaS Sprawl in 2021, the average company has 254 SaaS applications but, on average, only 45% of a company’s SaaS apps are being used on a regular basis. Moreover, 56% of all these apps are shadow IT, or owned and managed outside of IT. And the crazy part is to think that goes on top of all the software packages and systems of records they already have to run the core of their business.
The recent furore by business users to deploy RPA over old tools lacking APIs was a shortcut for old systems but not ideal for the fluid nature of digital business making changes all the time. For that agile businesses are using rapid app changes with low-code dev platforms, and the leading ones include these capabilities inside.
Above all, we’re now at a stage where organizations need more than ever to connect in real-time their data management, governance, and auditability across these multiple data sources which begs for more tools in hybrid integrations. The right software dev platforms or dedicated tools allow integrating data from different SaaS and legacy systems for a data fabric used by multiple systems and apps, which is key to supporting business leaders to make data-driven decisions.
“By 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies”.
Low-code doesn’t mean that developers will be replaced by business users (to understand the difference between low-code and no-code take a look at this blog post). Low-code platforms provide abstraction to remove some of that complexity that developers typically face when creating an app or system. And the best ones provide full-stack control for software engineers to have fine-grain control.
The goal is that those repetitive and boring tasks like dependency management, code validation, and automatic builds are done by the platform so that developers can focus on the extra mile that makes the difference, instead of just keeping the lights on.
#4: Cloud-Native Platforms
Still on the SaaS topic, the explosion of niche cloud applications is changing the “build vs buy” economics and timings. That’s because SaaS sprawl is not only exploding the original budgets but also becoming another form of technical debt: jumping among a dozen systems is a poor experience, with business consequences.
To recover business agility in enterprise systems used by customers, partners and employees, it demands a new type of cloud-native app development — one that is highly distributed, scalable, and enables the creation of resilient, fit-to-purpose enterprise apps that increases the agility of the organization.
The explosive growth of the mega vendors’ web services from ~30 five years ago, up to 250 by a single IaaS provider today, is becoming a massive distraction for business developers creating cloud-native applications.
To overcome these challenges, it is key that cloud-native development platforms allow dev teams to remain focused on the value stream management for their digital products, instead of exhausting their engineering talent on infrastructure management alone.
And with tech giants winning the race for scarce specialized engineers, organizations outside that tech elite need to embrace new ways to stay innovative and competitive with their own teams. This means finding technology that allows them to abstract or remove technical complexity and allow their development teams to focus on business outcomes and innovation — like a new crop of Cloud Native Low-Code Platforms.
#5: DesignOps
DesignOps is a tight team sport with close collaboration between design teams and front-end developers (including shared repositories, tools, asset exchange) promoting collaboration across the different product teams within an organization, and ensuring consistency of the product’s experience from the first delivery.
Now, the year 2022 is the first time when IT and app development budgets already reflect the hybrid work reality since both employee and partner experience has become just as critical as the customer experience — for hyperadoption: the broad and frequent use of the applications created to gain business agility.
As organizations are pressured to launch more digital products while meeting user adoption goals, they need to manage design at scale, while minimizing technical and UX debt, bringing DesignOps practices to the center of the stage.
#6: Observability
Going hand-in-hand with DesignOps, engineering leaders should invest in observability for hyperadoption. Combined with new end-user behavior observability and supported on open standards like Open Telemetry for tracing with plans to expand their use for logs and metrics, more digital product teams will aim for user adoption levels that were historically hard to achieve.
#7: PWA-First
Progressive Web AppsPWAs combine the functions of native apps and website accessibility without involving the app stores. Like native apps, PWAs can work offline, send push notifications, and access device hardware, such as cameras or GPS. The user experiences are similar to native apps on mobile and desktop devices without downloading or updating hassles, with great benefit — they run well on top of poor connectivity.
PWAs will regain momentum in 2022 due to their connectivity resilient design and user resistance (to keep piling native apps in their devices). There were already great technical arguments to adopt a PWA-first mindset by developers and software leaders, but the great acceleration to digital experiences is accelerating this change too, because:
From an end user perspective, PWA are easy to use their mobile devices (no app store) and are lightweight.
From a dev perspective, PWAs are way faster to change than native apps, and they are easier to maintain.
For dev teams, unlike native apps, they use one codebase for all devices, they’re searchable by search engines, and they are light.
Get Ready for 2022
So overall, the top software engineering trends we see for 2022 confirm the core of our mission as a company:
“To enable every business to innovate throught software”.
We believe we can’t go wrong in delivering to our customers a platform that keeps removing complexity, addressing the developer experience gap, abstracting the complexity of cloud native development, and, ultimately, enabling our customers to grow faster.
We wish you a successful 2022!
1Breaking out the top of the analysts scale, as you can find out in the first ever “Low-Code Wave” by Forrester in 2016.
If you’re here, you’ve probably heard about “low-code” before. If you haven’t, low-code is a software development approach that abstracts and automates application development steps to reduce complexity and accelerate development speed.
As the pressure on IT to deliver more and faster increases, many organizations are turning to low-code development to surpass the barriers imposed by the developer shortage and traditional development tools (you can read more about the pros of low-code in Top 5 Benefits of Low-Code). But, what can you really build with low-code? And what are its limits?
What our experience has taught us is that pure low-code platforms might be okay for building a form on top of a database or putting together a simple web or mobile app, but for more complex use cases, pure low-code tools fall short. For that reason, and based on our customers’ feedback over the last two decades, we’ve been evolving our platform to ensure it meets enterprise requirements and needs.
That said, next, I’ll review the use cases proposed by Gartner and share our vision on what you can deliver with low-code and when you should consider a more complete, modern application development platform like OutSystems.
Can Low-Code Support a Citizen Development Strategy?
Many low-code tools have no-code features embedded to allow citizen developers (non-professional developers with little to no app dev experience) to build simple, B2E applications almost exclusively using prebuilt templates, connectors, APIs, and logic.
So, does low-code support a citizen development strategy? Yes, it does. However, keep in mind that in its pure, drag-and-drop format, citizen development exclusively sponsored by no-code capabilities may lead to a scenario of shadow IT, where you end up with separate business applications that IT is not aware of and has no governance over them. Another problem is that you can end up with a proliferation of applications, many of which might be duplicates, that can slow performance or drive up cloud costs. Without this control, a violation of the organization’s requirements for control, documentation, security, and reliability is a possibility. You can also end up with app sprawl that is difficult, if not impossible, to rein in.
How Is a Modern Application Platform Different?
A modern application development platform also provides the visual, model-based development features associated with low-code. The difference is the apps you build with a modern application platform like OutSystems are not the simple ones churned out by someone who wants to put a form on top of a spreadsheet or create a vacation approval app. Instead, with OutSystems, you deliver powerful enterprise apps and app portfolios that run your business and what make you unique.
With OutSystems governance and impact analysis capabilities, for example, IT knows what every application developed with the platform does. Plus, if IT wants to work on top of the apps created by business users, OutSystems provides the necessary tools to unite IT and business to expand the project.
Can Low-Code Deliver Web and Mobile Business Unit Apps?
In the Speed of Change report, the majority of IT leaders inquired said it took their development teams 3-6 months to deliver an application. That’s a lifetime, and even more so in the COVID-19 era. The biggest value proposition of low-code is the development speed it provides. With low-code, development teams can build new web and mobile apps that involve data, business logic, and external services, such as SaaS services, in less than three months.
The problem comes when you need to deliver a second or third version of that app. Pure low-code tools help you build a prototype or version 1 of an app really fast, but when you need to make a change to meet customer feedback, or integrate to another system that has just popped up, they don’t offer an easy path. Think of it like running a marathon: if you start your run sprinting, you won’t have enough energy to finish the race. The same goes with pure low-code tools: to give you the speed to deliver apps super fast, they tend to sacrifice app quality.
How Is a Modern Application Platform Different?
A modern app development platform goes beyond low-code to give you the capabilities to build apps not only fast, but also right and for the future. Besides a low-code development approach and AI-assisted development, the OutSystems platform also provides services and security checks to ensure scalability, governance, protection from threats, and compliance.
In addition to that, its AI capabilities also find and solve issues early, eliminating design errors and duplication of effort and identifying anything that needs to be corrected or optimized. Unlike low-code tools, OutSystems was designed to help manage change and future-proof your apps. OutSystems platform services, AI, and visual tools enable the continuous introduction of features and capabilities. This way, developers can evolve apps every bit as quickly as the business changes and new technologies are introduced.
Can Low-Code Build Enterprise IT Business Process Applications?
Low-code gives organizations the capabilities needed to access, use, and share back-end data, logic, and processes, and thus the ability to automate and change business processes, workflows, and case management applications. In fact, many low-code vendors featured in LCAP Magic Quadrant were originally traditional BPM software vendors that reinvented themselves.
So, with low-code you can indeed build business process applications but, for some platforms, if you need to integrate those apps to other systems on-premise, you’ll need to do a lot of hand-coding. Plus, pure low-code tools fail at building more complex, enterprise-grade apps because you don’t have access to a full architecture view nor an easy way to debug them.
How Is a Modern Application Platform Different?
OutSystems allows you to design and manage your business processes and integrate them into your applications using its Business Process Technology methodology. In addition to that, OutSystems provides Architecture Dashboard and TrueChange to check and identify any architecture errors.
The Architecture Dashboard allows developers and architects to visualize complex cross-portfolio architectures and identify and fix problems while following best practices and avoiding common pitfalls. The TrueChange engine, on the other hand, combines the power of automation, AI and analytics checks for architecture errors and dependencies to provide team and architecture governance and monitor the performance in real-time.
Can Low-Code Develop Fusion Team-Developed Composite Applications?
Fusion teams are multidisciplinary teams that bring together business and IT to collaborate on cross-functional projects. Visual tools like low-code play a crucial role in promoting this collaboration, as it allows business people with no coding experience to tap into their subject matter expertise and create the application workflows they need.
But to maximize the power of fusion teams, the technology used should not only expand the capabilities of business people but also ensure that the apps created by non-developers follow the standard architectures and frameworks so that experienced developers can adjust and extend them without any re-architecting. Pure low-code tools, because they focus solely on simplifying the complexity of app development, lack this key part of the equation.
How Is a Modern Application Platform Different?
Modern application platforms like OutSystems give your fusion teams the simplicity of low-code development but integrated in a full-stack application development platform. This way, OutSystems gives developers the ability to extend applications that were started by non-developers with the expressiveness and flexibility of traditional coding.
In light of the research results, as BAYPM, we would love to help you with your Digital Transformation journey, give us a shout and we’ll be sure to assist you as best as we can. Currently, we are working on a project to digitize manual processes within different locations. The client opted for an incremental implementation approach based on geographical locations and the needs of their different factories.
According to Gartner, “70% of new applications will leverage a modern application platform using low-code or no-code technologies by 2025, up from less than 25% in 2020.”
These numbers foretell a dramatic shift in how enterprises will approach app development moving forward. Namely, your future success hinges on the ability to continuously respond fast to change and based on a new approach to constantly deliver applications and enterprise systems, modernize enterprise software development, and keep up with the competition.
Of course, not all modern application platforms offer the same capabilities. Not every platform is suitable for every use case. So how should you compare your options?
To help companies understand the modern application platform market, Gartner recently released their Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms. In this report, they divided platforms into challengers, visionaries, niche players, and leaders based on product capabilities, vendor operational health, market track record, and product vision.
Not only did Gartner name OutSystems as a Leader among vendors, but OutSystems is also the only company to receive a Customer’s Choice distinction as voted by hundreds of customers.
What Is a Modern Application Platform?
A modern application platform lets you quickly but securely develop and deploy new applications by automating the software development lifecycle and elevating the abstraction for the coding process. Not only does this augment your developer team to produce more significant results, but it opens up new opportunities to augment your internal staff beyond developers.
With more and more businesses relying on custom applications to accelerate operations, your ability to create complex applications quickly, interfaces, business logic, workflows, and manage data is a must.
When comparing platforms, Gartner analyzed their capabilities for three primary use cases:
Building custom business applications. You must be able to easily create and maintain complex enterprise applications capable of providing an intuitive user experience, managing complex integrations with your other business data sources and applications, and handling massive transaction volumes.
Automating business workflows. Your platform should help you automate as many workflows involving multiple application systems and users as possible so that your developers can work smarter and more productively.
Empowering collaborative app development. With development teams spread far and wide across locations, continents, and between the office and working at home, you need a platform that can ensure everyone is working efficiently on the same application. In addition, you need a platform that can scale its capabilities and usability to meet the needs of employees ranging from citizen developers to your most experienced, hard-core coders.
What Does Gartner Say About OutSystems?
While some platforms may be more suited for specific tasks, OutSystems is designed to provide a modern application platform suitable for the broadest range of industries and use cases. Unlike other vendors like Salesforce and Oracle, our current application platform is all we do, which has allowed us to focus on continuously innovating our product to meet the needs of almost every customer.
According to the Gartner report,
“OutSystems is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant(…) Its market differentiation is based on its capability to enhance developer productivity for building modern enterprise applications. OutSystems provides robust security, multi-experience development and AI-augmented development capabilities to enable faster application development.”
In the report, Gartner notes three key strengths that elevate the OutSystems solution to the top of the leaderboard.
Product: “OutSystems offers advanced low-code capabilities such as AI-augmented development, native but proprietary continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), application testing, agile enterprise planning, and governance capabilities to support the rapid development of enterprise-grade applications.”
Innovation: “OutSystems plans to introduce capabilities for automated unit testing using AI, native API management, enhanced observability experience (tied to infrastructure and application metrics) and an intelligent data mesh to facilitate seamless data ingestion and cataloguing.”
User experience: “In addition to providing robust capabilities for designing user journeys, OutSystems provides its UI design framework for designing standardized, accessibility-ready UIs. It also enables utilization of popular design systems and provides native support for chatbots and voice UIs.”
“OutSystems received the highest score of all vendors for the custom business application use case. It received good scores for the collaborative app development and business workflow automation use cases.”
In addition, customers also recognized OutSystems as a 2021 Gartner Customers’ Choice Vendor. Unlike the Magic Quadrant, whose leadership was determined by Gartner’s analysts, this award is based solely on feedback and ratings from hundreds of enterprise software users who have experience purchasing, implementing, and working with the OutSystems platform.
At the time of the report, OutSystems had 577 reviews for an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. Only three vendors were named a Customer’s Choice, with OutSystems being the only vendor recognized as both a Customer’s Choice and a Magic Quadrant’s Leader.
For all the details, check out the following reports:
In light of the research results, as BAYPM, we would love to help you with your Digital Transformation journey, give us a shout and we’ll be sure to assist you as best as we can. Currently, we are working on a project to digitize manual processes within different locations. The client opted for an incremental implementation approach based on geographical locations and the needs of their different factories.
Mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular among businesses and service providers.From e-commerce stores and payment banks to food delivery and healthcare, there is almost no industry where mobile applications have not proved their marketing value or established themselves fundamental for effective communication with target customers.
1. Availability: Be There For Your Customers Every Time
Nowadays, customer service is no longer just about face-to-face interaction. Especially with the rapid development of technology, there are now more than 2.6 billion users who own smartphones. We can call mobile apps a game-changer for industries. Do you know why?
Mobile apps are not likely to have mood swings and poor performance, unlike manpower customer service. With robust mobile software, you will provide users with the best way to choose. Users can decide whether they want to select your services.
Many businesses see mobile apps as a means of improving customer service. You are always ready for your customers. If a user finds out about your products or services in the middle of the night and wants to get information instantly, all they have to do is turn on their phone and download your mobile app.
Moreover, users do not have to wait for business hours to be able to even buy your product if they want to. Customer satisfaction should be one of your priorities, and therefore mobile apps are the answer to increasing customer satisfaction.
2. Marketing: Develop A Direct Marketing Channel
Of all the advantages of having a mobile app, one of the biggest is that it has all the information you want to give customers; booking forms, search features, user accounts, news feeds, it provides multiple functions such as.
You can also get closer to direct communication with push notifications. In this way, it is possible to remind your customers how sensible it is to choose your services and products. Now users have all the information at their fingertips.
3. Priority: Give Value To Your Customers
Business is about responding. If you want to improve the interaction of users with your organization, you must give them a certain level of value. When you start doing that, they do not think about going anywhere else. The question now is how you can value your users. You can plan a loyalty program to enable them to participate in your services and products. Some organizations use their mobile apps to offer rewards to subscribers. This motivates users to buy their services or products. If you already have such a program, it is possible to integrate it into the mobile application.
4. Visibility: Build Your Brand and Recognition
The mobile app can contribute to brand awareness. It would be better if we split this section into two different sections and the combination of both makes your mobile app a real winner.
Sign: a mobile app is similar to an empty billboard sign. Whether you want to give it a stylish look or not, you can make it shocking, informative, or functional. But what you can not ignore is improving it with many features that your customers will love. Moreover, it must be brand-based and painstakingly designed.
Recognition: the more you focus on customer engagement, the sooner they are convinced to buy your services or products. ”Effective frequency” is very important in the advertising industry. Wait, you do not know what happened? In the simplest terms, enough frequency is to see or hear your brand about 20 times. This will give you real recognition.
5. Interaction: Enhance Your Customer Engagement
Regardless of what you sell, users need a method to reach you. With a Help Desk feature, your app can change how you interact with your customers.
For example, OpenTable built its overall business model around the same principle. Instead of looking for a cafe or restaurant for a table, it is possible to book with fewer than five clicks on its platform.
You must have noticed that most customers prefer to contact you by phone or text. This is because everyone is busy nowadays and with a mobile app you can give them a chance to do it.
6. Uniqueness: Offer Something Out-of-the-Box
Technology has fascinated almost every part of our lives, and almost everyone has used mobile apps. However, despite the awareness, their development is still rare. Specifically, at the small business level.
Therefore, creating an app and presenting it to your customers can make your organization stand out. Make sure you build it correctly by following different application development strategies. Your competitors and users will certainly be surprised by your initiative and foresight.
7. Loyalty: Be True to Your Customers
Customer loyalty is the most important motivation to consider building your versatile application. With all the noise from Facebook promotions, roadside banners, announcements, flashing signs, daily paper ads, flyers, websites, site flags, coupons, and email marketing, you gradually lose your influence on customers. It is a great opportunity to come back by building a real and authentic relationship with your customers.
Also, try to make them a loyal fan of your product as well as your services. However, it can be a method of staying closer to your customers and constantly being just a “fingertip.”
To sum up; Why is it worth investing in mobile app development? In today’s competitive environment, people are using mobile devices to keep up with their favorite brands. They see it as a brand that allows potential customers to get all the information quickly. Whatever industry you’re dealing with, the advantages of having mobile apps for businesses are numerous, and investing in it is the best business deal.
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Start creating brand awareness through mobile app development and better distribute your reach. Your investment in mobile apps will benefit you for a long time. Working with BAYPM to develop mobile business applications will also ensure application security, timely updates, and effective application management.
Covid has negatively affected our lives in many ways, psychological, social, and economic. However, there have been some issues that have led to a breakthrough in the direction of digitalization. For instance; the use of low-code software received a strong boost from the COVID pandemic. It helps companies accelerate digital transformation and change the way they interact with their customers. According to Gartner’s research, because of that, the use of the platform has skyrocketed.
And after the pandemic?
To understand the answer, we first need to understand why companies are turning to low-code during the pandemic. The ITProPortal article, explains how the pandemic revived the use of low-code development tools among software developers: ‘’Increasing pandemic spread has provoked the permanent changes to how the world works in which organizations have decided that they have no other choice but to rework their established practices and client services.
According to the article, low-code software solves those problems. It implies that low-code makes developers more efficient by reusing components. It yields, ’’In short, low code enables IT teams to use their time and skills more intelligently and efficiently, accelerating the delivery of new user experiences.”
Additionally, business experts and citizen developers can use low-code/no-code platforms to write apps themselves, letting IT focus on more complex applications and on improving infrastructure.
All this means that the use of low-code platforms will continue its stunning growth even after COVID. That’s why the RTInsights article, “Low Code Use Peaked During COVID, But Will it Stick?”
Even though this pandemic comes to an end, potential disruption of operations is always a possibility. Many companies realized that they were not ready to handle even small obstacles like this.
In terms of digital transformation, the article notes that it is as important as ever. Businesses still need to get applications built fast. They need to increase the IT staff productivity.
As a result, “as long as companies develop a governance system, leveraging the power of low-code solutions can provide the fastest amount of value and provide an integrated experience without the months-long coding sprint of past years. As businesses prepare for the future, these solutions have a big chance.”
In fact, the benefit of COVID here for new technologies is that it creates the need for a rapid digitization process. Companies and administrations have sought a way to go to digital as quickly as possible to avoid being harmed by the epidemic, and they have been able to provide this speed with low code solutions. According to articles, low-code software will continue to be used after COVID to avoid the risk of company downsizing again and for rapid digitization.
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In light of the research results, as BAYPM, we would love to help you with your Digital Transformation journey, give us a shout and we’ll be sure to assist you as best as we can. Currently, we are working on a project to digitize manual processes within different locations. The client opted for an incremental implementation approach based on geographical locations and the needs of their different factories.
BAYPM attended OutSystem’s NexStep Conference as an official sponsor in the beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal. During two days, we learned the latest trends of from the Low-Code platform.
We also had the chance to present our newest SaaS application: eContractHub, a contract Management application.
BAYPM at Partner Reception before NextStep
Founder Arif Bay at the Partner Reception
OutSystems presents new mascot
Last OutSystems trends & innovations to accelerate development of digital experience
Presenting eContractHub, a Contract Management application developed on OutSystems
