business transformation - Digital Transformation

Accelerate digital transformation with low-code, no-code platforms. Core Technologies for Digital Transformation: From RPA to Cloud explores the benefits and implementation strategies of digital transformation (Industry 4.0, DT, DX, Digital Transformation) with a second low-code/no-code platform. It shows how non-developers can easily build apps and web systems.

Understanding the basics of low-code, no-code platforms

Another way to get started with DX quickly is to utilize a low-code/no-code development (LCNC) platform. Think of it as a kind of website builder. A website builder allows you to create a basic website without having to be an expert in web development and design, just by plugging your content into the templates provided. Low-code platforms make it easy to create mobile apps instead of websites.

While RPA automates work processes or reduces repetitive tasks, low-code platforms help you create apps or web systems without specialized development knowledge. So, just as individual departments or individuals can create RPAs, if you have an app that doesn’t have a lot of users but you need it, you can easily create it using a low-code platform. These microservices can be used anywhere, on PC or mobile.

Development efficiency and benefits of low-code platforms

Low-code platforms allow developers to build systems by assembling them like Lego blocks instead of writing all the source code, which can dramatically reduce development time. When you think of system development, you might think of a long period of time, but with a low-code platform, you can ship an application in a matter of days or weeks and quickly get feedback to make changes and modifications.

Of course, there are limitations in terms of freedom because it is a way to combine standardized templates like blocks. However, the short development time reduces labor costs, and with a little training, people in the field can create their own apps. In general, if you are a citizen developer and can automate your own work know-how using Excel macros, you can develop using low-code. Low-code development also reduces development resources because fewer mistakes can be made by entering less program code.

Accelerate digital transformation with a low-code, no-code platform

Staffing and scope of low-code platforms for digital transformation

Another advantage of low-code platforms is that they are relatively easy to staff. Hiring a developer or two in the IT department of a traditional company that doesn’t specialize in IT can be very difficult. Combine that with the recent shortage of IT talent, and you’ve got a real problem. In this environment, low-code platforms offer a lot of flexibility in the supply and demand of developers. You don’t need to be a super-skilled developer to produce more than the basics.

Specific examples and representative platforms for leveraging low-code platforms

Let’s get a little more specific about where you might want to use a low-code platform. Whereas RPA is about automating processes, low-code platforms are useful for creating company systems, such as a bulletin board of sorts, where you enter data into a specific form and edit it. In development, this is often referred to as CRUD (write, read, modify, delete), and you can think of it as a tool that makes it easy to implement.

It’s also useful for creating microservices by connecting to different data sources. In some cases, like a bulletin board, you can create a result without any data, but in many cases, you need to integrate with various systems within your company. There are many solutions on the market that allow you to do this, so it’s getting easier and easier to develop microservices that pull employee information from your HR system or specific data from your ERP to perform specific functions.

What are some low-code platforms? One example is Microsoft’s Power Apps. In addition to integrating with Microsoft products, Power Apps’ data visualization tool, Power BI, and RPA program, Power Automate, can be flexibly integrated with data from over 350 partners, including SAP and Salesforce. Then there’s ServiceNow. It is a more flexible platform than Microsoft Power Apps and has the advantage that it can be adopted alongside digital transformation of existing systems such as ITSM (IT Service Management).

Other top global low-code platforms include OutSystems and Symantec’s Mendix. OutSystems is more low-code in nature and has significant advantages, such as productivity in web front page development. On the other hand, Siemens’ Mendix has a lot of flexibility, including the ability to include some Java code, which is a bit of a departure from the low-code nature of the platform. We’ll talk more about the pros and cons of each platform in another post.

Low-code platforms, like digital tools, have the advantage of making it simple to create systems for your business that you use every day and can easily be modified as needed. More importantly, however, is the ability to identify the different needs of each organization across the enterprise and figure out how to quickly transform them digitally. Along the way, it’s important to gradually spread a digital culture within the organization. This is a very important driving force for continuous DX.

RPA: Immediate impact and high accessibility

He talked about adopting digital tools as the first step to sustainable DX. He went on to talk about changing the way employees work and experiencing a digital culture. However, it takes time for employees to adapt to these tools and turn them into productive know-how. So, is there a way to start DX with a shorter learning curve and immediate impact?

Digital Transformation with RPA: Driving effective business change

There is. Robotic process automation (RPA) has gotten a lot of attention lately. RPA is when a robot, or software robot on a computer, takes over the repetitive tasks that humans do with computers. A software robot is an automated program that runs on software rather than a physical robot. From simple, repetitive tasks like pulling information from a web page and saving it to Excel, to more complex business processes like filling out certain forms within a company and creating expense invoices. All of these can be automated with RPA.

Real-world use cases for RPA

For example, if you want to send a courier, you have to manually enter the names and addresses organized in Excel into the courier service’s site. If you have 100 cases, it’s not a big deal, but if you have to enter 10,000 courier data, you have to copy and paste 10,000 times to fulfill orders.

If you don’t have automation between systems, even simple repetitive tasks can take a lot of time and increase the likelihood of manual errors. Another example is if you have someone who is responsible for checking and reporting on real estate prices at a specific address on a daily basis. Every day when they arrive at work, they check the prices and enter them into a report (or email).

But what if this is not just one address, but 1,000 addresses every day? This person would probably be stuck doing this and not doing anything else. In this way, every white-collar employee has at least one or two simple repetitive tasks that they have to deal with on a daily basis in addition to their regular duties. It’s difficult to have a separate person for this task, and it’s impossible to create a separate system. This is where RPA comes in.

RPA’s impact on the enterprise

You can think of RPA as a computer doing the work for you, like recording and playing back what you’re doing. It automates tasks by capturing and executing actions at the screen level that you use every day. Imagine you have a daily task of copying and pasting your daily entries into a specific excel file into a specific menu in your ERP.

RPA does this exactly as you would do it, meaning it opens the excel file for you and inserts or copies the regularized values. In the case of ERP, the RPA will log in, enter the values you copied from Excel, and hit the save button. In other words, RPA takes over the work that humans do with specific rules.

The advantage of RPA is that it can automate without requiring large-scale development or changes to systems that exist inside and outside the organization. In addition, automation can span multiple systems rather than a 1:1 relationship. This means that specialized services can be developed for small departments or individuals. Each service may not seem like a big deal, but when aggregated across the company, it can lead to more efficient workforce management and, most importantly, a better understanding of employee job satisfaction and DX effectiveness.

If you’re pitching RPA to the C-suite, here’s how you might explain it “It’s like hiring an AI employee for each department. Imagine they’re the newest member of your team, and think about what you want them to do. You could have the AI take over all of the simple, repetitive tasks, freeing up other employees to focus on things that require a little more thought. Whether you have one or 100 of these AI people, it doesn’t make much difference from a cost of ownership perspective.”

RPA: A key component of your digital transformation strategy

As you mature in your actual use of RPA, you may find that you’re dealing with simple repetitive tasks at first, and then changing your company’s processes to fit RPA entirely. What was once possible by creating a separate system is now possible in a very efficient way. This can be the beginning of sustainable DX.