Low-code and flexibility

The post-pandemic world has seen a strong push towards the digitization of business processes, setting new standards for adapting to changing market conditions. In this scenario, the Low-Code approach allows the end user to directly update processes and interfaces, bypassing demand management mechanisms and going live in real time.

The advent of Low-Code platforms

Periods of crisis have always been accelerators of social processes. In the financial market it has translated into the race towards the digitization of business processes, given the obsolescence of habits that have dragged on unchanged over the decades. However, the driving force towards innovation collided with the reality of the facts: in the first post-pandemic period, the average time to take charge of a demand worldwide was 16 months [source: Gartner].

Low-Code platforms represent the turning point to lighten the workload of developers, transferring powers to a new corporate figure, the Citizen Developer, a "super-user" with the ability to modify processes and interfaces himself, without know programming languages and thanks to the tools made available by Low-Code.

Challenge

The customer turned to Technology Reply to develop:

  • applications for the implementation of standardized but at the same time flexible elements and processes

  • workload efficiency procedures and automation of repetitive tasks.

Solution

The chosen tool was Appian, which natively offers the possibility of adapting the application elements to the changed business needs, but requires knowledge of one's own programming language, which is not suitable for a Citizen Developer. The project therefore faced the problem of developing a layer capable of combining the potential of Appian with the need of the Citizen Developer to have user-friendly features available.

First objective
As regards the first objective, the solution was the development of utility interfaces, inserted within the applications, which made it possible to manage changes and additions to contents, configurations and graphic elements, guaranteeing ample room for maneuver in a secure environment and at the same time validated by the IT department.

Second objective
In relation to the second objective, Appian's ability to easily integrate with external providers was used, applying the business rules set out in the BPM (Business Process Management) module to the data. In this way it was possible to reassign practices in the face of company reorganisations, sort them towards support organizational units if a non-performing threshold was exceeded, carry out status changes if not carried out in time by an operator. All in automatic mode, but monitored by specific dashboards.