Agility. Employee Empowerment. Simplicity. Low-code platforms have revolutionized the way enterprise applications are designed and built. It's now easier for non-technical users to execute projects that once relied heavily on input from skilled developers and software engineers. Companies across all industries are cutting costs, saving time, and boosting productivity.
Of course, as more and more businesses embrace the benefits that low-code offers, the number of competing software solutions has ballooned. To help you select which is right for your needs, we’ve compiled the following list of 10 vital features to look for when making your decision:
A low-code application, no matter how elegantly and efficiently it has been designed, is only useful when it can be seamlessly integrated with your existing legacy systems. The platform you choose should be able to offer connectors and APIs that allow you to easily deploy apps across your enterprise’s entire tech infrastructure.
In today’s complex and ever-evolving business environment, it’s vital to know that your processes have been modeled, documented, and automated according to established security practices and current compliance requirements. Your platform of choice should provide the peace of mind that comes from knowing you can monitor and amend apps simply and quickly when the need arises.
At the heart of the low-code revolution are visual modeling and drag-and-drop interfaces. These intuitive and easy-to-use tools allow those with little or no tech expertise to become citizen developers, and able to create their own applications. You can learn more about various standards for business process modeling here.
See Bizagi's low-code platform in action.
A good low-code platform will be able to accommodate virtually any type of process modeling challenge, from a simple employee request for time-off to a highly complex task that requires a deep understanding of the relevant business logic and extensive documentation. While not every company needs this degree of flexibility, larger organizations will benefit by implementing a single, highly versatile platform.
Low-code software should enable both business and IT teams to work together. The best low-code platforms (Bizagi included) provide different interfaces for different types of users within your team. This enables technical and minimal-to-non-technical users to collaborate in a single environment, but to have access to different pieces of the puzzle. For example, you may want everyone to be able to work on the business rules, but only technical users need access to add scripts or work on integrations and security.
The over-arching goal of any business is to succeed. And, almost invariably, success brings growth. It’s important to choose a platform whose suite of software and services can grow along with you. A robust and scalable platform allows a business to evolve organically without the potential disruptions that often arise when a company is forced to make a major software system change.
Gone forever are the days of “One user, one desktop computer.” Today, your employees are working from a variety of devices, in various locations, at all hours of the day…or night! Your technology partner should be able to provide a design/build low-code solution that allows team members to be as productive on their phone, laptop or home computer as they are at their desk.
The word “shortcut” gets a bad rap in the business world. But, in low-code automation shortcuts can be a good thing: they save time, reduce frustration, and let your citizen developers concentrate on things that ultimately improve an organization’s overall productivity. Seek out a platform that will let you create consistency across the enterprise, and offer a simple way to repurpose and customize boilerplate content such as application and process policies.
“Continuous Improvement” is a mantra that’s often heard as you walk the halls of any successful company. Your low-code solution should strive to be a partner in the ongoing, and never-ending, pursuit of perfection. By allowing you to easily monitor the performance metrics that inform process improvement, a good low-code platform will deliver tangible returns on your investment…continuously.
There are various compensation models in the low-code space, ranging from traditional per-seat/per-user license fees to the more innovative, client-centric shared success approach. The latter (which we use at Bizagi) is tailored to fit an organization’s existing needs, but designed to keep pace as demand increases. The idea is to charge you for only what you use, without imposing unnecessary costs for excess capacity.
