Industry views
22 Apr 2024

Accelerating productivity: Leverage low code for seamless digital transformation  (Guest blog from Kainos)

Author: Simon Bown, Business Development Director, Kainos  

As transformation progresses and digital maturity increases, organisations face a challenge: how do you manage growing demands on IT teams? After all, as business units develop new services and solutions to improve operations and customer experience, you need the development and engineering capacity to deploy and manage them.  

So how do you overcome these capacity constraints – to avoid overburdening tech teams and slowing down innovation?  

Low code is part of the answer.  

In this article, we look at:   

  • What low code is  

  • The benefits of using low code as part of digital transformation initiatives  

  • Practical applications of low code  

  • Getting started with low code  

De-coding low code  

Low code solutions involve pre-built templates, drag-and-drop functionality and reusable components. These features create a repository that significantly speeds up traditional software development and deployment. Developers can quickly build, configure and test applications by leveraging pre-built connectors, data integrations and automation capabilities.  

Low code is a game-changer because you can:  

  • Quickly deliver transformational software and applications   

  • Easily automate processes  

  • Scale data and AI capabilities while reducing security and compliance risks  

Unlocking the benefits of low code in digital transformation  

  • Speed to value – Having a repository of templates and reusable components accelerates development, making it easier to respond to market demands.  

  • More agile innovation – For example, you can integrate AI using low-code platforms. These platforms also help you harness data across the organisation, whether it’s for development or insights.  

  • Enhanced data security and governance – Because you have in-built guardrails through the platform, you reduce compliance risks that come from having diverse product teams working independently  

  • Cost savings – You reduce reliance on traditional software engineering and custom coding, which can be time-consuming and expensive. The ability to quickly iterate, enhance and collaborate creates an environment for adapting to user needs, thereby avoiding costly re-development efforts.   

  • Enhanced collaboration between business and IT – A common low-code platform means business users can actively participate in the development process, providing real-time feedback that translates to tangible improvements. IT teams can focus on governance, security and scalability while leveraging business users’ expertise. This facilitates alignment between technology and the business.   

  • Improved productivity and satisfaction – You create capacity in teams, allowing people to focus on higher-value, more interesting and fulfilling activities. You can also use low code to build on existing productivity applications like Microsoft 365 and implement automations.  

Practical applications of low code  

Low-code platforms help with app creation, data analysis and reporting, workflow automation, AI-powered chatbots, web development and more.   

Common use cases include:  

  • Replacing legacy systems and reporting processes (like spreadsheets)  

  • Process automation  

  • Case management  

  • Improving data quality  

How do you get started with low code?  

It’s relatively easy to get started with low code. Platforms give you access to proven tools that enable AI-powered automation and app development while streamlining security and governance.  

To help embed low-code capabilities within teams, it’s worth thinking across four lifecycle stages:  

  • Enablement – basic low-code training to get teams up to speed with the toolsets and approach  

  • Advisory – formulating a low-code strategy and design based on the business objectives  

  • Delivery – using low-code tools to develop services and solutions in line with the strategy and design  

  • Management – ongoing maintenance and support  

This holistic approach to leveraging low code maximises the benefits and lays the foundation for sustainable value.  

Here are a couple examples of this methodology in practice:  

  • HR – Over four weeks, we assessed opportunities across three core HR functions, involving 14 stakeholders. Then, we created a strategy that encompassed 22 identified opportunities and implemented the top six globally. These involved enhancing the onboarding experience, streamlining expenses processes and expediting approvals. We used Microsoft Power Platform, including the Power Apps and Power Pages capabilities. These six use cases led to forecasted savings of £1 million annually.   

  • Customer service – We started with a discovery exercise that identified multiple opportunities to streamline contact centre operations. Then, we determined the feasibility and viability of changing the customer journey and colleague experience. This resulted in a move to more customer self-service, automation of manual operations and role-based applications that improve the employee experience. We implemented the strategy using Microsoft Power Platform. As a result, the contact centre saved 70+ hours per day of effort, reduced customer feedback lead times by 14 days and cut average manual processing from 10 minutes to two minutes.   

So what bottlenecks are your teams experiencing?  

From operations and reporting to development and customer experience, low code can help you clear them efficiently.   

So what opportunities will you explore first?  

Return to listing