Industry voice: In an increasingly digital world, local authorities are being encouraged to think outside the IT department and consider digital innovation as an attitude that permeates all areas of the organisation. By making digital innovation more accessible, local authorities can become more agile in development and can give their subject matter experts the power to effectively translate their processes into the digital world.
To help make this a reality, many organisations are looking to platforms that can distil the features of sometimes complex tools such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 into simple tools for their business users. These low code BPM platforms accelerate the rate of digital service delivery and empower business users to create, update and extend the way they interact with their customers online.
SOCITM cites low code solutions as one of the top public sector technology trends of 2019, due to the reduction in time and effort taken to facilitate digital delivery.
Key benefits of a low code platform
Plugging the skills gap
Given the focus on market disruption by many different industry digital transformations, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find .net developers, whether this is securing allocated resource from existing teams, or recruiting new starters. Low code means you don’t need a qualified Microsoft developer to design and develop online services, as this can be done by non-technical personnel or ‘citizen developers’ such as service owners/business analysts.
Through a pre-configured data schema, visual workflow designer, drag and drop objects, reusable components and workflow automation, services can be built and deployed 5-10x faster than by traditional methods. This means the more skilled and expensive developers can apply their skills to other priority IT areas.
Supporting innovation
The key to innovation is the ability to execute at speed, whether this is amending services, or introducing new ones reflecting legislation or citizen demographics. Low code BPM tools give you the ability to achieve this while facilitating agile methodologies to achieve roll out of digital services. It allows business/service managers, front line workers and IT to collaborate effectively on service design through visual tools and automated process flow documentation, allowing rapid prototyping without spending weeks defining the final specification.
Reducing effort through the use of building blocks
Services can share a number of common process steps (such as address search or payment) or be very similar in flow, yet still distinct. With low code BPM platforms, there is no need to start from scratch for each service designed. You can save substantial time through the re-use of out-of-the-box components and controls for different services or through copying existing services, saving as something else and then amending. Similarly, services can be built once but deployed through multiple channels such as a customer portal, email and contact centre, greatly reducing the associated effort.
Enhancing stakeholder engagement
As low code doesn’t require a dedicated or professional coder, it is more accessible to the business/service manager, empowering them to redesign the services for which they are responsible. Easy to understand, it encourages feedback from users making the overall process more insightful, and collaborative influencing stakeholder support for the project.
Becoming scalable and adaptable
Whether you have tens or hundreds of processes, of varying complexity, low code BPM platforms scale. Capable of building simple or advanced processes, they support automated decision branches, multiple questions and business rules. In short, if and when your organisation or digital strategy changes, new and redesigned services can be delivered quickly through existing low code BPM tools.
Connecting the wider service delivery ecosystem
Low code BPM platforms can extend the user community to non-CRM users, thereby delivering a more joined up organisation to improve service delivery satisfaction levels. For example, the process may include an approval step from a non-CRM user; in this instance, an email could be triggered to the relevant team for them to approve/reject the request from within the body of the email. Equally, integration frameworks enable Microsoft Dynamics 365 to talk to line of business and ERP systems, connecting front and back office teams to deliver quicker and consistent service levels.
If you want to learn more:
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Sign up for an ‘Immersion Experience’ to see for yourself the benefits possible with Evolve LRG: the low code BPM platform from Pythagoras.
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Attend the Evolve LRG Discovery Webinar to see the tool in action.
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Contact us at evolvelrg@pythagoras.co.uk
