My Experience with Low-Code App Development

With Low-code and RPA buzzing around, I was excited when the Course BUAN 6V99 Robotic Process Automation was added to my MSBA course list during my first semester @The University of Texas At Dallas. I was introduced to Appian, a Low Code Platform for RPA as our main learning objective.

Having had an industry exposure for over 5 years working as a developer, I had the opportunity to get a gist on one of the No-Code platforms. However little did I know of the vast revolution of transforming software development by Low-Code. That's when the curiosity around Low-Code and No-code seemed to have driven me into learning more!

The term "low-code app development" didn't exist until a few years ago. Forester coined the term “low-code” in 2014 and have since modified the definition:

Building software with low-code is the same as building software any other way, but the main difference is in the types of shortcuts offered and how effectively one can transform the business rules into working process models by a few clicks.

One of the interesting things I found working on The Appian application platform is The Dual Designer views. One is a full-blown app designer with a BPM module and other nifty facilities. The other is the Quick Apps designer, an easy-peasy graphical designer which creates basic, records-based applications directly in production for simple apps. The cool part is that we can extend the Quick App with the full Appian Designer to add an approval process, task assignments, or other workflows based on need. For Instance,

This simple BPM workflow assigns and sends an Approval task to a Supervisor.

Another interesting aspect is the Data Visualization reports. For someone who has started their Journey with Data Analytics and Visualization, this feature was indeed fascinating. Having to visually see your application statistics in real-time as interactive reports; this adds in a lot of value from a business stand point while interacting with the stakeholders.

Now, more than ever after the pandemic, businesses would feel the pressure to push operations to the cloud. These facts highlight the growing demand for low code in organizations. According to Gartner, more than 65% of application development in 2024 will be performed by low code platforms.

A few of the factors which would accelerate the Enterprise adoption for low-code would be:

• Implementation Speed - With low-code, one can build apps for multiple platforms simultaneously and show stakeholders working examples in days, or even hours.
• Easy One-click deployment: With low-code, a single click is all it takes to send application to production.
• Quick learning for employees: Low code is designed to be simple and accessible. There is no technical barrier, business users across varied domains can easily be trained on the Low-code application.
• Reduced steps in the development process, increased scope for new opportunities.

With a background in the Insurance sector, I believe most of the regular tasks like basic Policy Updates, Claims Processing, Underwriting can be done by automation processes. And having designed my first Low-Code automation site on the Appian platform as part of my curriculum, I look forward to learn more and apply my knowledge to real time use cases for automation in Insurance & Banking sector.