Low-Code & UK Manufacturing Productivity
Apple's Steve Jobs once famously said “A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”. OK, he wasn't talking about low-code at the time. The term didn't exist. But as a general observation about innovation it was insightful. And the proof is in the pudding. Apple was (and is) highly innovative.
The ability to be 'innovative' certainly relies on a creative mindset and nothing dulls creativity more than the burden of carrying out dull and repetitive tasks. Designers and engineers freed from monotony spend more time creating and innovating.
What does all this have to do with UK manufacturing productivity?
It is well recognised that the UK has a productivity problem. According to an often quoted FT report "The average French worker produces more by the end of Thursday than their UK counterpart can in a full week".
The same report goes onto explain how the UK, while having some highly innovative and productive companies, also has a ‘Long tail’ of relatively unproductive companies compared to other economies.
Much of the gap is due to historical under-investment in the automation of routine & prosaic business and engineering processes compared to other countries. This is where the advent of low-code can help.
So What is 'Low-Code'?
Not to be confused with other Industry 4.0 goodies like IOT, AI etc, low-code involves the rapid design and development of business applications with minimal amounts of coding. It relies on complex but reusable chunks of code being ‘commodified’ into so called 'components', 'building blocks', 'widgets' or 'services'.
These can then be combined in all kinds of different ways to produce comprehensive & reliable business applications that are tailored to the needs of users. Think of it as mass customisation for software applications.
And they can do this far more quickly than would otherwise be possible, with better performance & reliability and without upgradeability concerns.
This means companies can iterate more quickly towards productivity boosting and value creating applications designed to make their operational processes more productive. Kind of a virtuous circle.
What is a Low-Code Platform?
Low-Code Platforms are tools that allow you to design, build & deploy low-code applications. This Gartner report provides an overview of the various platforms out there.
The best of these platforms provide fully integrated environments for;
Creating and managing ‘Agile’ development projects, gathering requirements in the form of ‘user stories’.
Building the actual application itself using an Integrated Development Environments or IDE
Building business logic using visual editing tools rather than writing them in a coding language like C# or Java.
Managing versions and branching much like GIT handles this for pro developers.
Publishing your application with one click straight to a public or private cloud.
How Much Time & Money Can You Save?
If a traditional bespoke business application were to take six to twelve months to develop, you should probably expect a low code approach to cut that down to a month or two and reduce the budget by as much as 90% for the simple reason that you’re not creating code from scratch.
Low-Code as an Agent of Change
Because low-code development is very agile and iterative, it plays an important role as an 'agent of change' and as business transformation tool. It pushes business to understand and capture often opaque process often for the first time. I've heard many people say that "nobody actually knew the full process before but low code has created an opportunity to shine a light on it and work out the art of the possible".
Low-Code & The Cloud
The advent of low-code coincides with an explosion in the use of cloud computing resources. This is a kind of a perfect storm because it means low-code applications can be published to the cloud with 1 click and released to business users without building and commissioning all kinds of complex IT infrastructure.
So How Does All This Help UK Businesses Close The Productivity Gap?
During a recent conversation, the IT Director of a typical mid-sized UK manufacturing business, told me that, what he really needed was business applications “that work well with the way the business really works with as little code development as possible” so that “…we can do more with less.
He said that although they were on a ‘digital journey’ and there was much left to do (not least because every improvement raised people’s expectations further), low-code had forced him to confront and understand existing processes in a way that had never been done before. This was a good thing.
This new understanding created a baseline from where he could justify and drive process change & automation using Low-Code tools and approaches.
In so doing he simplified and streamlined the way business was done, eliminated hundreds of spreadsheets and, verifiably, raised productivity.
And this really gets to the core of the challenge & the opportunity.
Low-Code represents a paradigm shift in process automation because it tackles the problem from both ends.
It both drives digital transformation from a changes management perspective and allows business to execute that transformation quickly, cost effectively and in an agile manner that allows businesses to keep up with people’s rising expectations. And this inflection point provides a unique opportunity for the UK to skip a generation of process automation technology, build highly differentiated capabilities to deliver competitive advantage and close that productivity gap.
Low-code is the future of business application development for one very simple reason – it’s easier, faster and a more efficient use of time.
Want to know more about Low-Code?
Report - Gartner 2019 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low Code Application Platforms