You may have heard this a lot: Software demand is outpacing organizations’ abilities to deliver. It’s a prevalent message because, well, primarily it’s the truth, and a painful truth at that.
The truth, however, doesn’t have to hurt.
Organizations all over the world are turning to low-code development to accelerate digitalization. The benefits of low-code are many. Low-code increases IT’s ability to meet and exceed application demand. Through a visual modeling language, development is faster because professional developers can use one common language to create enterprise-ready applications. Visual language and collaboration tools allow for you to bring business domain experts into the fold as well, which increases the chances of delivering an exceptional user experience earlier on. Also, the right low-code platform gives you the ability to build out these experiences across a range of mobile and multi-channel experiences.
But how do you find the right low-code development platform in a market that’s as vast and deep as the Pacific Ocean?
The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021 is your perfect map to help you chart these murky waters. In this wave sits Mendix and its all-in-one low-code platform–with the highest score in the current low-code offering of all the evaluated low-code vendors.
The Process of Automation
The benefits of low-code are unmistakable when it comes to process automation. As reported in their Q1 2020 Digital Process Automation Survey, Forrester cites that more than 70% of organizations today still rely on paper-based activities for critical business processes. Organizations that automate manual processes, per a global study, stand to regain nearly 4.5 months of annual work time per employee. When it comes to digitizing and automating manual and paper processes, the faster it’s done, the better. It makes sense to turn to low-code development for such a task, and it makes even more sense to turn to a low-code platform that has embedded process automation tooling.
The right low-code platform enables you to build consumer-grade applications that automate end-to-end processes. Rather than using business process management software or robotic process automation tools, building applications that manage these critical processes gives organizations the ability to more quickly deploy, use, and iterate on these solutions.
The Right Low-Code Platform
So how do you even begin to discern the differences between the low-code vendors out in the market today?
Some features may not be as they seem and others may not be entirely relevant for you and your business. When it comes to meeting quickly the growing demand for software, you should look for a low-code platform that provides a holistic approach to the software development lifecycle.
Building Better Business Process Applications
The Mendix Platform was built on the foundational principle of giving Business and IT a way to visually express a shared understanding of development. Take Canadian bank BDC, as an example, which sought to rebuild its loan application process with low-code. To rebuild the process, BDC required greater collaboration between IT and the business. Herman Geldenhuys, a Mendix technical expert at BDC, says Mendix allows business and IT to speak the same language. “The biggest transformational impact that Mendix allows is to match the language of the business.” This lends itself well to when IT has to build applications and the business domain experts have to communicate each step involved in streamlining a workflow.
The biggest transformational impact that Mendix allows us within BDC is to match the language of the business, essentially removing the effort that we need to apply to focus on the technology.
Defining those workflows is easy when you use Mendix’s workflow editor to add process logic to your apps. The flow chart-like visual language is fully integrated with other visual languages you’ll find across Mendix’s two IDEs, like microflows and page editor, that reduces the complexity of expressing application logic, integrate with other systems, and update and adapt to market needs as needed.
Speed of Development
Plain and simple: Low-code helps you develop faster. Whether you’re looking to speed up development time by helping your pro developers build apps more quickly with reusable components or by allowing your non-professional developers the ability to create their own applications with an easily understood visual language, the right low-code platform gives you the choice to do either or both. Mendix supports this by having multiple IDEs –Studio Pro for professional developers and Studio for non-professional developers—where developers of all skills can collaborate on applications.
Better Data Integration
Accelerating the time to develop isn’t just dependent on the development environment either. Data integration and management can significantly slow down the process.
If you’re looking to develop applications that need to integrate with multiple systems—like a business process application would—you’d do well to find a low-code platform that makes integration easy. With Mendix’s Data Hub, your data is curated in a metadata repository that abstracts integrations via drag-and-drop. This means that you can better find, understand, and use data when you need it from either Mendix Studio or Studio Pro.
Easy Deployment
Of course, going faster means easing deployment. The right low-code platform shouldn’t lock you into a particular cloud scenario. You should have the option to deploy to any cloud of your choice. This is prudent, because as needs change, your apps need to scale, and your cloud of choice will differ based on those ever-shifting needs. The Mendix Platform allows you to single-click deploy your applications to the public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid.
Looking for a Low-Code Platform? Go with a Leader.
Given the pure vastness of the low-code development market, and the offerings that these vendors have, it is an honor and a joy to be considered a leader by Forrester in The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021.
This year, Forrester named Mendix a low-code leader with the highest score in the current offering category, citing us as “an elegant collaborative platform aimed at many personas and use cases.” No matter your needs, we’ve got you covered for both today and tomorrow with our holistic platform.
This year’s Forrester Wave™ helps you cut through some of the low code vendor fog. Click the banner below to find out why Mendix was named a Leader. We can help you meet and exceed those software demands.