Low-code applications yield high value, big change in less time

The urgent need to develop a successful competitive strategy and align your supply chain to it has become apparent in recent years. So why haven’t successful implementations of enterprise technology systems kept pace to support this critical need? The issue is that many of the core characteristics of enterprise applications – complex configurations, lengthy implementations, extensive testing and big-dollar budgets – prevent those tools from being deployed quickly and in a tailored way that fosters a competitive advantage. We’ve all heard of the very high failure rates of these complex system deployments.

Fortunately, there is a widely available and easily deployable alternative to complex enterprise implementations: low-code applications.

Rather than rely on complicated configuration requirements and proprietary programming languages, low-code application development employs user-friendly visual interfaces and object libraries. These enable stakeholders outside of the IT group to quickly design, launch and iterate on their own applications. This represents an evolutionary change that amounts to the democratisation of application development. However, it requires the C-suite’s attention and a fundamental shift in IT strategy.

Protiviti has several examples of using low-code platforms (from providers like Microsoft, Amazon and Google) to develop applications to better manage IT risk and rapidly enable new functionality:

• An industrial manufacturer developed and piloted a low-code application in just three weeks that analysed incoming materials receipts along with current and planned production schedules to route materials automatically within the plant. Over the next five weeks, the team incorporated feedback and made adjustments to the tool, trained employees and deployed the tool across the organisation, for a total time to value of just eight weeks. The tool scheduled materials movements and space allocations that resulted in fewer movements and an increase in manufacturing uptime and manufacturing capacity, and lower labour costs.
• A specialty merchandise retailer project team developed a low-code application that conducts analysis of variance (ANOVA) on SKUs. The team sifted through the historical order data to identify variability and seasonality to improve forecasting and inventory level setting. The analysis was shared with the sales group, which adjusted its processes to better manage SKU performance throughout the year.
• An industrial manufacturer designed an application to determine the precise time required to build a product using the current availability of the component pieces, the availability of manufacturing equipment and the capacity of shop-floor labour.

Supply chain leaders have also used low-code platforms to develop tools that improve a wide range of processes including forecast accuracy, inventory-replenishment lot sizes, shop-floor labour scheduling, and warranty-fraud detection. The ease of use and tailored nature of low-code apps gives them relevance across any process area.

The data available to manufacturers continues to grow at exponential rates, but that data is continually evolving in both quality and criticality. The value of the data is not in the data itself, but in the ability of an organisation to gain insight and decision making when the data is fresh. As the amount of data that manufacturers produce increases, low-code applications will demonstrate their value more and more.

Low code applications deliver their value in a manner that enterprise systems cannot: in speed, experimentation and iteration via a DIY ethos. In fact, low-code solutions can enhance digital transformation while reducing application development time by 50-90 percent. To be sure, ERP and other enterprise systems remain valuable and critical to the processes they support, but they are not suited to low-cost experimentation or on-the-fly iterations. This explains why teams outside of the IT group often historically viewed enterprise implementations as something done to them and not with them. Low-code applications are a form of technology that business stakeholders can do for themselves to capture opportunities quickly in their areas. Approximately two thirds of manufacturing workers would like to develop an app that tackles issues in their jobs.

With that said, businesses cannot flip a switch and become a low-code shop overnight. The approach requires important considerations and enablers, including:

• The C-suite’s recognition and support: Low code is a game changer, and senior executives should understand the rules of this new game along with the mindsets and strategic adjustments required to make the best use of low-code activities. Traditional IT strategies emphasise cost-effective systems investments, minimising technical debt and creating technology investment road maps that align with corporate objectives. That work has gone well and remains imperative. But as low-code applications proliferate, IT strategy will need to flex to ensure that smaller, homegrown assets also align with customer, product and financial goals. This alignment involves not just the CIO’s oversight but also input from other major stakeholders such as sales, finance, operations and chief digital officers.
• A major IT pivot: Most IT functions have traditionally focused on low-cost sourcing and control: Buy the least expensive software, implement and maintain it, and work through business partners’ requests for custom reports and reconfigurations. Low code requires a much more agile, iterative and consultative approach from IT teams, who will need to guide and advise their business partners/developers. IT leaders can help the rest of the organisation embrace a new software development approach, one that elevates minimal viable products and agile development methodologies over more rigid waterfall-type requirements (analyse, design, build, test and deploy).
• Tools and (modest) skills: In addition to investments in low-code platforms, organisations will need tech-fluent, or at least tech-comfortable, employees in every business unit and function. Low-code development does not require mastery of C++ or another complex programming language. Familiarity with a general, object-oriented programming language like Python (now taught in many high schools and universities) is helpful, though not required. As low-code development becomes more visual (e.g., clicking Lego-like building blocks into place), more employees will be able to develop applications.
• Governance adjustments: As hundreds and even thousands of individual application development projects get underway, CIOs, CFOs and other business leaders will need to ensure that these activities remain properly governed. If application development is to be democratised effectively, business groups and units will need to clearly understand and adhere to internal controls, data governance standards, development guidelines and other aspects of IT risk management. Governance guidelines also will need to be updated more frequently (a trend also being driven by growing generative AI usage). Low-code development guidelines should be applied to determine how to calculate and monitor the value that the applications deliver. For example, while operations and supply chain developers will be comfortable tracking reductions in freight costs and warehouse headcount, they will need assistance with market penetration, customer value and qualitative measures.

Designing and implementing a low-code strategy and capabilities will be critical to manufacturers to remain competitive in today’s landscape of data proliferation, complicated by the speed of market changes. While this may sound daunting, this process often starts by asking supply chain groups what is perhaps the most valuable low-code question – “What if we tried this?” – and then giving them the capabilities to try.

Business owners who have been overlooked by the lends of corporate IT application are no longer subject to corporate IT for running their business. Low-code applications put the control in their hands and empower them to quickly solve problems, leverage their data, and drive workflows and results in a very short time and at very little cost.