The Evolution of App Building and Process Automation

The need for efficiency has? driven countless innovations throughout history. As humans, we are always looking for ways to improve whatever we do.?

This need for innovation has accelerated in the post-industrial era due to increasing demand from businesses. From Ford coming up with the Assembly Line concept to improve production efficiency to CPU companies coming up with the multi-core to improve efficiency in computers in many different ways (other than just increasing the speed). These days, it’s common to see evolutions like this to improve speed and efficiency in every industry.

As businesses evolve they strive for more efficiency and improved experience and speed in their products and services. Digitisation of their operations plays an important part in this journey. This is another area that has been constantly evolving. The difference is that it’s been evolving at a much faster pace.?

On the implementation side, the digitisation journey requires companies to automate their workflows and only bring in humans where required. For example, when a bank comes up with a new loan product, they’d want to digitise the whole process end to end. From enabling people to apply for a loan through a digital form, automatically validating the applicant’s identity, checking their credit score, getting the application reviewed by an employee where required, and automatically generating a pre-approval.

While digitisation has been happening for a few decades, I can only assume how hard it would have been to digitise processes like this using the punch card back then. Plus the Infrastructure was just not there. People did not have computers and the internet was non-existent. That’s why not many processes were digitised. Fast forward a few years and the same urge for efficiency drove tech companies to enable a lot more people to create software applications and digitise more processes, by creating easier-to-use programming languages and tools to use them. This resulted in a big push towards more digitisation of businesses. And then the race to create better software development languages and tooling started. C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Visual Studio, JDE, Lime, etc. They all have been improving to make it easier for developers to create software applications. While there have been massive improvements in programming languages, development tools, and the ecosystem in general, the demand for digitisation (i.e. more software applications) has been a lot more than what the improvements have been able to offer.

While it’s a lot faster to digitise business processes, and there are more developers out there, it’s still too time-consuming, too expensive (not enough developers) and a very inflexible way of delivering business needs for the current day and age.?

As the evolution of this domain continues, the next step would be to find new ways to meet the demand. A lot of companies have taken the approach of enabling developers to create software applications a lot quicker. The way I see it, this is like Intel/AMD pushing to make a single-core processor faster. But at some point in time, you will hit the limit of that approach.?

For me, the existing major automation companies like #ServiceNow, #MS PowerPlatform, #Pega, #Appian, etc. are following that approach. They may claim their platform is for citizen developers but the reality is that, unless you are a software developer, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to create any proper solution on these platforms. (I am going by my experience and analysis of their platforms and not by their marketing messaging). On the other hand, you have companies like #Smartsheets, #Airtable, #Formstack, etc. which are easier to use (a non-developer should be able to use them) however, you can only create very rudimentary solutions using these platforms.?

I believe that it’s time for the industry to truly take the Multi-Core approach, i.e. enabling more and more people who are not developers to digitise their processes. This movement has already started and I believe that the current major players in the workflow automation domain are well aware of it. I think they have not been able to realistically jump on this wagon because of the amount of legacy baggage they carry and the shift they need in their operations (not just their products). We know the larger you are the harder this shift can be. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they cannot do it, I am saying it’s very difficult for them and doing so may require sacrificing short-term goals/numbers.

So, what’s the work to be done, you ask? Ok, a starting point would be “actually” enabling more and more non-developers to be able to digitise their processes end to end.?

We need to provide the means for them to create software applications easily and quickly. They should not need to learn how to code. No matter how much you claim your programming language is easy, it still is a programming language that requires developers. (yes, I am talking about you, Apps Script ??) .?

At Zenphi , we have tackled this by providing a flowchart-like design drag-drop experience. We believe if you know the process you’d like to automate, i.e. you can draw the process flowchart, you can automate it with #zenphi using only drag and drop. No need to learn any programming language, no need to write any code (although you can if you want), just drag and drop. By no means, this is the future of creating software applications. It’s just a stepping stone. In the not so distant future you will only need to tell zenphi what you want to automate and it would create it for you. However, the underlying tech is not there yet to be used for mission-critical applications. It’s very promising but still needs a few years.

Creating software? using a platform like zenphi has many of the same requirements as software created by a developer. It needs the whole lifecycle management; dev and debug, test, staging, production, etc. The tools you use to create the software would need similar features as the tools a developer uses. They need to have debugging capabilities, commenting, version control, the ability to easily find references for? each action, etc.

Again at zenphi we provide a lot of these capabilities for non-developers but we know that we are just scratching the surface and we have to constantly improve these experiences. I can tell you that our product’s roadmap has quite a few of these for the next three years. ??

In summary, the successful no-code automation/digitisation platform of the future is the one that understands that they are in the business of creating the tools required for non-developers to create software applications. This does not include the ones who are creating tools for developers to create software faster. Again, just to be clear, these companies are not going anywhere and developers will not be out of a job. The uptake of the modern no-code automation platform will mean that more processes will be digitised and developers will be focusing on software applications that have to be done by coding.?

How does this stack up against off-the-shelf products?

?We have been seeing more and more specialised off-the-shelf software and I don’t think that’s going to slow down. However, there are two things to consider:

1- There are and will be a ton of custom processes for each company that would require customisation levels that off-the-shelf products don’t offer. At the end of the day, the way a business operates is its IP and should not have to change.

2- The more off-the-shelf products companies use, the more processes they will have. You won’t normally perform a process on one platform only. Processes normally span across multiple platforms and include humans. This means you would still need to create an application to orchestrate the movement of the process across these platforms and bring in humans where required. This is another area where the modern no-code automation platforms come into the picture.?

Which company is best suited for this at the moment?

As I mentioned before, all the major automation platforms (this includes application building platforms like Mendix, etc.) are developer-focused. They like to say anyone can use them but realistically non-developers would find it extremely difficult to create working software on these platforms. On top of that, the platform is one thing and the GTM is another. These platforms are all way too heavy and expensive to be used for automating everyday operations. So the existing players need to revamp their platform as well as their operation to be able to offer something feasible for non-developers.?

Having said that, I truly believe Atlassian is uniquely positioned to be a major player in the space. Now they are not marketing themselves as a business process automation platform or application-building platform. However, people are using their products to achieve similar results. They use #Jira + #Confluence + #Trello to digitise processes. However, the last mile is normally done by a human or through coding. Ex. As part of off-boarding a user from a company, you need to disable his/her O365/Google Workspace account and revoke the associated licences. While scheduling the work can be done through Trello and/or Jira, and the steps can be documented in Confluence, the actual work of disabling the account is normally done manually by the IT. (the last mile is still manual)

Of course, #Atlassian still also needs a proper easy-to-use orchestrator which goes across all of their products and enables users to automate their processes end to end.?

But they are in a unique position:?

Their products are everywhere. In IT, HR, legal, small companies, and big companies. You name it. Their products are easy to use and targeted for non-developers. Their GTM is a lot leaner than companies of a similar size.?

And most importantly, a ton of users are already using their products to achieve similar results. The experience is just clunky at the movement because they are not integrated well. This could be because some of them came through acquisitions or because Atlassian never took a step back to look at their product with a zoomed-out view.

Anyway, that’s my view. With a small tweak to their offerings, they can help shape the evolution of software application building and maybe become the go-to platform.

Where does zenphi stand?

At #zenphi we put years of experience in the domain into practice. We are young which means we do not have the legacy baggage other businesses deal with, and are able to offer something which belongs to the current day and age. We are putting all the effort from all aspects of the business to provide the best possible platform for people to digitise their operations and automate their business processes. This includes everything at zenphi, from the platform to pricing, and support..

We already have a ton of capabilities that are futuristic for the existing players but we appreciate we are just at the beginning of the journey and there is a lot more we want to do. We are all very excited to be part of this journey and shaping the future of app building and process automation.