Here, we dive into what enterprise-level application development is, its goals, key features, and benefits, and how to build enterprise apps.

Key Insights

1. Tailor your app development: By creating an app tailored to your needs, you avoid spending money on an off-the-shelf solution that either falls short in terms of features or isn’t able to scale as your business grows.
2. Use a user-centric approach: By focusing on the needs of your end users, you both create more useful apps and encourage widespread adoption across your enterprise.
3. With Visual LANSA, you get a professional, low-code app development platform built to add quality and speed to your IBM i development projects.

What Is Enterprise Application Development?

Enterprise application development is a process of designing, deploying, and supporting software built for use in a large organization. What is an enterprise app? An enterprise app is different from a customer-facing app, which is usually designed for a broader user base. Enterprise applications, on the other hand, are built to help a company create more efficient workflows, better manage their data, or perform a specific, value-adding function.

Why Is Enterprise App Development Needed?

Enterprise app development is essential when your current tools, systems, or off-the-shelf applications can no longer meet the unique demands of your business. Whether you’re scaling operations, modernizing legacy systems, or improving internal and external experiences, custom application development can help your enterprise gain the power needed to bridge the gap.

Goals of Enterprise App Development

The goals of Enterprise App Development serve as the guiding force behind your dev lifecycle, because they decide which features you’ll include. Your overall goal, as a company, is not necessarily to turn your business into a software development enterprise. However, if you have multiple goals, you may end up building more than one app to meet them. Here are some of the goals many businesses focus on:

Automate Business Processes

EAD is a powerful tool for streamlining complicated or error-prone business processes because you can use it to automate multiple business-critical, time-consuming tasks. If streamlining business processes is one of your primary goals, you can start by identifying bottlenecks or manual tasks that are often prone to error.

For example, some businesses ask their employees to copy data from one application to another. This can add several hours to a work week, and it’s easy for employees to make mistakes along the way.

Improve Productivity

Enterprise application development is also effective at improving productivity, especially because you can first identify operational elements that hinder productivity and then use EAD to build a solution that addresses the problem.

For example, many companies struggle when it comes to collaboration. Even though employees can connect through online chatting tools, it can be difficult to share vast amounts of data as it is produced. However, you can build an application that automatically collects and shares project data. In this way, it enables workers in different locations to instantly share information and collaborate.

Enhance Security and Compliance

By using enterprise application development, you empower your team to create apps that meet your unique security needs. Similarly, it’s easier to stay within compliance regulations when you have control over how an app manages data and interacts with both your network and the internet.

Enable Scalability

When a business uses a typical, off-the-shelf application, it may not continue to meet its needs as the company grows. But, by using enterprise application development, you can adjust the scope of functions of each app you build as your organization evolves.

Gain Competitive Advantage

When you establish an enterprise application development program, you can create innovative solutions relatively quickly. In competitive markets, this can enable you to outperform your competition or reduce costs and then pass those savings on to your customers.

Streamline Data Analysis

Many enterprise apps process data produced by operations. In this way, they centralize important data, which makes it easier to collect and analyze. You can also use enterprise app development to build automated analytical systems that provide insights based on your data.

Key Features of a Successful Enterprise App

A successful enterprise app enables you to modernize fast and within budget while giving you enough features to improve:

Integration

Integration is a core element of any enterprise app that needs to unify data from different sources. You can integrate data from multiple applications you already use, using an enterprise app you develop as a central hub. This can save significant time because it eliminates the need for employees to switch back and forth between screens or even workstations.

Integration can be one of the more complicated facets of your app development. However, Visual LANSA makes this easier by providing you with a simple drag-and-drop interface, pre-made templates, and tools that save you time when it comes to cross-platform development. For instance, with LANSA, you can integrate data from a mobile app and one connected to a manufacturing process, uniting them in a central, easy-to-navigate dashboard.

Reliability

An enterprise app is beneficial because you have complete control of its design. Often, when you use an off-the-shelf solution, you may come across errors and bugs, simply because it’s a very complicated app designed to meet the needs of many different kinds of businesses.

Troubleshooting these issues or waiting for an update from the manufacturer can decrease productivity and hinder operations. But with EAD, you have control over the programming of each feature, and if issues arise, you can quickly address them right away.

Customizability

An effective enterprise app is often customizable because it has to meet the needs of multiple departments or different kinds of stakeholders.

For example, you can design an enterprise app that automatically writes emails that incorporate data from your product catalog. This can help the marketing team include the specifications of products that leads might be interested in. At the same time, you may want to make it customizable so the sales or product support teams can benefit from it as well. For instance, you can design the app to automatically pull product specifications for inclusion in a customer support ticket. By infusing this kind of flexibility, you will also gain widespread support for your EAD development program.

Benefits of Enterprise Applications

When building your own apps, you enjoy a number of benefits, several of which are hard to achieve when you simply buy a pre-made app:

Custom Data Flows for Better Decisions

Customized data flows that benefit your company’s decision-making processes. The data and analysis that help your company gain an advantage are likely very different than those of other organizations. When you build your own enterprise apps, you can make sure they collate the data you need for performing essential analyses.

Highly Flexible Features

With EAD, you’re not limited to the features a manufacturer assumes businesses in your sector need. Rather, you can design whatever helps your teams work more productively and make changes whenever necessary.

Improved Data Security 

Enterprise app development puts you in complete control of your data. Some companies are wary of trusting cloud-based apps because their data gets stored in an unknown, inaccessible server. But with EAD, you can decide where and when data moves and how to keep it secure.

Faster Development with Lower costs

The right development solution can save you a lot of time, especially when compared to hiring outside developers to build your app. For example, with a development platform like Visual LANSA, you get tools that make it easy to click and drag in features that could otherwise take many hours to code.

Yachiyo Industries, a Japanese company that manufactures automotive parts, experienced the benefits of Visual LANSA firsthand. Yachiyo wanted to bring its business systems development process completely in-house. Using Visual LANSA, Yachiyo’s team was able to build a web app for its parts molding process system. It plans to develop more solutions for 50 other parts processing systems across five different locations in Japan.

How to Build Enterprise Applications

Building a successful enterprise application involves assessing your needs and then breaking the process down into phases. Here are the basic steps successful organizations follow:

• Define goals. To define your goals, you have to identify the business problems you want to solve with the application you build. You also use desired outcomes to guide the goal-setting process. Getting the full scope of goals may require interviewing employees and other stakeholders regarding what they need or expect from the app.
• Design prototypes. The prototype design process starts with creating a page-by-page wireframe of the app. You then make some basic decisions about how the user interface will look and what the user experience should feel like.
• Develop the front end and the back end. The front end of your application should be user-friendly and responsive to different types of devices, such as laptops, phones, and tablets. The back end should enable dependable app functions and, if possible, optimize the cost of storing and managing data.
• Optimize your application. The first step in the optimization process is testing your app to see how it performs for different types of users and whether its features meet your goals. Optimization is also key as you fine-tune the user experience. Therefore, the optimization process often involves building several iterations, each one taking into account feedback from key users.

Technologies and Tools Used in Enterprise Application Development

Traditional enterprise application development typically involves many of the same Programming languages used in building applications for the general public. Some of these include Java, Python, C#, JavaScript, or Kotlin.

There are also frameworks and libraries, such as React and Angular, that can add consistency to the development process.

Many have turned to Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or Amazon Web Services for cloud-based applications.

However, low-code Enterprise application development eliminates the need for many of these tools by giving you pre-made components that you can simply combine to build your app. With low code, your team doesn’t have to know languages, such as Python, JavaScript, or Swift, to develop their applications.

This is where Visual LANSA can make a big difference. Visual LANSA’s pre-made tools and templates make it so even those with little to no prior development experience can build fully functional, professional applications. Whether you’re trying to streamline operations, automate repetitive tasks, develop a customer-facing web app, or something else, Visual LANSA can save you time and resources. Reach out today to learn more.

The post Enterprise Application Development: All you Need to Know appeared first on LANSA.

In this article, we will go through the methods, tips, and metrics to measure developer productivity. Moreover, we will discover a couple of ways to improve software developers’ productivity during the product development lifecycle.

What Is Developer Productivity?

Developer productivity refers to a developer’s ability to develop high-quality software solutions that operate as planned and are simple to maintain in a reasonable timeframe. In simple words, developer productivity is the measure of a developer’s performance that represents how productive a software developer is in any given matrix or time frame.

Why Is Measuring Developer Productivity Challenging?

Measuring developer productivity can be challenging because the impact of physical lines of code isn’t always proportional to the number of lines written. Also, pain points may arise during the development process, which can decrease productivity. With this in mind, instead of looking for the next big idea to increase productivity, it’s important to learn about these and other critical challenges. Here’s a bit more detail:

More Code Doesn’t Equal More Progress

Logical lines of code, where several actions can take place on a single line, differ from physical lines of code. Although adding extra comment lines is intended to make code easier to maintain, doing so will have the opposite effect. Parsimony and clarity frequently have trade-offs that are challenging to quantify with such a fundamental metric.

Customer Pain Points Impact Development Mid-stream

Some potential customer pain points may come up during the dev process — even while you’re measuring the developer’s productivity. These may include:

• Rapidly changing conditions
• Low developer productivity
• Lack of talent
• Difficult innovation processes
• Difficult integrations
• Modern usage limitations
• Finding ways to reduce high maintenance costs
• The need to scale to meet growing business needs

Prioritizing the Wrong Metrics

It’s easy to end up focusing on the wrong metrics, which can have a ripple effect on your incentivization as well. For example, rewarding developers for the number of hours worked while coding may encourage more work but may not result in more completed features of an app. Or merely rewarding programmers for the number of features they produce may not result in dependable, bug-free, effective code.

Measurement Paralysis

Measurement paralysis is when leaders get overwhelmed by the complexity of trying to measure developer productivity. This leads to frustration, and some may stop measuring it altogether. This could be because the perceived results of the measurement process may not feel like they’re worth the time and effort. Or, in some cases, leaders may fear measuring the wrong thing and don’t want to unnecessarily burden the dev team.

Benefits of Measuring Developer Productivity

When your measurement process helps developers produce high-quality programming in a reasonable amount of time, they flourish — both as creators and team members. They feel more eager to dive into creative projects and often produce more innovations as a result. At the same time, your business can set and reach more ambitious goals and grow faster as a result. It also aids organizations in building a software development estimation system, which plays a key role in the budget-building process.

Improves Business Performance

A business thrives when its developers are building innovations that benefit its bottom line. Developer productivity, therefore, has a direct impact on business performance. When you encourage productive, effective development practices, you also avoid the kind of laborious, slow development that can bring your innovative processes to a halt.

Delivers High-quality Software

Highly productive developers to produce better quality software. On the other hand, when productivity drops, it’s easy for more bugs and technical issues to creep into the end product. Even though you can catch many of these during the testing phase, they often end up reducing the quality of the software your end users get.

Reduces the Chances of Burnout

As you explore different ways how to measure developer productivity – and why to do so — reducing burnout may be at the top of your list. When your dev team finds themselves inundated with tedious tasks, they may get frustrated. On the other hand, when you choose to measure productivity using metrics they know exactly how to achieve, you reduce frustration and constantly reiterate the value of the programming they’re building.

Key Metrics for Measuring Developer Productivity

At the heart of all developer productivity tools lie the metrics needed to quantify the progress of your team members. Without metrics, leaders may fall into the trap of assessing progress based on whether a task is “done or not.” But by honing in on specific elements of the dev process, you can scaffold your evaluation system. This makes it easier for leaders to assess software developer productivity and for programmers to understand how they can improve.

DORA & SPACE Frameworks for Measuring Developer Productivity

DORA, which stands for DevOps Research and Assessment, consists of four primary metrics:

• Frequency of development
• The amount of lead time it takes to produce code
• The mean time to recovery (MTTR), which is the mean time it takes to recover from an incident or failure
• Change failure rate, which is the percentage of deployments that result in failures.

DORA can be effective when used properly, but it also has its flaws due to the limitations of each metric. For instance, frequency of development doesn’t take into consideration the quality of the end product. The same can be said when assessing based on the amount of lead time it takes to produce code.

SPACE is also an acronym, and it stands for:

• Satisfaction and well-being of the developers
• Performance of the product
• Activity, such as deployments and code commits
• Communication and collaboration between team members
• Efficiency and flow of the work process

SPACE is one of the more effective developer productivity metrics because it can measure how well a team is working together to produce high-performing software. At the same time, like DORA, it has limitations.

For example, to truly use SPACE effectively, you may have to take an extra step: You may need to grade each of the non-qualitative metrics using a performance-based coefficient. For instance, suppose the app only performed 6 out of 10 functions well even though the team scored high in the “C” (communication and collaboration) metric. It may make sense to qualify — or even reduce — the “C” score by a factor of 0.6. Otherwise, you risk ignoring the importance of performance in your productivity assessment process.

Regardless of the metrics you use, it’s important to use them thoughtfully and to factor in input from your dev team.

Healthy Metrics vs Vanity Metrics

Healthy metrics tend to refer to qualitative metrics, which measure the quality of performance, while vanity metrics typically refer to quantitative measurements, which measure the amount of work done. Here are some examples:

Healthy metrics

• Lead time it takes to implement effective changes
• Cycle time, or the amount of time it takes to produce effective code as part of a project
• Maintainable code created, which refers to the amount of code the team creates that’s easy to understand and change over time

Vanity metrics

• Number of code commits, which is the number of times the team produces code that they save to a repository
• Hours worked on a phase of a project
• The number of lines of code created

Tips to Improve Developer Productivity

You can improve developer productivity in several ways:

Specify the project specifications

Clearly define the project’s specifications. Moreover, it enables you to start working on the project immediately. Properly defined requirements can also help to ensure that test results are functional and effective. Properly defined requirements can also help to ensure that test results are functional and effective.

Optimize your Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Several IDEs have autocomplete, syntax highlighting, and real-time code analysis tools. By using IDEs with these kinds of features lets you speed up the development process, primarily because you save developers time. For example, each time the IDE autocompletes a coding phrase, the programmer saves a few seconds. Over hundreds of lines of code, these add up to significant time savings.

Eliminate unneeded or extra tests

Developers in today’s agile teams are responsible for testing. This may result in them frequently spending large amounts of their time on maintenance-related tasks. Reviewing and enhancing this maintenance work is an important step toward improving developer productivity.

One way to do this is to automate the code review process. You can use an automated system to assign code reviews to different people according to the code’s function. In that way, you send batches of code to those who are most likely to spot an issue with its function.

Minimize distractions and multitasking

Constant deadline alerts, open workspaces, and limited attention spans are all factors that may reduce the developer’s productivity. Likewise, when you work on multiple projects at once, it ends up taking a long time to complete all the to-do lists on time. Therefore, you should avoid attempts at multitasking.

In the IBM i space, LANSA offers a set of powerful tools that can boost productivity. This includes Visual LANSA, a low-code development platform that uses a visual, drag-and-drop interface to speed up the dev process. With Visual LANSA, even those without deep technical knowledge can build effective solutions quickly because they do not have to type in much manually — if any — code.

Experienced developers benefit from pre-built, thoroughly tested code they can combine to produce even very complex software. Instead of forcing developers to rely on a manual coding solution, you can give them Visual LANSA, and they can modernize IBM i apps and create powerful integrations in far less time.

Balancing Productivity with Developer Well-being

As you encourage your development team to improve its productivity, you can’t forget their well-being. Developers have stressful jobs, and it can be easy for them to let distractions and anxiety cloud their judgment, burn them out, or reduce the quality of their work.

With this in mind, it’s important to conduct regular check-ins, asking your developers:

• How they’re doing stress-wise
• Whether they’re achieving a healthy work/life balance
• If they feel personally satisfied with the quality of the product they are producing
• How they’re doing when it comes to eating well and getting enough sleep
• Whether they’re able to unplug after work or if they constantly think about code, perhaps dreaming about it or even waking up at odd hours of the night to build an idea

Use Visual LANSA to Improve Developer Productivity

By measuring developer productivity, you give your teams concrete goals they can use to build more effective solutions faster. You simultaneously boost their on-the-job satisfaction by taking into account their well-being and satisfaction with the development process.

In the end, a thoughtful development system also produces higher-quality end products that both your organization and your dev team can be proud of.

Visual LANSA, one of the first low-code business solutions, has a powerful, user-friendly IDE. Furthermore, it combines the benefits and ideas of low-code principles with the flexibility and also control of traditional programming.

Developers can build inside the IDE using Visual LANSA to develop a solution for intricate, complex processes and special integrations. Your developers can get started quickly building corporate applications with less code — without having to learn several complicated coding languages.

Are you ready to boost your developer productivity using LANSA tools? Contact us. You can also try out Visual LANSA for free.

The post How to Measure and Improve Developer Productivity: Tips & Metrics appeared first on LANSA.

For example, suppose you are working on a legacy application modernization project. Before diving into the planning phase, you need to accurately forecast the required time and effort. With an effective budget, you can secure the necessary funding for the project and enjoy a smooth, comfortable dev life cycle.

In this post, we guide you through software development estimation techniques and why they’re important. Let’s dive in.

What Is Software Development Estimation?

Software development estimation refers to determining the amount of effort required to deliver production-level software. It allows you to accurately predict the necessary funding, resources, and time.

By using the right software estimation methodologies, you can come up with accurate numbers for presenting a realistic budget to other decision-makers. This involves taking a few crucial steps ahead of time, such as:

• Establishing the project’s requirements and scope
• Gathering input from the dev team and other stakeholders
• Using historical budget figures from previous projects — if available
• Pinpointing the risks that could increase the amount of time, skills, or tools you need for the project
• Breaking down each element of the work involved

Producing dependable numbers may take a considerable investment of time and people power. Software development estimation alone can easily take two weeks or longer once you factor in the time needed to discuss each element of the project with different stakeholders, crunch the numbers, and identify issues that could pose risks.

Why Is Software Development Estimation Important?

Without reliable software estimation methods, you cannot predict how much effort, money, and time your team will need to complete the project. On the other hand, with the right software estimation methods, you empower your team to:

• Accurately allocate resources. In this way, you don’t commit too many or too few resources, including both funds and personnel.
• Collaborate around a singular goal. When everyone has the same detailed estimate in hand, they understand what they have to do, by when, and how much it should cost.
• Stress management. Developing software involves many intricate steps, all of which are dependent on each other — and this can stress out even very experienced developers. With the right time and resource estimate, software development projects are less prone to uncertainty, which reduces stress.
• Set the stage for more accurate time and budget forecasts in the future. Your estimation gives you invaluable data, a dependable starting point from which to start subsequent estimates.

However, keep in mind the estimate doesn’t provide the final software cost. Instead, it offers a range of potential expenditures. The goal of the software development estimation is to help you secure a budget and identify necessary resources. Once you have these pieces of the puzzle in place, you can begin development.

Components of Project Estimation

Even though every project is different when it comes to size, complexity, and the technologies needed, the core components of a reliable estimate generally remain the same. As you weave the following considerations into your software estimation methodologies, it’s important to be transparent and allocate resources fairly:

• Tasks. These involve a detailed breakdown of the work that your team or an external provider needs to complete.
• Human resources. Resources involve individual people, and you need to outline the qualifications and expertise of each team member.
• Technological resources. Your development environment consists of computers, IDEs, databases, and collaboration systems — and you have to identify each element and its costs.
• Rate. Your rate consists of a ratio that estimates the cost of production and the time it takes to develop the product. For instance, a small dev team may require $800 per day to complete a project.
• Duration. This is the total amount of time it will take to complete the project, from the moment the team starts building through to testing and your final product launch.
• Third-party services. These include what you may have to pay external consultants or developers to assist with elements of your project.

Steps in a Software Development Estimation Project

Before you plunge into the actual estimation process, it’s important to consider the answers to questions like:

• Do I need to break down the project into smaller milestones? Segmentation makes it easier to identify the resources each phase needs.
• Is it important to start asking questions? Task descriptions do not always offer a complete overview of the project, so asking questions helps you avoid making costly assumptions.
• Can leveraging experience help with the estimation? Have some team members worked on a similar project before? Try leveraging that experience.
• Should I use story point sequences? Developers use these to estimate the work required by tasks of different difficulty levels. For example, you could use small, medium, large, extra-large, XXL, etc. Or you could give each task a number in a Fibonacci sequence, such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.
• Should I set a maximum number of hours per task? Setting a maximum number of hours per task enables you to distribute time for the entire project effectively. If a task threatens to go beyond its limit, you can re-focus human, technological, or third-party resources accordingly.

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can use this step-by-step guide to structure your software development estimation process:

Assess Your Needs

Your needs include the objectives of the project, which features the final product needs to have, and the dependencies needed to support the front end.

Outline the Scope of the Project

Your scope describes how much work will be involved in building each component and feature. It also prioritizes which features are most important and which deliverables are the most crucial.

Decide on Your Software Estimation Methods

As we will discuss later in this guide, you should decide between methods such as bottom-up, three-point, and parametric estimation.

Delineate the Work Involved

This is where you dig deeper into the more granular elements of the development process. For instance, you should break down the number of hours it will take to build out the UI and UX of each screen.

Identify the Necessary Human and Technological Resources

To avoid overlooking crucial development components, you should assign resources to each element of the development process. While it may seem redundant, this may require writing the same name or development tool again and again throughout your estimation document.

Calculate Your Costs

In addition to people hours, your cost should also include how much you have to pay third-party developers. It also needs to incorporate expenses associated with monthly subscription fees for development tools or platforms.

Generate Your Estimate

Your final estimate should consist of a central document with all essential data points, including visual aids, such as charts and graphs, if necessary. Your goal is to make it easy for all stakeholders to understand. Ideally, the developers working on the project can also use it as a guide as they decide how much time to invest in each task and which ones to prioritize.

Continuously Monitor and Report

You need to assess actual performance versus your estimates. If the actual project requirements deviate from the estimate, you should immediately report this to stakeholders. It’s also important to analyze and report why.

Software Estimation Methodologies

You can give your estimation process some much-needed structure by incorporating one or more of the following time-tested methodologies:

Estimation by Analogy

Sometimes referred to as “analogous estimation,” Estimation by Analogy involves using data from past projects to estimate the costs and resources your project will involve. The key is to use a project that shares a number of similarities with the one you’re about to undertake. For instance, if you’re building a customer-facing eCommerce app, another eCommerce app would make a more suitable analogous example than an internal workflow automation app.

Use Case Points (UCP)

Taking a Use Case Points (UCP) approach involves identifying ways the software will be used, categorizing them based on complexity, and then assigning them weights. The weights then determine how much time each element of development will take.

For example, suppose you’re building an app for automatically updating inventory levels using sales and shipping data. A few Use Case Points may include:

• Listing the products in our existing inventory. Rating: Simple.
• Automatically updating changes in inventory levels in accordance with sales and existing shipments. Rating: Complex.
• Enabling automatic email messaging when inventory levels cross pre-designed thresholds. Rating: Average.

You then assign timeframes for each rating level, such as three days for Simple, 5 for Average, and 7 for Complex.

Bottom-Up Estimation

The Bottom-Up Estimation technique divides a project into tasks and subtasks. Because this outlines all of the tasks involved, you can easily come up with an accurate estimate. Also, the tasks and subtasks are straightforward to define and manage.

Bottom-up Estimation often results in a very detailed breakdown of tasks. To illustrate, suppose you develop for a manufacturer and you’re building an app that automatically sends critical equipment data to your maintenance team. One section of your bottom-up breakdown of tasks may look like this:

Build module gathering machine data

• Transform and clean machine data
  • Design filters to remove data produced while the machine is being tested by a technician.
  • Transform data by limiting the number of decimal points in doubles fields (Doubles fields are those in a database that allow numbers with decimal points.)
  • Decide which, if any, outliers to filter out, depending on their causes.
  • Design a system for filtering the applicable outliers based on their deviation from the mean.

Three-Point Estimation

The Three-Point Estimation technique involves providing three ranges of estimates from three data points. They tend to include the “best-case scenario,” “worst-case scenario,” and the “most likely scenario.” Each scenario gets a weighted average, and you factor this into your estimation method.

In other words, you begin with an estimated cost, such as $30,000, and then multiply it by the weighted average of each scenario. If $30,000 represents the most likely scenario, then perhaps the best-case scenario would be 0.88, and the worst-case scenario would be 1.15.

This means in a best-case scenario, the project would cost $30,000 x 0.88 = $26,400, and in a worst-case scenario, the project would cost $30,000 x 1.15 = $34,500.

Parametric Estimation

Parametric Estimation involves a statistical or mathematical approach. There are several steps:

1. Pinpointing the requirements, complexity, and technology of the project.
2. Analyzing similar projects and determining the amount of work required for software development.
3. Determining the cost by analyzing empirical relationships between the total tasks and the factors involved in the project.

This technique enables easier scalability without having to sacrifice accuracy. As the number of tasks and factors increase — or decrease — the cost of the project shifts accordingly.

Relative Sizing

Relative Sizing performs estimation by comparing or grouping different tasks together. For example, while using Relative Sizing, you might say, “Task A rates as a 3. Task B is twice as complex as Task A, so we give that a 6.”

You then assign cost estimations based on the relative sizes of each task. In some cases, this may result in very straightforward calculations, especially if you use a baseline cost for each unit. For instance, you could give a cost of $1,000 per unit. Using the example above, Task A would cost 3 x $1,000 = $3,000, and Task B would cost 6 x $1,000 = $6,000

Wideband Delphi

Wideband Delphi involves getting experts to estimate costs and then discuss discrepancies between their estimates until they reach a consensus.

To use a Wideband Delphi approach, you give each expert questionnaires, serving them in multiple rounds. You also have a facilitator, and their job is to summarize the findings of the survey.

Using Wideband Delphi, you may be able to reduce the cost and time it takes to develop your estimation, particularly if you condense the sessions into a relatively short period of time, such as three days.

What Are the Different Software Development Estimation Tools?

By combining the above methods with the tools below, you get a well-organized, easy-to-implement estimation system.

Work Breakdown Structure

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a tool that decomposes a project into smaller components. It provides the necessary framework for detailed cost estimation and control. Also, it supplies a guide for schedule development and control.

There are two representations to Work Breakdown Structures:

• Outline View, which gives a representation of the entire project. It uses numbers to record the various stages of software development.
• Tree Structure, which displays the final deliverable on top. Also, it shows a row of all project stages underneath.

Read: 5 Powerful Productivity Tools For IBM i Software Developers

PERT Chart

PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. A PERT Chart enables you to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project.

A PERT Chart utilizes a three-point activity estimating technique — M, O, and P.

• M refers to the most likely time and money required for the project.
• O stands for optimistic situation. It refers to the best-case scenario for completing the project.
• P stands for the pessimistic situation. It refers to the worst-case scenario.

When combined with actionable numbers, MOP simplifies the estimation process while also adding pragmatism to the process. This ups the ante for dev teams that may find themselves competing with other departments for funding.

Product Backlog

A product backlog is a prioritized list of tasks that need to be done to complete the project. It’s one of the more useful tools for software development estimation because you use story points to estimate the product backlog. It allows you to get an idea of the effort required to complete the project based on individual elements of the process. The most important tasks are shown at the top of the product backlog. Therefore, the development team knows what to deliver first.

Software Development Estimation: Do’s & Don’ts

Here are some best practices and things to avoid during the software development estimation process:

Do’s

• Break down large tasks into more manageable ones. The work and time involved in completing larger tasks is far more difficult to estimate than what goes into individual chunks of each milestone.
• Use historical data and previous experiences. The amount of time it took to do certain tasks provides a good starting point for estimating current to-do items.
• Use estimation methodologies. The methodologies outlined above add structure to your estimation process. They also make it easier to replicate when you have to assess the costs of future projects.

Don’ts

• Blindly guessing. You don’t want to just use a “gut feeling” as you estimate
• Using a one-size-fits-all approach. Due to the complexities of tasks, especially when you have to factor in different app requirements and development environments, each project is unique.
• Ignoring external factors. You have to also take meetings, code reviews, extensive testing, and other non-coding tasks into consideration.
• Setting your estimation in stone. Every estimate has to be flexible to account for real-world development conditions.

How can LANSA Help your Software Development Estimation Effort?

LANSA offers expert application development services, bringing over 35 years of experience to help your organization. Our deep development history makes us a reliable resource for both building your solution and giving you accurate estimations. Whether you need a detailed estimation via a consultation or you’d like us to take on some — or all of your dev process — our team is ready to put our expertise to work on your behalf.

Contact us to get started today.

References

Crowther, David. “Apple Releasing New iPhone but Still Trying to Find Next Big Thing.” Sherwood News, 6 Sept. 2024, sherwood.news/tech/apple-its-glowtime-iphone-event-finding-next-big-thing.

—. “The Billion-Dollar Price Tag of Building AI.” TIME, 3 June 2024, time.com/6984292/cost-artificial-intelligence-compute-epoch-report.

The post Software Development Estimation: A Quick Guide appeared first on LANSA.

This is where low-code digital transformation can make a huge difference. You can save time and money, perform the transformation in-house, and bring more stakeholders to the table.

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the process of using digital technology to make business operations more efficient and effective. It often involves automating processes using custom-designed workflows and/or software. Digital transformation is also used to glean business intelligence by harvesting and processing operational data. In this way, it enables you to reinvent your business with technology and gain an edge on the competition.

How Low Code Digital Transformation Benefits Different Industries

While virtually any industry can benefit from low code digital transformation, here are a few that often see significant productivity gains.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector often depends on legacy hardware and software that, while dependable, may not enable data-based insights or automated workflows. Using a digital transformation, manufacturers can pull data from different machines and software to automate their supply chains, order fulfillment, and how they procure materials.

IT

IT teams often use digital transformation to automate how they handle customer and employee requests. For example, they can take a laborious, manual ticket management system and automate it. In this way, they can automatically send each request to the best technician, reduce the time it takes to fix issues, and better organize their team.

Healthcare

Similar to manufacturing, healthcare organizations often wrangle with legacy systems that produce data in silos. Using digital transformation, healthcare organizations can unify data from billing, accounting, inventory, and their scheduling system to run more efficiently. In this way, they can serve more patients while providing better care to each one.

Why Is Digital Transformation Important for Your Business?

Digital transformation is important for your business because it future-proofs your organization and gives you a competitive advantage. Here’s how low-code digital transformation gives you an edge.

Improving Operational Efficiency

By using low-code digital transformation to automate core processes, you can operate more efficiently, saving time without sacrificing quality of service.

For example, a transportation company with a distributed architecture can design an automated workflow that chooses the closest driver to the warehouse where they’ll pick up an order. They can also automatically calculate the distances between pickup and delivery points and then have the system use this data to choose the most fuel-efficient vehicle, taking capacity and road conditions into consideration as well.

Boosting Employee Satisfaction

Digital transformation low code improves employee morale by reducing the number of tedious, time-consuming tasks they have to do. In some cases, a digital transformation may free up so much time that employees get the opportunity to use their creativity and business prowess to help create meaningful solutions. By honoring their mental capacity instead of relegating them to tasks a computer can do, you make them feel like valuable additions to the team.

Gaining an Edge on the Competition

Whether you want to outsell your competition by lowering prices or producing a higher-quality product, low-code digital transformation can play a key role. When you weave automation into lengthy processes, you can produce more in less time — and while spending less money on payroll. This can reduce overhead and enable you to charge less than your competition.

In many cases, using low-code digital transformation to automate elements of your customer service can make it easier to serve more customers in less time and with less staff. This makes it possible to respond to customer requests faster than the competition and provide satisfying results quicker.

Digital Transformation Objectives

The purpose of a digital transformation is to add efficiency and improve the quality of your end results, both of which have a positive impact on your customers and employees.

Do More with Less Time

By doing more in less time, you can significantly cut costs. For instance, a wholesale company can use low-code digital transformation to automate its inventory management system and integrate it with its ordering solution. Therefore, instead of scrolling through spreadsheets looking for parts and components, those in charge of order processing simply have to quickly approve or adjust the orders their automated system generates.

Improve Customer Experiences

Customers’ tastes and needs change frequently, which makes agility essential to any modern business plan. Using low-code digital transformation, you can build workflows that make creating new ideas and implementing customer feedback faster and simpler.

For instance, a consultant can build a cost estimation system using low code and give it to their customer at the end of their engagement. This empowers the customer to perform some of their own cost analysis using a custom-built app, designed specifically for their needs. How many consultants deliver that? The competitive advantages, especially when it comes to customer satisfaction, are one of the primary benefits of low-code development.

Integration for Data-Based Decisions

The work involved in gathering data is enough to hamper the efforts of even highly motivated decision-makers. But with low-code digital transformation, you can build a system that automatically pulls data produced by business apps and processes. You can also make the solution produce reports that generate business insights based on the data.

How Does Low Code Support Digital Transformation?

Low code supports digital transformation by making it fast and easy to build apps and automated workflows.

The leading low-code platforms provide you with drag-and-drop tools that make it easy to build effective solutions. They also come with pre-built components that have been tested for stability, giving you a more reliable end product.

Bringing More Experts to the Dev Table

Low-code digital transformation platforms give those with little to no development experience the ability to contribute to dev projects. You don’t need to hire external experts or send internal employees to coding school. They can hit the ground running, building strong solutions right away.

Reducing Time-to-Market

By building and testing more iterations quicker, you enable faster deployment. Also, instead of having to pour through hundreds or thousands of lines of code to fix a bug, you can quickly narrow down the source of the problem by focusing on each low-code component and their connections to the database and each other.

Closing Talent Gaps

A development platform that is easier to use is more accessible to those with little knowledge of specific programming languages. Armed with a low-code digital transformation platform, you pave the way for business leaders and experienced managers to leverage their years of experience to build winning solutions — even if they’re relatively new to programming.

Lowering Costs

You don’t have to hire expensive specialists, send existing employees back to school, or pay for many hours of development time. Since low-code tools offer easy onboarding and a gentle learning curve, you can stick with your in-house team, often without affecting your salary figures at all.

Solving Digital Transformation Challenges

Here are some common challenges and ways low-code digital transformation can solve them:

• Long digital transformation projects may take many months. With low code, you can often produce a minimum viable product (MVP) in a few weeks instead of several months.
• Employees who prefer the old way. Intransigent or somewhat reticent employees can be brought right into your development team because low code is so easy to use. This empowers them, gains their support, and makes them feel like a valued part of the solution.
• Integrating the data from legacy systems. Using a low-code platform that supports many different data formats, you can build automatic data transformations that bridge the gap between legacy systems and your modern solution. In some cases, your low-code solution may have presets matching the exact kinds of data you need to integrate.

To learn more about how low-code can solve even more challenges and bring broad benefits to your organization, check out our complete guide to low-code development.

How Can LANSA Support Digital Transformation Goals

LANSA gives you all of the benefits of low-code app development, making what would otherwise be complex, time-consuming digital transformations smooth and efficient.

Reface Legacy Applications

While there are many low-code use cases and examples, refacing legacy applications is one of the most helpful, primarily because it makes it possible to keep your legacy apps and hardware. With LANSA, you can quickly build modern user interfaces by porting data from legacy IBM i applications. Users will feel like they’re using a modern web app.

Expand Applications by Transporting Them to the Web

Expanding on-premise applications to the web is one of the best ways to reinvent your business with technology, especially because it gives disparate, remote workers access to the apps they need to do their jobs from anywhere. LANSA’s low-code digital transformation platform streamlines this process by providing you with pre-designed templates and workflows that make transporting apps to the web fast and easy.

Develop New Apps from Scratch

Have a great idea for an app but lack the time or resources to build it? No problem. With LANSA’s low-code digital transformation tools, you don’t have to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, never mind Swift and Kotlin, to create great apps from scratch. Just drag and drop your components into place and craft effective business logic and a user-friendly interface in a fraction of the time it would take with hard coding.

Extend Apps by Adding Mobile Functionality

You can accelerate your digital transformation with low code in the cloud and, as a result, add mobile functionality for end users. When you use LANSA to build a cloud-based solution, you essentially lift a legacy app into a cloud environment. In the same manner, you can create new apps in the cloud — or build ones that enable cloud-hosted automated workflows — making them available to teams and customers across the country or the world.

Use Low-Code Development for Agile Digital Transformation Innovation

With LANSA, you can introduce unprecedented agility to your organization because LANSA’s drag-and-drop programming tools are so simple to use. This cuts the time between ideation and MVP down to a few weeks — or even less — depending on the complexity of your app idea. When customers or competition come up with an idea that necessitates a quick pivot, LANSA’s tools make it easy to build an effective solution quickly.

Leverage LANSA’s Development Services

Don’t want to build your solution yourself? No problem. LANSA’s application development services can handle it for you. After getting to understand your business model, goals, and ideas, LANSA’s team can translate them into an MVP and then test and improve it. The team can also incorporate adjustments and ideas along the way, if necessary.

Low-Code Trends That Speed up Digital Transformation

The following trends are making low-code development even faster, which increases your agility while reducing your costs.

AI-Powered Development

AI’s prowess in producing custom, hard code is well-documented, but it’s also helpful when building low-code solutions. At times, you may need to use some hard coding to customize a low-code project. If so, you can have a generative AI system write the code for you.

AI can also design your business logic and database layouts. This adds speed to the ideation and creation process.

Also, if something malfunctions, you can describe your architecture and tools to an AI-powered system, and it can tell you what may be the problem.

A Stronger Focus on Security

Security is more top of mind than ever before thanks to a plethora of hackers lurking through the web. But low-code digital transformation tools can limit the number of vulnerabilities that could keep you up at night.

For instance, when dealing with a reputable low-code platform like LANSA, you do not have to worry about using framework components that hackers have found ways to exploit. You also get components that the platform will continue to support, unlike many frameworks, which are riddled with deprecated components.

Mobile-First Design Principles

Mobile-first design involves building apps designed to fit the screens and conform to the workflows users expect while using mobile devices. Low-code tools are now incorporating pre-made building blocks that look great on mobile devices and use functions native to iOS and Android operating systems.

Enable Cost-Effective, Stable, Secure Digital Transformations with Low Code

You can enable a digital transformation program that gives you agility, stable apps and workflows, and secure end products with LANSA’s low-code platform. In addition to adding convenience and speed, LANSA also reduces your development costs. Learn more by connecting with a LANSA expert today.

The post Digital Transformation Using Low-Code appeared first on LANSA.

Time-consuming programming is one of the biggest challenges with business process integration. But with low-code automation, you can develop a system that’s both fast and fast to build — without compromising quality. Not only do you save time and money by using a low-code platform to create your automation system, but you may also end up with a more reliable, easier-to-maintain solution.

What is Low-Code Automation?

Low-code automation refers to a method of developing software where the user can take advantage of visual interfaces and prebuilt tools. In this way, they can create automated workflow solutions faster, as well as test and deploy them. Even if a user has very little coding experience — or none at all — they can still build fully functional automation applications.

For a breakdown of general low-code app-building, check out our Complete Guide to Low Code Development.

Benefits of Low-Code Automation

While traditional automation typically requires deep knowledge of programming languages, low-code automation platforms make programming accessible to a wide range of professionals. In this way, they provide many of the general benefits of low-code app development, including:

Easy-to-use Tools

The principles and building techniques that drive low-code automation solutions are relatively easy to understand. This eliminates the need to hire expert developers. In some cases, departments can create automation solutions without even having to rely on the IT department for help.

Design According to Customer Needs

One of the most successful best practices when it comes to developing any solution is to design with the end user in mind. Low-code automation tools make it easier to meet this objective because those who build the system are those who are most in touch — and in tune — with customers or internal end users.

Also, if there’s a sudden change in the market or what end users need, an organization that uses internal programmers to build low-code solutions can react to these much faster. This is because you shrink the gap between programmers and end users.

More Value, Yet Less Expensive

An automation system needs to be made of solid, reliable components that minimize downtime and loss of data. They also need to be easy to audit and check for security issues. With a low-code development environment, you use premade tools consisting of tested components. This adds stability to the end product while also making it easier to check for potential issues down the line.

Enhanced Agility and Development Efficiency

Low-code workflow automation makes it easy to build and edit processes. As a result, you can quickly make changes to existing processes in response to evolving demands. A low-code automation platform also makes it easier to stay in line with regulatory adjustments and client demands because altering the system may involve simply switching out one component for another.

How Can Low-Code Automation Benefit Your Business?

Low-code process automation isn’t about only building solutions for one or two departments. Rather, it gives you the ability to automate processes for many, if not all, departments that use computers in their workflow. When using low-code business process automation, you can:low-code

Use Domain Experts to Build Solutions

Thanks to its ease of use, a low-code automation platform lowers the barrier of entry for many who would normally not get involved in the programming process. This often includes people with years of experience performing business-critical jobs or serving customers. By bringing these domain experts to the table, you ensure the automations you design add genuine speed and accuracy to your target workflows.

Low-Code Automation Use Cases

What is low-code business process automation in terms of specific industry use cases? Similar to the variety of general low-code use cases and examples, a diverse mix of industries can benefit from low-code automation platforms.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Using low-code automation, pharmaceutical organizations don’t have to invest much money in speeding up their processes and making them more accurate. Ss workflows get more and more complex, it’s easy for inefficiencies to creep into the testing and analytical systems pharmaceutical companies depend on. But the right low-code platform makes it easy to create automated systems for gathering data about drug performance, analyzing the effects on target patients, and pinpointing how to adjust the formulas for different medicines.

Education

Schools, at all levels, have to constantly manage data regarding students, faculty, and staff to improve the quality of education and retain the most talented professionals. By using a low-code automation solution, stakeholders can build automatic workflows that make it easier to process critical information. In many cases, an automated workflow can speed up the process of analyzing data and giving teachers the opportunity to use the resulting insights to improve student learning.

Home Loans

The mortgage industry consists of many interdependent parts, all of which have to work together to keep lenders profitable and provide much-needed liquidity to borrowers. Identifying the right mortgage, processing applications, and underwriting often involve many repetitive tasks that are relatively straightforward to automate using a low-code platform.

For example, you can set up a system that automatically replies to emails and distributes customer questions to the right agent. You can also build a solution that automatically completes the majority of application forms or imports borrower data, copying it from one form to another.

Software Development Companies

Not only can local development add tons of speed to the process of building software, but it also makes it easier to meet the demands of customers. For example, you can easily create a system for automatically processing support tickets, making sure they’re assigned to the right individual based on both expertise and current workload.

One of the most common use cases for low-code automation is in testing software. Rather than having users or internal staff manually click through newly built pages and components, you can use an automated solution to test user interfaces and connections with databases and other dependencies.

A Real World Example of Low-Code Automation

Australian company Greens General Foods had implemented a number of changes to their ERP system, resulting in systems that were either hard to maintain, error-prone, or both. They needed to wind back these modifications without sacrificing the custom functionality that comes with seamless data integration.

Green’s turned to LANSA Composer, a low-code platform designed for building automated workflows.

Green’s used LANSA Composer to:

• Pull picking confirmations out of their Windows-based warehouse management system.
• Apply validation rules regarding order quantity and available inventory.
• Send alerts regarding inventory levels in relation to order quantity.
• Trigger billing in their BPCS (Business Planning and Control System) and send an automatically generated invoice to an electronic data interchange (EDI) server.

Green’s commented that the system they built using a combination of LANSA Composer and an aXes-Robot “turned out to be a very good solution” because “Composer does the orchestration and contains the business rules and smartness, while aXes-Robot helped us with ‘the last mile’ of integration that would otherwise have meant that we needed to continue to develop custom programs.”

Low-Code Automation Challenges

Even though low-code automation creation solves many problems, there are a few challenges you may want to keep in mind as you choose your solution:

• Governance. It’s important for everyone involved to understand their responsibilities when it comes to data security, high-level organizational goals, and other governance-related issues. This may require very direct training to ensure your staff understands the what and why of development.
• Onboarding. Those that have never developed software before will need training. But even experienced developers might need a few days to get used to using a low-code solution.
• Limited customization with some platforms. In some cases, A low-code platform may have solid, prebuilt components, but they may be very difficult or impossible to modify. In many cases, you can overcome this using a few lines of custom code.

How to Get Started with Low-Code Automation

Getting started with low-code automation is relatively simple if you use the following steps:

1. Identify which systems you need to automate. This involves bringing several stakeholders to the table, asking about efficiency issues, and figuring out which individual tasks you can automate.
2. Get executives and managers to buy in. This will be essential when it comes to change management. Encourage your higher-ups to embrace low-code tools and praise those who may be diving into development for the first time.
3. Choose the right low-code platform. It should give you the flexibility and high-quality components you need to deliver dependable automation solutions. It should also make it easy to set up third-party data integrations and integrate data from your internal applications.

Improve the Quality and Speed of Your Automation Development with Low Code

Like Green’s General Foods and other organizations, you can use LANSA Composer to maximize the benefits and minimize the challenges of low-code automation. LANSA Composer gives you access to a visual interface and drag-and-drop tools that dramatically speed up the development process. LANSA Composer also comes with prebuilt, well-tested components that are easy to implement and add simplicity to the app maintenance process.

To learn more about the potential of LANSA Composer for building your automation solutions, connect with an expert today.

References

1. What Is Low Code? IBM.com. Accessed November 26, 2024. https://www.ibm.com/topics/low-code
2. Onoufriou, A. (2024) Safety Risks and Security Threats in Low-code Software Development, utwente.nl. Accessed November 26, 2024. http://essay.utwente.nl/101101/1/OnoufriouBAEEMCS.pdf

The post Low Code Automation: Everything you Need to know appeared first on LANSA.

But before you can benefit from the advantages of low code, you need to choose the best platform. Here’s a breakdown of the 10 best low-code platforms for building applicatio

What Are the Best Low Code Development Platforms?

The top 10 low-code development platforms are:

1. Visual LANSA: Best for its user-friendly drag-and-drop workflows, range of integration possibilities, and pre-built tools.
2. Appian: A good choice because it comes with intuitive tools that make it easy to visualize the data flows of the app you build.
3. Appsmith: A solid option for experienced developers who want to build complex solutions faster.
4. Power Apps: Power Apps gives you access to the Microsoft ecosystem, making several integrations simple and intuitive.
5. WaveMaker: A great option for developers who enjoy building with React.
6. Superblocks: Plenty of pre-made components and many integration options.
7. Nintex: Built-in RPA features make it easier to build efficient workflows.
8. Mendix: Ideal for agile development due to its collaboration tools.
9. Studio Creatio: Features no-code design options and pre-made machine-learning functions.
10. Caspio: Caspio provides an attentive team to guide you through its intricate building processes.

What Is a Low-Code Platform?

A low-code development platform gives you a set of pre-made tools that you use to build your solutions. With low code, you also have the ability to code in certain functions manually. This makes it different than no-code platforms, which are essentially black-box solutions. In other words, while low code lets you adjust and customize your application manually, no code doesn’t provide the same freedom.

For example, suppose you run a manufacturing plant, and you are using a low-code platform to automate the flow of components between inventory and your assembly line. Your low-code solution may come with several components that you need to construct your app quickly. At the same time, you also want to automatically send alerts to specific people on the assembly line when one of the components they need is delayed. But your low-code platform does not have a widget for that.

In this case, you could drag and drop most of your application components into place and then use custom coding to integrate the automatic messaging feature. This kind of versatility draws organizations with changing needs towards low-code options.

Benefits of Low Code Platforms

What is a low-code platform in terms of the advantages it gives your business? There are several benefits of low-code app development, many of which stem from its ease of use. For example, with low code, you can:

Produce Complex Applications Very Quickly

Since the vast majority of your building experience involves pre-made components, creating an application is a lot like constructing an apartment building out of pre-fabricated pods. You simply put components on top of and next to each other and make sure everything has the right connections so they can interact appropriately.

Simple, Accessible Workflows

With a low-code platform, regular business users with only some coding knowledge can become effective developers.

For example, a regular business user with zero coding experience can literally piece together an application using low-code tools.

Less Human Error

Low-code development platforms come with stable components that have been well-tested, making it extremely unlikely for broken code to rear its head in one of your widgets. Traditional, hard coding is often fraught with human error.

For instance, leaving out a simple semi-colon in a line of JavaScript code could render your application useless. However, with low code, the underlying code of each component has already been tested.

Stay a Step Ahead of the Competition

Your competition is working hard to gain an advantage in the market, but with low code, you can innovate solutions that improve profitability and performance very quickly.

For example, your HR department could use low code to build an onboarding app for new hires, one that collects their data and even provides training materials.

Broader Collaboration Across Your Organization

What is a low-code platform in the context of improving organizational efficiency? Using a low-code platform, your teams can collaborate on projects faster and easier while also producing higher-quality end products. Since the best low-code development platforms give you easy-to-use tools, people across your organization can learn how to build with them.

Easier Maintenance and Upgrades

While maintaining and upgrading traditionally coded solutions is expensive and time-consuming, it’s relatively fast and convenient with an application built using one of the best low-code platforms.

For example, suppose you built an application that facilitates communication between two departments. If you wanted to add another department, upgrading your application may involve simply dragging, dropping, connecting, and configuring one or two widgets.

Low Code Platform Features

The most common features of low-code platforms make it easier for inexperienced programmers, as well as veterans, to build effective solo options quickly. Some features you can expect to see in low-code development platforms include:

Drag-and-drop tools

Gives you the ability to simply drag pre-built components into your design interface while writing zero or very little code.

Pre-made templates

The best low-code development platforms come with templates that already include widgets and workflows for common use cases. You can use one of these as a starting point or inspiration.

Visual modeling tools

Top low-code development platforms give you tools you can use to model how data moves through your application or the structure of workflows.

Integration features

You get deep connectivity with other applications and third-party systems.

Cross-platform compatibility

You can build apps that work on iOS, Android, Windows, Apple OS, and other operating systems using the same tools.

Scalability

If you have a scalable platform, you can add more users and increase your development workloads without impacting performance.

Reporting and analytics

Some platforms come with analytics tools that show you how users interact with it and how your system performs.

Automated testing

Low-code solutions often have testing systems that automatically check for bugs as you work, which can shave precious hours off the development lifecycle.

Rapid prototyping

With the speed of low code, you can produce prototypes very quickly and get them into the hands of shareholders so they can provide feedback.

Security features

The best low-code development platforms have built-in security workflows and tools, such as user authentication and encryption, which infuse enhanced security into your development process.

To better understand the features and benefits of low code, you can read our complete guide to low-code development.

How to Choose a Low-Code Platform

Every low-code platform is different, which makes it difficult to choose the right one. To simplify the process, you can start by considering the various low-code use cases and examples that align with your industry. It also helps to take some time to examine what you need and why. Here are some questions you can ask while considering your options:

Which Problems Do We Need Applications to Solve?

By starting with this question, you can make a short list of the features your low-code development solution needs to have. For example, if your IT department needs to automate its ticket processing system, you could look for a platform that has modules that automatically send emails and forward data from one tech support person to another. In some cases, you may be able to find a platform with a template designed to perform a task you need.

Who Will Be Using Our Development Platform?

Asking this question helps you both choose a solution that’s easy enough to use and decide how many licenses you will have to purchase. For example, if three experienced developers plan to use your solution, your top options may be different than if you have 20 regular business users who plan to start developing.

What Are Our Integration Requirements?

You may have to integrate existing applications or databases. This means you will want to choose a platform that works well with each of these solutions. If the platform you choose doesn’t integrate with an app you already use, you may have to evaluate the cost and time involved with acquiring one that does integrate with your top low-code development choice.

What Are Our Most Important Outcomes?

Your organizational priorities should have more power than merely wanting to use the latest and greatest development solution. This requires listing out the outcomes you want to achieve. For instance, some companies prioritize speedy development, while others are more focused on building higher-quality applications.

What Role Will Our Platform Play in Our Organization?

Some solutions may work better with your existing workflows than others. For some organizations, getting a new platform is the first step in completely revamping their current development system. By identifying how it will fit in your company, you make it easier to narrow down the features you need.

Overview of the Best Low Code Development Platforms

Now that you understand the benefits and how to choose the right solution, you’re ready to start shopping. Here are the ten best low-code development platforms, their standout features, integrations, pros, and cons.

Visual LANSA

Standout features: Visual LANSA gives you drag-and-drop components that are easy to customize with minimal coding. The LANSA team periodically releases UI/UX upgrades that improve and speed up the development process. Visual LANSA comes with plenty of pre-built templates you can use to get started on common projects or make sure the one you are building from scratch has the features it needs. It also comes with a centralized active repository engine, so you can set up your logic once and then deploy it across multiple modules.

You also get cross-platform development with Visual LANSA, so there’s no need to build multiple versions of the same app for iOS, Android, Windows, etc.

Why Visual LANSA made the top 10: Visual LANSA is the best combination of ease of use and versatility. It also makes it simple to design responsive solutions, which are those that look good and function well, regardless of the device you’re using. The LANSA team also supports you throughout your development process, offering guidance and tips to make sure your apps meet your objectives.

Integrations: Visual LANSA integrates with many of the leading ERPs and CRMs, making it easy to weave your solutions into your current ecosystem. With Visual LANSA’s diverse mix of integrations, you also future-proof your ecosystem against data siloes when you have to add a new application to your software stack.

Pros:

Visual LANSA provides a speedy workflow that makes it easy to build high-quality apps quickly without needing extensive coding knowledge. Its templates give you even more speed and high-quality, stable components result in effective, dependable applications.

Cons:

It may be hard to find extensive, detailed articles or comments on discussion boards about how to troubleshoot issues while working with Visual LANSA. However, the LANSA team can help you address any issues.

Verdict: All-in-all, Visual LANSA gets the top spot due to its versatility, ease of use, and integration capabilities.

Appian

Standout features: Appian stands out for its intuitive workflows and visual tools. With Appian, you can connect different nodes using lines that represent data flows and integration connections. When it comes time to review your work or make improvements, it’s relatively easy to see how everything connects. The same goes for when you have to present your app to other stakeholders: Demonstrating how components interact is straightforward.

Why Appian made the top 10: Appian gives developers a potentially very fast app-building platform, primarily due to a mix of drag-and-drop design tools and a diverse mix of integrations. Thanks to the number of apps and platforms Appian integrates with, there’s a good chance you already work with some of the tools Appian can share data with, which prevents you from having to buy or subscribe to another tool just to incorporate a basic integration.

Integrations: Appian integrates with several tools in the Google suite, such as Cloud Vision, Drive, Maps, and reCAPTCHA. It also integrates with MariaDB, Azure LUIS, Dynamics 365 MySQL Data Source, SharePoint, and Snowflake.

Pros:

• Plenty of visual development tools
• A deep pool of integrations
• Intuitive workflows enable speedy development

Cons:

• Relatively expensive, especially for smaller businesses
• Limited customization options due to rigid rules for some components

Verdict: Appian is a solid choice for larger enterprises with considerable development budgets. Once users get used to Appian’s workflow, they can build solutions fairly quickly.

Appsmith

Standout features: Appsmith gives you the power to build web applications by providing you with a combination of widgets and pre-built tools. The primary focus of Appsmith is rapid development. In addition to drag-and-drop build tools, users also get git-based version control, which may speed up the development process.

Why Appsmith made the top 10: Appsmith gives you the ability to easily include your own JavaScriopt code as well as reuse blocks of code across your applications. You also get an editor that works a lot like a traditional integrated development environment (IDE). For example, similar to VS Code, Appsmith’s environment automatically completes coding phrases and provides you with debugging information. You also get multi-line editing capabilities, which can speed up the code-writing process as well. Appsmith also comes with role-based access controls, which increase the security of your dev processes.

Integrations: You can integrate Appsmith with popular database options, such as Supabase, MongoDB, and MS SQL. It also integrates with Google Cloud Platform, OpenAI, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Jira.

Pros:

• A developer-friendly low-code solution.
• Easy-to-understand drag-and-drop features.
• Open-source, which can make it easier to customize.

Cons:

• Not as many pre-built templates as some other options.
• You may have issues when working with large datasets.

Verdict: Appsmith is a good option for experienced traditional programmers who want to dramatically speed up their development processes.

WaveMaker

Standout features: WaveMaker enables rapid prototyping and development thanks to its drag-and-drop features. It also comes with a variety of pre-built templates that make it easy to get your project started right away by jumping into editing. You also have access to real-time collaboration tools, which enable a more inclusive, efficient development process.

Why WaveMaker made the top 10: WaveMaker is one of the easier-to-use low-code platforms, which makes it an attractive option for organizations that want to bring non-techy stakeholders into the development mix. It also has a mobile-first focus, which may appeal to organizations looking to build apps for remote workers or teams. WaveMaker gives you built-in security compliance as well, which makes it a strong option for financial institutions.

Integrations: You get integrations with Sharepoint, Quickbase, Yammer, Google Calendar, GitHub, and Bitbucket.

Pros:

• Plenty of built-in templates.
• Streamlined design processes.
• Convenient customization using JavaScript.

Cons:

• If you don’t have coding skills, it may be harder to customize it for very specific needs.
• Steep learning curve.

Verdict: WaveMaker may be a good choice for companies that require built-in security tools. It’s also a nice option for companies with a mobile-first development approach.

Power Apps

Standout features: Power Apps is Microsoft’s attempt to make app-building faster and easier for people of all technical backgrounds. Microsoft built Power Apps to make building apps with some of your favorite Microsoft solutions much faster. This includes Power BI, Automate, Virtual Agents, and Pages. In this way, it gives people who used to spend endless hours building with these solutions a far more efficient option.

Why Power Apps made the top 10: Even though Power Apps is Microsoft-specific, it gives you so many options for working within that ecosystem, it can be a compelling solution for Microsoft devotees. It comes with more than 500 pre-designed connectors that enable you to import data across a number of applications using Azure. You also have access to intelligent automation, which gives you the power to automate time-consuming processes, including those you’ve been handling manually with legacy software.

Integrations: Various services on the Microsoft Power Platform, as well as Twitter, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox, Jira, Google Drive, Slack, Jotform, and Freshdesk.

Pros:

• Automates a broad range of Microsoft-native functions from your Microsoft apps
• Very scalable, thanks to Azure implementation
• Many pre-designed tools

Cons:

• Limited functionality outside of the Microsoft ecosystem and the available integrations.
• Formulas in custom scripts may be hard to work with.

Verdict: Power Apps can be an effective solution for organizations with many existing applications from the Microsoft ecosystem. If you’ve been struggling with customizing your Microsoft apps, Power Apps can save you considerable time.

Superblocks

Standout features: Superblocks features drag-and-drop components designed for those who want to build internal applications that add efficiency through automated workflows. It comes with diverse integrations, welcoming APIs, and many of the big-name databases.

Why Superblocks made the top 10: Superblocks comes with more than 100 native components that you can combine to build user-friendly interfaces. You also get 1-click deployment, which makes the process of building and testing iterations just a little faster. Users can also access Superblocks’ observability features. If, for instance, your organization has partnered with a third-party observability service to watch your ecosystem for cyber threats, Superblocks streamlines the process of sending them logs they can use to better monitor your environment.

Integrations: You can integrate Snowflake, Postgres, Google BigQuery, MongoDB, Amazon S3, Google Sheets, GitHub, Google Drive, Slack, and Salesforce.

Pros:

• Broad range of integrations.
• User-friendly development environment.
• Quick, simple version deployment.

Cons:

• Limited customization options.
• Some find it hard to write code inside Superblocks’ browser.

Verdict: Superblocks is an impressive solution for those who need a wide range of integrations. If you commit to one of the environments Superblocks integrates with, you can use it to build solutions that span your entire ecosystem. But the customization and code-writing limitations may be an issue.

Nintex

Standout features: Nintex provides process automation tools that may be relatively familiar to experienced developers. Its robotic process automation (RPA) features can make many simple yet time-consuming tasks far easier and quicker.

Why Nintex made the top 10: Nintex comes with some features that may be hard to find in other low-code platforms, such as full visibility into all workflows on a single screen. This makes it easier to visualize the connections between different segments of your workflows. You can also use Nintex’s RPA features to quickly generate documents, for instance, saving time on repetitive tasks that would normally take several hours each week.

Nintex also gives government agencies access to a FedRAMP-authorized cloud for building more efficient workflows.

Integrations: Integrate with Amazon S3, Openweather, Outlook, Accuweather, Slack, Signiflow, Azure AD Groups, Google Translate, Smartsheet, and Bacon Ipsum.

Pros:

• Helpful tech support team.
• Secure solution-building option for government agencies.
• A relatively robust community.

Cons:

• High price point.
• Less-than-intuitive user interface, especially for beginners.

Verdict: Nintex is a versatile solution for developers who already have a good amount of experience building solutions. While it may not have as many integrations as some other options, the ones it includes open the way for a range of creative solutions.

Mendix

Standout features: Mendix gives users a very intuitive workflow by providing a simple wizard to get started. You can choose from pre-made templates with many features that may carry over into your final app. It also provides advanced collaboration tools, which make it ideal for agile development.

Why Mendix made the top 10: Mendix is unique in that it gives your organization tools designed to support Agile development principles. You can set up your teams using Scrum or Kanban, which means your development architecture can meld easily with your preferred approach. You also have the option of incorporating Mendix’s pre-made genAI tools into your app, a feature you may have a hard time finding on some other platforms.

Integrations: Mendix integrates with AWS, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud.

Pros:

• Very intuitive design workflows.
• Pre-built AI tools you can weave into your apps.
• Presets that support Agile development.

Cons:

• Relatively expensive.
• Resource-intensive so it may slow down your computer.

Verdict: Mendix is a nice option for organizations that want a platform that prioritizes user-friendly app creation. Its collaboration tools also make it a good choice, especially for companies with distributed teams.

Studio Creatio

Standout features: Studio Creatio’s process automation features make it a solid option for businesses looking to automate core processes. This makes it a top tool for streamlining operations. At the same time, it provides a versatile arrangement of project presets that can suit the needs of many different industries. You can also use Studio Creatio’s built-in AI features to improve your automation workflows and enhance decision-making.

Why Studio Creatio made the top 10: Studio Creatio is a powerful option for those looking to enhance or implement business process management (BPM), which is a common choice among low-code shoppers. Another reason Studio Creatio makes the cut is it has features designed for no-code app-builders, too. This makes it a more versatile solution for companies that have both experienced programmers and regular business users involved in the app-building process. With its no-code features, Studio Creatio enables very fast, intuitive development. Thanks to the machine learning tools Studio Creatio includes in its platform, it may be easier to build data analysis solutions than it is with some other options.

Integrations: You can integrate with Sharepoint, Calendly, Zoom, Jira, Asterisk, and Shopify. Microsoft Teams, Zapier. Quickbooks, Chat Master, SAP BusinessOne, and Chat Master.

Pros:

• Simple workflows.
• A solid collection of pre-made components that don’t need any code adjustment at all.
• Robust workflow automation-building features.

Cons:

• May not have enough flexibility if you want to create highly complex applications.
• Steep learning curve if you want to use advanced automation features.

Verdict: Studio Creatio has a relatively specific focus, business process automation, yet it also has enough tools to meet a diverse range of business needs. Its no-code features will appeal to companies that want to go the extra mile to level the playing field, yet the difficult advanced automation could limit the kinds of apps you can build.

Caspio

Standout features: Caspio excels in two areas: database app creation and customer service. CAspio’s designers built it as a database-focused app creation tool. It also offers native HIPAA and GDPR support, which makes it a convenient option for the thousands of organizations that need to conform to those compliance standards. Caspio is also a template-heavy solution, so new users have plenty of launch pads from which to propel their projects.

Why Caspio made the top 10: Caspio has a uniquely customer-centric approach, and not just when it comes to the company’s responsive, global customer service team. Caspio has gone as far as creating complete applications that users can simply adjust to meet their needs. While many low-code platforms provide templates, Caspio goes all the way — at least with a few apps. It also provides many templates to get you started.

Integrations: With Caspio, you can integrate with many different applications, some of which include Unbounce, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Wufoo, Twilio, Calendly, MySQL, and Quickbooks.

Pros:

• Very user-friendly.
• Customer-centric approach.
• Full-featured no-code options.

Cons:

• Relatively few customization options.
• Expensive customer support.

Verdict: Caspio gives compliance-focused organizations the structure they need to design without having to worry about crossing regulatory boundaries. Its pre-built applications may appeal to companies with needs that align with what Caspio’s team has already put out.

How the Low-Code Platforms Were Selected

We chose which low-code platforms to feature based on several factors:

• Each platform’s core functionalities. These include the kinds of features you would expect from a low-code app builder, such as the ability to develop apps for different platforms, multiple integration options, and the ability to produce iterations very quickly.
• Extra features that made each platform stand out. Some, like Visual LANSA, stand out due to their ease of use and integration options. Others have AI-powered tools or other features that set them apart.
• Customer support. Each option on the list comes with strong customer support, and some offer direct guidance on how to build your solutions.
• Customer reviews. While every customer has an opinion, we looked for trends across several reviews to identify which deserved to make the top 10, as well as some of the pros and cons we featured.

Extra Options

Here are some other options that, while notable, did not make the top 10:

• Bubble. Bubble has AI features that enable you to create complete apps with just a prompt.
• Zoho Creator. With Zoho Creator, you get one of the more user-friendly experiences available in low code, especially when it comes to building forms.
• OutSystem. OutSystem guides you through the creation process by helping you create an app that fits your role in the organization.

Start Building with Low Code Now

Low-code application development is continuing to evolve into a primary option for companies looking to reduce the cost of app development. When choosing the best option for your organization, you should prioritize flexibility and ease of use. In this way, you ensure you can create a broader range of apps as business conditions change — and you can involve as many people as possible.

To learn more about how Visual LANSA can help your organization build solutions, contact us today.

References

—. “Low-Code Application Development Platform.” Appian, appian.com/products/platform/low-code.

Appian. “Appian API Integrations and Connectors With the Platform.” Appian, appian.com/products/platform/process-automation/api-integration.

—. community.appian.com/discussions/f/data/25071/custom-record-field-and-limitation-of-4000-characters.

Introduction | Appsmith. docs.appsmith.com.

WaveMaker. “WaveMaker-Full Stack Development System Powered Low Code AI.” WaveMaker, 21 Mar. 2024, www.wavemaker.com.

Tapanm-Msft. “What Is Power Apps? – Power Apps.” Microsoft Learn, 7 Aug. 2024, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/powerapps-overview.

“Superblocks | Build Modern Internal Apps in Days, Not Months.” Superblocks, www.superblocks.com.

“—.” Nintex, 13 Nov. 2024, www.nintex.com/platforms/cloud-automation/app-development.

“Low-code Application Development Platform | Mendix.” Mendix, 11 Nov. 2024, www.mendix.com.

What Is Low-code? A Full Guide to Low-Code Development | Creatio. www.creatio.com/low-code.

Caspio. “Low-Code Platform – Build Online Database Apps.” Caspio, 4 Oct. 2024, www.caspio.com.

The post Top 10 Low Code Development Platforms for 2026 appeared first on LANSA.

As you consider going with native application vs. hybrid application development, it’s important to understand what each kind of app is, how they work, their key features, and pros and cons. This is exactly what we are going to dive into here, as well as a more in-depth comparison of the two.

What Is a Native Application?

A native application is an app built for a specific operating system (OS), such as iOS or Android, and it’s often used in mobile app development. For example, the Safari internet browser is a native app built for Apple and iOS operating systems. You can easily download and install Safari for any Apple device, and many come with the app already installed. But to run Safari on a Windows computer, for instance, you’d have to set up a virtual machine that runs MacOS and then install Safari.

How Does a Native Application Work?

A native application works by using features that are specific to the operating system you’re running the app on. They are also often built with languages that are specifically designed for the target OS.

For instance, Swift is a language designed to develop apps for iOS [1]. Therefore, iOS developers often learn to work with Swift so they can build and maintain iOS apps.

On the other hand, Kotlin is a language designed for building Android apps, making it a common go-to for Android developers.

When designing native apps building with an OS-specific language can present challenges at times. OS-specific languages are a major consideration. For example, suppose you have an internal development team, and all of them know how to program in Javascript, HTML, and CSS. But none of them know any OS-specific languages, like Kotlin or Swift. That instantly limits your ability to develop apps that take full advantage of the features of specific operating systems.

A native app may also use hardware and software features native to specific operating systems. For example, with iOS, you can use Quick Start, which enables you to set up a new iPhone by merely bringing it close to your old iPhone. You can’t do this with an Android device.

On the other side of the native app landscape, there are some Android features that some developers may have a hard time living without. One common example is the ability to expand storage using a microSD card. You could build a native Android app that stores data on a microSD card, giving your users the ability to access vast amounts of information locally. This isn’t an option for an iOS app because Apple devices don’t accept microSD cards.

Key Features of a Native Application

Native applications tend to have the following features, many of which appeal to developers, especially for apps that require speed and straightforward systemic integrations.

• Fast performance. With a native app, the application’s business logic interacts directly with the hardware and APIs that live on the device. As a result, some operations may happen faster.
• Stronger security. Each operating system comes with its own robust security system, and you have access to these when you opt for native app design.
• Easy integration of device-specific elements. For many, the tipping point between hybrid or native app development comes down to enabling users to interact with device-specific features, such as a contact list that’s easy to navigate or fits into the app’s workflow.

Native apps also tend to have several features that make them helpful tools for both users and developers. For instance, they support push notifications, can be used while offline, and often have pages that load quickly and smoothly.

If you’ve also been considering progressive web apps, some of the features native apps are known for may sound familiar. When contemplating developing native vs. progressive web apps (PWAs), however, you’ll want to keep in mind that while building PWAs, you don’t have access to the device-specific functions you get during native app development.

Examples of Native Apps

To help you envision the possibilities as you explore mobile app native vs. hybrid design, here are some common examples you may be familiar with:

• Waze. Waze is considered a native app because it comes with features designed to work well with each operating system.
• Instagram. Instagram, similarly, has features designed to take advantage of specific elements of the operating system it was built for.
• Uber. Even though your ride-sharing experience may be the same whether you use an iOS or Android device, the app’s functions are slightly different because each version has been built for that particular operating system.

As the examples above illustrate, the mobile app native vs. hybrid conversation often comes down to this question: Do you have the time and resources to develop the same software for two or more different operating systems? With Waze, Instagram, and Uber, decision-makers felt it was important to bring in users from both iOS and Android ecosystems, and they decided to develop one app for both OS’s. Not all organizations have the resources to do so, however. This brings us to hybrid applications, where you can often build a full-featured solution for multiple operating systems at once.

What Is a Hybrid Application?

A hybrid application is one that works the same on multiple operating systems. To make this possible, a hybrid app uses a combination of native and web app features. To build a hybrid app, you design the application using a language that a web browser can understand, such as a combination of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. In this way, users can run the app using their browsers instead of having to rely on the programming and hardware of their iOS or Android devices.

A hybrid app gets wrapped in a native shell specific to the operating system it’s supposed to run on. A shell consists of code that bridges the gap between web-based app features and those specific to the target native OS.

For example, iOS devices and Android devices handle camera functions differently because they have different hardware and programming. So when building a hybrid app, you use a native shell to make it so camera operation happens the same way in your app, whether the user has an iOS or Android device.

How Does a Hybrid Application Work?

Hybrid application development works by enabling developers to only build features that work well on multiple operating systems. For example, as mentioned earlier, you can build a hybrid app using JavaScript, and the user’s device’s browser can run it — even if the user doesn’t see the browser itself.

There are other coding languages, however, that are useful for siding on the hybrid side in the mobile application native vs. hybrid debate. For example, some developers use Dart, which works well for building flexible hybrid apps [3]. Dart also has a framework called Flutter, which consists of sets of widgets built using Dart code. This speeds up the development process.

Similar to Dart, many hybrid development options are designed to give you the ability to program many useful features, so you don’t have to choose between building a native or hybrid app.

Some programming tool builders take it a step further and provide you with an entire platform designed for building hybrid apps. In some cases, they even give you low- or no-code tools, which speed up the dev process and make it easier for those without coding skills to build effective solutions.

Visual LANSA is one such platform. It consists of low-code tools that you can use to quickly build robust applications. Visual LANSA also features templates that make the dev process faster because you can simply make a few adjustments to an existing template and quickly complete your app or one of its features.

Key Features of a Hybrid Application

If you’re mulling over the choice of a native app vs. a hybrid app, it’s important to consider the features of a hybrid app to see if they’d be a good fit for your projects. Some standout features include:

• Flexibility. The choice between a native mobile app vs. a hybrid mobile app design often tips in favor of a hybrid design due to its flexibility. You can build a single application that can work on more than one operating system.
• The ability to use a single codebase. While weighing hybrid vs. native app development, a single codebase may be a key factor, largely because it gives you the ability to adjust one set of code while updating or improving your app.
• Fast development. It typically takes less time to write a single set of code than it does to code two different apps for two unique operating systems.

Examples of Hybrid Apps

There are many hybrid apps on the market, some of which you may have already used:

• The BMW app. The BMW app is written using the popular framework Flutter, a hybrid app programming solution.
• Microsoft Teams. Teams is built using React Native, so it works equally well on Windows, Android, or Apple devices [4].
• eBay Motors. EBay’s developers needed their mobile app to have the features and look of eBay, but they wanted it built quickly. They opted for a hybrid approach to enable both speed and efficacy.

Given the range of different kinds of hybrid apps, it is no wonder that many organizations side with hybrid in the hybrid vs. native app conversation.

Native Application vs. Hybrid Application: Pros & Cons

It’s easier to see the difference between native and hybrid app development when you consider their pros and cons side by side:

• Limited access to device features. The hybrid vs. native app discussion may lean more towards native apps if you need specific features that a particular operating system offers. For instance, if you need your app to take advantage of three-dimensional tapping, which detects how hard someone presses on the screen, you’d have to build it for iOS devices because they have the 3D touch feature.

Native vs. Hybrid App: An In-depth Comparison

Hybrid app development vs. native is an easier decision when you take a deeper look into how they compare:

User Experience

Native apps may provide a smoother user experience because you program them using languages designed to work with a particular operating system. At the same time, however, if you use the right development platform, a hybrid app can provide a user experience that’s just as smooth. However, users won’t be able to enjoy functions that are unique to a certain device or operating system.

Development Process

When building a native app, you typically use multiple coding languages, one for each operating system. In some cases, it may be beneficial to take advantage of OS-specific features. But the biggest difference between the hybrid app vs. native app development processes is the length of time it takes to build out your solutions. Since you have to use two different languages, you have to spend extra time building additional versions of your application.

Cost

The cost of development is one of the most notable differences between mobile application development hybrid vs. native. For example, your development team may be able to use the same storyboard and wireframe for both versions, but it takes time to build out the business logic and code in the UI for the second version of the app. And, of course, time is money.

React Native Apps

React Native is a framework created by Facebook that’s based on JavaScript. In other words, React Native consists of tools that have been built using JavaScript code. Since web browsers can read JavaScript, React Native has become a popular option for those contemplating mobile app development native vs. hybrid.

React Native consists of widgets that can dramatically speed up the programming process. For instance, suppose you want to build a button that enables you to navigate between screens. In JavaScript, you have to first set up the structure of the button using HTML. Then, you have to manually program in the routing function. You then need to program in the navigation logic. This involves adding event listeners and managing your document object model (DOM), which represents the page in your app the feature is on.

However, with React Native, you can use the react-navigation, the button component, and the navigation.navigate method to accomplish the same thing.

Native App vs. Hybrid App: Which One to Choose?

Mobile app development native vs. hybrid can be a difficult decision, but it comes down to the answers to questions such as:

• Do you need to save time during the development process, building apps faster and producing iterations at a more rapid pace? If so, hybrid development may be a better choice.
• Do you have the budget to build the same app two or three times on different platforms, as well as the funds to support frequent updates and security fixes for multiple versions of your app? If so, you may want to consider native development.
• Will your end users have a rewarding experience even without OS-native functions, such as three-dimensional clicking? If so, then a hybrid approach may be a better choice.

Build Apps for Multiple Operating Systems with One Tool

At the end of the day, the most important considerations are the end-user’s experience, your time and financial resources, and enabling a smooth, straightforward development process. While it’s hard to check all the boxes with traditional development tools, Visual LANSA runs the gamut. With Visual LANSA, it’s easy to develop applications for mobile users and desktop users as well. Visual LANSA gives you low-code tools that speed up the dev process, as well as pre-tested components that add stability and reliability to your app.

These features make it possible for experienced developers to build apps much faster than with traditional coding or even using frameworks like React Native. By using Visual LANSA, you also lower the barriers of entry for people who don’t know how to code using traditional languages or frameworks. In this way, you broaden the scope of who can build solutions in your organization.

Contact us today to learn more about how Visual LANSA can improve your development processes.

References

Apple Inc. Swift – Apple Developer. developer.apple.com/swift/#:~:text=Swift+is+a+powerful+and,software+that+runs+lightning%E2%80%91fast.

“Kotlin Programming Language.” Kotlin, kotlinlang.org.

“Dart Overview.” Dart, dart.dev/overview.

React Native · Learn Once, Write Anywhere. reactnative.dev.

The post Native vs. Hybrid App: Which Is Better for Your Business Needs? appeared first on LANSA.

What Is AS400?

The AS400 is a computer system built by IBM specifically for business applications. When IBM released the Application System/400 (-400) in 1988, it came with both the AS/400 hardware and OS/400 software and a range of core functions. To this day, it’s a highly secure, stable, reliable, and scalable mid-range computer system that provides a wide range of functions.

The 400 is constantly being developed and updated to provide all the functionality that today’s business needs. This IBM system provides high compatibility. This means that programs that work using outdated technologies can run on it without modification.

IBM renamed the AS 400 systems several times. It was called iSeries System i. The latest version, which is current now, is called IBM Power Systems.

A Brief History of AS400

The lineage of the AS/400 began back in 1978 with IBM’s System/38, which preceded the System/36 version presented in 1983. The AS/400 combined features of its predecessors, launching in 1988.

After its birth in 1988, the AS-400 enjoyed success as a midrange computer designed for smaller and mid-sized operations. Then, in response to the growing needs of e-business, the AS/400 was rebranded with the moniker iSeries. Fast forward six years, and it becomes the System I, which runs the i5/OS operating system. This set it apart from IBM’s System p hardware.

Two years later, in 2008, the AS 400 matured into IBM Power Systems, known as IBM Power since 2021. IBM Power combines the System i and System p platforms into a unified server.

What Is the AS/400 Operating System (iSeries)?

The AS400 operating system, which is now known as IBM i, is an operating system designed to run applications on the AS/400 platform. It was released simultaneously with the AS400 hardware. It has several advantages:

• Built-in database.
• Backward compatible with earlier versions of the IBM AS-400. This allows you to switch to a new version of the platform without reinstalling applications.
• The IBM AS 400 is a turnkey operating system and can run for long periods with little or no IT support.
• Automatic scheduling of system maintenance and identification of problems in the system.
• The programming data needed to run the IBM AS400 is already integrated into the base OS. This eliminates the need to purchase and install software separately.
• The ability to quickly switch from one task to another.
• The AS 400 operating system is integrated with server technologies such as the DB2 Universal Database and Lotus Domino software.

These features combined for a more user-friendly, versatile experience for programmers, system admins, and regular users in the office, particularly when compared with its predecessor, IBM’s System/38. For instance, it features built-in support for SQL databases, which paves the way for more complex data manipulation by users.

The operating system also prioritized connectivity. This made it an ideal solution for office settings where users had to connect copy machines, printers, rack servers, and more to the same network.

What Is the Difference Between IBM i and AS400?

Comparing AS400 and IBM i is not correct, since AS400 is hardware, and IBM i is software.

IBM AS400 is a server that has its own OS/400 operating system. IBM released it in 1988. After that, it was constantly updated, and in 2008, it received the name Power Systems.

OS/400 is an operating system that was also actively developed and had different names. Now it is called the IBM i, and it works on IBM Power Systems.

Is the IBM AS/400 Dead?

Today, many experts consider the AS/400 system to be dead. However, we cannot agree with this. Even though the IBM AS400 system has been operating for the past few decades, it is constantly evolving, using modern technologies and satisfying all modern business needs.

AS 400 I series provides robust security. It is scalable, reliable, and can process large amounts of data quickly. This makes it indispensable today. A lot of companies widely use it to work with resource-intensive applications such as ERP, banking, or medical information systems.

The Controversy

Despite the proven usefulness of the AS/400 I series, it’s still surrounded by controversy. This is for two primary reasons:

• Some perceive the AS-400 as outdated. IBM created the system in 1988 and rebranded it several times. This makes some feel it’s not a truly “modern” solution. Despite this perception, it’s an important element of many leading organizations’ computing systems.
• Some AS-400 users are approaching retirement. Many who began mastering the AS-400 in their 30s back in 1988 are getting ready to retire. Their expertise heads to the golf course with them. Even so, you can modernize your AS/400 experience to make it more comfortable for younger users.

What Do Experts Think?

Experts tend to feel the AS/400 controversy is a bit overblown. For example, some feel instead of trying to pit the AS/400 or IBM i systems against cloud solutions, it makes more sense to focus on the cost differences. They point out that, for many organizations, it is significantly less expensive to keep their current AS/400 solution than it would be to start hosting workloads in the cloud.

Other experts feel that the controversy is unnecessary because AS 400’s robustness and reliability essentially negate the debate. Since it meets an organization’s needs and can continue to do so for several years, there is no need for internal controversy regarding whether to use it.

Key Industries Still Relying on AS400

Industries that depend on reliable connectivity, high uptime, and robust security still rely on AS/400.

Finance

Financial institutions in the banking sector depend on AS/400 I series to run their infrastructures. By purchasing a system, they can reduce their long-term data processing and computational expenses. For instance, if a bank that uses AS/400 as part of its infrastructure acquires another bank, it can easily scale up its AS/400 infrastructure to manage the additional clients and apps of the other bank.

Another benefit for the finance industry is the robust security of the AS/400. It has built-in security tools that make it difficult for attackers to gain unauthorized access. This gives financial institutions another layer of protection against data thieves and ransomware attackers.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector also relies on AS-400, due to both its solid reputation and features. Similar to the banking industry, those in manufacturing depend on an AS/400-powered ecosystem to reduce their computing costs as the years go by. Those familiar with the system can adjust it to fit changing production schedules, data flows, and product lines. Also, many manufacturers have been using AS-400 systems for decades and appreciate having a rock-solid, dependable solution powering their operations.

Insurance

Companies in the insurance industry depend heavily on reliable, efficient data storage retrieval and processing, all of which are in the AS/400’s wheelhouse. For example, insurance organizations often have complicated databases holding vast amounts of customer and claims data. Since the AS/400 operating system is compatible with multiple programming languages, insurance developers can build a range of solutions—using different coding languages—to manage interactions between the end user’s front end and multiple databases.

AS400 vs. Modern IT Systems: How Does It Compare?

The AS/400 differs from modern IT systems in several ways, and it provides unique advantages when it comes to security and workload capabilities.

• Architecture. The AS/400 features a proprietary architecture. This gives users access to an integrated system, which means it combines multiple elements, such as hardware, a database, and dev tools, into one solution. Modern IT systems are often cloud-based, so you have to connect the systems you need in the cloud.
• Database. The AS/400 has a DB2 database, which gives it the ability to handle SQL without using any other services. Designers typically build modern IT systems to handle a wide range of database systems, including popular options such as NoSQL and MySQL.
• User interface (UI). The AS/400 comes with a text-based UI that you can modernize to have the look and feel of modern GUIs. Modern IT systems tend to feature web-based, intuitive user interfaces that may be intuitive out of the box.
• Security. Security is a priority for the AS/400’s architecture, which has very limited vulnerabilities. This makes it easier to protect your data. Modern IT systems tend to have many vulnerabilities, but they’re often well-protected by modern security solutions.
• Workload management. You can manage very data-intensive and complex computational workloads with the AS/400. On the other hand, modern IT systems often come with limited workload capabilities. However, because they often use cloud-based tools, modern IT solutions are often easy to scale.

Why Are AS/400 Systems Still In Use?

A lot of companies around the world still use the IBM AS400 system. There are several important reasons for this.

1. High performance and reliability. IBM AS400 processors are 3-5 times more powerful than the competition. This system is ideal for applications that require extremely high performance and minimal downtime.
2. Backward compatibility. It’s compatible with earlier versions of the IBM AS/400, which enables you to switch to a new version of the platform without having to reinstall applications
3. A turnkey operating system. The programming data needed to run the IBM AS400 is already integrated into the base OS. This eliminates the need to purchase and install software separately.
4. Stability. Your AS/400 system can run for long periods with little or no IT support.
5. Enhanced maintenance features. It gives you tools for the automatic scheduling of system maintenance and identification of problems in the system.
6. An integrated system that enhances connectivity. The 400 operating system is integrated with server technologies such as the DB2 Universal Database and Lotus Domino software.
7. Simple user workflows. It gives you the ability to quickly switch from one task to another.
8. A wide range of options is available. You can choose different systems depending on the requirements of your business, from inexpensive entry-level systems to powerful servers with massive redundancy.
9. Integrated, modern technologies. They provide the latest features, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
10. Availability of a cloud environment. You can choose and pay for only the resources you need, dynamically scaling as your needs grow.

The Future Demand for AS400

A lot of companies around the world widely use the AS/400 now, and it will likely continue to be in demand in the near future.

A quick search on the job site LinkedIn reveals more than more than 2,500 open positions for AS400 professionals, underscoring the current demand for this pivotal technology.

As time goes on, this demand is unlikely to slump, especially because there are so many manufacturers, financial organizations, insurers, healthcare companies, and others that use it as a central part of their digital infrastructure.

Another good sign for the future of the 400 is the fact that users can migrate its apps to the cloud. This means you can integrate AS/400 apps with other cloud-based software, as well as take advantage of cloud security features. With the additional convenience that comes with cloud computing, especially for remote workers and distributed employees, the 400 is well-poised to continue to thrive in modern business environments.

How To Modernize AS400 With LANSA?

LANSA is a modern and powerful platform that offers several solutions for AS400 upgrades.

aXes is a tool that quickly converts an AS400/IBM i 5250 screen into a modern web interface without changing the source code. If necessary, you can also easily add additional features.

RAMP (Rapid Application Modernization Process) is a tool that allows you to build applications from scratch while using existing functionality. You can also add new features as well. This allows you to create applications using modern technologies while retaining important functionality.

Ready To Modernize Your AS400 Software?

Register in LANSA for free and modernize IBM i/AS400 applications easily using its tools.

References

B. Losey, “IBM i (iSeries – AS400) – IT Pragmatism,” Mar. 29, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ibm-i-iseries-as400-pragmatism-bob-losey-82oyf/

W. Onion, “‘The AS400 is an antiquated financial legacy system’… well, yes and no. So curious what actually went wrong and…,” Jan. 05, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/billonion_govguam-payroll-may-see-delay-due-to-as400-activity-7149060754497835008-2FZI/

LinkedIn job search result, LinkedIn.com, accessed December 12, 2024

The post Why is the AS400 Still in Demand in 2026? appeared first on LANSA.

Benefits of AI for Business Intelligence

AI supports your BI system by enabling you to work with more data and enabling more complex, flexible analysis.

Analytics on More Diverse, Larger Data Sets

AI makes it possible to analyze a wider range of data in your BI system [1]. For example, instead of merely analyzing text and .csv files, you can use AI to draw insights from:

• Images
• Videos
• Audio files
• Unstructured data from survey responses

You can also feed data from an IoT system or social media into an AI-powered analysis tool. As a result, your business gets access to more data, which puts you in a better position to make sound decisions.

Fast, Complex Analysis

AI can detect patterns and deliver insights by analyzing large data sets — quickly and accurately. They use parallel processing, which refers to breaking down large workloads into smaller parts and then completing the work on each part in “parallel” or simultaneously. As a result the computational process takes less time than it would for a system using a linear approach on the entire data set.

AI systems use graphics processing units (GPUs) to run complicated calculations faster than normal processors. This means businesses can reap AI-generated insights in real-time by integrating data from multiple business apps.

Adaptive Performance

You don’t have to explicitly train an AI model to improve its performance. It can improve the accuracy of its performance on its own. This makes them capable of delivering more value over time. Therefore, much like a diligent, focused human employee, an AI can get better day by day.

Using Predictive Insights to Power Proactive Decisions

An AI system can analyze historical performance data and juxtapose it with current outcomes. It can then use this information to recommend ways to improve business performance.

For instance, you can use AI to analyze past sales performance data. You can then give it current performance data and a sales goal. The system can then use this data to tell you how likely your company is to achieve its sales goals. It can even recommend changes you can make to achieve your objectives either on time or sooner.

Regardless of whether you choose to use AI to provide advice, the data it produces puts you in a strong position to meet future demands, build solutions that align with customer demands, and more.

AI vs. Traditional Business Intelligence

While AI has many uses across creative, analytical, and functional domains, it’s transforming BI in three principal ways via descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Here’s how each of these work:

Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive analytics enables an AI system to describe what has happened [2]. For instance, an AI-powered descriptive analytics solution can:

• Summarize historical data
• Interpret historical data
• Identify trends and patterns across your data.

In this way, AI makes it easier to understand, interpret, and use even very complex datasets. For example, you can simply have your AI-powered BI tool summarize a trend in yearly sales figures. It can explain the trend in simple terms that you can then use during a presentation or a one-on-one meeting.

LANSA BI is one example of a powerful descriptive analytics tool. LANSA BI gives you standard reporting features, dashboards, and scorecards, providing assisted insights generation that improves business performance. You can also use LANSA BI’s assisted insights to explain data and compare it alongside other data. With this feature, you get a descriptive analytics solution that adds easy-to-understand analysis to accompany rich, interactive graphics.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics involves calculating the probability of something happening in the future [3]. Some common uses include:

• Performing demand forecasts
• Assessing risk
• Improving operational efficiency
• Optimizing your supply chain

To illustrate, you can use natural language query (NLQ) to ask an AI analytics app, “Which products will generate the most revenue in October 2025?” With guided NLQ, the system provides you with language, such as “products,” “most,” and “revenue” and then aligns them with the categories in the database you’re querying before providing you with the data you need.

Prescriptive Analytics

Prescriptive analytics describes actions you can take to make a future outcome more likely [4]. For instance, a prescriptive analytics system can:

• Tell an IT company which help center staff to employ to maximize positive outcomes for employees
• Use a yearly sales goal to advise a manufacturer which products to produce, how many, and how to price them—all in a way that helps the company reach its revenue milestones
• Tell an insurance company which companies it should raise rates on to reduce the impact of expensive claims over the next year

How Is AI Transforming BI?

AI is transforming BI by producing automated, actionable insights in less time and for less money.

Faster, Easier Analysis

With traditional BI, you may have to spend hours or days designing Excel spreadsheets that surface insights. But with AI-powered BI solutions, you can simply feed it your data and wait a few moments for its output.

More Flexible Querying

AI systems are pulling the business world away from the restrictive queries traditional BI forces you to rely on. AI-built BI solutions enable you to query your system in a number of ways instead of having to rely on prescribed queries. For example, with an NLQ-based system, you can ask your solution questions like, “What was our profit-to-overhead ratio last year?” Then, a minute later, you can ask, “Which products had the highest profit margins?”

Lowering the BI Barriers of Entry

As AI transforms the way people build BI systems, some tools also make the building process easier. As a result, a wider range of employees can construct BI solutions, especially if you use low-code tools. A sales associate can click and drag their way to a system that tells them which clients produce the most revenue in comparison to the hours the rep spends cultivating each sale. With a little training up front, regular employees can build systems with minimal IT intervention.

Applications of AI in Business Intelligence

While the number of applications of AI in business intelligence is virtually unlimited, here are some of the more common use cases:

Managing Risk and Opportunity

An AI system can use competitive intelligence to help your organization monitor the risks presented by your competition. For example, it can monitor new product launches, pricing adjustments, customer sentiment toward your competition’s products, and marketing campaigns.

Then, you can use this information to identify opportunities to succeed where your competition may be falling short — or other ways to leverage knowledge of their tactics.

Detecting Inefficiencies and Recommending Solutions

You can use AI to generate digital replicas of physical systems, model their operations, and then use prescriptive analytics to tell you how to boost efficiency.

For instance, an AI system could monitor the energy generated by a solar-powered vehicle’s solar panels in different driving conditions. It can then tell you the optimal size solar panel to use to get the best performance in different regions of the country.

Using Intelligent Process Automation

Intelligent process automation can reduce the number of resources needed to perform repetitive or routine tasks. For instance, using document intelligence, an AI system can pull insights and data from PDFs. You can then use the data it surfaces to automate a data entry process, such as filling out a form or populating a spreadsheet. This can significantly cut down on the time it takes to generate and use these documents in your business intelligence system.

Supply Chain Management

A business intelligence strategy enabled with AI can detect outliers and anomalies in your supply chain data. Highlighting this information puts you in a position to identify and rectify problems before they have a significant impact on your shipping and fulfillment costs.

You can also use AI in your supply chain by having the system automatically tell you when inventories are getting too low or to outline the most efficient methods of shipping materials. It can, for example, figure out the most cost-effective shipping channel for goods that have to go from L.A. to New York in a week or less.

Boosting Employee Productivity

Your AI-powered BI solution can analyze employee data while keeping track of how their performance fluctuates over time. For instance, it can recognize when an employee’s performance starts to slip and tell you the kinds of tasks they are struggling with. You can then use this information to provide encouragement, training, or even a much-needed break.

Dynamic Pricing

With AI, you don’t have to give every customer the same discount, hoping it encourages them to make more purchases. Instead, you can program an AI model that decides how you should price individual items based on customer buying patterns [5]. You can also use AI to determine how much of a discount a customer should get based on how much they spent the previous year or quarter.

In addition, instead of waiting until the end of a day or week to adjust prices, you can have an AI system alter prices according to demand in real-time.

More Accurate, Automated Fraud Detection

Fraud can be hard to spot—even for a well-trained employee with years of experience. On the other hand, an AI-powered system can examine patterns in fraudulent forms, payments, and more and then automatically raise a flag when another transaction displays similar traits. This takes moments instead of hours, and you can automatically feed fraud alert data into a CRM, ERP, or other software.

Challenges of using AI in BI

Despite the many benefits, using AI in a BI context isn’t without its challenges. For example, you may have to overcome:

• Data quality. Some AI-powered tools need clean, consistent data to produce actionable results
• Cost. At times, an AI-enabled BI solution may come with a high price tag. It can also be expensive to deploy and maintain over time.
• Expertise. With some AI-powered BI tools, you need significant knowledge to get it to produce the required results.

Key Takeaways

AI and BI make excellent partners because AI has the ability to analyze data, predict what is most likely to happen in the future, and provide advice regarding how to optimize business performance. As such, an AI system can streamline the process of managing risk, making decisions around how to optimize human and other resources, and making tough business calls in real-time.

LANSA BI gives you AI-powered business intelligence using embedded analytics, NLQ, and BI dashboards—all of which combine to help you derive valuable insights. Contact us today to learn more about the potential of LANSA BI in your business intelligence strategy.

References

1. Speed, efficiency, and accuracy: How AI is supercharging critical document analysis finance.yahoo.com/news/speed-efficiency-accuracy-ai-supercharging-164507263.html?
2. Lawton, George. “Descriptive Analytics.” WhatIs, 10 Jan. 2022, www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/descriptive-analytics.
3. What Is Predictive AI? | IBM. 12 Aug. 2024, www.ibm.com/think/topics/predictive-ai#:~:text=Predictive%20AI%20is%20sometimes%20confused,what%20is%20likely%20to%20occur.
4. Ibm. “Prescriptive analytics.” What is prescriptive analytics?, 8 Nov. 2024, www.ibm.com/topics/prescriptive-analytics.
5. “Dynamic Pricing: What It Is and Why It’s Important | HBS Online.” Business Insights Blog, 10 May 2024, online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-dynamic-pricing.

The post AI for Business Intelligence: How AI Is Revolutionizing Analytics appeared first on LANSA.

B2B eCommerce Statistics

The rise of business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce has been meteoric. Just a few years ago, in 2021, only about 51% of B2B companies sold online. Now, that number has spiked to about 65%.

The widespread acceptance of ecommerce in a B2B context has permeated both sides of the transaction table. Customers used to prefer in-person sales. In fact, at the beginning of 2021, in-person sales outperformed ecommerce transactions, with 27% of buyers choosing in-person transactions and 22% opting for an ecommerce channel.

However, by the end of 2021, those statistics had already reversed: Thirty-two percent of buyers preferred ecommerce and 23% chose in-person purchases. After that reversal four years ago, the sector never looked back. As evidenced by the following 10 B2B ecommerce trends, the future of B2B commerce is bright, leverages the latest technology, and focuses on highly personalized experiences.

Top 10 B2B eCommerce Trends for 2025

Here are the most pivotal B2B ecommerce trends in 2024, all poised to impact the future of B2B ecommerce.

#1. Upgrading Legacy Systems

By upgrading your legacy system, you provide a more seamless experience for users and ease the process of integrating other systems with your e-commerce solution. For instance, you can use wholesale B2B ecommerce to upgrade your current wholesale selling process. This enables your business to browse products and place orders anywhere they have an internet connection. As a result, upgrading to an ecommerce system reduces friction in the buying process and fosters stronger relationships between wholesalers and their clients.

Some legacy ecommerce solutions may work as standalone operations. As such, they only “integrate” data via manual, backend inputs made by a webmaster or someone else with access to the ecommerce app.

Upgrading these legacy systems in 2024 and beyond will facilitate automated data integration, saving countless hours and introducing novel automation.

For example, by upgrading to an integrated solution, you can automatically sync your ecommerce platform with your ordering and inventory systems. If a retailer were to sell more than anticipated, their system could automatically generate purchase orders for more goods without any human intervention.

In addition, by integrating your ecommerce platform and inventory system, you can use inventory levels to generate messages to buyers interacting with your site’s front end. For instance, as the quantity of an item falls below a certain level, your customers can see alerts, such as, “Only 5 of these left in stock.”

#2. Investing in an eCommerce Platform

Even though pre-built ecommerce website templates have been effective for some businesses, they often lack the features you get with a more robust ecommerce platform.

For example, a web template can provide a shopping cart, a Buy-It-Now button, and other helpful features. On the other hand, you would be hard-pressed to find one that automatically synced with your accounting system. If, for example, you want your balance sheet to reflect every purchase and return made through your ecommerce platform, you may have to look beyond Wix.

Forward-thinking companies are investing in full-fledged ecommerce platforms for enhanced features and future-proofing their organizations as customer needs evolve.

However, choosing an e-commerce solution flexible enough for your unique business model can be challenging. You can meet this challenge with LANSA Commerce Edition, which gives you:

• A low-code development environment that streamlines the app-building process even for users relatively new to building software.
• Full control over your content management
• The ability to build multiple storefronts and integrate fully into your ERP.

#3. Personalizing the Online Shopping Experiences

Online shopping has been quickly closing the personalization gap. In a traditional, in-person store, you may have a shop owner, cashier, or other staff member who remembers the kinds of products you tend to buy and understands your preferences. With modern web tools, e-commerce solutions have met or surpassed this standard.

For instance, if your ecommerce solution enables users to log in, each of their shopping experiences generates valuable data that you can use to customize their next visit. Everything from what they purchased to what they placed in their carts to pages they spent a long time reading can be used by your system to design the shopper’s next experience.

This is particularly helpful in a B2B context because business customers often hunt for products that they use to offer or improve their services. Knowing this, you can use traits such as the quantities of items purchased to recommend what they buy the next time they visit your platform. With a development tool that simplifies ecommerce for distributors, you can produce these kinds of customized experiences for your customers more easily.

#4. Using Social Media Platforms

Social media is no longer strictly the domain of B2C companies, especially because people who work for B2B organizations often spend considerable time on social media platforms — both at work and at home. Therefore, when you incorporate social media selling into your ecommerce workflow, you are simply meeting customers where they already are.

For instance, companies incorporate links to buy products into their social media posts and place links to buying pages in YouTube video descriptions.

Further, B2B companies can leverage the comments section of a video to attract purchases. For example, by pinning your comment, you can keep it at the top of the comment section. If you were to include a link to a purchase page for a product featured in the video, all who visited the comment section would see that link at the top.

Social media selling is one of the more versatile B2B ecommerce tools, particularly because you have many opportunities to diversify how your buyers interact with your content. To illustrate, you could create a single video about one of your product’s features and post it on YouTube, TickTock, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You could also create a YouTube short. In this way, you create five different selling opportunities with a single piece of content.

#5. Enabling Self-service Buying

The days of B2B buyers needing to speak to someone before making a large purchase are drawing to a close. According to a report by McKinsey & Company, 71% of B2B buyers are willing to spend $50,000 or more without speaking to a representative.

This sheds light on what many may consider a surprising trend: The “human element” is becoming less of a factor for buyers as they commit to large purchases. Eliminating the need for human interaction should even be a consideration when setting up a B2B ecommerce system for manufacturers. Buyers across the spectrum are becoming more and more comfortable with navigating the buying process on their own.

This fundamentally alters the role of the sales rep. Since B2B buyers are willing to make larger transactions via self-service portals, the sales rep’s job can shift from being a “convincer” to a supporter — answering questions and walking a buyer through product features.

Furthermore, self-sales ecommerce portals also free up your sales staff to become customer relationship experts. Rather than starting the relationship with a pitch and handing it off to customer support after the sale, each sales rep can continue to circle back to buyers, checking in about how they enjoy your product or service and offering ideas when appropriate.

In this way, your staff builds the relationships that keep buyers returning.

#6. Using Generative AI (GenAI)

Generative AI is still a relatively untapped resource in the B2B space, but its potential will be realized more and more over the coming months and years.

On a basic level, many companies are already using GenAI to craft product descriptions. Instead of manually typing them out one by one, you can generate dozens in a few seconds, give them a quick review, and copy and paste them into your ecommerce platform’s content management system (CMS).

However, using GenAI’s API solution, you can automate the content creation and management processes, automatically entering what the GenAI creates with your CMS.

This is merely scratching the surface of GenAI’s potential in B2B ecommerce. For example, you can use GenAI to create some — or all — of your marketing and customer-facing collateral. This includes videos, short animations, product use cases, infographics, and more.

Using consistent characters and digital humans, you can craft photo-realistic GenAI spokespeople that can represent your products on your site and on social media.

#7. Creating B2C-like Experiences for B2B buyers

The traditional B2B ecommerce buying experience often featured multiple pages, starting with high-level solution information and ending with a product page. While this may have effectively mimicked the marketing funnel, modern customers expect an experience closer to what they get on Amazon’s, Target’s, or Walmart’s websites.

This involves putting all necessary product and service information on a single page, including pricing info. Understandably, many B2B sellers may balk at the idea of being transparent about their pricing online. Sometimes, the number after the dollar sign may seem too high to show prospects without thoroughly explaining the product or service’s benefits.

However, this is what many customers want. By giving them all the necessary information on a single page, you can shorten the buying lifecycle — and sometimes chop multiple days off the process.

To illustrate, suppose a business buyer comes across your solution, sees its value, and wants to make a purchase. But it’s Friday night, 7:00 p.m. By forcing them to submit a contact request, you’re tacking on at least two extra days before they can make a purchase, particularly if your sales staff operates from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday.

On the other hand, by including all product and pricing info on a single page, you enable buyers to purchase 24/7/365.

NTC Electronics, a New Jersey-based electronics parts supplier, discovered the benefits of introducing a B2B ecommerce solution first-hand. The company used LANSA Commerce Edition thanks to its ability to integrate with its existing IBM i-based ERP. As a result, customers no longer had to find their way to physical locations to purchase NTC’s products. The company no longer had to rely on distributors to feature NTC’s products front and center on their websites. NTC simultaneously took control of its marketing and selling and integrated its ecommerce solution with existing systems.

#8. Using a Mobile-first Approach

Using a mobile-first approach is vital in the modern B2B ecommerce ecosystem. This is primarily because so much computing and communication happen in the palms of buyers’ hands. As you search for a B2B ecommerce platform, this means you have to keep a few important details in mind:

• You need a responsive site. This means your site adjusts according to the screen dimensions of the user’s device. Therefore, your site looks great on both a laptop and an iPhone.
• You may need to consider creating a mobile app. However, developing solutions for iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems is expensive and time-consuming. So, some companies choose to create web apps that run from the user’s browser.
• You should consider geolocation features in your B2B ecommerce solution. For instance, if you have multiple locations, your app should recommend purchases based on the location nearest to the user.

To learn more about ecommerce tips for 2024, check out this article, which goes into some of the most effective approaches to ecommerce development.

#9. Incorporating Automation

Since B2B ecommerce selling involves so much data, you have many automation options. For instance, you can:

• Set up your system so it automatically generates reports and sends them to customers about the status of their orders. This includes both production and shipping information.
• Show inventory levels in real-time, both to sales staff and customers. This could be helpful if, for example, a customer needed to order 100 units and saw that you only had 120 in stock. This may motivate them to make a purchase sooner.
• Automatically determine the best fulfillment center to expedite the shipping process. By reducing the time it takes for your customers to receive their orders by a day or more, you make it easier for them to start using your products in their operational or sales workflows.

#10. Offering More Payment Options

When you provide more payment options, you make it easier for your B2B customers to make purchases for multiple reasons:

• Many B2B buyers may appreciate the ability to pay with different accounts for accounting purposes. For instance, a buyer may have allocated a PayPal account to buying materials because it connects to a bank account used for specific overhead expenses.
• Some payment platforms offer rewards points, so enabling a wider variety of payment types makes it easier for your buyers to take advantage of rewards programs.
• Mobile payments are often more convenient and may include shipping or product insurance, which B2B buyers have factored into their risk management strategies.

On top of that, you have to consider the issue of convenience. Since mobile payments, online payments, direct deposits, and other options have gained so much popularity, you wouldn’t want to leave out an option your competition offers.

Key Takeaways

The B2B ecommerce space has undergone an exciting evolution, and to take advantage of its momentum, it is important to adjust with the times. To keep up with the competition, you need a highly customizable solution. This enables you to incorporate automations, customer-facing features, and integrations that smooth out the process for both your customers and staff.

The key is to invest in an ecommerce platform that provides ultimate flexibility without requiring in-depth coding expertise to customize. This can be a challenge, especially if you also need a solution that integrates with your existing ERP.

However, with LANSA Commerce Edition, you get a B2B ecommerce platform that easily integrates with leading ERPs like JD Edwards, Lawson, Daly, Commerce, and others. LANSA Commerce Edition gives you the flexibility you need to set up multiple storefronts, centrally manage your content management solution (CMS), and provide multilingual experiences for customers.

Contact us to learn more about the potential of LANSA Commerce Edition for your organization.

References

1. M. Bangia, L. Harrison, C. L. Plotkin, and K. Piwonski, “Busting the five biggest B2B e-commerce myths,” McKinsey & Company, Jan. 26, 2022. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/busting-the-five-biggest-b2b-e-commerce-myths
2. L. Donchak, J. McClatchy, and J. Stanley, “The future of B2B sales is hybrid,” McKinsey & Company, Apr. 27, 2022. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-b2b-sales-is-hybrid
3. “Business-to-Business e-commerce Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by product category, by deployment (Intermediary-oriented, supplier-oriented, buyer-oriented), by region, and segment Forecasts, 2024 – 2030.” https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/business-to-business-b2b-e-commerce-market#:~:text=The%20global%20business-to-business%20e-commerce%20market%20size%20was%20estimated,for%20the%20expansion%20of%20the%20B2B%20e-commerce%20market.

The post Top 10 B2B eCommerce Trends to Reshape your Business appeared first on LANSA.