If there’s a single lesson to be learned from the events that have dominated the world’s news for the last few months, it’s that businesses have to be agile at their very core. Which company or organization in the world has not been affected in some way by the spread of a virus? Those who have managed to pivot and change rapidly to suddenly changing circumstances have been able to continue in their line of business successfully. Others, however, are struggling — and that’s unfortunate.

In the coming months, the demand for digital interactions with organizations looks set to rise massively. But this is no spike — rather, around 40 percent of consumers want more digital interactions with their service and product providers than what is available presently.

With consumers in particular wanting (or being allowed) significantly fewer face-to-face interactions and call centers overloaded, businesses need now, more than ever, to speed up their production of new, innovative offerings that are better suited to a post-pandemic business landscape. A new eBook, “How Low-Code Can Supercharge Development,” offers hope to businesses, discussing how companies can develop, iterate, and maintain fast deployment cycles in their DevOps practices.

The eBook also talks about practical ways that companies can break free from rigid development practices, reduce the time it takes to put an app in production, and delight end-users. Yet, at the same time, it recognizes that companies also need to be mindful of security and data governance issues, and — critically — be in a position to be able to get the most out of their legacy systems.

The latter aspect of application development is one that’s sometimes overlooked. Few organizations have the luxury of being able to tear down their existing technology stack and start again new. Instead, the data and the mission-critical business applications in legacy platforms represent a significant investment. Therefore, as the eBook clearly states, being able to interface with those platforms is critical.

But whether it’s a departmental system, like an HR Management platform, or an ERP system, being able to access the information and power from existing systems surely has to be a given. More than that, companies can — with the right low-code development platform — significantly extend the life of legacy solutions, thus saving the business resources in the short to medium term.

OutSystems is that platform. More than low-code, it enables the development of applications with input and guidance from the business itself. Using the OutSystems intuitive interface, citizen developers, relevant stakeholders, developers, and DevOps practitioners can build powerful applications together, quickly, and easily. Instead of being tied to the way that larger, legacy systems might force the organization to work (a case of the software dictating business processes), OutSystems helps ensure that the application’s intellectual property is unique and fully belongs to the enterprise.

Therefore, instead of vendor lock-in to a particular software or hardware framework that is unsustainable or unpredictable, the apps produced by the OutSystems solution are future-proof. And, because of the ease with which they are constructed, they can be quickly iterated on by business personnel themselves.

The OutSystems team has many examples of how successful apps developed using their platform can be. To take a single example, a financial institution in the Philippines (The Philippines Armed Forces and Police Mutual Benefit Association [AFPMBAI]) found itself in the situation faced by most companies at the beginning of lockdown. Instead of gaining new business through face-to-face meetings, the company had to quickly offer a new loan portfolio — and do it digitally.

Instead of the months of “traditional” development time usually associated with a series of sensitive financial interactions with its prospective customers, the AFPMBAI was able to achieve:

– A four-day initial development period for a new secure app

– Only a two-day testing and improvement process

– Integration with legacy systems to ensure a single-source-of-truth for customer information

– Full compliance with data regulations and local legislation

The allotted loan fund that was to be allocated through the new app was sold in just 10 days. The customer experience for applicants for finance was so good and the product presented so well that the expected month-long sales window was not required.

It should also be noted that the app, produced in the OutSystems low-code environment took place during lockdown, which naturally also affected the AFPMBAI. All work was carried out by the development team remotely, yet the results exceeded all expectations that might have been typical in ‘normal’ circumstances.

To read more about How Low-Code Can Supercharge Application Development for yourself, we urge you to download the full whitepaper today.