As companies shift their focus from internal processes and systems to customer-facing activities, it’s vital to facilitate cross-channel collaboration among employees, partners, customers, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Digital business process automation can make this happen. It helps enterprises transform the way they operate by streamlining workflows to drive critical initiatives. It is transforming companies that want to support emerging digital work patterns, architectures, and devices. In our digital age, innovative businesses must closely collaborate not only internally, but also externally with their customers and partners.
According to Forrester analyst, Rob Koplowitz, traditional business process management has been focused on removing costs. Modern digital business process management is driven by customer engagement. This is primarily because customers are now at the core of business technology priorities.
Furthermore, digital business process management isn’t dependent on developers and analysts, instead, it’s designed to be accessible to business people with a focus on no-code. That’s why mobile business process platform, Pulpstream, enables business users to rapidly develop and deploy mobile applications with zero need for new code.
For example, Interstate Batteries used to use the traditional pen-and paper method to conduct environment, health, and safety (EHS) checks. With the help of Pulpstream, now they complete these processes across 76 locations with a mobile device, even in areas without cellular service.
This transformation also allows Interstate Batteries to make adjustments by tracking KPI trends. This process was digitally transformed within four months, something billion dollar companies traditionally take six to twelve months to achieve.
But no-code development isn’t purely for business users to build apps, it’s also used by developers within traditional IT departments who collaborate with business users to accelerate development. What’s more, it can also free up software engineers to focus more on complex tasks that will enhance innovation across the company.
Why less coding?
The traditional approach to coding derails innovation by limiting the speed of development for companies rely on coders. Furthermore, the complexities of traditional development approaches go against the philosophy of innovation and rapid iterative development.
It’s also the opposite of what end-users have become accustomed to. Both your customers and employees have grown used to and expect fast and frequent software releases.
No-code development brings business and IT together to deliver new customer-facing applications quickly and collaboratively. This can also be achieved without costly complex custom development projects or a large overhaul of existing core systems.
Instead, the users are empowered to take advantage of innovative tools that provide a real world alternative to traditional software programming.
What makes rapid development and deployment of customer-facing applications possible?
Digital, business process management technology has three main components that make rapid development and deployment of customer-facing applications possible:
Simplified visual modeling to accelerate development: Business users can build apps by using visual design and workflow tools instead of traditional lines (and lines) of code. This enables domain experts with significant business insights to collaborate seamlessly with software engineers or even lead the whole development process.
Pre-built elements: Business users can speed up the development process by inserting pre-built templates, reusable components, and widgets into the visual design process.
Cloud deployment: As everything is hosted on a cloud, both business and IT users can engage on the same platform that manages all requirements of the project. Design, development, deployment can also take place in the cloud without the need to set-up anything.
This approach can enable the project to focus solely on solving a business problem without having to think about programming languages or IT infrastructure.
As a result, existing and future customer needs can be met within a matter of minutes, days, or weeks, not months. It can also be implemented to follow a continuous delivery based-model where the application is driven by user feedback.
Enterprises have been transformed by digital, business process automation as key business stakeholders no longer have to wait six months to see an application after defining its requirements. Rather, all those involved can now work together in an iterative agile work stream where prototypes will be ready quickly.
This will enable the project to be driven by user feedback and not the original scope of the project. As enterprises embrace a distributed workforce model, a digital, mobile-centric business process platform will also enable employees spread out across the country and around the globe to streamline workflows and deploy it within minutes.
By eliminating inefficient tools like pens, papers, and excel sheets, productivity can be optimized significantly across industries. For example, work that requires field reporting, inspections, and site audits can now be conducted much faster by taking advantage of a no-code customized mobile app.
This is exactly what the Branch Group did to digitally transform their construction site inspection process with Pulpstream. This initiative significantly reduced the amount of time it took to make decisions and eliminated the use of approximately 10,000 sheets of paper, annually.
Furthermore, as Pulpstream’s customer-centric business processes will also seamlessly integrate with data from DocuSign, EchoSign, and Saleforce.com, you can also make adjustments based on key KPIs.
Pulpstream enables the use of digital forms instead of paper so you can easily keep track of information, as you will never lose another document.
