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Must-have capabilities for your enterprise-grade, low-code platform

Anthony Abdulla, Log in to subscribe to the Blog

Quickly evolving digital technologies, changing marketplaces, custom software, and work structures that are shifting from in-office to remote to hybrid are pressuring businesses to become more agile. As we’ve seen over the past year, the ability to pivot and adapt to unexpected demands is greater than ever. In response, adoption of low-code platforms is increasing.

But which capabilities are important for enterprise-grade, low-code platforms? The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021 recommends organizations look for low-code development platforms that support different types of workflows and processes (both data-centric and process-centric); provide tools to support a spectrum of development skills, from professional to business to citizen developers; and can integrate with your specific network infrastructure, architecture, and development process requirements.

We’re proud Pega has been included for the first time in this Forrester Wave™ and recognized as a “strong performer.”

Forrester evaluated the 14 most significant low-code development platforms for professional developers for the report. Among the 27 criteria, Pega received among the highest scores in tooling for process automation, tooling for app testing, deployment, and management. The report says about Pega:

“The platform easily handles complex processes across a wide array of best-in-class process capabilities like robotic process automation (RPA), digital decisioning, and content management, with strong support for testing, application change management, and governance.” 

“It offers a highly integrated native-cloud solution through Pega Cloud®, in addition to strong support for public clouds and on-premises deployments. Pegasystems has augmented this with an elegant low-code development environment (App Studio) that is accessible even to nontechnical business developers: One reference customer noted that the product is a ’great enabler’ to ’engage business units in the delivery journey.’”

  • Tools for business developers and citizen developers. An intuitive, visual user interface makes it easy to build faster, together. Familiar drag-and-drop functionality helps citizen developers and business users be part of the solution, providing step-by-step guidance to defining the personas, workflows, business rules, and data needed to help streamline work, and automating steps to build your applications.
     
  • Tools to manage application governance and compliance. Bringing business into the equation requires built-in governance tools that help your IT managers define and apply guardrails to keep all of your enterprise applications compliant with internal policies and best practices, as well as any relevant external or industry regulations. Governance tools and alerts also help you manage and track your apps, giving you visibility into the quality of every app at every stage of development.
     
  • Integrated environment for secure testing, deployment, and management. Speed application delivery and deployment with open and native testing capabilities that let you create and automate functional tests for workflows, decision rules, UI, and other application components, as well as establish a continuous testing environment.

Organizations in almost every industry are modernizing mission-critical processes with powerful, intuitive, low-code app authoring environments that support different levels of developers: professional, business, and citizen.

For example, Pfizer, a multinational biopharmaceutical company, used low code to modernize their existing end-to-end portfolio management tool, which was at the end of its lifecycle and required custom code to keep up with their technology ecosystem. With intuitive authoring tools and built-in design best practices, Pega’s low-code platform accelerated Pfizer’s transformation through efficiency and collaboration, helping them stay adaptable and ready for future changes. As a result of this system update, Pfizer has seen a 28% improvement in process efficiency; a 65% reported improvement in user experience; and a whopping 650% increase in overall system performance.

Deutsche Bahn, a railway and transportation provider with more than 580 subsidiaries, is taking a citizen developer approach to modernizing and automating thousands of processes across their subsidiaries. Using Pega’s low-code App Factory, they operationalized their low-code app development with reusable templates, tracking, and the ability to apply guardrails to ensure the apps created by their citizen developers complied with organizational best practices. Their first project – updating a Contract Management microjourney – reduced manual workload by 50%, and they’ve since scaled their modernization project to update and digitalize many more processes.

We believe the path to low-code leadership comes from reducing barriers to adoption

In both of the examples above, a single, low-code platform that can handle everything from departmental use cases to the most critical customer journeys is the key to creating more complete digital experiences and innovating at scale. It encourages innovation by tapping into the innate knowledge of all employees and empowering app development through intuitive tools to create compliant solutions that continually boost everyone’s productivity with minimal IT support. 

“As businesses try to continuously innovate, there’s an urgency to develop applications even faster to keep up with market conditions and build at a competitive pace to better serve customers,” said Don Schuerman, Pega’s Chief Technology Officer and VP of product strategy and market. “Organizations should look to low-code tools that support the needs of citizen developers, business developers, and professional developers alike.”

Worldwide, enterprises are facing a shortage of programmers and realizing that they can empower staff at all levels to innovate and scale their business. Enterprise-grade, low-code platforms that integrate with your enterprise architecture and support a spectrum of development needs – from low code factories that cultivate citizen development, to supporting mission-critical industry processes, to low code for driving enterprise transformation – are best able to help you keep pace with change. We’re excited at what the future has in store for low code and that, in our view, our roadmap aligns with Forrester’s recommendations.

Tags

Product Area: Platform Topic: Business Agility Topic: Low-Code Development

About the Author

Anthony Abdulla (@AnthonyAbdulla), Pega’s director of product marketing for intelligent automation, helps some of the world’s most recognizable brands build faster now and into the future by bringing users together through innovative, enterprise-grade, low-code development capabilities.

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