The differences between digital documents and app development

Modern business models dictate that companies must be data driven and always online.  Digital technology must be embraced to automate business processes in order for businesses to remain competitive and minimize human interventions.  As part of this digital transformation journey, digital documents serve a key role in democratizing IT for digital workers that have a need to work with and harness data in every aspect of their work lives.

Digital documents have been transformed in the past decade with the rise of new file formats like Canvas Document Format. Today, it’s possible for non-coding information workers to produce pretty much any style or form of information solution for the enterprise using digital documents as an alternative to back-room application development.

In this article, we compare digital document formats like Encanvas’ Digital Document Canvas with more traditional app development tools like FLUTTER, and answer the question—‘Which is best for a digital business?’

The COVID-19 pandemic has become somewhat of a watershed for the old ways of operating a business. Attitudes of ‘if it’s not bust don’t fix it’ don’t cut with the digital age.

Firms that resist embracing change as a constant—and as an opportunity for repeated rebirth—fail. Rapidly changing markets are causing organizations to push harder for flexibility in the way they work, and enterprise IT is not exempt from these pressures.

Rise of the citizen developer

With the growing popularity of low-code, no-code, and fully codeless software tools, it was thought not so long ago that citizen development and no-code software applications development tools would service the demand for distributed custom information processing and collaboration solutions in the enterprise.

That, however, has proven to be increasingly unrealistic and unviable owing to the need of IT professionals to stay in firm control of enterprise data and the data processing environment they are responsible for.

Pressure is on IT to govern data and information services

 It’s not easy for IT leadership teams to achieve the right balance between the pace of enterprise information systems development and information systems oversight.

Digital transformation demands have outstripped supply. There is a worldwide shortage of coding and analytical skills. In the meantime, every digital business sees technology as a fundamental component of its customer value, so demand for solutions development is high.

Enterprise IT these days is not just about serving up automation of business processes. Neither is it solely about serving the needs of information workers. It’s also about serving customers and other stakeholders.

Compliance pressures

 Underpinning all strategic IT decisions is another important balancing act; that between business opportunity and risk. With more compliance and regulation demands—such as cybersecurity, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), consumer credit regulations, banking regulations, etc.—IT leaders can’t encourage a free-for-all of digital solutions.

Demands for more solutions, delivered faster, to serve digital transformation

 The watchword for most businesses post the 2020 pandemic is adaptability.

Businesses know they need to be able to see market changes as an opportunity, not a threat. That means installing more fluidity into supply chains, resourcing approaches, business processes, and, most importantly, how IT is served up to information workers. We’re hearing new terminology from industry watchers like Gartner—like ‘composability’—arguing the case for more adaptive and flexible ways to produce information solutions.

IT leaders are faced with a difficult choice. They know they can’t possibly produce all the digital solutions the enterprise needs, but they also know they are unable to allow a free-for-all of information solutions engineering.

The solution, then, is to offer information workers digital tooling to serve themselves with the information analytics, collaboration, and data processing tooling they need under the strict governance of IT. And this is where modern intelligent digital documents are bringing value.

What intelligent digital documents have brought to the digital enterprise is a new level of information working autonomy

New digital document formats—like Encanvas’ Digital Document Canvas file format (CDF) are in essence a composite file that contains data, design, and logic rules in a single, coherent digital file.

The reason digital document adoption is rapidly growing comes down to the ability of digital documents to satisfy the digital holy trinity of the business, the IT function, and the information workers that use them.

Intelligent digital documents perform the characteristic autonomous roles of a document in the enterprise—i.e., to share data, capture it, process it, reporting on it, structure it, present it, bridge process workflows between systems and organizations, etc. However, in contrast to their structured document predecessors (such as PDF) new intelligent alternatives offer a new digital construct for a digital age.

Given that digital document solutions are built on codeless technology, information workers can design and publish them to discharge their information management tasks without calling in IT. 

Nevertheless, what makes digital document architecture ever more powerful are the IT-owned layers of the architectures they rest on.

What makes digital documents different to apps?

What makes digital documents different from apps is the level of autonomy they provide for information workers to work with data, formulate micro-processes, and use them relatively untethered to IT platforms and resources.

That should not infer that digital documents suffer the same regulatory challenges as citizen app development tools. Vendors work hard to ensure that governance over information architectures for IT leaders is a red-line priority.

What’s more, IT teams are often surprised by just how comprehensive their governance tools are.

FAQ

Digital technologies can be confusing.  For this reason, we’ve put together the explanatory notes below.

Electronic versus Digital Document

An electronic document is any document type created by a computer application.  A digital document is an HTML document format that takes on the form of a web page or micro-site.  Digital document formats hold ALL of the application logic needed to make them autonomous.

Digital Versus Digitized

A digitized document is an electronic file forma created by scanning a hard-copy document and turning it into a readable format using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Digital Versus Digitized

A digitized document is an electronic file forma created by scanning a hard-copy document and turning it into a readable format using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Why is the autonomous use of digital documents important to digital transformation? In this article, we dig deeper to find out.

Citizen developers—nice idea, but not in an enterprise

Creating business applications is nontrivial. Even the simplest ones are a complex composite of data, presentation, workflow, logic roles, reports, and integrations.

Building applications is not for the faint-hearted. Something strange happens when documents produced on desktop applications, like a spreadsheet, are converted into web deployed and database-driven applications. They grow tentacles, and take on gargantuan proportions; doubling, or tripling in their size and complexity. And it helps when the authors of applications know some of the fundamental background issues of how database theory works, how data is presented on web browsers, and how if/then logic rules are applied.

Can a knowledge worker learn these skills? Yes, definitely. Is it a good idea to make every knowledge worker a citizen developer? Definitely not.

Sticking to the day job

Most people I know who run a business or are information workers don’t really harbor an unrelenting passion for coding software or building applications. They want to use tools to harness information and streamline processes. But, that’s where the passion ends.

Frustrated by the lack of useful tools to work with data can lead businesspeople to unimaginable attempts to build applications by themselves.

Even for those that want to build software applications (and, if that’s you, you’ve arguably chosen the wrong career if you’re not already in IT), using citizen development tools without some foundational training in IT is going to make your life extremely painful.

What’s more, for IT professionals, this idea really sucks. The buck stops with IT when things go wrong, when data is lost, when processes fail, and when information workers get stuck with using technology. Citizen development, however generous of heart, is a bad idea in a highly regulated environment like a company in the 2000s.

The motives for citizen development are in the right place

While one might question the act of citizen development, nobody can surely argue with the motives of those that engage in the practice. For digital businesses, useful ways to capture, process, publish, analyze, automate and collaborate with data are a key element of the customer value being served up.

When executives and information workers hit a wall with underperforming or unsuitable software tools, who could do anything but admire their pluck for picking up a citizen development tool and jolly well having a go at building apps themselves. All very admirable, but there are other ways of achieving the outcomes you seek without becoming a pin-up poster dartboard in the IT department.

Autonomous digital documents

Digital documents are the logical evolution of the document form for the digital age. Like their analog (hardcopy) and digitized (think PDF) predecessors, intelligent digital documents are easier to work with than citizen applications.

Autonomy of use is the key factor with digital documents. They exist on a digital data fabric that spans the enterprise serving up composable data, and are, to some extent, tethered to the digital cloud space that serves them up. Nevertheless, for users, they feel empowering and very much autonomous of large IT.

Autonomy means that information workers are free to do ‘as much as digital documents empower them to do’ without the risk of breaking anything important in the enterprise architecture.

A better outcome for software app seekers and solvers

The win: win for IT leaders, is that enterprise digital document architectures provide a high level of attribution control for IT teams, so they can give information workers enough rope to do what they need to do, without losing control over endpoint security, data structures, technical architectures, and process workflows. An additional layer of no-code administrative tools make light work of tedious IT admin tasks such as replication, backup, data security monitoring, etc.

They can give information workers the digital tooling they need to work with data, without suffering the nightly anxieties of handing over the keys of their kingdom to untrained and unregulated citizen developers.

Breaking Free from IT and Platforms

Are you tired of waiting on IT to create basic reports, web pages, forms and presentations?  Do static documents fail to capture your audience’s imagination?  Introducing the game-changer: Encanvas digital documents. This innovative new document format empowers business users like you to create interactive, data-driven documents – all without relying on technical expertise or bogging down the IT department.

Hello Interactive Experiences

Static documents are a thing of the past. Encanvas documents transform information into captivating experiences. Embed videos, live polls, and interactive forms directly into your content. This fosters audience engagement, allowing viewers to actively participate and gain a deeper understanding of your message.

Telling Stories With Data

Data is powerful, but raw numbers can be overwhelming. With encanvas documents, you can leverage data visualization tools to present information clearly and compellingly. Transform complex datasets into stunning charts and graphs, making trends and insights readily apparent. Tell compelling data stories that resonate with your audience, without relying on a data analyst to create them.

Mirroring the Dexterity of Paper Documents

Go back thirty years and every business used paper documents to sign contracts, capture data, communicate with customers, write training courses, share reports, and archive records.  When there wasn’t an app or the possibility of building an automated data transfer between two parties, documents were the automatic go-to.   

With Encanvas Digital Documents, digital workers can enjoy similar autonomy to ‘get things done’ with a versatile database-driven and interactive digital document that makes it easy for everyone (without deep database knowledge or scripting know-how) to capture, communicate and store data.  

The Future of Business Communications

Encanvas documents represent the future of business communication. They empower business users like you to become storytellers, data analysts, and content creators – all rolled into one. With intuitive tools and powerful features, you can create dynamic and impactful documents that captivate your audience and drive results.

So, ditch the dependence on IT and embrace the power of encanvas documents. Start building your own interactive masterpieces and unleash the communicator within!

DIGITAL DOCUMENTS REMASTERED

Micro-Portals • Forms • Reports • Training Dashboards • Charts • Maps • Tables Checklists • Onboarding • Risk Registers • Presentations • eBooks