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Codeless web development in an agile world

Codeless web development in an agile world

Feb 26, 2022 | Codeless, Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation

How codeless web development is changing the world of application software development

With codeless enterprise software development platforms like Encanvas, it only takes ONE business analyst to take an app from concept to deployment. When a scrum of one becomes pointless, how do firms adapt their methods for modern software development?

The move to codeless agile software development

At one time, companies would buy an IBM AS/400 computer and a bundle of software.  They would expect to find everything in the box to run their enterprise.  Not today. Enterprise computing has become fragmented, complex, and more virtualized. Even with all the latest tech tools, it’s not enough to serve up the software applications they need.

This has led to enormous growth in demand for functional and task-specific Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.  So-called ‘SaaS sprawl’ accounts for a growing proportion of technology spend, with the average company now relying on over 200 unique SaaS apps.

The average number of SaaS apps used by businesses has been steadily rising. In 2020, it was around 80, and by 2022, it jumped to an average of 130.

The biggest losers in the adoption of SaaS are data-driven businesses. Adoption of SaaS tools creates tens, if not hundreds, of discrete data repositories with each operating a data model designed by a vendor. Harnessing this data becomes a nightmare for departmental and business leaders who find themselves running blind on business-critical decisions.

business analyst making business application

Innovation factories powered by codeless deveopment

Faced with the need to originate high-quality real-time enterprise data insights, companies have resorted to creating in-house development teams; their ambition to become innovation factories in their own right.  Software Development Life-Cycles (SDLC) have changed.

Today, the state of the art in web development software is codeless agile.  In concept, codeless agile differs from traditional waterfall software development projects by encouraging cooperation between developers through daily dev team stand-ups and scrums. In this ‘must do it well and fast’ world of app development, digital leaders have encouraged the use of fewer, more capable tools—with many adopting cloud platforms with built-in tooling to assist rapid application development, deployment, scaling, containerization, security, and such like.

But that innovation in methods and tools still doesn’t cut the mustard.

For most application developments, additional layers of data aggregation and business intelligence tooling to make sense of the data squirting out of the myriad of apps used across the enterprise. And the trusty spreadsheet is hanging on for dear life to retain its stature as the accountant’s friend, and the first and last port of call when professional SaaS apps aren’t still numerous enough to solve the many and varied data processing problems of users and teams.

From Rapid to Low-Code, to No-Code and codeless web development

Cloud delivered software development tooling is more holistic and comprehensive in its design than the desktop tools that preceded it. Industry watchers have seen the enterprise software development industry transition from Rapid Applications Development (RAD), to Low-Code, to No-Code in less than a decade.

Today, cloud-delivered codeless web development platforms like Encanvas are fast becoming the state of the art. They remove the visibility of software code and script from the app design interface which means businesspeople can be directly involved in the applications development process, to steer priorities, and quickly identify shortfalls in User Experience (essential in a world that priorities customer experience above practically any other competitive strength).  

colleagues working on the app development process

From scrums to fusion teams

The use of No-Code development tools has presented organizations with the means to re-think their designs to foster dedicated change teams.   

Gartner calls these new development organizational structures as ‘Fusion Teams.’ These new ad-hoc structures in organization design appear as and when a new application development is needed; bringing together business stakeholders, change professionals, security experts, and business analysts together to create a solution for the new requirement. Once the solution is delivered, ‘the team’ dissolves.

In the context of a Fusion Team, the entire software development team (as was ‘the scrum’ in the previous team design model) is represented by a single Business Analyst, who, with the support of an IT architect, is empowered to take an app concept to delivery using No-Code tools and plug-in technologies.

Such a fundamental change in operational behaviors dictates that project management processes keep up. Fusion Teams today are experimenting with new approaches to project management, like Agile Codeless that have been purposely engineered to keep up with the development cadence of Fusion Teams and No-Code app development, that today are creating apps in days and weeks that would’ve taken months and years only a few years ago.

Application Fabrics are a natural evolution in enterprise computing technology

What makes this transition possible is Enterprise Applications Fabric technology. An Applications Fabric (AppFabric) is a cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) equipped to design, deploy and run countless software bots and applications. It facilities the replication, scaling and operational performance management of published applications, while managing their life-cycle from birth to death. Using an AppFabric, it is left to the IT team to frame the fundamental user experience design rules, together with end-point security, core data tables, etc. This means Business Analysts operate within a suitably constrained and monitored ‘creative bubble’ determined by the IT experts of the enterprise.

This new approach to enterprise applications developments offers organizations the means to engineer their own built-to-fit digital ecosystem, without having to rely on spreadsheets and third-party SaaS tools, or the need to glue data together afterward. Fundamentally, all apps created in an Application Fabric bring data together in a single place, allowing organizations to fully leverage and re-use their accessible data.

Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin

Author

Ian Tomlin is a marketer, entrepreneur, business leader and management consultant. His passion is to help make great ideas happen. Relentlessly optimistic about the potential of technology for good, Ian’s 30+ year career has focused around the intersect of strategy, technology and marketing. He writes on subjects including enterprise computing and organizational design. He also works as a consultant and advisor to the executive teams of PrinSIX Technologies, Answer Pay and INTNT.AI, helping to rethink their marketing in order to tell their brand story.

Ian has founded a series of successful businesses including NDMC Ltd (2003), Encanvas (2006), and Newton Day Ltd (2019). He has written books, articles and guides on brand, digital transformation, enterprise applications, data science, workforce management, and organizational design. He can be reached via LinkedIn or Twitter.

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Codeless web development in an agile world

Enterprise app software platforms allow companies to create their own agile codeless digital ecosystem, bringing data together in one place.
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What is Codeless Software?

Codeless software is a type of enterprise computing platform used to design, deploy and operate software apps without the use of, or visual presence of code

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Codeless enterprise software

Ian Tomlin, CEO of Encanvas predicts the rapid adoption of Codeless enterprise software in the coming years and gives his reasons why.

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What is Agile Codeless?

Agile Codeless is a software development life-Cycle (SDLC) approach that embraces codeless authoring tools and methods to produce enterprise apps

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Fusion Teams Versus DevOps

Fusion Teams Versus DevOps

Dec 17, 2021 | Digital Transformation

According to the latest thinking by Gartner, DevOps teams are about to get displaced in the enterprise by FUSION teams.

Many firms pursuing distributed delivery are using “fusion teams” to bring together IT and business employees to develop digital solutions. As fusion teams become more prevalent, enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders must actively support these blended, multidisciplinary teams.—Gartner Enterprise Architecture Research Team, Feb 2020.

The term Development Operations (DevOps) has been on the lips of Digital Officers and CIOs for the past three years. This team of SCRUM crazy tech wizards has been charged with driving digital transformation project forward in double quick time. But, according to Gartner, that world is about to change—and 2021 is likely to be the year it happens.

The Enterprise Innovation Factory

Customers are ever more online, remote, discerning, and seeking personalised experiences. Moreover, they want to be in control of their purchasing experiences, call the shots, not be kept waiting, and they want answers when they seek them.

Technologies like Machine-Learning and Artificial Intelligence, sensor networks (the ‘Internet of Things’), blockchain, AI-driven conversational chatbots, virtual and hybrid reality, and 3D modelling are transforming customer value and experiences.

Every business needs to harness the potential of digital technologies to surprise and delight their customers, and stay competitive. That requires tech teams who can be the ‘tip of the spear’ and lead the charge. Someone somewhere needs to understand the hyper automation journey and what the outcome looks like from a tech-stack perspective.

The rapid pace of change in technologies and tools has left many traditional IT teams disorientated and confused about their role (i.e, ‘Do you want me to focus on upgrading our apps, displacing legacy systems and keeping the lights on or not?).

The solution for many organization has become what’s known as two-speed IT. Put another way, it’s about parachuting a new team of tech experts to create a Development Operations team that is equipped with the right skills blend and tech tools to implement agile developments. That was good 3-years ago, but today—IT’S STILL TOO SLOW.

digital

The Challenges of Coding

The pace of digital evolution is now SO SWIFT that there’s not enough time to code the majority of apps anymore. A growing demand for short-cuts and code block re-use has popularized the use of Low-Code tools that make coding faster. These solutions, while useful, haven’t done anything to remove one of the fundamental challenges of application ideation: That is the barrier that exists between IT and the business when you use code and script.

digital

Enter No-Code

At one time, any applications design and deployment technology that didn’t show the appropriate amount of love for the art of coding would be shunned by businesses as being ‘amateur stuff’ that wasn’t ‘enterprise-grade.’ Practitioners in the art of coding would argue that any tech platform not focused on the needs of the coder was deemed unable to cater for the vast array of requirements modern enterprise apps dictate. They even had a name for these enthusiastic amateurs—‘Citizen developers.’

That isn’t true anymore. In the past decade, cloud-based technologies have transformed the potential of Platform-as-a-Service ecosystems to support the design, deployment and operation of applications—all achieved without coding.

Platforms like OutSystems, Encanvas, Mendix, BettyBlocks, Outgrow, AppSheet and Bubble are able to offer enterprise-grade results. Some, offer integrated data crunching and interoperability tools together with the ability to ‘code if you want to’ or add existing DLLs, HTML, Javascript or C#.

digital

Fusion Teams—Bringing ‘IT’ and ‘the Business’ Together

These new tools enable Business Analysts to scope and design solutions, removing the ‘deep technical’ duties from the task of authoring an application. That means business people and tech people can build apps in real-time in workshops without having to create a SCRUM or run off into back-rooms to code.

While the technology is transformative, it’s taken some time for organizational designs and cultures to adjust to this new reality. FUSION TEAMS are the emerging solution to that challenge.

’Multidisciplinary digital business teams — or “fusion teams” — are critical to success in digital transformation. Progressive CIOs foster rather than fight the rise of the distributed digital delivery model and maximize value by focusing on the human aspects of managing digital business risk.’—Gartner CIO Research Team ‘Fusion Teams: A New Model for Digital Delivery, 2020.’

digital

How Does a Fusion Team Work?

A Fusion Team is a cross-functional project team brought together around a particular app development initiative. It is generally a temporary organizational structure that ‘fuses together’ technical, commercial, change management, data security and legal considerations in the form of a transitional project team.

The purpose of a Fusion Team is to come together, implement the change, then go on to do other things. This means its not always necessary that the entire team has to be employed on full-time employment contracts, forging the possibility for Statement-of-Work styled project programs to be established whenever business needs are identified.

While project teams that use No-Code tooling to deliver app development outcomes isn’t particularly new, the fact that Gartner has ‘given this team a name’ and is now priming the enterprise IT market to consider a new way of working.

’Digital opportunities and risks are cross-cutting and fast changing, so it’s no surprise that most IT employees participate in flexible “fusion” teams that extend across IT and other parts of the business.’—Gartner CIO Research Team, Fusion Teams: Cross-Functional Collaboration for the Digital Era, June 2017.

digital

Summary

In one of its latest papers, Gartner argues, ’The rise of fusion teams, or multidisciplinary digital business teams, requires CIOs to rethink the role of IT in supporting enterprise strategy.’ We would agree. The adoption of Fusion Teams into the enterprise biosphere is going to take a significant shift in attitudes and the final acceptance that coding is always going to be required for exceptional cases, but for the majority of applications building blocks, No-Code tools work just fine. It may take all of 2021, and a little time longer than that, for some ‘head in the sand’ CIOs to take on that little fact.

The No-Code Software App Factory

The No-Code Software App Factory

Nov 21, 2021 | Digital Transformation, Enterprise Software, No Code Development Platform

How No-Code Software is re-inventing app development

2022—The Year of No-Code Software and Digital Platforms

In its 2019 FutureScale outlook focusing on ‘Digital Supremacy’ IDC argued that operating as a software-driven “digital innovation factory” will be at the core of an enterprise’s ability to sustainably differentiate and compete in its own industry.

They suggested that, by 2025, nearly two thirds of enterprises will be prolific software producers with code deployed daily, over 90% of apps cloud native, 80% of code externally sourced, and 1.6 times more developers than today.

Watch any ad break on the TV and you will see 4 in 5 ads promoting apps or showing someone using a smart device. The world has gone mad for smart devices, AND APPS.

Why are so many companies becoming no-code software app factories?

A clue comes from McKinsey & Co. in its paper published in August 2020 titled, ‘The Next Normal—Digitizing at speed and scale’ where the management consulting and analyst firm suggests the recovery will be digital. They write, ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for companies to adopt digital business models—and only cloud platforms can provide the agility, scalability, and innovation required for this transition. Although there have been frustrations and false starts in the enterprise journey to the cloud, companies can dramatically accelerate their progress by focusing investments in it where they will provide the most business value and by building cloud-ready operating models.’

No business today can ignore the importance of transitioning incumbent slow-burn enterprise systems towards an agile, cloud-born, no-code software platforms that serve the information management demands of all stakeholders.

There are two major drivers of this move to no-code software. They are:

1. Speed of Change

The pace of change in markets is unprecedented. It means laggards are no longer ‘just slow’ and missing out on opportunities. Without a place in the digital future, companies face extinction. According to research conducted by PWC in 2019 and 2021, around 1 in 5 surveyed companies (18%) implemented some form of Artificial Intelligence in 2019, but that dropped to 4% in 2020 when the pandemic gave businesses something else to think about. 2021 is likely to be the rebound year when businesses accelerate their digital plans to innovate their way out of the economic slowdown.

Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC, argues, “As more than half the global economy turns digital by 2023, a new species of enterprise will be required to compete and thrive. IDC’s 2020 predictions show that enterprises will prepare for the digitized economy by accelerating investments in key technologies and new operating models to become hyperspeed, hyperscaled, and hyperconnected organizations.”

2. The Need to Re-Define Customer Value

For many industries, customer aspirations have changed in the past year. Some businesses will be impacted by the raising demand for PPE and medical products. Others will have to deal with the consequences of more home working that reduces foot-fall in major commuter cities. Covid-19 brought the travel and tourism industry to its knees. Office space will drop in demand and value. And ANY business not already trading successfully online will need to get their act together in 2021. Those, however, are the top-line impacts. Consider too that consumers have reset their perspectives on what’s important. The pandemic has raised questions in the minds of buyers in the efficacy of a wasteful consumer society. Re-cycling, re-use, and business models framed around protecting the planet will trump behaviors that promote excess and extravagance.

Every business will face its own unique blend of challenges, and to counter them, the solution is to create a technology ecosystem that maximizes customer value and experience, while minimizing cost. Unfortunately, that doesn’t just come out of a box in a form executives can plug in—it needs to be crafted and deployed.

What does a no-code software app factory look like?

The modern no-code software app factory relies on a partnership between the IT team and ‘the business’ comprised of Line-of-Business (LoB) managers, execs and application stakeholders (which could be employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, industry partners, shareholders, etc.).

To herd the cats, you will also need a Project Manager to drive the ideation process. Additionally, a Business Analyst should be on hand to create the apps using a modern codeless Integrated Design Environment (Today, the app creation role has shifted away from the tech-stack deployment, scaling, backup and architectural considerations, and the operational governance responsibilities of IT).

Bringing these disparate interests together is the role of the FUSION TEAM. This is a transitional decision making ‘meeting of minds;’ where stakeholders come together to agree what should be built, how it should be deployed, and what people, process, technology and data considerations need to be thought about to make any app deployment a success.

The technology toolset will be a no-code application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS) of one form or another, deployed on a private cloud by the vendor.  Expect to find in your tool-kit the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), together with data management and governance tools, heaps of data security, and the necessary data crunching and integration tools needed to harvest data from existing and third party repositories. It’s worth noting that almost no application exists as an island these days. Inevitably, your apps will need to harvest and serve up data to third party tools. With modern tech-stacks, this is normally achieved using codeless data connectors, so whilst still not a trivial task, it is surprisingly simpler than using APIs and third party integration platforms and tools.

Final thoughts—Where to find the right no-code software for your business

How companies think about their enterprise stack has been slow to change. Company IT teams were educated to code and script. They have invested hours of their lives in learning the systems and tools your business uses today. Asking them to forget all that and adopt a new approach and set of skills is a big ask. Therefore, managing change is best done by bringing in some fresh thinking, either from a third party, or by hiring a Digital Officer familiar with the latest generation of cloud-born no-code software application ecosystems—such as Appian, ServiceNow, Encanvas, Outsystems, BettyBlocks or force.com.

Transitioning to become an APP FACTORY is a people, process, data, and technology transformation—and it’s never easy eating an entire pizza in one serving. For businesses that have yet to transition to FUSION TEAMS and NOCODE development, the likely starting point is to find a technology partner able to advise on how to progress.

The good news, is that no company has to be left behind. Every opportunity exists to get on the band-wagon and to build up your capability to develop a digital ecosystem to build agility into your tech-stack and orchestrate your business model one app at a time.

Looking for enterprise-grade no-code software for YOUR app factory? To experience ENCANVAS for yourself, book a test drive.

Francesca Manley

Francesca Manley

Author

Francesca is an independent writer and head of communications for technology brands.  Armed with a passion for writing about innovative technologies that can transform business, she serves on the management team of Encanvas and has worked as a public relations adviser to the executive teams of various companies including Newton Day Ltd, TwoMinute Reads.com, NDMC Consulting, PrinSIX Technologies, and Answer Pay helping to rethink their marketing in order to tell their brand story.  She can be reached via LinkedIn.

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What is a Digital Transformation Platform?

What is a Digital Transformation Platform?

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation Platform

Discover why digital transformation platforms are a critical technology component to power your growth

About

A Digital Transformation Platform is a computing platform used to support the orchestration of business models in support of the digital transformation of an enterprise, where digital transformation describes a foundational change in how an enterprise delivers value to its customers. A digital transformation normally represents an adjustment to the business model adopted by an enterprise to create its customer value and profitable returns for shareholders.

Digital Platforms and Ecosystems

Technology leaders increasingly talk about digital platforms and ecosystems; but what are they, and what’s the difference between them?

Our interpretation at Encanvas is that a platform is a computing platform used to orchestrate business models serving the data processing needs of an organization, while an ecosystem does more to serve the data processing needs of a community. That said, when people speak of digital transformation platforms, they often blur the line between the two. It has become quite a muddy area of technology understanding!

The impact of digital transformation platforms on business success

The outcome of implementing a digital transformation platform is normally a step-change in operational effectiveness and growth.

Recent research conducted by Harvard Business School suggests that companies that are digital laggards don’t perform as well as those that embrace digital transformation. They write, “Organizations that scored in the top quartile of our digital transformation index obtained much better gross margins, earnings, and net income than organizations in the bottom digital quartile. Other financial and operating indicators showed similar disparities.”

Harnessing new digital technologies to create more customer value and reduce operating costs is a challenging prospect for many organizations accustomed to primarily investing in slow-coach IT to keep the lights on. To leverage the potential of technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and cloud computing (etc.), your enterprise needs to embrace a digital ecosystem that’s able to embrace new technologies and adapt to change affordably and expediently. That’s why

NDMC invented encanvas to support digital transformations by equipping organizations to adapt their IT to fit their business model. We describe it as a business model orchestration and it normally means the evolution of enterprise IT architecture to embrace codeless ‘Live Wireframing’ of applications.

A 2019 report by Zenzar found that employees too understand the value of having the right digital tools to get the job done. More than three-fourths (76%) of the 1,000-plus survey group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. More than half (53%) said it makes them more successful. The same share said they would be more empowered to better manage workflow if provided with the IT tools they needed, and 42% said it speeds up boring tasks. Some 68% of the 18 to 34 age group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. That’s a significant share. But it’s even higher – at 80% – for the 35 to 54 age group. And a whopping 83% of workers age 55 and older agreed.

Adopting a top-down approach to enterprise IT – and creating a single, unifying digital transformation platform with modern cloud technology – will transform your business and its ability to compete in the digital age.

McKinsey & Co. suggest companies with digital platforms enjoyed an annual boost in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 1.4 percent, compared with the 0.3 percent gains of non-players. They go on to state that performance effects are cumulative, with EBIT improvements adding to early-year gains, so over a five- year period, platform players may capture an additional 10 percent in EBIT growth—a company’s 2 percent EBIT growth, for example, would increase to 2.2 percent in year five. Source: ‘The right digital-platform strategy’, McKinsey & Co, May 2019

According to IT analyst firm Gartner, a digital ecosystem is – ‘..an interdependent group of enterprises, people and/or things that share standardized digital platforms for a mutually beneficial purpose, such as commercial gain, innovation or common interest, growth and shareholder returns.’

Example

A good example of a digital transformation platform is Amazon. At amazon.com customers get the benefit of using the Amazon platform to find and purchase products. They also are able to manage their own account, coordinate logistics, see the progress of orders, and more. At one time, all of these duties would’ve been performed by back-office workers operating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Not today. Digital Transformation Platforms displace much of the need for businesses to enter data or operate Systems of Record.

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enteprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to instal and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading

What is a digital ecosystem?

What is a digital ecosystem?

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation

Find out why digital ecosystems are taking off…

About

According to IT analyst firm Gartner, a digital ecosystem is – ‘..an interdependent group of enterprises, people and/or things that share standardized digital platforms for a mutually beneficial purpose, such as commercial gain, innovation or common interest, growth and shareholder returns.’

Digital Ecosystems have become more visible in enterprise computing owing to the increased focus towards digital transformation. Digital transformation describes a foundational change in how an organization delivers value to its customers. It normally represents an adjustment to the business model adopted by an enterprise to create its customer value and profitable returns for shareholders.

As a matter fo fact, the world of business has gone mad for digital ecosystems in the last few years, partly driven by the awareness of technologies like Blockchain that make it possible to create a federated and trusted digital market-place for ‘anything.’

Purpose and benefits

The purpose of a digital ecosystem is to provide the data processing capability needed support a community of users in the delivery of a process or function. The benefit of using a common digital ecosystem across a community is to reduce frictional costs, not to mention the cost of operating IT for each contributor. With Digital ecosystems, IT costs are shared by the community, probably in the form of a subscription charge.

Example

A good example of a digital ecosystem is a city-wide Internet of Things platform. These are being developed by leading cities around the world including Barcelona, London and Tallinn in Estonia. The principal of a city-wide digital IOT ecosystem is to enable all digital services to be provisioned and paid for using a common technology substrate. It means that citizens and visitors can register for a service with their ID and then pay for (and consume) services more easily.

Examples of services include car park payments, transport payments, lifelong learning and gym fees, computer printing and copying etc. For any such digital ecosystem, a digital platform is required able to manage and house applications deployed as services.

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enterprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to install and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading

Digital Transformation Platform

Digital Transformation Platform

Mar 11, 2020 | Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Platform

Why is Digital Transformation such a hot potato? Read this article to better understand it.

About

The impact of digital transformation on business success

The outcome of a digital transformation is normally a step-change in operational effectiveness and growth.

Recent research conducted by Harvard Business School suggests that companies that are digital laggards don’t perform as well as those that embrace digital transformation. They write, “Organizations that scored in the top quartile of our digital transformation index obtained much better gross margins, earnings, and net income than organizations in the bottom digital quartile. Other financial and operating indicators showed similar disparities.”

Harnessing new digital technologies to create more customer value and reduce operating costs is a challenging prospect for many organizations accustomed to primarily investing in slow-coach IT to keep the lights on. To leverage the potential of technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and cloud computing (etc.), your enterprise needs to embrace a digital ecosystem that’s able to embrace new technologies and adapt to change affordably and expediently. That’s why

What subjects does digital transformation focus on?

Research suggests that the most common focus of digital transformation are projects that improve customer experience or create more customer value. Examples include:

  • Portal applications to encourage self-service
  • Projects to make more information and services transparent to customers
  • Simpler logistics, automation, and billing
  • Chatbots and customer support services brought online
  • Projects to capture more customer insight to deliver more personalized, tailored products and services

Orchestrating your digital transformation

NDMC invented encanvas to support digital transformations by equipping organizations to adapt their IT to fit their business model. We describe it as a business model orchestration and it normally means the evolution of enterprise IT architecture to embrace codeless ‘Live Wireframing’ of applications.

A 2019 report by Zenzar found that employees too understand the value of having the right digital tools to get the job done. More than three-fourths (76%) of the 1,000-plus survey group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. More than half (53%) said it makes them more successful. The same share said they would be more empowered to better manage workflow if provided with the IT tools they needed, and 42% said it speeds up boring tasks. Some 68% of the 18 to 34 age group said having the digital tools they need at work makes them more productive. That’s a significant share. But it’s even higher – at 80% – for the 35 to 54 age group. And a whopping 83% of workers age 55 and older agreed.

Where to start?

Adopting a top-down approach to enterprise IT – and creating a single, unifying digital platform with modern cloud platforms – will transform your business and its ability to compete in the digital age.

McKinsey & Co. suggest companies with digital platforms enjoyed an annual boost in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 1.4 percent, compared with the 0.3 percent gains of non-players. They go on to state that performance effects are cumulative, with EBIT improvements adding to early-year gains, so over a five- year period, platform players may capture an additional 10 percent in EBIT growth—a company’s 2 percent EBIT growth, for example, would increase to 2.2 percent in year five. Source: ‘The right digital-platform strategy’, McKinsey & Co, May 2019

About Encanvas

Encanvas is an enterprise software company that specializes in helping businesses to create above and beyond customer experiences.

From Low Code to Codeless

Better than code-lite and low-code, we created the first no code (codeless) enterprise application platform to release creative minds from the torture of having to code or script applications.

Live Wireframe

Use Encanvas in your software development lifecycle to remove the barrier between IT and the business. Coding and scripting is the biggest reason why software development has been traditionally unpredictable, costly and unable to produce best-fit software results. Encanvas uniquely automates coding and scripting. Our live wireframing approach means that business analysts can create the apps you need in workshops, working across the desk with users and stakeholders.

AppFabric

When it comes to creating apps to create a data culture and orchestrate your business model, there’s no simpler way to install and operate your enterprise software platform than AppFabric. Every application you create on AppFabric adds yet more data to your single-version-of-the-truth data insights. That’s because, we’ve designed AppFabric to create awesome enterprise apps that use a common data management substrate, so you can architect and implement an enterprise master data management plan.

Customer Data Platform

Encanvas supplies a private-cloud Customer Data Platform that equips businesses with the means to harvest their customer and commercial data from all sources, cleanse and organize it, and provide tooling to leverage its fullest value in a secure, regulated way. We provide a retrofittable solution that bridges across existing data repositories and cleanses and organizes data to present a useful data source. Then it goes on to make data available 24×7 in a regulated way to authorized internal stakeholders and third parties to ensure adherence to data protection and FCA regulatory standards.

Encanvas Secure&Live

Encanvas Secure and Live (‘Secure&Live’) is a High-Productivity application Platform-as-a-Service. It’s an enterprise applications software platform that equips businesses with the tools they need to design, deploy applications at low cost. It achieves this by removing coding and scripting tasks and the overheads of programming applications. Unlike its rivals, Encanvas Secure&Live is completely codeless (not just Low-Code), so it removes the barriers between IT and the business. Today, you just need to know that it’s the fastest (and safest) way to design, deploy and operate enterprise applications.

Learn more by visiting www.encanvas.com.

The Author

Nick Lawrie is the CEO of NDMC Ltd and a member of the Encanvas Steering Group. His background is in corporate finance where he served for several decades as a Fortune 500 CFO. Nick is an experienced practitioner in large-scale enterprise IT and change management projects. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile.

Further reading