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Avoid data spaghetti with a no-code aPaaS
No-code aPaaS will transform your data driven decisioning. Here’s how.
Most enterprises today operate more than 80 SaaS apps, the consequence being ‘data sense’ is harder. The good news is that you can use a no-code aPaaS platform to bridge across enterprise silos to tame data spaghetti and create a single version of the truth
The problem SaaS exacerbated that no-code aPaaS solves
The short-lived joy of SaaS
When the possibility of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions arrived into the market in the early 2000s — heralded in by the evolution of web platforms and cloud computing — they were game-changing for innovators in the tech industry.
Through cloud SaaS innovations, developers could bring their products to market faster (and eat much lower costs), focus on very tight niche solutions, offer products on a subscription, and give customers the opportunity to try them out immediately. Furthermore, technical support and endorsements could be supplied through the same online site that sold the products.
For buyers, SaaS was equally advantageous. No longer did they need to commit to a purchase before experiencing a product to see if it delivered value. The quality of products leaped up the scale, as providers HAD to deliver excellent quality, intuitive, and responsive applications.
The downside of SaaS is that it spreads your data across a wide number of data silos.
SaaS has re-balanced IT selection decisions towards department leaders, but at a cost
Enterprise computing practitioners were somewhat less thrilled by SaaS. Before its arrival, the role of the Enterprise CTO was unquestioned. They were the gods of technology, and nobody could get anything done in IT without their blessing.
The idea that departmental managers could arrive at the IT desk and start demanding software products they hadn’t even seen before, and show them immediate advantages was hard to counter, and left many IT heads on the back foot, trying to defend the common sense of requiring testing, integration and further validation before any recommendation was adopted.
The rise of SaaS adoption levels in the enterprise has soared over two decades, as department heads have got ever more involved in selection decisions on the tools they, and their teams, want to use. The power to make decisions drifted from the center of the enterprise to the margins.
Few could argue that the quality of applications used in business has benefited from SaaS. But at what cost?
Step into any large enterprise and you’ll encounter find the common problem of data held in various SaaS platforms with departmental managers pulling their hair out trying to gather it up to drive decisioning.
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Data spaghetti
Software-as-a-Service technology has played its part in making it close to impossible for real-time business decisioning to happen across the enterprise without an additional layer of ‘business intelligence and analytics’ technology being superimposed.
Even with the best data visualization and analytical tools, the problem of fragmented data silos pervades.
It’s not simply the case that SaaS tools separate usage activity into different places across the enterprise computing biosphere, using a myriad of separately authored apps results in every app using its own core data tables for common things that every organization needs to know about — such as people, departments, organizational hierarchies, policies, processes, suppliers and user groups. While some of these building blocks can be inherited from common directories, most are simply individually reproduced time and again by vendors.
Digital transformation drives data re-use
Growing demand from department leaders and executives for new apps and real-time data analytics has created a demand for data reuse. And it’s when these requests emerge that the problems of data integrity and quality emerge.
Install any new digital innovation into an enterprise, and it’s almost inevitable that existing data will want to be harnessed.
When this happens, time and again, one finds that the original data tables operating within SaaS applications are incomplete, unused, or irrelevant. Business Analysts find themselves scratching their heads trying to work out which bits of data to string together to build a reliable picture of the operating reality.
The state-of-the-art is a right state!
- Enterprise IT leaders wondering if they will see the day when no department manager comes to the door demanding the next new SaaS thing.’
- The very same Department managers being given a subscription to Microsoft PowerBI forcing them to spend time away from their customers and teams to clumsily play with rubbish data, wondering ‘Why do I have to spend half my life trying to find data, rather than having the chance to use it?’
- CxO Executives still struggling to know what processes, policies, and customers actually exist.
Businesses want to be ‘digital’ but lack the quality and integrity of data to innovate.
It begs the question: Is there a better way? The answer is yes — and it’s been around for a while.
Ready to discover the new era of codeless software? Check out our products.
Secure&Live – A feature rich and data secure digital transformation platform. Secure and Live is a codeless Enterprise applications Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS), built to turn business models and strategies into apps.
GlueWare – Enterprise iPaaS for bringing your data together, mashing it up, and bridging between your eCommerce store and back-office, streamlining processes for maximum results.
AppFabric – Build as many apps as you need using an agile codeless SDLC approach and change them as often as you like.
Live Wireframe – Design and publish ebooks, courseware and apps, then go live in two clicks!
CDP – Codeless Customer Data Platform to create a single view of your customer data. Use our data integration tools to harvest insights from across your enterprise and beyond.
Learn about the data safeguarding, features and modules of Encanvas that make it a leader in codeless enterprise aPaaS
Better decisioning starts with a no-code aPaaS to harness data
The rise of no-code application platforms
The concept of cloud Platform-as-a-Service solutions has been buzzing around for over a decade since the arrival of cloud computing. PaaS describes the layer of technology that sits between Software-as-a-Service and the mechanical end of cloud–hardware infrastructure, memory disks and the like.
A no-code application PaaS is an environment for designing, deploying and operating tens — if not hundreds — of apps and software robots without needing to use code to design, deploy, and run them.
No-code aPaaS introduces a new skill-set
Using no-code-aPaaS means that Business Analysts found within IT or Digital teams (not coders) author applications. They do so working in consort with business stakeholders in what Gartner fashionably calls ‘fusion teams.’
Applications requirements go straight from the workshop whiteboard into a live wireframe that swiftly becomes a new application.
Examples of mobile and web desktop applications designed and deployed on no-code aPaaS
What makes no-code aPaaS different to what comes before is that at least 60% of the things you need to produce an Enterprise App come out of the box. It means the only things business Analysts need to get right are the drag and drop rules, if-then logic and workflows of the application they are building that are unique to the requirement. While No-Code applications development is fast, building apps on a No-Code Application Fabric is even faster.
No-Code aPaaS is a win: win for both IT and the business
People used to argue you needed a two-speed IT capability to make digital business work. That notion has thankfully gone away. No-code aPaaS returns IT influence from the outer fringes of the enterprise to the center.
That’s an awkward conversation in today’s boardrooms, but it’s arguably a necessary one.
Organizations that want to harness data, become data-driven, keep data safe, eradicate self-authored apps and spreadsheets, achieve excellence in customer experience, serve up the best applications for their stakeholders, and cut costs. History tells us that the best way to achieve it is to have a unified computing and data environment.
PROs
The benefits of no-code aPaaS for ‘data bridging’
Data quality/integrity benefits include:
- Faster data gathering / aggregation using no-code interfaces instead of APIs etc.
- Use of integrated no-code Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Information Flow Automation (IFA) tools to streamline data uploads from remote locations
- Safer for data – data is secured at source, during transport, and when uploaded.
- Improved data quality through use of artificial intelligence/fuzzy logic tools to cleanse, normalize, enrich and de-dupe data
- Easier to test, replicate and scale applications using the provided ‘cloud container’ technology
CONs
The downside (a few things to think about)
1. IT people used to coding will be resistant to change
2. Departmental heads may initially be resistant to the idea of sharing their data
3. Not every no-code aPaaS offers ALL the features you will need. So selecting the right platform with be important and isn’t always straightforward.
About Ian Tomlin
Ian Tomlin is a management consultant and strategist specializing in helping organizational leadership teams to grow by telling their story, designing and orchestrating their business models, and making conversation with customers and communities. He serves on the management team of Encanvas and works as a virtual CMO and board adviser for tech companies in Europe, America and Canada. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or follow him on Twitter.
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About Encanvas
At Encanvas we have a passion for low-code / no-code (we like to say codeless) software development. We’ve been leading innovation in the enterprise rapid applications development (low-code / no-code / data mashups) industry since 2002.
Our enterprise digital transformation platform is used to design, deploy and run custom apps by uniquely blending application (aPaaS), integration (iPaaS), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and data mashup codeless software tools.
Encanvas brings agility and innovation to businesses. Used by data-driven organizations around the world, our platform evolves digitalization plans at the speed of light to maximize customer experience and minimize IT costs. Accelerate time to value of new applications as part of your digital transformation or data engineering program. Read the Encanvas Blog to learn more about what we do.