Low-code Composable Experiences Speed Up Implementations
How to quicken software implementation cycles with low code.
Vikram Srivats, VP, WaveMaker, shares why enterprise software executives must look to low code as a profit lever to address margin-dilutive implementation cycles for independent software vendors (ISVs).
We’re facing an increasingly uncertain economic climate in many sectors. In the past year, inflation ran rampant, interest rates rose, and layoffs and battered valuations were everywhere in the tech world. As a result, profitable growth has been harder and harder for enterprise software companies, which have seen sharp declines in profitability in recent quarters. Every option is on the table if it might jumpstart profit.
Therefore, a major challenge for today’s enterprise software companies is executing their platform’s digital core capabilities to keep up with new competitors and products without giving up short-term profitability. After all, the profits made now will make long-term advantages and advancements possible.
What these businesses are after right now is a way to free up their leadership’s bandwidth to identify the core capabilities that can serve as the strongest foundation for the future and then build atop them. In the custom, differentiated experience business, being an enabler—rather than a doer—is how you create a customer base for the long term, and infrastructure plays a major role in getting there.
Long Implementation Cycles are Eating Away at Profitability
Software implementation tends to drag on longer than one would assume, given all of the operational and computing efficiencies the industry has created in the last decade. There’s one major culprit for this: customization. Enterprise customers want customized software with the exact features they need (and ideally nothing more) that will integrate right into their current workflows. However, since most software vendors offer complete experiences, that’s easier said than done. Implementation requires professional services, significant labor to configure and integrate the solution, and no small amount of haggling for the customer to get the cheapest package available that will do all that they need and no more.
As a result, implementation cycles stretch; the longer that goes (and the more employee effort spent on implementation), the thinner the margins become. Each day or week that elapses before a solution goes live delays revenue from being realized, and profitability gets much farther away. Complex implementations take months or even a year to identify, prioritize, allocate, spool up implementation teams, test, and reach completion.
Quickly Activating Enterprise Customers Are Not Without Risks
The goal, then, for software providers is to “activate” enterprise customers faster. Low-code UX builder tools eliminate the need to build or code simple apps from scratch. These can help customers quickly get up to speed with a good level of customization possible—more on that below. Of course, more complex and sophisticated integrations and apps still need manual intervention. However, removing a large portion of the upfront low-complexity work will help speed up the implementation process.
Some companies are even changing their revenue recognition model, beginning at the start of implementation when system integrator partners are involved. This can be risky, with problems arising if implementations go over schedule, over budget, or outright fail. Other software companies have reworked their software platforms from the ground up using composable foundations. However, that alone doesn’t address the hard-coded web and experience layers, which are skill-intensive and expensive to expand or customize.
See More: Why Is Composability the Mantra for Faster Digital Innovation
The Benefits of a Low-Code Experience Model
Companies are meeting the challenge of balancing immediate and future needs by adopting composable, low-code experience models that speed up time to revenue while setting up infrastructure for future growth.
Low-code software implementation models provide many benefits rather than vendors delivering preset user journeys and UI elements.
- Self-service: Low-code experience models often involve a pivot away from full-service models to self-service options, where vendors aren’t the sole contributors to a product. Custom experiences are created in tandem by vendors, customers, system integrators, and third parties.
- Experience infrastructure capabilities: Experience infrastructure combines micro-apps, open low-code composable studios, experience-aware and third-party APIs, and many other building features and templates. This infrastructure allows customers and third parties to compose their own custom experiences sans major, intensive coding and frees up implementation teams for more complex tasks.
- Less time in service implementation: Faster implementation realizes revenue sooner—less margin dilution and quicker time to market for new capabilities. Profits being harder to come by makes competition more cutthroat than ever. Therefore implementation speed serves as a competitive differentiator for many enterprise software developers.
- Ecosystem benefits: Developers, partners, customers, and third parties being able to compose end-to-end experiences alongside one another bodes well for ecosystem growth. One party might have insights or perspectives that can inform the other and improve products for the whole ecosystem.
- Customer stickiness: Participative development models, where the users have a hand in building it themselves, help to bolster customer stickiness thanks to increased satisfaction and investment in a product. Allowing customers to customize with minimal coding gives them a sense of ownership.
Short-term Profit Acceleration for Long-term Strategic Advantage
Composability is not new on its own—many enterprise software vendors have already invested in composable platforms. Low-code experience models built on top of strong technology frameworks open up the ability to make custom experiences without major investments of time or financial resources. These dramatically reduce bloated implementation cycles that many customers are experiencing, thanks to predefined, rigid products accommodated on various platforms and processes.
The less time spent in implementation, with the customer and third parties taking a hand in customizing, optimizing, and selecting pre-built apps for their needs, the quicker dollars can start flowing in. This short-term push for profitability can also yield strategic advantages in the long term, as orchestrated experience-aware APIs and higher-order experience components can form a library over time that will shorten future customers’ implementation cycles and free up developers for both the more complex day-to-day needs and big-picture innovations.
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