In the modern software development market, cost-effective solutions sound like a saving grace regardless of the size of your business. Low code development is the trump card you need to hold if you want to win in this case.
Sounds great, right? But how do you implement low code development in your business? To understand low-code use cases in your business, let’s start by knowing what low-code development is.
What Is Low-Code Development?
Low-code development is a software development approach that utilizes visual model approaches and drag-and-drop methods to create software rather than constantly typing thousands of lines of code to create something from scratch.
Low-code development leverages pre-built components to put them together to create your custom application. This allows non-technical specialists to create a business solution that is fast, effective, and lightweight without any programming knowledge.
Aside from the obvious, why is it so popular?
A rise in the hybrid or borderless workforce is the main driving force behind adopting low-code technology, and a Model-driven development environment offers an initiative UI that allows developers and business experts to visualize their ideas and integrate them into the final product if needed.
The Best Platform In The Current Low Code Scenario
There are multiple low-code development solutions out there, offering a myriad of features and tools that can amplify an organization’s overall productivity and prowess.
Among all of them, Mendix has been able to stand apart from the crowd for quite a long time, as the 2023 Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms has stated Mendix to be a leader of the low code industry for the fourth time in a row.
One of the most valuable features that place Mendix on the throne is its derivative model-driven development capabilities. To ensure future competitiveness in the software industry, declarative development is crucial; you can rapidly deploy solutions without teaching your computer to do the basics.
15 Low Code Use Cases For Business Applications
Now that you understand the basics of low-code development, here are our most preferred 15 low-code use cases, many of which also feature our preferred and trusted low-code application development platform Mendix.
1. Customer & Employee Portal
Web-based digital portals are a great way to deliver self-service experiences like paying bills, submitting claims, generating quotes, etc. This reduces the workload for your customer support team by letting the users perform various operations themselves.
When the customers go through an automated user journey, it reduces the waiting time for each customer, increasing customer satisfaction.
With low-code development, you can create and deploy customer portals by reusing interfaces and tailoring their functionality to meet your business’s specific requirements for internal and external users.
Creating portals with low code is an operation with minimal cost and can help your organization add new revenue streams.
Mendix Empowers City of Rotterdam With Portals
The City of Rotterdam was suffering from a lack of business-IT collaboration, and it was halting its journey toward digitization. The city was facing three major challenges:
- Evolving Expectation of the General Masses: The city’s people demanded a better user experience when interacting with the city’s departments, like public affairs, traffic, and zoning.
- Data Privacy Concerns: The city doubted collaborating with third-party solutions and external partners due to potential data breach risks.
- Massive Business-IT Gap: The developer teams were siloed out with no common language and didn’t have proper collaboration with the internal and external stakeholders either. The result was a hefty backlog and a heap of shadow IT solutions.
They adopted Mendix back in 2018. As a result, their teams took 8-12 weeks on average to build an MVP.
After choosing Mendix as their primary low-code solution, Gemeente Rotterdam has released over 100 applications to serve the public, which have supported over 100,000 users in less than 4 years.
2. Native Mobile Apps And PWAs
With traditional programming languages, mobile application development can be boring, with tons of time and money wasted. When you’re taking the low-code approach, it suddenly becomes much easier, and each app is fit for purpose.
Now, you don’t need to maintain a team to develop and maintain your native apps and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Low code development can help you create a self-serving experience for the customers that enhances customer satisfaction with a rich user experience by leveraging the ReactNative framework.
This framework also allows for cross-platform apps for all the existing users, devices, and operating systems, so it’s a win-win.
Erie Insurance’s First Mobile App With No Mobile Developers
Erie Insurance is one of the leading insurance companies in the USA who are part of the Fortune 500. Though their services were mobile-friendly for years on end, they decided to create mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms to improve the user experience.
Since Erie Insurance was partnered with Mendix even before the need for a mobile app, they decided to create their native mobile app with Mendix as well.
Since Erie doesn’t employ any native mobile developers, they created their first mobile app with Mendix without any professional mobile app developer on their team.
The app simplified the user journey significantly by including biometric scanning for individual customers who can easily access their policy information, payments, ID cards, etc.
3. IoT-Enabled Apps
Low-code developed apps can easily integrate with different IoT platforms, enterprise systems, and third-party services. This allows an organization access to data that can be translated into actionable insights.
With low code, you can build rich customer experiences on top of connected devices, making it a more efficient choice if you develop IoT-enabled apps.
You can also monitor the apps constantly to detect and solve problems before they arrive.
WRSTBND Boosts Sales With Mendix-Enabled IoT For Turnstile
Formerly known as Solomon Group, they’re an entertainment company specializing in large-scale events. The company relied on manual Excel processes and Quickbase applications, which was quite ineffective.
The team took the help of Mendix to create a few applications for their employees:
- An app that integrates with IoT turnstiles
- Custom ERP
- RFID VIP Management Application
The IoT turnstile app offered increased transparency at events for employees and regulators, resulting in a $700,000 increase in single-day ticket sales.
4. Innovative Business Models
While the core offerings of a low-code platform include physical products, services, or a combination of both, every organization provides the services through software in the digital world.
When opting for low-code development, you create applications that enhance your core products and services and make them available for commercial selling.
This way, your low-code apps can easily address the core pain points of your existing target audience while capturing new markets and audiences.
Crollin Crowdfunding Reaches More People With A Lending Platform
Crollin Crowdfunding works on connecting entrepreneurs to potential investors. Their new business model almost stopped when previous off-the-shelf solutions couldn’t meet their current needs.
Crollin Crowdfunding built its end-to-end lending platform using Mendix. The development took 5 months, and the app has since placed $5,40,501,850 in loans.
“We are using the new technology because without Mendix we can’t do our business.”
-Jeroen ter Huurne / Managing Director / Collin Crowdfund
5. Replacement, Migration, or Extension of Legacy Systems
All legacy systems become obsolete at one point, and a business has no choice but to call for an upgrade. But with low code, you don’t have to throw away the existing system to make a place for bringing in the latest ones.
Low-code is a frictionless way to modernize your legacy systems that can easily update your business processes while rebuilding your core structure. If your core still functions, you can easily build apps around it to support the pre-existing legacy systems.
You can also create replacement apps that can decentralize your core system. When you need a rebuild, you can just start with the vital components with minimal hassle right away, as there are tons of reusable components you can gain access to with low-code platforms like Mendix.
BDC Accelerates Loan Processing With Modernized Lending System
Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a government-owned bank supporting Canadian businesses. Due to their slow core system, their customers faced slow processing times for loan applications.
With the help of Mendix, BDC created a new core lending platform that consolidates documentation and approvals in the application process. The system also has over 100 integration points with other apps like
- A CRM
- Client File System
- Multiple External Applications
The MVP of this new lending system was released in just 4 weeks, And the complete system was developed in just 8 months. The loan processing time has now been reduced to 20-30 minutes; in some cases, the applicants even access their funds on the same day.
6. Splitting Bigger Apps Into Microservices
When you split one giant app into multiple microservices, it ensures rapid development and updates. Each of these microservices has improved security, perfect for the modern landscape.
49% of businesses use microservices, and low code is the perfect solution for all of them to make the most of their time and effort.
PostNL Delivers More Than A Million Parcels With Mendix-Powered Microservices
PostNL is the national postal carrier for the Netherlands, serving 17 million customers. They deliver an astounding amount of 8.1 million letters and 1.1 million parcels daily.
Their legacy order management system was created with traditional software development practices, which struggled to keep up with the rapidly increasing parcel volume and complexity of PostNL.
PostNL decided to rebuild its core order management with Mendix and implemented a microservice architecture. The current architecture processes over 1 million parcels per day.
With the new infrastructure, they cleared their two-year backlog in six months while offering a 99.5% uptime guarantee.
7. Business Process Automation
Gone are the days of manual labor and toil, and automation is here to cut down the cost of additional time and resources for all of us. With process automation, most repetitive tasks are taken out of the equation, optimizing the entire development cycle.
With a low-code automation process, you can integrate multiple services of your application for widespread improvement where all enterprise workflows are optimized.
Kaneka Malaysia Harnesses The Power of Automation
Kaneka Malaysia is one of the biggest manufacturers of vinyl, performance polymers, foams, and performance fibers. Their manufacturing operations relied on an archaic legacy system and manual processes over email or Excel.
Kaneka Decided to replace its legacy system and go with custom-made applications that will appeal more to the customers instead of off-the-shelf solutions. Since the team was also limited in resources, they saw low-code development as their best bet.
Over the next 18 months of making their decision in 2021, Kaneka rebuilt 55 manual processes and delivered 13 new systems with the help of Mendix. This massive restructuring resulted in 80-100% time savings across almost every part of the manufacturing process.
8. Central Maintenance Platform
You can connect different data sources through low-code automation that can provide you with real-time information, which helps you streamline different types of enterprise workflows.
Data centralization of low-code apps offers a centralized solution that helps you incorporate advanced technologies like AI, IoT, and machine learning. By doing so, your maintenance procedures become far more predictive.
9. Social Network Solutions
Building a giant social media site like Facebook is a giant pain, even when you have low-code development as an option. To make it easier, you can offer turnkey social solutions made by low code that operate to serve a specific purpose.
With low code, it’s easy to create an app for social interaction that will address one core element of communication the target audience is looking for and act on that idea to create an app through rapid development enabled by low-code application platforms.
10. SaaS Development
If we’re talking about a company, who have always provided physical products or services, developing a SaaS can sound like something way out of its league. This is where low-code platforms come in.
With features like faster prototype creation and A/B testing, low-code developers can develop and release a SaaS software solution in a fraction of the time compared to the traditional software development process.
11. Supply Chain Management
When supply chain app management comes into question, the biggest concern is always data management. This includes huge data storage, giant spreadsheets, and countless hours of manual labor to sort everything.
However, mobile-based supply chain management portals make the process more flexible. And the best way to achieve it is to create supply chain apps with low code.
With a low-code supply chain app, you can track your inventory in real time, automate orders for low stocks, and invoice processing for purchases.
12. Capital Request Application
You have to approve various expenses when you’re running a branched-out business. Though there are apps to manage the procedure, most are riddled with complicated forms and input fields that are harder to make sense of.
When you create a capital request application with low code, you create a mobile-friendly app that is simple yet effective. Tools like that are best when planning to streamline capital management and budget approvals.
If you consider the ability to be able to create API connectors to centralize your data storage system, the entire process just becomes a walk in the park.
13. Regulatory Compliance
There are several international regulations that each organization must comply with, including GDPR, ISO, and HIPAA, to name a few. Low-code development allows your team to deploy new apps through rapid deployment that can ensure complete compliance with these security regulations.
Low code also helps you manage information about certifications and regulations that are near expiration or require upgrading a certain app part to ensure complete compliance.
14. Corporate Resource Booking
It’s common for a company to need corporate resources like meeting rooms, computers, projectors, etc. The requesting party must create a booking first, and manually doing so includes the elements of human error, like double booking.
With a low-code app for corporate resources booking, you don’t have to fear double-booking or other errors during the booking process.
Manually booking, managing, and integrating with Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar also requires manual inspection, which can completely be removed by low-code application development.
15. Citizen Development
Low-code development brings the bar down for the entry of developers. The development process is easy with drag-and-drop elements, visual modeling, and pre-built components.
With these features, you can assign professionals to handle more complex tasks while citizen developers oversee the primary application-building process.
You increase efficiency and agility by allocating experts to more complicated operations while improving collaboration.
To Wrap It All Up
Low-code development is the modern equivalent of cooking with gas in the early times. Anything you can think of, low-code development can get it done way faster compared to traditional methods and approaches.
The latest addition of artificial intelligence and machine learning has only expanded the area for low-code use cases.
FAQs
Some common use cases for low-code development include building internal tools, creating customer-facing applications, and automating business processes.
Low-code platforms are often used to develop mobile applications quickly and efficiently.
Due to their robust features and extensibility, low-code platforms can handle complex enterprise applications.
Yes, low-code platforms can be used to develop e-commerce websites, enabling businesses to easily create online stores and save costs.
Low-code development allows easy integration between various systems, facilitating data exchange and process automation.
