Small Business Forum: Leveraging the Latest Software Tools for Business Process Automation

ABSTRACT

For decades, software development has required cooperatives to invest considerable time, talent, and treasure to build solutions for their specific problems that could not be resolved using Commercial Off The Shelf software alone. The growing field of Low Code / No Code software development offers cooperatives tools to reduce the resources required while building solutions tailored to the unique needs of each cooperative. Software development tools and practices have steadily evolved and Low Code / No Code is a major step in the “democratization” of building software. When managed correctly, Low Code / No Code offers significant savings in the costs and time required to deliver automated business processes. However, user accessibility to Low Code / No Code based business process automation also poses risks for managers of cooperatives. This article describes Low Code / No Code software development, provides an example of automating a business process, addresses the role that Low Code / No Code provides in a cooperative’s information technology operations, describes risks associated with this technology, provides recommendations, and details some of its limitations.

EDITOR Barbara A. Wech, Ph.D. Department of Management, Information Systems, and Quantitative Methods University of Alabama at Birmingham COLLAT School of Business 710 13th St. South Department of Management, Information Systems, & Quantitative Methods Birmingham, Alabama 35233 bawech@uab.edu

GUEST WRITER Samuel C. Thompson, PhD Department of Management, Information Systems and Quantitative Methods University of Alabama at Birmingham COLLAT School of Business 710 13th St. South Office: (205)934-8384 scthompson@uab.edu

LOW CODE / NO CODE PLATFORMS AND TOOLS

Low Code / No Code (LCNC) platforms and tools present a compelling opportunity for managers of cooperatives to automate business processes quickly and at less cost than through traditional software development methods (Bloomberg, 2017). However, the LCNC platforms and tools are being adopted so rapidly that they pose a risk to the operations of cooperatives as they can readily be implemented and used with customer/ member data, and without the approval of the

Information Technology (IT) Department.

Computerization of business processes began in large banking and insurance companies that handled millions of repetitive transactions such as payroll, payments, and the associated accounting of these transactions. As the relative costs of computerizing business processes has decreased, an increasing variety of business processes have been computerized. Automation offers speed and accuracy in processing that suffer when using more labor-intensive approaches. Modern business processes are often managed via Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms that offer tighter integration of a business, but with significant financial and other costs before, during, and after implementation. These platforms have generally been adopted first by large organizations. Over time, the ERP and CRM platform vendors such as Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce have gradually brought out smaller scale versions of their products, more suited to the needs of medium-sized organizations. However, for many cooperatives, these tools have remained out of reach.

Managers have found the financial and time savings of information technology compelling as they allow relatively few employees to serve the needs of an increasing number of customers or cooperative members. However, software development projects for many organizations are a large capital expense, consuming vast amounts of money and time. In one widely-cited report, the average cost of a software development project for a small company was $434,000 and $2.3 million for a large company. Additionally, only 16.2 percent of these projects were completed on time and on budget (Standish Group, 2014). The return on investment of these projects may require an extended period of time to be realized. As a result, many software projects are only undertaken to address truly compelling needs in an organization. This has been especially true for employees whose responsibilities do not allow them to sit in front of a desktop or laptop computer during most of their workday.

The personal computer began as a desktop device, evolved to a laptop device, and has most recently become a pocket-sized device in the form of the smart phone. While smart phone adoption has been overwhelming during the years since the iPhone’s introduction in 2007, the growth of skilled Application Development and Delivery (AD&D) professionals able to create smart phone “apps” has lagged considerably (Sharwood, 2017).

Until recently, the custom workflow applications implemented as smart phoneoriented “apps” more suited to these mobile employees have required AD&D professionals. Tools such as Objective-C, HTML5, Javascript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have been the primary tools required to create smart phone apps. The cost of harnessing this level of technical expertise has mostly limited the deployment and adoption of mobile apps to large user bases such as consumers and employees of large organizations (Joorabchi, Mesbah, and Kruchten, 2013).

To address these organizational needs for lower cost computerization of processes as well as the provisioning of custom apps for mobile employees, LCNC platforms and tools available from Google, Mendix, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, and others have enjoyed a rapidly growing market share, especially in the last few years (Umuhoza and Brambilla, 2016; Fryling, 2018). According to a Forrester Research article, the market for LCNC is expected to grow to $15.5 billion by 2020 (Richardson and Rymer, 2016). As the name implies, these software development platforms do not require extensive knowledge of computer languages or a standard Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Instead of an AD&D professional, a power user within an organization familiar with the processes of their department can use LCNC tools to automate those processes (Majchrzak, Ernsting, and Kuchen, 2015; Mew and Field, 2018). Given that LCNC is “democratizing” software development, shifting capabilities from professional software specialists to power users, these power users of LCNC are often referred to as “citizen developers.”

FROM TEXT-BASED TO TRULY VISUAL TOOLS

Currently, the vast majority of software is created using the text-based, “hand coded” paradigm. Even modern programming languages like Java and Visual Basic require developers to master instructions like public, void, string, class, var, rem, int, and so on. Some programming languages are highly cases sensitive, others are not. All of them require careful management of symbols (; : - # * ,) . In comparison, the visual paradigm of these LCNC software development platforms is a palette of buttons, textboxes, and icons that are dragged onto a virtual canvas. The LCNC user, either a citizen developer or AD&D professional, then modifies these basic elements to suit their business needs. Even business logic is modeled using icons and ready-to-run software implementing this logic can be quickly tested and deployed.

Within the last year, the LCNC market was anticipated to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent (Worldwide Market Reports, 2019). In addition to small and medium sized businesses, major companies like Zurich Insurance, New Balance, Komatsu, and Ingersoll Rand are using LCNC to automate business processes. Recognizing an opportunity in the marketplace, Microsoft and Google have begun to offer their LCNC toolsets - Power Apps and App Maker, respectively. Power Apps can be added to Microsoft Office 365 and App Maker is an extension of Google’s G Suite.

AUTOMATING A BUSINESS PROCESS WITH LCNC

For cooperatives, LCNC offers an opportunity to automate business processes that have previously been too expensive to address via “hand coded” software. This is especially true for business processes involving mobile employees. The LCNC toolsets make Androidbased smart phones and iPhones primary targets for mobile app development and deployment.

As an example of an LCNC-based business process automation, electric cooperatives must have their field employees conduct periodic inspections of equipment. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers publishes the National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) every five years. These standards for managing electrical systems have been periodically published since 1913 (American Electric Power, 2019). For electrical cooperatives, NESC mandated inspections to insure the safety and functionality of electrical equipment are a set of standard business processes. These processes, especially the ones that are limited to annual or even less frequent inspections, may present an opportunity for automation via LCNC tools.

An electric cooperative’s field employee may periodically inspect member meters to insure they are operating safely, properly, and have not been tampered with by anyone. This business process may be based on a clipboardbound, paper form that is filled out while observing the condition of an electric meter. The clipboard is carried along while the field employee walks between the member’s electric meter and the employee’s vehicle. Without LCNC, migrating this business process from “clipboard-and-paper” to “smart phone and app” may be considered too expensive to implement using traditional mobile software development processes. A central principle of user interface design is to capture data as close to its source as possible. In the electric meter inspection business process, the field employee either enters their observations periodically into a laptop in the vehicle or someone in a coop office copies from the paper forms via manual data entry at a desktop computer. This process is vulnerable to an array of problems. Paper entries could become smeared or damaged. Pages of readings may be misplaced, damaged or destroyed before their entries can be recorded digitally. The field employee may have trouble understanding their entries hours or days after initially recording them. The process could also be disrupted by an interruption such as a vehicle accident or breakdown. If a second person creates the digital entries, there is a likelihood of incorrect interpretation or recording of the original data. In either case, there is a delay

between the original meter inspection and its entry into the electric cooperative’s computer systems.

In this example of migrating from “clipboard-and-paper” to “smart phoneand-app”, a citizen developer in the electric coop with deep knowledge of the operations department’s business processes could be tasked with automating equipment inspections. They could create a smart phone oriented form to be used by the field employees. A powerful feature of LCNC tools is that instead of simply providing textboxes labeled Street Address 1, Street Address 2, City, State and so on, the form presented on the field employee’s smart phone or other mobile computing device could provide a digitized map to them. Using the GPS capabilities of the mobile computing device, the field employee would be able to view their own location on a map, then tap the location icon of the cooperative member’s address icon and the app would automatically populate the Street Address 1, Street Address 2 and other fields of the form. To further minimize typing on the mobile computing device, the form could provide buttons to record standard observations such as, “Meter inaccessible, No problems observed, Damaged meter, Meter requires calibration, Evidence of tampering, Meter requires replacement” and so on. An entry area on the form could be provided for recording the in-service date of the meter, its model number, or other information that may be best obtained through direct observation. The mobile app could also provide textboxes for free-form recording of the field employee’s observations to address any issues not otherwise provided on the form. Also, details regarding specific observations could be addressed through additional buttons or textboxes accessed initially via one of the high-level buttons. Once the observations were ready for entry to the electric cooperative’s computer systems, the field employee would click a Submit button on their smart phone or other mobile computing device’s screen. This approach ensures the data is collected as close to the source as possible.

While the construction of this example mobile app is familiar in software development, it differs radically in terms of complexity. The citizen developer of the LCNC development environment may not have to enter any computer code at all, just descriptive text for the buttons, maps, and textboxes presented to the field employee. If additional functionality or complex integration with the coop’s databases was needed, then this example would also entail some assistance from an AD&D professional.

Another advantage of developing software on an LCNC platform is the immediate feedback available to the app developer. They can initially connect their smart phone’s web browser to the URL where the app’s current page is provided, then just pull down from the top of their smart phone’s screen to refresh the page with the latest version of the app. What the citizen developer sees is the same as what is seen by the app’s users. While this means rapid updates of a deployed, operational app can be provided, it also means that mistakes may be rapidly introduced, requiring revisions and the communication of corrections to the app’s users. Given this dynamic, it is recommended that apps be developed at a low level, on a small scale, and carefully tested to eliminate problems before operational deployment. Once a small process has been successfully automated, the scope can be expanded to automate higher-level, related processes.

LCNC PRODUCTS

In a 2016 report by Forrester Research, 42 vendors of LCNC products were identified. At the high end of the cost and feature scale is Oracle with its Business Process Management Suite and related low-code platform for database apps. At the lower end of the cost and feature scale is Quick Base (formerly a division of Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks), which offers process and workflow automation software to include free trials. For ready leverage of large Microsoft

installations, that company offers its Power Apps platform for process and workflow automation. The financial costs of all these products tend to be lower than traditional software development projects, but higher than simply documenting business processes and workflows.

For cooperatives that have already implemented Oracle’s Business Process Management Suite, Salesforce CRM, or Microsoft’s Power platform, these products offer LCNC tools at additional cost. While potentially costly, the ready integration of the resulting LCNC-developed software may provide compelling business process automation opportunities for cooperative managers.

LCNC AS “SHADOW IT”

One motivation for learning about LCNC is that it has already infiltrated many organizations via self-styled citizen developers trying to solve problems with software. As with many earlier technologies, adoption may be “organic”, as opposed to being formally evaluated and approved by the organization’s information technology department. Shadow IT is a term used to describe information technology that has been introduced and is in use without the approval of the organization’s Information Technology department. Shadow IT projects lack official sponsorship in an organization. This poses a significant risk to an organization as it normally represents a violation of organizational policies and may lead to serious, negative consequences (Su, Levina, and Ross, 2016).

An example of the threat of Shadow IT would be a cooperative employee who has been provided an IT Department approved laptop computer for working remotely. The laptop would be provisioned with virus protection, a firewall, and Virtual Private Networking to help facilitate secure data management. The employee would be provided with a file share on a cooperative’s file server that could then be accessed using either the employee’s desktop computer in the office or from the cooperative’s laptop. However, that employee could find the laptop burdensome and choose to work on the cooperative’s data files using their own desktop computer at home. The employee’s assigned files could be accessed easily from the employee’s office and home desktop computers using a cloudbased, Software-as-a-Service tool like Dropbox. If other employees embraced this solution, the cooperative’s data would be at considerable risk of loss or damage. Family members sharing that employee’s home desktop computer might accidentally or deliberately access, modify, or copy sensitive cooperative data. This places the cooperative at risk of violating privacy laws with the resulting fines and lawsuits. Compromised data could be used by identity thieves. In one survey, 35 percent of enterprise employees agreed with the statement that they saw a “need to work around your company’s established security policies and procedures just to get your work done (RSA, 2007).” Vendors like Dropbox offer organizational file sharing solutions that are managed by an IT Department, but they work only if the IT Department is involved in this process.

Typically, the cooperative’s IT department requires that software be carefully tested and approved prior to formal adoption. Resources like servers need to be provisioned with an operating system, backup software, fault-tolerance features, anti-virus, intrusion prevention software, and many other elements that ensure these resources function in accordance with the cooperative’s computing policies. If not, they are at risk of failure or service interruption due to improper vendor licensing of the operating system, an irrecoverable failure from lack of backup, service interruption given a lack of faulttolerance, and so on.

Since free trial periods are offered by most LCNC vendors and the products are accessed like basically any other website, LCNC presents low barriers to entry for citizen developers. As a result, these apps may be developed and deployed without any notice to a cooperative’s IT department or an approved purchase order from the accounting department. Nelson

Petracek, CIO of LCNC provider Tibco, stated “It’s happening already, and if you don’t know about it, go find out where” (Boulton, 2019). When LCNC developed software encounters problems, it is very likely to require resolution by the organization’s IT department. If the software that has been introduced has come to be considered “indispensable,” then it will have to either be supported or replaced with approved software. However, those who have come to rely on a technology solution, whether it was deployed formally or informally, typically will not accept having the automation of their business processes taken away. This makes it imperative for IT managers to inventory their software development assets, including these assets that may have been introduced organically, without official sanction.

Another risk of Shadow IT is the threat it poses to the alignment of IT with the overall strategy of the cooperative. What may begin as an organic, line employee level initiative to automate a few paper-based business processes could grow into something much larger. The resulting software infrastructure, developed “under the radar” of executives and information technology staff, is very likely to better reflect the needs and goals of its citizen developers and users than of the organization as a whole. This could interfere with moving the cooperative towards its strategic goals while consuming some of its limited pool of resources.

LIMITATIONS OF LCNC SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

The LCNC platforms have features that make them powerful tools for citizen developers but limit the scope of their ability to automate business processes. The AD&D professionals accustomed to typical software development features such as reversion to earlier versions or check-in/check-out of code will either not find these features or will find only limited versions of these features in most LCNC products. The LCNC vendors contend that leaving out these features accelerates code development and deployment but require the customer to accept some risk. A typical problem resulting from these limitations is a citizen developer might make a change to an app that either breaks or disrupts it significantly and could be unable to restore it to its previous, fullyfunctional state. Careful, labor-intensive procedures for the citizen developer or AD&D professional may be required to mimic the usual code reversion capability of a teamoriented IDE. Two citizen developers could also find themselves inadvertently modifying the same code at the same time due to the lack of check-in/check-out features more typical of full-featured AD&D platforms. This can lead to multiple, difficult-to-resolve problems.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The growing field of LCNC software development presents excellent opportunities for cooperative managers to automate business processes that have previously been regarded as too expensive to address. With low barriers to adoption, it is imperative that cooperative managers work proactively in evaluating the possibilities of LCNC adoption. Otherwise, they may be forced to work reactively as LCNC may “have already happened” inside the cooperative. If the IT Department is consulted early in the process and appropriate governance procedures are followed, LCNC may present a compelling alternative to traditional software development projects for the automation of business processes of appropriate scope and complexity. While a cooperative may implement some of its software development via LCNC, mission critical processes would continue to be supported by AD&D professionals. As part of this supervision by the IT Department, the cooperative’s citizen developers should benefit from the expertise of the IT Department’s AD&D professionals working in support of those citizen developers and the end users who require automation of their business processes.

The LCNC platforms and tools indicate the shift from the text-based to a much more visual paradigm of software development. This

increased level of abstraction is facilitating the growth of citizen developers. Given the unique needs of cooperatives and the nature of their employees/members, the growth of LCNC software development is compelling. Thousands of worker hours and millions of dollars to support costly, legacy business processes may be reduced using LCNC to automate these processes. Hundreds of organizations worldwide have successfully used these platforms to rapidly automate business processes without the time, treasure, and talent that has typified software development for decades. However, the LCNC platforms have distinct limitations that only allow managers to accelerate software development while accepting some of the costs attendant to lacking the controls of more established software development toolsets.

REFERENCES

American Electric Power. (2019) Guide for Electric Service and Meter Installations https://www. aepnationalaccounts.com/builders/Requirements.aspx Bloomberg, J. (2017) The Low-Code / No-Code Movement: More Disruptive Than You Realize, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/20/the-low-codeno-code-movementmore-disruptive-than-you-realize/#10091f0f722a Boulton, C. (2019). What is Low-Code Development? A Lego-like Approach to Building Software. CIO. https://www.cio.com/article/3263392/what-is-low-code-development-a-lego-like-approach-tobuilding-software.html Fryling, Meg. (2019). Low Code App Development. The Journal of Computing Sciences in College, Volume 34, Number 6, April. West Haven, CT, USA. Joorabchi, M. E., Mesbah, A., & Kruchten, P. (2013). Real Challenges in Mobile App Development. ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, October, pp 15 – 24. Majchrzak, T. A., & Ernsting, J. (2015). Achieving Business Practicability of Model-driven Crossplatform apps. Open Journal of Information Systems Volume 2, Issue 2, pp 4-15. Mew, L., & Field, D. (2018). A Case Study on Using the Mendix Low Code Platform to support a Project Management Course. Proceedings of the EDSIG Conference, Norfolk, Virginia, USA. pp 1-11. ISSN: 2473-3857 Richardson, C. & Rymer, J.R. (2016). Vendor Landscape: The Fractured, Fertile Terrain Of Low-Code Application Platforms. pp 1-23. Forrester Research, Inc. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. RSA. (2007). The Confessions Survey: Office Workers Reveal Everyday Behavior that places Sensitive Information at Risk. pp 1 – 12. Sharwood, S. (2017). Developing World hits 98.7 percent Mobile Phone adoption. The Register. August 3, 2017. Standish Group International. (2014). The Chaos Report, United States of America. Su, N., Levina, N., & Ross, J. W. (2016). The Long-Tail Strategy of IT Outsourcing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 57(2), pp 81 - 89. Umuhoza, E., & Brambilla, M. (2016, August). Model driven development approaches for mobile applications: A survey. In International Conference on Mobile Web and Information Systems (pp. 93107). Springer, Cham. Worldwide Market Reports (2019). Global Low Code Development Platform Market: Market Analysis, Insights, Trends, and Opportunity Analysis, 2017- 2027. https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/ product/low-code-development-platform-market/

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