CAPE digital solutions

IT Solutions for Operational Excellence

When technology fails to support specific business needs, employees are forced to implement manual fixes, leading to inefficiencies and costly workarounds. The lack of integration between IT and business processes not only disrupts day-to-day operations but also stifles long-term strategic growth. While sometimes effective in the short term they can create a fragmented and inconsistent operational landscape.  Addressing this issue is crucial for creating an effective, and resilient operational framework that empowers businesses to thrive.

We believe IT should drive operational excellence with the right tools. For over 20 years, we’ve been helping our clients develop custom solutions that enhance efficiency and eliminate bottlenecks.

How low-code can help

Rapid Development and Deployment

Utilizing low-code platforms enables you to spend more time understanding your business and identifying its specific needs. Low-code can be used to develop custom applications within days and begin testing with your business immediately. This approach facilitates quick feedback loops, ensuring the IT solutions that are build to be a perfect fit for your operational processes while also enhancing overall efficiency. This agility allows your organization to swiftly adapt to changes in the business environment, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition.

Flexibility

Low-code applications are built from the ground up, free from pre-existing constraints. This allows you to design software that perfectly aligns with your operational needs, enhancing efficiency and fostering innovation without compromise. Combining this with enhanced integration capabilities allows you to create application with all kind of information available from multiple sources and pushed back if required. The applications can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises, and the technology allows you to scale both vertical & horizontally.

Business-Oriented Developers

 Achieving operational excellence requires streamlining processes. The real experts are the employees who master the workflows and understand what needs to be done. It’s essential to analyze and optimize current processes before developing software solutions.

Low-code platforms enable business professionals to directly contribute to application development, allowing them to focus on improving processes first and then creating tailored solutions. This approach simplifies the development process by combining business expertise with custom application development, reducing the need to bridge the gap between business and IT and resulting in more efficient IT solutions.

Enhanced Integration

In today’s landscape, most organizations use more than 150 applications. As a result, employees often need to navigate multiple systems to perform their work, leading to inefficiencies as data must be accessed and updated across various applications.

Another issue is that not all employees have access to the required systems due to security restrictions, user licenses, or limitations on application availability outside the office network or across different devices. This often results in manual processes outside these systems, adding extra work and increasing the risk of errors, as data must be manually re-entered and may not be regularly validated or updated with the latest information.

With low-code, we can address these challenges effectively. Data can be extracted from multiple sources, displayed to different user roles, and easily enhanced in responsive applications for phones, tablets, and laptops. This approach improves operational efficiency by eliminating manual work and repetitive tasks while ensuring access to accurate data. Additionally, data validation upon entry enhances quality, providing a seamless and efficient operational environment.

Governance: Ensuring Compliance and Security

Effective governance is essential for IT departments to ensure compliance and security standards are met. Shadow IT, or the use of unauthorized IT systems, poses significant risks. These risks are heightened when critical processes rely on such systems due to slow response times for official IT system changes. This often leads to employees using Excel spreadsheets as makeshift solutions. 

With low-code these Excel spreadsheets can be turned into a functional application in just 10 minutes, providing a secure and compliant alternative to shadow IT. All of your applications can be easily managed in the portfolio tool that is included in the platform. With this tool you have everything you need for monitoring the applications. It also comes with audit logging and many more features required for compliance.  

Case Study: Transforming Business with Low Code

Consider a manufacturing company struggling to provide its machine operators with access to crucial information from their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. The core IT system was complicated and difficult for floor staff to navigate, leading to inefficiencies and delays in accessing vital data. By adopting a low-code platform, the company developed a custom tablet application that integrated seamlessly with their PLM system. This new application was user-friendly and provided operators with just the information they needed in an easily accessible format.

The results:
1) Direct access to necessary data reduced delays and streamlined operations on the manufacturing floor.
2) Fewer products were manufactured with quality issues, as the right parts could be found quickly, and lead times for machines were significantly reduced.
3) Operators could access real-time information, enabling better decision-making and more responsive adjustments to manufacturing processes.
4) The intuitive design of the tablet app aligned with the workflows of the operators, leading to higher productivity and job satisfaction.
5) The new application allowed the organisation to continuedly improve the application, and every two weeks new features were deployed compared to every 6 months with the old system.

Conclusion

Low-code development offers a powerful alternative to the traditional approach of adapting operational processes to fit IT constraints. By enabling the creation of customized applications that support and enhance your unique workflows, low-code platforms drive efficiency, reduce costs, and improve employee satisfaction. Embrace the flexibility and agility of low-code to transform your operations and position your business for future success. 

Low-code platforms revolutionize the way businesses approach software development. Instead of forcing operational processes to fit into predefined IT molds, low-code enables the creation of customized applications that support and enhance these processes. Using visual development tools and pre-built components, you can rapidly create software that supports your existing workflows. This customization ensures that your processes remain efficient and intuitive, minimizing disruption and maximizing productivity.

Frequently asked questions about Operational Excellence

What is operational excellence and why is it important?

Operational excellence is the practice of optimizing business processes to achieve maximum efficiency and minimal waste.

It is important because it helps businesses remain competitive, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction by delivering consistent, high-quality performance.

IT can drive operational excellence by providing solutions that automate, integrate, and optimize business processes. This reduces manual errors, improves efficiency, and ensures better alignment between technology and business needs.

Low-code is a transformative software development approach that significantly supports operational excellence by reducing the need for manual coding. Utilizing visual development tools and pre-built components, low-code platforms enable the swift creation and deployment of custom applications.

This rapid development process accelerates feedback loops, allowing businesses to quickly adapt solutions to their specific operational needs. By streamlining and optimizing business processes, low-code enhances overall efficiency and flexibility, driving operational excellence and helping organizations stay ahead of the competition.

A manufacturing company used a low-code platform to develop a user-friendly tablet application that integrated with their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.

This provided operators with direct access to critical data, resulting in faster and more efficient production processes, fewer quality issues, and improved decision-making on the shop floor.

You can get started by contacting our team for a consultation. We are ready to help you develop customized IT solutions that drive operational excellence in your organization.

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Are you ready to make your future happen? We’re ready to help you. Contact us to learn more about how we can help with creating IT solutions and schedule your session today.