Using OutSystems to Maximize Efficiency
Overview
Brief overview of low code development
Low code development is a modern approach to software development that enables the creation of applications with minimal hand-coding. This approach is particularly advantageous for businesses that need to rapidly develop and deploy applications but may not have extensive coding expertise on hand. It involves the use of visual development environments, where developers and business users can collaborate to create applications by dragging and dropping components onto a canvas. This not only simplifies the development process but also makes it more accessible to non-technical users, fostering a more collaborative and inclusive approach to application development. This process-flow approach to development makes it easier to visualize business logic and make changes quickly.
OutSystems
OutSystems is a leading low code platform that provides a range of features to facilitate the development of enterprise-grade applications. Some of its key features include:
Visual Development Environment: OutSystems provides a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that allows developers and business users to collaboratively design, develop, and deploy applications. This reduces the learning curve and enables faster development cycles even for new or inexperienced developers.
Integration with Existing Systems: OutSystems allows easy integration with existing systems and databases, ensuring that businesses can leverage their existing investments while modernizing their applications.
Built-in Templates and Components: OutSystems provides a library of built templates and components that can be customized to fit specific business needs. This can allow for rapid prototyping, shortening development time and maintaining consistency across applications.
Scalability and Performance Optimization: OutSystems ensures that the applications developed are scalable and optimized for performance. This is crucial for businesses that experience fluctuating demand and need to scale their applications up or down accordingly.
Security Architecture: OutSystems places a high priority on the security of the applications developed on its platform. It provides built-in security features at every layer of the application, from the database to the user interface. This includes features such as role-based access control, input validation, and secure data storage. OutSystems follows best practices in security and certified in industry standards such as ISO 27001, 22301, 27017, 27018, 9001, and SOC 2.
This ensures that applications developed using OutSystems are secure by design, providing businesses with the confidence that their data and applications are protected against unauthorized access, data breaches, and other cyber threats. This is crucial for businesses operating in regulated industries or managing sensitive data, as it ensures compliance with legal and regulatory requirements related to data protection and cybersecurity.
Mobile and Web Development: OutSystems allows the development of both mobile and web applications from a single codebase. This ensures consistency across platforms and reduces the development effort.
Automation and digitization in the modern business environment
In the modern business environment, automation and digitization are crucial for staying competitive. Automation helps in reducing manual effort, minimizing errors, and increasing efficiency. Digitization, on the other hand, involves converting information into a digital format, making it easier to manage, access, and analyze. Together, automation and digitization can lead to significant cost savings, improved customer experiences, and better decision-making.
Low code development, facilitated by platforms like OutSystems, plays a key role in enabling automation and digitization. By simplifying the development process and making it more accessible, low code platforms empower businesses to rapidly develop and deploy applications that automate manual processes, digitize information, and provide valuable insights. This not only helps in optimizing business processes but also enables businesses to quickly respond to changing market dynamics, stay competitive, and drive innovation.
Automating Business Processes
Bill Generation & Processing
Managing invoices and bills is a time-consuming task for any business. Manual bill processing involves receiving and validating invoices, making payments, and updating accounting records. This can lead to errors and delays, which can have a negative impact on supplier relationships and cash flow. OutSystems provides a way to automate the entire bill processing workflow, from receiving and validating invoices to making payments and updating accounting records.
For example, a retail company that receives many invoices from suppliers can use OutSystems to create an application that automates the following steps:
Receipt and Validation of Invoices: The application can automatically receive invoices from suppliers via email or a web portal and validate them against predefined criteria such as supplier details, invoice amount, and tax calculations. This ensures that only valid invoices are processed further.
Matching of Invoices to Purchase Orders: Using business-defined processes, the application can automatically match received invoices to the corresponding purchase orders in the system. This ensures that the goods or services invoiced have been ordered, tracked, and received every time.
Approval of Invoices for Payment: The application can automate the approval workflow by routing the invoices to the appropriate personnel for approval based on predefined rules such as invoice amount and supplier category. This ensures that only approved invoices are processed for payment. If your process changes or needs to add or remove steps, you can quickly adapt without long coding delays.
Making Payments: Your application can automatically create payment batches for approved invoices and send them for processing. This ensures that suppliers are paid on time and helps in maintaining good supplier relationships, while slashing the amount of time required for manual processes.
Updating Accounting Records: The application can automatically update the accounting records with the invoice and payment details. This ensures that the financial records are accurate and up-to-date, without requiring hours of time for a dedicated accountant.
By automating these steps, businesses can significantly reduce the processing time and errors associated with bill processing. This can lead to improved relationships and cash flow, ensuring customers receive their products or services more quickly. Additionally, the company can have better visibility into its financial transactions and can easily generate dynamic reports and insights for decision-making processes.
Overall, automating the bill processing workflow with OutSystems can lead to significant benefits for businesses, including reduced processing time and errors, improved supplier relationships and cash flow, and better visibility into financial transactions.
Automated Report Generation
Timely and accurate reporting is crucial for decision-making in any business. Manual report generation involves collecting data from disparate sources, collating, and analyzing the data via spreadsheets and charts, and finally creating and distributing reports. This can be time-consuming and error-prone, leading to delays and inaccuracies in reporting. Using OutSystems, businesses can automate the report generation and distribution process.
For example, a financial institution that needs to generate monthly reports for its stakeholders can use OutSystems to create an application that automates the following steps:
Data Collection: The application can automatically collect data from various sources such as databases, spreadsheets, and external APIs. This ensures that all the required data is automatically gathered into one place, remains up-to-date, and is easily accessible.
Data Analysis: The application can automatically analyze the collected data to generate insights such as trends, patterns, and anomalies. This can involve calculations, aggregations, and comparisons with historical data or benchmarks.
Report Generation: The application can automatically generate reports based on the analyzed data. This can be done via a timed event, triggers such as record import, or on demand. This can involve creating useful visualizations such as charts and graphs, and formatting the data into a readable and presentable format.
Report Distribution: The application can automatically distribute the generated reports to the stakeholders via email or a web portal. This ensures that the stakeholders receive the reports in a timely manner and can access them from anywhere, whenever the data is needed.
By automating these steps, the financial institution can ensure that the monthly reports are generated and distributed in a timely and accurate manner. This can lead to better decision-making by the stakeholders, as they will have access to the latest and most accurate information. Additionally, the financial institution can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on manual report generation and distribution.
Dynamic Notifications
Keeping stakeholders informed about important events and updates is crucial for any business. Manual sending of notifications involves creating and sending notifications via email, SMS, or push notifications. This can be time-consuming and may lead to errors.
For example, a healthcare organization that needs to send appointment reminders and notifications to its patients can use OutSystems to create an application that automates the following steps:
Appointment Reminders: The application can automatically send appointment reminders to patients via email, SMS, or push notifications a day or a few hours before their scheduled appointment. This can help in reducing no-shows and ensuring that the patients are prepared for their appointment.
Appointment Confirmations: The application can automatically send appointment confirmation messages to patients once they have scheduled an appointment. This can help in reducing misunderstandings and ensuring that the patients have all the necessary information for their appointment while also verifying authenticity.
Appointment Changes or Cancellations: The application can automatically send notifications to patients if there are any changes or cancellations to their scheduled appointments. This can help reduce confusion and ensure that the patients are informed in a timely manner while simultaneously reducing workload on staff.
Follow-Up Notifications: The application can automatically send follow-up notifications to patients after their appointment, asking for feedback or providing additional information. This can help in improving the quality of service and ensuring that the patients have all the necessary information for their follow-up care.
By automating the sending of these notifications, the healthcare organization can ensure that the patients are informed about their appointments and any changes or follow-ups in a timely manner. This may lead to increased appointment attendance, improved patient satisfaction, and better quality of service.
Scalable Solutions and Cost Savings with Low Code
Grow with ease
As businesses grow, they face challenges in scaling their applications to handle increased load without compromising performance or security. Traditional application development involves writing code, testing, and deploying the application. This can be time-consuming and expensive, and may require specialized skills. OutSystems, with its low code platform, provides built-in features for scalability, security, and performance optimization. This means that as your business grows, your applications can scale to handle increased load without compromising performance or security.
For example, a logistics company that needs to track shipments in real-time can use OutSystems to develop an application that can handle the increased load as the number of shipments grows. This not only results in reduced development time and costs but also ensures the ability to handle increased load as the business grows. Furthermore, by using low code technologies, businesses can significantly reduce the development time and associated staffing costs. This is because low code platforms, like OutSystems, reduce the need for specialized skills and allow business users to participate in the development process. This leads to faster development cycles, reduced reliance on an increasingly complex codebase, and lower total cost of ownership.
RAD Manage Platform Management Services
In addition to the benefits provided by OutSystems, RAD Manage offers platform management services that can further optimize the development, deployment, and monitoring of your applications. These services include:
Platform Optimization: RAD Manage can help optimize the OutSystems platform for your specific business needs. This includes configuring the platform for optimal performance, scalability, and security.
Application Development: RAD Manage can assist with the development of applications using the OutSystems platform. This includes design of the application architecture, developing the core structure and UI/UX of the application, and rigorous testing before deployment.
Application Deployment: RAD Manage can assist with the deployment of applications developed on the OutSystems platform. This includes configuring the deployment environment, deploying the application, and ensuring that it is properly integrated with other systems.
Application Monitoring: RAD Manage has developed a proprietary system to provide monitoring services for applications developed on the OutSystems platform. This includes monitoring the application’s performance, security, and user experience, and providing recommendations for improvement.
By leveraging RAD Manage’s platform management services, businesses can ensure that their applications are developed, deployed, and monitored in the most efficient and effective manner possible. This can lead to further cost savings, improved application performance, and a better user experience.
Conclusion
Low code technologies like OutSystems provide a powerful and cost-effective way to automate business processes and create scalable solutions. By automating complex tasks such as bill processing, automated report generation, and dynamic notifications, businesses can save thousands of hours every year, even for smaller operations. Additionally, the built-in security features of OutSystems ensure that the applications developed are built on a secure foundation, providing businesses with the confidence that their data and applications are protected against unauthorized access and other cyber threats.
Furthermore, the platform management, development, and monitoring services provided by RAD Manage can optimize the development, deployment, and monitoring of applications, leading to further cost savings, improved application performance, and a better user experience. This comprehensive approach not only leads to increased efficiency and productivity but also enables businesses to focus on their core competencies and innovate.
If you are looking to optimize your business processes, maximize efficiency, and ensure the security and performance of your applications, it is worth considering low code technologies like OutSystems and the platform management services provided by RAD Manage. Together, they provide a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to stay competitive in the modern business environment.
Are you ready to optimize your business processes? Let RAD Manage lead the way, ensuring your business experiences a smooth and beneficial shift. Reach out to us today!