You’re planning investments in people, processes, tools and technology and you’re faced with limitations and high costs of improving your current SaaS, custom code and RPA.
In this article from our no-code software series, we explore benefits and limitations of SaaS and RPA and the future of No-Code software.
SaaS Is Generally Inflexible
What is SaaS? They are primarily point solutions created to address specific business problems. They define a common set of features, and require customers to work the way the software was designed in order to get the intended benefits.
What actually happens is that organizations don’t change key processes to work like a SaaS because the changes would negatively impact operations. Instead, organizations end up investing in closing the gaps between SaaS and how they actually operate.
Like their on-premise cousins, SaaS typically meets the needs of different internal stakeholders including business, IT and security. With this acceptance, organizations have implemented many SaaS. This has resulted in more time and money being spent to reconcile data across different systems.
At some point, the investments to overcome SaaS inflexibilities and connect silos, become too much, and organizations start spending money on writing custom code.
Custom Code Costs and Time
The benefit of custom code is that it meets unique needs.
However, the problems with custom code are long standing.
For instance the original developer knows what their code does. Even with a transition, it’s almost impossible for others in an organization to have the same level of knowledge of the custom code as the developer.
Custom code is expensive because it requires a team that analyses business processes, documents requirements, develops software and completes testing. These resources are required whenever code needs to be changed.
The scalability and security of custom code are unknown. Each piece of custom code needs to be assessed independently and then in combination with other custom code, against current and changing security risks. Sometimes the code meets requirements, and sometimes it doesn’t. The accountability for custom code is with the organization that invested in the code, there’s no vendor to rely on to resolve issues.
When it comes to maintenance of custom code, timing and costs are challenges. Sometimes the original developer isn’t available, or changing the code isn’t feasible or affordable.
RPA Is Still Limited
There’s a new market for custom code. Developers write code bots called Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Since RPA is custom code, it is subject to the same problems as outlined above. In fact, the more custom code bots an organization creates, the more the initial and ongoing maintenance costs and time are required
Comparing SaaS, RPA and Origami No-Code Software
When planning current and future investments in processes, tools and software in your organization, your stakeholder’s needs can often be considered using the table below.
Best of Both Worlds: the Origami SaaS Platform
With experience gained from creating dozens of custom software solutions, it was clear to Origami that organizations of all sizes and in all industries significantly changed their process on a regular basis, which required software updates.
The reality of frequent impactful process changes led to the creation of the no-code Origami SaaS. Origami is described by Origami’s CEO, Yaniv Shimony as “a framework of elements that people combine in any order, and change as often as they need, to create inputs, workflows, outputs, integrations and more.”
The Origami SaaS Automation Platform is now used by hundreds of business stakeholders to create whole enterprise systems in a few hours.
Since no two companies operate the same way, business stakeholders can choose to create their system from the ground up, or to adjust a template to get exactly what meets their needs.
What happens when processes change? These same business users make changes to their software, without any developers, in just a few clicks.
- Need to change data collection? Add, remove or change fields.
- Need to change a workflow? Add, remove or change who receives emails, SMS, in-system notification and more.
- Need to change an output? Adjust a dashboard widget, report or in-system view.
- Need more efficiencies? Add more processes to the system, import legacy data using Origami’s ready-made import tools, and eliminate point solution silos.
What about scalability, IT and security requirements? Origami is a SaaS based on the same common elements which are rigorously tested, highly secure, and scalable. You can even choose to have Origami on premise. Origami’s processes are ISO27001 compliant.
The Future
As your organization’s business processes improve, the faster you update internal tools and software, the quicker you will realize benefits. Yaniv believes that “organizations that give business stakeholders control over current and future data needs, have a competitive advantage. Business leaders operate 3-5 years into the future. ”.
Gartner also sees Hyperautomation, which they define as a business-driven approach to identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible, as a 2022 Top Strategic Technology Trends. This approach enables scalability, remote operation and business model disruption.
Origami is your solution to disrupt you business model by accelerating change, while delivering scalability, security and controlling costs.
