Businesses today have hundreds of processes across dozens of departments. This means that most organizations manage processes with a variety of disparate tools and technologies, which can lead to technical debt and shadow IT.

If you’re considering process automation for your business, the tools you use should address your processes end to end. But how do you find the right technology when the automation market is overcrowded, and product offerings are almost impossible to distinguish?

Read on to see why low-code development is the best way to facilitate end-to-end process automation.

What is end-to-end process automation?

End-to-end process automation is the practice of automating business processes from start to finish and everything in between. This includes automating tasks like:

• Approvals
• Reviews
• Check-ins
• Escalations
• Requests

End-to-end automation is now often called business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT).

Automation and governance

Many organizations have a CRM platform, a separate cloud platform, and a project management tool for software development. Those are just the IT-sanctioned solutions.

It’s not easy to govern across all these personas, platforms, and use cases and still make any practical sense on the ground. These are examples of automation’s growing pains.

There is no real automation manifesto yet for the modern enterprise IT leader to turn to. That’s why low-code end-to-end automation is crucial for governance.

But different departments have different requirements. Sometimes, a decentralized approach to IT makes sense for enterprises.

Low-code platforms can oversee such a multifaceted design and allow for:

• Infinite customizations
• Workflow, component, and integration reuse
• UI and UX personalization

With low code, you don’t have to leave the platform. There are fewer variables and fewer sacrifices, which makes all the difference.

With one enterprise-wide, low-code platform connecting processes, they all play nicely together. You don’t have to worry about how one change will affect other processes that come before or after. You can also enforce guardrails while scaling automation. That means your enterprise can stay compliant as you grow.

More platforms mean more overhead

Automation is supposed to increase efficiency. But when you add more platforms to the mix, you extend the learning curve for these new platforms. It takes longer to benefit from any so-called incredible time-saving features.

But, this is not a time-to-value or return-on-investment metric exercise. Learning, updating, and maintaining more tools will cut into the tools’ value.

The majority of enterprises use a mix of digital process automation, low-code, robotic process automation (RPA), and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) options.

Automation — at the enterprise level, especially — is complex and fluid. You don’t just set up end-to-end automation and call it a day. Processes evolve, grow, and shrink to accommodate new workflows, regulatory changes, and more.

There are several drawbacks to relying on many platforms:

• Limits your code reuse
• Promotes platform specialization
• Creates multiple systems of record
• Increases the deployment time for feature releases

A low-code tool like Mendix Connect creates a single source of truth for all enterprise users. Developers and users can collaborate, too. There’s an inverse relationship between collaboration opportunities and the number of automation platforms.

With a low-code, end-to-end platform, you can create flexible solutions at speed and scale while reducing overhead.

The reality of end-to-end process automation

If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that making technology decisions is a lot of work. We would rather not have to repeatedly make the same difficult decisions just because technology changes. But that’s what happens when you continually apply a one-off solution to a single problem.

Honeypot free trials, patchworks of non-centralized IT purchases, shadow IT experiments, etc. The longer these are in use, the more indispensable they become. Trying to incorporate machine learning or artificial intelligence to orchestrate an adaptable, comprehensive workflow is infinitely more challenging when you are not using an end-to-end platform.

Process automation is the goal, but process automation isn’t digital transformation. It’s a prerequisite to digital transformation.

With an end-to-end low-code development platform, intelligent automation with AI- and ML-embedded solutions is just the beginning. Other benefits include:

• Collaboration between IT and the business streamlines processes
• Use one platform for cross-channel applications and process improvements
• Deploy scalable cloud-native solutions that integrate all core systems and data sources
• Accelerate your time-to-market

Automate with Mendix

The vendor market is complex. Products overlap, limiting use cases, scalability, and the opportunity to incorporate new technologies seamlessly.

Mendix is an end-to-end low-code process automation solution that will support your organization as it evolves in the long term. Mendix is customizable and promotes business-IT collaboration across the enterprise, which is not possible in an a la carte development and automation environment.