How low code is driving innovation

As Pega kicks off our annual Community Hackathon, it’s a good time to highlight the innovations and successes organizations are realizing with low-code development. Today, organizations are facing any number of challenges: supply chain disruptions, customer loyalty, shortages of skilled labor, and the need to do more with less. The pressure is on business leaders to modernize and digitize operations as well as innovate. And speed-to-market matters.

McKinsey & Company research finds that “a small team of exceptional people working in agile ways delivers significantly more impact than an army of average talent.” That’s what low code platforms – and our Community Hackathon – are designed to do; empower teams to create impactful business solutions in a collaborative, agile environment.

The outcomes organizations are driving with low code

Organizations investing in agile, low-code development platforms are successfully solving problems big and small. They’re doing it by taking a centralized approach that enables collaboration between experienced IT professionals and workers in non-traditional development roles. And this collaboration is important because, for organizations to realize the value created through new, digitized workflows, those workflows need to be widely adopted by workers and team members at all levels. Low code helps bring a diverse set of workers and users into the development process to contribute front-line business knowledge critical for making sure the workflows being built are useful and functional for end users.

Low code platforms like Pega go a step further, providing a governed, operationalized approach to solution development that helps ensure the entire development team follows best practices and the new solution is compliant with the organization’s standards. A platform approach also enables low code development at scale by governing the development of reusable components, which helps shorten development cycles and speed time-to-market, all while reducing risk.

Across industries, organizations are reducing backlogs, unjamming bottlenecks, and increasing efficiency with this low-code platform approach to solution development. Pega clients, for example, are using citizen developers to help drive projects, such as:

• Freight company Estes Express Lines empowers business users to collaborate with IT to create new, streamlined workflows around pricing agreement adjustments and other processes.
• Auto maker Ford established a Center of Excellence to manage low-code, citizen developer projects across their enterprise. They keep everyone working within their standards and guidelines by applying a lightweight governance model to all low code projects.

Past Community Hackathon teams have also taken advantage of Pega’s low-code platform to solve business challenges and address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in creative ways. For example, last year’s Pega Hackathon winners created solutions to support:

• Employee career growth and a positive work environment
• Next-generation crisis management
• Improving farming activities in India
• Hyper-localized crowd funding
• Bridging the gap between employees in an organization
• Tracking COVID-19 cases in emergency rooms
• Showcasing skills of young entrepreneurs
• Personalized recommendations for a career path

See more customer success stories, and enter our Hackathon to show us how you innovate with low code

To get an idea of the level of impact low-code platforms are having across industries, take a look at the different ways our clients are using Pega’s low-code platform to innovate. From newer, better ways to acquire, onboard, and engage customers, to automating processes that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of services and operations, low-code platforms are helping organizations work smarter, unify experiences, and adapt quickly to market changes. Because of the agility they provide, it’s no surprise that analyst firm Gartner says,

"By 2025, low-code application platforms are expected to remain the largest component of the low-code development technology family of products.”

How can your organization take advantage of low-code platform tools to build value or solve problems in new ways? Participate in our annual Community Hackathon and show us how you innovate! Pega’s Community Hackathon provides teams from around the world the opportunity to showcase how a low-code platform for application development helps speed time-to-market and drive innovation. Participation in the hackathon is a great way to accelerate an existing project, increase team collaboration, and explore new opportunities to drive business value.

The pace of change is accelerating, and the creative ways organizations are using low-code platforms to respond with agility keeps expanding. Show us how your teams are using low code to solve problems – or connect with us if you’re looking for solution ideas. With more than 35 years of experience in the industry, we’ll help you identify opportunities for low-code innovations.