ServiceNow’s Low Code No Code App Engine & its advantages

Building software solutions from the ground up takes time—months, or even years, of planning, designing, testing, and deploying. And when organizations need solutions fast, waiting on overburdened developers may not be an option. Therefore, so many businesses are turning to low-code development.

A low-code application platform (LCAP) is used to rapidly develop and deploy custom applications by abstracting and minimizing hand coding. At a minimum, an LCAP must include low-code capabilities (such as a model-driven or graphical programming approach with scripting) to develop a complete application consisting of user interfaces, business logic, workflow, and data services.

Thus, organizations are increasingly adopting the low-code application platform (LCAP) to enable fusion team development with IT and business to quickly deliver new solutions and modernize business capabilities.

This is because low-code development carries with it several advantages.

These benefits include the following:

Speed

Accelerated development and delivery of new applications is perhaps the most widely recognized advantage of low-code development. Intuitive user interfaces, drag-and-drop functionality, simple integration with support tools, and one-click delivery options all help ensure faster turn-around than is possible with traditional development. In fact, low-code solutions can decrease development time by as much as 90%.

Productivity

Low-code app development streamlines the development process. This means that developers can build more apps in less time—focusing on innovation and addressing needs, rather than minute technical details.

Agility

Decreasing the time to deployment carries with it an additional benefit: Business agility. As markets change and new opportunities arise, organizations can quickly create and release new digital initiatives targeting the changing needs of their employees and their customers.

Cost

Hiring, training, and supporting an army of developers can be an expensive endeavour, with the potential cost of developing a single mobile app ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. Low-code solutions allow fewer developers to accomplish more, and even empower non-developers to build apps. This means reduced costs, and a greater return on your investment.

Governance

Managing the development and deployment of potentially thousands of apps can be a monumental challenge. Low-code development platforms provide a central location from which IT teams can monitor and control every development project with full visibility.

Collaboration

Managing app development from a single location also promotes better collaboration between developers. Multiple individuals or groups can see exactly what tasks are being accomplished and by whom, allowing them to collaborate together to work on the same modules at the same time.

Scaling capacity

If you are relying only on professional development teams to build your apps, you may be overlooking a wealth of untapped capacity. Low-code development gives those with limited technical background the power to develop. These citizen developers can use the pre-built functionality of low-code platforms to further innovation and grow your business.

ServiceNow’s App Engine is one of the most effective low-code applications, which is why ServiceNow has been named the Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms.

ServiceNow Low-Code Application Platforms App engine provides the right support for developers and citizen developers alike. App Engine offers several cutting-edge features in its cloud-native format:

• The Common Service Data Model provides an excellent framework for modelling data on the Now Platform.
• Ready-to-use services such as the Service Portal, virtual assistant, Service Catalog, Workspaces, and Knowledge Management can be used by developers to create and provide users with feature-rich and highly personalized applications.
• App Engine’s Flow Designer is a no-code process automation tool that can be used by developers to create end-to-end workflows. Furthermore, creating complex workflows involving different departments and workflows across the enterprise is easy with Process Automation Designer.
• ServiceNow Integration Hub provides thousands of spokes or connectivity support to applications, infrastructure, and platforms that can be used for custom integration with little to no code.
• The Delegated Development feature provides a collaborative environment for the development of applications across departments by developers of various skill levels without requiring IT to relinquish its control and governance of the platform.

Coforge has been leveraging ServiceNow App Engine for building various products for accelerating ServiceNow builds and for easing the maintenance of the platform. One such example is a ServiceNow License optimization app that helps track ServiceNow subscriptions and comply to it. Another app that probes your ServiceNow instance for configurations and report health issues is also built on App Engine.

Apart from creating various utilities using App Engine, Coforge helped one of its customers create high-performance delivery model of their critical Business Process with App Engine. It Improved Service quality of Intake and Governance Business Process by leveraging Workflows (built as custom app) and managing services against a consistent, up-to-date set of KPIs which led to 60% reduction in request closure time and 94% Reduction in metric maintenance efforts.