As business needs evolve and become more agile, traditional development methods start to become less sufficient for addressing the current and future demands of the market.
In the coding environment, for instance, the development of applications leads to excessive delays due to the tedious work process and approvals required in the traditional setup. Even if the business user opts to buy a ready-made solution, the process of getting IT approval continues to be an arduous one.
This particular challenge is where platforms like Kissflow come into play.
Kissflow is a platform with both low-code and no-code capabilities. Its approach to innovation is based on the company’s philosophy to keep simple things simple, highlighting its core vision towards democratising application development.
The company’s no-code capabilities further enable process owners or citizen developers to automate internal business processes on a self-service basis and require no programming knowledge. The low-code capabilities, moreover, allow internal IT teams to build full-fledged business applications.
In a recent discussion, Rakesh Nandakumar, associate vice president and head of Southeast Asia at Kissflow, delved deeper into the platform’s mission, stating its commitment to bring both users (IT and business) on a single platform.
Particularly, he noted, “With Kissflow’s intuitive drag-and-drop features, both these teams can build their own applications within a few weeks. Yes, with Kissflow, even the developers can reduce the turnaround time drastically.”
Maximising customisation using the platform’s key features
As a platform, Kissflow provides a great level of customisation. In addition to their pre-built apps available in the app store, teams can also create their own apps through a wide range of features to suit their specific needs.
Among these features are the app builder, smart boards, real-time analytics, and seamless integration.
- App Builder
Kissflow’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder enables users to easily ensure quick deployments with pre-built components and modify apps to suit their specifications with custom components. It also allows them to use a theme builder, aiming to maintain a cohesive brand identity.
In terms of easing the process, users can work with the platform’s AI suggestions to create workflow fields, steps, and integrations.
- Smart boards
With this feature, users can create dynamic workflows that adapt to their unique business needs using smart boards. The visual and intuitive interface, in particular, allows teams to further embrace a connected way to work with freestyle workflows.
- Real-time analytics
With Kissflow’s real-time analytics, users can now track performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions. These insights are aimed at facilitating continuous improvement and ensuring processes operate smoothly.
- Seamless integration
This feature offers extensive integration with APIs and other handy tools, ensuring the tool is versatile and can fit into any tech ecosystem. Users can also instantly connect Kissflow with their existing systems for smooth data flow.
When asked about the platform’s security against surrounding threats and vulnerabilities, Rakesh also explained how Kissflow assists teams in creating secure and high-quality applications in a governed space.
According to him, the platform has a dedicated and exhaustive governance layer that undergoes extensive auditing and monitoring throughout the entire app portfolio. The primary distinguishing factor of this governance layer, in particular, lies in its pre-configured reports and dashboards, eliminating the need for manual setup by users.
“These reports and dashboards are comprehensive and thorough, providing consumers with a thorough understanding and monitoring of various aspects such as security, usage, and access control,” said Rakesh.
The said reports also encompass essential data source references, potential data breaches, comprehensive event audits, ownership and access information, data relationships, and the latest deployment and creation details.
Rakesh further stated, “Kissflow is also GDPR-compliant. We engage only pre-declared data processors for our models, ensuring that all data handling practices meet stringent privacy standards.”
Empowering citizen developers, bridging IT and business
At the core of the platform, Rakesh shared that making application development accessible and addressing the gap between IT and business are two of the company’s fundamental goals. This further extends to envisioning the platform as a go-to low-code, no-code platform in the future.
Carrying this mission forward, he pointed out the importance of enabling citizen developers in this aspect, indicating it among the company’s initiatives to better cater to enterprise needs.
“We are taking a focused approach based on our more than two decades of experience in BPM and workflow automation market to cater the enterprise needs with our low-code, no-code approach by enabling citizen developers.”
Rakesh further elaborated on this core mission, recognising the potential of artificial intelligence in reducing the semantic gap in creating applications.
More importantly, he stated, “We are also committed to improving the capabilities of our platform, so every change or trend that happens in the industry pushes us to do better.”
“We will be using AI not as a superficial construct that stitches together UX inadequacies of the current platform but as a core capability of our business object, process, and state engines that will enable the development of a new wave of apps that cannot be achieved by citizen developers currently because of the inherent semantic gap,” expounded Rakesh.
Looking ahead, Rakesh then noted the foundation of such desire, revealing the core principle that Kissflow lives by.
“This vision is rooted in the desire to further strengthen the product’s capabilities without sacrificing the simplicity that Kissflow has spearheaded, which is crucial when considering citizen development,” concluded Rakesh.
