Whether it is to modernize outdated business processes, automate workflows, or innovate with a new digital product or service.

In any of these use cases, the development effort is intense — demanding heavy dedication from the IT team, complex programming, and system integrations — which creates the need to accelerate and implement process automation to boost productivity.

In this context, the truth is that there is a pent-up development backlog when it comes to updating and creating these processes.

For companies, however, shopping the market for business process management (BPM) solutions can be complicated and expensive.

With so many options available — Business Process Management (BPM) tools, intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS), and robotic process automation (RPA) — plus promises of intelligent workflows, choosing the right platform is hard.

Yet the market already offers a solution that keeps gaining ground.

With visual development and a user-centered approach, low-code platforms have emerged as the viable alternative for this kind of demand.

They reduce the complexity involved in building a business process, simplifying the journey of creating corporate systems and services and opening the door to process automation.

In this article, you will discover some of the advantages of the Mendix low-code platform, designed specifically to bridge the gap between business and IT and to foster collaboration across the entire application delivery lifecycle.

Keep reading to learn more!

Mendix: building business processes with low-code

Ineffective processes exist in virtually every organization. Even when they are mission-critical, they often deliver a poor user experience, wasting valuable time on simple, repetitive tasks.

This is a reality that needs to change. After all, business processes are the lifeblood of an organization. According to McKinsey, “organizations across all regions and industries are automating at least some business processes, yet only a small majority have succeeded in meeting their targets.”

In practice, companies can lose a significant share of revenue to operational inefficiencies. Avoiding that kind of loss requires a change in approach.

Truly successful business process applications require collaboration between IT and business owners.

By adopting a low-code platform like Mendix for business process management, you gain access to a common language that IT, the business process owner, and the end user can all understand.

Architecturally, the Mendix platform also delivers important capabilities, such as:

  • Model-driven design and execution to support fast change cycles;
  • Flexible application monitoring;
  • Controlled application extensions;
  • Built-in security that meets the most rigorous standards.

Mendix and business process automation

With the Mendix low-code platform, you can go beyond iBPMS capabilities and easily integrate with third-party systems when needed.

The platform even outputs separate applications in which processes run. This structure provides greater flexibility and interoperability between them — and, above all, the ability to add UIs (or experiences) and logic on top of them.

Mendix also provides out-of-the-box functionality when it comes to supporting visual process models.

The platform makes development accessible to citizen developers while also making life easier for professional developers.

That is because visual business logic and decision model design is supported by two dedicated Mendix editors, Studio and Studio Pro. A workflow editor is available in both environments.

This way, citizen developers — who hold the tacit knowledge of the business process — have the resources they need to build a workflow application that truly meets user needs.

Model-driven development

To involve the business in application design and development at a level where users can actively participate, Mendix fully embraces a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach.

It is an excellent communication mechanism for aligning business and IT stakeholders, ensuring higher quality and better outcomes.

Model-Driven Development has emerged as one of the leading approaches to enabling fast, collaborative development. Because visual models are used to define data structures, application and process logic, and user interfaces, this approach makes application building far more agile, eliminating the need for laborious low-level coding.

As a result, the team gains productivity, since the process moves faster than it would with traditional programming languages such as C# and Java.

Mendix platform: key benefits

Built for low-code development, the Mendix platform makes programming intuitive, with collaboration built in.

Applications are multichannel: once created, developers can run them anywhere, with no need for additional tools or codebases.

With a cloud-native architecture, speed of delivery is one of its standout differentiators.

Here are the main advantages of Mendix:

  • Faster changes: changes to the model do not require an explicit regenerate, rebuild, retest, and redeploy step. This leads to shorter turnaround times.
  • Controlled extensions: extending the model with custom code is managed more simply through an API layer in the platform.
  • Cloud deployment flexibility: a runtime environment such as the Mendix Business Server provides an additional layer on top of the infrastructure. Mendix is built for the cloud as a PaaS solution.
  • Better portability: it is easy to configure a runtime environment like the Mendix Business Server to run on multiple platforms — using different operating systems and cloud platforms, for example.
  • Easier to deploy: you simply start the runtime server and load the model into it. Mendix automates this process with one-click deployment.
  • More flexible to monitor: application monitoring can be configured in a more dynamic and flexible way.
  • Easier to upgrade: incorporating changes into the runtime engine and restarting it with the same model is simpler with Mendix. There is no need to regenerate code.
  • More secure: you only need to upload your model to a cloud environment. There is no need to access the file system or other software resources. Only code on the runtime server can access system libraries.
  • Runtime analysis: because the model is available at runtime, you can debug your models by stepping through them as they run. You can, for example, add breakpoints at the model level.

Given that a significant share of an application’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) actually comes after the initial go-live, the Mendix approach to MDD and Model Execution delivers substantial savings and gains in agility and flexibility across application change cycles.

By contrast, code-generation methodologies such as Java or .NET are more rigid, creating maintenance challenges and making it harder to meet security, scalability, and performance requirements.

By now, you surely know which model to choose for building your solutions. Get in touch with us and discover the full potential of the Mendix platform!