Creatio Low-Code and No-Code Development: What is the Creatio LCNC Platform and When and How Can My Business Use Creatio?

Introduction

There are numerous crucial considerations involved in the process of development of a software product for the consumer market, or an application for business users. One of the most important factors in solution development is choosing the platform upon which you will build your mobile application, your software product or your business application.

Today’s industry publications and technology journals are full of articles about low-code and no-code development technologies and techniques. In this article, we will focus on the concept of low-code/no-code and, specifically, the Creatio solution.

Gartner Defines Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAPs) as platforms for accelerated development and maintenance of applications, using model-driven tools for the entire application’s technology stack, generative AI and prebuilt component catalogs. 

Before we move on to discussing the benefits, advantages, challenges and development factors within the Creatio environment, let us take a moment to further define low code and no code development.

What is low-code?

Here is a brief description of the low-code development definition. This approach supports the development team by decreasing the amount of ‘from scratch’ coding required, and creating a foundation of reusable code with components that become building blocks for future development. This development approach allows programmers to leverage low-code user interface components roughly 80% of development tasks, thereby limiting the manual coding efforts to 20% of developer time. Because low-code application development requires a knowledge of other tools and development skills, it is typically used by professional programmers with coding skills and knowledge. A Low-Code development platform allows developers to extend component libraries and web frameworks to address specific use cases. Developers can work faster and more precisely with proven tools and combine coding and programming experience with tools designed for rapid software development.

What is no-code?

Low and no code tools are not exactly the same. No-Code approach utilizes a visual workflow in an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), eliminating the need for manual coding. This technique creates a kind of ‘snap in’ system of components that developers can use and reuse to solve problems and create features and functionality. This closed system of tools restricts the developer by limiting use to pre-existing capabilities and user interface tools. The No-Code approach can provide a start-up with quick results and foundational features and allow them to enter the market and build visibility.

Now that we have a better understanding of low-code/no-code app development, let us consider how technology research firms and publications see these development techniques.

• According to the world-renowned Technology Research Firm, Gartner, ‘low-code platforms will be used in 65% of application development by the end of this year.’
• Gartner Suggests that, ‘the key differentiating factor between low-code and no-code development is the target audience. As low-code development still requires technical skill and coding knowledge, low-code development platforms are primarily suited to developers. These platforms help good developers code faster.’
• ResearchGate provides a comprehensive overview of capabilities and limitations of these techniques to help you understand the differences between low-code and no-code development, and when it is best to use each approach.
• According to Gartner, the low-code/no-code market has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 23% since 2018 and is accelerating.
• Mendix states that 44% of organizations now have at least one low-code application in production.
• Salesforce reports that 69% of businesses will adopt low-code platforms within a year

As you can see, there is ample research and industry support for the low-code, no-code (LCNC) development environment.
If your business is seriously considering this approach, you may wish to review the Creatio Development Environment, which incorporates LCNC as a primary driver to support programmers and developers.

What is Creatio?

Creatio is a no-code application platform that is ideal for businesses that are focused on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing, sales and service, and for the banking, insurance, credit unions, retail, transportation, business services, and telecommunications industries. Its no-code, open platform environment enables custom business applications for quick results.

The Creatio platform is designed with composable architecture, and does not require coding. It provides a simple, secured environment with frequent upgrades, and good performance and reliability.

‘By including the benefits, advantages, challenges and tradeoffs in this article, we hope to give you a more comprehensive picture of the capabilities and limitations of the Creatio products and platforms, so that you can compare this development environment to your enterprise requirements and business needs.’

To understand how Creatio and its AI-enabled environment can be used in business, let’s look at some business use cases.

Process Management

Your enterprise can automate business processes to improve productivity, reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Financial Services, Loans, Real Estate, Banking – These businesses have established processes for reviewing and approving contracts, loans, business service relationships, etc. Process management automation can handle documents, emails, and approvals to ensure appropriate communication with clients and complete the cycle quickly with process automation.

Human Resource Management – There are many functions within the HR environment that can be automated: approving vacation time, submitting benefit forms, sending out recruiting emails and follow-up, scheduling onboarding activities and training, etc.

IT Support – Software vendors and in-house IT professionals can use business process automation to create support tickets and to assign tasks to personnel for follow-up and completion. The process can include calendar reminders and easily allow the team to add notes and close tickets, and it can follow-up by sending an evaluation survey to the client or team member who requested the support.

AI Automation Tools

By incorporating AI within its development environment, Creatio allows developers and businesses to create ‘smart’ components and application that will take automation and personalization to the next level.

Retail – The integration of these tools can help a retail business personalize customer experiences by gathering and analyzing customer data and purchasing behavior and suggesting products and product bundles with personalized email offers or personalized messages served on the business website. Chatbots can provide customer support and answer questions about orders, shipping, etc.

Manufacturing and Production – The enterprise can gather data in real-time to minimize equipment downtime and anticipate maintenance issues, to provide demand forecasting and improve logistics.

Transportation – AI-enabled tools can be used to manage fleets and appointments, to monitor and manage vehicle performance and maintenance, and to reduce downtime and fleet shortages. These tools can also provide real-time monitoring of weather, traffic and delivery schedules.

Why Should I Use Creatio Development for My Business Project?

Now that you have a better understanding of low-code, no-code development and the Creatio environment, let’s take a more detailed look at the benefits of Creatio low-code no-code (LCNC) development for your business project.

A recent survey of businesses revealed several primary reasons for using the Low-Code/No-Code approach.

• Accelerate Digital Innovation and Transformation
• Reduce Current IT Backlog and Increase Responsiveness
• Reduce Dependency on Professional Technology Skills, and Increase Developer Productivity
• Protect Against Technology Churn
• Improve Time to Market

As with many low-code, no-code development options, there are some primary reasons for selecting this approach. First, the development process supports programmers with simple tools, making it easier and faster to develop components and launch an app. Secondly, many of these options are open-source, so they can be easily combined with other frameworks and platforms to create a comprehensive solution. Creatio checks both of these boxes, and it has other benefits to offer. By choosing Creatio As Your LCNC Solution, you can achieve the following advantages:

Developers – Creatio provides an intuitive, simple environment in which to build apps with templates, connectors and apps that make it easy to get started, and its design tools allow the team to track project milestones and tasks. The platform allows for easy integration of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), OneLogin portals, Microsoft Exchange and 365, Webitel and Google and others. Creatio also includes integration capabilities for REST API support, OData protocol, SOAP services, OAuth authentication and LDAP protocols. The Creatio support team provides responsive access for developers, and the solution can be easily customized to suit various industries and business functions.

Businesses – The Creatio environment provides the capability for customer overview from sales conversion to retention and marketing campaigns, and enables insight into planning and budgeting with analytical features to produce reports and help the business improve performance. Creatio allows the business to monitor tasks and projects and forecast outcomes, and tracks email, phone, social media and web interactions to provide a complete picture of customer interaction. Its customer relationship management (CRM) solutions include sales and customer service components and a Marketing Automation Tool. The recent launch of the Creatio Energy 8.2 platform incorporates unified agentic AI, generative AI (GenAI) and Prescriptive AI in a single platform AI Command Center, making it possible for the business to incorporate AI functions and features into its product or app roadmap.

There are many businesses using Creatio today, including:

…just to name a few. There are businesses around the world using this platform with great success.

When you consider how to use Creatio within your own business, you will find many advantages that apply to your industry and business function. Here are just a few examples of the Many Uses Of Creatio within your enterprise:

Personalizing and Automating Marketing Campaigns – The generative AI (GenAI) capabilities within Creatio can help you develop a campaign, prepare a presentation, and create campaign collaterals and materials. It can monitor campaign performance and recommend changes and improvements to improve results.

Automating Sales Outreach – Creatio can help sales managers and associates to automate outreach starting from the initial contact and continuing through the communication and connection process to create personalized messaging that will attract new customers and improve results.

Customer Service Support – GenAI features can help customer support agents to provide better service by responding accurately to customer tone and language, providing appropriate content for resolution and offering additional supporting information like user manuals, etc.

Financial Services – Creatio AI can analyze customer data to produce personalized reports and feedback for portfolios and suggest changes to improve results. It can detect fraud and suspicious transactions and produce reports to monitor and manage these issues.

Healthcare Support – Creatio can create and update medical documents, manage patient communication via email, images, phone and hand-written documents, and personalize healthcare communication and advice. It can analyze results from information related to diet, exercise, blood sugar, weight, etc. and produce customized nutrition plans, and recommend visits with healthcare providers.

Product Development and Design – Creatio AI-enabled development environs can support product design, analyze materials, trends, costs, customer buying behavior etc. to suit specific demographics or customer groups.

Process and Product Integration – Creatio supports numerous Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to help businesses create components within software applications, or add AI and other functionality to existing ERP, HR, SCM and other solutions to serve business functions, specific departments and enterprise needs.

Creatio combines generative, agentic, and predictive AI into one no-code platform to enable businesses and industries to  achieve market advantage, improve  productivity and customer satisfaction and support business decisions and strategies.

When NOT to Use LCNC and/or Creatio For My Business Project

Creatio is a low-code, no-code development environment, so no discussion of pros and cons would be complete without including the challenges and tradeoffs your development team will face when choosing low-code/no-code for certain types of projects. For more information on the pros and cons of Low-Code, No-Code, you may wish to explore our article, ‘What Is Low-Code, No-Code Development? How Can It Support My Business Application And Software Product Development Needs?.’

Here we consider the challenges of low-code and no-code development, and the pros and cons of Creatio to answer the question, ‘is Creatio a good LCNC platform for my business needs?’

Low-Code, No-Code Development Challenges

Integration – Complex integration roadmaps that include multiple solutions and techniques can make it challenging to integrate Low-Code/No-Code solutions. If an enterprise plans to integrate these approaches with legacy systems, the development team is likely to face some integration challenges that will require manual coding. Vendors provide their own version of these tools and if an enterprise chooses more than one of these environments for development, it can create integration challenges.

Scalability – The development team or IT consultant must carefully assess and support performance, reliability and security issues, and consider infrastructure and load testing to assure appropriate scalability and performance across all apps and systems. If your business depends on large datasets, you may have scalability and performance issues.

Solution Customization – By its nature, the low-code/no-code approach limits customization capabilities and provides less flexibility for developers when combining ‘from scratch’ code with restrictive components and tools.

System and Solution Governance – The enterprise must work closely with IT consultants and the in-house IT team to ensure appropriate oversight, and to monitor and manage the growth and changes required to stay abreast of organizational requirements and effectively manage the production and development environment and processes.

Creatio Development Platform Challenges

Regulated Industries and Businesses – Industry and government standards can be complex and will require specific customization that can exceed Creatio capabilities or create burdensome cost.

Scope of Solution – The Sales Creatio package is more suitable for product-focused businesses than for service businesses. While it can be customized and enhanced, the business should consider the cost of that customization in its decision-making process. Some developers report limited scope of potential applications when using the Creatio Marketplace tools.

Pricing – Creatio pricing will increase as the business grows, so it is important to forecast cost increases in your selection criteria. Creatio pricing is based on the individual Creatio products and support plans the business chooses, and the number of users. The business can choose mobile-only users, external B2B portal users, limited internal users or external B2C portal users. For small to mid-sized businesses, this cost may be a concern. Be sure to thoroughly review and understand pricing before making a decision.

Customization and Enhancements – While low-code, no-code development is generally faster and easier to accomplish, Creatio feature enhancements can take time and additional cost in deployment, so be sure to work with your IT Partner to understand your requirements and the resulting cost.

AI-Enabled Tools – Creatio Energy 8.2 incorporates unified agentic AI, generative AI (GenAI) and Prescriptive AI in a single platform AI Command Center. While the potential for this platform is promising, the toolset and platform are new (launched in October of 2024). Depending on the type of application your business plans to create and the planned use of these tools and techniques, the business may wish to consider the stability of these products.

By including the Benefits, Advantages, Challenges And Tradeoffs here, we hope to give you a more comprehensive picture of the capabilities and limitations of the Creatio products and platforms, so that you can compare this development environment to your enterprise requirements and business needs. It is wise to work with your IT partner when choosing a development environment to be sure that the you select a framework and platform that will meet your needs now and in the future – one that is suitable for your users and your suppliers, customers, partners and stakeholders.

‘Creatio is a no-code application platform that is ideal for businesses that are focused on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing, sales and service, and for the banking, insurance, credit unions, retail, transportation, business services, and telecommunications industries.’

How to Hire Creatio Programmers and LCNC Developers for Your Project

If your business is seriously considering the Creatio low-code/no-code approach to development as a component of your project, or for an entire development project, you will need to focus on resource planning and ensure that the team you establish has the skills you need for this project and to ensure success for upgrades, to support and maintain your solution and to provide adequate resources to develop and deploy your solution. Choose an IT partner with the skills and resources to address your needs and to assess requirements, plan, design, develop and deploy your software product or application using a comprehensive set of skills and experience in low-code and no-code and in Creatio.

When considering Creatio Software Product And Application development Vendors And Service Providers, you will want to include the following factors:

Resources Most organizations do not have the bandwidth to staff a development project and sustain other projects, maintenance, support and governance activities at the same time. Even if your enterprise has enough resources, it is likely you will experience delays because of competing priorities. Adding resources using a flexible delivery model can help you staff and move your project forward. Whether you require onsite, offshore or a hybrid delivery model, you will want to consider a vendor that can provide appropriate access and a responsive staff to keep your project on schedule and on budget.

Skills The Creatio low-code, no-code approaches are popular because they provide a fast, easy way to develop apps and software and that can lead businesses to believe that if they use one of these approaches, they can create solutions without any professional expertise. Be sure that the team you select has the most up-to-date skillset for Creatio products including the Sales, Marketing, CRM, and AI-enabled suites and all integration and customization techniques, etc. Whether you are creating a business application, a mobile app, a consumer website or any other software product or application, there are many facets to a development lifecycle. Using Creatio tools, techniques and platforms to develop in a low-code, or no-code environment may be appropriate, but your development team or IT consulting partner will need skills for requirements planning, and perhaps for minimum viable product development to test prototypes and concepts, and they will need to have the skills and bandwidth to design, configure, test, integrate and deploy. Choose an IT consulting partner with a full suite of design and development skills and a comprehensive understanding of available and popular technology.

Support The need for expert, experienced software application developers and application support and maintenance skills is constant. If your business is not equipped to hire, train and retain permanent staff to satisfy the peaks and valleys of IT business requirements, it is time to consider an expert partner – a well-balanced, skilled IT team with leading-edge skills to enhance and support your business with innovative, high-value, low-cost application maintenance and support services, and timely, proven processes and methodologies. Whether you are employing low-code/no-code technology or integrating that technology with other platforms and services, you need a team that can support every component and aspect of your solution.

Upgrades If your business plans to keep your software app, mobile app or software product evergreen, it is good to know that Creatio is invested in frequent upgrade schedules, so new capabilities are available on a regular basis. Be sure your IT partner is up-to-date on what is currently available from Creatio and can help you create a roadmap for upgrades to keep your product competitive in the market and add new features to assist your users. Change is a constant but one thing is always true, your business must adapt to changing customer buying behavior, and leverage new, cutting-edge technologies to remain competitive. Your partner will help you plan for anticipated upgrades and provide the flexibility required to keep your solution agile, so that, when you are ready, you can make those changes without expensive customization or having to start from scratch.

If you wish to obtain a detailed list of experience, skills, support and resources to achieve a seamless outcome, explore: ‘Offshore Outsourcing Company White Paper On How to Select an Offshore Development Partner,’ ‘The Cost vs. Value Equation for Offshore Software and Technology Projects,’ and ‘Top 3 Considerations for In-House Software Product Development vs. Expert Assistance Decision.’

Explore these complementary articles: ‘MVP Software Development: Everything You Need to Know (The What, Why and How),’ ‘Low-Code, No-Code Programming: What’s the Buzz,’ ‘Minimum Viable Products and Their Value,’ and our White Paper, ‘Understanding the Concept and Value of Low-Code and No-Code Development,’ and ‘What is Low-Code, No-Code Development? How Can It Support My Business Application and Software Product Development Needs?’

In this article, we have described and defined the Low-Code and No-Code approach to development, and the Creatio platform and solutions, and considered the benefits and challenges of choosing this approach for your business. We have reviewed vendor considerations and provided a summary of the Creatio environment and its uses.

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