WaveMaker
close
LOW-CODE
PREFABS
SOLUTIONS
EVALUATE

Wired for experience®

WaveMaker

Forrester finds that, in 2020, over 27% of organizations improved their customer experience (CX) index scores, a big number compared to the few who were making progress in the years before.

“To emerge successfully from this global crisis, brands must build experiences that help them engage with their customers at an emotional level,” wrote Forrester SVP, Sharyn Leaver.

So, how do enterprises engage customers at an emotional level when the predominant
channel of interaction is now digital?

By delivering insights-driven, personalized, contextual, end-to-end digital customer experiences anytime, anywhere, across channels and devices.

To achieve this, at accelerated time-to-value and scale, enterprises need a springboard: A Digital Experience Platform.

Gartner defines a Digital Experience Platform (DXP), as an integrated set of technologies, based on a common platform, that provides a broad range of audiences with consistent, secure, and personalized access to information and applications across many digital touchpoints.

 

At WaveMaker, we visualize it in three layers:

Most enterprises have the business engine and the digital engagement hub, even if some of them might be legacy software. However, the digital customer experience layer needs to respond to rapidly evolving needs, offering opportunities for experimentation and rapid implementation. It is here that low-code can help. Here’s how.

 

Transforming applications to a customer-oriented approach

In most industries, IT is designed around the organizational structure, not customer needs. For instance, the technology architecture of a retail organization is driven by the supply chain — divided into inventory, point of sale, customer relationship management, e-commerce, etc. So, if a customer wants to check on the company’s website whether a product is available in their nearby store, it would be next to impossible because the e-commerce engine doesn’t speak to the inventory management system.

A digital experience platform can enable enterprises to address such use cases without elaborate investments in product development. When the business engine is built on customer-oriented architecture, deploying applications as microservices, loosely coupled, and API-driven with functional encapsulation, the low-code customer experience suite empowers you to drag and drop any combination of features and functionalities to create a new app. It effortlessly abstracts the various business engines to create apps with little manual programming.

 

Leveraging data for personalized digital experience

No customer wants to search and scroll endlessly on their shopping app to find the product they want. Nor do they want to manually drag and drop features into their interface to personalize it themselves. They want personalized experiences that are meaningful, engaging, and, most importantly, efficient.

A digital experience platform can leverage advanced analytics to deliver that. The low-code customer experience suite can form the abstraction over the analytics engine to bring together user, interaction, and business data to create a 360-degree view of the customer. It can enable dynamic user experiences, ensuring continuity of customer relationships, displaying cross-sell/up-sell opportunities contextually.

 

Delivering omnichannel engagement

In the era of ‘hand-off’ between devices, customers demand a smooth omnichannel experience from enterprises. For instance, an e-commerce customer today wants to add items to their cart from any device, anywhere, anytime, and purchase them all together when they’re ready.

Digital experience platforms are built to enable this seamlessly. By integrating various digital business engines, the low-code customer experience suite allows you to build omnichannel customer journeys — effortlessly moving from one channel to another, ensuring continuity of engagement across devices.

 

Enabling dynamic content delivery

Traditional applications are optimized for short-term transactions, while digital experience platforms are built to create long-term customer value. For instance, an e-commerce application is typically built around capabilities like search and checkout, focussing on the efficiency of shopping. But customers today are seeking more engagement. Perhaps why social commerce — blending of social media like Instagram and shopping — is gaining popularity, as it stresses the ‘experience' of shopping.

The digital customer experience suite enables enterprises, especially in industries like banking, media, retail, or fashion to design websites, portals, apps, etc. to deliver personalized, contextual, relevant, and timely content to improve stickiness and loyalty.

 

Ensuring end-to-end digital service

Today, saying “you need to come to the store to get this done” is a sure-shot way of losing a customer, especially given that the cost of switching to a new provider is the lowest it has ever been. However, traditional shelf-ware is heavily restrictive in the functionalities they can offer.

Digital experience platforms enable you to deliver end-to-end digital service. With the customer engagement suite, enterprises can:

In 2018, PwC found 32% of customers say they would stop doing business with a brand after one bad experience, even if they had loved it before. On the other hand, customers are willing to pay a 7-16% price premium for a good experience. This becomes even more telling in the post-pandemic era.

Today, just offering a digital avenue isn’t enough. The digital channel(s) is the storefront, relationship manager, customer service, marketing, sales, product catalog — all rolled into one. The true success of a digital channel is in dynamically adapting to customer needs. A digital experience platform helps you achieve that.

With a robust low-code customer experience suite built with WaveMaker, you can accelerate your digital experience platform journey significantly. Its ability to provide features such as a composable architecture, scalability, cloud-native capabilities, customizability, repeatability and security strengths enable your application teams to create differentiated experiences at a fraction of the time and cost.

To see how low-code can accelerate your digital platform journey, try a demo of WaveMaker today.

Authored by Gopi Mishra, Principal Architect - Development, WaveMaker, Inc

Enterprises are increasingly using ‘Direct-to-Consumer’ digital initiatives. They are parallelly digitizing their internal processes with increased velocity. These changes bring with them a tide of security threats. From insider threats to exposed marketplaces, there is always a security hazard lurking around the corner--one that can assume mammoth proportions if security doesn’t become an ingrained part of application development. In fact, according to a report by cyber security firm 'Checkpoint', cyberattacks on organizations worldwide jumped by 29% during the first half of 2021 as compared to the same period in the previous year.

So if an enterprise is adopting the web, mobile, and cloud, and directly selling to the consumer, it would be paramount that the IT team prioritizes the security of its product, and most importantly ingrain the best practices of weaving security into the development process.

Who better to don the mantle of defense than the ‘developer’? After all, when it comes to the security of an application, ‘developers’ are the first line of defense!

 

Defense-In-Depth

A ‘Defense-In-Depth’ approach to security for applications is a layered approach to security. What it essentially means, is that developers should take necessary action to mitigate security risks at every layer, be it the front-end (client), middle-tier, database services, or even the network layer. To do that, developers need to collaborate with various stakeholders: customers, DevOps teams, IT-networking, and the security teams handling the necessary infrastructure.

A developer has to have the same approach while developing secure applications using a low-code platform. WaveMaker comes fortified with SAST tested auto-generated code that is VeracodeTM verified. While developers working with WaveMaker can rest assured of the inherent security of the platform, there are a few best practices that a one can follow while using WaveMaker low-code to develop secure applications.

 

Embed security using WaveMaker

Developers need to think about security primarily in three areas: Data, Business Logic, and Coding. Data in itself could be static or could be in transmission. Depending on its state, the developer needs to keep an eye out for the following checkpoints:

 

Data at Rest:

 

Data in Motion:

Secure data in motion from being intercepted

 

Business Logic:

 

Coding Best practices :

 

Security is an inarguable conclusion

While security best practices can help developers immensely, what is more important, is that they develop a ‘security mindset’. Security must be a priority and not an afterthought. While developing applications using ‘Agile Practices’, security should be a criterion in the ‘Definition of Done’ of user stories. Bigger pieces should be taken up as enabler stories. Regular penetration tests should be performed early in the development stage and should be a part of every sprint release. A security loophole caught early in the game will alleviate future pain points, bring down costs and reduce technical debt.

Being secure is not an option, it is an inarguable conclusion. Developers with a finer sense of security will hold this as their mantra.

 

Author’s Bio

Gopi is a software architect with over 15 years of experience in the financial tech and IT domain including 9 years he spent on mastering mobile architecture design. He presently leads a team of low-code developers and mentors them about best practices in software development. In his free time, he loves to read non-fiction, watch history channels or binge-watch movies.
Write to Gopi Mishra at info@wavemaker.com

Authored by Akhil Pillai, Principal Engineer, WaveMaker, Inc

The web has been a unique platform to develop applications for decades. Of late, platform-specific applications have created a lot of buzz, mainly owing to their reliability and extensive features. Some of them work offline, some have hardware capabilities while some of them can notify users of important updates. PWAs or Progressive Web Applications are the web’s newest attempt at matching the level of reliability and richness that these native applications offer.

What exactly are Progressive Web Applications?

Progressive Web Apps are just plain old web applications with newer capabilities enabled on modern browsers using progressive enhancement. That is, even if the modern features are not supported by the browser, the user still gets the core experience of a web app. PWAs make use of web-platform features like service workers and manifests to give users an experience on par with native apps.

Some of the features that PWAs offer are:

 

Installable

PWAs allow users to install them through prompts that are either on the browser or implemented by the developer. Once installed, they mimic native apps that are available on home screens, docks, or taskbars. The application opens up as a different window rather than as a tab in a browser and is shown as part of the app switcher, thus tightly integrating it with the platform.

 

Reliable

Speed is crucial to keep the user interested and reduce bounce rates. Google's research shows that an increase in page load times from 1 to 10 seconds leads to a 123% increase in bounce rates. The capability of PWAs to cache resources and load them from the cache greatly increases speed and performance. This not only helps with load times but also helps when the network is slow or there is no network at all. This means even when offline you have access to your favorite application unless network connections are indispensable.

 

Linkable

Being a web application, PWAs can be easily shared using URLs. Anybody with a URL can install a PWA on any platform with a supported browser. This greatly reduces the effort it takes to distribute an app through an app store. Managing versions are made easy too with auto-updates or prompted updates that allow partial updates. With this feature, gone are the days when we had to download entire applications for just a small change in text.

 

Enables Notifications

One of the biggest flexes that native applications had over web applications is the ability to push updates to the user. Though web applications could show notifications, they needed to be running in a window to do so. PWAs have overcome this hurdle through service workers. A service worker is a piece of code that runs in the background even after the web application is closed by the user. This allows the web application to run background tasks and receive notifications. This makes it easy to keep the user engaged even when the application is not running.

 

Secure

PWAs are inherently secure. The service worker, which is the core part of a PWA, is only activated if the connection is secure. If the connection is not established over a secure HTTPS protocol, PWAs behave just like normal web applications.

Though these are some of the main features that PWAs offer, there is much more to them like background sync and hardware communication among others.

 

How can PWAs impact business?

Most of the features directly or indirectly affect the way users interact with web applications. This in turn drives business decisions. For example, giving a native feel to a web application is made easier with PWA. This allows businesses to ship applications faster while skipping app stores and their complex policies. PWAs while reducing development effort also reduce the associated development cost. Faster loading times give a big boost to customer retention while notification capabilities keep the user engaged.

In terms of data supporting these tall claims, let's take the case of Twitter. Twitter saw a 65% increase in pages per session, 75% more Tweets, and a 20% decrease in bounce rate. Nikkei saw 2.3 times more organic traffic, 58% more subscriptions, and 49% more daily active users. Hulu replaced their platform-specific desktop experience with a Progressive Web App and saw a 27% increase in return visits. As they say, numbers don't lie. PWAs are definitely influencing customer interaction with applications.

 

How can WaveMaker help?

PWAs combine the native feel of platform-specific applications with the dynamic nature of web applications. But how do we implement all these features? Using vanilla JavaScript and HTML to implement such rich features would take a lot of time and effort. Of course, libraries like Angular and Workbox can help but WaveMaker goes a step further. With the latest 10.9 release, PWA is officially in its beta stage on WaveMaker. All the user has to do is enable an ‘app.pwa.enabled' flag in the profile they use for production. Detailed instructions can be found here.

WaveMaker uses Angular’s built-in support for PWA and throws in a bit of its own magic to enable these features. As soon as the flag is enabled, two of the most prominent features are baked right into the WaveMaker web applications - installability and caching. Notifications are also enabled by default that can be made to work with a few app-specific changes. WaveMaker also allows the user to choose a custom icon for the installable app. What better than having your brand image in your user’s app drawer!

At WaveMaker we realize that continuous improvement and innovation is the path to creating customer satisfaction. As of now, PWA features that are in the beta stage are subject to continuous improvement. The way forward is to enhance features like notifications and to gradually add features dictated by customer interests.

PWAs are here to stay and WaveMaker will help your business embrace the technology with as little code as possible.

Watch this video to know more.

 

Author’s Bio

Akhil Pillai is a full-stack developer with more than 10 years of experience in software development. He is a technology enthusiast and a polyglot with a soft spot for machine learning. In his free time, he loves to read technical content and listen to music.

Mankind and the systems that it relies on are in a constant state of flux. From the transportation systems we travel in, to the medicines we take, evolution has been a constant phenomenon in human life. If that were not so, we would still be stuck in stone-age. Development tools are no different. From low-level languages like COBOL to high-level languages like Java and Python, coding has evolved to make application development easy. Similarly, IDEs are constantly evolving to make the developer’s life easy. From text editors to GUI-based IDEs to IDEs that even autocomplete your code, development environments have come a long way. Low-code is the next eventual milestone.

Hi! I am Sagar Vemala, from Hyderabad, India and I work for WaveMaker, Inc. After completing my engineering course, I joined WaveMaker as an intern where I was introduced to low-code development and I found the concept of converting ideas into products rapidly; absolutely fascinating! I had an offer in hand to join a reputed technology company as a developer even before I was offered an internship at WaveMaker, but I must say that the internship introduced me to a whole new world of application development and I decided to stay. When I started as a full-time developer at WaveMaker, I was warned by my peers about being labeled as a ‘low-code developer’ but my gut instincts told me that I was making the right decision. Looking back, am glad I stuck to my decision. A low-code developer’s job is not restricted to simple coding, it is an expansive sea of learning, of thinking outside the box and more importantly, it is a job that solves a problem.

In this context, I would like to share my experiences from my journey, clear some misconceptions and present my point of view about my career as a low-code developer. Here are a few pertinent questions that I get asked about low-code:

 

If it is just drag and drop, then what is there for a developer to do?

I learned Java on notepad++. While it is the best way to learn Java, it is not necessarily the best way to develop faster. Seeing me code on a text editor, my friend introduced my novice self to the Eclipse IDE and it is there that I was introduced to the world of GUI IDEs with cool features like generating import statements, getters, and setters methods automatically.

My ‘world of coding’ just became so much more flexible.

The first time I saw how WaveMaker worked, it was déjà vu--Once again a complicated process had been made so much easier. My life as a developer is made ‘easier’ by WaveMaker. Here is how:

WaveMaker has a real code-behind approach and allows full customization and extension on every level. I consider WaveMaker as an advanced IDE (RAD) which generates open standards-based code following best architectural practices. It offloads monotonous tasks like setting up the project and environment, managing framework, and library upgrades and allows me to focus on the problem at hand. Also, it helps developers by providing configurational code for standard features like multi-language support, security, and scalability. With all that being taken care of by WaveMaker, I can focus on areas where my knowledge and experience are needed, like solving requirements and writing business and integration logic.

 

By being a low-code developer, am I restricting my learning and knowledge?

Absolutely not! I see myself as a problem solver and not just as a developer. I get to work on so many layers of technologies, right from designing the DB schema to preparing the backend to composing the UI and deploying the app.

In a traditional setup, this would require a large team of dedicated backend and front-end developers working for months to build an app. In today’s world, there is an imminent danger of irrelevance by the time an app is developed. With WaveMaker, a small team does the job in weeks that would traditionally take months and as a plus, I get to dip my toes in every kind of technology.

As development became more agile and the time frame became shorter, I got to work on many applications across different domains. At times, I would digest requirements directly from the client. With total control over development at all layers, I was able to provide accurate estimates. After observing diverse apps getting built, I started to think about another important aspect of development--user experience. This skill that I picked up while using low-code helped me deliver applications even without the help of a business analyst or a user interaction designer. My learning outside just coding, sky-rocketed.

I also got the opportunity to work with DBAs, senior developers, technical team leads, and architects of various enterprises as a WaveMaker SME. All apprehensions about not being ‘technical enough' disappeared after my conversations with them and I believe that I was able to add value to decisions that are agnostic of WaveMaker.

In a nutshell, the horizon of my learning expanded.

 

If the platform generates most of the code, won't that make developer's learning gloomy and less interesting?

Circling back to the point of learning, let’s elucidate with an example. Let’s say, a ‘traditional’ JavaScript developer has just started learning Angular. If the said person follows the documentation of a ‘to-do’ app and merely replicates the steps without understanding the intricacies of how Angular is helping, will the person be able to actually ‘learn’ and contribute to projects? No, right? The same logic applies here as well. There is learning in any sphere of creation. Developers who aspire to work with WaveMaker low-code need to use or will learn the below-mentioned skills to understand WaveMaker generated code and make the best use of it.

As a low-code developer, am I stuck? What is the future of a low-code developer?

I strongly believe that low-code may not be a hammer for every nail but is a necessary tool in the developer kit. Enterprises have and will adopt this methodology into their practices for years to come. Digital transformation has become ubiquitous with every enterprise and if an enterprise is looking at ways to create safe, scalable, and modern products with faster go-to-market, low-code is a safe bet. According to Gartner, the low-code development market is predicted to reach a worldwide total of $13.8 billion in 2021. In fact, the demand for low-code developers has been rising exponentially.

After having worked for WaveMaker for more than 5 years, I find myself with an abundance of choice and skills. I have the skills and knowledge to go the full-stack way, I can lead teams of low-code developers, I can be a solution architect, or I can choose to use low-code for hybrid development. There is a myriad of opportunities and options available. You only have to choose.

Finally, I think I chose the road less taken, even though opinions around me were not as positive about low-code, as they are today, I feel I made an interesting choice that fueled a unique career for me, and that has made all the difference.

Author’s Bio

Sagar Vemala has been with WaveMaker since 2015 and has implemented several customer projects as part of the professional services team. He has built a variety of API-driven applications in workforce planning, inventory management, finance and insurance. If you are developing an application and plan to use low-code, Sagar can share best practices using WaveMaker. Write to him at info@wavemaker.com

 

Tech-savvy users are swiping left aggressively and swiping right selectively. No, we are not talking about dating apps. We are talking about how quickly the customers of today are changing their banking preferences. Loyalty is a fickle emotion. As Jeffrey Gitomer says “You don't earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day-by-day", by responding to the customer's needs every single day. Otherwise, they just move on.

How responsive banks are to the changing needs of the customer will now decide their longevity. Or else, it’s a swipe left for sure.

With so much at stake, what can banks do to retain their customer’s loyalty?

Going digital is an obvious answer, but then everyone is doing it. Every bank of repute has a digital face--some, more advanced than others. What spruces up the relationship between the customer and the banking app is the customer journey. It is all about how the relationship started and how it sustains--the qualities that keep the customer engaged, the features that make a banking app sticky. So what are the features in a banking application that entices customers, and how does the WaveMaker low-code platform help?

Though a banking application may not necessarily be composed of all of the above, it should at the very least be provided compatible platforms that enable the development of these features leading to the creation of a composable banking app. So the question one may ask is, does WaveMaker as a low-code platform support the integration of these features into a composable banking app?

The answer is a resounding yes!

A developer working on WaveMaker can take two approaches:

One, use the built-in prefabs to quickly conjure up a banking-specific component.
Two, integrate third-party banking components into the application.

This is helped by two factors:

WaveMaker allows seamless collaboration of ecosystem partners with ease--the foundation of a composable banking architecture. It helps banks, BaaS players, fintech, and ISVs respond to what customers ask for--modern experiences, intuitive interfaces with stunning visual components, security, smooth onboarding, and device-agnostic feature-rich applications. WaveMaker with its API-first approach, prefabs, support for all major databases, and vault-like security with VeracodeTM certified code has all the qualities to broker a long-lasting partnership with the bank and the customer with agility.

Banks can expand the reuse of legacy core banking, offer services to brands as a BaaS player, or launch greenfield initiatives; with WaveMaker, the possibilities are endless.

So, this time when the user swipes right, banks can swipe right back at them!

Swipe right to know more about WaveMaker

*Watch this space for our next article on our banking software components

 

By Vikram Srivats, Vice President, WaveMaker

Enough has been said and written about the effect of the pandemic in hyper-accelerating the shift to digital – for enterprises and consumers alike. This is one widely accepted fact we can note and move on from.

The combination of low-code development and BaaS APIs are enabling more companies than ever to add banking services to existing apps and products

However, another rising wave has been afoot for a few years now – something that Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) thinks is far greater than the Internet, Cloud, and Mobile combined (yes, you read that right) – with a projected market value of $3.6 trillion by 2030. BCV heralds this wave as the Fourth Platform: financial services in an embedded (or integrated) form within technology-driven businesses.

Andreesen-Horowitz (a16z) and CB Insights talk about this being the banking industry’s “AWS moment”, with new Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) players offering all (or parts of) the banking stack as-a-service for a new crop of fintech and tech-driven brands. a16z further predicts that every company will become a fintech company – embedding finance across digital and traditional brands – by leveraging offerings from BaaS providers.

Embedded finance and BaaS are two sides of the same coin. Brands and fintech offer embedded financial services to consumers and businesses while BaaS providers are the suppliers and enablers for those brands and fintech.

Two trends collide to form one massive opportunity

With the pandemic driving a tectonic shift to online, virtual, and instant gratification, embedded finance allows brands and disruptive new financial products to gain and delight customers, increase share-of-wallet and create stickiness. From a customer standpoint, the financial experience is in the moment, contextual and seamless within the brand experience – to the extent that the finance is almost invisible.

For example, think of Apple – which now offers a credit card backed by Goldman Sachs – or Shopify – going above and beyond by offering embedded payments, balance accounts, and loans to aspiring e-commerce businesses. With the likes of Amazon, Google, Doordash, Chime and Affirm, the list of embedded finance and BaaS-powered use cases and players is growing rapidly.

This growth is primarily fueled by a whole slew of capable BaaS players – Synapse, Treasury Prime, Stripe, Marqeta, Bond, Finastra, Railsbank, Solarisbank, Unit, Galileo, BBVA Open Platform, GPS, and many more – offering differentiated and compelling technical and financial propositions. These BaaS players in turn have partnerships with one or more banks and offer APIs (sometimes a single API) for a brand or fintech customer to call and access the offered financial service via the API.

In a way, things have come full circle – from the software powering financial services (core and engagement platforms) at FIs, we now have banking subsumed into software and offered via APIs.

BaaS APIs are becoming the new currency in the world of financial services

With this BaaS revolution going on in the background, the low-code market has grown exponentially, with more than 100 platform providers – with different specializations – competing for market share.

Microsoft, Mendix, OutSystems, and ServiceNow are some of the leading players while there are specialist challenger firms more focused on specific personas (professional developers, citizen developers, and business process users) and target areas (apps, workflow, automation, analytics, and so on).

To say that low-code adoption was propelled further by the pandemic is an understatement. Whether for businesses urgently wanting to digitally transform or for more advanced corporations, low-code has comfortably hit its stride as a new paradigm in software development.

Now, with over 2,000 fintech launched in 2019, the rise and maturity of BaaS offerings and differentiated embedded finance use cases/opportunities, and a world where APIs rule, developers are now the first customers of the banking and financial services capability stack.

Brands and fintech, banks and third-party software developers, independent software vendors, and system integrators need to find, attract, hire, train, mentor, motivate, manage and drive world-class development teams to deliver business outcomes.

They must do all this in the face of non-trivial challenges:

A breed of developer-friendly, open, API-driven, modern, enterprise-grade low-code platforms could be the answer. Here is how:

In 2020, Microsoft cited research predicting that more than 500 million new apps will be built in the next five years, which is more than the total number of apps built in the last 40 years, even as companies struggle to find software developers. According to KPMG, despite the overall market softness in H1 2020, H2 rebounded and saw almost $72 billion in fintech investment (across PE, VC, and M&A deals). Klarna, Revolut, and Chime raised mega rounds north of $500 million each. KPMG goes on to predict that embedded finance will emerge as the *new North Star* in fintech.

Low-code development layered on BaaS APIs may be embedded finance’s hockey stick moment

Embedded fintech and low-code development are massive scale markets in their own right. The next 1,000 or 10,000 fintech, FIs, and brands that deliver embedded financial services will need to be laser-focused on their customers and business to compete and win. Agility, automation, and reuse will underpin composable enterprises and personalized experiences, and modern, powerful low-code platforms already are delivering complex, compelling and contextual experiences for discerning development and business teams globally.

To further explore banking solutions by WaveMaker, please view our exclusive BFSI offerings here.

Or, start a conversation with our expert consultants for solutions to your unique requirements.

Originally published in Fintech Futures