Over the past 2 years, our focus at Kurtosys has been to democratise technology in a way that empowers marketers to take control; part of that evolution has been to build a Low Code framework into our WordPress for Finance stack. We call this Pagebox.
‘Low Code’ website CMS applications like Pagebox are one of the biggest innovations to be born from the marketing technology evolution. In the last 2 years, WordPress has equalled the lead in democratising technology, putting the power in the hands of marketers, designers and developers that still need to go beyond UI & UX configuration.
The movement is helping businesses large or small become empowered to evolve and improve their digital experience, with a delivery process instilled with predictability, speed, quality and commercial efficiency.
Our wider Kurtosys application which houses our FundPress (data), DocPress (documents) and InvestorPress (portal orchestration) follows the same mantra.
What is a Low Code CMS?
It’s an interactive UI layer, typically encapsulated in an application layer, that enables developers and design teams to increase the delivery of website or application assets. Micro technologies are what you ultimately pay for in time and money as a result of longer lead times to deliver projects. In WordPress’s case, there is a plugin layer that contains pre-built functionality, removing the development defect cycles you may go through when implementing other custom CMS products.
A Low Code CMS platform enables digital teams to deliver enterprise-grade websites with little or no custom coding. Of course, you still need a digital strategy and UI / UX framework to build from, but technical skills are not required, just solid training to on-board onto the chosen platform functionality.
These types of CMS applications or plugins (e.g. Pagebox for WordPress) provide a visual interface which enables users to quickly formulate a website in a much shorter lead time.
End to end efficiencies
At the most basic level, a Low Code platform allows users to create page layouts with dynamic template builders. These enable a user to build a website framework in a matter of days rather than months. Once the multiple page framework is in place, the designer or developer can use micro building blocks (we call them Atoms) to create modules of functionality. These can be dragged and dropped onto the pages. Templates can be re-sized, content can be loaded and colour schemes changed to achieve the desired UI design, and user testing can commence.
How Low Code is shaping the way organisations build and maintain their digital landscape
- Democratising website delivery – With a clear strategy and UX blueprint, building websites and applications can be disseminated across an entire marketing team rather than a select few.
- Configuration & Development Speed – 80% of your work is configurated with very little development work. This means you are building on a proven platform of features and functionality, removing potentially long UAT defect cycles. Typically, project delivery times are reduced by anything from 50-200%.
- Improved productivity of teams – Solutionising digital assets and experiences can become the premise of the entire team, not just the ‘elite’ digital natives. The head count needed to deliver a project reduces by approximately 25%.
- Reduces project failure – Implementation of a proven product solution ensures predictability of timelines and managing wider business expectations is much easier.
This demonstrates how marketing technology is moving away from being the domain of a select few elite digital specialists, and into the hands of a wider community of users. The power of implementation is now in the hands of leaders that understand the business proposition – designers and marketers – where previously they would have to go through the hands of developers.
Summary
Ask yourself, does your platform allow you to bring your digital execution within your internal teams, or are you still reliant on product/vender tension? Are you recruiting the digital native marketers that will be the next generation of their kind that know nothing other than Low Code?
Technological advancement means that the delivery of digital solutions on CMS platforms is moving to a democratised framework. You may well still use a vendor to execute your website experience, but the speed and commercial expenditure to deliver and maintain it is highly likely to reduce.
