Arjo van Oosten, Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation at Mendix, a Siemens business, discusses the low-code revolution and Mendix’s role in enterprise digital transformation.
In the past businesses could afford to view digital transformation as a distant challenge, something they’d deal with only if they directly encountered it. But that’s no longer the case. Today, digital transformation is a driving force in the business landscape, continuously evolving and challenging companies.
Arjo van Oosten, Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation at Mendix, said, “If you talk about change and the truth of transformation, you see that threats are coming to get you. They’re actively hunting for you if you don’t control it.”
Mendix, a leading low-code platform provider, is helping organisations navigate these challenges. Its digital transformation approach is comprehensive and nuanced, recognising that actual change goes far beyond simply implementing new technologies.
Mendix views digital transformation as an holistic journey encompassing technological shifts and organisational structure, processes, and culture changes. It’s about reimagining how businesses operate in the digital age, focusing on agility, innovation, and customer-centricity.
The company’s methodology is built on two key mantras: the “5 P’s” and the “3 S’s.” The 5 P’s – Portfolio, People, Process, Platform, and Promotion – form the backbone organisations’ transformation strategy, ensuring that they address all critical aspects of change. The 3 S’s – Start, Structure, and Scale – provide a roadmap for the transformation journey, breaking it into manageable stages.
This structured approach helps organisations avoid common pitfalls in digital transformation efforts. As van Oosten points out, many transformation initiatives fail due to a lack of clear vision, poor portfolio selection, or an inability to demonstrate value quickly. Mendix’s methodology addresses these challenges head-on, ensuring organisations can move swiftly while maintaining a strategic focus.
Central to Mendix’s approach is its low-code platform as an enabler of digital transformation. By reducing the time and complexity involved in application development, low-code platforms like Mendix allow organisations to bring new solutions to market faster, respond more quickly to changing business needs, and foster greater collaboration between business and IT teams.
But most importantly, Mendix recognises that successful digital transformation is about people. It’s about empowering employees with new skills, fostering a culture of innovation, and breaking down silos between different parts of the organisation. “It’s always about people because certainly, low-code is […] touching people’s roles, responsibilities, career paths as well,” van Oosten said.
In the following Q&A, we delve deeper into Mendix’s approach to digital transformation, exploring key strategies, common challenges, and the role of emerging technologies in shaping the future of business.
Q: Can you elaborate on Mendix’s “5 P’s” methodology for digital transformation?
Each P can be different depending on where you are in your journey, but it always comes down to these five areas. The first P is Portfolio: What do we want to build? When do we want to build it? The second P is People: What is my starting team? What is my team growth strategy? What kind of people do I need? How am I going to train those people?
The third P is Process: Can we work towards MVP, the minimal viable product? Are we working in an agile way? Do we have fast-release cycles? Are we doing DevOps? The fourth P is Platform: How do we land our technology in an existing enterprise architecture ecosystem, and how do we grow it?
The fifth P is Promotion, and that’s the youngest one. We’ve always been talking about the four P’s. Now we have five. This means three parts: internal PR, purposeful stakeholder management, and creating a business and IT community. That is the most pivotal thing we learned.
Overall, these Ps are parallel. However, the People aspect is the most important one. If you don’t have buy-in, if there’s no change of appetite, then everything falls flat. It would help if you ensured everybody, particularly the key people, are on board with your initiative.
Q: How does Mendix structure the digital transformation journey?
Mendix breaks down the transformation journey into three key stages, called the ‘3S’s’: Start, Structure, and Scale. The Start stage focuses on quick wins. We aim to deliver value rapidly, typically getting an application live in 60 days. This ‘seeing is believing’ approach helps build momentum and enthusiasm for the transformation process.
The Structure stage builds predictability and continuity, while the Scale stage focuses on expanding organisational transformation efforts. This staged approach allows organisations to deliver value quickly while building a foundation for long-term success.
Q: What are some common pitfalls in digital transformation efforts?
There are two major pitfalls. The first is a lack of clear vision. You need to have a strategy that connects to that vision. The second is poor portfolio selection, particularly in the early stages of transformation. If an application is technically feasible, it doesn’t mean that you have to build it as your first application. “Instead of choosing overly complex initial projects, I recommend a more gradual approach, allowing teams to learn and adapt as they build their capabilities.
Q: How does Mendix’s low-code platform factor into digital transformation strategies?
Mendix’s low-code platform offers both tangible and intangible benefits in digital transformation. On the intangible side, it improves business and IT collaboration, drives innovation, and increases organisational flexibility. The tangible benefits are more quantifiable, with the most significant advantage being faster time-to-market. This accelerated delivery can translate into substantial financial benefits for organisations, potentially turning IT departments into profit centres.
Q: What metrics does Mendix recommend for measuring the success of digital transformation initiatives?
Mendix recommends three key metrics for tracking transformation success.
First is time to application completion, which measures how quickly we can bring new applications to market. Second is the number of certified developers, indicating the growth of the organisation’s low-code capabilities. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to train your developers and ensure they continue gaining experience even after certification is complete. This ongoing development is crucial for maintaining and enhancing the team’s skills.
The third metric is the number of applications built on low-code, which shows the organisation’s adoption scale. Tracking the business value delivered by these applications is also essential.
Q: How do you see emerging technologies, like AI, shaping the future of digital transformation strategies?
I don’t want to sound too clichė, but AI plays an increasingly important role in digital transformation, particularly in three key areas.
First, in application development, where AI will start to behave as a co-developer or even like team leads in the future. Second, applications themselves can be made smarter by integrating AI capabilities.
Third, AI could potentially assist in driving the transformation process itself, understanding customer needs and providing recommendations for the transformation journey. Mendix is actively working on integrating AI capabilities into our platform and developing new tools to assist with digital transformation efforts.
Photo by Joshua Earle)
See also: How low-code and no-code platforms impact traditional development
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Tags: coding, development, low-code