Foreword: Small and medium-sized enterprises have a strong demand for informatization. For software workers and programmers who develop informatization projects of small and medium-sized enterprises, how to quickly understand the needs of their informatization projects and deliver them in a timely manner according to the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises is a matter of concern and concern. discussion topic.
In recent years, with the deep integration of the global economy and the continuous rise of labor costs in China, Chinese enterprises are entering a period of business model transformation. Many enterprises have realized that it is necessary to improve the level of management informatization in order to reduce enterprise management costs and improve management efficiency. Many enterprises have intensified their informatization construction, which has led to a huge demand for enterprise management software. According to the statistics report of China Industry Information Network, from 2015 to 2016, the ratio of Chinese enterprises using information systems increased from 46.6% to 60%, an increase of 13.4 percentage points within one year.
Figure 1: Construction of Chinese Enterprise Information System (Source: China Industry Information Network)
In the process of enterprise informatization, large enterprises can be equipped with professional talents and abundant funds in informatization construction due to their advantages in market position, scale, capital, and management concepts. In contrast, the informatization of the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises has the following characteristics:
1. The business of the enterprise is not standardized, and at the same time it develops rapidly, and the demand for informatization changes greatly.
On the one hand, the business division of small and medium-sized enterprises is relatively extensive, and the frequency of adjustment of business models is high; Soon after it came out, before the information application was promoted and implemented, the dilemma of completely overturning the original demand often appeared immediately.
2. Enterprises are under great pressure on capital investment in informatization.
The key to small and medium-sized enterprises is development. Due to the great pressure of competition among enterprises, enterprises put their limited funds in research and development and the market, and have very limited investment in informatization. They hope to achieve informatization needs through low-cost means.
3. Lack of enterprise information talents.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, what is most lacking is talents, especially for information talents. Small and medium-sized enterprises that are developing at a high speed are often not very attractive to information professionals because of their low level of informatization application, poor working environment and poor treatment.
Knowing the above characteristics, it is not difficult to understand why we often face the following dilemmas when developing SME projects: on the one hand, you need to wait for the company to provide specific project requirements before you can start development; on the other hand, the company only sees the project you develop to give feedback.
How to solve such a dilemma? A viable option is to use a Low Code Platform. Low-code development platforms refer to those tools that can quickly generate applications with no or little code (No Code or Low Code). Such tools usually provide visual design tools to quickly build interfaces, design data models, and create business logic and workflows.
The low-code development platform is very suitable for projects that customers cannot describe in detail and need to be deeply involved in the development process. It can help us build the framework of the application and deliver it to customers for trial in a few weeks or even days. Then, based on customer feedback, we decide to use the program developed in the early stage as a throwaway prototype, which is only used to collect user requirements; or to continuously enrich its functions through iterative development on the basis of the current program.
Figure 2: Common process of project development based on low-code development platform
The movable type grid of Grape City is a typical rapid development platform for enterprise informatization. Movable Type uses an Excel-like design interface, and can quickly create a Web information management system through a simple drag-and-drop operation. The main features are as follows:
- Visual design: Movable Type provides a visual designer, and developers can complete the main function development of the information system by dragging and dropping.
- Flexible customization: movable type provides powerful customization capabilities, including page customization, data table management, business process customization, etc., which is convenient for various enterprise applications.
- Permission management: Movable Type provides organizational structure management and fine-grained permission management for multiple people, which is convenient for enterprises to flexibly set and adjust permissions according to the actual situation, and promote internal collaboration.
- Easy to deploy and maintain: Movable Type provides a one-click publishing function without the need to configure a complex network server; it is also easier to perform system maintenance according to changes in enterprise needs.
- Support secondary development and system integration: Movable Type is an open rapid development platform, experienced programmers can still develop many advanced functions based on Movable Type without being restricted by Movable Type itself; at the same time, Movable Type Development The developed application can also be easily integrated with the existing information system of the enterprise, or integrated with third-party applications such as WeChat and DingTalk.
南京塔塔汽车零部件系统有限公司是一家外商独资的汽车零部件企业，主要给通用、沃尔沃、奔驰、捷豹路虎等整车厂供应塑料件。公司每个月的快递数量非常多，之前是使用纸质的审批签字，面临着领导审批时不知道费用预估是多少、相关人员需要找领导签字、 费用统计分析非常困难等问题。
南京塔塔采用活字格，在2个星期之内开发出一套快递审批系统，包括了快递申请填写、快递申请审批、快递费用对账、快递费用统计报表分析、域账号验证、权限管理等功能。
负责开发的聂先生说，“活字格开发的系统是基于BS架构的，易于维护和操作使用。用活字格开发的“快递审批系统”上线后，大大减少的员工找领导签字的时间，提高了办公的效率，从费用趋势图上能看出，整体快递费用在刚部署系统时是上升趋势，目前已转为下降趋势，表明系统在控制费用方面还是带来了明显的效果。”
图3：南京塔塔基于活字格开发的快递审批系统
关于低代码开发平台，一个常见的误区是认为“低代码开发平台只适用于平民开发者（Citizen Developer）”。平民开发者是指那些非传统的、没有受过专业编程教育的开发者，他们主要用低代码平台来创造和定制应用。事实上，活字格的使用群体当中，有接近40%的人是专业的开发者，有多家开发合作伙伴正在使用活字格加快项目的开发。
当然，通过使用低代码开发平台，可以降低对多数项目人员的技术要求。在多个项目并行时，只需要一个有经验的程序员进行数据表、业务逻辑等的设计即可，其他项目人员无需编程能力，这样在人月数和人员要求两个方向都能有效控制项目的投入。
借助低代码开发平台，可以更高效地理解中小企业的信息化项目需求，控制项目开发的成本，同时适应中小企业信息化需求变化快和缺乏专业技术人员进行项目维护的特点，是开发中小企业信息化项目的最佳选择。