Key Capabilities in Low-Code Platforms – Anurag Shah, Newgen Software

This is texturing TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrong TV our next guest in today's show is Mr. Anurag Shaw.

Anurag Shah with new gents software Inc. And he's coming to us today from their North American headquarters, which are up in the McLean area and anurag welcome to Tech strong TV. Thank you.

Ellen. Very happy to be here. Thanks a lot.

So pleasure to have you on honora. Why don't we start with you give how about a little background on yourself for our audience? absolutely, so Like you said anurag Shah that I manage the product sense solutions for the North America news and business.

And I have been with the company for close to about 24 years. And in all these years having spent so many years. Obviously it comes naturally but I have had to wear different hats at different point in time.

But most of the time I did my product management group to start with so the product that we are going to talk about or the products that you see on our website. I have been closely associated with its Genesis almost Genesis and it grew with me while I grew with the company. So that's one and then I also spent several years in implementation professional delivery for our Enterprise customers across us Caribbean and some part of India supposed.

Well in my current role right now, I am in addition to managing the products and solutions. I'm also running sales for our Enterprise business unit here in US. Actually, all right, you know what first of all congratulations because in today's world, it's see someone who's been at the same company for 20 plus years like that.

It's rare. It's rare right because In today's world people instead of asking for a raise they get a different job. You know what I mean?

They they just don't stay so congratulations for you. Thank you to for you being there that long. I think it's also a testament to new Gents.

corporate culture and business that Hey, they've kept you happy here all this time. That's that's not that's good good on them. If you don't mind, let's get a little background on new Jen software if it's okay.

Absolutely, so news six year older than what I am in news. And so we are about 30 years old already. So we have been for three decades in this business and all we have done throughout our existence of three decades or a little over three decades are content process and communication So, you know, I mean when the news and was when news and was founded our initial tagline, which we used for several years almost more than two decades was one World and one workplace.

That was our motto that this is a one world some day. The users will be able to work from one place irrespective of whether they are using content. They are used they are participating in a process or their communicating with anyone.

That's the motor with which the company started. So we started with our content management which in Earth's while decades used to be called document management system. And then we moved from content to the workflow part of it, which became business Process Management and then intelligent business Process Management.

And today we are calling the at a local no code and in the journey, we also brought in the third pillar, which is the customer communication part of it. It started with print about a decade or couple of decades back, but then it moved into electronic it moved into emails. So so we also started doing digital sensing and incoming communication on the social media what the customers or partners are talking or writing about UNS and all the companies.

So in nutshell news and carries three pillars in what we are calling news in one. The content the process and the communication and there are industry vertical Solutions which we spin out on this news and one platform for several Industries, like banking Insurance manufacturing shared services and so on and so forth. So that's a little bit about of course.

We are headquarter in India, but we work in about 72 countries now Us North America. It's a very integral part of our growth and our overall companies existence, so so that's that's about news and that's quite a footprint too, right but 30 years. I made good stuff.

Excellent. Yeah. So I wanted.

It today a little bit about the whole low code no code. Kind of I don't want to call it a revolution because we've been seeing it going on now for a couple more than a couple of years. It's an evolution.

Right where we're seeing we and to me this kind of two. roads of this one is making it easier for developers to develop applications. By not having the right much code right using low code no code kind of thing.

So people who are already professional developers looking to speed up the time rapid deployment rapid development rapid application development by using local code no code. Other Road traveled let's call it the citizen developer that to me. That's the non-professional developer whose tasked with.

Hey, I need something that does this and I we need it yesterday and just is there a way to make it happen faster right without having to go to the development team and do a requirement stock and you know, all of the things that are involved in an Enterprise today. You know developing new applications. Those are the two.

places I'm interested from your perspective from new Jen's perspective. Is that correct? Which one is the one you guys focus on or maybe you focus on both and where do you where do you see today?

Where do you see it happening? What do you think the the impact of this? Well, that's that's very pertinent point that you bring in this question.

So. post now now we are post pandemic and it is era of maybe it is a cliche already. It is an era of digital transformation.

We all know. And the the Enterprises and the business in their pursuit to reform reinvent and do all of those things. What we are looking what we are seeing when when I go and meet with the sea sweets and the senior VPS and VPS and the operations and it what I hear just as a background before I come to your you know, the question that you ask they I am see I'm I'm hearing the need they are looking at an application development platform obviously, but the one which will help them achieve a faster time to Market which will maximize their customer satisfaction.

And while minimizing the cost and time those are few of the critical aspects that the Enterprises are looking at when they are trying to arrive at a platform on which they want to do what they want to do. the great down coming to the point right the great resignation that we saw in 2021 and some part of 2022 early part of 2022 that post a challenge of software Talent Enterprises and you talked about professional and citizen developers and it I guess. The Natural Evolution became came out a front in front of the Enterprises also in front of us as a solution provider or as a platform facilitator that how can we now in in this challenging time can help these Enterprises by bringing the business at the Hem of the development projects and not only rely on professional developers.

Now, I don't want to say that professional developers are not required. So all those Integrations all those analyted data lakes and all those leadingest Technologies, like artificial intelligence machine learning those all aspects will still require your professional development. But if we look at the process the business if a lender is looking at how the the operation is going to run for a lending to a commercial lending.

commercial real estate lending or an underwriterina in an insurance company is looking at how to underwrite a specific insurance product or how to communicate with a customer Those are the areas where B so called citizen developers from these business communities the analysts. Who are not really a developer or a SQL programmers, but they are able to come and utilize this local low-code platform to do certain things. To to obviously you talked about achieving speed so rapidly develop those tense and tense and maybe hundreds of applications and these applications could be just few steps or many steps simple medium complex with or without complex rules with Integrations without Integrations.

They will certainly collaborate with the professional developers from it to to leverage those Integrations to leverage those other third party systems, which are contributing and participating into an overall process or operations landscape. So that's how we are looking at both Citizen and professional developers contributing to it. And I we don't see it going away, but we are looking but but what it is doing is giving those Those empowerment if you will to the business community on what they want to do instead of they working with it and then resulting into those Chinese Whispers.

I told you this you made that and then when you brought it back to me, it is not what I had thought in my mind. So we are looking at we we are seeing that business communities are really happy with when they are able to put their mind into what the local allows them to put into the processes if that makes sense. It makes fun of sense.

Trying to sense. So you mentioned we're in a post pandemic kind of economy and all of that. but we also having you know, we can't ignore what's going on out there in the economy.

And there's some macroeconomic conditions inflation the war in Ukraine and and then you look recently the banking system. Right we so, it's Silicon Valley Bank last weekend everything and other banks will followed. It would seem something that offers.

Hey, I could get your applications done faster. with less coding would be like throwing a Lifeline to a drowning person, right? I mean, what's what's bad?

What's bad about that? Do you think that these will serve as accelerants? to Greater faster adoption of this absolutely and The the reason why the low code platforms low-code no code platforms are probably creating now in in the in the industry are because of two or three things you talked about it the not now businesses and Enterprises including the it and the cios office can no longer afford those extensive coding sand those longer timelines you talked about it.

You said that and that's absolutely true. In fact, we are seeing this gradual shift towards this affordable application development approach using the local platform. So cost definitely is an integral part of it is an important aspect of it.

But along with the cost, like I said earlier this speed, Is is also a very critical for for all of these and all right and not to forget the security. While we are enabling while we are enabling the business folks. We still have to maintain and give those compliance and security specifications.

And not let business users go figure out what compliance and security they have to think in their mind if the local platform can help them remain within the boundary of the compliances the security the specifications. And then in with that in the in the in the platform they if we Empower them to rapidly develop those applications that is kind of thing. That is helping that that will help them in what they want to do.

And this also has diverted this business focus. I was in in another meeting recently and it was very intriguing to see that though. The the leaders of these Enterprises are now diverting their focus from how which used to be few years back to when and why So how part they are almost kind of they have under almost determined that yes low Code and low code is the way to go.

So how part is taken care they are now saying when and why those are the things which they are seeing their their constantly driven by the need to evolve and grow their business and of course with with we talked about security and all of those things. So they also we are I I also see that they need a lot of control or almost a complete control of their production environments with this kind of platforms that will offer them a few things like analytics based process Discovery Connected app development. We talked about professional developers helping business people to connect those deploying with those single play Cloud friendly applications simplifying operations.

Scalability so on and so forth. On Iraq, we're way over 15 minutes here, but really who want to get more of. Oh, yeah, I think we're close to the 20 coming up soon, but for people who want to get more information about New Gen software, where can they go?

com. and in that website, I will just maybe take another 20 seconds to give one input when you go to that website, right? You will see those three pillars that I talked about the content the process and the communication.

One of the thing that differentiates us. I mean we have been in the magic quarter of Gartner and waiver report of Forester for all these products consistently for about more than 13 14 years. There are two or three things which tells about that one is we have we have remained contemporary.

We are evolving we are innovating and that's the reason we are there in those reports consistency consistently every year in leader in Visionary and those kind of quadrants, but that the unique thing that differentiates us from all the other players is the organically developed and pre-integrated platform which brings content process and communication all three together. While there are products and solutions which does content which does process which does communication but we have seen that when we are trying to integrate multiple products and applications with to bring content into a process or to bring communication into a process. We see customers and Enterprises struggling big time.

That's a place where we kind of uniquely do exceptional job. When when a Content communication both have to participate into a process in the contextual presentation to the user curated UI for the user. Of different user personas.

So those are the things which I just wanted to kind of quickly highlight when you go to our website you will see. com go check it out or nog. Thank you so much for being with us.

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