PETALING JAYA: Given the headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing containment measures, digitalisation has been touted as a solution to the current setback, although high technical and financial barriers have prevented many from adopting it.
Orangeleaf Consulting co-founder & & chief digital & innovation officer, Tim Hendricks (pix) believes that innovative technology can solve long-standing, legacy problems, which have been thrown into sharp focus by the Covid-19 outbreak.
“There’s ample reason and opportunities to digitalise now, and those who do will find themselves better positioned to carve a niche for themselves in a business landscape fundamentally altered by Covid-19,” he told SunBiz.
However, from first-hand experience speaking to businesses on the ground, Hendricks acknowledged that cost, talent shortage and lack of scale are the key issues that prevent them from making the leap.
“However, there are businesses that have made the digitalisation leap but failed due to the purchase of commercial off-the-shelf digital assets or software which does not fit their needs,” he said.
Hendricks cited research by IAG Consulting which found 68% of IT projects failed from the start, taking twice the estimated time to complete at more than 1.6 times the expected budget with less than 70% of the desired functionality.
In this regard, he believes a low-code platform can level the playing field for smaller businesses.
“Businesses need to be agile and be able to adapt to a changing environment, and therefore the era of build takes precedence. This is where Orangeleaf Consulting comes in as we use Mendix, a low-code platform which helps organisations develop systems and apps without writing code – hence the term ‘low-code’.”
Hendricks said low-code enables software development at an unprecedented speed, by simplifying the process, by enabling users to essentially drag and drop functions that they require through a user-friendly, visual interface, to build what they need.
He said Mendix is the fastest and easiest platform to build and continuously improve mobile and web applications at scale. “This includes complex systems, which not every solution in the market can handle.”
The co-founder stated that Mendix is a platform as a service subscription while Orangeleaf Consulting provides advisory and software development services.
For the solution, subscription to the service starts at RM70,000 a year, while a typical first project costs RM150,000 on average in professional services.
“While the cost varies per customer, we ensure that there is a solid business case based on the return on investment report in the digitisation plan,” he explained
To date, Orangeleaf Consulting has built systems across various industries ranging from F&B, retail, last-mile logistics, product automation, manufacturing and banking to e-learning apps by leveraging Mendix’s technology.
“Anything and everything can be built with low code and it is scalable according to the needs and complexities of a given business – it is also ten times faster and utilises 70% less resources,” Hendricks said.
