How AI Software Development Can Help in Accelerating Digital Transformation - A Quick Guide for CIOs

Digital transformation is the need of the hour for organizations across industries to stay competitive and adapt to the rapidly evolving technological landscape. As CIOs grapple to make their vision of digital transformation a reality within their organizations, they are confronted with numerous challenges – the most prominent of them being time to build and launch applications. The push for digital transformation across the board is greater than ever and the new-age CIOs are leveraging on frontier technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI) to aid their audacious vision of quicker digital transformation. Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a powerful tool in driving this transformation, enabling companies to intelligently build software applications, not just cheaper but significantly faster.  

This article explores the ways in which AI software development can accelerate the pace of digital transformation, revolutionizing industries and empowering organizations to thrive in the digital era. But before we get there, let's understand the disparate tools for the different needs for digital transformation requirements.

Different tools for Digital transformation Requirements

As an organization looking to digitally transform, one of the biggest constraints you have would be the time to go-live. With the deadline for digital transformation yesterday, the organization is often looking to build something fast and without the risks of hiring expensive or skilled developers. In that case, they would not prefer to go for custom software development but look at existing tools and platforms which would help them build the solutions they require in no time. In exceptionally rare cases, companies might opt for the custom development route – but even there might look to collaborate with companies using AI-based software tools to go to market faster.   Let’s gain a deeper understanding of the ecosystem of the available tools and platforms which companies can deploy to meet their requirements and help them go-live faster:  

• Website, web-store and client interactions: The first category and perhaps the simplest is where businesses require the creation of a website, an ecommerce store or simple applications, workflows which would either integrate into a larger digital ecosystem or could be a stand-alone application for the use of customers. It’s almost always better to use SaaS based No-Code development platforms as they have pre-built templates which would help with building your applications in no time. You could customize the template to suit the UI/UX or the feature selection which you would want in your application. Some of the popular platforms in this category include Wix for website development, Shopify which would help you launch your E-commerce store in a matter of minutes, AirTable or Bubble which are popular platforms which would help you configure and launch applications using the templates on their platforms.  
  

• Function & Industry specific solutions: With a slightly higher complexity are specific solutions which fit the needs of a particular industry, function or a vertical. These typically are industry standard solutions which fit the organizational requirement with a customization requirement of no more than 20%. Most of the solutions under this help launch tools or applications with minimum customizations but specific to a function or an industry. For example, Steer is a construction management software which allows users to customize solutions based on their internal processes. Similar Monday is a popular project management tool which can be customized by teams to intuitively manage their requirements and keep track of the progress of their various projects. The tools in this category would be more sophisticated but targeted to a specific niche of users.  
  
• Low Code and No Code solution builders: Another popular category is No-code and Low-code application development platforms. While they could be used for customer facing applications (depending on the tool and the use-case), most of the low & no code solution builders cater to enterprises for internal and backend processes, with the need for rapid modification. This business process automation capability coupled with the ability to integrate with legacy systems make these platforms extremely popular with companies looking to digitize internal operations. The ability to make process changes on the fly or get all stakeholders on the same platform make a compelling case for adoption of these platforms.  
  

While there are various no-code platforms, the popular ones which companies adopt at Pega, QuickReach or Kissflow. The popular low-code development platforms are Outsystems, Mendix, Appian or Betty Blocks which assist developers launch solutions which would cater to the specific application requirements for an organization.   The above categories are applications builders or platforms with limited customization capabilities. Depending on the use-case and the preferred tool, an application might be relatively easy and cheaper to build and deploy compared to the options of custom development. Custom development, while seemingly daunting, might be simplified by the infusion of AI techniques in the software development process – which would inevitably be the next category of tools.  

• AI assisted Custom development: This is a category which is becoming increasingly crowded with a number of alternatives cropping up with varied value propositions. This consists of managed application development which allow you to own the IP of the code and helps you go-to-market faster than custom developing the application ground-up. Most of these platforms have proprietary AI app-development tools which would allow for either intelligent code generation, requirement gathering, prototyping, planning, estimation or design and quality control & feedback management for the software application being developed. AI allows for fitting reusable features based on a template with developers using the platform to create custom features. These tools and platforms are ideal for customer facing systems where UI and UX is critical.  
  

Popular tools in this category include Builder.Ai, Locofy, Crodbotics or ChatGPT – these tools, as varied they might be, allow for AI to help in custom development of software applications. A deeper dive into the various subsegments identifying the categories for application development could be found here which outlines the classification of different types of AI tools, their Pros and Cons and who is it ideally targeted for.  

Xamun: Helping CIOs leverage AI to fast-track digital transformation

A popular AI tools assisting in system-level development is Xamun which takes a visual approach to automating full-code software development. Xamun leverages AI to create a basic structure of the software instantaneously, so that the focus is on customization and fine-tuning. The proprietary design-first approach conducts UAT using a detailed Figma prototype reducing the risk for scope creep and ensuring budgets and timelines are adhered to. Moreover, Xamun’s AI-assisted blueprint creation, bot-powered code generation and testing dramatically reduces software development time.  

If you are a CIO or a business executive looking to have your software rolled our as fast as low-code platforms, but with less complexity, more flexibility and without recurring subscription fees reach out to one of Xamun’s digital transformation evangelist here to get started.