What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Telecom/5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Empowering Citizen Development: Kissflow on Low-Code Automation, GenAI Integration, and Transformative Success Stories
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Unlock the secrets of low-code automation with Kissflow and learn how you can empower your team to build applications without any coding knowledge! Featuring Dinesh, the Chief Product Officer of Kissflow, this episode reveals how Kissflow began its journey in 2004 with a mission to democratize app development for business users. Discover how Kissflow's simple and iterative system effectively bridges the gap between business needs and technical solutions, positioning itself as a leader in the citizen development platform space. We also discuss the groundbreaking integration of AI and ML technologies, focusing on how Generative AI can transform user-system interactions by allowing users to communicate in their own language.
Ever wondered how to minimize IT bottlenecks while empowering your own citizen developers? This episode delves into the challenges CIOs face with new technology integrations and illustrates how a robust citizen development program can revolutionize organizational problem-solving. Hear success stories, like a customer scaling from 200 to 18,000 users with minimal IT involvement, and learn about the importance of customer feedback in continually refining the product. We also explore the future impact of advanced GenAI tools on the low-code industry and its workforce, making this a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of work and automation.
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Hey everybody, we're diving into the world of making work simpler today with Kisflow, a leader in the low-code automation space. Dinesh, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing good, ewan, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well. Thanks for joining, fascinated by your vision and technology. Maybe start with some introductions. Chief Product Officer at Kisflow. What does that involve and what's the big idea in terms of making work simpler for everyone?
Speaker 2:The vision started way back in 2004,. Right, so we used to. We have a rule engine workflow engine background and we realized people are somehow extremely comfortable using spreadsheets. Right, so, probably. Freshtree is the first citizen developer tool, so we want to create a product that enables the business users to build applications without knowing a single line of code or writing a single line of code. That's the vision behind the product. Of course, it's not an easy one to achieve. It took significant time for us to understand what the users think and create an extremely simple product, and the product is out there for more than 12 years now and hugely successful, and we have customers in more than 160 countries right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an impressive story and you go way back. I think personally, maybe 15 years in the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 20 years, 20 years at Kislo, yeah.
Speaker 1:You've seen the entire journey, making work simpler for everyone. So how do you do that? How do you keep things straightforward without sacrificing all the power and utility and features businesses need?
Speaker 2:Okay. Mostly it is not about even technology. It is about understanding how the business users think, because they don't understand systems. They don't understand something like a database or a data model or a schema Mostly what they have. They know their needs, but they don't know the needs that can be directly translated to. They know their needs but they don't know the needs like that can be directly translated to systems as well. If you go and talk to a business user, they'll probably give a one line requirement, right. That's what they know. But if you probe further, they'll be able to give pretty much everything that it needed to build a system right. So if you have to solve their problems, you need to have a very simple system and it's extremely easy for them to understand. That's what we call as a semantic gap.
Speaker 2:Without understanding more about the system, they should be able to immediately get started. Systems should be quite iterative because, as I said, they don't know the 100 percent of the requirements. They will be able to automate a very simple, automated, very simple use case. Roll it out. Once they see the success, then there is motivation for them to solve bigger problems. So the DNA of the product lies in the simplicity of the product. It's super simple. So as a business user, I can immediately get started. I'll be able to roll out a very simple use case to the business and when they see success then they actually go, iterate, make changes. They also to an extent understand how the system works so many of the bigger customers. They were able to roll out hundreds and hundreds of applications within the organization without any other idea.
Speaker 2:So the idea is actually creating a product that is extremely simple for business users.
Speaker 1:Wow, well done. And talk about this landscape. There's so many workflow automation tools and low-code, no-code tools out there these days, but you've been around this for a while. What makes KissFlowflow Bachelor unique? You know how do customers choose you over all the many different options out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question, right? Low-code is the new cloud right In 2008,. Every product is a cloud product right Right now. If you look at it, you have I heard there's like 400 low-code products in the world right now, all right.
Speaker 2:But again, if you look at it, I heard there are 400 low-code products in the world right now. But again, low-code is like a spectrum. So there are a lot of low-code products that cater to professional developers and there are a lot of low-code products that actually cater to the integration middleware use cases and we cater to a very small niche in the spectrum called citizen development platform. So there are very few products. They cater to the business users, allowing the business users to automate their work, and Kitsflow is in that spectrum and in that niche spectrum we are pretty much the leader there. Of course there are a lot of products that tries to cater to citizen developers, but unless you get away from systemic artifacts, the business users won't be able to understand the product. So unless you create a product for citizen development, it is extremely difficult to cater to the needs of the citizen developers. You can't create a low-code product and then try to help the business users automate their use case. That's not try to help the business users automate their use case.
Speaker 1:That's not going to help, got it? So let's talk about embracing new technology. Obviously, ai, ml, all the buzzword these days, but how are you practically weaving in these technologies into the platform and how are you making it even better for users, developers?
Speaker 2:This is at least for the citizen development paradigm.
Speaker 1:Gen AI is a gift right.
Speaker 2:If you look at what Gen AI is trying to do, Gen AI literally allows users to talk to systems in the language the users understand. If you look at all the different generation of languages, every generation tries to bring users closer to the systems. If you look at assembly, there are probably a few thousand coders who can actually code in assembly. In C, probably a few million developers. Java actually made pretty much every engineer a developer.
Speaker 1:In my case it was Fortran and Pascal, but we're going too far back. No, I am pretty much in the same area as well.
Speaker 2:My first language is Cobalt, so I understand that. But again, every paradigm bought more developers who can understand the language of the systems. I call them as translators because they need to translate the business requirement to the language the systems can understand. But if you look at Gen AI for the first time, instead of developers, are the users understanding systems? Language systems can understand the users language. So this is what we call are the users understanding systems? Language systems can understand the user's language. This is what we call this bridging the semantic gap. If the users can talk to the systems in their language and if they can understand and get the work done.
Speaker 2:Where, anyway, citizen development is the utmost abstraction? With very little learning, the users can get the work done. But if you combine citizen development with Gen-AI, they don't have to even understand KISS flow. Rather, they can talk to KISS flow and get the work done. So this is going to be a revolution in the application development paradigm because first time with Gen-AI and citizen development, we are getting rid of the translators, who are the programmers. We don't need an intermediary to translate the business needs to system languages.
Speaker 1:That's an exciting time. Talk about teamwork across departments. You talk about supporting many different personas Interesting way to describe it. We know the enterprises are very siloed and lots of times different departments have a hard time working with each other. How do you make it easier for everyone to stay on the same page, given all these different personas and use cases?
Speaker 2:Okay, you don't have to keep everyone on the same page. That's the advantage of citizen development, because in citizen development there is nothing like a right way to design applications right, Because there are no design patterns for citizen developers, the system should be extremely forgiving for them to actually experiment something right.
Speaker 2:So here there are no constraints. Of course, there is a very clear governance layer for the IT teams. But again, as a citizen developer, I don't have to worry about making mistakes. Everything should just work. But if I understand something is not working correctly, I should be able to go and immediately make corrections. So the intent is to actually allowing them to create extremely simple use cases that, by understanding the systems and when they understand how everything works, they'll be able to go and solve complex use cases right. And it starts bottom up.
Speaker 2:We are talking about process owners, right? Process owner is the persona. For example, if I am leading a team of 20, then I need to, of course, define process for my team to work efficiently, right? So that's so. I need to automate something right now. These are like very small use cases. It's of no interest to IT because this is not something that's strategic to the organization. It will never touch it. The process owners right now manage this using spreadsheets, emails and a lot of different tools. So if they're able to create a platform that allows them to automate all these use cases and they're not technical either, that's where the biggest differentiate this will actually helps them to achieve what they want to achieve.
Speaker 2:Again, as I said, the process owners will be able to automate the use case, roll it out within the team. It is not still enterprise-wide. They actually start automating use cases that are very specific to their teams. Then, once they understand how this works use cases that are very specific to their teams Then, once they understand how this works, a few functions need to cater to pretty much all the employees across the organization, like finance or HR. They create very small process like listing card approvals very, very simple ones or gate pass approvals. All the employees in the organization can start using it and then, once they understand how these things work, then they go ahead and create or solve complex use cases in the organization, can start using it and then, once they understand how these things work, then they go ahead and create or solve complex use cases in the function. That's how it normally evolves in certain organizations.
Speaker 1:Wow, nice approach. And how do you think about playing nice with others? You know companies have so many different tools and apps clouds. You know lots of technical debt out there. Other, you know Gen AI tools, other low-code tools. How do you think about interoperability and interworking these days?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very good question. I heard there are at least 200 different products that are used by any enterprise. Right, we have a very, very strong integration layer. We have more than 60 connectors to pretty much all the enterprise systems these organizations widely use. But, again, as I said, integration is difficult. Unless the integration layer is simple, you're going to create a lot of applications that work in silos that will not integrate to any of the other systems that you have. It is not just about application development. Even our integration layer is due to yourself. They will be able to drag and drop, create connectors. That's where the gen a also comes in, because they don't understand apis, they don't understand keys are oauth, right, so the gen a understands two endpoints, automatically connects these two systems for the business users, right? So, uh, this is the whole package, right? It's not just about solving the requirement gathering our application development. This is also about connecting with other systems that you already have in the organization.
Speaker 1:Well done. So, as you know better than anyone, implementing new technology is really tough. You know what are some of the typical challenges you know a new customer has when getting started and how do you overcome those obstacles in the beginning when everything is new.
Speaker 2:Okay, so mostly everyone wants to implement citizen development, at least the CIOs. But again they don't know how, because citizen developers are not. It's not their day job. Solving application use cases's not their day job. Solving application use cases is not their day job. They need to run the business. But again, enabling them is going to help the organization because they'll be able to massively transform whatever they do right now. They need to implement what we call as a citizen development program.
Speaker 2:There is a very clear framework which the CIOs can use to identify citizen developers, enabling them, creating an onboarding program for them, because it's not about the tool, it is about changing the mindset. It's about making them believe that they can solve their problems without drilling an ID, and it's also about helping them in uncovering the use cases which they can solve with the first iteration. So they need to, of course, conduct multiple iterations of these programs. When they are able to create a critical mass of citizen developers inside the organization, then it explodes. So they go and talk about how they are able to create, successfully, deploy these applications to productions, to all these other business users inside the organization, and a couple of years down the line, then you have, like hundreds of citizen developers inside an organization, at least during the initial phase. You need to have a very clear program where you enable, uncover, enable the citizen developers to deploy these applications.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great approach. So you have so many customers and partners but it's tough to probably call out one or two, but any favorite success stories you know of working with particular customers, maybe across industries?
Speaker 2:Yeah, quite a lot. Many of the success stories start very small. Right, one of the bigger customers for Caseflow. They started with 200 users a couple of years back. Right, again, the same as citizen development program. Right now they have 18,000 users using the product Wow, and they have deployed close to 900 different applications in the enterprise.
Speaker 2:And again, if you look at it, the involvement from IT is pretty negligible. Their only job is to make sure that they're governing the whole ecosystem. So the sensitive data is not captured, the integrations are intact. So we have a governance layer for the IT teams and you need a flag because the business users may not know anything about data privacy. They, of course, might ask for any PI information as part of the form data, or they might have to actually export the data or connect to a system outside the domain, outside the enterprise. All those things are red flags for IT, their enterprise, so all those things are red flags for IT. So IT is just taking care of governing the platform, but the citizen development developers within the ecosystem. They have complete control over what they are developing using the product as well. That's one of the biggest success stories for us.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And speaking of those users, how do you interact or listen to those customers when it comes to feedback or shaping the way you develop KISS Flow? Talk about how you decide where to focus your developer resources on when it comes to the product.
Speaker 2:Multiple channels through which we get feedback. We have an internal framework called WINSes. It's for winners it, all these features that are strategic in nature. Invisibles are, I uh like in the tech debt mostly. Of course, once in a while we need to make sure that the systems are modern, uh continuously revamped as well. And then, when we have n for needs, uh, any customer needs uh, through our customer success team or the professional services team, that actually goes through the needs bucket. And then we have experience, because Kistler is known for simplicity.
Speaker 2:Every time we need to continuously monitor the struggles the users are facing within the product and that feedback need to flow into the product team so that we continue to simplify the product.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, the most important one is yes, the sellers right, and if you are actually losing any deals because there are certain features that are not part of the product that need to flow into this bucket. So these are like five different buckets through which we continue to get features to the product team and, of course, not all the buckets have equal priority. At some point in time, the winners are more important. For example, with GenAI, we have at least 50% of the product team work on GenAI features. So every time we continue to analyze all the features that are part of different buckets. But every bucket have different set of priorities that continue to change, based on the market conditions as well. But we continue to keep eye on all these different buckets to understand what the customer needs, what our prospects need and where the customers are struggling in the product as well. But we continue to keep eye on all these different buckets to understand what the customer needs, what our prospect need and where the customers are struggling in the product as well, fantastic approach.
Speaker 1:So next question a little bit cheeky, a little bit irreverent, but is an advanced Gen AI tool, or maybe AGI one day in the future, going to put us all out of work in the low-code, no-code space? And we won't need any tools, we'll just have some master intelligence managing everything for us. What do you think?
Speaker 2:This is a question that pretty much many CIOs, when I talk to them, ask, but I don't think that's going to happen, right? The reason is simple. Assume that you are going to take a decision. We don't take decisions based on data that is available in the system. There are a lot of decisions that we take based on the knowledge that we have, based on our experience, based on data points that are not available in the system. As long as we hold on to that knowledge and experience, systems can't take decisions. Systems can take decisions based on data set that is available for them, and that is extremely limited.
Speaker 2:I'll probably give an example. Assume there is a shipment. I need to. Probably this happened to my car shipment. I need to. Probably this happened to my car right, my car, of course. I need to change a bigger part in my car right, and the part need to come from Germany. Normally it takes five days, but again, because of the war in Yemen, right? They need to take a longer route to the Horn of africa and it is taking 14 days. The system can never know the relationship between war and amen and the car part that's supposed to, uh, be shipped from germany to reach india, right. So this is these are. But again, as a human, I know that right. So we have a unique ability to connect information that are not obviously connected and take decisions, and it's extremely difficult for systems to do that. And, if you look at it, every decision that we take involves a lot of data points that are not obviously visible for the systems. So that's the reason I don't think the systems will ever rely on systems. That are taken by the systems.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, great insight, and here's to a continued role for humans in this world of citizen developers. So what's next for you, for Kisflow, for the team, over the next few months? We're heading into the busy end of year. What's on your radar, personally, professionally, that you're looking forward to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the usual answer generate. Right, because we are rewriting the product, see, typically, if you look at it, even during the cloud era, there is something called cloud washing. Right, because we are rewriting the product. See, typically, if you look at it, even during the cloud era, there is something called cloud washing right.
Speaker 2:Every product will add something that is related to cloud and then call that a cloud product, and that is what is pretty much happening in the local market as well. Right, there are a lot of Gen AI features that are embedded as part of the product and products suddenly become Gen AI products, right? But it doesn't essentially work that way. You need to rewrite the product, Of course, if you want. You can't actually take an on-prem product to Cloud and make it a Cloud product. You need to rewrite for Cloud. That's the same thing that we are doing for Gen-AI as well. We're rewriting our core engines so that the core engines understand natural language. Only if you do that, instead of just creating a patch over what we have and call it a Gen-AI product, you'll be able to actually create a truly Gen-AI platform for low-code. Right, that's what we are doing right now and we are quite excited by the possibilities. Right? Probably a few months away from releasing that, but the team is quite excited about what the new product can do.
Speaker 1:Well, exciting times. We'll have to pencil in another podcast in the next 20 years and see where AGI is and we can revisit these discussions. But thanks so much for joining Dinesh. Really insightful discussion and, yeah, really great work onwards and upwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, man. It's a pleasure talking to you, and have a wonderful day.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. Thanks everyone. Thanks for listening and watching.