About year ago Land O’ Lakes CEO Chris Policinski was explaining to me that LOL was actually a software company who focused on precision agriculture … that day I realized if the company I thought was synonymous with butter called themselves a software company that most companies might be software companies. As we become a software economy a challenge is that software often takes a long time to develop and is not only sometimes outdated by the time it is successfully implemented, but often of significant cost.
I was really intrigued when last week I spoke with Matt Calkins, CEO of Appian because he was explaining the next level of software which is called ‘low code’. This concept is instead of taking a few years to write complex code, to draw simple diagrams which enable code to be completed within a few months. I thought it was also interesting because CEOs who are not technical can actually just draw the visuals of strategy and it can turn into code. So I asked Matt to explain the role of low code .. his response, “In 2018, software is for impressing customers as much as it is for saving money. Good software must match the expectations of the customer, and change as quickly as the customer changes. Appian is a platform for building and changing software rapidly. In Appian’s ‘low code’ environment, developer build applications by drawing a flowchart rather than writing lines of code.”
So my question to CEOs, whatever industry you’re officially in, are you actually a software company?