Low Code/ Rapid Development

Park Industries builds high-precision machines for stone and metal fabricators. With over 15,700 machines sold, the company has become North America’s largest manufacturer of stoneworking machinery, with the metal industry not far behind. Part of Park’s success has been driven by investing in state-of-the-art technology in its machines as well as expanding its breadth of digital solutions.

Like most successful manufacturing companies, Park Industries is constantly innovating and automating. But, innovation and automation don’t just happen. They take time and dedicated resources. David Lloyd, Director of Information Technology at Park Industries, said keeping up with the company’s long list of IT needs was a constant challenge.

“Each IT project request at Park Industries goes into a queue—whether it’s process automation or a new software application. We’re typically working on 15-20 projects that are the highest priority, but we had about 80 projects in the queue,” said David. “On top of that, we also had about 80 custom developed legacy software applications that needed to be re-platformed so we could reduce the amount of time and money we spent maintaining them.”

To get through the project list quicker and more cost effectively, Park Industries wanted to implement a rapid application solution for development. But, first it needed to select the right one. The company looked at five vendors and platforms over a two-month period. Capmation helped Park Industries with the due diligence process.

“Capmation worked with us to assess the top options based on our requirements — both financially as well as the types of applications that we needed to develop and the types of business processes we were going to automate,” said David.

Ultimately, Park Industries chose OutSystems.

OutSystems is a development platform—often referred to as low code—that’s designed to dramatically accelerate the development of critical applications, while also delivering flexibility and efficiency.

“We went with OutSystems for a lot of reasons, but primarily for the broad and deep set of functionality,” said David. “They cover the most breadth and depth of what we were looking for as far as being able to solve the technical things we needed to do. They also have a proven track record in speeding up software development. They say it’s ten times faster but, in some cases, we’re already seeing up to 30 times faster.”

Capmation led the implementation process and helped Park Industries determine the best training experience. From there, OutSystems developed a custom training program that included completing an actual project in the Park Industries’ queue. When training was complete, the company had a fully functioning application that met the requirements for the first phase of development, and the team was ready to go.

Eight months into the platform, David says he’s cashing in on the benefits of his investment—the first being speed to completion. The company is developing software much faster than it anticipated. He says the user experience has also improved because they now have a consistent look and feel across all of their applications, regardless of who did the development. He also appreciates that DevOps is built into the program.

“We can run automated tests and we can evaluate metrics, so we know how much code has changed and what our defect percentages are. Those things have always been a challenge to capture and proactively monitor in the past. Instead of purchasing third-party DevOps tools or developing that process ourselves, it’s all built in so we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.

David also gives OutSystems high marks for its quality customer support, online documentation and user forums. The platform also provides a growing library of 3,500 open-source components that developers can grab and leverage to make the process even more efficient.

David said Capmation championed the effort and takes a lead role in several development projects.

“Capmation has pretty deep expertise in OutSystems. They were very instrumental in getting the program adopted and they still are instrumental in the day-to-day development—and we’re getting full advantage of that. I don’t think you’ll find anyone with their level of experience and commitment in making the projects successful. We’ve had 100 percent success, and it’s really delivered more than I expected. A lot of that is due to Capmation’s knowledge and leadership and taking us through that process,” added David.

• Rapid application development platform makes modernizing apps and automating processes quicker and more convenient
• Incorporates development, testing and production all in one environment
• Ensures quality, reduces maintenance and improves user satisfaction