Kissflow infuses AI into no-code, low-code development platform

00:00 
Hi everybody, welcome to DEMO, the show where companies come in and they show us their latest products and platforms. Today, I’m joined by Neil Miller, he is the Director of Product Marketing at Kissflow. Welcome to the show, Neil. So tell us a little bit about what Kissflow is, and then what are you going to show us here today?
 
00:14
So Kissflow is a no-code, low-code, application platform that really spreads the power of application development across the enterprise.
 
00:21
Generally, who is this designed for? Is it designed for product developers, or is it other people within the company that might not be a developer?
 
00:30
Yes, so Kissflow is a unique product in that it’s really built for both groups, so it can handle the people that like the high-powered, low-code developers who really want to build a lot of things out — they don’t need a lot of certifications or anything. It’s a platform they can get on to build things very quickly and easily. But then the other side, you also have junior developers, business analysts and specifically process owners, who want to build their own thing themselves. The platform is easy enough for them to use that they can build their own applications too.
 
00:56
Do you subscribe to the whole citizen developer movement that we’re seeing in the space, because of skill shortages and things like that?
 
01:04
Absolutely. Citizen development is one of the main themes we like to play into. Now our platform is very governed, so IT admins have the ability to govern the entire platform and know what’s going on in there. But at the same time, we believe that people who actually run these processes probably know best what’s there. So as long as you give them the right tools, and you give them enough training, they’re able to build what they need.
 
01:25
Because I guess if I was in IT, the biggest fear would be like, “Wait, you’re we’re giving power to who?” Because the last thing you want is me programming something, with very little design or development skills. So why should companies care about Kissflow versus maybe some of the other platforms out there, or some of the other processes that go on.
 
01:42
Like I said, Kissflow’s unique thing is that one, it’s just super easy to use. You’re going to see it in the demo here a second. The layout, the feel of it, is just really geared towards someone who knows what they want but maybe doesn’t have the development skills about it. There’s a lot of things we won’t show today that show the power of the low-code side of it as well, so that even a higher-powered developer can come in and really do what they want to do, but that’s one thing that really makes it easy, is just the ease of use and be able to generate things quickly. So even somebody who’s in the IT department that just wants to build a lot of apps very quickly to get things out of their backlog, they can really easily build dozens of apps on this.
 
02:16
If companies didn’t have this, would they just be relying on developers to do a lot of the requests that are coming in? Does this offload some of those processes to people that usually don’t have those skills?
 
02:26
So a few different things. One is that they would either just be custom developing things. Second is they might be using a different low-code platform, but typically, you’re only going to be building two or three applications a year on those really big platforms that are out there. Kissflow is more like, “Hey, give us a few dozen that we’re going to get done in a year.” Then the citizen developers, the other thing they would be using would just be spreadsheets, Excel or something like that, to build what they need. So this is their option to actually get something that’s an improvement on Excel.
 
02:53
So let’s go into the demo. Tell us what you’re going to show us.
 
03:00
What you see here is the basics of a process. So we have a few different modules in Kissflow, but the process builder is one of the easiest to understand, and the one that generates the most interest for most people. So we start off with a form, which is a little bit interesting. Most people are going to say, OK, build us a data table or something like that. But we actually want to start with a form, because that’s where the process owner is usually going to start. They know what they want to do. In this situation, we’re looking at asset disposal requests. So this is, again, something maybe your admin team is going to use, or maybe somebody else in the IT department is going to use, but it’s really something that the person who is building this knows what they need, and they just want to be able to bring that in.
 
So the form is very, very simple. It’s all drag and drop. We have tons of form fields that are available here on the left, all sorts of things, from very simple things to very complicated. We also have some AI features here. So if you want to, just based on the name asset disposal request, you’re going to be able to generate types of fields you might need to know. So if somebody’s building it for the first time, they’re going to be able to bring those in. They can do anything here, building out sections, you’re also able to refer back to fields. We have remote lookup, so you can go to databases outside of Kissflow and bring those things in. Every field has the ability to change the settings, to add validations, add visibility requirements, stylize it the way you want, and even add these custom events, which is more the low-code part of what’s going on. So the field, the form is one of the things that is most fun to use, I feel like to build in, but then you want to take that form and drive it through a workflow. So that’s where we go to the second phase. So here again, this is one of the powers of Kissflow, is just being able to see how simple it is to build things out. Again, we have these AI features where they will suggest steps for you based on the name of the platform. Here I have a few that are already added in. It’s as easy as adding in new steps. Adding in you can do something like a parallel branch where two different things may be happening at the same time. Or you want to create conditions based on how things happen. So all these things are available to just make it easy.
 
One of the best things about it is how you assign things. A lot of these features, a lot of other platforms, don’t have so easily to do in terms of if you’re going to assign it to a group of people, if you’re going to assign it to everyone, if everyone needs to approve it before it goes forward, if only a few people need to approve it. If you want to assign things to one person based on the region that they’re in, but a different region needs to go to somebody else, that’s really easy to do in Kissflow. If you’re trying to hand-code a lot of the things, it becomes very difficult to do. You can also build in these conditions. You can look at different SLAs, actions, deadlines, field permissions that are available at different steps. That’s really one of the great, but I’m able to create services requests. I’m able to create product marketing requests based on these workflows and just set up the way I want to do it.
 
05:46
Do you find that when you’re doing the application itself, does it get sent to approval from the IT department to make sure that you’re not missing anything? Or does another developer check your work before it gets deployed? Or because, if it’s internal, maybe you don’t have to do that?
 
06:02
So within the citizen development framework, which we also try to align ourselves a lot, you kind of have these zonings of applications, they’re based on the risk and based on the complexity. So a lot of risk that’s involved and a lot of complexity, you really want your IT team to be hands-on doing those things. Maybe you’re going to let a citizen developer work on a form or something like that. Then you have things that are less risk, but maybe with a little bit of complexity. That’s where someone just needs a mentor to be able to come along and make sure, “Hey, you did it right, you didn’t screw up anything.” Then you have this other area where it’s like, it’s low risk, it’s low complexity, and pretty much you’re just letting those people just build whatever they want, because they’re not going to mess up too much.
 
So this particular one, asset disposal, there may be some concerns about some risks that are around there, but not too much. This would be an example of one that would probably be fine for a citizen developer just to build on their own, and just for the data governance platform, just to know that it’s there. But other apps you’re going to want to have people more involved in it.
 
After you build out all the steps that you want, and again, this can get as complex as you want. We’ve seen many very big workflows that go on, then you go on to permissions. So here, at each step in the process, you’re able to figure out if fields should be editable, if they’re read-only, or if they’re hidden. You can set these rules across steps or just for individual ones. It’s really just a way to make sure to ensure some privacy issues, or ensure some scalability issues, as you’re building these out to make sure that each step is what it needs to be.
 
One of my favorite features within this particular function in Kissflow is the simulate button. So here, instead of having to go live with something and then test it out and figure it out, this is really a way to just test it on the back end really quickly. Here I can simulate it as myself, or as lots of other people, and see what it would be like. I can see, these fields are obviously like a read-only field, but this one is something that I can use. And if I say, “Okay, well, I didn’t want that to be like that,” I can just go back into the process and figure that out.
 
With each step I can see things. I can mark it, and I can submit it as done, and see what it looks like in the next section. You can also see what it looks like on a mobile app. So this is really the fun side of Kissflow, I would say, in order to be able to see what’s going on and be able to build it. In this particular process builder, deploying an app is just as simple as clicking this button to go live. Now it’s live. So now at this point, this is more like the runtime. So in here, a new person would be able to get in. They’re going to click this New Item button. They’re going to see all the same fields that you had with Kissflow, with our process builder. You’re going to see exactly when something was started, when the next step was done. So these are going to have times if they had SLAs attached to them. The SLA is going to be there to know if it was handled appropriately or not. You can also add comments for people that are involved in the workflow. So if there’s some extra things that need to be added into all these things, so you get this big data trail as well. So a lot of this use of Kissflow, with an approval management cycle, you’re going to be able to get all the things you need, as opposed to just trying to handle something on either a simple workflow builder, on Excel or something.
 
09:01
You were talking to me before the show that you’ve got some integrations that you wanted to show off?
 
09:06
So this part of Kissflow is about approvals. So you’re talking about mostly human-based ones, but also you can build a lot of really intense integrations as well. So here, this is an integration we built for another process was about scheduling interviews with customers. This is pretty easy, and again, you’re going to see a similar workflow builder here, but here we’re not talking about human elements. Now we don’t have approvers. Now we are just going into different systems. So here, when a status of an item is updated, we’re going to make sure certain data sets match and then send an email. Those are easy to do, but again, you can see lots of different connections we have here, lots of things within Kissflow. But then also outside of Kissflow, as well, other tools that if you want to go into one of your CMS or your ERP system and make a connection, those are very easy to do. Again, this is still no code. We’re still talking about people like you and me that aren’t technically minded, that can just go in and make what they need to do. Maybe I get into a little bit of trouble. I need to ask somebody, Hey, what I do here, and that’s very easy, just to go and then you feel really empowered as a system developer.
 
10:05
You’ve got a lot of features other than the stuff that you just showed me. But do you offer a free trial? Is it? Or how do you get set up on this?
 
10:12
Yeah, free trials are available. As long as you go to our website, request a meeting with our sales team, they’ll kind of get a figure for how you want to use it. One of our big things is that we like to see companies with a long list of backlogged apps. If you have five to 25 apps that you’re like, “Man, I wish somebody would take these off our plate,” that’s our kind of customer. So if you’re in that that zone and you really want to see it, or you want to try out citizen development as well, unleashing something for the rest of the organization, then come in, we’ll figure out if it’s right for you, and make sure you get set up.
 
10:43
And it looks simple to operate, so I’m also assuming it’s going to be simple to install. You’re not talking like a three-month long install process.
 
10:49
Absolutely not. We like to see people get up and going as soon as possible. We don’t have any long certification courses. You get in, you learn the platform, and then again, depending on if you want to turn this over to people, citizen developers, or IT departments. IT departments are going to be very fast with this, and like, within a week, they’re going to be up and building MVPs, and things much more complicated. What I was showing you before was our standard runtime that you can see with a certain process, but we have a page builder, you can build a custom UI, so you can have everything unique. You can build your own dashboards or your own reports. This is just like one small, easy part of Kissflow, but it can really be very powerful.
 
11:27
All right, give me the website again.
 
11:29
Kissflow.com.
 
11:30
Neil Miller, thanks again for joining us on the show. That’s all the time we have for today’s episode. Be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, add any thoughts you have below. Join us every week for new episodes of DEMO. I’m Keith Shaw, thanks for watching.