It shouldn’t surprise us anymore if you’ve been following our Executive Perspective series where we learn about vendors in the space, their goals, and origin stories, but for some reason I still chuckle a little bit when I hear the “we used to be an agency but a customer opportunity turned us into something else” story. The agency days are far behind Richard Billington and the rest of the team at MatsSoft. In fact, they were acquired by Netcall a few years ago and were given even more room to grow into a low code application development leader that is recognized by Forrester as one of the top 13 platforms for application development delivery professionals in the The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms For AD&D Pros, Q1 2019.
Read more about how we define low code versus no code here. Alternatively, you can check out this article from a Forrester analyst.
While Richard and some of the marketing folks on our call agreed that it has been difficult to pin down the right name for this category between what analyst groups, other outside the space, and other pressures want to call it – their goal has been the same all along. MATS was created to support transformation efforts at businesses who agree that their processes could be improved.
When I dug in to that goal a little I appreciated how simply we were able to summarize the perspective. “Don’t automate bad processes.”
It’s an easy trap to fall into when you choose a BPM, low code, no code, or other vendor that will help you automate a business process. The team at MATS takes great care to challenge the processes they are asked to automate in order to avoid that trap.
It started with a bank, and an online form.
Looking way back to that customer that changed the path of the software agency forever, it was a bank. A UK-based bank had contacted Richard and his team looking for help in deploying an online form that would help them automate online applications for their financial products and services. Since then, the small team has grown in to an international company with three offices (based in UK, with offices in US), and 250 team members globally.
Their expertise in the banking and finance has grown significantly since then – also working with insurance companies, pharma/healthcare, and major utilities. They have a well presented list of low code case studies available on their website.
A mature platform, ready for the most demanding projects.
While the team here is planning further diligence with the MATS team, we were able to get a quick look at each of the primary platform areas within MATS. Between the process designers, rule builders, integration library, and UI/UX designers we found a very mature and well organized feature set that, at first glance, deserves to be in every conversation with some of the larger players in the space like Appian, Pegasystems, Nintex, and others.
The process designer strictly follows the BPMN 2.0 standard so that business analysts can hop in quickly.
The data modeler, which can oftentimes be the most challenging elements of application development for non-developers, is appropriately visual to reduce the learning curve and maintain support for complex use cases.
The page or UI builder in MATS was an interesting approach to “out of the box” and “custom” as Richard quickly ran through some of the commonly used elements. Resizing for different form factors was handled by the platform well, and you can apply your own CSS if needed. Another look at a more user facing example is below.
Put MATS on the list.
With proven company growth and a mature technology platform you should include MATS in any BPM, low-code, or other digital transformation platform project that you are considering, especially if you are in the UK. While they may not be the best option for small business, any mid-size or large enterprise will find that MATS is a competitive option with a strong and experienced team that can support most transformation projects.
