Front-end as a Service is a way to build, test, run and evolve fast, immersive front-end experiences for companies looking to stand out based on the quality of their digital customer experiences. The front end is responsible for displaying the right content on the right device.
If you look at the software and apps you interact with regularly, each has its own unique design, and yet, there are many familiarities such as navigation bars, contact forms, feature boxes – certain elements tend to be present no matter where you go. That’s because these elements play a crucial part in how users engage with the products that you’ve built.
By including these recognisable and predictable elements within the frontend structure, the user’s focus is on the content before them; not on trying to solve the mystery of the user interface. For software developers though, this is a pain. You know what kinds of components need to be included in a product. However, until now, you’ve had to build them from-scratch time and time again. Worse, any time something needs to be updated, it rides on you to implement the update and push it to the live site — and it all has to be done right this minute.
With FEaaS this all changes. The sources of content can be many and varied, from CMS’s, CRM’s or ERP systems, but they are combined to create a dynamic set of building blocks, ready to be used as needed. According to Gartner Hype Cycle for Software as a Service, 2020 “FEaaS is most useful where complex and interactive customer journeys are required, such as digital commerce. A challenge with FEaaS can be that some aspects of presentation management that have been traditionally in the hands of the business user can return to being developer tasks, unless careful technology choices are made. Vendors of “headless” content-centric applications are addressing this need.” Mike Lowndes, senior director analyst at Gartner states in the Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce, 2020 report that “Businesses should consider FEaaS if they desire to use such technologies but do not have the resources to develop, deliver and manage it. The impact is less transformational for purely content focused websites, but more so for fronting “web apps” digital commerce, customer portals, booking engines, communications and social platforms, forums, etc., taking advantage of the mobile-first approach and integration with native device capabilities.”
If you would like to understand the benefits of Front End as a service or talk about how to optimally digitalise your business, schedule a call with us today!