MxHacks Sponsor Spotlight: LINKIT Provides Knowledge to Build Smart Solutions
We still have a big smile on our faces just thinking about the ‘MxHacks: Low-Code for Good’ Hackathon! More than 1200 developers from all over the world competed to build the smartest solutions for three designated nonprofits that help improve lives, fight for justice, or advance other good causes. But without sponsors, there wouldn’t have been a MxHacks. Therefore we’re happy to give some insight into the MxHacks experience of LINKIT, one of our wonderful Diamond sponsors. Who is LINKIT? LINKIT serves more than 100 customers in the Netherlands and Germany, providing digital innovations that help customers accelerate IT to become frontrunners in their industry. LINKIT helps solve business challenges by combining a winning approach, a knowledge-driven team, and powerful technology like the Mendix platform as well as data, cloud & IoT technology. Also LINKIT is the latest addition to Mendix’s partner community. LINKIT has a passion for the human aspect of business and a focus on empowering people with knowledge to build the best solutions. Talking to CEO Cornelis Lemstra and seeing the team perform at MxHacks, it’s clear that he and the rest of LINKIT share this passion. LINKIT at MxHacks During MxHacks, LINKIT competed with their own teams and offered hands-on support to developers who specifically chose to build solutions for Welcome App, one of the three nonprofits selected for the hackathon. Welcome App offers a one-stop-shop for people who are rebuilding their lives in a new country. Designed for refugees and asylum seekers, the platform aims to simplify integration into a new society to help people feel at home wherever they are. Of the cause, Cornelis Lemstra says: “Welcome App is a cause close to our hearts. Over the years LINKIT has welcomed over 20 nationalities in its workforce so we’re aware of the challenges people cope with starting over in a new…
How to streamline the development process with low code
“At the time, I had never heard of low-code, so when I was invited [by Validata], I was immediately enthusiastic. I had some experience with Java and JavaScript, but it’s difficult to learn them and use them quickly. Mendix is visual, which makes it easier to understand and implement compared to traditional coding,” Idris said. Validata offered Idris a role as a Junior Mendix Developer working on Core Next Gen, Validata’s first screening application, addressing new features, integrations, and bug fixes. Impacting Customer Experience Validata was founded in Amsterdam in 2009 by Harm Voogt and Job van der Weijden to assist organizations with their employment screening process. Their goal was to take an inefficient and often fragmented process and turn it into an efficient, GDPR-compliant one that would solve the data-sharing issues and long turnaround times that so often plagued organizations. To reduce friction throughout the screening process Validata created a screening application to centralize steps such as criminal background checks or validating education and work experience. The first version of the application, Core Next Gen, was built in Mendix. After gathering insights from customers and reevaluating the efficacy of the application, Validata decided to prioritize enhancements around automation and accessibility in a version two called Valluga. As the first in-house low-code developer, Idris and his eventual team successfully rebuilt the application by gathering input from business stakeholders and their support team who were intimately familiar with the application process, candidates, and clients. Valluga was started in August 2019 and completed one year later, a pace which Idris attributes to the speed of low-code. “If you want to create an interface for a candidate to see if the functionality works and test it in Mendix, you can do it within half an hour and see if it works. With traditional coding, you first…