The pandemic has completely revolutionized the way we look at businesses today. A McKinsey report states that the pandemic response has speeded up the adoption of digital technologies by several years, many of which could be here for long.1 This digital transformation urgency has created a new set of business requirements, operational challenges, and customer demands that need to be addressed quickly.
However, responding to dynamic market needs necessitates a kind of nimbleness often thwarted by legacy application development technologies. Elaborate coding requirements and maintenance of large IT teams are now passe. This is where a low code platform comes to the rescue.
The Rising Significance of Low Code Platforms
Low code is a streamlined and visual approach to help developers translate business requirements into intelligent applications through minimal coding. According to Forrester, “low code has the potential to make software development as much as ten times faster than traditional methods.” 2 This makes low code platforms a prerequisite for organizations looking to rapidly respond to dynamic business needs and stay competitive.
Low Code: The Digital Transformation Enabler
Low code can help enterprises digitally transform and stay ahead of the curve by:
- Enabling Rapid Application Development and Deployment:
Traditional methods of application development can be painstakingly long, recurring, and prone to errors, leading to poor overall efficiency. With the help of a low code platform, businesses can tackle these challenges by leveraging a visual, flexible, and modeling-driven environment to develop intelligent and customized applications in less time.
A low code platform can help IT professionals through visual and drag-and-drop modeling tools in deploying mission-critical applications, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and multiple integrations with third-party systems with a quick turnaround time.
- Bridging the Gap between Businesses and IT Developers
Traditionally, it took significant effort to translate business visions into applications, particularly because application development has been an opaque process for non-IT business leaders. Low code has changed all that. Now business leaders can collaborate with IT developers to transform their most innovative ideas into reality with the help of a visual and guided application modeling environment. Low code development can also help business leaders communicate with IT experts and better understand the abilities and short comings of their IT architectural systems, thereby leading to rapid decision-making and quick implementation.
- Leveraging Data for Intelligence
Modern enterprises need to organize their ever-increasing data pool and process it to derive important information and improve decision-making. A low code platform enables enterprises to build relevant programs and IT infrastructure that can help them collect and organize this mountain of data and allow seamless integration with multiple business applications.
These programs can be further mastered to enable data modeling capabilities, thereby helping businesses analyze existing data and user trends to remodel their applications, make informed decisions, and provide enhanced customer experience.
- Efficient Application Governance and Compliance
Building and deploying applications is a complex process but governing and maintaining these applications can be equally complex. The low code way of application development can help ensure continuity of operations by providing comprehensive governance, smart debugging tools, and minimizing service downtime.
Low code also helps ensure compliance with business regulations and security protocols by creating programs that adhere to secure coding standards and stay consistent throughout the system.
Low Code for The Win
Low code has been hailed by leading analysts as a key enabler of digital transformation. According to Gartner, “Globally, most large organizations will have adopted multiple low-code tools in some form by year-end 2021.” 3
In order to be successful in a business ecosystem of ever-increasing competition and diminishing margins, it is necessary to tackle business complexities intelligently and build an agile organization. Digital transformation, powered by low code, can equip enterprises with business agility and help them unlock their growth potential.
References:
- COVID-19 digital transformation & technology | McKinsey
- Why You Need To Know About Low-Code, Even If You’re Not Responsible For Software Delivery (forrester.com)
- Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Low-Code Development Technologies Market to Grow 23% in 2021
