Meeting customer needs today means both businesses in service and product industries should provide high-standard services and value for consumers. As an organization grows so does its customer base and partner/supplier network. This growth requires that midsize to large enterprises process big chunks of data, develop business processes and rules, and orchestrate workflows to operate efficiently. Therefore, the software that organizations use to manage processes and customer relations tends towards not only helping with timely decision making, but also enabling companies to maneuver and adjust their services to the constantly changing consumer requirements.
The process-based approach to enterprise management includes business process management (BPM) methodology which allows users to automate processes and accelerate business cycles. Technology advances together with customer expectations, and today not only highly-skilled programmers can make changes to business processes to meet the changing needs of an organization. Low-code empowered BPM platforms make workflow automation and adjustment attainable for any employee in the company with no coding skills. Here is how low-code/no-code solutions help companies reach their goals and grow.
The process-based approach to enterprise management includes business process management (BPM) methodology which allows users to automate processes and accelerate business cycles. Technology advances together with customer expectations, and today not only highly-skilled programmers can make changes to business processes to meet the changing needs of an organization. Low-code/no-code empowered BPM platforms make process automation and adjustment attainable for any employee in the company with no coding skills. Here is how low-code/no-code solutions help companies reach their goals and grow.
How Low-code/No-code Platforms Help Businesses Keep up
According to Gartner, market demand for app development will grow at least five times faster than IT capacity can deliver this year. The majority of an enterprise’s IT budget is spent on ongoing maintenance of legacy systems, which leaves little leftover for innovation and new application or process development. No-code solutions help to reduce the cost of development by up to 80%. No-code requires little to zero formal programming expertise, thus helping to close the IT-staff gap without having to incur additional resource expenses. Almost anyone within your organizations can create necessary solutions to support business workflows and accelerate processes. Such solutions help to bring IT and business together, enabling more rapid, iterative, and collaborative development and change implementation.
Today, elements of low-code solutions can be found in different programs; no one is surprised by the ability to create a form in the visual editor, customize the interface by dragging its elements with a mouse, configure the settings in the visual “wizard”, etc.
Low-code is not only an all-around tool, but the solution can also be leveraged as an advanced tool for business functioning. When using low-code as an advanced function, the following key requirements should be considered:
- Out-of-the-box functionality which includes customizable software, templates, widgets, and plugins to help accelerate workflow automation.
- Reusability of pre-configured modules for apps which have common core functions and can be reused to develop different solutions more quickly.
- Cross-platform accessibility makes apps accessible from any device and allows users to build solutions that can also run on all core platforms and devices.
- Scalability that allows users to build new applications for process automation that can handle an increase in customers, business growth, and other changes in business development or strategy.
- Application lifecycle management streamlines several stages in the software development lifecycle, such as debugging, testing, and deployment.
What are the Main Benefits of Low-code/No-code Technology for Business Users
The idea behind low-code/no-code technology is to turn more business users into “citizen developers.”
The term ‘citizen developers’ stands for users who create new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT. Empowered by low-code/no-code technology, citizen developers can make their work more transparent and efficient building their own customized solutions with low-code and no-code approach.
Using such solutions, citizen developers can make a great contribution to an organization’s digital transformation initiatives by:
- Solving several types of business challenges, they would previously have put off
- Saving time for the IT department so they can work on more complex strategic projects
- Boosting efficiency of processes
- Enabling transparency across various types of business operations
- Cutting operational costs
- Shrinking the IT-skill gap
By providing business users with the ability to create new applications, the role of IT is refocused on data governance programs, as well as deploying automation without delay.
What is also especially important is that with a low-code/no-code BPM, the tools and features necessary for the entire company are no longer disjointed and stand-alone. No-code tools allow for the development of these features to exist on a single platform, unifying departments and simplifying workflows. The sales team may have a completely different workflow than the service team, but with no-code, they do not need a completely different platform to help automate their workflows. This also allows information to be passed from one department to another both faster and easier.
The Current State of Low-code/No-code Adoption: Global Survey Results
A recent study conducted among 1,000+ IT, digital, and business leaders by Creatio, states that 43% of digital and IT leaders see a lack of skilled resources as the core barrier to digital transformation.
Creatio, a leading no-code platform for operational and CRM workflow automation provider, surveyed organizational leaders to uncover the challenges of digital transformation facing businesses and the role of low-code/no-code technology in automation.
The report shows the following:
- During COVID-19 and the global pandemic, 95% of respondents pushed forward with their digital transformation initiatives.
- Low-code/no-code is currently being adopted primarily for custom app development inside separate business units.
- The key benefit of low-code/no-code adoption is accelerated time to market, followed by reduced app development cost.
- Low-code technology is equally utilized for both customer-facing processes and middle & back-office processes.
- Only 13% of respondents are not regularly investing in technological innovations.
- 68% of respondents agreed that upper management completely supported strategic investments into technologies.
When enterprises undertake digital transformation initiatives, they become software-driven companies. This means that developers are on-site hand-coding software. Low-code/no-code is disrupting this pattern by allowing almost anyone within your company to become a citizen developer that leads to faster and more successful results.
The challenges of 2020 showed both the need for digital transformation and the obstacles faced by companies that lacked modern technologies like low-code. With the necessity to rapidly adjust business and working models to remote work, and increasing demands on IT, companies that adopted low-code/no-code tools were able to adapt more quickly and enable remote business users to make changes to processes and be ready to adapt to ever-changing conditions.
In a Nutshell
The research has shown that low-code/no-code BPM platforms can make a substantial difference to a company when put directly into the hands of those who know their processes best: business users.
With a low-code/no-code solution, companies can create fully-fledged centers of excellence within their organizations. Having teams of citizen developers, businesses can accelerate the adoption of innovations, streamline application development, and process automation, and develop a culture of continuous operational improvement.
Companies can leverage in-house application development and deploy new applications to optimize the company’s customer-facing and operational processes. With accelerated workflows, organizations will improve their resilience, strengthen agility, and fuel growth.
With low-code/no-code business process management, organizations can modernize their legacy systems, create new and improve existing processes, build powerful applications, modify, and adjust solutions easily to meet specific countries’ market or business needs.
It becomes easier to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies of processes and provide feedback on their performance. The transparent development process leads to receiving better results and businesses gain more loyalty and trust from their employees, customers, and prospects.
Considering the numerous advantages of low-code/no-code BPMs, it is no wonder why businesses around the world are shifting their focus from traditional software development to encouraging the rise of citizen developers in multiple departments instead.
The future is no-code, where everyone can be a developer using BPM platforms without coding skills. The world of business does not require the expansion of IT departments, but the creation and encouragement of citizen developers via the implementation of low-code/no-code solutions. An advanced low-code/no-code BPM platform saves time, resources, and allows employees to automate their daily tasks so they can focus on more creative assignments. In the modern era, anyone can be a developer – a citizen developer – and the companies they work for will reap the benefits, no coding required.
