The pressure is on both sides.
IT and application development teams are pressured by business need to develop quickly, using agile, iterative releases that show results in days and not months. Business teams are pressured by market forces to enter new markets ahead of competitors, design omnichannel customer experiences that are both clever and meaningful, and experiment with new kinds of customer connections like mobile first.
The need for speed is mutual - but also a source of incredible friction.
Low-code platforms can reduce the tension and give both sets of teams the power to be responsive to customer and market change. With digital evolving and advancing so rapidly, the only thing constant these days is how digital keeps changing the business - from marketing to product design to customer service to sales.
Platforms that enable rapid delivery of business applications with a minimum of hand-coding and minimal upfront investment in setup, training, and deployment.
Some IT leaders put low-code platforms in the category of Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS), which simply highlights the infrastructure and functionality of these cloud-based platforms which support the application development process.
Gartner characterizes an aPaaS platform as one that "supports application development, deployment and execution in the cloud, encapsulating resources such as infrastructure and including services such as those for data management and user interfaces." The enterprise category of dev platforms are specifically "designed to support the enterprise style of applications and application projects (high availability, disaster recovery, external service access, security and technical support)," Gartner says.
What all that means for your business is:
- Non-coders (the people Gartner calls "citizen developers") on business teams can use drag & drop coding tools to quickly create database-connected applications for everything from internal concepting discussions to client-facing applications.
- IT and application dev teams can use a cloud-based platform offering declarative and visual development as a complement to increase the speed of hand-coding in programming languages like Java and C#/.net.
- Using the visual configuration of virtual data models and declarative tools for implementing business logic and workflows, app developers can accelerate the release of market-ready, complex and reliable customer solutions.
Ask this question of your business: "What pressing problem could I solve for my customers (or internal teams) if I could quickly create a fully functioned, reliable app in a fraction of the time it takes to hand code it?" Please do answer. Make a list. It's an incredibly empowering exercise. Most people are surprised at how high impact and numerous the ideas are - and how accessible they might be if you use a low-code platform.
Many enterprise users build sophisticated applications such as data-driven microservices or apps that focus on data collection, customer service and product or brand access. It's possible to connect hundreds or even thousands of data sources to full service applications using low-code tools. It's also easy to launch apps with a specific function.
- Think about an app for sales teams that uses location-based data and your CRM database to remind them that they are traveling near a prospect or customer who has recently interacted with the website. Think a widget that allows customers to share reviews across multiple third party sites.
- Think gamification of an app that assesses a prospect's needs and presents the most relevant product information. Applications can also be internal - helping teams collaborate, process data, pull insights quickly from customer interactions and kickoff workflows.
Check out some of our client stories for inspiration.The low-code development platform market is growing because more application developers and business teams see all this as a way to rapidly deliver multi-channel applications to engage and serve prospects, customers and co-workers.
Speed is the difference between lagging the market and leading it. How are you addressing this relentless focus on digital speed? Tell us on Twitter and learn why low-code could be a powerful new tool in your arsenal.
Download our free whitepaper about Low-code in Swedish. A guide to technology that can dramatically increases the speed of application development and at the same time enables harmonization of the application portfolio.
