Low-code delivers the technology trifecta – faster, better, cheaper – all in the same package. For organizations looking to win in the digital-first agile world, low-code is quickly becoming a critical component of a modern enterprise technology stack. Keep reading for a recap on the latest low-code insights culled from industry analysts and the media.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Companies looking to increase agility and compete in a dynamic market are turning to low-code technology in droves, according to a ComputerWorld article. In 2021, the global market for low-code development technology hit $13.8 billion in revenue. And the adoption of low-code software development platforms is growing by more than 20% a year, according to Gartner. By 2023, low-code development is expected to be adopted by more than half of all medium- to large-sized companies.

A January survey by research firm IDC of 380 enterprises showed that 49% of respondents are purchasing low-code or no-code platforms to move innovation in-house. The second-largest reason for purchasing the software tools (39%) was “pandemic-related needs.”

To Infinity and Beyond (with Low-Code)

Organizations need to adopt a more holistic approach towards automation that enables proactive identification of new processes with automation potential, aligning/preparing these as required, and finally automating the best candidates. Enterprises have to think beyond RPA to truly embrace digital transformation via automation, declares The Economic Times.

This model also enables organizations to scale their automation initiatives with ease. Moving beyond macros, data scrapping and basic task automations, enterprises can kickstart the next phase of their intelligent automation journey and manage end-to-end software development with the right enterprise low-code platforms.

Skills to Pay the Bills

With a dearth of tech talent that’s forecast to become more severe in the next few years, the ability to create business apps using low-code and no-code tools is quickly becoming an expected skill set for non-tech business workers, notes ComputerWorld. Business units understand business application needs and can detail requirements faster and more efficiently than IT.

A shortage of software developers and IT workers in general is forcing businesses to turn to “citizen developers” within their organizations to create business applications supporting digital transformation efforts. Finding workers with software development skills, or training them in-house, is becoming a priority. What makes citizen development possible is a raft of low-code and no-code development platforms, which enable business users with little to no coding experience to develop apps based on business needs.

1 + 1 = 3 … Exponential Gains

The most significant inhibitor to most organizations’ growth is structural constraints. These constraints can come in many forms, but most are based on the limits of human interaction. The more complex any process, the more we must break it down and add in controls to ensure it doesn’t fall apart as it passes between people. But new generations of automation tools are offering us a new way to look at these problems.

When you bring an end-to-end perspective and a low-code mindset to your automation efforts, it becomes transformative — in part because it forces you to break through the process and functional silos that are often the greatest inhibitors to realizing exponential gains. The analysts at Intellyx write that applying automation on a task or piecemeal basis will unquestionably drive efficiency gains and cost savings. But no organization can compete and thrive in a disruption-driven market merely by reducing costs.

Banking on Low Code, Literally

A friction-less customer experience is king in the banking sector, like many industries, but financial institutions have to manage the legacy challenges that naturally face regulated industries that have to work around strident regulatory requirements and in-depth security concerns. According to BizTech, low-code allows a fresh influx of agility in areas that haven’t been quite so easy for banks to serve.

With many organizations and their underpinning financial systems still reliant on legacy technology, banks may find themselves unable to move as quickly as they’d like. The true benefit of low-code development for banks lies in how much it can do and how quickly it can do it. Given the complexity of most financial institutions, traditional programmers might need years to optimize platforms for modern operations

The OG for OX

An organization is a collection of business processes for production, marketing, sales, service, and support functions. So any optimizations and improvements of the most critical processes will enhance the bottom line: cost savings, revenue generation, and compliance. These are called operational excellence (OE) improvements. As VentureBeat notes, Intelligent Business Process Management (iBPM) low-code/no-code platforms are an enabling technology for OE. There is a remarkably close affinity between low-code/no-code and BPM. As far as back in 2005 or earlier, BPM suites were touted as platforms for model-driven development, which is akin to what we now call low-code/no-code.

iBPM is much more than technology. At its core, it is a transformational management discipline that helps organizations achieve their strategic goals. Automation is a crucial component of iBPM solutions. As a discipline, BPM drives the operations of enterprises. It includes several iterative phases from design to execution to monitoring and continuous improvement.

Mind the Gap … Between Business and IT

The applications for intelligent automation can be used in countless ways to create more seamless customer experiences across multiple verticals from digital banking to patient access and care in healthcare, to claims management in the insurance industry. Low-code is a key element of intelligent automation in that it enables business users to build applications and make changes to processes with simple logic and drag-and-drop interfaces without the need for coding skills, according to recent Forbes article.

The ability for organizations to get their business and IT leaders to work collaboratively and build applications in an agile and cost-effective manner is a challenge. This is even more critical in our continued world of remote work with smaller distributed teams. Low-code can help speed up innovation even at larger companies by putting creative power into the hands of citizen developers. In fact, in order to work, the low-code paradigm must become a way of thinking across the entire enterprise. Low-code gives business users the ability to embrace tasks that may have once been delegated to resource constrained IT teams. It’s a win-win.

Start Now, Think Big, Go Fast

To deliver true end-to-end workflows and drive value across the enterprise, low-code is a critical component of your automation technology ecosystem. Companies need to start preparing today to execute tomorrow.

If you want to learn more about how low-code helps deliver operational excellence and its value to the enterprise, let’s talk.