By Arjun Devadas, Senior Vice President, Professional Services & Operations, Vuram
Modern-age enterprises are constantly trying to bridge the gap between two of their essential groups of people: the ones who write codes and the ones who don’t. The latter segment of non-coders—also popularly referred to as citizen developers—relies on the IT department to get an application built. But with low-code, the scenario is upended.
What Is Low Code?
In simple words, low-code automation tools are software programs that require negligible or no coding knowledge to create enterprise-grade applications; it is rather a visual approach to software development brought in by the drag and drop interface, user-friendly design enabling software solutions to be delivered rapidly. Low code can be related to Lego blocks where a citizen developer can convert a business problem to a solution similar to creating a Lego model. Here the Lego blocks are pre-written low-code modules or templates that we arrange together logically.
Why Is Low-Code Automation Crucial?
According to a forecast by Forrester, by 2022, the market growth of low-code development platforms is expected to reach 21.2 billion dollars. This is understandable looking at the manifold benefits offered by low-code automation that makes it key for businesses.
Fosters Minimal IT Dependency
Technical debt and the inability to align the application development needs with the business poses a serious burden for many organizations. Low-code automation provides the perfect solution for the purpose. Rising demand for sophisticated software solutions in businesses and a corresponding shortage of skilled developers have also led to the adoption of low-code development platforms that have drastically come to the fore.
Has a Fast Time-to-Market
Low-code automation turns business ideas into realistic workable solutions with the fast-to-market capability and minimum IT dependency. The technology helps rapidly deliver apps that a business requires for smooth functioning with the existing talent. Low code is created with mainly citizen developers in mind such as business analysts, business users, or executives with minimum technical expertise; it enables them to easily solve their business problems and get a production-ready application up and running within the least amount of time.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vuram leveraged Appian’s low-code capabilities to deliver a custom-built app for a Canadian food retailer within a short timeframe. Besides the fast time-to-market, the app addressed the existing gaps and also helped overcome a timely challenge: making on-time deliveries during the pandemic. Digitization of processes empowered over 3000 drivers working on 1400 routes per day and also brought about a contactless work environment.
Can be Intelligent
Low-code automation combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has the potential to create a system that improves automatically by learning about business problems and deriving solutions to them. Over time, the system will be capable of making more precise predictions and decisions every day.
Augments Human Efficiency
Low-code automation works with people and contributes to improving their cognitive and physical skills. It contributes to enhancing the productivity and efficiency of humans, while the cognitive skills of artificial intelligence can help in better decision making.
Highly Reliable
The more consistent and structured a process is, the more reliable it becomes. This helps a business to have an advantage in the market because highly dependable processes are offered to the customers, and their satisfaction rates remain high. The automation process with strong in-built business rules makes sure that the generated results are also of high quality and consistency.
Productivity & Business Improvement
Low-code automation applications also provide reports on productivity and analysis that would help in fine-tuning the process to increase the ROI. This form of automation is primarily the essence for creating business values 20 times faster with maximum ROI. By shortening the time taken for development and reducing the number of tasks required to be handled by humans, people get more time to work on critical tasks, thus increasing their productivity and making them more innovative and motivated.
Promotes Business Agility
Low-code automation fits perfectly with an agile methodology or iterative development. Business agility enables enterprises to adapt and respond to market changes as well as accords them new opportunities using unique digital solutions that solve timely business problems efficiently. Improving customer experience and personalizing it is crucial in today’s world. Besides, businesses that run on low-code apps adapt quickly to new changes or trends in the market and are able to address their customers’ needs efficiently. It also slashes the time it takes to make improvements to the application.
Compared to traditional development, the market for low-code development continues to expand widely across different segments and industries owing to its nature and the benefits it offers. Its adoption is becoming widespread. In the near future, it is expected to provide greater opportunities and benefits.