2022 could be the year of low-code and no-code in enterprise tech

As the reliance on technology has grown, no business can achieve organizational objectives without a full arsenal of enterprise platforms and applications. Having the right tools enables your teams to gain the most value from data, increase task efficiency, decrease manual work, and increase overall speed. 

An organization must also grapple with the dynamic business environment demands rapid change, innovation, and even newer business applications and tools. The traditional application development paradigm with lengthy analysis, coding, testing, and deployment processes might not be up to the task. The time, capabilities, effort, and costs required can be prohibitive and thus impacting business agility. The need for business agility makes the low-code/no-code platforms immensely relevant, addressing the challenges of needed speed, accessibility, and skill availability.

In recent years, competent technology platforms enabling applications development with little or no coding have become available. The prominent among those are Microsoft Power Platform, Out Systems, and Appian. These platforms allow users for lightweight, fast, and secure application development – something that can help enterprises compete and innovate at scale in 2022.

Enable smarter work and high efficiency

As businesses leverage technology to automate and orchestrate their processes, they gain reliability, repeatability, and integration, making their operations efficient and effective. 

Low-code and no-code software enable organizations to face emerging needs with higher speed and agility. Organizations can solve business problems, encourage collaboration and productivity, achieve company goals, and develop a mature digital ecosystem to gain a competitive edge that enables assistance in the long run. With these platforms, users can build complete applications using a visual development approach rather than the traditional writing pages of complex code — an otherwise resource-intensive, complicated, and lengthy process. With such tools, organizations experience higher benefits and increased productivity. 

For developers-- “low-code” capabilities enable faster and more innovative work and increased efficiency with better results. People with non-development backgrounds are empowered to create, modify, and use enterprise software that encourages and enables them to develop apps as and when the need arises with the power of no-code platforms. 

Key benefits

In 2022, as organizations look to expand their digital capabilities, low code/no-code platforms will enable businesses with:

• Speed:  Not only is the development process fast and easy, but such platforms also don’t require much infrastructure needs and skilled resources. Enterprises can optimize their operations and accelerate product delivery with low code and no code. They can relieve the workload on their IT departments, and end-users who understand your company’s business processes can develop their solutions, thereby reducing manual internal processes. 
• Time and effort: According to research, low code platforms can cut 50%-90% of development time compared to manual coding. The time and efforts saved here are invaluable for business development.
• Easy integration: With low code/no-code platforms, implementing APIs and connector integration with third-party tools is an easy and quick process. 
• Visual development: Simple to use development interfaces like drag-n-drop known by low-code platforms, allow developers and people without technical training to work effortlessly and quickly make applications most suited to their needs.
• Security: Security is crucial when considering software that interacts with critical company data. Low-code promises an emphasis on high protection and surpasses the requirements for all types of company’s, no matter the hosting solution.
• User Experience: How the user reacts to software and how relevant are the results to them determines the success and utility of the integration. With low code/no-code platforms, the user experience is straightforward with pre-determined and custom templates without interfering with functionality and performance. 
• Cost-effectiveness: Low code platforms allow users to build more apps in less time with low costs. But that’s not the only driver. Low-code development reduces the requirement for skilled developers, further reducing costs. And, the right low-code platform can make everyone in the organization—not just IT—more productive.

With newer technologies and updates constantly coming into lightweight application development, businesses are getting productive and efficient. Whether it’s business users creating an app themselves or simplifying the development process for coders by automating manual processes, low-code development makes it easier than ever to create flexible apps to get specific tasks done.

The author is Founder and CEO at Advaiya