Automation enables transformation on a scale, giving you the time to sit on more strategic and value-driven matters. New potential can be unlocked by rethinking the way processes work and automating them. Likewise, businesses are automating their application development and ancient old operational processes. How? By empowering themselves to take away the system’s standalone apps and functions (one built on Excel or SharePoint). In long run, this helps them stay focused on achieving business and IT buy-in.
For instance, automating a simple yet highly crucial process like the leave-application process can save so much time, and effort, and become a hassle-free process for all.
Similarly, businesses are transforming such processes into smart enterprise-scale apps that get work done much more efficiently and save time and costs.
But, while low-code and no-code development functionality has been a topic actively talked about within marketing circles for some time, are the technologies and the processes leveraging its true effectiveness? Let’s understand.
What No-Code/Low-Code Can Now Accomplish
Do you remember those old days when technology was meant only for the elite? Yes, only large businesses could use it to develop applications and maintain their legacy market share. According to Gartner, the market demand for micro development services will grow at least 5x faster than the IT capacity to deliver them. So, with the evolving business conditions and adapting customer needs, it becomes the need of the hour for businesses to be agile.
In the present day, thanks to the cloud, all you need is an Internet connection. With it, even a small startup could build an application without worrying about costs or the necessary infrastructure. Here, unlike traditional development, no-code/low-code platforms enable business users to develop new apps and adapt to these applications quickly and easily.
To state, no-code/low-code development is majorly the process of using simple mechanics such as a drag-and-drop user interface to build an app. Sounds magical? It is. The only thing you need is an idea and with the right no-code/low-code platform, you can implement it in minutes and hours. Also, with standardized, pretested, and ready-made components, there are much lesser integration issues to deal with compared to the traditional method.
In all, we can say that instead of an expensive, time-consuming, and difficult process. Low-Code/No-Code promotes the hassle-free deployment of ideas with pre-built templates for specific business problems. But still, many people compare it with the flexibility of Microsoft Excel. While in many cases, Excel proves to be quite advantageous, no-code/low-code can also help solve such (and even more complex) problems.
Excel vs Low-code/No-Code
It’s no hidden fact that low-code/no-code tools stem from earlier rapid application development (RAD) tools such as Excel, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft Access. These tools require users to thoroughly understand the business logic and their development environments to build capabilities. In contrast to them, with low-code/no-code tools’ drag-and-drop features, users need either minimal or no general knowledge of the tools or development.
Although the spreadsheet concept today is still relevant, the respective sharing needs and the volume of data have changed drastically. Low-code/No-code promises a halfway point between either sticking with a complex spreadsheet or paying a developer to turn it into an app if you could find one.
Further, many applications developed using low-code/no-code tools are robust enough to be used throughout the entire enterprise. In fact, in some cases, they are even employed by external users such as customers and business partners. On the other hand, development with RAD tools generally produced capabilities that were primarily being used by the individual who created the functionality.
As stated earlier, similar to Excel, no-code/low-code also relies on a visual user interface to allow non-technical (or business) users to access features and build solutions. They provide additional functionality to development teams by allowing them to create custom code when needed.
On the downside, because these tools are easy to use and are associated with low-cost, organizational leaders can, and often do, lose track of what their employees are building. In essence, some organizations may also find that some tasks where their teams have used such functionality weren’t well-suited to low-code/no-code methods. Thereby, resulting in a significant waste of resources.
In short, we can summarise that Excel can do a lot, but low-code/no-code platforms can do more.
A Smarter Path to Value
Enterprises are in constant need to innovate faster to optimize internal processes for greater efficiency. Because of this, an ongoing shortage of developer talent and IT workers will continue to increase the adoption of low-code and no-code tools. On the other hand, to keep up with the competition, upskilling in-house developers or outsourcing IT teams are non-budget-friendly options.
Since low-code/no-code technologies are designed to conserve developer bandwidth and shorten the turnaround cycle for project development. They will continue to be in high demand as business agility continues to be a defining factor of market leaders. In a nutshell, as a low-code/no-code platform enables even non-IT teams such as HRs, marketing, finance, procurement, etc to build their own custom applications without relying on IT, they have huge potential as compared to casual Excels. Whatever Excel can deliver, low-code/no-code can deliver a lot more, just more efficiently.