Picture this: You’re swamped with a backlog of tasks, and too often, these tasks get tangled up with the same convoluted, broken process, making it nearly impossible to get the job done.
To add further torment, you’ve got a crystal-clear vision of how to fix this infamous process monster – you just lack the coding proficiency to implement it.
That means waiting for your already overloaded IT team to have bandwidth, a lengthy development cycle, potential bureaucratic hurdles, and other delays that often come with traditional coding projects.
This scenario is why low-code application development is taking over the business world.
Low-code app development empowers you to rapidly develop new solutions that solve this moment’s problems, even if you only have basic coding skills. Meanwhile, your IT team can focus their efforts on valuable larger-scale projects. This is a massive agility booster for your organization, allowing it to innovate and problem-solve to keep up with today’s fast-paced business world.
But that’s only the beginning of how valuable this technology can be for organizations. Let’s dive into the top 7 low-code benefits that will help you meet the moment.
7 Benefits of Low-Code App Development
1. Higher Agility
Low-code technology’s user-friendly features, like visual drag-and-drop functionality, allow you to go from an idea to a fully working application with minimal turnaround. And when you need to make an update or resolve an error, you can do so far more easily than traditional coding.
These capabilities fast-track your ability to respond to problems, potential threats, customer demand, and industry trends in real-time while your competition gets to it a few months down the road (or later.)
2. Save Money
Low-code development doesn’t just accelerate app creation at a fraction of the cost of what “starting from scratch” with traditional coding once did. It also frees up your developers’ time to devote to other value-added work that’ll add to your bottom line. And both wins can save you considerable money and time, resources which you can then redirect towards fueling growth elsewhere, like within research and development or customer support. Low-code platforms also allow you to supplement or replace current applications like legacy systems, which leaves you with the potential for even more savings related to license fees and system maintenance.
3. Boost Your Productivity
Referring to the example scenario at the beginning of this article, one of the biggest benefits low-code technology brings is eliminating the waiting game. Since you can do it yourself, you won’t have to wait for developers to get to your request before you get to enjoy the benefits of your new solution. And then, you’ll be onto the next task, and developers can keep making progress elsewhere too.
How long does low-code application development usually take, you may ask. Good question – It depends on the scope of the application you’re building, but it can take anywhere from a few hours to 1-3 weeks. That’s a whole lot faster than the 2-8 months traditional coding projects typically take. One of our customers, Chris Tucker, Manager of Property Control & Duplication Services at SUNY Cortland, created an Admissions Travel Calendar Application from the ground up in just a few hours. He started building it first thing in the morning and by noon, it was up and running. 7+ years later, the application is still used daily, and Chris has only needed to make a few minor updates over the years. You can read more about Chris’ low-code WorkView applications in the article linked below.
4. Gain the Flexibility to Meet Customer Demand
Customer demand and trends surrounding the customer experience are constantly evolving. If you’re tied to the lengthy development cycles of traditional coding, staying on top of it all can be downright unrealistic. But since low-code technology lets you create and update applications quickly, you’ll have the flexibility to adapt and offer the rich experience your customers desire when they desire it (not months or years later when they’ve already set their sights on the next big thing.) And given your ability to whip up new and maintain existing applications easily, you can respond to customer complaints and requests faster to create more positive customer experiences in real-time.
5. Gain Insights into Your Processes
The success of your business relies on consistently enhancing your operations, which involves closely tracking, reporting, and refining your crucial processes and workflows. Without the right understanding, it’s easy to overlook compliance requirements and inefficient processes.
Fortunately, leading low-code platforms offer the benefit of advanced reporting and analytics tools that enable proactive decision-making. These solutions offer real-time insights into your processes’ status, the completeness of records, and the overall health of your systems. With all these insights at your fingertips, you can continually improve your business with ease.
6. Easy Integrations with Your Enterprise System
The best low-code platforms offer pre-built integrations that ensure a swift and seamless integration of your new solution with your existing enterprise system. This is a massively helpful feature, too, because without these prebuilt connectors, manually coding a new platform for integration can delay implementation severely and hinder user adoption.
7. Boost Security and Minimize Shadow IT
Low-code app development platforms are also pre-configured to offer top security right out of the box whether you deploy it on-premises or in the cloud. They’re also capable of integrating with your other external security systems and offer additional features like:
- Strict, customizable password policies covering complexity, rotation, and lockout requirements.
- Granular rights management that precisely controls user access to authorized data.
- Security keywords that allow administrators to restrict access based on document metadata.
But low-code application development also offers the benefit of reducing shadow IT. When a problem just can’t wait to be solved, some employees go around IT to implement their own workarounds. But these solutions are often third-party, and since they aren’t verified by internal IT, they’re vulnerable to security and compliance issues. If sensitive data gets involved, the situation can turn catastrophic. Giving employees the ability to safely create their own solutions with low-code app developments reduces the risk of these workarounds from occurring in the first place, keeping your company safe and secure.
Stay Ahead of the Curve with Low-Code
With low-code application development, you unlock the potential for both IT and non-IT users to actively shape and enhance your business processes by putting their ideas into action without delay. This level of continuous improvement opens your organization up to incredible potential for keeping up with industry standards, trends, technological advancements, and customer expectations and even getting ahead of the curve.
That’s the power of low-code technology, and it’s why we’re dedicated to helping organizations make the most of it. Want to learn more about what low-code app development could do for you? Drop a question or comment in the chat below, we’d love to hear from you.
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