Low-code and No-code Applications Empower Business Users

Agility is pivotal for business success. It means being able to respond to customer needs faster. It means being able to shift with (or even before) the market does. It means being able to create new products and innovate faster. And it means being able to make changes that constantly improve the customer experience. This need for agility makes low-code and no-code platforms so valuable to organizations.

Companies experience a boost with no-code solutions in nearly every business unit. These platforms are even enabling for technology teams, who can rapidly create parts of an application with pre-built components and spend the rest of their time developing custom features and functionality.

Business users, too, experience a wealth of benefits from having access to "click-not-code" solutions. From minimizing wait times for feature requests to eliminating the friction caused by "shadow IT" practices, low- and no-code platforms equip business teams to autonomously create the solutions they need.

Of course, it can't be a free-for-all. Governance and training must be part and parcel of the process when giving business users the ability to create and alter applications. It is risky and problematic to allow business users - who are unused to the rigors of application lifecycle management (ALM) and its importance - unfettered access to make production changes.

The Benefits of Low-code and No-code Application Access for Business Users

Low-code is a means of building or updating applications that, instead of using traditional programming languages, uses a graphical user interface (GUI) to create functionality. It's not quite point-and-click development, but it's close. In fact, Salesforce refers to the low-code functionality in their solutions as "click to code."

This brings development into the realm of those resources that previously didn't have the knowledge or access to create, alter, or update applications. Typically, if a business user needed a change to an application or saw an opportunity to improve the customer experience with new functionality, they would need to put in a request to IT and wait for a developer with the right skills to have the bandwidth to take on the project.

Instead, low-code solution shifts at least some application work and workflow development from software engineers to the business. For instance, changes to an online patient in-take form can quickly be done by a product manager or admin instead of a programmer. Organizations have been embracing what low-code has to offer - according to a 2021 report from Gartner, 70% of new applications built by enterprises by 2025 will use low- or no-code solutions, a significant increase from 25% in 2020.

The benefits of low-code and no-code solutions for the business and users alike include: 

Getting new features, products, and services to market faster

Empowering business users to make needed changes

Freeing up technical resources for more complex development

Accelerating overall development and innovation

Increasing business agility to respond to a changing market

Creating a better customer experience, faster and closer to the point of contact

Low-code and No-code Considerations

While low-code and no-code solutions are more straightforward than traditional programming language development, there is still a learning curve, and there is still the risk of poorly planned functionality, data integrity concerns, and up and downstream impacts from deployed applications. Using low-code technology might not require a developer, but it still requires care and management.

The following are key considerations for organizations introducing low- and no-code solutions into their workflows.

Training

Like any complex application, low-code and no-code applications will serve an organization best when those using these solutions are well-trained in what it can do and what they can do.

However, this is even more important when it comes to permitting business users to create and alter applications. Many, if not most of these applications, will have access to data in some form - without proper training (and a good process, which we'll discuss next), it will be a risk to have these users developing functionality and altering workflows.

Governance and Management

Even with the best training, it's possible to develop bugs or code that has unintended consequences within the application or workflow or downstream of it. Business users should be introduced to some level of ALM and perhaps even be paired with a developer who can review the functionality they develop before it's deployed into a production environment.

These users should also be limited in the data they have access to. While some will likely be needed for development and testing, there is a high likelihood that your data contains sensitive information, or at the very least, you have an interest in maintaining data integrity. Access management on live data is a must.

One solution is to provide a development and testing environment where business users can create and verify applications before deploying them to production. For example, business users in Salesforce could be provided with a sandbox and a set of test data for development purposes. An admin or developer could review any changes before they are scheduled for release to ensure proper oversight.

Adoption

Even if you provide tools to your business users, they may not be keen to jump in and use them. Indeed, training can help overcome hesitation to using low- and no-code tools, as can providing them a "playground" in which they can make mistakes and learn. Remember to build time for users to get up to speed to accelerate tool adoption.

There may also be some pushback from other executives on the use of these tools. Discuss with those leaders the benefits of these technologies and any plans for protecting existing code and assets, like data, and how business users will be supported.

Conclusion

Low-code and no-code solutions are rapidly gaining in popularity and usage, with 92% of IT leaders surveyed stating they planned to incorporate these technologies into their organizations by the end of 2020. These businesses will reap the benefits of spreading feature and function development out beyond the bounds of IT and into their business community. They will innovate faster, experience better customer satisfaction, and be more nimble than their competitors that wait to adopt low-code and no-code solutions.

Meeting the needs of your business and your customers with low-code technologies don't require a complete retooling of your business, however. Incorporating the Salesforce platform into your organization will give you the advantages of using an industry-leading platform while adopting a low-code strategy. If you're interested in learning more, Six Consulting can help you understand how to incorporate Salesforce into your business and use its "click not code" tools to speed your success and growth. Contact us today to learn more.