Felix is the manager of his company’s IT department. Every week, he gets at least two new requests coming from other departments about a new application that needs to be built.
But there is a problem. Software isn’t developed that fast, nor does his team have the manpower to churn out all of these requests.
He can’t hire more staff as well, the organization wouldn’t want to add more staff without a justified increase in productivity.
But poor Felix needs a solution, and fast. One of his colleagues, Elena, suggests that he look into low-code to speed up development. But he’s unsure. Does low-code platform really enable such a massive increase in productivity, or will it just dumb down the process?
App Development Using Low-code Platforms
If you’ve ever come across the phrase low-code technology, you’ll know that it’s become quite the buzzword in the industry of productivity. Everyone seems to be talking about it, and many people swear by it.
Creating applications using low-code platforms is not fundamentally different from traditional hand coding. The massive difference you see is the way applications are coded and launched.
In traditional hand coding, each and every function in the application is coded line-by-line. Obviously, this takes a lot of time and energy to do, and needs skilled developers.
On the other hand, these low-code tools provides a faster method to develop software. Using visual models, APIs, syntaxes, and other methods to reduce the amount of code that has to be manually entered, low-code web application development softwares drastically speed up development.
Another direction that low-code platforms take is to provide a means of development to users who aren’t familiar with coding at all. Empowered to be ‘citizen developers’, regular business users can create their own applications using specific low-code platforms for the functionalities they need, as long as they know and understand the logic of the application they want to build.
What Can You Build With Low-code Platforms?
All this sounds nice, but there is still the question of what you can actually build with low-code platforms.
Most business users have requirements that fall into one of four major buckets. They are
- Innovation
- Improving the customer experience
- Improving operational efficiency
- Aiding migration from legacy systems
Most low-code platforms have tools that make all four of these possible. Here’s how it works:
Innovation Apps
Innovation is adding a new function to an existing process, improving workability, or adding a new technology to an existing system.
Low-code app development platforms can take the trial-and-error approach with rapid iterations, ensuring there’s minimal or no interference with current business operations while new functions and features are being added.
This is mostly done by developers who have an understanding of these new technologies and innovations.
Apps Improving Customer Experience
These are apps that are meant to improve not only the way employees interact with customers, but also how customers engage with the company and its products and services.
These apps can be built by both developers and business users, depending on the level of their complexity.
For example, an easier ticketing or complaint system can be built by a business user. But a chatbot that will help answer customer queries immediately will require the intervention of a developer.
Apps Improving Operational Efficiency
These apps are designed to improve internal operational efficiency. These can mostly be built by business users, since they know business processes and workflows better than developers would.
For apps like this, it makes sense to invest in a tool like Kissflow, where the low-code platform is designed to improve operational efficiency.
Apps Aiding Migration From Legacy Systems
These apps are designed to provide an easy and effective method for business users to migrate their data from legacy systems to modern cloud-based systems.
Due to their complexity, it’s best if these apps are developed by skilled developers, so there is no issue with migration.
Conclusion
For Felix, low-code development platforms provide an easy way to clear out the massive queue for his department. For developer-intensive apps, he can use a low-code platform that will enable his existing developers, without having to add more people to the workforce. If he has apps that don’t need active developer input, platforms like Kissflow can help empower his business users to create their own apps and remove their requests from his team’s queue.
