The digital landscape is shifting faster than ever, demanding businesses stay agile and responsive. Continuous innovation is the key to holding a viable position-technologies rigorously making incremental improvements now poses catalysts for industry-wide changes.
In this digital landscape, as a development solution, democratising app development and offering significant advantages over traditional solutions, No Code and Low Code (NC/LC) Development is projected to account for 65% of new business application development by 2025.
Let’s grasp the potential of NC/LC Development as I cover how it facilitates the start of new businesses, drives growth for established enterprises, interplays with AI and Data Science, and its impact on the industry.
Breaking Free From Code Dependency
Traditional software building relies on finding the right solution suited to the specific needs of businesses. Thus, the high barrier of entry into coding creates a bottleneck. NC/LC platforms break free from this dependency by providing visual interfaces with drag-and-drop functionality and pre-built components.
Taking the example of how Unico Connect provides Nocode services, we use Xano and Airtable for the backend, WeWeb, Webflow, Bubble, Retool for frontend, and FlutterFlow, Adalo and BravoStudio for mobile.
Even integration with legacy systems and payment systems, where you need to manage data integration using Excel sheets through SFTP servers, are offered as enterprise solutions on NC/LC platforms.
Businesses can also choose to build an IT department, but it requires investment in building tech infrastructure and acquiring skilled developers during a growing tech talent shortage or outsourcing the development process and losing control and participation- becoming reliant on service providers for maintenance and updates.
NC/LC development dramatically reduces the tech infrastructure requirement, development and deployment time, maintenance downtimes, troubleshooting lag, complexity of hyper-automation, and more, reducing the gap between planning and realisation for new businesses.
Thus, the outlook on new businesses adopting No Code and Low Code development is highly optimistic and could generate $180 Bn in revenue by 2030.
Boosting Productivity, Efficiency And Innovation
NC/LC development simplifies the development process for enterprises, reducing expenses and freeing up resources to boost productivity.
The range of solutions available with NC/LC platforms is vast- web applications, SaaS applications, chat assistants, and more. These are seamless integrations that do not create hiccups in the functioning of the business, and the need for skilled developers is minimal.
Most functions deploy with simple drag-and-drop action, and the visual interface makes it easy to define triggers and actions to automate workflows, minimising inefficiencies and streamlining operations.
With NC/LC, development timelines are reduced to a fraction of the conventional development process, which often takes months from conception to launch. The modular approach, readily available templates, and rapid deployment capabilities allow businesses to iterate quickly, test new ideas, and bring apps to market faster, outpacing businesses using traditional stacks.
In one such case, Unico Connect worked with a bulk payment platform that allowed multiple large corporations to make payments seamlessly. The client, in their initial versions, was manually processing through Excel sheets and had a large operation team to perform this activity.
Payments were failing, errors were persistent, and the reconciliation was difficult. Unico brought a structured approach to this problem, where we created different views and workflows- depending on the state of payment and the enterprise, and we were able to scale from 1000 transactions a day to 50,000 transactions a day using Xano as a scalable backend.
Improved Security, Scaling & DevOps
Traditional development carries the risk of costly errors and miscalculations late in the development cycle. NC/LC mitigates this risk by allowing rapid prototyping and iterative development. NC/LC platforms are security solutions for enterprises as they comply with industry-specific regulations and standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC2.
Many platforms also provide additional security mechanisms such as RBAC, PCI DSS, Penetration Testing, and User data security out of the box.
Flexibility, scalability, speed, and automation are the factors that make a business more efficient and productive. Once deployed, NC/LC systems are easy to scale, update, and maintain; the platforms provide built-in analytic tools for real-time data and detailed reports and can realistically pivot the application to different purposes without incurring heavy development expenses.
A chunk of the work of developers is building and working with the pipelines and tools to be integrated and maintained across the development projects. NC/LC quickly deploys pipelines and reduces the troubleshooting time with end-to-end logging. In an ecommerce setting, traditionally, you can develop sites using Shopify.
In one application, Unico used Shopify headless CMS along with Webflow & Wized, as once the business scales, you need customisation, animation, and improved user experience.
NC/LC tools also help developers produce proof-of-concept quickly, streamlining the testing and approval of ideas before the full-scale development. And with no requirement for programming knowledge, the basic development tasks can be taken by non-devs in the organisation.
Citizen developers with deep domain expertise can translate their knowledge into functional applications- solving problems directly, streamlining workflows, and automating tasks without relying on the IT department, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.
Data Science And AI With LC/NC Development
The data analysis paradigm is shifting, with Data Science and NC/LC development converging to unlock new possibilities. With NC/LC tools, citizen data scientists and business analysts explore data without coding barriers.
This democratisation unlocks hidden insights, speeds up analysis cycles, and fosters data-driven decisions across departments. Thus, NC/LC acts as a bridge, allowing more people to participate in the data revolution, leading to a future where data insights are not just the domain of the few but a powerful tool for all.
The interplay of AI with NC/LC platforms makes the visualisation of data and reports an automated and seamless feature. In most enterprises, NC/LC applications automate and digitise operational activities.
In these applications, the ability to generate a visualisation of real-time data based on the user’s specific criteria is a game-changer feature that the management can use to make rapid optimisations.
Impact On The Industry
The growing use of NC/LC development solutions has made modernisation and automation standards, lowered time-to-market, and moved the focus on enhancing user experience.
With the mixing of visual development and hand coding accessible to everyone, these platforms also encourage experimentation and innovation and have decreased the skill and communication gap between pro-code developers and others.
NC/LC adds momentum to the citizen developers phenomenon, letting people of more diverse backgrounds, with expertise in different fields and unique ideas, participate and grow the pool of experience, perspective, and resources available.
These platforms are helping make innovations and technological advancements accessible to a larger audience, diversifying the IT community.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, No Code/ Low Code development platforms are not just technological tools; they represent a fundamental shift in how we approach software development.
By empowering citizen developers, accelerating innovation, and reducing costs, these platforms offer a compelling alternative to the traditional stack.
As businesses increasingly grapple with the demands of the digital age, No Code/Low Code development is poised to become the cornerstone of agile and responsive software development.
The future of development is code-agnostic, and businesses that embrace this shift will be the ones shaping the digital landscape of tomorrow.
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