How No-Code Application Development can drive Digital Transformation for Businesses in 2021

By Gautam Nimmagadda, Founder & CEO, Quixy

The year 2020 will be one of the defining years in human history. As a species, we have faced a once in a century event and were obviously not prepared for it. The way the world has come together to adapt to the disruption and has figured out a way to survive and then excel has come out as a silver lining this year.

Disruptions generally put a spotlight on the weaknesses of policies, systems, process & models. And COVID-19 put many such weaknesses in the spotlight – people and organizations across the world have responded with tactics and mechanisms to overcome the weaknesses. Tactics though generally bring short-term relief, 2021 will be the year where strategies will be put into execution (if not already done) to bring long-term resilience and strength.

What is digital transformation? And why businesses need it?

The reimagining of business in the digital age by using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements is defined as Digital Transformation.

Simply put, digital transformation is NOT using digital technologies for some operational purposes of a business, it IS a full adoption of digital technologies into every part of a business and is a culture of embracing digital as a key part of doing business and not simply as an enabler.

Disruption requires businesses to depart from traditional methods and embrace bold thoughts. The world of business is set for a massive transformation. Speed, agility, innovation & adaptability will be the defining traits of successful businesses in the coming years. Starting with 2021, the new decade’s need for digital transformation has magnified considerably with what with the emerging need for the latest technologies that enable a business to stay relevant and have a competitive standing in this market structure.

It is predicted that every organization’s success will be defined by the speed and magnitude of digital transformation it undergoes over the next decade.

Utilizing digital technologies leads to having the space for innovation in an efficient manner resulting in great stakeholder experiences (customers, employees, partners, suppliers, etc.). According to an industry survey, 67% of consumers will pay more for a great experience. This keeps the business data-driven and moving forward in the new decade.

Adopting digital technologies into all business areas will play an essential role in businesses achieving superior efficiency, innovation, speed, and stakeholder experiences and, therefore superior value creation.

What is no-code?

The traditional path to fast and extensive Digital Transformation is fraught with barriers such as shortage of skills, speed of adoption, prohibitive cost & limited innovation.

A startling prediction has been that while there will be a demand for 500 million apps by 2025, the capacity to fulfill this demand will only be up to 50 million apps. A major reason for this massive difference between demand and supply is the skills required for building apps.

To overcome these barriers and step into an era of real Digital Transformation requires a paradigm shift in building and adopting digital technologies. Enter No-Code & Citizen Development – a new era where non-professional developers are enabled to build software and digital applications at break-neck speeds through sophisticated platforms.

This creates a whole new category of builders called “citizen developers”; which is essentially anybody in an organization who builds digital solutions using no-code tools adopted by the business.

So with the help of no-code, citizen developers can pretty much build any digitalsolution they want. Small enterprises can build custom ERPs inside out, while larger enterprises can fill gaps in their ERP implementations with no-code. One can also build websites, portals, chatbots, or even product prototypes. Possibilities are endless!

How can no-code application development drive digital transformation?

A survey found that 70% of businesses either working on a digital transformation strategy or already have one in place.

Clearly, no-code solves the challenges of speed and cost of digital transformation. The real cherry on the cake is the innovation that no-code brings to the table by democratizing the ability to build digital solutions.

With no-code, Citizen Developers bring their knowledge and ideas and experiment with creating digital solutions. The bottleneck of technical skills is removed, allowing 100X more minds to build digital solutions, which results in multi-fold increase innovation in addition to the advantages of greater speed and lower cost.

No-code allows speed, agility, and adaptability in a business as citizen development is enabled, thus lessening the massive IT backlog (the demand and supply) through easy-to-learn-and-use methods (e.g., a simple drag and drop visual interface to create workflows). It also facilitates super-fast prototyping without overhead expenditure,encouraging and enabling experimentation and, thus, innovation.

There are no-code platforms for various requirements:
– Creating a website is now very simple with platforms like WordPress and Wix.
– Business applications can be created easily using tools like Appian and Quixy.
– Users can create end-to-end e-commerce portals in a matter of hours with platforms like Shopify.
– Bravo Studio allows citizen developers to create native mobile apps from just designs in Figma

There are many more areas of digital solutions citizen developers can build with no-code. By taking coding out of the picture, businesses can transform much faster and at a fraction of the cost.

This year and decade belong to the businesses that can effectively execute digital transformation, and no-code will play a pivotal role in making good on their digital transformation strategies. By the end of 2021, we will see no-code becoming a critical component of many early-mover businesses and industries, bringing them a massive advantage in their business performance.