By Zunder Lekshmanan, Chief Technology Officer, OpenTurf
Low code is emerging as a core strategic capability for organizations as this software development approach equips organizations to deliver enriched customer experiences.
Even a cursory look at numbers is good enough to realize the fast-growing prominence of the low-code development approach in today’s business environment. The $14Bn strong category will touch a market cap of $187Bn by 2032 with an enviable CAGR of 29.5% between 2022 and 2030. What makes the growth of low code philosophy even more impressive is its holistic growth across business categories. From financial technology to the manufacturing industry to service domains, organisations cutting across industries are using a low code approach for designing, developing, and implementing mission-critical solutions. The development philosophy has made a transition from being a crisis technology in the past to the core technology of the present. Now how this transmission has happened, what fueled these changes, and what are significant trends we are likely to witness in the future: here’s the complete lowdown:
1) Digital Revolution: Covid-19 has proved a blessing in disguise for the digitization of businesses. The pandemic flipped the business world upside down and made switching to digital mode a prerequisite for survival. Today, it has become critical to digitise operations and develop virtual touchpoints to deliver better service experiences to customers. Low code development is proving instrumental in this digital transformation and by helping firms design, develop, and integrate digital strategies without considerable investment, the approach is heralding a sea change in the ways business is today conducted across the globe.
2) Changing Priorities: The shift in the priorities both on customer and business fronts is also helping low code development to spread its wings across product categories and service domains. The new-age business realities are focused on achieving collaboration, enhancing productivity, and building reputations of brands among customers, all of which is far cry from the preferences businesses used to have in the past. Customers have also come of age and now focussed more on Value Triad made up of Quality, Service, and Price. To effectively meet all these challenges, an increasing number of companies are using low-code platforms and taking the help of this quick and agile development perspective to come up with new-age interaction platforms, enterprise-grade security solutions, and agile business models.
3) Enriched Customer experiences: The concept of superior value delivery continues to remain at the heart of achieving competitive advantage in the market. Low-code platforms can help organisations deliver superior value by overhauling legacy systems, offering customisable templates, and facilitating the use of AI, ML, and automation in business processes. Also, the enormous savings in cost, time, and effort that low code philosophy brings to the table make this perspective a core strategic tool for companies to emerge as a sure-shot winner even amidst intensified competition.
4) Wide Scope: Contrary to the initial trends, the demand for low-code development platforms is now growing exponentially in the manufacturing and production sectors. Segments of production engineering, quality control, and product design have become new avenues of growth for low-code platforms. Besides offering quick development capabilities, low code platforms are also helping manufacturers to collaborate across stakeholders in their value chains and come up with Holistic Value Propositions for the target market. Low code development is emerging as a preferred template to bridge the gap between information technology and operational technology of firms.
5) Automated Solutions: One of the primary thrust areas of low code development is automating the functional procedures and operational mechanisms in firms. It’s also used to lower the level of manual intervention where a complete decoupling from manual inputs is not possible. Once automated, companies can achieve a significant improvement in their process efficiency and procedural mechanisms. Besides, a low code approach can be used to develop personalized solutions and help in achieving the desired level of customization as per the specific tastes and preferences of customers. The technology used by the low-code platforms also makes them a handy solution for the reconfiguration process.
6) Public Sector Services: The rising prominence of low code of development is extending to the public sector too. Especially to counter the challenges of cyber attacks, low code platforms can play an important role in designing and developing robust enterprise-grade security architecture to offer superior protection against malware, firmware, and ransomware attacks. No wonder, government organisations, statutory companies, and regulatory bodies are utilizing low code development to keep up the pace with technology changes and remain ahead in the innovation curve.
A note of caution: The application of the low-code approach is situation-specific and before its implementation, it’s recommended to evaluate priorities and use cases where this development perspective fits in. In sum, organizations need to strike a balance between choosing the low-code approach and legacy systems as both outlooks are applicable in specific cases and come with their own set of merits as well as disadvantages.
