A Guide to Low-code Development Platforms: Challenges & Opportunities

Less is the new more. Low-code platforms enable accelerated application development through automated tools, reusable out of the box functionalities using module that can be dragged and dropped to develop different solutions, thus breaking down traditional silos. It allows you to deploy a unified workflow to fast-track business outcomes.

Gartner predicts, “By 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.”

As traditional Application or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) dictates, there’s a user-requirements gathering, analysis, systems design, and programming phase. That said, as each of the thousands and sometimes millions of lines of code are written, the emotions run high. It is especially true when complex functions need to be digitized or digitalized.

What is low-code development?

Low-code in simple terms is a development platform that is alternative to the traditional software development and which requires little or no coding to build applications/processes. So, get rid of the extensive coding languages, and drag-and-drop instead.

Companies can introduce automation at every stage of the development lifecycle to accelerate the deployment of applications. Low-code helps in bridging the gap between business and IT, thus speeding up the go-to-market and bringing efficiencies to the enterprise processes.

Harping on the butterfly effect of digital transformation

Described best as – The big impact of small decisions. The term signifies that even a small change can lead to significant disruption. Similarly, any player/team in the organization has the potential to impair an organization’s competitive advantage.

Digitization is going beyond applying new technologies to legacy applications. While innovation is imperative, organizations will have to leverage the digital medium to evolve and attune to the future. To stay relevant, they will have to follow a clear roadmap, embrace risks, and deploy technology to create a well-defined business journey.

With a strong partnership ecosystem consisting of the leaders in Low-Code / No-Code Suites (Pega, OutSystems, Mendix, Appian, IBM BPM, Zoho Creator, etc.), we intend to deliver transformational value to organizations globally, exploiting low-code/no-code business solutions.

To gain more insights, here’s the link to our low-code/no-code services page.

The benefits

Low code development brings three-pronged benefits. The first and the foremost benefit the businesses get is unimagined time-to-market. Developer productivity gets better because of the availability of modular off-the-shelf solutions and the resources like toolkit, components, UI, etc.

Secondly, businesses can do digital transformation at scale by building modular apps across varied workflows with very reasonable investments. The speed and scale of solution deployment bring an even closer business and IT integration and positively impacts agility.

By eliminating the need to code for every function, it standardizes the way the different functions of the application are implemented. It means you are most likely compliant-by-default with most SDLC, Application, and Business Operations Standards.

It also means that change management is simplified, and the number of bugs the team fixes is but a fraction of what it may have been if the function was coded from scratch.

Beyond these obvious benefits lay the core business case in using low-code platforms:

• Prototyping becomes a breeze
• Since it uses a function library, new libraries could be created or purchased, so if you want to implement a function that is not available in your current library, you could pick up a few more items, or choose from a different library and just write the code needed to integrate the function
• It’s extremely modular, meaning your application could be flexible as well – you don’t need to consider multiple phases – it could all be done in one go
• It doesn’t need technical knowledge of programming or programming languages, as most of the code is pre-built into the GUI

Who can build on low-code?

Anyone. Yes, you heard it right. Of course, conditions do apply. It is not as easy as it seems. If you want a complex functionality to be implemented, you’d need to do a certain quantum of code-writing. More importantly, low-code allows business owners, business analysts, process owners, and subject matter experts to become application developers.

That said, in order to keep the digital platform experience relevant and safe, it is important for developers to continuously build creative software solutions and applications. Low-code provides developers libraries and tool boxes to customize and accelerate their app development, build mobile apps or leverage microservices architecture. While the majority of the low-code users are professional developers from enterprise IT departments, low code enables business users with little to no coding background (also known as citizen developers) to build basic productivity apps.

While about 66% of the low code developers are professional developers, according to a Gartner survey, 61% of the organizations mentioned that they have either started or planning to start a citizen developer program.

Applications of low-code

• All Business Process / Workflows Apps (KYC , Risk and compliance, email parsing, clinical trails, STP, Loan Processing, Ticket Booking, Tax Processing, crew management, etc.)
• Complex Mission Critical Applications
• Innovation Apps  (AI, ML, IoT, Augmented Reality) & Multi-Channel Apps (Progressive Web , Chatbot, Social media & Mobile Applications)
• Operational Efficiency Apps (Automate manual / paper-based processes, Data Processing, Employee Mgt & Tracking apps)
• Legacy Migration Apps (Meant to replace legacy apps that can’t support new processes)
• Automating Tasks & Batch Processes (Faster Deployment)

From mobile apps, web portals, applications specific to certain lines of business, right up to microservices, all applications can be built using low-code.

However, the industries where low-code has had a game changing impact both during and after the pandemic are fintechs, banking, insurance, retail and telecom. If you’re a fintech or a bank, then the digital transformation of your legacy systems would help in providing multi-channel onboarding features, secure interfaces, capturing transactions in real-time, faster handling of queries and AI/ML analytics for personalized digital experience. In the insurance and loan space applications with AI/ML it will help calculate the risk value and credit worthiness with customized plans to meet individual needs. In the retail space, digitalization could cater to the needs of having safe interfaces between the shopping site and banks, order management, customized promotions without disrupting the shopping experience. Finally, telecoms could use it for over a spectrum of cases right from adding new revenue streams by creating accelerated time-to-market offers, customized subscriptions, voucher management, e-wallets for mobile banking, and more…

As low-code is so modular and flexible, you won’t need to indulge in a bit of hyperbole to say that the possibilities are endless! These possibilities, in turn, tie into business value.

Business value of low-code development

Having come this far, describing low-code, it almost seems superfluous to crystallize the business value that low-code development platforms bring-

• Significant savings in time-to-market, sometimes as high as 70% of development time
• The ability to rapidly build and test to reduce risks
• Standardized code that allows for an enterprise-wide security posture to be extended to these applications
• Best practices followed by default, as you no longer are the whole-and-sole custodian of the code written

The principles of low-code development

The biggest differentiator of a low-code platform for application development is its ability to put the builder’s role in the hands of the people who really know what needs to be built. Based on this fundamental tenet, you could call out 5, 50, or even 5,000 principles of low-code development. But ultimately, it would boil down to three essential facets.

1. By the user – for the user: Low-code puts the power in the people’s hands allowing them to build and alter as per their convenience. As it is handled by people who know what they want, it increases the probability of getting the entire application ‘First Time Right’.
2. Agile by design: Irrespective of the size or scale of the application, by leveraging low-code, the development can be carried by fewer resources as compared to the traditional SDLC. Adding to this is the built-in modularity of the application. So, however you look at it, you’re staring at an application that looks more like a microservices architecture. Which means, that each application, or application module, or micro application, is designed and developed by the respective subject matter experts. It automatically translates into an agile-ready initiative, thus benefitting from the principles of agile development.
3. Objective-oriented programming: Since this application is developed by the users, they tend to be more tightly coupled to the goal of each process, thus eliminating errors, reducing redundancy, and improving performance. These qualities also make the application lighter, thus more available, less infrastructure intensive, and low maintenance.

Given that the low-code development platforms are industry, application, and typically business process agnostic, the very qualities that make them so effective and flexible, compliant with regulations and statutes such as PCI/DSS, HIPAA, ISO-20000 are not necessarily as simple as drag-and-drop.

However, the power and simplicity of low-code development cannot be ignored. It only needs the application owners and the enterprises alike to take a holistic view of the application security. The risks associated with traditional software development and mitigation plans and approaches can also be applied to low-code applications, thus getting the best of both worlds.