According to Gartner, low-code is expected to increase its share in application development activity to 65%, with an estimated 75% of large organizations utilizing multiple low-code development tools by 2024. While it is easy to understand the benefits of low-code platforms, implementing them at the organizational level often leads to confusion. In this article we will look at 3 tips for a successful low-code implementation in your organization.
Forecast Platform Scalability
There are many low-code platforms to choose from but not all are created equal. Organizations largely make the leap to platforms that offer low-code development capabilities to enable growth. For this to happen, they must choose feature-rich low-code platforms that cater to both non-technical and technical users.
Non-technical users, so-called “Citizen Developers,” those with little to no coding experience, can easily build applications with user-friendly features like drag-and-drop modelers and point-and-click interface creation. Citizen developers have become a crucial component of modern organizations’ efforts to achieve scalability for several reasons.
First, more organizations than ever are implementing digital technologies. According to a survey of more than 1,000 CIOs conducted by Gartner last year, the “march to digitization is so commonplace today that 40% of global CIOs have reached scale for their digital endeavors, more than doubling the proportion of enterprises from 2018.”
Second, with such widespread adoption of digitalization initiatives IT backlogs have grown even larger. Organizations continue to face severe labor shortages of developers and IT professionals. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment rates for tech professionals sit at just 1.9%, suggesting a tight and competitive labor market.
IT departments with limited resources are under tremendous pressure to advance their organizations’ digital initiatives by building business-critical apps. In fact, according to IDC, by 2023 over 500 million apps will be developed. The best way to meet this growing demand is by relying on citizen developers that leverage powerful low-code platforms to create and implement innovative automation technologies.
Low-code platforms also play a key role in helping technical users to manage their workloads. Developers use low-code technology to automate time-consuming manual coding tasks. This frees them up to focus on the most important aspects of an application, while also overseeing the work of non-technical users.
In addition to empowering both citizen developers and professionals, quality low-code platforms offer other features to support scalability. These features are built into the platform and do not require a significant time commitment to figure out. For example, the ability to seamlessly integrate third-party applications is critical. ProcessMaker’s open low-code platform makes it easy to integrate third-party systems through APIs, or to leverage robotic process automation and business rules to enable business process automation.
Select the Most Obvious Repetitive Tasks First
A McKinsey report that examined automation in the workplace found that “49 percent of the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy have the potential to be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technology. While less than 5 percent of occupations can be fully automated, about 60 percent have at least 30 percent of activities that can technically be automated.”
Tasks that are generally not ideal for automation are those requiring high levels of human creativity and decision-making. Organizations should start automating the easiest and most obvious repetitive tasks. For example, employees often spend a good portion of their days corresponding with customers and vendors. With a low-code platform, an organization can automate email communication using autoresponders as well as integrate their CRM system.
Automating basic tasks allows employees to focus more time on performing high-value tasks. Organizations can gradually expand their automation initiatives, including more complex processes.
Identify the Organization’s Key Citizen Developers
We mentioned the important role that citizen developers will play in helping organizations to achieve digital transformation. Yet a successful low-code implementation requires that stakeholders clearly define key roles and identify the citizen developers that will fill those roles. Moreover, organizations must align business and IT – citizen developer governance plays an important role to innovate while IT oversees the process, handling things like infrastructure, maintenance, and scalability.
Citizen developers tend to be digital natives, those that grew up with technology and understand its value. They possess some level of technical skills, or at least have the ability to use low-code tools without requiring extensive training. Most importantly, citizen developers have process knowledge. They know how a business process works, its shortcomings, and how it can be improved. Thus, unlike traditional developers, citizen developers can build with the organization in mind.
With low-code platforms business processes are improved, the strain on IT teams alleviated, and organizations can achieve scalability within a cost-effective and secure environment. Countless organizations rely on ProcessMaker’s industry leading business process management (BPM) software to successfully implement low-code within their organizations.
