Every company strives to automate, simplify, and cheapen business processes, as well as quickly launch its product to the market without losing quality. It seems like no-code and low-code solutions are able to provide businesses with those opportunities. Let’s find out if it’s true and how can they do it?
Programming without code technology appeared in the USA several years ago and immediately became popular. Forrester predicts that 75% of applications will be built using no-code and low-code platforms this year, rising from 44% in 2020. Gartner expects the global low-code development platform market to reach $13.8 billion in 2021, up 22.6% from the previous year. Why did these solutions boom the market and which benefits do they offer?
No-code vs. Low-code: What’s the Difference?
No-code represents an intuitive and simple interface that allows people without a technical background to create custom web applications. This means that you can use visual development tools to build various solutions without coding. You don’t need to be a professional developer to make the necessary changes to the system, customize it, or create applications using drag-and-drop, adding different components to develop an app or website. These platforms are widely employed to integrate services, receive payments, create reports and dashboards, analyze and process data, distribute newsletters, and much more.
Low-code platforms also allow you to employ visual modeling tools and simple scripts to build websites, create applications, and solve other common problems without involving software engineers. You don’t need any special programming skills to develop apps, modules, and widgets as an independent product or part of a software platform with the help of low codes. The only difference is that low-code allows you to create a more scalable and flexible architecture compared to no-code solutions because you need to code here.
No-code suits non-tech persons. This approach allows non-programmers to create IT products and automate their development. The biggest advantage of no-code platforms is that they require very little training, so anyone can build business applications quickly. Companies usually apply no-code platforms to test new product ideas, implement small projects, simplify their operation processes, and customize corporate software.
Low-code, in turn, is more suitable for developers or persons with minimal programming knowledge. This approach eases the development process. Business users can expand their opportunities by creating useful and thoughtful applications under the guidance of IT specialists. Professional developers will be able to work faster and more efficiently because using visual modeling tools keeps manual coding to a minimum.
No-code: Use Cases
With no-code apps, companies can automate and streamline their business processes and workflows. For example, Zurich Financial Services, a leading Swiss-based insurance company, used Excel spreadsheets to price their products. The employees had to fill the tables manually, which took a lot of time and effort. The company incorporated the spreadsheets in the no-code app to automate the filling process.
Zurich Financial Services didn’t have to spend millions of dollars to develop a custom solution. Once implemented the no-code platform with visual development tools, they managed to customize it to fit their needs without involving external developers. Thus, the company killed three birds with one stone:
- it continued to work with usual tables;
- it didn’t lose its sensitive data; and
- it didn’t have to train its employees to work with new software.
Also, companies can quickly and easily launch a new product or MVP (minimum viable product) using a no-code approach. Let’s say that you’re working on a new project and would like to understand whether it will be in demand among the population, as well as quickly test its features and functions. Obviously, you don’t want to spend a lot of time and money on hiring an in-house development team or an outsourcing IT company until you know that people gain interest in your product. Using the no-code platform to launch your project will be a cheaper and perfect option for you in this case.
No-code allows businesses to create internal work tools, such as custom CRMs, survey forms, checklists, dashboards, admin panels, collaboration apps, corporate systems, and even mobile apps for their staff. For example, Pfizer employees often used third-party services to send and store information because the corporate internal system was overloaded. This threatened confidential data security. The company created its own internal app store developed on a no-code platform, which solved this issue.
Low-code: Use Cases
EY provided an example of one company that had to process Excel data and PowerPoint reports manually to track the workflow. It was a complex and outdated process. To address this issue, the EY team created a simple, low-code app. If they had done it several years ago, they would have worked on this project for several months. Low code allowed them to develop the app for a couple of weeks and for a little money.
Low-code application development has gained huge popularity in recent years. Gartner considers low-code platforms the most prospective development instruments. According to their data, 65% of business apps will be created using low-code by 2024.
Which Benefits Do No-code and Low-code Platforms Provide?
Cost-saving
It takes a lot of time and money to find a highly skilled and experienced developer. As a rule, recruiters need 43 days to fill a job vacancy, while employing a software engineer in the USA costs from $137K to $173K per year. No-code and low-code platforms allow you to either go without programmers or hire fewer specialists because your employees can do some things by themselves.
Increased productivity and flexibility
No-code and low-code platforms allow your employees to solve a range of their issues on their own without involving programmers. IT personnel, in turn, will be able to perform their tasks quicker without being distracted by other requests. The market requires businesses to react to new demands as quickly as possible.
The conventional integrated development environment doesn’t allow you to change features or functionalities immediately, especially when you don’t know a particular programming language. No-code and low-code approaches offer you flexibility. If you want to change or modify your application, you can do it in several hours.
Increased development speed
Since you don’t need to code or use a minimum of code, developing web applications will take much less time. The use of ready-made modules allows you to create apps without planning architecture, UX/UI analysis, or choosing a development environment. Even the testing process can be automated thanks to CI/CD integration. For example, low-code platforms helped Ricon increase the app development speed three-fold and reach payback within six months.
What Is about Drawbacks?
Sometimes it can be expensive
As above-mentioned, it’s cheaper to use no-code and low-code platforms instead of hiring a team of developers. Nevertheless, no-code and low-code solutions are suitable for small companies. You should understand that when your business expands and the number of your customers grows, you will have to pay higher rates, including payment for automatic sending of offers, service operation, integration with external platforms, etc. Also, you must remember that the platform will not belong to you. Therefore, someday it will become more profitable to develop your own solution from scratch.
For example, the cost of the Mendix license starts at $1875 per app per month if you buy a three-year subscription. The license is limited to 50 internal users. The corporate license starts at $7,825, which is nearly $100,000 per year.
Scalability issues
When your business expands, your solution will require new functions. For example, you’d like to add more products to your online store or connect a delivery service. No-code platforms are an ideal option if you want to test your ideas and business models. If you want to scale your project, it will be better to develop your own platform.
Dependency on platform
You risk losing your business and money when your no-code or low-code provider shuts down. Another issue may be connected with your intention to change your project (e.g., technology, design, etc.), but you won’t be able to do it because you don’t have access to the binary file of the platform.
Limited customization
Since a no-code approach offers you to use templates, you won’t be able to create something unique. Low-code solutions can partially solve this proble m, but they cannot fully replace a development team.
Dmitry Ivanov, Project Manager at Elinext
“I see these technologies more as another hype that PR specialists present as a panacea – no more need for programming. Only the admin panel where you press the buttons and integrate ready-made modules in a few clicks.
Low code and no-code bring no threat to SaaS companies since this direction covers a certain market segment. As a rule, these are small businesses (5-10 people), the companies with pretty simple processes: travel organizations, small real estate offices, etc. Such business will most likely not grow quickly so ready-made solutions (low and no-code) are the best options for them. Integrators sell such ready-made solutions, sell licenses, help with settings, and provide support for a fixed price.
This is not the area we focus on as a SaaS company since the customer initially plans to save on software development. We are more interested in custom development of solutions from scratch. This is the common request from larger companies that are not ready to change their processes for software but want to sharpen the software for their processes.
I don’t think that low code and no-code are simplifications that will degrade software development in the future. The platforms that allow you to implement the no- or lowcode approaches are still written in conventional programming languages.”
Mary Rose Cook, a product engineer at Airtable, believes that those things [low-code and no-code platforms] don’t threaten developer jobs because they actually make the developer more valuable.
Colin Teubner, a director of customer solutions at airSlate, agrees with Ms. Cook. “Developers have more than enough to do. In fact, there’s a huge shortage of them,” he said.
“So, we’re not really talking about firing developers and replacing them with [non-technical employees] and no-code tools. We’re just freeing them up to work on things that only developers can do.”
John Bratincevic, an analyst at Forrester, advises people not to confuse ‘no code’ with ‘no work.’ He said:
“Prescriptive low-code vendors promising solution delivery without any coding are promoting quicker solution delivery and evolution as well as potentially reduced technical debt. They’re not promising that business experts can deliver substantial projects without attention to good development and delivery practices. Discipline still matters.”
Wrapping Up
The popularity of no-code and low-code platforms has become so high that some people began to fear that they will replace programmers soon. If accountants, marketers, and managers can build apps by themselves, there is no point in maintaining a development team. TechRepublic revealed that almost 60% of applications have already been created outside IT departments.
However, market participants are sure that developers can sleep with a calm mind – their jobs are not threatened in any way. No-code and low-code solutions offer businesses a lot of benefits. They can help to overcome the shortage of specialists, non-tech specialists to develop and launch a small project, test a new idea or startup, understand market requirements, streamline workflows, and improve internal instruments. But if you need a complex and unique product, you won’t be able to do it without the help of highly skilled and experienced professionals.
