For the old question “(Why) Should I digitally reinvent my business?" has been replaced by: “How can I step up my digital transformation game?” Given the well-known “brakes” — skills shortages and the inconvenience of using the traditional hand-coding development tools — you legitimately ask yourself: "How can I streamline my core operations to deliver stellar customer experience... at a low cost?” By exploiting the capabilities of a low-code development platform, that's how!
Therefore, here are 3 major impacts of low-code development on your business' digital... reinvention:
- it accelerates the whole development lifecycle (and, implicitly, cuts down costs)
- it automates all the internal business processes involved
- it enables you to make changes in real time (and thus quickly scale to your customers' ever-changing needs)
So, let's dig in:
1. But First: 2 Common Challenges to Digital Transformation
“And what is digital transformation?”
Here's a brief, yet comprehensive definition:
A means of improving the customer experience that you deliver by optimizing your core operations. How? Using the latest digital technologies...
Now, the 2 key challenges to modernizing your legacy systems and streamlining your internal processes for better addressing your customers' needs are:
- the lack of skilled resources: the talent gap will only “sabotage” all digital effort
- the cumbersome traditional development tools: the main cause behind project backlogs
In short: facing a skills shortage in your company and having just hand-coding tools at your disposal — meaning long delivery times and high costs involved — the perspective of digitally reinventing your business is bold, if not impossible...
2. And What Is Low-Code Development More Precisely?
In relation to the efforts of digitally transforming your business, of course...
Low-code development tools use a visual approach to development instead of a coding syntax. The main benefit is that designers/non-technical developers, too, are empowered to contribute to the development process.
This way, you, as the business owner, get to overcome both challenges:
- you'll deliver faster (and boost your team's productivity)
- you'll overcome the “lack of skilled resources” type of obstacle
And where do you add that you'd be cutting down costs, as well.
But here are the 3 main benefits of using low-code development platform... in detail:
3. You'll Shorten Your Development Lifecycle
And it's more than predictable if you come to think of it:
Since non-developers, too, can understand and get involved, directly, in the development process, apps get delivered quicker and new features get implemented faster. Since their UI, too, is significantly more intuitive.
Furthermore, in addition to their visual design format, low-code development platforms provide prebuilt libraries and already stored-in functionality. This way, your development team gets to re-use some of the components and:
- speed up the whole development cycle
- boost productivity
Also, re-using components means a higher level of security.
In short: you'll get your newly built and your newly updated applications up and running in no time.
And that's how you step up your digital transformation game...
4. You Can Make Changes in Real Time
Swiftly updating your applications, adapting them to your customers' changing expectations on the go, is crucial.
And, let's face it: it would be way harder to make changes in due time using one of those rigid (and oftentimes too costly) conventional development tools. Agility is definitely not one of their strengths...
By contrast with these traditional development methods, the low-code development tools enable you to:
- make changes in real time (e.g. implement new operation system models, new... cost structures, if you're running an online store, etc.)
- adapt your apps to users' latest feedback... on the go (agility)
- personalize the customer experience in due time (and here, think omnichannel user experiences, for instance)
5. You'll Streamline Internal Processes
You can't expect to deliver a stellar customer experience (which often times means addressing their pain points and adapting to their changing needs in no time) if your business:
- is still based on some overly complex, time-consuming internal processes
- … and inflexible operating models
Luckily, low-code development platforms are designed to automate precisely those time-consuming business processes within an organization. All it takes is some drag and dropping process modeling.
Your team can leverage existing data and create new processes based on existing ones.
Moreover — a not in the least insignificant detail — low-code development platforms come with built-in security features.
An aspect of particular importance if it's in the healthcare or financial services industry that you operate. For then your internal processes most certainly involve managing infrastructures of sensitive data.
6. Final Word
Do keep in mind that digital transformation is a multi-leveled “game”, with the use of low-code development tools being just one the levels.
They do help you:
- reduce development time
- cut down costs
- empower all the members of your team to get involved in the development process, regardless of their technical expertise|
Yet, they're just a part of a whole ecosystem of approaches and technologies — cloud, mobile, employees' mind-shift — that stands for the solid foundation of a digital transformation strategy.
Do keep that in mind...