No-code: The future of enterprise software

How no-code can help companies provide hyper-personalized experiences for their customers

As we move into the future, expand our horizons and develop new ways of delivering value to customers, the tools and approaches we use will change over time. In the past, large and mid-size enterprises used to rely on their IT organizations to provide them with business applications and help with automating processes and operations. Now, as IT project backlogs have significantly increased, the traditional way of managing digital transformation and deploying software is unable to keep pace with ever-growing customer needs and expectations.

With customers in all key industries expecting hyperpersonalized and accessible service, with the ability to innovate becoming “business as usual” practice, organizations must find a better way to deliver on automation projects. It is no surprise that low-code/no-code have been among the most disruptive technological trends for 2021-2022, representing a new business paradigm that can increase organizational capacity and provide a competitive edge.

The promise of no-code lies in its ability to enable non-technical people, so-called citizen developers, to develop and deploy business applications without deep technical skills. Democratization of software is coming and it is important to get it right.

The key benefits of low-code/no-code tools include the ability to resolve IT resources hurdles, accelerate the development cycle and improve time-to-market. Organizations that adopt such an approach can reduce the tactical dependency of IT for development, boost collaboration internally and empower business users to deliver process automation on their own.

According to the recent report from Creatio, The state of low-code/no-code 2021 , respondents from our survey indicated that the top two reasons for utilizing low-code/no-code tools were their ability to accelerate time-to-market and reduce applications development costs.

Constantin Mares, executive director of an OTP bank subsidiary and user of Creatio, who spoke at our Low-Code Marathon in June 2021, said: “The new approach helped us rethink the way we go to market. We have increased the self-sufficiency of the team and now are able to deploy applications faster than ever before. We have changed as an organization and we are not going back.”

Gartner’s research supports this view, with 50 per cent of medium-to-large enterprises revealing they will adopt a low-code approach in some form by 2023. It is evident that low-code/no-code companies are becoming the norm.

What is even more exciting is that these benefits are realized by all parties involved, IT, operations and business teams. Each category can find its own reason to invest in citizen development and new technology. Despite some concerns that IT would not support the new approach, we see more and more forward-thinking technology leaders encouraging business teams to take control of their automation projects and build strong partnerships with IT.

Such an approach allows IT to repurpose its resources, increase collaboration with business and drive innovations. Of course, IT professionals need to provide the needed support to govern, integrate and administer such applications to make sure they comply with the company’s standards and procedures.

The benefits to business teams are also evident, as they gain more freedom and the ability to inherit critical capabilities immediately, without the struggle of going through a painful change request process. Any business user can become a software creator without spending years learning how to code. More importantly, they can apply these skills to make their job more intelligent and automated, freeing up more time for creativity and meaningful tasks.

Operational leaders, as big-picture thinkers, would find incredible potential in driving excellence and process improvement. When process automation becomes as easy as drawing a diagram, you can better connect teams, remove bottlenecks and deliver a lot of value to your internal clients. There is always a sophisticated process behind excellent customer experience but now, creating these sophisticated processes becomes much easier and a fun task to tackle.

As the effect of no-code solutions begins to snowball, enterprise technology stacks will become increasingly composable, meaning knowledge workers of any company can combine “building blocks” of software without a need for formal training or technical experience.

This way, they are not reinventing the wheel, but are rather using ready-to-go capabilities and positioning them in the right order. Composability is a fundamental part of the no-code approach and is a great enabler for efficient and frictionless development. As such, low-code/no-code tools can greatly accelerate software development up to 10 times, according to Forrester .

Hopefully, you are convinced that no-code is a new way of automation and thinking. Gartner found that 65 per cent of enterprise software will be built on top of such platforms by 2024. I strongly believe this will help organizations create no-code companies and deliver more value to their customers, partners and employees. It is definitely the enterprise market disruption we are seeing and Creatio is thrilled to play a significant part in this market change.

This article originally appeared in the PEX Report 2022 .