The Complete Guide to Low-Code Application Development

Learn more about low-code application development, with tips for vendor selection and how to get started. 

Low-code application development platforms are an integral part of digital transformation initiatives, enabling organizations to innovate faster, adapt to change, and deliver value to customers and stakeholders in today’s digital age.

There is no one-size-fits-all platform. Adopting multiple solutions is more common than not, and it’s about finding the right tools to solve your business pains.

Let’s embark on this journey together and unleash the full potential of low-code application development.

What is low-code?

Low code is an approach to software development that uses a graphical user interface and pre-built components to design, develop, and deploy applications faster and more efficiently than traditional manual coding. This is particularly appealing to individuals with limited or no programming skills.

What is a low-code application development platform?

Low-code application development platforms (LCAP) are tools that provide guided development pathways with drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built templates, and other visual tools to minimize the amount of code required to build business apps. These platforms simplify and speed up complex development processes, like designing user interfaces, defining business logic, and integrating various components.

With this limitless potential for creation, customization, and automation, companies of all sizes, across all industries, can benefit from using low-code app development tools. Common use cases for low-code app development include:

• Forms / Workflows

• Dashboards / Analytics

• CRM / CMS

• Intranets / Customer Portals

• Inventory Management

• Workforce Management

• Compliance

• Procurement / Transactional

• Multi-Tenant

• Mission Critical

Who can build with low-code?

Low-code platforms enable professional developers and citizen developers (business users with limited programming skills) to rapidly develop and deploy applications. These platforms help address productivity issues, skill shortages, and business project backlogs.

What are the benefits of using a low-code application platform?

Using a low-code development platform offers numerous benefits for organizations of all sizes and industries, including:

• Speed to deployment

  Getting to market faster means earning revenue faster. With ever-changing business conditions and needs, agility is key.

• Cost savings

  Extreme improvement in time to value. Expect an 80% or greater reduction in expensive resources and development timeframes.

• Ease of use

  By eliminating technology barriers for business users, they can contribute ideas and participate in the app development process.

• Risk mitigation

  Businesses can focus on solutions instead of technologies used to build them.

• Flexibility

  Load data faster and start building applications immediately with full flexibility to adjust on the fly.

• Scalability

  Easily accommodate simple apps and robust enterprise-grade solutions.

• Collaboration

  Bridge the gap between business leaders and IT in your organization.

• Accessibility

  Everyone across the organization can contribute to the application development process.

• Training

  Minimal training is required.

• Enhanced integration

  Allows for seamless integration with third-party services, APIs, and legacy systems, enabling businesses to utilize their current infrastructure and data sources.

• Improve governance and compliance

  Organizations can uphold data integrity and safeguard sensitive information through built-in capabilities.

• Improved customer and employee experiences

  Respond to user needs and feedback promptly while delivering a customized experience that promotes engagement.

👉 Click here to learn more about Jitterbit’s low-code application platform

Why is low-code critical for solving business challenges fast?

Want to get ahead of your competitors? Solving both your customers’ and your own business problems quickly and easily, with minimal high-cost resources and time, should be a no-brainer. There’s plenty of competition in the low-code application development platform market, which is anticipated to be worth $86.92 billion by 2027. It’s critical to choose the best solution for your business to succeed and win.

If nothing else, the past few years have taught us businesses need to be agile to react to unforeseen and unprecedented challenges quickly. Enterprises and all businesses alike need to examine opportunities for streamlining operations to remain competitive.

Process automation is key for digital transformation, and even greater benefits exist for businesses that can automate, or even hyperautomate, multiple processes. Turning manual, multi-step workflows into streamlined, automated processes provides measurable results in cost, resource, and time savings. Low-code solutions, like Jitterbit’s low-code application builder, Vinyl, provide the optimal framework to quickly and successfully automate processes across your business.

With the right low-code solution, you can put the foundation in place to solve business needs rapidly by building custom applications.

Where do some low-code platforms fall short?

Although the benefits of using low-code can be limitless, many platforms fall short of delivering the expected results. When selecting a low-code solution, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice complexity and functionality for ease of use.

Security is a key factor to consider when looking at low-code application platforms. Research the platform company’s security policies, and how it applies to their platform. Security should be front and center in any low-code platform, with the ability to scale along with your business needs every step of the way.

Another key factor to consider is whether the platform offers the hosting flexibility to meet your business’ needs. Some providers lock you into their cloud. Vinyl offers flexible options, allowing you to host in our cloud, in your own private cloud, or deploy and host on-premise.

At a minimum, we recommend selecting a platform that offers the following features:

• A predictable, consistent pricing model

• Full integrations to all systems and data sources

• Integrated security standards for users, data, applications, and the platform

• Customer deployment options (on-premise, hosted cloud, or private cloud)

• User-defined workflows with notifications

• Multilingual translation support

• Intuitive visual design tools

• Release management

• Audit logs and monitoring

• Application lifecycle management

• Responsive design

• AI assisted development

The future of low code

The future of low-code app development holds immense promise to transform the way businesses innovate, iterate, and adapt. Here’s a look into what lies ahead:

• • Integration with artificial intelligence (AI): AI coding assistants and AI conversation with app
  • Major focus on platform developer experience: intuitive interfaces, pre-built templates, and pre-built components

• Stronger collaboration tooling for development teams (code branching)
• Improved security and governance
• Better application user experiences across all devices

Why choose Jitterbit’s low-code application builder?

As a leading low-code solution, Jitterbit’s Vinyl simplifies building scalable, end-to-end applications that easily integrate with new and existing systems, including legacy systems. Designed for organizations to solve complex business problems at scale, Vinyl empowers anyone to create fully-integrated, bi-directional applications in weeks. Powerful enough for full stack developers and intuitive enough for citizen developers and business technologists, Vinyl enables you to build secure apps that run on any device, automate any business process, and integrate any data source–no coding required. To learn more about Vinyl, schedule a demo with an expert today.