By Greg Belkin, Senior Director, Product Marketing
Believe the hype! Building low-code applications was a top priority for 85% of organizations this year.
Exploring the use of low-code application development platforms is very trendy right now.
Why?
Businesses today are under enormous pressure to drive digital transformation and operate with greater efficiency. But they often lack the internal resources, time, and bandwidth to execute strategies that move the automation needle.
Low-code and no-code application development platforms have emerged as a key solution, enabling both non-IT and IT executives to build their own business apps without coding experience, while, at the same time, ensuring they adhere to corporate security and governance protocols. This reduces the burden on IT teams, giving them more time to address other critical projects and drive innovation.
Yet the question remains: with the promise of a reduced burden on IT and the empowerment of citizen developers to get things done faster, how willing are organizations to embrace this technology?
To answer that question, we conducted a survey to determine how low-code application development is being viewed, adopted, and prioritized for both IT and line of business (LOB) users.
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3 key takeaways about low-code application development in 2023
After surveying more than 100 executives across IT, marketing, and human resources in North America, we arrived at three key findings regarding low-code tools and their impact on organizations who adopt them:
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85% of survey respondents say that building low-code applications is a top organizational priority
Low-code app development is a critical priority for the majority (85%) of today’s organizations. A number of different factors are driving this perceived need, such as the growing desire to build an effective automation strategy, concern around the growth of unauthorized applications on desktops and mobile devices, and a genuine need to solve organizational integration challenges without significant IT engagement.
It’s noteworthy that such a high percentage of respondents agree on the need to develop low-code applications; especially given the fact that low-code technology is only a decade or so old.
These findings confirm that most organizations are incorporating low-code app development as a key part of their ongoing automation strategy — a critical long-term journey that joins other technologies such as RPA, AI, IoT, mobile, blockchain and web 3.0.
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66% of all respondents are comfortable with non-IT employees building low-code applications
Considering that low-code platforms are both relatively new and also require a partial shift in control from IT to citizen developers, this is a positive sign for the continual adoption of these app development tools.
Not surprisingly, however, the comfort with low code platforms is more muted among IT executives (51%) than it is for marketing (72%) and HR executives (75%). LOB and citizen developers in these departments are under pressure to solve challenges quickly, and look to low-code solutions to help them do so. However, the gap between IT, marketing, and HR executives in overall comfort with LCAP tools is only 21% and 24% respectively, which will likely continue to dissipate as these tools grow in popularity and adoption.
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89% of HR and 87% of marketing executives consider it to be a priority to build, deploy, or maintain low-code applications to accelerate key initiatives
HR and marketing executives clearly see low-code application development as a high priority. This is not surprising, given that the average HR organization utilizes between nine and 11 different HR-related applications per year to manage crucial employee data. Plus, marketing organizations report having as many as 120 systems and tools in their tech stack. Both of these departments are under considerable pressure to meet and exceed their goals, and must find ways of being successful without being overly dependent on other departments, such as IT.
Findings from the survey also showed that 65% of HR and 56% of marketing leaders feel that the application development burden sits between their department and IT. Less than half of both HR (40%) and marketing (44%) believe that central IT manages this responsibility on their own. This finding shows us that HR and marketing departments are still significantly reliant on IT to oversee the rapidly increasing need for data sharing across applications — yet they may feel isolated when it comes to ensuring that department data is properly shared between multiple relevant applications. Low-code application platforms are an IT-safeguarded solution that help HR and marketing departments share data between systems, collaborate with greater efficiency, and solve their critical issues faster.
What’s next for low-code application development?
As the business world continues to evolve, especially with the explosion of AI and its ability to transform business processes and software development, low-code application development will play an even bigger role in accelerating automation initiatives.
In fact, artificial intelligence is one of the most promising developments for the low-code development space. As AI is further integrated into low-code platforms, it can be harnessed to build apps using natural language or bots – making it even simpler and faster to automate business processes.
Today’s automation-driven world is driving organizations to actively seek savvy, budget-friendly solutions to ramp up productivity and enhance operational efficiency. The ongoing evolution of low-code app development tools will be a key to achieving these goals and accelerating digital transformation.
