Richard Knight
Dir Product Offerings, GW Apps
There are many excellent reasons to use a No-Code platform for developing your internal business process applications (Think anything that needs approvals or reviews). Here are a few reasons that our clients have mentioned to us:
1. It is much, much quicker than what they had before
When compared to traditional coding, it really is a dramatic difference. A simple app won’t take more than a few hours to build and a complicated enterprise application will take no more than a few weeks. Even simple traditional development projects tend to start at ‘weeks’ and common apps often take ‘months’. Good No-code platforms enable you to build custom business applications 10x faster than the traditional development. We have built simple custom applications in a working Zoom meeting with clients and had that application in production by the end of the meeting.
2. They were surprised how easy it is to use
Sure, clients buy into No-Code platforms in part because they are supposed to be easy to use, but once they start building many of them find it to be even easier than they imagined. Even the best No-Code platforms have a learning curve to go through in order to deliver production ready apps, but that curve is surprisingly short and shallow in slope. The drag, drop and configure process at the heart of good No-Code tools is intuitive and simple to use, and you never have to learn any programming languages. The same visual approach also means that users can see what they are building in real-time, and so can easily refine, adjust and improve their app as they build.
3. No-code apps are easy to update
It should come as no surprise that No-Code platforms that make building apps easy and quick, will also make updating or fixing them just as simple and rapid. Traditional development usually requires applications to be taken off-line while updates are implemented, and typically involves a small team of IT specialists. With No-Code platforms, updates are automatically implemented by the developer with no additional support.
4. Rapid prototyping leads to better applications
With traditional development, the complexity of the work means that a clear and detailed design needs to be completed before the team can start building. With No-Code you just start building and, as you can build so quickly, you can show multiple iterations of the app to the users and get feedback and new ideas as you build. This quick repeated cycle of build and demo is called rapid prototyping, and is proven to lead to better, more efficient and more user friendly applications. It also fosters an environment of innovation, as you can try things quickly to see which business ideas work and which ones don’t. Better apps, faster and with less risk of missing the mark. Win-win-win: Who doesn’t like that?
5. I can now personally deliver real process automation value
As the No-Code platform does most of the heavy lifting while a user builds an app, a single person can build and deploy even large and complex apps. A citizen developer, or even a professional developer wanting to maximize ROI and project deliveries, is all you need. Your in-house IT expertise can then focus on more important and more complex tasks, and deliver even more value to the organization.
6. CitizenIT is not the same as Shadow IT
Business users need to deliver value to the organization, and if they don’t get the IT solutions they feel they need they will often cobble together a solution from whatever is around them: This is ShadowIT, and it leads to many issues, most notably with security and the inaccessibility of the valuable business data in these unofficial apps. With an official IT implemented No-Code platform you can side-step those issues but still give your business users the freedom they are seeking. As a bonus, the platform will also enable much simpler cross-team collaboration and data sharing.
7. The business can leverage itself
With a good No-Code platform, the employees who truly understand the business issues and goals can now create the required solutions themselves. Also, without the constraints of having to budget for developer expenses, even internal ones, more business issues will get automation solutions.
8. Maintenance, what maintenance
In traditional custom developed software there is usually some form of regular maintenance required. Software patches must be applied to servers to keep them safe and secure, database versions need updating, not to mention backups. In the Software-as-a-Service world of No-Code, there isn’t any maintenance: The platform supplier does it all in the background as part of the subscription fee. As we mentioned before, you don’t even need any support to ‘deploy’ new application updates, you just save the changes and they are deployed.
9. Programming, what programming
Like it says on the label, a No-Code development platform means no code, and so, no programming and no programming languages. You’re welcome. It’s why we’re here.
10. Save a lot of money and yet do more
Budgets are tight the world over, and getting tighter and more closely scrutinized every year. A good No-Code platform will allow you to build more apps, more quickly and for far less money that you would have to budget when using traditional development. Do more, in less time and for less money: Win-win-win number 2.