5 Reasons Low-Code Platform Adoption is Taking Off

Low-code adoption has been steadily rising and is predicted to continue to take over the software development market. Forrester predicts that 75% of application development will use low-code platforms by the end of this year.

A lack of skilled developers and increasing demand for business applications is driving rapid low-code adoption. The pressure is on to keep up with changing market conditions and customer needs whilst keeping costs down, so low-code development platforms have become a must-have for any business striving to improve the efficiency of their operations and stay competitive.

1 – The need for faster application development

Businesses are looking for ways to deliver applications that meet internal and external customer needs fast. Traditional development involves business users going to IT with a business problem and requesting an application to solve it. This approach often results in a lengthy development cycle due to the IT department having to juggle these requests with their day-to-day tasks, plus any other projects they are working on. Additional hours spent on development due to miscommunicated requirements or further improvements to the process can also lengthen the development timeline. While traditional development will always have a place, it is not the solution to the ever-growing software demands of the enterprise.

Low-code development platforms speed up application development as business users can build applications without relying on this level of support from IT. Forrester found that software development can be up to 10 times faster when created in a low-code platform.

2 – The need for agility

Businesses need to be agile enough to respond to changing market conditions: good or bad. New technologies, changing regulations, and ever-evolving customer needs all demand change, and businesses must do so quickly to stay successful.

A low-code platform makes deploying updates and changes to applications quick and easy, enabling businesses to take advantage of market opportunities and tackle threats. Applications are designed with a process model as the foundation, which users can easily make changes to. The changes are immediately reflected in the application, providing agility to adapt and change.

Want to know more about low-code development? Download The Ultimate Guide to Low-Code Automation

3 – The need to lower costs

Reducing costs has a direct, positive impact on business profitability. While increasing revenue often involves incurring additional expenses and takes time to realize the benefits, lowering costs can have a real impact on profitability from the outset.

Adopting a low-code platform helps businesses to lower costs in several ways:

  • Business users can build applications without coding knowledge, so there's no need to hire expensive software developers.

  • Shorter development cycles allow businesses to reduce time to market, so they can see ROI faster.

  • Low-code software typically incurs lower maintenance costs and reduces technical debt.

A Total Economic Impact Study by Forrester found that customers using Bizagi’s low-code platform saw an average ROI of 277%.

4 – The need to integrate

Business processes rely on data from various internal and external systems and integrating these sources is key to gaining real-time visibility of business data for faster and more accurate decision-making.

Low-code platforms allow businesses to integrate legacy systems, ERPs, and other systems simply and securely. This increases data accessibility and efficiency for workers across the enterprise. 

5 - The need to monitor shadow IT

Shadow IT (defined by Gartner as ‘devices, software, and services outside the ownership or control of IT organizations’) is prevalent in many businesses. In a bid to achieve maximum efficiency business users often turn to software products such as project management tools without consulting IT. This approach poses a problem as it opens the organization up to compliance issues and security threats.

Adopting a low-code platform enables trained business users to create applications that will ease their day-to-day workload in a system that has guardrails set and governed by IT. This mitigates risk while still increasing productivity and gives IT visibility over projects and helps collaboration across departments.  increasing visibility and collaboration and mitigating risks.

It's time for Low-Code Platform Adoption

In contrast to traditional development, often a complex and lengthy process, low-code development offers a simpler, faster, and more agile approach enabling business users to build and manage applications that meet their needs and giving IT more time to focus on IT specific tasks and projects.