Low code app development and the adoption of low code development technologies has grown on the back of the surge in remote development brought upon by a variety of factors that caused many businesses, small and large, to re-consider their operational strategies in the current climate.
While low code application development is not new, the overall industry, market and range of low code development tools has been growing rapidly. According to market research and advisory firm Gartner, low code application platforms are expected to remain the largest component of the low code development technology market through 2022, increasing nearly 30% from 2020 to reach $5.8 billion in 2021.
With the increased exposure being attributed to ‘digital transformation’ many businesses are experincing increasing demand to deliver innovative technology solutions, faster and with a rapid ‘Time to Value’.
Low code technology has increased exposure to technology across the organisational spectrum, driving a surge in ‘business technologists’ and ‘citizen developers’, who want to create and execute their own ideas, to drive more automation across business applications and workflows.
Low code app development can help enterprise developers to create valuable micro-solutions faster while driving value to the broader business objectives.
Low code solutions for small businesses, through to medium and large size enterprises also have the opportunity to deliver benefits from low code technology which will allow them to automate manual tasks that deliver immediate efficiencies to their business while building a whole-of-business platform that will facilitate future growth
When understanding the power of low code app development, it is important to understand the difference between low code app development and no-code app development.
No-Code Apps – A no-code app builder is really as simple as its name suggests — it is development software that allows users to create apps without needing to understand how to write code. No-Code Apps are ideal for people without coding experience and this type of development helps anyone create fully functional apps via a simple visual editor.
Low-Code Apps – A low-code development platform refers to an app development platform that allows you to create business and mobile apps with little to no coding skills. They use a graphical UI with minimal logic and drag and drop capabilities instead of writing extensive lines of code. Low-code app builders add extensibility that allows for more flexibility and customisation, when compared to a no-code app builder.
Whether you are choosing low code apps or no-code apps for your business, it is important to understand your objectives and make sure that you are choosing the right technology solution for your business, both now and in the future.
Traditional software development, requiring developers to write individual lines of code that is organised into functional routines and modules that provide the features and functionality of the software.
Code-driven software development requires the programmer to have a wide range of knowledge across the software development spectrum including software development languages, development environments, compilers, testing and deployment tools, along with the various policies and practices used to handle coding, testing and deployment.
In comparison, low code platforms usually allow users to select from a range of reusable functionality components using a drag-and-drop visual interface with much of the programming needed to create the software encapsulate in the back end.
Using the low code visual interface, users can easily add, move or delete functional components in order to develop the process flow. Once the low code app is created, the low code platforms also support testing and deployment.
Low code technology can enable an enterprise to deliver a range of micro-solutions faster and for less money.
There are still many projects that require functions and operations that do not easily fit into the low code approach, where the amount of work to create and modify the low code platform to meet those requirements, cannot be justified.
Low code solutions can simplify and accelerate many everyday business programming tasks; however low code is not intended to eliminate all coding. Many low code platforms still require some basic programming knowledge to either modify existing functional components or to create new custom functions.
No-code systems aim to provide all the intended function and features, eliminating any need to add or modify components, meaning that users need no knowledge of application design or programming.
No-code platforms are usually considered to be the more user-friendly, easy-to-use subset of low code solutions.
If the technology and business use case align the business goals with enterprise requirements then there are a range of common low code applications that could be implemented within the enterprise including:
- MVP Apps
- Startup Business Apps
- Business Systems
- Business Processes Improvement
- Micro-Service Apps
- iOT-Based Apps
- Web Portals
There are a wide range of low code tools and platforms available, and the market continues to evolve. Businesses can choose from various cloud-native and third-party low code platforms for uses that range from simple websites and mobile apps to enterprise-class application development.
Businesses should evaluate the specific capabilities of the low code platform before commencing to ensure that packaged models, functionality and components align with the project objectives with a minimal amount of customisation required.
There are a range of ways to develop low code apps for your business and most depend on your objectives and budget.
Some companies choose to increase their low code development capacity in-house or recruit new low code employees to join their company.
Others looking to develop low code apps for business improvement, choose to up-skill current employees who are familiar with the underlying business processes and train their own citizen developer team in-house.
Many businesses realise that the cost of initial implementation and low code infrastructure management is best left to a low code platform integration specialist who can work with your employees to develop a foundation low code platform that your own internal citizen developer team can enhance further using their own experience within your business.
We hope to have provide an informative perspective about low code app development for businesses, small and large.
However, we appreciate that there are a lot of moving parts and it’s not as simple as saying ‘make my business smarter’.
If you are searching for a low code app development company, or are simply interested to explore how low code software and business automation can help your company, talk to us about your digital transformation options and how low code app development can help your business increase efficiency, decrease costs and increase profitability through partnering with a low code software development company.
The cost to develop a low code app is difficult to estimate due to the wide range of options that are available when choosing a low code development platform and the level of complexity involved in creating a low code solution.
Some businesses are starting out and automating their first business process, which provides a lot of freedom to select the solution for your business and create a suitable data model to ensure your data will be available as you further develop low code solutions for your business.
Other businesses may already have data in a legacy database or in the database of a paid app that has been used and isn’t meeting expectations or capable of handling future growth. This requires consideration around how the data is stored and how it can effectively be migrated into a new system or attached to a low code app using APIs.
The requirements will ultimately determine how much it costs to develop a low code app, however the opportunity to integrate future technology combined with a rapid return on investment, in many cases, often ensure low code development projects pay for themselves quickly.
Defining the best low code app development platform is an almost impossible task. There are so many different variables that would need to be considered that the end result is simply that people will continue to debate which low code app builder is best, based on their own requirements…which is exactly what we would recommend you to do. Every project is different and every requirement should be assessed on its merits at the time.
As to the question of which low code app development platform we prefer, then this is a simple answer for us here at App Consultants, with that being we believe the Microsoft Power Platform is developing into what will become a market leading low code solution allowing businesses of all sizes to implement a full Power Platform solution or integrate the required functionality as a part of a larger enterprise initiative that may involve multiple low code platforms throughout different parts of the business.
However, for new businesses who do not already have an established infrastructure in place, that may be using a monthly paid app that isn’t living up to expectations, or others who realise that the digital transformation is happening and they need to get on board or be left behind, and with the opportunity to choose a software solution to run your business and meet your needs, now and in the future, then we recommend the Microsoft Power Platform as one of the best choice for starting your digital transformation journey.
The Microsoft Power Platform offers the ability to automate routine processes to become more agile in a hybrid work world where it is possible to analyse data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents that will help your digital business transformation.
The Microsoft Power Platform is more than the sum of its parts, connect the parts of the Power Platform together with integrations to hundreds of other apps to build end-to-end business solutions.
The Microsoft Power Platform is comprised of 4 key components:
Make informed, confident business decisions by putting data-driven insights into everyone’s hands.
Find clarity when you need it most by empowering team members to discover insights hidden in your data with Microsoft Power BI.
Create a data-driven culture with business intelligence that can enable everyone at every level of your organisation to make confident decisions using up-to-the-minute analytics.
Self Service Analytics – Get self-service analytics at enterprise scale and reduce the added costs, complexity, and security risks from multiple solutions by using an analytics platform that can scale from individuals through the entire organisation.
Smart Tools – Use smart tools for strong results. Find and share meaningful data insights using hundreds of data visualizations, built-in AI capabilities, tight Excel integration, and prebuilt and custom data connectors.
Data Security – Help protect your analytics data and keep your data secure with industry-leading data security capabilities including sensitivity labelling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring.
Achieve powerful results from your data!
Turn ideas into organisational solutions by enabling everyone to build custom apps that solve business challenges.
The world needs great solutions. Quickly build and share low-code apps with Microsoft Power Apps.
Build professional-grade apps the easy way and increase agility across your organisation by rapidly building low-code apps that modernise processes and solve tough challenges.
Get started quickly – Empower your team to start building and launching apps right away using prebuilt templates, drag-and-drop simplicity, and quick deployment—then roll out continuous improvements as needed.
Build apps without compromises – Give everyone the power to build the apps they need with advanced functionality previously only available to professional developers — including pre-built AI components.
Enable extensibility for developers – Provide professional developers the tools to seamlessly extend app capabilities with custom connectors to proprietary or on-premises systems.
Boost business productivity to get more done by giving everyone the ability to automate organisational processes.
Take care of the most important functions in your business and automate the rest by streamlining repetitive tasks and paperless processes with Microsoft Power Automate so that you can focus your attention where it’s needed most.
Automate quickly and more securely – Empower everyone to build automated processes with flows in Power Automate while using low code, drag-and-drop tools and hundreds of prebuilt connectors that automate repetitive, mundane tasks with ease.
Boost efficiency – Record and visualise your end-to-end processes with process advisor functionality that provides guided recommendations for creating flows and deep insights that take the guesswork out of what to automate.
Enhance workflows with AI – Make your automation even smarter with the Power AI Builder which could allow you to quickly process forms using document automation, process approvals, detect images and text, or create with prebuilt models.
Automate anywhere. Anytime. You can expand your automation capabilities across desktop, web, and mobile with Power Automate apps.
Easily build chatbots to engage conversationally with your customers and employees—no coding required.
Empower everyone to easily build intelligent chatbots that can respond rapidly to your customer and employee needs — at scale — using intelligent chatbots built with Power Virtual Agents that require no coding at all.
Build the extra help you need by quickly creating sophisticated, AI-powered chatbots that can resolve common issues and answer questions 24/7.
Easily create your own chatbots – Create and manage powerful chatbots without the need for code or AI expertise using an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Take action – Easily integrate your chatbots with the products and services you use every day. Look up records, personalise conversations, hand off conversations to live agents, and call APIs. Choose from hundreds of prebuilt connectors, build custom workflows using Power Automate, or create complex scenarios with Microsoft Bot Framework.
Build smarter bots – Get suggestions on which topics to build, create rich, personalised conversations using natural language understanding and entity extraction, and monitor and improve your chatbot’s performance using AI and data-driven insights.
Transform how your business engages with employees. Give them the tools to easily build chatbots and quickly automate frequently asked questions and common business processes.