A Guide to Low-Code 

When the world was hit with the Pandemic, companies were stuck with the question – “To survive or To Thrive?”  

Organizations have built complex applications to address their business challenges, they continue to invest millions into large-scale software development and implementation projects that take years of coding and customization.  

With the world going in lighting speed, time-to-market has become most critical, lines and lines of coding is no longer an option – the faster the better is the motto most companies go by currently.  

Digital transformation is hindered with slow development, threatening business agility. What if we tell you there is a way to fast-track the process by ensuring better collaboration between IT and the business, enabling your IT team to develop applications faster with little to no coding which is easier to maintain going forward?  

The world of Low-Code is the way forward!  

Low-code is a platform that allows for a faster way to build, deploy and manage business applications, becoming the go-to solution for digital transformation. Low-code allows for rapid development of applications, it’s quick to deploy and can be easy to manage and enhanced to create a real buzz around Low-code. 

What is Low-Code Application Development?  

Low-code application development equips you with a flexible design space that translates into scalable applications which easily is understandable by businesses. Applications are built with the help of drag and drop features, process modelers, and out-of-the-box integration that can be commonly used in both enterprise applications and cloud services and single-click deployments. It follows a mobile-first approach – giving you a modern and responsive user experience.  

Characteristics of the Low-Code Platform –  

It improves the application development process with minimal coding and application development time with the following features-  

• Drag and Drop tools for user interface design -
  The platform allows for users to use the simple drag and drop the element to be able to quickly assemble a modern and mobile-friendly user interface. It can be achieved with less need for coding  
• Scalability - 
  The platform allows for the apps built to grow as the business grows, whether that be twenty employees or a thousand.   
• Reporting and Monitoring - 
  The platform provides the user the ability to track and monitor the application’s effectiveness, performance, and ease of usability. These factors can be further used to improve/optimize the application for a better end-user experience.  
• Visual Modeling of Processes –  
  The platform provides highly intuitive and collaborative process discovery tools that create a visual model. These models are easy to understand and interpret by all stakeholders.  
• Mobile-first, Out – of – the – Box
  The platform enables multi-device factoring in user experience. Developers can focus on what the end-user needs. 
• Security –  
  The platform provides a superior class of security by integrating LDAP, Modern encryption, and a robust authorization framework  
• Business user friendly –  
  The rules in the platform can be modeled using business-friendly told and will require little to no intervention from the IT team to make changes to the business rules.  
• Powered by Cloud – 
  The traditional way of application development comes with large upfront costs like licensing costs, hardware costs, IT staff etc… but with the advent of Low-code platforms being available on the cloud, you can avoid upfront costs and also significantly reduce the ongoing application development, maintenance and enhancement costs.  
• Built for Agile –  
  It accelerates the time to market by aiding in building and launching innovative business applications quickly and can enhance them over time with the help of continuous feedback. The platform comes with the ability to make quick changes making the Low-code application development more agile.  

Low – code empowers you with – 

• Lower costs –  
  The platform when combined with cloud deployments, significantly cuts down the costs of initial set up, development, maintenance, support, and upgradation of an application. It helps you save money, lowering the number of resources required to develop and maintain the application.  
• Higher Agility –  
  The platform facilitates quicker changes into the application by declarative configuration as opposed to programming changes.  
• Superior Customer Experience –  
  Low-code helps you in building applications that have modern and rich UX by means of look and feel. 
• Speeds of Innovation –
  With the help of low-code, one can accelerate the innovation to build an application in less time, making the time-to-market faster. 
• Mobile Enhancement –  
  The platform is designed natively for use on Mobile devices. It provides user interfaces across multiple devices, form factors, operating systems and mobile platforms.  

When to consider Low-code? 

Low-code enables quick development of various applications, the applications can range from being developed for a specific line of your business or an application that can work for multiple departments to innovating or automating enterprise business processes across the organization. The key benefits of Low -code  

• Modernization of Legacy applications –  
  If your firm has been using legacy systems, then the lack of adaptability will make it difficult for the organization to keep up with the changes, with the help of Low-code the legacy applications can be easily integrated giving you the benefits of agility while maintaining the integrity of the data in the legacy application.  
• Modernization of Customer experience –  
  With the help of low-code, you can transform your customers’ experience, by building modern apps that are visually appealing and engaging user experience. Low-code helps you get there faster. 
• Pace of Innovation – 
  Low-code allows you to keep up with the pace of innovation that your business demands.  
• Mobile first –
  With the world operating from their mobiles, your business too needs a mobile strategy. Low-code lets you build and consume everywhere with one single codebase.  

Applicability of Low-code in different Industries –  

 In the Manufacturing Industry – 

“Smart Organizations can add value to the firm and the Global economy”

It is predicted that 2.4 million manufacturing business jobs will go unfilled between now and 2028. Mobile and Website based applications will allow manufacturers to do more with fewer people by streamlining processes and making current employees more productive.  

Digitalising business processes will enable manufacturing companies to – 

• Increase in worker efficiency – the number of hours spent on daily activities decreases.  
• Capturing information – The current employees can create a guide for the newer members of the team or it can be used in logging all the necessary information that can be accessed at ease.  
• Data Management – The data can be easily managed eliminating the delay and mistakes to critical data.  

The best applications are those that can be used both online and offline, which helps in optimizing data entry, populate critical information and also be able to share it with the rest of the organization.  

The applications can improve the capture and sharing data that can allow the decision makers to make better and faster decisions that impacts the bottom line.

 In the Transportation Industry –

“56% of the CEOs agreed that digital improvements have led to revenue growth” 

Transportation and logistics companies need to collect and share critical information like routing, delivery status, fleet management, repairs etc… Mobile and Web application can help in streamlining processes and making workers more productive.  

Digitising the business processes enables the organization to –  

• Increase the efficiency of the workers and the delivery  
• Helps in capturing the data regarding the routing, delivery status, fleet management etc…  
• Reduces the risk of data loss, it will allow for efficiency in the management of employees, fleet and data.  

 The applications can help in making decisions that will help the company in making improvised and faster decisions that will help in reducing redundancy.  

In the Education Industry –

“Adopting digital transformation helps academic institutions, and educators to significant time and cost saving” 

With the world going digital Academic institutions and educators were tasked with collecting, analyzing and sharing information with various stakeholders such as PTAs, activity schedules, report cards etc…  

The digitalization using Mobile and Web applications will enable the firm to –  

• Improve the services to the students and parents through on-demand experiences that will help them in getting assistance as well as access to the data.  
• The loss of information can be minimized and the information can be easily accessed.  

The application can help in making capturing of data, analyzing the data and utilize the data faster. 

Outsystems, the go-to Low-Code platform   

Emerging as a game-changer in the world of low-code development, it consists of various out-of-the-box features, that include process and workflow mapping, visual drag and drop features, choice of pre-configured templets, and so on.   

Outsystem believes one thing – low-code is the future of app development – they are the pioneers in this space. The platform makes it possible for organizations to capture new markets, create new services and captivate customers in new and unimagined ways. It covers the widest range of capabilities for enterprise-grade development and full lifecycle management. The platform also offers capabilities such as advanced web and mobile user experience, B2C support, and even batch processing.   

Why Novigo Solutions –

Novigo Solutions is an end-to-end IT Solutions provider helping companies transform IT by focusing on business priorities and making sure your IT investments match those priorities. 

We are experts in modernizing your technology capabilities to match the demands of a fast-changing technology landscape. With its unique delivery model, it helps the clients to achieve significant cost savings and business success 

We have has gained immense expertise in solving core issues within Low-code Application Development, Robotic Process Automation, Business Intelligence and Agile Analytics, Data Science & Warehouse, SharePoint, O365, Snowflake, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Mobile Application Development, Custom Application Development, IT Managed Services and IT Staff Augmentation. We also have an established office in Dubai-UAE and the development centers in India at Bangalore and Mangalore. Apart from these, Novigo Solutions also has its presence felt in Singapore and the Middle East countries – specifically UAE, KSA, Oman and Qatar.