What if you could build your own software without any programming skills? Or make a prototype without writing a single line of code? As in nada, nothing, no-code. With no-code tools, these aren’t pipe dream questions; they’re a reality for a growing number of so called "citizen developers" — employees in your organization with great ideas but no programming skills.
According to Gartner, by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity. Citizen development will become fundamental to power digital transformation and, already today, over 25% of large organizations use some sort of no-code framework to drive change to a more automated and digitally integrated organization.
Here's our summary of the top 5 benefits of using no-code in your organization:
#1: Spend time building REAL functionality, rather than coding work that doesn't add immediate value
With traditional development a lot of work goes into determining what kind of infrastructure, UI framework or back-end coding languages to use. And then there's also the time product managers or business analysts spend on putting together user stories that tell the engineering team what needs to be build. Instead of spending time writing user stories, business analysts would be better off building their app right away. Of course it's helpful to outline your app idea using a product roadmap and SCRUM methodology, but it doesn't have to be that detailed as no-code allows citizen developers to build their own app without programming skills.
In addition to this, there's also the testing that takes less time time. With traditional software builds, software testing usually takes up to 25% of development time. With no-code, we believe that less than 5% of your time needs to be spend on testing. Any2Info is a completely visual application builder, this means that users can immediately see the result of what they are building and they can test new functionality thanks to a live preview. Also, most apps have admin features that are required for user onboarding and rights management as well as features for privacy and security. Even though this is common functionality, it isn't available as pre-fab code off the shelf if you start from scratch. With no-code such features are often built in as they are very important to enterprise users. Any2Info offers an advanced admin configuration suite, so that even very complex enterprise privacy and security requirements are easy to configure.
#2: Launch your app 10x faster than traditional programming
Even though this one may seem obvious... If you start from scratch, the complexity of writing code, building integration and deployment pipelines, and building containerized infrastructure slows you down if you don’t have an army of expert-level resources. And what about talent? You probably spend a fair bit of time (and $$ on recruiters) finding the right talent for the job. Not every developer has the right set of skills (JavaScipt isn't Java!) for your project and sometimes the scarcity of these resources means you hire people that just aren't the right fit.
So what if you wouldn't have to hire developers AT ALL? What if you could work with your existing team of business-or process analysts? Generally speaking, most no-code solutions allow you to build your own custom app in just a few days. The learning curve is similar to a couple days of training or self-study and the simplicity of no-code development means your employees get more done in less time, we believe that 10x faster development than with traditional Java or .NET builds is realistic!
#3: You don't have to manage a dozen of different technologies, an all-in-one platform covers all your infrastructure needs
Even though most developers love building out new app ideas using the latest technologies, traditional software development also requires a lot of DevOps plumbing and infrastructure configuration. Not to mention you also have to maintain a testing, acceptance and production server. This is generally requires a lot of time and careful planning, and DevOps engineers unfortunately don't come cheap as app release pipelines and hosting infrastructure can be very complex. A solid no-code platform such as Any2Info offers you the choice to deliver your app as a SaaS web-app (software-as-a-service) or as a native iOS and Android app at the click of a button so you don't have to worry about complex infrastructure. Launching a new app release becomes a breeze as it literally takes seconds. And since we don't like limitations ourselves, you can also decide to host your app on your own cloud or on-premise servers if that's preferred for security reasons.
#4: The cost of innovation and failure is negligible, this is what drives real innovation
Imagine going back to the early 1990s when industrial companies first started to think about the benefits of ERP systems. This often were multi-million dollar investments, and even today the average ERP implementation project for a mid-sized manufacturing company may cost up to $2-3 million dollars. And still, 50-60% of such long-term implementation projects would fail or not yield the expected results. This was the era of high-stakes software, but now a citizen developer can sign up on our website and get started in under a minute. You can just pull your credit card and start prototyping your new app idea, so the cost of failure is negligible. Our chances of finding the next big thing are a direct function of how many things you try. And as Jeff Bezos would say: "We are the best place in the world to fail". He compares launching a new app experiment with taking a swing at baseball, the only difference between business and baseball is that you're limited to only four runs. In business, whenever you decide to step on the plate to take a swing you can score a homerun. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it's important to experiment and try new things.
#5: Citizen developers are directly connected to the problem they're solving, most traditional software developers are not
Many traditional software developers often find themselves completing coding tasks instead of solving problems. They sometimes regard themselves as being a "code-monkey", just to write code and complete the tasks that the product manager tells them to do. This often leads to bad outcomes as engineers aren't directly involved with the stakeholders of the problem they're trying to solve. The best way to manage an engineering team is to ask them to solve a problem so engineers can use their own creativity, but unfortunately this is not how most engineering teams operate. They are often not directly connected to the problem themselves, but instead they rely on a product manager that needs to translate the problem into overly detailed user stories. This doesn't just lead to a loss of time but engineers can also easily get lost in translation since they haven't experienced the problem first-hand themselves.
Now, imagine how this would work if your business analysts — the ones dealing with the problem first-hand — are able to build the app they need themselves?
