Insights

Low Code No Code

Consulting Director, Jon Bance, discusses how reducing reliance on traditional coded development is enabling businesses to have more control over their systems.
November 25 2022

Low Code No Code

It is safe to say that the pandemic has brought about a new philosophy in many industry sectors and, from our business observations via over one hundred different engagements since that awful period,  seems to have finally pulled IT/Technology closer to the core of the business.

Many industries realised decades ago that technology must underpin the business’s operations and effectiveness, however, some sectors have let Tech and its teams seemingly do their own thing, not necessarily wishing to engage until something fails to work on their PC or phone. A lot of business leaders (not recently I hasten to add) saw IT alike to rocket science and for nerds only. Those sectors and businesses received a wake-up call in February 2020. We at Leading Resolutions have seen many of these businesses significantly accelerate their Digital transformation, some having outstanding successes.

Equally Agile and similar methodologies and approaches have gelled Tech teams and the business together and not before long, ensuring the “product” or “products” are better defined. However, something has been gathering dust within the tech sphere that is being talked about more and more, day on day,  right now. That something is the often-misunderstood area of Low Code or No Code and, before you switch off, this could be an absolute game changer for business agility.

We have been investing time with David Chassels, a Scottish Chartered Accountant who has been advocating the use of Low Code / No Code for over 40 years. The subject is easy to throw mud at, there are so many ifs and buts and of course, many questions from the traditional large software houses and developers, but there is something very compelling here.

Imagine business users having control of their systems and being able to change business processes through interactive technology solving an issue they have and probably always had. That would have been a great enabler for Hospitality businesses when the pandemic hit. The ability to quickly amend their model and protect some of their business channels.

The problem Low Code and No Code has been trying to solve is that traditional software and applications are often inflexible and suffer from a really poor user experience, they also tend to be very expensive. Trying to get these issues solved has been one of huge frustration for many business leaders.

A lack of being able to adequately describe the issues and articulate the requirements coupled with minimal understanding and transposing these into software solutions has been too slow and too expensive (please note there are exceptions out there). To combat the inflexibility, businesses have often granted large funds to build an internal development team which solves the problem for a period but often leads to problems further down the line as experience and knowledge leave the business and technical debt builds up.

David, realising the issues businesses were facing took up the challenge,  first starting to build a method in which business users could map a process visually, without the need for programmers and to produce enabling technology that was business-friendly, simple to use, and generic in application.

The residing technology including core code, therefore, remains untouched, but the functional look and feel and treatment of data are, giving the business users the experience, they require.

Dangerous, yes potentially, but put in the right hands and with very clear roles and responsibilities very, very powerful.

Low Code and No Code are being pushed globally to combat the issues mentioned and solutions or platforms are growing rapidly. Positioning Low Code / No Code, we believe this could be a real productivity tool enabling you to push sophisticated, robust and secure applications out to your users far more quickly and help quickly reduce those development backlogs that many businesses have. With Low Code you can make changes much more quickly with fewer bugs and deploy quality applications rapidly on a continuous basis to your end users or customers.

Leading Resolutions believe over time there is a real opportunity to adopt Low Code as your main development platform rather than for just ad-hoc discrete projects and reduce your reliance on traditional coded development.

The Author

Jon Bance

CITO, Leading Resolutions

Leading Resolutions is an independent, business focused technology consultancy with a unique knowledge and skills in digital technology. We are leaders within our industry and we work well with our people.
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