Smart Apps for Dummies Part 2—Raise your Digital IQ
In the first part of Smart Apps for Dummies blog series, we explained that low-code is at the convergence of several driving forces, illustrated in the diagram below.
Why low-code is essential to digital leadership
Now let’s address the why. Why are so many companies embracing low-code as a way to stay or become a digital leader?
Speed is of the essence
From a business standpoint, speed is of the essence. Not only speed of development of apps but foremost, speed of innovation. Ideas can now become fully functional apps in minutes rather than months. These apps seamlessly integrate and extend existing systems in place. Creating and changing enterprise apps is now easier and faster. Being able to quickly deploy, see results, and make changes is of huge benefit. It allows you to keep up with changing demands and growth. Slow results or difficult changes mean your company is constantly grasping at straws trying to stay in the game but instead, ending up behind.
But don’t lose sight of the end game—digital leadership
Low-code is essential to digital leadership. It is an enabler of digital transformation and a catalyzer of innovation.
Enhance customer experience
Quickly translate ideas into sophisticated apps and pilot them in the marketplace innovation faster than the competition so that you can deliver disruptive products and services that meet and exceed customer expectations.
Innovation with connected digital products
Visual, easy-to-use, yet powerful tools allow you to break traditional barriers between business and IT. Maintaining a short and iterative app creation and enhancement process fosters active collaboration and ultimately greater alignment to solve business problems.
Nimble and cost effective operations
By rapidly creating and launching applications, you improve agility while maintaining the ability to enhance and expand apps over time. A simple, intuitive and cost-effective platform for creating smart applications that solve business challenges empowers your staff—unleash their creativity and turbocharge productivity.
This is why low-code was recently highlighted by ZDNet as a top enterprise technology to watch in 2017.
“[Low-code platforms] can greatly offload IT in simpler business situations and can even make it possible for digital transformation to occur in a far more decentralized manner than in the past”.
Why low code is great for citizen developers
Who is the citizen developer?
There is ample content written on the citizen developer. Check out an especially great piece written by George V Hulme here. There is little doubt that citizen developers that have emerged in the past few years are true agents of change—a force to be reckoned with.
From our standpoint, a citizen developer can sit in either the IT or business side of an organization. He or she is foremost a problem-solver who has the drive and determination to engage in app development even though he or she lacks traditional coding skills. They:
- Aspire to create a better way to work and know the challenges that get in the way of productivity, and envision solutions to be more efficient.
- Have to grapple with the inability to drive change as much as desired because IT gets in the way, processes and existing systems are too inflexible, and delays are a common issue.
- Have new ideas on how to delight customers and grow revenue, but need a way to quickly go from idea to operational app.
- Are accustomed to long lead time to change. Going from idea to operational systems takes months at best, if not lost in the IT backlog.
- Desire to advance skills on an ongoing basis to grow personally while positively impacting the business.
Empower citizen developers to drive digital transformation at digital speed with TIBCO Cloud Live Apps
- Self-service over the cloud: Creating a new account is swift and does not require any software installation. Users are up and running instantly. Access is zippy and available anywhere and anytime from a web browser.
- Jump right in and start describing a solution to a business problem in plain language. A five-step interview is all it takes to create applications from the ground up. Contextual help and video tutorials are available at your fingertips.
- Get the job done in no time with intuitive visuals, simple drag-and-drop tools, and step-by-step guided interactions.
- Capture new business requirements easily and perform app updates in a few clicks.
- Speed up development with app sharing and reuse. Find the right app or template in just a few clicks.
- With simple drag-and-drop, choose from a variety of pre-built connectors, unlock data from core systems, and bring it to life in minutes.
- Create apps that play nicely with existing IT environment and are worry free for both business and IT.
In our next blog, we’ll look at why low-code is for IT (development) managers and how embracing low-code helps IT transform and extend IT’s reach.