In today's rapidly evolving technology landscape, fostering inclusivity is both a moral and strategic necessity for building innovative, efficient, and impactful solutions that address the diverse needs of a global audience. Low-code technologies emerge as a central catalyst for inclusivity, empowering individuals across different backgrounds to actively participate in the development process.

By embracing low code, you can put your people first, and unlock a variety of organizational benefits through the following 5 impact areas:

• Open access to advanced development diversifying and enriching user-centric design outputs
• Easier collaboration between Business and IT fostering a more cohesive work environment
• Overcoming the tech talent shortage with instant upskilling of novice or citizen developers
• Accelerating time to innovation by streamlining and simplifying the development lifecycle
• Smarter and more efficient operations enhancing productivity and automation

In essence, low-code adoption signifies a natural commitment to putting inclusivity into practice where every team member is a direct contributor to your business and digital innovation journey.

Open Access to Advanced Development

Low code stands as a powerful driver for the democratization of development by inviting a much broader spectrum of individuals to participate in the creation of digital solutions. Its user-friendly nature, characterized by intuitive interfaces and a significantly faster learning curve, ensures that individuals from diverse backgrounds and expertise levels can seamlessly onboard and take part in the development process.

This democratizing effect extends beyond traditional IT roles, empowering business users, subject matter experts, and novice developers to play pivotal roles in shaping solutions.

Through low code, organizations tap into a wealth of perspectives, driving more impactful, user-centric design outputs. With a varied pool of contributors, representing different backgrounds, roles, and perspectives, you can gain more comprehensive insights into the needs, preferences, and challenges of their user base. This helps craft solutions that are not only technically robust but also resonate with a larger audience, ensuring a more relevant and engaging end product.

Easier Collaboration Between Business and IT Teams

Historically, it has been a key challenge for organizations to break down the divide between IT professionals and business teams in order to create more seamless and collaborative workflows. IT teams traditionally operate in a technical realm, dealing with coding, system maintenance, and infrastructure, while business teams focus on strategic planning, operations, and customer-facing aspects. With each group typically having its own language, priorities, and goals, the lack of alignment has the potential to create communication gaps and delays slowing down innovation.

Low-code technologies act as a strong bridge between business and IT teams facilitating communication and collaboration.

Unlike traditional development methods that require a deep technical understanding, low-code platforms empower business users to follow along or actively participate in the application development process. This allows business teams to articulate their requirements directly, minimizing miscommunication and accelerating the translation of ideas into functional applications. For instance, a marketing professional can easily contribute to the creation of a customer engagement app without extensive coding knowledge. Or an HR specialist can review the developed recruitment flows over a visual representation rather than going through codes. This seamless collaboration not only bridges the historical gap between IT and business but also ensures that the resulting solutions align closely with the strategic goals and user expectations.

Overcoming the Tech Talent Shortage

The talent shortage in key development roles has been a growing challenge experienced globally, posing significant obstacles to organizations’ ability to fuel innovation. US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that demand for software developers will grow by 25% from 2022 to 2032. And, according to Forrester Research, it currently takes 47% longer to fill technical roles than nontechnical roles causing more vacancies, higher development backlog, and increased recruitment costs.

Low-code solutions play a pivotal role in tackling the tech talent shortage by redefining the traditional notion of who a developer can be.

A case study of Shell’s DIY Citizen Developer Program reveals widespread adoption with 4,000 active developers and a total of 6,500 contributors. With intuitive interfaces, visual programming, and simplified workflows, low code enables individuals without extensive coding backgrounds to create applications. It is a powerful tool to address the talent shortage by expanding the pool of contributors to potentially anybody in the organization.

Accelerating Time to Innovation

Low code accelerates time to innovation by streamlining and simplifying the development lifecycle. By abstracting complex coding tasks, stakeholders do not need to dive into intricate lines of code to build or guide features. From prototype to deployment, this accelerated pace is a game-changer, reducing development cycles from months to days or even hours.

With pre-built templates and drag-and-drop functionality, low-code platforms enable rapid prototyping and iteration, allowing teams to quickly bring ideas to life.

Low-code solutions often come with reusable components and integrations, eliminating the need to build functionalities from scratch. This not only reduces development time but also enhances consistency and standardization across projects. With built-in best practices, low-code development accelerates the delivery of innovative solutions, allowing organizations to respond swiftly to changing market demands and stay ahead in a competitive landscape.

Smarter and More Efficient Operations

From an 80% reduction in processing times to $6.7 million in savings within a year, low-code platforms quickly transform organizations towards higher efficiency. By empowering individuals with domain knowledge to design and implement automated workflows, low-code ensures that those closest to the processes can drive the efficiency gains and improvements tailored to their unique insights within the organization. This democratization of automation allows teams to focus on more value-adding tasks, as routine and repetitive processes are seamlessly handled by automated workflows. As a result, organizations not only unlock a quantum leap in efficiency but also free up valuable human resources to concentrate on strategic initiatives and creative problem-solving.

Low code puts the power of automation directly into the hands of those who understand their operational needs best – the users themselves.

Embedded AI/ML capabilities in low-code solutions elevate automation to a new level, enabling smart automation. Unlike conventional automation, which often follows rigid rules, embedded AI/ML allows systems to learn from data, adapt to changing conditions, and make intelligent decisions. This level of sophistication in automation enhances efficiency by minimizing errors, optimizing workflows, and responding dynamically to evolving business requirements. By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, organizations can achieve a more nuanced, adaptive, and intelligent automation, leading to a significantly greater impact on operational efficiency and business outcomes.

Conclusion: By the People, For the People

Low-code/no-code technologies are spreading across the globe fast. And, it is due to their transformative impact that prioritizes people-centric development. 71% of developers in Forrester’s Developer Survey stated that their organization is adopting low code or has plans to do so for many advanced use cases involving the core business as well as customer-facing applications.

Think of low-code/no-code platforms as a strong ally in your technology plans for next year where the potential benefits you can unlock are myriad. If you are not certain about where to start, here is a risk-free roadmap you can easily follow:

• Start small: Conduct a POC on a significant yet isolated use case without disrupting your business
• Measure the impact: Evaluate the effects on key areas from operational efficiencies to higher revenues
• Communicate for buy-in: Inform and educate the organization about the outcomes
• Maximize adoption: Systematically expand to the entire organization to reap maximum benefits

At Rierino, our mission is to enable businesses to tackle even the most complex advanced development challenges with low code. And, we support businesses from a variety of industries with diverse use cases. Connect with our experts today to discuss your unique needs and embark on your transformative journey.