Unleashing the Beast in 2021: No-Code for Business Problems

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As Chris Wansthrath, CEO of GitHub says, “The future of coding is no coding at all”, the greatest innovation of today is no-code for business solutions- from ground level processes to entire digital business strategies.

We all know 2020 has seen it all and has taught us the importance of digital workplace transformation and innovation. From the largest conglomerates to mid & small-scale enterprises have taken the brunt with technology at some point or the other but especially in 2020. Businesses small and big have faced major business problems and hassles while shifting to digital.

Today’s business executives and heads are faced with overwhelming, competing challenges and uncharted waters as they attempt to navigate towards digital transformation.

Many organizations and businesses are looking at “superpowers” to unlock digital business potential to emerge from the pandemic stronger. And no-code for business drives those solutions, the resolution.

For these and to these leaders, we have the best and the beast to unleash- to drive business like never before and with a spirit of reinvention — No-code development, accelerating digital transformation, and implementing agile operations.

In this article, we’ll talk about how resolving some basic but highly crucial processes and eliminating bottlenecks can do wonders with no-code apps. We’ll discuss everything – from the problems to solutions and beyond.

No-code for business for tomorrow: 2021 ‘Resolutions’

Let’s talk about goals and agendas and plans for a bit.

When it comes to goal-setting, agenda-setting – organizations are great at foresight and creating new structures, inventing models, and a lot of plans. What gets left out or overlooked is the mere fact that most business problems arise because of manual and repetitive processes. To begin with, software and IT hassles are the biggest business problems faced – especially with WFH.

Let’s take an example.

Mark has a team of 5 employees. Each of his team members currently spends 4-5 hours a day on the above activities. That’s a total of 125 hours a week and 500 hours a month for a small team of 5. Let’s say the average full-time employee costs about $30 an hour. With that said, inefficient processes are costing Mark approximately $15,000 a month. Yikes!!

What most businesses do is create software, yes customized but keeping it updated, resolving bugs and slight coding problems takes ages because the IT team is always packed with requests. IT departments have their own set of challenges. They have their IT backlogs growing in size every day.

Every software requirement goes through the “Buy vs. Build” dilemma. Ready-to-use one-size-fits-all solutions are usually not customizable and rarely meet all business user requirements.

Custom-built software, on the other hand, takes time to be developed as IT departments face a shortage of professional developers. According to a study conducted, it’s estimated that by 2021, there will be a shortage of 1.4 million software developers.

Yes, the shortage of software developers is real. On average, building, designing, and deployment of software takes around 4-9 months. Finally, when the software is ready, it’s not uncommon that it does not mean business-user expectations. Due to the nature of the software development processes, business requirements are often lost in translation as the business users are not involved throughout the development life cycle.

That is one to begin with, other challenges include,

Repetitive tasks

Businesses still continue performing endless admin tasks that are repeated for each event, from internal documents approval to email negotiations, same creating similar documents multiple times and so many more.

Cost of time

As they repeat a lot of tasks, it obviously ends up putting in too much time for the same tasks time and again. This applies to every process – approvals over and over again during the day, depending on the respective executive’s availability, spending time on emails and spending time on handling errors which are not flexible to fix on paper, etc eats up valuable time which companies cannot afford to waste at such testing times.

Process delay

Processes when manual or repetitive are not easily performed in manually operated firms. Time consumed, dependence on different departments and the time taken by executives to pass on approvals and documents block the urgent and fast processing in business.

Costs incurred

Spending time on resources and putting in hours also tends to cost more along with other costs like software maintenance etc. Delayed processes affect different departments’ business processes big time due to heavy costs incurred.

Transparency & visibility

Across a business, many teams and departments are involved in various processes such as, customer experience management, sales, approvers, finance department, and suppliers; which often leads to a loss of control and less visibility on the overall process also risking the transparency of many processes.

Reporting & maintenance

Business processes involving reporting and maintenance often face problems as most reports are made manually, which becomes a huge challenge since data entry is done manually too and to handle as well,

Miscommunication

Amidst WFH processes and digital shift, miscommunication between teams, loss of information, etc is a major challenge – contacts, responsibilities, tasks, etc can make it tedious to perform and also cause disagreements and loss of information and errors.

The solution of the above problems is easy and simple, and yes, software can be involved but at what cost? And at what speed? The questions that need to be answered are about agility, resilience and speed.

It’s this ability to solve business problems developers constantly need to tap into. But, some of our best problem solvers need not be complex codes at all – nether coders or programmers.

It’s high time businesses realize and start leveraging the potential of their teams and find a middle ground to form a collaborative and fruitful team of subject matter experts to solve business problems. No-code for business drives conversations across the funnel and drives value.

This in-turn has come to be known as citizen development, by allowing no-code for business problem resolution.

No-code for business problem resolution: The journey to reinvention

From the example above, take Mark. His organization’s resources involve his team, other teams including IT. He has a problem solver in every team but does he have coders for each? Each team member has a solution to offer, a value to deliver but the only obstacle? Execution.

You’ll come to notice, just like Mark, there are many problem solvers at many levels who excel at solutions-oriented thinking. And, it is upon us, business execs to find and understand the value they can deliver for the business.

What if we told you these valuable resources can be developers? That too without knowing code?

No-code for business enables this all.

What is No-code Development?

No-code, shortened from no-code platforms refers to application development platforms that require zero coding! This means applications can be built on purely visual, intuitive interfaces with no need for programming experience. These platforms often offer features that are simple such as drag and drop form builders and are perfect as no-code for business solutions has proven to drive impact exponentially.

They work the same way you get to design a collage with stickers, simply take what you need and put it where you need it most. These are typically used by citizen developers or business users to build applications without having to write any code or depend on software developers for any help.

Ever since the world entered the digital experience, developers have been at the forefront. Their demand has increased with time across the globe.

Today, with the digital transformation taking over every industry, no-code for business problems is demanded and the need is higher than ever before. This demand is exploiting the pain points of organizations because as much as they would like to transform digitally, they cannot afford and/or find stellar tech professionals who can take over all the IT requirements.

Organizations and industries have consistently been looking for a way to overcome the burden by allowing their staff members to build apps (citizen developers) without prior tech knowledge or the need for training.

No-code for business problems unleashes the hyper automotive nature of processes- making it extremely easy to shift to digital.

And it is true. No-code for business enables and unlocks the power of businesses by taking them to new heights since it involves thinkers becoming creators too. It eliminates the need for complex code making it easy and super fast for departments and teams to create their own applications.

Equipped with resources like no-code development platforms, it enables “citizen developers” to play larger and more strategic roles in building apps that help move their teams and companies forward in turn driving unprecedented growth.

How can you leverage no-code for business problems? What are its benefits?

The answer is automation and optimization.

No-code for business lets you automate manual repetitive processes and eliminates errors.

Identify which processes are slowing you down in the first place. Fill in the gap by automating these processes, check how it’s going, and optimize.

Becoming a citizen developer is not as daunting as it sounds because it requires no coding knowledge! All you need to do is find the right no-code platform that allows you to experiment with ideas to create effective solutions.

The benefits are plenty:
benefits of no-code

1. Automated & custom workflows

Workflow automating and modeling is not just fast; it’s much more seamless. It lets you manage all your data seamlessly without ever indulging in the language of code.

Say bye to spreadsheets and repetitive manual tasks by creating custom apps for team use.

For example, Mark can create a customized app for all his projects and teams, record data in real-time that can be accessed from any device, task management apps that create tasks for him and his teams, and customize them to be repeatable or ad–hoc.

2. Anyone can build no-code apps!

That’s the beauty of them! You won’t have to wait for IT departments, and you don’t need technical experience or knowledge about code. Anyone (or as we like calling them, citizen developers) can build functional applications within minutes and hours!

3. Enhanced innovation

You won’t have to let go of ideas and will have the power to create your own apps, the way you aspire, and like. This encourages everyone to get their creative juices flowing, making workplace innovation a part of your company’s culture.

4. Exceptional agility

With no-code for business apps, change is not only adaptable but also profitable. According to a McKinsey Study, agile organizations tend to be healthier, more profitable, and innovative. No-code apps check this box by automating everything from building to testing. The teams, thus, have more time to actually get the work done instead of wasting it preparing for work.

5. Reduced time

No-code for business and development eases the burden on IT and builds apps in lesser time than other software. One can build, design, and deploy no-code apps within minutes and hours!

Quixy is a leading no-code app development platform that will help you through hassle-free digital transformation and leverage it without burdening your pockets, your teams, or your IT department. With Quixy, you get the flexibility to build great solutions with ease!

Vivek Goel
With over 20+ years of industry experience, Vivek Goel, in his current role as a No-Code Evangelist, is helping companies transform digitally 20X faster. He is an intriguing speaker, marketing consultant, and people’s coach. He has experience working with organizations of all sizes in India and the USA. As a No-Code Evangelist, he loves discussing and illuminating people on No-Code, Digital Transformation, and SaaS Marketing. He holds a B.Tech Degree in ECE from BIT, Ranchi, India.

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