What is No-Code?
No-code development is an approach that allows coders and non-technical users to build applications through visual modeling tools and configuration. No-code movement accelerates application development and fulfils the need for workflow automation and custom software creation faster than traditional coding approaches. No-code enables every employee to become a citizen developer without learning to code. This, in turn, helps businesses accelerate operations, quickly adjust processes to change, better meet customer and employee needs, and grow.
You wonder whether it’s possible to omit coding at all? The answer is ‘yes’ for end-users, since anyone who uses the platform, applies the code by just clicking, scrolling, and drag-and-dropping parts of the visual interface.
Simply put, no-code is a visual mediator between the programming platform and the end-users so that they can build and customize the look and feel of a software piece without touching the code itself
Top Reasons to Choose No-Code Platform
Reasonable use of Company Resources
According to Gartner, through 2022, the demand for app development surpasses IT’s capacity to deliver by five times. The majority of an enterprise’s IT budget is spent on ongoing maintenance of legacy systems, which leaves little leftover for innovation and new application or process development. No-code platforms allow any user without IT skills to quickly create new apps without IT department engagement. This way, business users can be equipped with new tools and skills, while being empowered to take ownership of workflow automation for their specific needs.
Effortless App Customisation
No-code requires less formal programming expertise, which helps close the IT gap many companies face without requiring them to hire more IT experts onto their team. No-code platforms also enable citizen developers to develop apps without any IT involvement, which cuts the IT backlog while minimizing the costly resources.
Accelerated App Development and Delivery
As organizations undertake digital transformation, they become software-driven companies. While many used to hire developers to hand-code software, no-code is disrupting this pattern. Today both IT and business leaders realize that doing away with hand-coding altogether will lead to faster and more successful results. A rich set of visual editors, along with an ecosystem of ready-to-use code snippets, form templates, built-in connectors, and more, help to roll out new applications fast with teams of citizen developers.
Support of Digital Transformation
Pandemic, quarantine, remote work conditions and ensuing consequences forced organizations to rapidly rethink their tech strategy. Many companies made up to a 10-year leap in their digital transformation. In response to the unprecedented times, organizations automated processes from scratch or adjusted them within a short period of time to stay afloat and support their employees and customers. No-code platforms provide core technology for organizations to continuously innovate and accelerate adaptation to the ever-changing market climate.
High-level Security
No-code platforms provide users with crucial security features like admin tools, access control, and threat assessment. This way, authorized users can configure and monitor the system’s security at each point in time. Moreover, industry best practices ensure the security and privacy of stored data by supporting it both at the application and network levels, as well as at the physical access level.
No-Code VS Low-Code
The difference between no-code and low-code development platforms mainly depends on three related points:
Coding Skills
No-code platforms don’t require technical knowledge and thus are accessible to any end-business user. Low-code requires developers with knowledge of coding who can work within a platform to support and streamline the development process.
Core Design
With no-code platforms an end user chooses an app’s design through drag-and-drop logic. Low-code solutions provide a similar development model but with more dependence on coding for managing an app’s core architecture.
User Interface
No-code relies on a preset UI layer which streamlines applications design. Low-code platforms provides more flexibility in UI options, but at the cost of additional coding requirements.
No-Code Features
Visual Modeling Tools
Creating apps using visual methods and models is faster than developing using code. Powered with visual modeling capabilities, no-code platforms use built-in components to represent any information in a form that is readable to anyone – from regular business users with no tech skills to professional developers.
Out-of-the-Box Functionality
Leading low-code systems provide OOTB (out-of-the-box) functionality, which eliminates the need to build core modules for apps from scratch. For example, some no-code platforms include modules for data management or modules for customer-facing apps, such as service management or sales processes management.
Drag-and-Drop Interfaces
Every established no-code platform has drag-and-drop abilities. It is one of the most useful and important features that enables an easy development process. Both citizen developers and professional developers benefit from the convenience drag-and-drop features provide during the creation of applications.
Reusability
One major aspect of no-code development’s OOTB functionality is the usage of pre-configured modules and functionality for apps. These modules have common core functions needed for several apps, and they can be reused to develop different solutions more quickly. It’s essential that a low-code platform allows users to reuse prebuilt or newly-developed modules, plug-ins, and entire applications to develop necessary apps faster.
Cross-Platform Accessibility
No-code tools are accessible from any device and don’t require special technical equipment. Moreover, its cross-platform compatibility allows users to build apps that can also run on all core platforms and devices.
Scalability
No-code platforms provide scalability. They allow users to build new applications that can handle an increase in customers, business growth, and other changes in business strategy and development.
Application Lifecycle Management
No-code streamlines several stages in the software development lifecycle, such as debugging, testing, and deployment. In addition to these benefits, users get the ability to access information about the apps created and their development. Users also can revert to previous versions if needed for better application lifecycle management.
Advantages of No-Code
Cost Saving
No-code solutions help to reduce the cost of development by up to 80%. No-code requires less formal programming expertise, thus closing the IT gap that many companies possess without having to incur additional resource expenses.
Increased Agility
Simple and fast development via visual modeling tools provides businesses with the opportunity to adapt quickly to ever-changing markets and customer demands.
Time Saving
The average time to develop an application takes 4 months. With the increasing speed of business transformation, developers are looking for ways to be more productive and to deliver the applications faster. No-code development platform cuts this time in half or even less.
Accelerated Operations
With today’s hybrid work conditions, a no-code platform is an ideal touchpoint for remote and office workers. It keeps the employees on the same wavelength to build, start and process workflows without wasting time on figuring out how to work using complex tools. It helps to reduce the monotonous, routine tasks that take time away from the critical work of building new products and strategies.
Better Apps
Both IT and citizen development via no-code tools results in a better success rate for apps. IT experts can use no-code to create applications much faster and receive instant feedback, taking advantage of automatic testing to further streamline the process. Citizen developers can create applications knowing full well what they need from it and how they want to use it.
Meeting Market Demands
No-code movement is the future. Companies that implement new technology today, stay ahead of the curve. A no-code platform is an indispensable tool for continuous improvement, market presence expansion and finding new ways to engage with employees and customers alike.
What Can You Build with No-Code
With a no-code development platform businesses are able to grow fully-fledged centers of excellence within their organizations. By building in-house teams of citizen developers, companies can accelerate the adoption of technology-driven innovations, streamline application development and process automation, and nurture a culture of continuous operational improvement. Business users can build processes for tasks of any complexity to automate operations across several departments.
Companies can leverage in-house no-code app development and deploy new applications to optimize the company’s customer-facing and operational processes. With streamlined workflows, organizations will improve their resilience, strengthen agility and fuel the growth.
With no-code, organizations can modernize their legacy systems, create new and improve existing processes, build enterprise-grade applications, modify solutions easily to meet specific countries’ market or business needs, etc.
Conclusion
A reliable no-code solution allows users to leverage no-code technology to provide the ability to build apps and automate workflows without coding skills. We at AppleTech have extensive experience in developing solutions based on the no-code technology. Reach out to us today for transforming your concept into a solution.
