There’s more than just one (low) code for success

In this concise, two-part blog series, I’ll be discussing the emergence of different LCNC technologies, their potential for your business, and how you can expect them to impact your applications and ADM services as a whole.

The emergence of LCNC technologies

The LCNC movement is expected to continue growing significantly in the coming years. Since 2019, it has grown at an average of 23% per year. This growth has largely been driven by companies’ needs to accelerate time to market for new applications as well as a desire to increase the use of automation in workflows and business processes and to satisfy the ever-expanding demands of IT departments. The graph below from Gartner depicts the key technologies that fall under the purview of LCNC and their respective estimated market share in 2021.

Low-code Application Platforms (LCAPs)

Low-code application platforms (LCAPs) have the highest market share and are growing at an average of 29% annually since 2019. Some of the leading tools in this space include Visual Lansa and Zoho, which are used for mobile app development; Quixy, which is used for workflow automation; Web.com, which is utilized for website development; and Microsoft PowerApps and Mendix, which foster the building of applications.

One of the key reasons for the fast growth of these platforms is the increased penetration of the internet and smartphones during the pandemic. These are some of the specific areas where LCAP vendors are offering unique solutions.

Citizen Automation and Development Platforms (CADPs)

One prominent type of LCAP is the citizen automation and development platform (CADP). For several years now, awareness of the potential of CADPs to supercharge organizations has been growing steadily. Empowering non-developers to automate processes, integrate systems, and build software solutions independently of IT has been found to increase organizational efficiency and agility and set organizations up to adopt composable operating ecosystems. These are used by companies to speed up small developments and reduce dependency on IT service providers. Organizations generally use LCAP platforms to create simple business applications to improve their day-to-day productivity or existing business processes.

IBMPs, MXDPs, and RPA

After LCAPs, an almost equal amount of the market is shared between three categories of LCNC technologies: IBMP, or intelligent business process management suites (21%); MXDPs, or multi-experience development platforms (16%); and RPA, or robotic process automation (16%).

IBMP suites like Pega and BMC are combining low-code capabilities with process mining, process analytics, and AI/ML capabilities to create core offerings. With increasing focus on end-to-end service experience for consumers, the importance of these tools has grown in recent years. The YOY growth in this category is in the single digits, which could be attributed to the low availability of business processes mapped in existing systems, issues related to integration and compatibility with legacy systems, a lack of skilled labor, and the time required for implementation.

MXDP platforms offer developers an integrated set of front-end development tools and back-end services for the creation of fit-for-purpose apps that enable consistent user experience across various digital touchpoints like web, mobile, wearable, conversational, and immersive mediums. The Salesforce Lightning platform, SAP Extension Suite, and the ServiceNow platform are some of the leading solutions available in this category. Some examples of successful multi-experience strategies are BMW India’s Contactless Experience and Domino’s Pizza with their Domino’s AnyWare, which enables customers to order pizza in 15 different ways.

RPA platforms are currently the second fastest growing market. However, execution of these projects can be a challenging endeavor. According to a recent survey, 69% of RPA projects fail to take off because of their complexity. And even the lucky ones that manage to proceed to execution have a 50% fail rate. Hence, while there is lot of interest shown in these platforms, they also face a lot of challenges. For example, a lack of business and IT alignment, the absence of a clear RPA strategy, or the choosing of the wrong business process to automate.

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Low code/no code with ADMnext brings intuitive development to your citizen developers, value to your customers, and results to your business through our Assess, Visualize, and Democratize formula. This formula assesses and sources high-value, LCNC application transformation opportunities and provides you with visibility to effectively choose the best LCNC technology options for your entire user base and business.

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Now that we’ve had an extensive overview of the key technologies and platforms within the LCNC space, my next article will analyze how you can utilize LCNC to the fullest by working with the right application development and maintenance (ADM) services provider.

To talk more about choosing the best LCNC opportunities for your business, shoot me a message here.