No Code Tech Is Helping Businesses Adjust to New Realities

Today, the struggle continues, with the demand for technical talent far outpacing supply.  In 2021 the power dynamics are changing, the idea of a year-long or multi-month deployment is untenable. Companies can no longer wait to hire a team of developers to move their business forward. Jen Grant, CEO at Appify, will discuss how no-code technology is poised to dramatically change how businesses compete in an ever-changing world.

In 2011, Marc Andresseen famously penned Why Software Is Eating the WorldOpens a new window , sharing examples of how innovative technology companies were taking down traditional businesses. Today’s disruptors would include Uber/Lyft and traditional taxi companies, Airbnb and traditional hotel chains, as well as big companies, notably Walmart and FedEx,  that maintained their advantage by embracing technology.

Even in 2011, Marc pointed to the shortage of trained engineers to build software – making even Silicon Valley struggle to move quickly to attack these opportunities. If it’s already so difficult for Silicon Valley, imagine how difficult it has been for traditional industries to hire developers.

And today, that struggle continues with the demand for technical talent far outpacing supply. Six out of 10 CIOsOpens a new window expect to struggle to keep up with the pace of change because of technology skill shortages. 

But weren’t SaaS applications and the cloud going to change all of this?

We certainly thought so. In 2011, we believed that the cloud was offering an entirely different approach to business software and companies could pick the best cloud solutions and easily integrate them. Businesses could rely on cloud software with best practices built-in that would give everyone the innovation they needed in real-time. No more 3-year product cycles, but instead innovation delivered through the cloud as it happened. 

Learn More: 25 Acquisitions That Spurred Innovation in IT Ops in 2020

But while the cloud does offer many advantages over traditional on-premise deployments of monolithic ERP systems, there have been two major issues that SaaS companies have not addressed.

1. Cloud Applications Have Created Silos

App popularity has exploded in the Enterprise, with an average of 1,200Opens a new window cloud-based applications being supported by IT at any given time. Even SMBs have hundreds of SaaS apps from CRMs to HRMS floating throughout their organizations. It’s spiraled out of control. Data is caught up in silos of cloud apps making it difficult for a business to get a complete view of what is happening. And more SaaS companies have sprung up to solve this new problem, promising to centralize all that SaaS data so that the business can analyze it. At Looker, we saw this again and again. Companies were making business-critical decisions without the data that could guide them.

2. There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Every business is unique and it has been quite difficult to fit the software we’ve built with businesses in the past ten years. And what is happening to SaaS is what happened to the old traditional ERP solutions: Customization. And suddenly the fast deployment dreams that cloud providers wistfully promised, turn into months and even years. SaaS apps like Salesforce are starting to look a lot like their predecessors-  rigid and slow due to a lack of developers.

Businesses are now looking towards hiring developers to build and maintain this custom code. More specifically, businesses are looking for software application developers, so much so that the job title now accounts for nearly a thirdOpens a new window of all tech job openings.

Learn More: Building the Right Device Strategy to Manage Complex IT Environments

But in 2021, the power dynamics are changing.

With the speed of the pandemic, the idea of a year-long or even multi-month deployment is no longer tenable. Companies that were planning for digital transformation over the next few years, had to accelerate and launch in weeks. New requirements popped up overnight for new safety protocols that no one had anticipated, forcing companies to adjust their processes, supply their now-remote workforce with new tools, all while trying to keep the business afloat. 

No longer can companies wait to hire a team of developers to move their business forward- a reality that has accelerated the latest transformation in technology: No Code. This new technology is poised to dramatically change how businesses compete in an ever-changing world. 

No-code is not another SaaS application to add even more data silos to your business.  No-code is a transformational shift in how people interact with technology. It gives businesses the ability to create apps using drag-and-drop interfaces that anyone can use; and enterprise no-code platforms have the built-in functionality and scale to manage even the largest and most complex of deployments.

Companies now have the tools to quickly adjust their business processes and deploy apps to support those changes in just days. This kind of speed is only available with a platform that abstracts the code into an easy to understand drag and drop interface. Traditional software could never provide enough agility to launch that quickly or adjust to that much complexity. 

Learn More: Why Legal Will Be the Next Frontier for Digital Transformation

There is definitely precedence for abstracting from traditional coding to a drag and drop approach. Remember when it was hard to create a website? The arrival of Squarespace and Wix made it easy for anyone to create a website for their business – no coding required. That is what no-code platforms can do for business software. 

And some companies are starting to recognize the benefit. According to Forrester ResearchOpens a new window , 84% of enterprises have started using low code/no code technology, and Gartner predicts that low code/no code will represent 65% of all app development by 2024.

These are big numbers, but before anyone starts to worry about developers, keep in mind that in 2019, the U.S. graduated only about 65k Opens a new window computer science majors. Compare that to the seventy-two percentOpens a new window of IT leaders that say project backlogs prevent them from working on strategic projects. Without no-code platforms, the IT and engineering teams of most businesses will not be able to provide the strategic support that the business needs. 

And yes, as Marc Andresseen wrote, it is still true today that great software companies are “eating markets,” but with no-code technology opening up opportunities for any company to innovative quickly, there is a real chance that those same markets will have the tools and wherewithal to bite back.

Do you think no code technology will play a significant role in the application development space in the future? Let us know your thoughts on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!