The Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Low-Code for Application Building (and the Case for Power Apps)
In a world that has become highly competitive, ‘slow and steady’ rarely wins the race, especially in the enterprise and business landscape. As software runs the world and we move firmly into an app economy, accelerating the pace of development becomes critical to stay ahead of the curve.
As digital breakthroughs continue to explode, businesses have to chart their business success using the power of applications to support internal and external processes. Development methodologies like Agile and DevOps are making software development faster, more robust, and more reliable by making testing an organic part of the development mix. But as business opportunities expand and the demand for newer applications increases, along with the development methodology, the development itself needs to become faster.
Low-code application development platforms are becoming increasingly popular as more enterprises choose them to develop applications to accelerate the pace of development and leverage market opportunities faster. According to Gartner, the worldwide low-code development technologies market is expected to reach $26.9 billion in 2023.
What is Low-Code Development?
Low-code tools have now evolved and are mature enough to build complex applications and workflows. Even as these tools maintain their appeal to citizen developers, today, professional developers too are using them to make development faster and accelerate application delivery.
Low code development uses a drag-and-drop approach to build applications. There is no need to write lines of code as low code is essentially model-driven development where users visualize the data. Low-code platforms offer built-in templates, logic, and modules that simplify application development and enable users who have minimal coding experience to develop applications.
These platforms simplify application development with techniques like drag-and-drop functionality and visual guidance. This frees up IT and development resources so teams can focus on more complex projects.
Some of the Clear Advantages of Low-code Application Development are:
- Accelerates Digital Transformation
As enterprises navigate the new world of work, accelerating digital transformation initiatives demands an improved ability to develop applications and workflows to meet business needs. Low code development allows enterprises to build innovative web and mobile applications that meet the evolving needs of the business by democratizing application development.
There is no need for developer schedules to open up, as low-code platforms allow citizen developers to create flexible apps to accomplish specific tasks. These platforms enable enterprises to bring ideas to life faster, especially when timelines and budgets are tight.
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Reduces Workloads and IT Costs
Low-code platforms allow enterprises to reduce their IT spending irrespective of company size and structure. Further, they reduce the workload of the in-house IT team, as anyone can develop an application. These platforms provide a set of tools, visualization dashboards, etc., that simplify application development and increase productivity.
Seasoned developers, too, can accelerate productivity using low-code platforms and drive continuous innovation. In fact, low-code empowers IT, marketing teams, and other departments to work together and simultaneously on the same application, provide relevant inputs, and drive collaborative application development. It also reduces the risk of ‘shadow-it’ by enabling ongoing and efficient collaboration between IT and business departments.
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Drives Opportunities to Elevate UX
Multi-experience development is becoming increasingly popular as customers demand more intuitive and immersive app experiences. Multi-experience employs a variety of senses (like voice and touch), devices (such as mobiles, [Power platform is not supporting smart wearables as is now and there is not roadmap prescribed by Microsoft yet.], and tablets), and applications that end users can leverage.
This kind of development provides elevated user experiences irrespective of device type. Enterprises can develop several interaction channels, such as mobile apps, chatbots, etc., without having to re-create the entire application for each support.
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Improves Time-to-Market
Businesses need to be as agile as possible and capably leverage market opportunities. For this, they need to get products on time to the market and quickly adapt to changes. Research shows that low-code development is between 40% and 60% faster than traditional development. Enterprises get a “shortcut” to building applications with low code development with drag-and-drop capabilities, built-in data models, UI templates, and logic.
This gives enterprises the agility to leverage all opportunities and also get applications into the market faster. Along with this, low-code development platforms allow enterprises to quickly scale and adapt apps to evolving business needs.
Traditionally, enterprises had to build new applications every time for any significant change. A cycle of testing was involved to ensure that the new modules did not tamper with the functionality. Favorably, low-code platforms identify and fix errors that arise from existing app modifications. Automated testing supports faster testing and allows developers/citizen developers to automate the functional tests for user stories, thereby reducing overall testing costs.
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Elevates Customer Experience
Customer experience drives businesses. As competition increases and becomes global, customer experience becomes a key business differentiator. With low-code development, enterprises can deliver consistent, unmatched digital customer experiences. Building customer-facing online portals, IoT-enabled apps, mobile apps, etc., all from one platform in a shorter period and at lower costs, offers a significant business advantage by increasing business responsiveness to customer needs and wants.
It also becomes easier to deliver significant value with a low code platform as it allows collaborative development where the teams close to the final consumers work in close partnership with those developing the applications. This makes it easier to deliver customer-centric solutions and elevate the customer experience.
The Case for Microsoft Power Apps
While there are plenty of low-code platforms available to choose from, we must remember that not all low-code platforms are equal. Microsoft Power Apps is a popular platform for low-code application development. It helps developers and business users to develop enterprise-grade applications to streamline workflows, accelerate business transformation, solve business challenges, and do a whole lot more.
Power Apps provides intuitive visual tools that do not require code and enable data integration and distribution. It also integrates with Microsoft applications such as SQL Server, SharePoint, and OneDrive, as well as third-party applications like Dropbox, Google Docs, SAP, and Oracle. Further, it comes built-in with Common Data Service. All Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications are built on the Common Data Service, an enterprise-grade datastore. And also provides option for Custom Connectors for legacy systems where API is available or Microsoft On-Premises services. This feature eliminates the need for additional data integration.
There are three types of Power Apps:
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Canvas Apps – They use connectors to access data and services. Canvas apps start with a blank screen, like an artist's canvas, and the creator manually lays out each screen. This gives the creator complete control over the placement of each element on the canvas.
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Model-driven Apps – They're built on top of the data modeled in that database environment. Views and detail screens for model-driven apps are based on the data structure. Because of this, they offer users a more consistent look and feel from one screen to the next without requiring much effort from the app creator.
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Power Apps Portals – For website design and to create external-facing web portals that allow vendors, customers, and external partners to sign-in or access anonymously, view data in Dataverse and browse content.
PowerApps allows businesses to:
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Employ drag-and-drop simplicity to build apps quickly with no/low code and use pre-built app templates to accelerate business processes.
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Reduce development costs by 70 percent, realize an ROI of 362 percent, and increase business process efficiency by 15 percent.
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Power Apps and Power Automate integrate across the core apps that are already in use.
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Simplify tasks, quickly process information and approvals, and enhance prediction with AI Builder.
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Maintain greater security and control by building secure solutions in a compliant Microsoft environment.
The Bottom Line
Low code development allows enterprises to fulfill the growing demand for faster application delivery and highly customized automation workflows. These platforms and tools allow both IT professionals and business users to build applications and achieve a high level of digital competency and speed of delivery needed for today’s highly competitive and modern agile environment.
Reach out to us for more information about the viability of adopting low-code tools for your business.