Why you should add a low-code solution to your organisation’s strategical toolset

“We automate our processes with SAP”. “We will add some custom actions to our legacy DMS”. “We developed a solution for that using product X”.

When pitching the Power Platform at organisations we often hear these remarks when trying to inspire them with some apps we built in the last couple of years. While organisations are most of the time aware and even convinced of the benefits of Power Platform, they still hesitate to add it to their strategical toolset. Why is that? Fear? Costs? Learning-curve? Extra load on the IT-department?

Small side-note: I’m currently reading this book on 2 world travellers who had something interesting to say about fear:

Fear comes from not knowing what’s coming and the feeling of losing control. The remedy against fear lies in its antipode “trust“. Through collecting knowledge and building experience, you gain trust.

I learned companies tend to fall back to products and platforms they know, already use and have the necessary development resources and licenses for. And that’s perfectly normal. But if you want to develop all your processes and automations using the same toolset, you could hit some limitations. Do your existing tools offer the necessary

• features and possibilities
• low cost
• flexibility
• speed of development

for every use case?

Buy or build?

Traditionally, organisations choose between full custom development and an off-the-shelf product. That’s the way it’s been for decades: buy vs build. Low-code, however, is quite new to the game: it is linked to the build paradigm (you still create in-house) but at the same time it also shares some buy characteristics (it provides predesigned building blocks and is less technical). In many cases, low-code platforms are the ideal compromise between these 2 options: they offer a lot of built-in features, but provide the necessary flexibility.

Here are some other reasons why I believe adopting the Power Platform is actually quite easy and why it deserves its place in your toolset.

Platform management

Since it’s a full cloud platform, managing the platform is a no-brainer: no installation, no upgrades, always up-to-date with the latest security-patches… So from an IT-maintenance point-of-view, it’s nothing compared to maintaining legacy on-prem platforms.

Resources

The name says it: low-code platform. Power platform is very accessible for less technical resources. I deliberately say less technical and not non-technical resources. Resources will need to have some technical “feeling” and be able to do some basic scripting (which you can very easily learn through online tutorials and resources), but they won’t need a master degree in computer science or x years of experience in this or that development-tool/language/methodology.

The Power Platform has a very low threshold so it’s accessible for more functional profiles who can then build the applications themselves. In fact, when developing power apps, it’s more important that your “developer” has that designer-eye instead of technical knowledge. So your pool of resources is not limited to those technical wizards, that unique profile, but is broader. Very important in these times where the war on technical talent is raging.

Costs

Do you already have licenses for M365? Well, then you have licenses for the Power Platform. There are of course extra licenses needed for more advanced implementations, but for starting, you will not be confronted with extra license costs. (PS: there is a nice blogpost here on how to identify small processes to try out your first powerapp).

I’m not going to go into details on the next argument because you will find tons of references on the internet substantiating this claim, but development time is considerably lower than classical custom development, about 45% lower. So if you think about it, you’re actually saving money.

Because the cost of building apps is decreasing, operations which you would never have considered digitising before because the ROI is too low, now become within reach which gives low-code platforms a lot of potential. Furthermore, you will make your employees happy because in these digitised times they expect to have an app for everything.

Digital acceleration

The way businesses are run has changed drastically since the pandemic. It’s absolutely crucial to digitise your operations as soon as possible because the way organisations interact with the customers and employees has changed! With that in mind, can you really afford investing a lot of time in traditional ways of development? Organisations who adopted the Power Platform report an increase of 22,5% in developer efficiency.

Conclusion

Adoption of low-code platforms is growing with 20% each year and will reach 50% of all medium to large companies by the end of the year. By the end of 2025 70% of new applications will be developed using low-code.

Adopting new technology can seem like a challenge and often companies stare at the obstacles and not at the opportunities. Low-code platforms and more specifically the Power Platform allows you to do more with less, less maintenance, less lack of resources, less costs. So start gathering knowledge, start building experience and start gaining trust.