Low-code may open AI doors for many businesses

Every company wants to put Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their business/organization but most of them are not blessed to hire battalions of data scientists–nor is that necessarily the right approach. Low-and-no code platforms can make it possible without hiring an army of expensive developers and data scientists, but how? Anithalakshmi Arun, Program Manager & Architect, Low-code Practice, Indium Software explains in detail.

Low-code development can boost AI adoption

For any organization AI adoption is a challenge. The contributing factors include - availability of skilled resources, the cost of building AI solutions, the availability and usability of data, time taken to complete the cycle of build/deploy, time to market, cost of maintenance and making incremental improvements. Despite these challenges, the need for AI is inevitable.

Low-code, with its visual development, intuitive modeling, user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), and pre-built integrations is a great enabler for AI adoption. AI applications involving conversational bots using Natural language processing (NLP), Machine learning (ML), deep learning, visual recognition etc. are much simpler to build with the low-code platforms.

Not only Low-code is used to build AI-driven applications, but the platform by itself provides AI assistance in form of a ‘co-pilot’ utilizing ML, and predictive behaviors to understand the project needs and extend guidance, suggestions, and automation throughout the development journey.

Anithalakshmi Arun, Program Manager & Architect, Low code Practice, Indium Software

Low-code empowering businesses

Low-code/no-code empowers business agility and accelerates business outcomes, primarily because it bridges the gap between business and IT with the democratization of application development. Business teams, with their better understanding of end customers, are ideal candidates to build and test applications that have a greater chance of success with the customers.

Intuitive drag and drop of templates, forms, in-built applications, a visual integrated development environment (IDE), model-driven environment with connectors and out-of-the-box widgets to connect with multiple systems breaks the barrier of programming and coding skills. Though it does not mean that citizen developers will replace programmers, there is an opportunity for them to evolve beyond their current function.

Revolutionizing digital transformation

All businesses attempt to become customer-centric and focus on enhancing customer experience. And digital transformation is a key step towards this goal. Unlike the past, where tech teams were driving IT projects, Digital transformation initiatives are primarily driven by business teams. They want to try out new things, apps, workflows to know what's working or not working with their customers. And the competition as such, they are always in a hurry. This is where low-code comes into the picture.

With a drag and drop interface and with minimal support from IT, business teams can create apps, workflows and explore what works for their business and their customers, extremely reducing the time to market.

The rapid adoption of low-code cloud-based software

Most low-code/no-code platforms are PaaS (Platform-as-a-service). Hence, the need to build and invest in on-premise infrastructure is long gone. Also, most low-code platforms have built-in automated testing, deployment, and security (DevSecOps). The platform's agility, scalability, and convenience reduce software development effort and time to a fraction of the traditional methods.

Aiding intelligent business process management

Low-code /no-code platforms are bundled with built-in tools for creating business rules and to set approval workflows. The platforms are feature-rich with Workflow designer, Form modeling, Role-based Access Control, KPI based reports and dashboards, Notifications with email and mobile application alerts for quick intervention, Configurable Checklists and Audit Points, and Exceptions rule configurations. The best part is these are mostly wizard based and can be built by a citizen developer.

Future of low-code/no-code development in terms of enterprise resilience

According to Forrester, the low-code automation market was worth $4 billion in 2019 and is likely to hit $21.2 billion by 2022. According to Gartner’s Low-Code Development Technologies Evaluation Guide from 2019, 75 per cent of large enterprises will use at least four low-code development tools for IT application development and citizen development by 2024.

Gone are the days when enterprises used multiple platforms to develop and maintain multiple applications. The overhead cost of maintenance and non-uniformity caused a lot of inefficiencies. Investing in a single platform for application development across the organization led to efficient management on a single platform, which included reliability, security, scalability, and infrastructure monitoring. This also reduces the total cost of ownership across the geographical region and business units.