What Are Low-Code Platforms And What Makes Them Stand Out Among Other Systems?

The origins of the no-code concept date back to the 1970s and the first low-code platforms became available in the 1990s. However, it took until only recently before we saw the surge in their popularity, which led to them being used on an increasingly broader scale. Low-code platforms are modern, functional and standardized tools, which offer everything that modern businesses need – they are easy and intuitive to use, offering an extensive set of features, which can be perfectly adapted to the needs of any company and using them does not require the users to know any programming languages. 

Where Did The Idea And Demand For Low-Code Platforms Come From?

Low-code platforms are modern IT systems, offering features of solutions such as DMS (document management system), BPM (business process management) and BPA (business process automation). Initially, before low-code solutions started to be developed on a large scale, these systems required the direct involvement of development teams in order to ensure their proper functioning, development of new features and introducing changes on an ongoing basis. Software developers were indispensable in all processes involving these systems, from implementation and configuring them to fit the company’s requirements, to modifying them if necessary. With the development of modern technologies and digitalisation taking hold of companies, these platforms became more widespread, which made the companies dependent on software development services and increased the costs of company IT support. In reality, however, with time the tools which were supposed to help employees with carrying out their tasks and increase the efficiency of company operations became a hindrance and were met with users’ reluctance.

The rapid digital transformation of enterprises in recent years has led to the need to involve an increasing number of IT specialists. However, despite high salaries, widespread access to specialised training courses and other benefits, IT experts are still scarce in the market and the supply still cannot cover the demand. According to data made available by the European Commission, there are currently around 600,000 vacancies for IT positions in the EU, and nothing indicates that these numbers will significantly decrease in the coming years. This situation, on the other hand, put companies in a position, where they had to find solutions that would reduce the need for software developers without compromising the quality of IT support for the business. Eventually, low-code platforms emerged as the best solution, enabling the building of business applications in a quick and efficient manner, to manage and automate business processes.

What Is A Modern Low-Code Platform And What Does It Offer?

Low-code platforms are modern and truly innovative technologies, based on a visual approach to creating business applications. Their functioning is based on a number of important foundations – ease of use, supporting global standards, high level of integration with other systems operating in the company, universal availability, as well as simple scalability and expandability.

Low-code platforms use drag & drop and point & click methodology, available via the designer graphic user interface, for building business applications. This allows users to build, modify and manage business applications without knowing any programming languages and without having any actual software development skills. This, on the other hand, enables every user who understands business processes and workflow mechanisms to take direct part in their development. What is more, low-code platforms offer the ability to use code elements where this is more economically or technically justified. This can be the case, for example, with more advanced integrations with other systems or extremely complex business scenarios.

A low code platform enables building business applications without having to write code, thanks to which it effectively supports the electronic workflow and document circulation processes in the company, while functionally supporting and automating virtually all business processes taking place in the company. It enables the management of core processes enabling the company’s operation and supporting back-office processes, which improve the company’s operation from within. A low-code platform is a modern and feature-rich solution, which was developed for companies wishing to automate their processes in a quick and efficient way, as well as build business applications that are ideally suited to their needs and easy to modify on an ongoing basis, without being dependent on external or internal software development teams.

What To Look For While Choosing A Low-Code Platform?

The sudden surge in the popularity of low-code platforms has resulted in quite a few systems offering relatively extensive functionality of this kind emerging on the business IT solutions market. However, not every low-code platform available to customers enables making efficient, real time changes and modifications at every stage of the application life cycle (including applications which are already in use, as well as workflow instances, which are operational at any given moment), which is particularly important in today’s rapidly changing business world.

When choosing a forward-looking and highly functional solution that will always be ideally suited to the current needs of the company and will effectively support its natural, dynamic growth, it is worth picking a solution that will not only allow building business applications in a quick and efficient manner, but also to modify them if necessary with immediate effect. This will allow the company to introduce the necessary changes without compromising existing applications and processes, and thus to easily and quickly adapt their functionality and feature set to the changing needs of the company, while ensuring a comfortable time-to-business.