In the world of business, there are things you cannot control no matter what you do. Therefore, it’s important for businesses to plan ahead and to “expect the unexpected.” Finding and implementing creative IT solutions for these unexpected events could help your business not only survive but thrive during what Gartner calls “turns.”
According to Gartner, “uncertainty has become the watch word for business leaders. You can’t read much about business these days without coming across the word “disruption,” especially technology-driven disruption, but “turns” can come in many forms, such as acquisitions, cost pressures and shifts in consumer demand.”[1]
We believe that low-code platforms are one solution to ensure you are able to quickly react to these turns and move your business forward in the midst of disruption.
Navigating the Unknown
At this point, many companies have taken the first necessary step to protect employees and customers. That may have been providing employees with the necessary tools to enable them to work remotely and to ensure there is consistent and transparent communication with not only employees, but customers as well.
A remote workforce means a higher reliance on technology. We believe that in order to ensure operations can respond and continue, you must have software in place that can provide real-time insights and transparency into your operations. The more software based you are, the more you have the ability to react and adapt quickly.
Platforms that are agile, accessible, and reliable can help companies thrive in times of uncertainty. Therefore, we believe this is the time to reconsider your technology strategy and identify software that provides you with the most value. Leaders faced with difficult decisions during this stage should look for solutions that help employees achieve more out of the resources they have available and enable innovation throughout the organization.
Finally, the long-term goal for any business navigating any kind of “turn” should be strengthening your resilience for handling these unforeseen circumstances. We believe this means assessing how software-based your business is, your reliance on cloud-capability to help strengthen the core of your business.
In our opinion, if you haven’t already, now is the time to embrace the tools that can help you deal with future disruption.
Building Strong Software with Low-Code Platforms
Companies that build strong, agile software-driven businesses can pivot more quickly, mitigate the volatility, and recover faster as well. Your people – employees and customers both – need reliable software to interact with your business. Your assessment and long-term strategy need to account for technology at scale.
Once you decide to shift your capacity to take on digital transformation, you gain speed and agility that your competitors may not have. If you’re reading this and wondering about your existing tech department’s ability or panicking about investing in new development talent, there is one way to help strengthen your operations with resources you already have.
Business strategies that deliver value, not complexity, are vital to shifting to a software-based model. Enter Low-code.
What is Low-Code?
Low-code platforms enable problem solvers throughout the business to build highly customized solutions without needing any previous coding experience. They’re more agile and require less long-term maintenance than standard platforms, but are also highly secure, scalable and reliable. These platforms also increase visibility into data while providing security and governance controls.
Additionally, graphical user interfaces provide intuitive development and enable accelerated business solutions – perfect for adapting to sudden “unexpecteds.”
As companies wrestle with the digital age, ones that enable innovation throughout the entire business may be better prepared to weather unexpected events.
Why Consider Low-Code
We believe low-code platforms could be your secret weapon as you address future disruption. The platforms are:
- Naturally agile, addressing the need for quick pivots and real-time reactions to current events.
- Accessible and reliable, both in security and performance. Teams and IT leaders stop worrying about things like infrastructure or maintenance and get back to what they do best, innovate.
- Unite business and IT, allowing IT to stay ahead of business requests and put more resources towards the most complex and specialized digital transformation efforts.
- Able to break down silos, allowing multiple departments to work together in a lean environment.
- Ultra-fast to develop, satisfying the continuous development benchmark now required of digital age companies.
Weathering Discontinuity through Agility
You cannot plan for every event, but you can create an agile business framework with the right software. Once you’ve taken care of your people in the immediate aftermath of an event, the time is ripe to reassess your business operations and strengthen your resilience.
We believe low-code platforms are a necessary tool to have in your arsenal as you navigate ahead. We know because we have seen it. In response to COVID-19, we have seen companies use low-code platforms to rise to the challenge and quickly adapt and adjust their processes in order to protect their employees and continue to provide value to their customers.
This is the time for IT teams lead their organizations and develop a plan with necessary software to quickly adjust, react faster and be more agile in their response to massive disruption. The chance to take action and pivot with the times could mean the difference between sinking and thriving.
[1]Gartner, “2020 CIO Agenda: Winning the Turns,” By Andy Roswell-Jones, et al, 21 October 2019
