IT leaders are being pushed and pulled in multiple directions, asked to become close partners with business units, take the lead in creating new customer experience initiatives, build new apps and enable digital transformation — all while facing a significant skills gap.
While this constant push and pull may feel overwhelming for IT leaders, there are tools that can be deployed to eliminate manual processes and streamline app development. As our technology evolves, so do our tools. Recently consumption of low-code development tools has grown exponentially. Through smart technology and savvy design, low-code development tools can help IT accomplish all of their goals in record time and with record savings. And this low-code evolution is just the beginning. In Salesforce’s second annual State of IT report. the organization predicts continued growth of artificial intelligence (AI) application in tools that can make previously complex tasks simple and streamlined.
In the report, based on interviews with more than 2,200 IT leaders worldwide, 81 percent of respondents said IT is “entering a new era driven by customer expectations,” with 79 percent of respondents believing that “IT is the primary enabler of customer experience initiatives.”
App Development is Crucial to Creating New Customer Experiences
The key takeaway from the Salesforce study? IT is in the driver’s seat, with expectations from the rest of the enterprise that the ride will be a smooth one. The report concludes: “As the enabler of customer experience, IT plays a critical partnership role for other business units. Without IT as the backbone, these departments fall flat on powering crucial customer experience initiatives.”
At the core of building new customer experiences is the ability to build apps quickly. But IT can’t develop and deploy apps as quickly as customers demand. The report found, “Only 45% of IT leaders can design/prototype an app per business requirements in under a month, and 47% can deploy an app in under a month. While such timelines may have been lofty goals a few years ago, they increasingly represent targets for IT teams to hit in order to meet customers’ constantly evolving expectations.”
To tackle the problem, the report says, IT is turning away from full-stack development and towards low-code development tools. The study concludes, “nearly nine out of 10 IT leaders (88%) are already using or plan to use low-code solutions over the next 12–18 months. IT leaders agree that low-code development will help not only with speed but also productivity, allowing tech staff to concentrate on more strategic initiatives and innovations.”
The study goes on to explore how low-code tools will help not just IT staff, but also business users and domain experts, By taking the pressure off of IT and allowing experts knowledgeable in the business to create the apps they need, low-code development tools will benefit organizations cross-functionally. The report found, “74% of IT leaders plan to increasingly shift some application building responsibilities to business users over the next 12–18 months.”
When you commit to using development tools, you’re not only able to better meet consumer need, you’re equipping your organization with the know-how for the fast-arriving future of AI. As you build familiarity with the platforms and processes associated with these tools, you can then translate those skills to other cutting-edge development tools as they arrive.
What’s the Best Low-Code Development Platform for IT?
While many low-code development platforms claim to offer complex functionality, more often than not, you’ll still end up doing a hefty amount of the coding lift.
Alpha TransForm (for non-developers) and Alpha Anywhere (for developers) are ideal low-code and no-code tools for enterprise development. These solutions can work independently or together as a single platform and are ideally suited for helping IT build new customer initiatives.
Alpha TransForm helps business users craft online or offline mobile apps in minutes that employ the latest mobile features (camera, GPS, etc.) for fast, accurate data capture. Alpha Anywhere has the unique ability to rapidly create mobile-optimized forms and field apps that can easily access and integrate with any database or web service and can exploit built-in role-based security or robust offline functionality. Ready to learn more about what Alpha TransForm can mean for your organization?
Don’t miss your chance to try our low-code platform free for 30 days.
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