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Tools for IT: Low-Code, Mobile, Syncing with Business Units & Beyond

To know where the business world is headed, look at CIOs and the IT Department.If you want to know where the business world is headed, there’s one place to look: at IT departments. They put strategies in place to help companies chart their courses in a fast-changing business world, and invest in technologies to help navigate it in the future. So it’s worthwhile looking at Salesforce’s second annual State of IT report, which surveyed more than 2,200 IT leaders worldwide, to see what IT really cares about, and where they’re investing for tomorrow.

One big takeway: IT recognizes it needs to dramatically speed up development and has targeted low-code development tools as a way to do that. It found that “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 low-code tools are not just for tech staff, but also for business users, so-called citizen developers, as well. The report notes, “IT leaders are looking to citizen developers as a way to increase staff productivity and improve development speed.”

The report also found that IT recognizes that it is not an island and must work cooperatively with business units.

It reports that “Sixty-seven percent of IT teams say improving their collaboration with other lines of business is a high priority.” It concludes: “In the customer-driven era, IT can no longer function separately from business strategy and execution. IT has become the central nervous system driving business success, playing a key role in how business units leverage customer data and streamline cross-departmental processes (e.g., service teams upselling, sales and marketing collaborating, etc.).”

As for which technologies that IT says are most likely to transform businesses, the report found “The top three technologies expected to have the most transformational business impact...are cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and mobile technologies for customers.” Cloud computing was ranked at number 1, artificial intelligence at number two, and mobile at number three.

Overall, the report says, there’s a widespread recognition that IT needs to focus on innovation instead of just “keeping the lights on.” It found that “Sixty five percent of IT leaders say innovation for competitive differentiation is a critical or high priority.”

Choosing the Right Tool for IT and Digital Transformation

IT needs the right tools to deliver the future enterprises envision — and to speed up digital transformation. That’s where Alpha Anywhere and its new TransForm technology comes in. It’s the best tool for speeding up enterprise digital transformation. It offers tools that lets existing staff build business apps much more quickly and effectively and enables savvy business domain experts and IT departments to work together to digitize business processes and deliver tangible business impact. It also simultaneously enables IT to control data integration with systems of record, and data security compliance.

For practical advice on how to get IT and business users working together at your organization, download our comprehensive guide: "Citizen Developers: The Democratization of Web and Mobile App Development."

Learn how Alpha Software technology for IT AND business users can help you speed your digital transformation.

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About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.

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The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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