You have heard and read about no-code everywhere, from small tech blogs to big magazines and news portals with universal reach. Some say no-code applications are the future of the software industry. Others go one step further, claiming it is the way to go for the tech industry as a whole.

It is 2022, and still, most available solutions are not built with a low-code approach. This makes it difficult to evaluate your options, comprehend the ever-changing landscape, and weigh your limitations and opportunities. This blog aims to provide you with a quick overview of where no-code is today and a few important factors you should consider before introducing it to your business. 

Why No-Code?

No-code development solutions came to be as a response to the necessity of numerous modern companies to incorporate more of their diverse workforce in the planning, development, content creation, reporting, and publishing processes. 

The employees of a company don’t all have the same background, skills, and needs. As a result, for companies to be more agile and productive, equal opportunities must be provided to employees who are not as tech-savvy. No-code platforms make it possible for them to be able to contribute in more fields with just simple training. In addition, considering how expensive some types of IT specialists and engineers can be for a company’s payroll, incorporating more functions in the aforementioned processes ensures improved cost efficiency.

In addition, no-code solutions can even be beneficial to IT-trained and tech-savvy professionals. This is because they frequently require less thinking and can provide satisfactory results with minimum effort. 

Types Of No-Code Software   

Although the no-code development approach has found its way into various industries and areas of interest, here is a non-exhaustive list of popular cases. 

  • Content/Website Creation: No-code solutions in this area make it extremely easy to put together very decent website pages and blog posts by dragging and dropping them from a variety of content blocks. 
  • Prototyping: Similar in logic to the above but aims to align all project stakeholders before moving forward with actual development and design. Some prototyping tools are 100% code-free web-based that allows you to create high and low-fidelity interactive prototypes in minutes, even with no coding skills! 
  •  Project Management: Here, we mostly refer to the task or card-based apps that allow teams to follow the task’s status, exchange comments, upload images and documents, and keep an overview of how projects or sprints are unfolding.
  • Analytics: With data analysts being a popular yet rare breed for recruiters, no-code analytics solutions allow anyone in a team to run simple questions and get valuable data within seconds. 
  • Customer Support: In a globalized world with many time zones and a constant need for user support, the best no-code development company allows you to automate part of all your support needs.
  • Email/Social Media Marketing: Tools in this area make it easier to schedule emails and posts for a later time and date. This reduces human error and allows marketing teams to concentrate more on performance instead of execution.   

Common Features In No-Code Solutions

As with all other tools, no-code development solutions have various features that respond to different user needs. However, the following can probably be found in most: 

  • Drag-And-Drop Functionality: Most content-related tools comprise different libraries of elements and components that you can mix and match as well as customize to fit your exact needs.
  • Data-Base Connectivity: Many no-code tools are able to directly sync to the user’s SQL or CRM database. Alternatively, uploading data in .csv format or Excel spreadsheet is also supported. 
  • Data Security: No-code solutions require direct access to company or user data to operate smoothly. Therefore, they are improved with data protection protocols from external breaches and violations. 
  • Responsiveness: Most features and capabilities of no-code tools are equally available on both desktop and mobile devices. 

Considerations Before Adoption

Adopting any new software in your built workflow can be intimidating. From all the above, it is quite obvious that adopting no-code development solutions can bring numerous benefits to your organization. However, it is essential to consider a few things for a smooth transition. 

  • Security Loopholes

With an increasing number of employees adopting a new no-code tool, it is very important to train your team based on online data security. Especially, if most of these users are not tech-savvy, it is necessary that they become aware of both the dangers and opportunities that might appear from the newly adopted solution. Also, your organization might need to create frameworks in order to evaluate employee security savviness on fixed intervals, e.g: annually. 

  • Lack Of Flexibility 

No-code development tools usually offer a great selection of options and comprise many content libraries, you will never get the customization level of developing and designing your own apps or pages from scratch all by yourself. It is important that everyone becomes aware of this limitation and learns how to use the newly available resources in a creative yet flexible manner. 

  • No Ownership Of Source Code

Anything you create via no-code solutions is based on the tool’s source code on which your team or company has no proprietary rights. However, some tools claim that they give you access to your projects’ source code. And in most cases, a significant part of that is encrypted and therefore, impossible to tamper with. 

  • Costly Scaling Up 

As you will see once you get in-market for a new no-code solution, beginning with a few users and seats will not set you or your business back by a lot. However, as your team’s needs grow, whether in terms of the number of projects or licenses available to you, you will see that the cost can jump exponentially. Try to bear that in mind before committing, always forecast a 1-2 year growth scenario, if possible. 

Closing Thoughts

No-code applications and software seem to be gaining popularity extremely fast, especially in the tech industry. This means that as more solutions become available, new challenges and opportunities will open up for potentially interested users. 

As with everything else, always consult the most well-versed people in your organization, create various hypothetical growth scenarios of growth, and make sure the tool you select is user-friendly. This is because it is crucial that your staff embraces it from the first few days of its adoption.