Developing Software is Challenging
Anyone who has ever been a part of a software development cycle knows that developing software is challenging; it is definitely not a walk in the park. Software development for most enterprises is an expensive & time-consuming process that often takes more than a year to bring to fruition (As per Gartner & PMI, 200% IT projects are over-budget & 41% IT projects get delayed respectively). More so, you need technical understanding & resources to successfully build, develop, deploy & manage a large software undertaking. All of which reduces the probability of software impacting a company’s bottom line, if at all.
But with that being said, technology is the future. Today, with our recent experiences with Covid, digitization is the only way forward. Companies & organizations that have successfully implemented technology solutions to automate their processes are miles ahead of their competition in driving efficiency; case in point, Asian Paints, which emphasizes technology. Needless to say, the approach has paid them back handsome pidends. So what is to be done? How can technology be made accessible to all? How to overcome its drawbacks & challenges? One such sustainable solution to this is No-Code.
What is No-Code?
No-Code is an approach to software development through which citizen developers/any non-technical person can ideate, prototype, design, build, deploy & manage complex end-to-end software without learning how to code. Complex enterprise software takes dozens of technical team members to envision, develop and operate, right from business system analysts (BSAs), Ui/Ux designers, DevOps engineers, software architects, developers, QA engineers, and so on and subsequently. Relatively, a no-code platform empowers users to create software for their enterprises themselves. Thus, removing any & all dependencies on extensive technical teams. Not only that, but no-code platforms also enable enterprises to save a lot of time & money. Software that used to take more than a year to build can now be completed in under a week. There are big cost savings too. No-code platforms have bought down the cost of development to a mere fraction of what it used to be. As per Market Forecast, the No-Code market opportunity is expected to be $187 Billion in 2030 with a CAGR of 31% from $10 Billion in 2019-20.
So then what’s the catch? Why is everybody not using no-code software? Well, to understand that, one will need to delve deeper into the history of such software. No-code/low-code is not new! In fact, it has been part of the ecosystem from the dot com era. Most of the large no-code platforms were set up in the early 2000s. That being said, the solutions that they delivered were very generic & not very customizable. With the advent of artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud solutions & faster wireframes & computing power in general, no-code is becoming huge. It has already started cannibalizing software development work in the market in a big way.
Natifi.ai is one such emerging startup that is redefining the software development process. Rather than creating a generic tool that can be used across industries, Natifi focuses on a few niche industries such as grant management & supply chain management. It can deliver deep & complex solutions that can be leveraged at an enterprise level. Not only does their platform enable building complex systems through an entirely no-code experience, but their Ai models train themselves on the incoming data & predict & forecast. Using Ai, enterprises can cut short lengthy manual processes which often take months & highlight the correct data to go ahead with & take a decision on, thereby, saving thousands of manhours.
The age of automation is upon us & making technology accessible is the way forward. Founder of Natifi.ai, Aditya Ranjan Sinha Roy, says, ‘Democratizing technology is the only way forward & one of the most critical areas that we the tech industry can focus is on automation through no-code & artificial intelligence amongst other leading technologies.”
Democratizing Technology: The Way Forward
Concluding, with imminent digitization and a massive digital talent shortage, the only way we can automate & sustain our technology & enterprises is through reimagining the way solutions are built. The era of spending millions of dollars on technologies that may or may not work, may or may not drive home efficiency/profitability is gone. The way forward is to democratize, make accessible, speed up, cut costs & scale; the way forward is the no-code revolution.
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