While facing additional pressure to build and launch content-based applications at speed, software developers have turned to low-code tools to accelerate the process.
70% of those surveyed by Nuxeo in its study, ‘The Low-Code Imperative‘, said that digital transformation has become more of a priority since Covid-19.
Looking ahead, 41% of software developers want more than half of their organisation’s app development processes to be based on low-code by 2022.
However, almost half (47%) believe they lack the low-code tools to build applications quickly enough to meet deadlines, while 44% said that their organisation has abandoned application projects because they took too long.
43% of respondents said it takes more than three months to create a typical content-based application.
The most common reasons for project abandonment in this space consisted of the inability to respond quickly enough to changing market requirements (22%), and the project simply taking too long (15%).
Although 55% said that their employers encourage them to use low-code development tools more often, 61% admitted to only using such tools occasionally or rarely.
The benefits of low-code
Among the software developers surveyed, the most commonly cited business benefit of low-code technology was the simplification it bought to the development process (35%).
Also mentioned were differentiating from the competition (25%), helping the company be more innovative (25%) and improving the customer experience (24%). Customer experience and differentiating a brand have been predicted to be more vital than ever in 2021.
Regarding more personal advantages, 32% said it enables them to do more varied and interesting work, while 29% believe they can bring more value to the organisation. This highlights the positive impact low-code can have on staff retention and personal development.
How realistic is the promise of low-code?
“The pandemic has only served to accelerate digital transformation programmes that were already underway, with businesses having to shift further online, provide new customer experiences and deliver better products quicker than ever,” said Chris McLaughlin, chief product and marketing officer at Nuxeo.
“Organisations need the right tools to improve agility, flexibility and to respond to market demands quicker – for content-based applications, the right tools means low-code development.
“It’s always been important to be agile, flexible and innovative but it’s become even more so this year. To achieve this, organisations need to bring their content-based applications to market much quicker and with a minimum of cost and complexity, and low-code tools will play an increasingly central role in doing so.”
