Recently, “low code” fire, Tencent, Ali, Baidu, Kingdee, Yonyou and other well-known enterprises have entered the game, low code or will usher in a period of rapid development.
According to Gartner’s latest forecast, the global market for low-code development technologies will reach $13.8 billion in 2021, up 22.6% from 2020.
** According to data from HAIBi Research Institute, in 2020, the size of China’s low/no code market reached 1.9 billion yuan. In addition, the compound growth rate is expected to reach 49.5% in the next five years, and the market size will reach 10 billion in 2024.
From the above data, we can predict that in the future, the trend of less development and lightweight is unstoppable. Low code/zero code may be the industry leader. At this point, one might ask, what exactly is low code development? Why is it so popular with capital?
Low code development, as its name implies, uses little code to achieve rapid development. In essence, it is a change to the traditional development mode. It can help enterprises improve development efficiency, reduce technical threshold and save development cost by abstractive application scenarios and using visual language or component templates for one-time development and multiple reuse.
Why is low code development so popular?
In fact, the popularity of low code in the market is mainly to solve the difficulties faced by enterprises in the process of digital transformation.
1. The traditional development mode has long cycle and low efficiency, and the iteration speed of internal system cannot keep up with market changes
Traditional information construction, often long cycle, high cost, more and more difficult to timely respond to the needs of enterprises. In the context of a rapidly changing market, enterprises need to accelerate the pace of digital transformation and rapid iterative response of their internal systems. They hope to quickly build an information platform with the lowest cost and the most agile way to cope with various uncertainties in the market. Driven by the high demand for development efficiency, the low code development market is ripening.
Low code development can abstract out common application scenarios, modularize requirements through visual languages or components, realize reuse of modules, greatly improve development efficiency, and help enterprises quickly realize digital operation with agile and flexible development.
2. Low code development reduces the technical threshold and solves the problem of talent scarcity
Low code development is the product of technology development to a certain stage. From the perspective of industry development, low code development can lower the threshold of software development, from professional development teams to the general population. In this way, the distance between developers and users can be shortened, and execution and creativity can be better unleashed.
IDC’s Dayaratna has stated: there is a strong belief that successful enterprises will evolve into a model in which everyone will be trained in software development, whether as a professional, a low-code developer or a business unit skilled in providing requirements.
Thus, the emergence of low code development solves the problem of the shortage of high-end developers in the market. People with certain development knowledge, and even in extreme cases, business people with no technical knowledge, can quickly build and deploy applications by dragging and dropping, accelerating the process of enterprise innovation and digital transformation.
3. Enterprises are bearing increasingly heavy costs in the process of pursuing digital transformation
High implementation and development costs, maintenance costs for late changes or iterations… For enterprises, the increasing cost of labor and time is getting heavier and heavier, which makes many enterprises who want to transform back from it.
As mentioned earlier, low code development modularizes requirements through visual languages or components, like building blocks, which can be developed by simply arranging and assembling the “building blocks” according to requirements.
On the one hand, the mode of low code development, avoid a lot of code writing, greatly reduce the workload, shorten the development cycle, effectively save the development cost and time cost;
On the other hand, the building of “building blocks” is conducive to the expansion and iteration of the system. If there are new requirements or changes in the later stage, it only needs to “restructure” or modify some modules instead of completely rebuilding, which greatly saves maintenance costs.
Ii. What are the application scenarios of low code development platform in enterprise services?
Low code development platform widely used, such as: ERP, OA, CRM, MES production management can be developed quickly. Low code has long been used in enterprise data services.
In the past, most of the enterprises when doing data analysis, the general process for: from business unit to the IT department requests for data analysis, by scheduling a report made by the IT department to develop the understanding deviation will occur as long as there is communication problem, so there may be a repeated modification, and the status of the rework, in the long run, this way lead to report development efficiency is extremely low. Also, when the market evolves or the needs of the enterprise change, the report must be coded or completely redeveloped (time-consuming and laborious)…
Development platform, and using the low code can easily implement multiple heterogeneous system data integration, data platform, bulk import to low code through setting up relationships for each data object, break the barrier of the data between the system, by business people by simply dragging drag form, report development and the use of visualization.
What are the main aspects of low code value?
In my opinion, the value of low code is mainly reflected in three aspects: integration, forms, models and intelligent analysis.
1. Integration: low code/zero code connection data source
Previously, China Software Industry Association released the “Ten Trends of Low code Development Platform in China”, pointing out that the integration ability of low code and business system will be paid more attention to by breaking through the data island. Similarly, in data analysis and application, enterprises need to get through various business systems to achieve data integration. ETL is very complicated in the implementation of traditional BI, and the time consumption accounts for about 80% of the whole project.
Low-code platforms save a lot of work:
By presetting mainstream data extraction scripts, assist enterprises to quickly achieve data extraction work, greatly save the time cost of understanding business and exploring table structure, save time and effort! In addition, the form connector, zero code to achieve online form data collection, dynamic creation of views, real-time table diagram and semantic model, automatic modeling. After the completion of the report, the data is automatically extracted regularly without manual intervention, and the lightweight application enables instant collection and analysis.
2, form: zero code to achieve data supplement
Excel spreadsheets serve as a common tool to complement business system functions and create large statistical query tables, so there is a growing need to quickly import Excel data into a database and implement real-time data analysis and presentation through modeling. In Excel data, low code platforms enable such capabilities.
Business personnel only need to import Excel data through the low code platform, so they can realize the perfect integration of the filled data and the system data. There is no need to export the system data and then analyze the data in Excel, freeing manpower from a lot of repetitive work and greatly saving labor costs. The whole process zero code realizes data updating and automatic processing at any time.
3, model: preset model out of the box
Taking the OA collaborative office model as an example, the low-code platform can quickly build financial, personnel management, performance management and other models based on the enterprise system, and realize the multi-dimensional and graphic analysis of the system across departments, modules, and documents. Further enrich customers’ data analysis applications and realize lightweight data analysis.
4, intelligent analysis: drag to achieve visual analysis
In traditional report design, most of the time is spent developing report styles, while low-code platforms are preconfigured with a variety of visual charts, data analysis can be achieved quickly by dragging and dropping, report styles can be modified on demand, and the whole process of visual editing. Proficient in business processes but not good at programming business personnel, zero code to achieve flexible, agile, efficient report development.
The use of visual charts to create a management center, in a more beautiful and intuitive way to transmit data information, with the visual parameter definition, can be to achieve the report drilling, penetration, mining more data value.
Conclusion:
In the era of digital intelligence, enterprises have a higher demand for digital transformation plan. Low code development can make enterprises more agile and efficient in responding to a large number of demands initiated by business departments, and help enterprises stride forward on the road of digital transformation.
The low code development platform enables rapid implementation of data analysis results, builds agile data analysis applications for enterprises, and greatly promotes the pace of data information mining and digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises.
Reasonable and effective use of low code platform, not only can let us work efficiently, but also can maximize the achievement of team goals. I recommend wexinInFormat, which has built-in 100+ standard application templates, covering OA collaborative office, ERP purchase-sale-inventory, CRM customer management, HR performance finance, enterprise service, individuals and organizations, and other application scenarios.