Low Code Use Cases: What Can You Build With Low Code Platforms

article on the use cases of low code platforms
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Software development is time and resource-consuming, expensive, and a slow process. According to the Mckinsey and Oxford joint study, most large-scale IT projects fail to prove or validate themselves. To overcome this, enterprises have started to adopt the use cases of low code development platforms.

Low code platforms reduce pressure on Enterprise IT teams by minimal hand-coding to build and deploy apps. It helps businesses boost their app delivery and cut down the time used for manual coding.

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What is Low-Code Development?

Enterprise Low code platforms have emerged as the next big thing to build, scale, and sell their data, AI solutions, or software.

Low-code development is an interactive, visual programming development approach that enables applications to be built with minimal hand-coding. 

Citizen developers can design apps and websites with Low-code Application Platforms (LCAP) or Low-code Development Platforms (LCDP).

Also See: What is Enterprise Citizen Development and top low code platforms for citizen developers.

Low-Code Development Approach for Enterprises

The total spending on low-code development as per Forrester Research is expected to hit $21.2 billion by 2022, signifying a 40% compound annual growth rate.

Organizations that are looking to gain a competitive lead in the market should focus on speed and time-to-market as the crucial drivers. Low-code development can help organizations boost their speed and productivity.

reasons to use low code platforms by enterprises
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Source: Outsystem

Low Code Use Cases: Types of Apps You Can Build

Today, there are a plethora of industries with different app requirements. With low-code platforms, you can build different kinds of applications with varying levels of complexity. At Gramener, we build enterprise data apps and AI solutions with our low code analytics platform, Gramex.

Find out more about Gramex’s architecture, use cases, solutions, and capabilities.
Download Gramex Data Sheet

Let’s look at a few low-code example use cases. Here are four low-code platform use cases as charted by Gartner’s Pace-Layered Model:

Innovation Apps

An innovation application owes its origin to ideas for new products, channels, and digital business models to help grow and distinguish an organization. With the help of emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, IoT, etc., these low-code enterprise apps unlock new sources of value. A high degree of business involvement is needed throughout the development process as innovation apps begin with ideas.

Customer Engagement Apps

These low-code use cases help partners and customers transact and interact better with the business, thereby improving retention, revenue, and satisfaction. Customer engagement applications enable the business to have a complete idea of the app. These apps generally encounter demanding use cases in terms of seamlessness, usability, and multi-channel access. 

Operational Efficiency Apps

These low-code enterprise solutions are the partner or employee-facing apps designed to automate the manual or paper-based process and reduce costs. Operational efficiency applications help company-wide, cross-departmental, or inter-departmental processes.

They are generally in regulated industries driven by compliance needs. This type of app often incorporates core systems. The operational robustness becomes more vital as this app is closer to the core systems of the business. There are multiple paid and open source low code platforms that can easily build operational efficiency apps. However, the extent of customization is a question when it comes to using free technology.

Microservices-based Solutions

Tech giants such as Amazon and Netflix have implemented low-code microservices for building big data applications. They have achieved a great deal of success in their business models with low-code development apps. Low-code platforms support enterprises that are looking to shift from a monolithic approach to a microservices-based approach.

Low-code microservices can be used to develop modular web applications. With this, enterprises can develop a suite of micro-applications that can incorporate with each other using open services.  

Omni-channel Solutions 

For business sectors such as call centers and BFSI, these are the best-suited solutions. Low code platforms have some effective use cases in the banking industry. The use of a low code approach can reduce time and energy in developing applications like online banking (where customers can access their business and/or personal accounts anytime, anywhere, and on any device). 

These necessities require the application to fetch data from manifold data sources (APIs, Custom Business Logic, databases, files, cloud services, legacy apps) and generate mobile as well as web-ready dashboards. Low-code data science solutions provide these integrations with business logic and APIs, but they also provide live data grids, real-time charts, and live lists that give instant visibility into data. This helps businesses in the BFSI sector view their applications.

Applications on New Platforms 

Today, technology is moving at a fast pace and customers want to engage with businesses on new platforms such as virtual reality and augmented reality. Serving applications for these platforms help companies build their KPIs like retention, satisfaction, and revenue.

MXDPs – Multi-experience Development Platforms – allow the development of these modern platforms by Low-code AI apps or other low code approaches.

Building Data Analytics Solutions With Low Code

Building data analytics applications with low code have seen new dawn. Be it building digital twins for manufacturing operations or creating data apps for enterprise reporting, low code platforms can do it in less time compared to traditional coding.

Let’s now understand use cases and benefits of low code platforms, when it comes to building data apps.

Real-time Business Insights Dashboards

A low code platform helps citizen developers embed analytical components by automating analysis patterns into libraries. With low-code platforms, it is easy to put together a solution that will generate real-time business insights for users. it can be automated narratives, BI dashboard reporting, and even war room analytics applications.

Digital Twins of Business Operations

Businesses running expensive operations can incur losses too. A digital twin can create a virtual environment for them to try out their manufacturing operations or business processes. Based on the simulation, enterprises can understand the effectiveness of the operation.

For example, the GIF below is a use case of a low code Machine Learning app, created to replicate a pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. This digital twin application captures real-time data such as reactor temperature, cooling rate, stirring speed, etc. to predict the quality of the tablet batches.

machine learning application built on low code platform
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Compelling Data Visualizations and Visual Analytics Apps

Data visualizations represent the numerical insights in the most consumable manner. Human beings process and remember pictures a lot faster and better than text. Low-code development platforms make it easy to build innovative data visualizations with enhanced storytelling capabilities.

For example, the application shown below is a scrollable storytelling dashboard. We built this with the World Bank to understand how innovation, technology and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. This use case built on low code technology helped us understand the effect of rise in technology on people.

Automation of Data Stories

A low-code development platform helps in automating data storytelling, allowing business users to consume insights more easily. Business users can consume these data stories in the form of web apps, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, or interactive data applications.

The following is a business playbook that narrates important insights from organization data in a storytelling format. All you need is to download the PPT and put it in motion.

use case of an interactive data app built with low code platform
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Advantages of Low-Code Platforms

Support and Scalability in a Unified IT Environment

You can easily integrate low-code data apps with other apps in the organization’s software ecosystem. This is one of the important uses of low code platforms that can benefit enterprises. Dozens of systems of the IT department can be connected via a low-code platform’s open API in a unified IT landscape. This can further boost the solutions to match the company’s goals for development.

Faster Software Development and Deployment

Low-code technology reduces hand-coding efforts to ground level. Also, it has a user-friendly UI, one-click deployment, and support for a collaborative environment. The delivery of new applications is accelerated, and this plays a vital role in fast-tracking digital transformation.

Better Agility Across the Software Development Lifecycle

When compared with traditional programming, low-code solutions permit developers to easily accept changes to a project and transform the processes or apps even after deployment. This helps businesses to quickly adapt to the shifts in customer expectations and revert to the market changes.

Reduced Risks Associated With Shadow IT

Companies eradicate the requirement to delegate some projects to IT service providers by giving developers competent tools to build apps more quickly. Low-code development platforms thus help to overcome shadow IT development. For businesses, it means better IT governance, the possibility of end-to-end operational transparency, reduced data security risks, and many other improvements in operational efficiency and software maintenance.

Limitations of Low-Code Platforms

Although low code development aims to simplify the software development process, it does have a few limitations.

Restricted Customization Preferences

In low-code development platforms, there are limited customization tools. This sometimes leads organizations to amend business processes to meet the low-code platform’s competencies.

Restricted Flexibility

Low-code apps have limited components and when there is a need to add a specific feature, the organization faces issues with the drag and drop building blocks as they may not match the organization’s needs. In such cases, there is a need for businesses to write custom codes that allow specific functionalities.

Security

Low-code platforms are used by those with little background in information security, and they do not have complete control of the development. Hence there remains a big risk of security breaches in low-code enterprise apps. Special audits are needed to overcome security issues.

Bottomline

Like the two sides of a coin, low-code platforms have their own pros and cons, but the advantages far outnumber the drawbacks. 

The list of low-code example use cases will further increase as more businesses and enterprises turn towards low-code platforms. These platforms certainly help in faster software development by producing applications with customizable building blocks. 

Finally, if there’s anything we can do with our low code approach to benefit your business, do contact us.

If you still want to discover more about the low code trends, benefits, use cases, and examples, download our latest eBook by clicking download below.

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