Want to create business solutions for your company? Or maybe you are in IT and want to push form and workflow creation to HR, Facilities, Purchasing, and other departments, so they can build the solutions themselves?
The rise of no-code solutions makes it possible for business users to build highly effective workflows without needing to know programming languages. The goal is to provide non-programmers with tools that allow them to easily automate processes.
After all, the people who use the workflows are the ones who often know best what they need. But without the tools to build solutions, they have to rely on IT to provide these services.
(For a no-code tool to build workflows solutions in SharePoint and Office 365, check out our NITRO Studio.)
Previously, departments would call on IT to provide an automation solution. This often resulted in delays as the overloaded IT department would try to help, but had many other demands to attend to. It would take time to clarify the requirements, then to schedule the busy programming group to build it or to find a vendor who supplies something close to what the department needs or to contract out to an (expensive) consulting company to provide it.
Fortunately, the no-code approach is transforming how enterprises are building a wide variety of solutions, including business process applications. The barriers between IT Departments and Business Management are being broken down, as business users now have an opportunity to directly engage with solutions at an operational level.
No-Code Solutions Benefit Organizational Efficiency
No-code technology has broken down barriers between IT and other departments. In doing so, it has had an impact on organizational efficiency. Key benefits of using no-code solutions include:
Self-Service – Build Your Own Solution
At the core of no-code technology are tools designed to create highly configurable apps that can be applied to specific business needs. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, intuitive, and engaging for non-IT users. After a relatively short training period, no-code builder tools can empower business users to:
- Create workflows that automate internal and external processes
- Design and build customer self-service portals
- Design forms that gather specific information from users
- Configure interactions between forms and processes (e.g., event triggers, conditional form displays, automated actions based on input, etc.)
- Manage reporting and analysis capabilities.
Faster Deployment
No-code building tools are designed with speed as a primary requisite — business users need to quickly define processes and workflows based on current needs which, more often than not, change frequently.
In addition to allowing automation of processes and workflows, no-code builder tools enable business users to create brand new apps tailored to unique segments, such as onboarding systems, user request management, and help desk systems.
The Move Away from Legacy Systems
For years, enterprises were locked in to complex platforms that lacked the scalability needed to adapt to the fast evolutionary pace of modern IT. A case in point is InfoPath: for years, InfoPath was the de facto forms creation solution in the Microsoft world. It was built to operate in specific environments (such as SharePoint) but lacked the flexibility needed in new tech environments such as mobile, HTML5, and responsive Web-based displays. In addition, the backend coding used to run InfoPath—XML—was the flavor-of-the-day, but soon fell out of favor as new programming languages offered greater efficiency and wider implementation options.
(See more at our InfoPath Replacement information pages.)
InfoPath is just one of many examples of solutions that were not built with flexibility and scalability in mind. The continued use of legacy systems costs enterprises millions of dollars annually, with organizations relying on temporary fixes and workarounds in attempts to forestall the inevitable demise of no-longer-supported solutions.
An ideal no-code solution should be built with the future in mind — meaning, the ability to scale upwards without compromising functionality while remaining flexible enough to adapt to new technologies.
—
Crow Canyon Software delivers the power of a connected, digital workplace to your organization, helping you be more successful and competitive. We provide the tools that allow you to gain the maximum benefit from SharePoint and Office 365, Microsoft’s premier collaboration platforms.
Want to learn about how our business productivity applications for SharePoint and Office 365 can power up your organization? Give us a call at 1-925-478-3110 or contact us by e-mail at sales@crowcanyon.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
