Low-Code/No-Code Accelerate Digital Transformation Initiatives

By Ayalla Goldschmidt, Head of Platform Product Marketing, ServiceNow

This year, COVID-19 created high demand for low-code and no-code applications as enterprises required creative, agile solutions that helped maintain business continuity. In 2021, we will see low/no-code application development become a standard practice as enterprises invest in application development that solves cross-business challenges and accelerates digital transformation initiatives.

Low/No-Code Will Take on Mission Critical Functions Within the Enterprise

As the low/no-code market matures, these platforms will increase capabilities to support complex software development needs by non-professional developers. End-to-end low/no-code platforms will emerge to combine experiences, process automation, integration, AI/ML, and data reporting in a holistic offering hardened for the enterprise. This will make it possible for industrial-grade software development to be done completely by citizen developers. As a result, we will witness more mission-critical software projects executed on a single low/no-code platform.

Additionally, implementing guardrails and governance policies and processes is going to become a major requirement for organizations as low/no-code platforms take on more mission-critical software projects. Companies will have to be hyper aware of how they scale low/no-code across the enterprise without creating application sprawl.

Consolidation of Low/No-Code Technology  

With low/no-code gaining momentum this year, every software vendor seems to be announcing their own solutions. This in turn is creating a crowded and confusing landscape. In 2021, we are going to see the low/no-code market consolidate as it matures due to recent business tailwinds and converge with adjacent spaces.

As enterprises move to adopt low/no-code at scale, architectural standardization and the breadth of platform functionalities supporting both LOBs and IT will become critical decision factors. As a result, buyers will reduce their short lists to a small number of end-to-end platform vendors that can deliver value across domains. Multi-purpose platforms will bring broad sets of capabilities together and eliminate the complexity of integration for customers.

RPA Will Be Consumed by Low/No-Code

We will see RPA become part of low/no-code process automation in 2021, and low/no- code platforms will become the orchestration layer for RPA. After a few years of experimenting with RPA, enterprises have realized that it is not the answer to support process automation end-to-end on its own. And while RPA has seen tremendous growth and adoption, it is also receiving healthy criticism from an enterprise architecture perspective, for getting out of control within organizations.

RPA competently automates repetitive mundane tasks, but process automation requires enterprises to also address the human element through an engagement layer in any end-to-end workflow, including tasks such as item selection, approval, or scheduling. Low/no-code platforms will therefore incorporate RPA as a key feature and serve as the logical orchestration layer for managing RPA, as well as incorporate RPA bots into more sophisticated workflows.

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About the Author

Ayalla Goldschmidt is Head of ServiceNow Platform Product Marketing where she oversees the marketing strategy and GTM initiatives for the ServiceNow Platform. Ayalla has over 15 years of experience with driving GTM for development and integration platforms and spent the earlier part of her career as an Organizational Psychology Researcher.