The no-code application development platform revolution continues to grow. Forrester has estimated that the low-code development platform market will be worth $15 billion by 2020.Higher education organizations in particular are seeing increasing demand for next-generation business applications to help:
- Design and deploy best-in-class apps, from student recruitment to alumni donation management
- Implement more efficient processes, integrate new and existing systems, and easily connect to data from multiple sources within a single user experience
- Rejuvenate legacy applications (in particular the difficult-to-use user interfaces) to deliver better user experiences and increase user adoption
- Transition apps from on-premise to the cloud
- Deliver mobile-ready apps for students, staff, and educators.
No-code application development platforms help enable the rapid delivery of the above. One of the typical questions we hear is, “Why invest in a no-code app development platform when I could write custom code to build and deliver such business applications? If I already have a team of in-house coders or use a Systems Integrator, why should I invest in another technology solution?”
This question is often asked (or challenged) by developers themselves, and it’s a fair question. Below are some of the reasons why there’s a compelling need for higher ed organizations to add a no-code app development platform to their solution armory:
With no-code platforms you can deliver more, faster.
With demand for business apps growing at a rapid pace, the backlog of new app developments continues to pile up in higher education institutions. Students and faculty call for next-generation technology that matches the consumer-grade user experiences they encounter in their day-to-day lives.
But budget constraints often mean that IT teams only have the resources and funds to do maintenance on existing solutions, much less adapt and innovate.
When purchasing SaaS software in particular, organizations often hope they can "set it and forget it," but in reality, users demand far more customizations than what's available out-of-the-box.
And customizations mean lots of code.No-code platforms are uniquely equipped to help higher education institutions deliver innovation in a cost-constrained environment.
A no-code platform can help plough through the IT backlog and get applications delivered to users to start adding value as quickly as possible. This means that organizations can maximize the return on their existing software investments.
In addition to ensuring a quick payback period and rapid ROI, no-code platforms prevent users from being frustrated by long delivery times (which more often than not drive them to develop offline alternatives, in spreadsheet-type solutions).
Higher ed organizations can leverage no-code platforms to create simplified, easy-to-use apps that operate the way students, educators, and staff work. Often, there’s no training required to learn to use these apps because they’re so intuitive.
At Skuid, we continue to see higher ed institutions leverage no-code platforms to build the apps they need, when they need them, everything from student portals to onboarding, enrollment, electronic forms, learning management systems, marketing and development automation, forecasting, and more.
Organizations are focusing on delivering apps with amazing user experiences that constantly adapt as the needs of schools and users change. No-code platforms allow you to execute this level of agility. If you can deliver more, more quickly using a no-code platform versus writing timely custom code, shouldn’t you?
Bridge the gap between education professionals and IT.
No-code platforms are for developers to use as much as they are for business analysts or citizen developers. No-code platforms are primarily focused on allowing non-IT personnel to deliver applications (aka citizen developers).
It makes perfect sense to have someone close to the needs of the application users developing the solution. But no-code platforms can be used by developers, too.
They help ensure the backlog is worked through at pace as previously mentioned, making devs more productive than ever. It also allows developers to focus on other complex assignments and activities that require their focus and effort.
This is equally applicable to Systems Integrators, because they can deliver more value to their clients. Essentially, higher ed institutions need both options of writing custom code and using no-code platforms. It's “and,” not “or.”
Like most technologies in a modern organization’s arsenal, there’s not a one-size-fits-all technology that caters to all user groups and all organizational needs, all of the time.
Higher ed organizations need a number of options to deliver what’s needed in the best way, appropriate to each scenario of the business application they are needing to deliver.
In some cases, that may be delivering it through a no-code solution, and in other cases it may be through writing code. Organizations need to have the choice to ensure the best outcome is achieved.
Having a no-code app development platform in your tool set will certainly become a mainstream necessity in the education world, and beyond, as the demand for next-generation business apps continues to grow.
It is, and will continue to be, an essential mechanism to deliver value-added business applications in an agile fashion.
