Accelerating Digital Transformation with Rapid App Development in Low-Code Environments

Written by Salesforce India | Sep 7, 2021 8:21:15 AM

Increasing internet penetration and the large base of smartphone users have made India a poster child for mobile communications. And whether it was working from home or shopping online, nearly everyone and everything went digital last year.

The average time spent by a user on the mobile in 2020 increased 40% to 4.6 hours a day, taking India to the third position after Indonesia and Brazil. Indian consumers spent $500 million on mobile apps across iOS and Google Play Store.

The bottom line? As a business, you cannot plan your success strategy for the new normal without building the right apps for your customers and employees.

The good news is that, unlike a few years ago when mobile app development was the domain of IT teams, today low-code app development platforms have made launching digital marketplace and workplace app solutions easier and more inclusive.

Here’s how you can benefit from mobile app development in a low-code environment:

Low-code app development with clicks, not code

The accelerated pace of digital transformation demands rapid development of business applications, which is possible in a low-code environment.

Out-of-the-box PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) solutions allow organisations to build functional business apps with just a few clicks, without the need for an extensive IT team. These solutions are cost-effective and considerably reduce the time taken to build and deploy apps by using customisable templates, drag and drop tools, and other app building components.

Solutions like the Salesforce Lightning App Builder can help you build customised business apps by integrating ready-made components such as API services, data integration services, authentication, event log framework, analytics, and collaboration.

According to an IDC study, organisations witnessed a 68% reduction in the application development life cycle with Salesforce Platform.

Rapidly test and deploy apps

Performance and vulnerability testing are essential even for low-code apps and need an environment that can support such rapid development.

Testing spaces like Sandbox and Scratch.org allow developers to test apps and make any changes in a secure, isolated environment. They also ensure there is no business disruption during the app testing or while making any changes.

Enable business-critical customisations in-house

According to the Salesforce-YouGov Digital Skills survey, 93% of Indian managers believe that the pandemic has hastened the need for digital skills in their organisation. But hiring expert talent on a budget is also a challenge. Empowering the existing team to become citizen developers can address this issue. Even business admins, managers, and team leads can build apps that can extend Salesforce's out-of-the-box functionalities to deliver critical customisations. These stakeholders can, among other things:

automate complicated business processes into seamless workflows
set triggers for alerts and notifications (for instance, when a new or big sales opportunity arrives)
set security levels and access permissions based on role and hierarchy in the team
build custom validations for data entry to ensure compliance with business rules (for example making certain fields mandatory or setting rules on password strength, etc)

Prepare your workplace for successful remote working

With the shift to remote work environments over the past year, your employees have also become the consumers of your remote working setup, which should include file sharing and transfer, remote collaboration, 24x7 access to data, etc. Hence, there is a need to focus on improving the overall digital experience for employees as well. Low-code app development platforms help organisations champion this internal mandate too.

According to the Salesforce Employee Engagement report, 56% of Indian employees believe their workplace apps help them do their job effectively and efficiently. However, they also say the workplace experience could be enhanced with new or improved apps.

Using Salesforce Platform, easily build productivity-driving enterprise mobile applications for your employees, and integrate these with back-end systems to give employees access to all critical data anytime-anywhere. The apps can be fully customised to support a team or employee's unique line of work and responsibilities. You can also update these apps using simple click-and-point and drag-and-drop tools that let you try-test-launch easy and fast.

According to an IDC study, companies using low-code platform solutions like Salesforce Platform Lightning achieve average annual benefits of $7.55 million per organisation, resulting in a five-year ROI of 508%.

Low-code app development will rise to prominence in the new normal, as ‘digital first’ becomes the modus operandi of every business. According to Gartner, low-code application building will consolidate more than 65% of all app development functions by 2024.

Organisations can leverage the benefits of Salesforce Platform to create powerful, intuitive, and engaging mobile apps in no time with easy-to-use components like no-code builders.

Watch this App Builder demo to know more.

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