Print this page
Thursday, 02 December 2021 03:37

Microsoft Lowcode applications to boost digital transformation

Written by Evelyn Alas

The workforce is changing: their skills, expectations and even location thanks to remote work are not the same as before. Companies of all industries and sizes had to reinvent their business models to meet the challenges of the pandemic, a process in which technology was a fundamental ally.

Digitizing the operation of a company or enterprise became an imperative for its growth and, today, technology is becoming increasingly accessible to non-experts. If until a few years ago, creating an application implied numerous hours of work, cost and experts, nowadays low-code tools -such as the ones that Microsoft Power Platform brings together- allow a person to create applications in a few hours and, more importantly, without the need to have programming knowledge.

Additionally, there is a huge talent deficit in the technology world: it is estimated that only 33% of the labor supply in these fields finds trained talent. This is a problem for the transformation and competitiveness of the entire business fabric. In view of this huge talent deficit, and the fact that it is estimated that only 2% of the world's population knows how to code, a new protagonist has appeared: the citizen developer. The world of application development is no longer cryptic and incomprehensible thanks to the integration of Artificial Intelligence tools such as voice or image recognition to ready-to-use tools and templates.

Ready-to-use tools and templates

"This new era of low-code tools and solutions has democratized technology, giving people access to technical expertise through a simplified experience that does not require extensive and expensive training. Thanks to the cloud and low-code solutions, task automation or application development is no longer reserved for large corporations with robust IT departments, but is available to any organization, of any size and in any industry", said Michael Burke, Power Platform's Business Leader for Latin America.

Microsoft Power Platform - which has 10 million monthly active users - combines a series of interconnected solutions: Power BI (visualization dashboards that allow you to organize large volumes of data), Power Apps (low-code application development), Power Automate (workflow automation) and Power Virtual Agents (for the development of intelligent chat bots). All this integrated in a secure and reliable hyperscale cloud ecosystem on Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365.

With these solutions, apps can be developed for both cell phones and websites through a simple build process - it's nothing more than drag-and-drop elements democratizing access to technology.

A Forrester 1 study demonstrated the impact on organizations of implementing such low-cost solutions, empowering the role of non-programming experts. Three examples of Power Automate saved 26,660 labor hours per year. Respondents also described many ways in which their businesses have improved. These include happier employees, reduced time to market by 33%, and increased revenue.

In this way, non-expert citizen developers are helping to reduce bottlenecks in their organizations, close development gaps, increase agility and innovate faster. In addition, according to Gartner by 2024 75% of large enterprises will use at least four development tools under code, so it is critical to start implementing these solutions and leverage their potential to drive Digital Transformation in companies of all sizes and industries.

Related items