• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, May 19, 2021

Have you been given some easy-to-use email technology and told by IT, in effect, to do it yourself? 

It probably won’t happen any time soon, judging by The State of Low-Code/No-Code, a study by Creatio. 

Only 6% of low-code development in all realms is done by the actual users, without IT involvement. 

Adoption of no-code tools is higher because the “low-code development approach still requires a basic understanding of underlying technologies and IT acumen,” the study notes.

That is one issue being studied in companies as they race to complete their digital transformation. Most are: 87%of the respondents are regularly investing in high-tech innovations. 

Here’s what firms are planning in 2021:

• Continue the firm's planned transformation initiative as it is an ongoing process in the organization — 55%
• Complete the ongoing initiatives, but not introduce new ones — 27%
• Scale digital transformation, include more business units into the project — 13%
• Pause all initiatives for 2021 — 5%

Low-code is being used primarily for custom app development in separate business units like sales and marketing, service, HR or finance. 

But companies face challenges: Lack of skilled resources is cited by 43%. And 60% say the main obstacle to low-code is lack of experience.

Why bother with low-code? The main benefit is “accelerated time-to-market, followed by reduced app development cost,” the study continues.

Here’s how fast it is (according to the survey participants):

- Slower than traditional development — 2%

- Equal to traditional development — 3%

- 1-20% faster — 11%

- 21-40% faster —27%

- 41-60 days faster — 29%

- 61-100% faster — 5%

- 81-100% faster — 5%

- More than 100% — 6%

Moreover, low-code/no-code tech “presents a new ideology in the tech field, one where business users take up the reins of process automation and app development for their business units without special training,” the study says.

But here’s another issue — 30% of business processes are not automated at all, and only up to 10% are fully automated.  

But it’s a goal worth having: “Sharing the IT reins with non-IT employees empowers those employees to become business users and the owners of their technologies,” the report concludes. 

Creatio surveyed 1,022 IT and business leaders, including 29% at the CEO/president/COO/founder level.

In addition, it polled 26% were in IT CIO/IT director, 15% in digital CDTO/digital leader roles, 13% in marketing — i.e., CMO/marketing director/head of marketing.