Low Code vs Traditional Development

As digital transformation is fast-moving, businesses of all sizes are building their own applications and digital products to drive more customer engagement and unlock new revenue, in order to thrive in the increasingly competitive world. In the past, traditional software development was the only way for businesses to bring their ideas to life. Lately, with the emergence of low code development, companies are comparing low code with traditional development to have their applications or products market-ready faster.

Let’s take a closer look at the infographic to know what low code development means and how does it differ with traditional development.

Low Code Development Vs Traditional Development: Which One is the Best For Your Business

Digitalization is more than important ever. Every business needs transformation to keep with the pace of evolving market demands. And software applications play a crucial role in bringing efficiency and productivity in various business operations. In many cases, the more customized the application is, the better business outcomes it delivers.

Traditional Software Development

Traditional approach means building software using manual coding. Imagine building a treehouse. For this, you need materials, instruments, a skilled carpenter, and obviously a plan. Creating a custom application is not much different. To build software in a traditional way, you need to hire a team of developers, determine software requirement specifications, appropriate tech stack (programming languages, tools, databases, etc.), and receive a rough estimation before the IT team launches into development and testing phases.

Low Code Development

Low code development approach, is sometimes known as no-code development, requires little to no coding expertise to develop applications. The functioning in the form of a drag-and-drop interface simply lets the app creators build rich, high-performing business apps at a much faster rate. Low code platforms where web applications can be launched in a matter of months, significantly slashing down the costs and making custom apps a more feasible prospect to achieve for some companies. Today, the number of businesses embracing low code development is increasing, and Gartner estimates that they will account for 65% of all application development by 2024. 

For example, Shopify Plus offers full store customization to meet your ecommerce business needs. The platform when integrated with Sitecore has enabled an online art gallery to expand its business operations and brings best of commerce-driven experiences to its users. Using Shopify Plus, businesses can create automated workflows and make many daily operations easy to handle. Many medium-scale ecommerce companies that couldn’t afford to invest in traditional development choose low code platform (like Shopify Plus) to accelerate their growth and revenue.    

Reasons to Use Low Code vs Traditional App Development

Software applications are powerful business assets that cater to the needs of users and meets their expectations.  Of course, you can buy off-the-shelf code like open-source libraries and other code pieces to make the development faster. Still, the bottom line for traditional app development is you need a skilled team of developers who are specialized in programming languages, frameworks, and database tools to write code and build the app. It requires much effort, a substantial budget and is slower to market because of the long development cycles. However, the traditional development has a great scope of customization that low code doesn’t offer.

Let’s understand the differences between low code and traditional development in detail.

Intuitive & Rapid Application Prototyping

While traditional development practices require professionals to write code, a low code approach takes a visual environment. As several pre-built modules come with these platforms, a simple drag-and-drop in a given workflow is all that is necessary to design apps faster.

Apart from building the apps quickly, low code offers reusable templates and components that can help citizen developers to create prototypes easily and quickly. The time savings aspect of low code can be significant for organizations to launch software before their competitors or to modernize their monolithic systems. For example, a Forrester survey found that 31% of application developers said that traditional coding throws challenges in fulfilling business requirements on time as a result of leveraging programming languages, frameworks and middleware to build applications. Unlike traditional development, low code platforms like Google App Maker, OutSystems, Salesforce Lightening, etc. can help build apps within a few weeks or months.

Limited Coding Skills are Necessary

Low code development is far easier than traditional development because most people with little or no coding experience can develop websites and mobile apps. It comes with pre-built modules that speed up the development process. 

As most of the low code platforms are cloud-based, automation of development workflows becomes easier while iterating the application. Moreover, these platforms enable citizen developers to build applications with easy third-party APIs integration and modules that support different platforms.

The learning curve for low code platforms is simpler when compared to traditional development. The help files, user guides, and live support provided by such platforms ensure that understanding the platform is easier and faster.

Within Planned Budget and Timeline

IT departments face challenges to stay within budget and time when building applications using traditional methods. Technical resources are often under-skilled and limited, thanks to constant changes in application development standards and coding languages used.

Low code development on the other hand can take away all the underlying complexity of coding from citizen developers, allowing them to pick up faster. These platforms have some common components readily available, thus saving a huge amount of development time and ensures that apps are delivered within a stipulated time frame.

What’s Driving the Growth of Low Code Development?

According to a MarketsandMarkets report on low code development platforms, the overall market size of Low Code Development Platforms (LCDP) is expected to rise from USD $13.2 billion in 2020 to USD $45.5 billion by 2025. The increasing need of digitalization and the automation of workflows are expected to enhance the proliferation low code development platforms worldwide.

Increasing Need of Digitalization

According to the World Economic Forum, industries, including finance, manufacturing, and retail, invested around $1.7 trillion for digital transformation in 2020. Moreover, with a year-on-year increase of 23%, the investment of digitalization across industries will reach $2.4 trillion in 2022. With that continuous increase in transformation demand for business software applications, the low code platform is playing a crucial role in enabling digitalization for processes, such as sales, supply chain management, operations, accounting & finance. Thus, the low code development platform is expected to take a stride to fuel digital transformation across the industries in the near future, which, in turn, will drive the market growth of the low code platforms.   

Related Read: How To Create A Digital Product Strategy When Technology Changes Fast

Automation of Workflows

The concept of automation of workflows has become popular across many industries. Companies with maximum uptime and with the greatest need for consistent audits are more likely to build high performing apps on low code platforms. Another reason is the simplicity of arranging application components, both data and logic, using a drag-and-drop interface. Business users can easily design their apps and bring customizable features. On the other hand, programmers can expedite the development cycle by writing automation scripts for manual tasks.

Other drivers with medium level impact on the low code are less dependency on IT teams and stringent government norms.

Low Code vs Traditional Development: Key Takeaways

• Traditional development is not a bad idea for those business requirements that need a high level of specialized interactivity. Though low code platforms can build enterprise grade applications, they put limits in providing flexibility and a level of freedom to create highly customized software

• Low code development allows non-programmers to speed up time to market with smaller budgets compared to traditional development. As the platforms run on cloud, they are maintained externally, and include all the upgrades, security patches, etc. without worrying about the maintenance.

Might Helpful: The Risks and Rewards of Custom Software Development

Time to Make the Switch  

With increased digital momentum, business leaders need to increase application delivery speed and time to value. Low code development, in the era of rapid change and compatibility, will continue to evolve by providing fast, creative, visual environments for citizen developers & companies to reach to the next level. Such cool features result in significant cost savings and help enterprises stay within budget.

What companies choose between low code & traditional development should depend on the complete analysis of the real necessities they have. At Icreon, we work as a software development partner to study your business needs and understand the gaps.

Connect with us today to embark on your digital transformation journey with low code development.