Low-code: A top investment choice for IT departments in 2023
Amid current economic pressures, organizations are being strained at every level, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasting a slowdown in global growth to 2.9% in 2023, down from 6% in 2021. IT departments are no exception, seeking innovative ways to reduce costs.
At the same time, IT teams are grappling with an increasing application backlog, unable to meet stakeholder demands due to a shortage of developers and technical specialists. IDC predicted in 2021 that 750 million new apps will need to be developed by 2025. The demand for technical solutions is growing rapidly, but the supply of professional developers is insufficient.
The solution? Low-code. A survey conducted by Edelman Assembly for Microsoft, involving over 2,000 CIOs and IT professionals, reveals that low-code platforms enable IT departments to quickly build technical solutions, enhance data insights, and reduce costs.
Speed up application development
Low-code platforms drive efficiency by accelerating legacy application modernization and speeding up development through prebuilt components. In fact, 89% of CIOs and IT professionals surveyed agree that low-code effectively enhances efficiency.
To address the gap created by developer shortages and lengthy traditional development timelines, low-code enables organizations to shorten time to value. It extends existing legacy systems, streamlines migration projects, and replaces outdated applications with low-code solutions. This has proven highly beneficial for application modernization, with 87% of CIOs and IT pros citing low-code as essential in modernizing legacy systems.
A 2021 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study, commissioned by Microsoft, revealed that over a three-year period, professional developer efficiency using low-code platforms increases by an average of 62%. These improvements are particularly important, as 45% of IT professionals adopted low-code to compensate for staff shortages.
Recent advancements in embedded AI within low-code platforms promise further gains in efficiency. Features like Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents simplify development through natural language authoring and AI-assisted conversations. These innovations are crucial for organizations adopting low-code, with 87% of CIOs and IT professionals stating that embedded AI and automation would help them better utilize platform capabilities.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) exemplifies the impact of low-code, accelerating development by building its Cyber Technology Rationalizer solution in just six weeks. PwC needed to migrate from its legacy system to improve maintainability, scalability, and versatility. By leveraging Microsoft Power Platform, PwC developed a multitenant enterprise decision support website. Utilizing the Power Pages Web API and Microsoft Dataverse with C# plugins, the team rapidly created a new low-code solution, achieving 85% cost savings and 30% time savings since its deployment.
Achieve organization-wide cost savings
Reducing costs while simultaneously increasing the number of technical solutions may seem counterintuitive. Application development and maintenance are typically expensive, so expanding these efforts should, in theory, drive up costs. However, 87% of CIOs and IT professionals surveyed report that low-code is effective in cutting expenses.
According to a 2021 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Microsoft, Power Platform and Azure reduced costs by 24% by improving developer efficiency, streamlining DevOps, and lowering reliance on third-party solutions.
Beyond direct IT savings, low-code platforms help reduce costs organization-wide by addressing solutions that would otherwise remain in an application backlog. These solutions cut costs by automating manual processes, enhancing user productivity, and supporting data-driven decision-making.
A notable example of this is EY's PowerPost app, developed using Microsoft Power Platform. EY automated its high-frequency, semi-manual General Ledger (GL) posting process, which previously involved data transfers between multiple applications and frequent errors, sometimes taking over a day to post successfully in SAP. Built in a matter of weeks by EY's in-house development team using low-code, the PowerPost app reduced document processing time by 95%, is projected to cut existing costs by 30%, and completely eliminated the need for emails and Excel in the process.
Streamline data insights into actions
As technology integrates into every aspect of business, the volume of data grows rapidly. This data is often duplicated across databases and improperly formatted, making it difficult to use for decision-making. Low-code platforms address this issue by centralizing data and providing user-friendly visualizations, turning raw data into actionable insights.
Many low-code solutions are designed to modernize legacy applications and automate labor-intensive processes. By centralizing data into a single source of truth and reducing duplication, low-code platforms help break down data silos. This is why 86% of CIOs and IT professionals report that low-code improves their organization’s ability to generate accurate insights.
These enhanced insights allow IT teams to develop more comprehensive and efficient solutions, resulting in less rework, higher solution adoption rates, reduced costs, and faster time to market—all of which help IT departments clear their application backlogs. This impact is evident, as 89% of CIOs and 88% of IT pros say low-code has been effective in generating data-driven insights used to improve service for both customers and internal stakeholders.
ÖBB, the Austrian rail operator, serves 477 million passengers annually across Europe and has seen significant benefits from centralizing data with low-code platforms. To better serve customers, ÖBB implemented a chatbot using Power Virtual Agents’ built-in AI capabilities, integrated with their CRM, Power BI, and Power Automate. This allowed the bot to answer basic customer queries and hand off more complex issues to human agents.
Additionally, by producing detailed reports in Microsoft Power BI based on clean, centralized data from the chatbot, ÖBB gained valuable insights into customer interactions, including the bot’s transitions to live agents. These insights enabled ÖBB to further refine its chatbot and enhance customer experiences.
How can low-code benefit your IT department?
For IT departments aiming to cut costs, reduce application backlogs, and quickly transform data insights into actions in 2023, low-code should be a crucial component of your development strategy. To discover how your organization can initiate, expand, and build expertise in low-code practices, consider taking the Microsoft Power Platform Adoption Assessment.
This assessment will guide you in identifying opportunities to optimize and streamline processes, while offering best practices on how to effectively leverage Microsoft Power Platform to meet your business goals.
Learn more here.