10 Reasons to Try No-Code Apps for Your Mobile Workforce

It’s the end of the fourth quarter, which means business leaders everywhere are planning their goals for the new year.

For some, it might be improving their safety record. For others, reducing costs and increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction. Whatever your 2021 business goals are, adopting no-code apps can bring you one step closer (many steps closer, if we’re being honest) to reaching them — especially if you’re managing a mobile workforce.

Here are the top 10 reasons to adopt no-code development software in 2021.

1. Reduce data-collection errors: All businesses collect information to some degree. Whether it’s hours worked by their employees, incident reports and other information related to safety, or the condition of their assets at any given time. Doing so with a pen and paper creates multiple opportunities for that data to be corrupted. Inconsistencies in data management, illegible handwriting, forgetting details between inspection and documentation, and data-entry mistakes are a few examples of what can go wrong. With a no-code mobile app, data is collected once, on site, and can be easily standardized with pick lists and required fields, reducing the impact of human error.
2. Work more efficiently: With a no-code mobile data collection app, information gathered in the field gets uploaded to the cloud instantly (or, if you’re collecting in areas without cellular or wifi service, as soon as you reach connectivity), where it can be accessed from anyone on your team with permission. There’s no lag time, waiting for data to be transcribed into your systems. Managers can track the progress of their mobile teams in real time and make rapid decisions about where more resources might be needed to get jobs completed faster.
3. Increase safety: It can be a challenge for safety managers to be sure their teams are following the safety protocols that ensure everyone makes it home at the end of their shift — especially when employees are working alone in the field. With a no-code app, you can deploy checklists for your field techs to follow so they don’t miss any crucial steps to protect themselves from dangerous or unpredictable situations, and watch in real time as those checklists are completed so you know your team members are following the rules as well as being safely accounted for.
4. Improve situational awareness: Mobile apps with built-in geotagging enable managers to see where (and when) data is collected, so you know where your teams and physical assets are at all times. Armed with this information, you can deploy your crews more efficiently, visualize trouble areas, and respond to urgent situations more quickly because you know exactly where they are occurring.
5. Get better documentation and analytics: Even if it’s accurate, data collected on paper is of little use until it’s transcribed and entered into your systems. If you have a hundred inspection reports on a hundred different sheets of paper, how can you recognize trends? It’s significantly more difficult to extract data and make actionable changes when information is stored and shared on paper instead of through an app that’s updated in real-time. When you need to demonstrate that compliance, you have to rifle through those hundred sheets of paper to find the one you’re looking for. But inspections completed with a mobile app are automatically geotagged, timestamped, and stored securely in the cloud to provide documentation — from anywhere — when you need it.
6. Don’t prototype — iterate: With a no-code development platform, you can literally, within minutes, get a mobile app in the hands of your team members to use. As they use it, they might come up with suggestions for improvements that you can make and deploy right away — no sending it back to the developers and waiting for updates. And you can make changes as frequently as you like to ensure your team members have the latest checklists and standards in their hand at all times.
7. Save money: Bringing new technology to your organization often comes with a hefty up-front cost, whether it be hiring a team of developers to build an in-house platform, engaging with outside consultants to create a bespoke solution, or buying an expensive suite of software that will need to be upgraded in a couple of years. With a no-code SaaS platform, you don’t have to rely on software engineers to build or maintain it, and upgrades are automatic. Plus, most SaaS products offer a monthly subscription, so there are no enormous up-front investments, just predictable monthly payments.
8. Engage and empower your teams: Around here we like to say no-code app development creates confidence through collaboration. Because no-code apps are built using a visual drag-and-drop interface, anyone on your team can make them. And stakeholders from every part of your organization can participate in the app-creation process to ensure you get the solution that best serves the needs of the most people.
9. Automate workflows: Whether you’re conducting inspections, surveys, or completing a process checklist, data collection is often just the first step of the process. In order for data to be effective, something needs to happen with that information, and in most cases, the sooner that data is extracted and analyzed, the better. With a no-code development platform, you can build automated workflows into your apps that move things along faster. For example, when a team member completes a form on the app, the platform can notify a manager that their sign-off is required. Or if the user indicates that something needs to be fixed, it can send an email to the maintenance team to schedule the repair — all without human intervention.
10. Stay IT-friendly: No-code platforms empower you to create and modify custom apps and workflows without getting stuck in IT backlogs. Not only does that mean you can put your app in the hands of your staff faster, but it takes the strain off of your IT department, giving them the ability to address higher-level issues. At the same time a no-code platform like Fulcrum enables you to follow IT’s rigorous security requirements with enterprise features like single sign-on (SSO).

If you’re interested in learning more about how Fulcrum can enable your organization to own and manage its data, watch this webcast to learn more about how no-code app development empowers ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things!

This post was originally published on the Fulcrum blog.