Rise of No-Code and Low-Code Solutions for Work-From-Anywhere Life
Scrappy is a word used most often to describe founders of previous eras, whose empires were built in basements and garages, based on coding and programming written from years of education and practice.
Today, as the business world continues to deal with the fallout of a global pandemic and millions of workers are either adjusting to work from home or are being laid off or furloughed, we are proving to be as scrappy as founders of years past with one distinct advantage: coding is no longer required to quickly put together the solutions we need. As entrepreneurs or as leaders within an established company, we are solving for the issues at hand with the help of low-code or no-code platforms that allow us to address employee, client and/or contractor needs easily without the on-ramp of writing original programming.
Examples of Low-Code and No-Code Solutions
Articles in Wired and The Wall Street Journal illustrate beautifully how the get-it-done spirit is being buoyed by online tools.
In Wired, a copywriter-turned-marketing startup founder with no background in coding took it upon herself to automate systems and create tools for both herself and her team as well as potential clients through a handful of programs like Webflow, Airtable, Zapier and Slack. Dani, the startup founder, admits that the system isn’t perfect but it’s working for her as she scales her services.
The Journal article explores how larger businesses are helping their employees function as they continue to work separately from the central office, especially as some industries codify their work-from-anywhere policies to keep employees safe and help them manage households. Whereas meetings, business trips and other in-person activities typically made workflow smooth, companies are having to solve for the mishmash of regulations as some states continue stay-at-home orders and others begin to “reopen for business.”
One supply chain company was able to launch a system to track their company equipment for out-of-office workers within two days; a biotech firm is using a rapidly developed app to track employees’ location and health status since many of the company’s research and development department was still coming into the office and the leadership was concerned with tracing any illness should it occur. Both companies cited the need to get their solutions launched as the reason why they chose to go with low-code and no-code solutions as opposed to outsourcing to developers or purchasing more advanced, pre-coded options.
#NoCode Solutions Here to Stay
I’m excited to read these articles and others as the corporate world embraces the simplicity and ease of low-code and no-code tools. When I launched Sandbox Commerce, it was precisely for the reasons that many of these companies are creating solutions: working to make the complicated simple, be it providing ease of use for a retailer or helping keep employees and customers safe by tracing the health of workers.
I’ll wrap up with a quote from the Wired story:
The success of no-code startups may thus be a useful corrective to the cult of the Brilliant Tech Dude. If nearly anyone can do this, some of the magic dies. And some new magic, possibly, is born.
Originally published at Sterling Smith.
