Shaping digital transformation with low-code platforms

Introduction

The increasing digital transformation and rapidly changing business requirements alongside global economical and political instability are increasingly challenging corporate IT teams. A future-proof, agile and flexible IT infrastructure is essential to remain competetive. In particular, flexible and modern software solutions are the foundation for digital processes and one of the key success factors for further digitization.

In the context of ongoing digitization, ever higher expectations are being placed on the development and provision of applications. Not only are high performance, scalability and usability expected, but also dynamic development that integrates the wishes of individual users as well. First and foremost though, an increasingly faster time-to-market and ever shorter update cycles are expected.

These challenges are increasingly being addressed using agile development methods. Meanwhile, technologies and procedures have evolved that make software more flexible and cost-effective, resulting in a change in software development as well. Massive, time-consuming, and cost-intensive software roll-outs will be replaced by iterative integration and delivery through agile development of fully automated processes.

In the fast-moving environment of digitization, this is a necessary step in order to be able to develop and provide software with the required quality, speed and efficiency, even in times of tight budgets and resources. This also raises software development as a whole to a new level in terms of real-time capability.

One of the key technologies here are low-code platforms. These enable professional developers as well as business users without specific programming knowledge to create and adapt applications of varying complexity in order to be able to quickly and easily implement the dynamic demands from the business on software development.

KPMG conducted a large-scale survey in 2022 to assess the status of adaptation and perspective of low-code.

The results of the study conducted among 715 companies in EMA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) show how significant this topic has already become. About 60 percent of the company managers surveyed rate low-code development as “critical to very critical“ for the further performance of their companies, both from an operational and a strategic point of view.

But where do companies currently stand in the development of software and the use of low-code platforms, and what are their future plans? What challenges do business and IT face? What measures are companies taking to ensure fast and secure application? How is this being implemented within the companies? And what are the key success factors for the successful integration of low-code platforms into companies‘ software development processes? These and other questions are analyzed and answered in this study.