As we move into 2021, the evolving needs of businesses require new strategies to help them stay ahead of the competition.
They need new ways to connect with their employees, share work over the web, and collaborate through online platforms to keep running efficiently. This has resulted in rapid digital transformation over the last few months as organizations find it more efficient and affordable to go digital.
Developers have emerged as saviors during this time, enabling this transformation. They've found exciting new ways to give businesses inventive ways to function, and their obvious choice is low-code and automation.
The lack of coding makes it easier to create low-code applications, which is the need of the hour and something that will truly benefit you in your 2021 strategy.
The Pandemic brought on a massive increase in communication and collaboration platforms, enabling smooth business operations while working remotely. Microsoft Teams' active users nearly doubled in April 2020 and have crossed the 100 million mark since. Workers spend a lot of their time on it for collaboration, making sense to introduce the apps they require within Teams.
Customers need a data-driven understanding of their business that they can access whenever they want and take action on it through easy communication.
An example of this is the American Red Cross, with a workforce that provides disaster relief. Communication and collaboration are essential for them to work efficiently. They use Teams to communicate and Microsoft Power BI in Teams to collaborate for disaster response as they need data with pivots and filters for specific insight. Furthermore, to help people work on the data, they use Microsoft Power Apps.
Many customers claim that their non-developer employees use Teams and figure out the Power Apps within it. Ultimately, they stick with it and build apps for their group.
One of the easiest ways to do so is through the Teams feature called Microsoft Dataverse, which helps you build and edit workflows and custom apps using Power Platforms. Once published, anyone in your group can use these apps without the need to switch between them. The feature allows people with or without code experience to create apps from scratch or use a Microsoft template as a start.
Automation makes lives a lot easier, reducing their daily manual work like installing updates and configuring machines, apps, and servers.
For instance, creating basic automation could help an IT worker look into Windows updates and use the Microsoft Power Automate Desktop to install them. This automation toolset could save hundreds of working hours monthly.
Microsoft has come up with a process advisor to analyze your existing IT processes, recognize the areas where automation can work, and then introduce it in your firm.
Power Platform's usage to provide automation can give governance and IT dev skills to IT admins.
One of the most significant changes in the industry that should be carried forward in the upcoming years is the creation of fusion developer teams. Such teams consist of citizen developers (those who don't have a developer background and build low-code apps), code-first developers, and IT developers.
The main aim of these is to solve business issues. An increasing number of firms are creating such teams and recognizing the importance of high-code and low-code collaboration.
The collaboration comes about as code-first developers write APIs and connectors and then store them in tools such as Azure API Management which low-code developers can use for their app-making needs.
Additionally, code-first developers can also plan the work to build an app to be better structured rather than be a one-time solution.
Microsoft also aims to help these fusion teams through their partnership with GitHub to include their actions in the Power Apps for better collaboration.
We have seen an immense digital transformation and growth during the Pandemic. If we want to move forward efficiently, we have to adapt to these technological advancements in the coming years to accommodate the growing IT needs of businesses.
To prepare for unprecedented situations and optimize productivity, we need to digitize our current processes. One of the best ways to do so is through low-code apps to fulfill the technology demands and carry on with them in 2021.
Ready to stay at the top of the latest in app development technologies? Contact our team of experts in Microsoft's solutions at Definity First to learn more.