The modern business landscape is no longer a place where one size fits all. Businesses across the globe are looking for highly scalable enterprise applications that will not only streamline business operations, but also allow them to quickly adapt to the changing needs of their customers. This trend can also be seen in the banking and financial service sector. As financial institutions continue their search for customizable solutions, the question arises how enterprise application development and low-code development tools can help accommodate their individual needs.
An enterprise application is software designed to fulfill business needs and manage operations within a company or organization, developed specifically to operate in corporate environments. The main purpose of enterprise application development is to provide businesses with software applications that support business growth by automating repetitive tasks and simplifying cooperation.
Typical examples of enterprise apps include systems designed for enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and human resource management, which are utilized by both large organizations and smaller businesses.
The progressing digital transformation has over the years motivated businesses to look for ways to improve the quality of services and increase profitability. Enterprise applications appear to be the ideal solution to this challenge, as not only can they help streamline workflows, but they are also very customizable and generally easy to integrate with legacy systems, as opposed to web applications, which do not offer as much flexibility.
As any other software, enterprise applications can be more or less complex, depending on the purposes they are to fulfill and the ways in which they are developed.
High-code development relies entirely on the work of professional developers, who write and deploy code. Although it might appear as an obvious choice in developing enterprise software, reliance on skilled developers can be quite expensive and cost businesses flexibility.
On the other side of the spectrum lies no-code development, which allows businesses to handle smaller projects without the intervention of developers. No-code development platforms often utilize intuitive drag-and-drop tools to enable the development of mobile apps, but they can be quite limited in functionality.
Between high-code and no-code tools, low-code development platforms can be found, which largely rely on pre-built components that can be reused across different applications. As a result, low-code platforms can be utilized by business users with little to no coding experience, leveraging mostly their understanding of the company's workflows and processes. For this reason, low-code development tools such as Eximee appear to be perfect for enterprise software development.
While traditional application development processes might be fraught with time-consuming procedures and insufficient flexibility, nowadays, talent shortages in the field of IT appear to be the greatest constraint. Not only is there a major skill gap on the market, but the professionals that are available understandably charge appropriately for their valuable abilities, which can translate into major costs for a business. This is where the use of low-code platforms for enterprise application development can completely change the game.
Where the challenges of traditional enterprise software development emerge, the strengths of low-code development can be found. Low-code development platforms allow business users to have more autonomy in the creation and improvement of tools that they actively use in their everyday work. This decentralized approach to enterprise app development appears to better reflect and adjust to the needs of the teams that are to work with those apps.
Relatively easy to use, low-code development platforms allow users without specialist knowledge to build enterprise applications by utilizing intuitive visual devices such as drag-and-drop tools, pre-built components, and templates. Additionally, low-code development tools automate code generation processes and enable seamless integration with existing systems, which ensures consistency and lowers the risk of errors in production.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global low-code development platform market value is estimated to grow to USD 264.40 billion by 2032, indicating an important trend in the work of both citizen developers and IT professionals, as the latter have also been utilizing low-code development platforms to accelerate the development and deployment of new solutions, as reported by Forbes.
Furthermore, as Gartner predicts, the percentage of citizen developers among the users of low-code development platforms is expected to rise from 60% in 2021 to approximately 80% by 2026.
The banking and financial service industry is not immune to the rapidly developing market demands and changing regulations, which generate the need for banking applications that expedite the work of employees and improve the experience of customers.
The most common problems that enterprise software solutions in banking and finance are designed to solve include challenges associated with administrative and document management, regulatory compliance, and security concerns. Enterprise applications for this sector also seek to improve team productivity levels, minimize operational costs, and deliver a multi-channel experience to consumers of financial services.
Like any other industry, the financial sector must follow the market trends and respond to the changing needs of the customers. To keep up with the progressing digitization of financial services, banks and financial institutions have been steadily moving away from traditional software development and its complexity in favor of quicker and more flexible low-code development processes.
Low-code development in banking and financial services largely focuses on software applications intended to modernize legacy systems, enhance agility in the organization, automate sales processes, and provide self-service possibilities to customers. It is associated with a number of benefits, among which the following can be listed:
In this way, low-code development in banking and financial services helps increase the efficiency of business processes and improve customer experiences, giving organizations a competitive advantage over other businesses.
The future of low-code enterprise application development is expected to see a gradual increase in its utilization, and the banking and financial sectors can draw major benefits from its implementation. For this reason, it might be the right time for organizations that are not currently using low-code development tools to look for a scalable, efficient solution that will support their growth and accommodate the needs of the industry and its customers.