Businesses are in the midst of a global labor shortage, and IT operations are among the many areas of the workforce that have been hard hit. In the US alone, there were 10.4 million unfilled job openings in September 2021, according to the Labor Department.
Throughout 2021, workers have been voluntarily leaving their jobs for other opportunities. In fact, 4.3 million people recently quit their jobs, which is the highest rate since December 2000. Media outlets have referred to this strange period of the pandemic as The Great Resignation and The Big Quit.
The IT industry is by no means immune to the ongoing resignation trend and labor shortage. According to a recent CNBC poll, 57% of tech executives said staffing issues are their number one concern. And prospects for retaining top tech talent look discouraging, as 72% of tech workers are considering quitting their current position in the next 12 months. This is bad timing, as many companies are still in the midst of strategic digital initiatives.
I recently chatted with Deb Gildersleeve, CIO of Quickbase, to see why companies are turning to low-code development amid this talent drought. According to Gildersleeve, empowering users outside of traditional IT to create solutions using low-code/no-code tools is one way to fill the gaps and keep digital projects chugging forward. But doing so gracefully requires a robust low-code platform, the proper security guardrails, and a healthy community to encourage a low-code culture.
Gaps in the Data Lifecycle
The labor gap is pervasive. “You find it across all of IT and technology,” noted Gildersleeve, adding that there was a gap even before the Covid pandemic. Remote work has also influenced more folks to reconsider their job status, compounding the situation. As a result, many companies are still in the middle of their digital efforts but lack the resources needed to get them across the line.
Gildersleeve especially noted a gap in how companies support the data lifecycle. This includes how we manage, report on, and gather insights from data. Smartly leveraging data is critical to refining modern digital business, but it typically requires data engineers and architects to generate useful insights.
Without proper data lifecycle management, “it makes it harder to get at key insights for the business,” said Gildersleeve. Data may be locked in Excel spreadsheets, making it cumbersome to refresh data and link it with disparate data management systems, such as CRM or ERP. Data management inefficiencies between systems can inhibit informed decision-making.
Another area that is lagging is the automation required for digital transformation. “Business needs to get information into systems and act on it in an automated fashion,” said Gildersleeve. “We need to be able to move things along the continuum.”
Bridging the Skills Gap with Low-Code
Data management and a lack of automation are factors that may necessitate a shift toward tools to empower non-tech innovators. With the low-code/no-code approach, you can standardize data management with connectors to existing systems. So it’s not necessary for knowledge workers to download an Excel spreadsheet locally as a CSV file; standard integrations can automate data sharing. “The more you can automate, the better off you are,” said Gildersleeve.
Low-code allows more parties within an organization to bring together data in a scalable way, says Gildersleeve. Business technologists can leverage no-code/low-code to connect data consistently and in a repeatable way so that others can access it. By drafting business technologists into the low-code model, companies can limit the need to involve professional IT.
A straightforward scenario is creating and hosting a custom form for a large number of people to fill out. This could help aggregate data in a centralized fashion. Low-code could also add a bit of flavor to internal ERP or CRM systems, which are often rigid and hard to customize. These systems may cover 90% of a project’s goals, but benefit from an extra bit of data enrichment, like approval checks or additional steps for particular business units, described Gildersleeve.
Pairing low-code with pre-existing internal systems enables a myriad of workflows. For example, Gildersleeve explains how one global client utilized low-code to alter an ERP process to conduct business in the EU. Business technologists were able to pull data out of the ERP system and transform it without interrupting data flow.
Guardrails Are Key
“When business and IT work well together, things work really well,” said Gildersleeve. The end business outcome of low-code is that it takes the backlog out of IT, she says. Having projects just sit on the IT laundry list for months can be frustrating for business folks, especially when they are simple to implement. By handing off some of the responsibility, IT can focus on more core development. Low-code automation can also bring time savings that add up.
Of course, low-code does present some potential quandaries. If ungoverned, low-code/no-code adoption can lead to shadow IT. Guardrails must be implemented to ensure access to development environments is controlled and that sensitive data is not leaked. According to Gildersleeve, the best way to ensure this governance and security is to build an IT and business partnership with a Center of Excellence model.
Low-code creations may also require reviews or additional assistance at the last mile. So, deciding when to involve IT is necessary to collaborate effectively. “It works really well when this model is set up front,” said Gildersleeve.
Looking to the future, we will likely see new development platforms expand their use of connectors to tap into more and more systems. Gildersleeve also anticipates increased automation that leverages cutting-edge technology against datasets. By applying machine learning and AI to a data-driven process, workflows will slowly become more and more automated with less human intervention.
Navigating the Talent Shortage
A labor shortage in the tech industry will likely remain well into the future, with so many people rethinking their career options. If talent is hard to sustain, companies will lack the resources to support their next phase of digital innovations.
Low-code development has emerged to upskill a new class of citizen developers, giving lines of business hope that they can avoid being #25 on the IT support backlog. “Low-code is a really good way to help solve [the labor shortage] and empower business users to solve their own problems,” said Gildersleeve.
For these reasons, it’s not surprising that the market around low-code is booming. The worldwide low-code development technologies market was projected to total $13.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 22.6% from 2020, according to Gartner. Gartner also predicts that by 2024, 80% of tech will be built outside of IT teams.
The modern composable enterprise is essentially stitched together from many digital components, all of which must connect seamlessly to enable hyper-automation. It appears low-code is well-positioned to connect this new data-driven economy. “This has been a long time coming,” said Gildersleeve.
