It’s unsurprising that the disruption created by a worldwide pandemic created a refocus of priorities for business leaders. SAPinsider surveyed 70 executives for their 2021 CIO Perspectives: Strategic Business Priorities and the SAP Agenda and found that CIO’s top priorities for 2021 are increasing process efficiencies (62%) and supporting new business models (61%). The chaos of the last 18 months is forcing Chief Information Officers to focus on business agility and adaptability to build a successful foundation for the future. Low-code agility platforms like Quickbase enable business to achieve adaptability quickly for a multitude of reasons.
Enabling Enterprise Agility
CIOs identified enterprise agility improvements as crucial for navigating the future. Low-code platforms, like Quickbase, are built for innovation and iteration as business needs change. Low-code platforms are intuitive, customizable technology solutions and are at the heart achieving enterprise agility.
These platforms enable rapid response to changing needs and external factors. Instead of requiring heavy lift from experienced developers, users with no coding background can prototype and deploy production apps in a matter of days. By allowing users to build out the precise app they need, you can surface relevant information to stakeholders inside and outside of your organization quickly. Increasing visibility improves enterprise agility and informs improvements of processes in the face of changes.
Creating Adaptable Business Systems
CIOs now believe the ability to respond to changing conditions and gain meaningful visibility into your business operations at a moment’s notice is crucial. Most businesses have adopted business systems that are full of valuable data and insight. Existing data is valuable but pulling specific information together can be tedious or impossible without development resources.
Highly customized ERP systems were once seen as a major asset for organizations, but the effort required to make changes make them an obstacle to operations. This is where low code platforms solve for adaptability. Business agility platforms are flexible and will be difference makers for organizations going forward. Adaptable solutions don’t overhaul deeply rooted systems, but rather sit atop of these systems and activate existing insight in powerful, custom ways. Business agility platforms, like Quickbase, facilitate adaptability by unlocking data trapped in legacy systems.
Building Partnerships with IT Instead of Reliance
CIOs are more driven than ever to streamline digital operations and make business systems and data easily accessible in the cloud. To achieve this, professionals with expertise in application development are pivotal. However, IT resources are stretched thin, so citizen development is a necessity for enterprise agility. Citizen development doesn’t circumvent IT, but rather allows users to build a custom solution and partner with IT without putting the onus on them.
According to an analysis by the Association for Computer Machinery, thousands of highly skilled IT positions will be left unfilled as software development positions are to grow by 22% while Computer Information System graduate numbers reduced by 11,700 in 2021. Low-code agility platforms are the solution to this IT resource shortage. Quickbase, and platforms like it, facilitate citizen development within organizations. Citizen development empowers professionals without development backgrounds to build apps to solve the problems they deal with directly. Citizen developers within your organization will be required to advance business transformation now and into the future.
After a period defined by unprecedented disruption and uncertainty, CIOs are placing bets on emergent technology solutions to ease the burden of business transformation. Insights from SAPinsider’s 2021 CIO Perspectives make it very clear that reorganizing priorities around business agility is vital for your long-term future. A low-code, business agility platform is the key to improving your outlook and adaptability in an uncertain world.
