The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated demand for digital transformation and for augmented processes in almost all areas of life. It’s clear to technology leaders that demand isn’t likely to ease up anytime soon.
The green shoots of recovery are delicate, precious and prone to sudden localised changes. As such, every day since the pandemic impacted travel has seen demand for information and assistance grow exponentially in terms of volume and complexity.
No-code, low-code approaches allow technologists to keep up with demand for digital transformation in a rapidly evolving business environment. Its application follows the principle of abstracting away from code to provide the benefits of visual modelling. Examples of basic no-code platforms in everyday life include drag-and-drop website builders like Wix or Squarespace.
CWT met demand for information by embracing and empowering the role of business-led data management, analysis and reporting through our no-code platform AnswerIQ. IT’s role in delivering a truly valuable service is by supporting a diverse range of use cases, ultra-dynamic business needs and the broadest range of stakeholder capabilities. Such services are even stronger when they can be delivered internally and to our customer organisations from the same platform.
By wrapping our AnswerIQ platform with an intuitive and enterprise-grade identity and access management capability along with highly automated metadata loading services CWT Technology created an environment where leaders and subject matter experts from any part of an organisation can create, maintain and share highly contextual, flexible and uniquely specific insights themselves.
Access management can be safely and securely delegated to business teams to operate themselves. The loading of all relevant metadata has been automated so that any authorized AnswerIQ user can do it personally. By removing the commonplace bottlenecks of user management and data ingestion CWT’s technology team has been able to harness the full range of the consumer-grade qualities of ThoughtSpot a key technology that lies at the heart of AnswerIQ.
Now CEOs, CFOs, travel managers, risk analysts, customer executives, business analysts and many more are able to see what is happening at any moment. They are also able to collaborate in real-time, with their own relevant metadata and reporting hierarchies, to create views that answer the questions of the moment. They can do this without delay and without having to call on specialist data analysts every time.
Through maximising the use of AnswerIQ’s no-code capabilities we enabled “your reporting, your way.”
The platform has already enabled over 400 people within our client’s organisations to develop and access the business travel management insights they need in the formats that mean the most to their audiences. By the end of 2021, this business-led analytics community is estimated to have grown five-fold to become over 2,000 strong.
How to get the most out of no-code, low-code platforms
- Focus on understanding the needs and capabilities of business teams active within specific areas of the enterprise and match these to existing no-code or low-code platforms
- Create excitement and energy through intelligent and transparent IAM and intuitive task automation
- Coach and enable business technologists; resisting the temptation to direct or take over.
- Continually look to identify the next set of opportunities and use cases that will benefit from no-code or low-code platforms
The capacity for any enterprise’s IT organisation to improve efficiency, accuracy and output of technical solution delivery is finite. Demand for solving business problems was already outpacing the ability to resource and develop tools internally to provide useful products and services. Accepting and partnering with business technologist communities will not mean that solution are decentralised or weakened or that those solutions will be less secure or stable.
No-code and low-code platforms create the space where the digital skills and transformational energy across the whole enterprise can be brought together effectively and with growing efficiency. IT teams can then focus on the essential and non-functional capabilities that determine and control how technology solutions need to behave. Business technologist teams can take a direct hand in building the functional digital capabilities that truly change the way that business value is delivered and how customers are engaged and retained.