Failure to digitize offerings is cited as one of the main reasons over half of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared since 2000. To remain competitive (and not go the way of previously dominant organizations like Blockbuster), CEOs must drive digital transformation throughout their organization. Developing enterprise-wide applications—whether customer-facing or internal—without writing, editing, or seeing a single line of code is one way to accelerate that transformation.
We previously broke down how to convince a Chief Security Officer (CSO) that the innovative approach of no-code development is secure and compliant. From a monetary and process optimization perspective, CEOs also care that any implemented technologies will not introduce risk. However, being forced to constantly contend with the business’ success in the broader marketplace means they have to consider a wide variety of factors when introducing any new technologies.
We’ll break down common C-suite priorities and explain how a no-code PaaS vendor like Unqork can mitigate them.
Chief concerns of the Chief Executive Officer
Ensure revenue growth. For CEOs to get on board with any new tool or technology initiative, it must offer demonstrable value in helping projects succeed and driving company revenue. In our ever-online world, digitizing services and products for customers should increase revenue. This is obvious, however…
Control costs. Digitization is expensive! Developers spend 42% of their time managing technical debt, of which four hours are spent just on debugging. On top of this, the average enterprise spends 57% of its IT budget on supporting current operations.
Foster innovation. Internal collaboration across departments can help spark new ideas and keep enterprises competitive. However, business teams—the ones who engage with customers directly and know their needs—are typically not involved with developing the software, as they don’t know how to code. This sometimes causes engineers and developers to miss the mark when it comes to the final product.
Mitigate risk. Large IT project failure is unfortunately common among enterprises. McKinsey estimates that two out of three large-scale digital transformation efforts regularly exceed initial budgets, miss schedule estimates, and underdeliver against business goals.
4 reasons why CEOs should invest in codeless development
A no-code enterprise application platform like Unqork can facilitate growth. Here are the advantages of no-code that are of most relevance to CEOs.
1. Lower costs
Consumers expect seamless digital experiences, but delivering them can be an expensive and drawn-out process. Development costs eat up a significant (and growing) portion of revenue in many industries.
As explained above, this is due to the fact that tech spending is not aimed at innovation, but instead at maintaining the status quo—a process that does not contribute to revenue growth. As CEOs work to better align technology investments with business strategy and shift their focus from value preservation to value creation, adopting a no-code enterprise application platform is a logical choice. By eliminating code altogether, CEOs eliminate the costs associated with code.
2. Deliver more high-value projects
Making the best use of talent can help an organization grow. Mundane but necessary tasks like debugging can quickly take up the majority of an engineer’s time, limiting their contribution to specialized projects. The New Stack found that professional software developers spend more time maintaining, testing, and securing existing code (a combined total of 35% of their time) than they do writing or improving code (32%).
By fundamentally changing what it means to be an engineer, no-code immediately flips this ratio. No-code enterprise application platforms allow organizations to quickly onboard business users to begin contributing to the development process themselves. In turn, this can free up engineers to focus on projects that require their advanced problem-solving skills. This means more innovation throughout your entire organization.
3. Reduce enterprise risk
For enterprises, digital transformation efforts consistently run into trouble because of their complex requirements, interdependencies, and communication hurdles. Only one out of every ten large-scale projects is successfully delivered—meaning on time, within budget, and according to plan.
To remain competitive, CEOs often have no choice but to move forward with big investments, despite the likelihood that these projects will fail. Instead, by moving the same project forward with a no-code application development platform, they can dramatically minimize risk by removing a codebase from the development process and reducing the number of moving parts. No-code platforms also enable business and tech teams to collaborate more closely, ensuring that resulting applications are more likely to meet all end-user requirements.
4. Faster time to market
Every CEO knows that project delays can cause expensive problems, but going to market with products that aren’t ready can prove equally costly. No-code eliminates this dicey trade-off by helping enterprises ship better software more quickly. After all, each extra minute spent building an application not only means higher production costs, it also means a loss of potential profit.
No-code platforms enable teams to ship initial builds in a fraction of the time they usually take, which means projects can be validated by the market and start generating revenue much faster. In the long run, this can have a huge impact on the company’s bottom line. Ultimately, accelerating project completion increases the overall throughput capabilities of the team, to the tune of increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
In short: Switching to no-code can help mitigate risk, spark revenue growth, better allocate resources, and enable even the largest enterprises to focus on innovation. What CEO wouldn’t want that?
