Very few organizations were actively preparing for the impact of a global pandemic in January of 2020. By March, the effects of COVID-19 were impossible to avoid.
In the enterprise space, the crisis materialized as a sudden and cavernous disruption to operations. Consider that a mere 30% of respondents to an i4CP survey in early February reported the pandemic had impacted productivity, but only three weeks later, that number had more than doubled.
In the public sector, the pandemic resulted in crucial government services not being able to reach those most in need. According to an analysis by The Century Foundation, for example, state unemployment systems were so overwhelmed by the sudden jump in claimants that by the end of April they were only able to successfully fulfill 47% of claims (which we should note was a marked improvement over March, when fulfillment only reached 14%).
Modern digital technologies may have helped mitigate some aspects of the crisis, but for most organizations, the impact proved unavoidable and, in some cases, unrecoverable. Following months of unrelenting disruption, one thing became clear: Withstanding a COVID-scale crisis requires more than online hubs and cloud-based productivity suites; it requires the ability to rapidly shift digital infrastructure around fast-moving events.
Building custom software, however, can be plodding under even the best of circumstances: Consider that developing a custom enterprise solution using a traditional code-based approach can take up to a year with 85% of projects going over schedule, which is hardly useful in the context of a pandemic that unfolded over a matter of weeks.
This lagging pace of traditional development is due to a variety of factors such as difficulties upgrading and integrating legacy technology, competition for IT talent, and the disparate and expansive complexity of modern digital ecosystems. All these challenges are, of course, only amplified during a pandemic.
When it came to engineering around this fast-moving crisis, no-code platforms proved invaluable for helping organizations—both public and private—build scalable, secure, enterprise-ready applications with unprecedented speed. In this eBook, we will explore how some of the country’s leading cities and biggest enterprises used no-code to rapidly adapt their infrastructures and deliver for residents and clients.
