In a market driven by digital transformation, companies are constantly looking for new ways to accelerate time-to-market — in other words, to launch their products faster.

With consumers embracing apps at scale, building this kind of tool has become a core digitalization initiative for brands, and an agile view of time-to-market for development projects is now a common market requirement.

As mobility gains momentum, users are increasingly searching for high-quality apps that can help them with everyday tasks.

According to the global “Mobile Payment Journey” report, 78% of Brazilians prefer to purchase products through apps.

That number shows how important this kind of tool is in the buying journey and in building relationships with potential customers.

In the context of innovation, the challenge for IT leaders is to find ways to build applications with speed, consistency, and quality.

To do that, the best path is to explore new development methods that go beyond the traditional ones.

In this article, we look at the potential of low-code as an accelerator for building digital solutions and applications. Keep reading to better understand the concept.

The digital transformation challenge

Today, to stay competitive and survive, a company needs to invest heavily in innovation and move decisively toward digital transformation.

Digitalization is the only viable path to keeping a business sustainable over the long term. Above all, it is about ensuring the company’s continuity.

Now is the time to adapt, prioritize innovation, and invest in building digital channels that bring you closer to your customers.

Digitalizing the business model is the passport to competitiveness in a future that will be dominated by new technologies.

For IT leaders, the challenge is delivering a successful digital transformation.

Why a faster time-to-market matters

Within digitalization projects, building new applications and solutions has become one of the main workstreams for IT teams. However, teams and managers are not always able to move quickly and consistently.

Traditional development methods demand deep commitment from professionals across a long, time-consuming process. For mission-critical applications, an extended production timeline can jeopardize the entire project’s goals.

That is why you need to think about a leaner time-to-market. The ideal is to shorten the development cycle for new solutions. From there, IT leaders can create an environment that enables rapid change and responds to customer needs.

So how do you reduce time-to-market delays for applications, knowing this is a problem many IT organizations face today?

To establish a new production rhythm, the ideal approach is to have cyclical development teams (requirements, design, development, and testing) working together on the same timeline.

With discipline, organization, and efficient communication, you can reduce friction between these teams and, of course, boost productivity.

Beyond that, low-code can also accelerate your team’s time-to-market. Here’s how.

Low-code: why use it?

Time-to-market — the time spent developing a product — often stretches far too long when teams rely on traditional methods.

Thanks to low-code platforms, however, that production pace is gaining speed, consistency, and quality.

With low-code, application time-to-market is considerably shorter, because development speed is one of the defining characteristics of these technologies.

More and more companies are choosing low-code development platforms.

In practice, they let you assemble application components — including data and logic — through a drag-and-drop interface.

For developers, it’s like moving virtual Lego blocks with a mouse and snapping them into new solutions.

Adoption of these tools keeps growing. Gartner projects that by 2024, 75% of large enterprises will be using at least four low-code tools for IT application development and citizen development initiatives.

Low-code’s success is no accident. These platforms shorten time-to-market by compressing the timeline for developing and launching a product.

According to a Red Hat study, low-code can cut delivery time for a new application by 50% to 90%.

So how does low-code actually work?

In practice, low-code tools automate all the mechanical, purely technical steps of the software development workflow.

To start a project on a low-code platform, the user works in a visual editor where they design and define the application’s features and screens using ready-made programming blocks. These elements deliver the functionality the product needs.

It sounds very simple — and it really is. A low-code platform also eliminates other complex tasks, such as building structures from scratch and wiring up different databases.

3 benefits of low-code

Beyond shortening time-to-market, this kind of platform delivers a range of other advantages. Here are three benefits of low-code:

  • Higher team productivity: low-code tools use visual programming models, cutting the time needed to build new products since the underlying code is already in place;
  • Flexibility: low-code platforms are flexible, making it easy to adjust and customize the product;
  • Agility: low-code platforms are modular, so their structure makes it simple to remove old pieces and add new ones. You can also enhance the application with ready-made elements. That lets developers be creative while still delivering fast.

As we’ve seen, low-code technologies may be exactly the solution you need to shorten your IT team’s time-to-market. After all, business digitalization can’t stop — and can’t wait.

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