Exploring the Impact of GenAI on Today’s Digital Transformation
To say that AI has great potential feels like the biggest understatement of the year. Especially since the launch of ChatGPT, terms that were reserved for technical specialists, such as generative AI and LLMs, have become mainstream.
However, that explosion of conversation and a scramble to integrate AI tools into enterprise workflows or find a valid way to describe an organization’s solution as “AI-powered” in marketing copy has left many asking the question of the hour. Are the applications of AI, and generative AI in particular, being overhyped?
Journalists, analysts and buyers are all growing weary of the constant attention on the emerging technology and questioning whether AI can actually solve complex business challenges outside the sandbox.
Chief Growth Officer at Creatio.
The Rise and Limitations of SaaS
To answer this question, it is useful to look at the recent evolution of digital transformation in companies. The development of cloud computing has led to increased integration of software to drive transformation, which has led to an increase in applications and services and the rise of SaaS.
Predictions say that cloud-native applications will soon rival the number of apps developed in the past four decades. Businesses are choosing to go cloud-native because of its ability to meet specific digital transformation needs, while SaaS has replaced legacy solutions because it can handle the increased demand for cloud-native apps.
The problem with SaaS, however, is that the one-size-fits-all nature of these solutions isn’t always the best fit for individual industries and business needs, defeating the very purpose of using digital transformation to meet business-specific needs to gain and maintain a competitive edge. Furthermore, multiple competitors using the same “out-of-the-box” SaaS solutions quickly begin to appear homogenous to customers.
Finding a way to leverage SaaS’s key benefits of simplification and speed while adapting applications to the individual needs of the business is the biggest challenge of digital transformation today.
No-code and GenAI: a perfect combination
This is where no-code technology enters the conversation. No-code platforms allow users who have no formal training in software development to develop applications using visual drag-and-drop tools. Far from having to understand a programming language, the only skills really required when using no-code platforms to develop business applications are problem-solving and, crucially, a good understanding of the business and its processes. By combining these two things, applications are optimized for the individual needs of the organization.
No-code combines the speed and accessibility of SaaS with the personalization qualities of traditional software development by offering companies a way to democratize the application development process. It helps enterprises tackle their application backlog by helping to address use cases from customer-facing applications to workflows, where every employee can quickly and easily contribute to solving unique business challenges.
GenAI also comes into play here as a powerful catalyst for no-code development; this is a great example of where AI can already make a huge difference in any enterprise today in a very simple way. It allows enterprises to streamline application development and greatly accelerate the process by automating tasks. For example, it can be used to convert user requests directly into application templates or frameworks, eliminating an entire step from the development process.
It can be used to automate and accelerate workflows and processes across an organization, from project management to customer privacy and regulatory compliance to employee lifecycle management. One government agency used this technology to roll out an application to thousands of users to automate complex project management processes — 95% of the app was built without the agency having to write a single line of code.
Myth-busting GenAI and no-code
GenAI and no-code technologies are being used together as part of a natural progression of digital transformation. Far from replacing jobs, they are accelerating the pace of innovation by turning employees into citizen developers, helping them build applications that specifically address specific business goals, automating mundane tasks and freeing up developers and other departments to focus on the activities that will truly move the needle.
With the no-code market expected to generate $187 billion in revenue by 2030, up from $10.3 billion in 2019, the market is set to meet the growing demand for increasingly specialized software applications and demonstrates the need for a tool that provides the freedom and flexibility to build applications that not only work for the business, but also drive competitive advantage.
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