The world changed and the adoption of technology accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Today work, study, transactions, purchases and sales take place in the virtual environment. The needs of organizations for technological solutions multiplied exponentially, and the IT expert of the institutions no longer has enough to meet the demand in an increasingly digital world. The trend is only going to accelerate: It is expected that from the 75 million business applications that exist today we will grow to more than 500 million by 2023.
But there is a huge talent deficit in the world of technology: It is estimated that only 33% of the labor supply in these fields find skilled talent. And that is not a problem for the ICT sector; it is a problem for the transformation and competitiveness of the entire business fabric, because today it could be said that all companies are software companies: An automotive company today employs more developers than mechanical engineers, since an average car requires to its operation 100 million lines of code. In fact, 61% of developer job openings are not from the tech sector.
New protagonist has appeared
In view of this enormous talent deficit, and the fact that it is estimated that only 2% of the world’s population knows about code, a new protagonist has appeared on the stage of digital transformation: the developer citizen.
The world of application development was left cryptic and incomprehensible thanks to the integration of Artificial Intelligence tools, such as speech or image recognition to ready-to-use tools and templates. Thanks to the fact that technology is becoming more and more accessible to non-experts, ordinary citizens are being the leading players in the world of technological innovation.
Citizen Developer
Most likely, this citizen developer does not have formal training in programming, and that he is not even part of the IT team of his company, but he has curiosity, audacity to invent and an invaluable knowledge, because no one knows his work better than they do your need. Armed with new low-code tools -that do not require mastery of programming languages-, end users can create applications and development platforms and transform, automate the operations of their organization and use the power of data to “reason” about her and make informed decisions.
Microsoft’s Power
Microsoft’s Power Apps allows citizen developers to create applications and is simple enough that most people create a solution tailored to their needs. With the help of low-code tools or without a single line of code, these non-developers are equipped to develop applications and systems that in one way or another support their daily works and overall business goals.
Advantages
The advantages are many; Low-code tools allow lower costs, as fewer expert developers are needed, allow more people to contribute to the digital transformation of the organization, foster greater collaboration and applications can be developed at a faster pace. With the Power Platform, citizen developers are helping to reduce business bottlenecks, increase agility, and innovate faster. According to Gartner, by 2024, 75% of large companies will use at least four low-code development tools for both IT application development and citizen development initiatives.
Low-code solutions
This new era of low-code solutions has democratized technology. It has given people access to technical or business domain knowledge through a radically simplified experience and without requiring extensive and expensive training. Another factor that is critical for this democratization of technology: thanks to the cloud and these low-code solutions, the automation of tasks or the development of applications -which were previously only reserved for large corporations with robust IT departments, are at the fore? Reach of any organization, of any size and of any sector.
SMEs and the access to technology
It is not a minor issue, because in a region like Latin America, where SMEs represent more than 99% of all companies and employ about 67% of all workers, the digitization of small operations is essential for them to remain competitive and for the well-being of millions of families. And although SMEs are traditionally the segment that has the least access to technology, with low or zero code tools and the pay-per-consumption cloud model, developing an application, a bot or process automation is within the reach of any undertaking.
Democratizing technology, putting the tools that dynamist the transformation of the business fabric – and in particular of SMEs – is essential for the inclusive economic recovery of Latin America. Digital transformation must be within the reach of all people and all organizations, and Power Platform is the tool that enables it.
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