Excel is Overused for Internal Business Processes, Low-code is Ready to Take its Place
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When I walk into a new client office (or, more likely nowadays, Zoom in), I know I’ll see one program that’s used by almost everyone, Excel. Before I get into the fact that Excel is overused and most certainly not the best tool for most jobs, let me give credit where credit is due. Excel does almost everything a little bit, and everyone can pick it up and start using it. Excel’s simplicity and modularity let it function as a “good enough” method for analysis and even data collection. Basically, Excel is like a swiss army knife; it does a bit of everything but does almost nothing very well. All of that out of the way, what do I mean when I say low-code is poised to replace outdated Excel practices?
Every business has business processes, and most companies create more as they grow or modernize. Processes aren’t inherently bad, but issues arise when the time/budget for the process to be made is set to almost zero. When that scenario happens, the easiest tool available to grab is Excel. Given some time and Googling, anyone from the business can make a “tool” in Excel that somewhat streamlines the process. Does the Excel tool do the job well? maybe, is it scalable? no, is it portable? no, and is it really user friendly? again probably not. So Excel worked in the past when the processes were smaller, and the data wasn’t as big, but in today’s world, Excel is too slow and not portable enough. Unfortunately, many companies fall victim to Excel’s low barrier to entry, and it becomes the one sized glove to solve the problem, even though it doesn’t fit.
The solution? Well, as the title implies, low-code is the solution most enterprises and SMBs should be considering. Ground-up development using a traditional programming language for internal applications is slow and expensive. Excel is fast and cheap but functions poorly. Low-code is the “just right” solution for many businesses as they expand and modernize their business processes.
Low-code is gaining more and more traction. According to Grand View Research, the low-code development market is slated to grow at a CAGR of 22.7% between 2020-2027. That means more and more companies are, and will, realize the usefulness of finding a solution that lies between ground-up development and Excel for data analysis, data collection, internal business process management, management dashboards, automation, machine learning, and robotic process automation.
At Kilby Solutions, we not only help you develop the low-code application that you need, but we also help you examine your business processes and make sure that you’re running as efficiently as possible. We help our clients transform their businesses for the future instead of merely turning old Excel tools into new low-code tools. If you are considering low-code for your business or already have low-code solutions in place but want to utilize its capability better, reach out and let us see how we can help.