How Startups and Small and Medium-Sized businesses can benefit from Low-Code software for BI

James Carnell, Author

Pure.metrics’ Founder, Galla Pupel, explains how Startups and Small and Medium-Sized businesses can benefit from Self-service BI tools.

Coding is not only confusing and complicated it’s something most business owners and entrepreneurs are not aware of and tend to spend thousands on hiring software experts to help them develop web applications and apps they require for their businesses.

However, off late, there has been a buzz around ‘low-code and no-code’ tools, which make things easier for entrepreneurs with no coding background to design their own apps and websites without hiring a team of software specialists to help them gather and analyze data that they require to grow their business.

Business Intelligence these days is the key to making smarter business decisions, and it is therefore of utmost importance for businesses to pay close attention to their business data. To find out more about how low- code or no-code applications and tools work, we spoke to the founder of Pure.metrics a Business Intelligence consulting firm, Business Intelligence Architect, and Data Engineer Galla Pupel.

Easy Access to relevant Data

Traditionally, to create a software or an application, an organization would need a developer who is skilled with programming codes, however startups and many smaller businesses, usually, don’t have a technical team with developers and neither have the budget to employ such a team.

According to Pupel, who has led several Business Intelligence teams for Fortune 500 companies and start-ups alike, the no-code tools are designed with non-coders and non-developers in mind and such tools come handy for people who aren’t aware of programming languages.

This means that they can easily create and access apps and software that can help them with Data Cleaning and Data modelization, Reporting, and Data Exploration, without the help of an IT team.

It puts the user, in this case, the business, at a strategic position. As it gives them complete access to the tools required for generating and analyzing important data. It also leverages their skills and allows them to easily prototype a solution which can later be used at the first step of a project as it boosts their efficiency and productivity.

New Business Intelligence tools have emerged in the market over the past 5 years, these tools bring a data-driven culture in the company, as they are designed for all, not only developers. Democratizing the usage of data in the company.

Time Efficient

Pupel also explains that low-code tools tend to be a better approach for most startups as traditional methods of developing software or tools can take a lot of time. Timeliness is an important factor for startups to stay in the game. “Low-code/no-code software allows startups to build applications faster and more efficiently as we all know that timeliness is an essential factor for startups to stay relevant.”

These tools tend to reduce the tunnel effect as sometimes it can take months for the apps and tools to be developed and when the product is delivered, it does not fit the business needs anymore.

Plus what happens very often, is the needs of the business can changes along the way, impacting the already existing development. Using low or no-code tools, you reduce your development cycle and you can easily change your project scope without much impact.

She also added that these tools allow their makers to experiment with rapid prototyping and develop a BI solution in just a matter of hours.

Easy integration

Apart from being easy to use, the no-code tools support seamless integration, unlike traditional coding, as it gets difficult for developers to change a functionality or a feature instantly, for the software they have developed. However, a no-code development platform is easily changeable and only requires a new logic, and within a few hours, anybody can make and implement that change.

Pupel, also believes that BI solutions that do not allow businesses to add new data scope easily, greatly reduce the ability of the users to make fact-based decisions. Indeed it breaks their train of thought by making them dependent on IT and discouraging free data exploration.

The use of no-code or low code applications does not mean that developers will become obsolete on the contrary developers will be required to develop advanced functions they require highly technical skills. In the same way, IT services are always necessary since they are there in the case of industrialization of the solution, and implementation of advanced security systems.

As competition rises the need for accurate decision making is extremely important according to the BI Architect who led the BI team for a French company Ivalua while it became the French Unicorn valued at more than US$1 billion.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTime