How Low-Code Can Reduce Your IT Spend

There are many reasons why IT leaders are looking at low-code development platforms closer than ever before. While speed and ease of development are often high on the list, spend control is another big motivator for many IT teams.

IT budgets aren’t usually stagnant these days, but with so many opportunities out there, CIOs want to invest their budgets where there are going to see the largest returns and impact the company the most.

In the world of application development, there has been a scaling problem for a long time. It’s possible to build nearly any app you can imagine, but it’s all dependent on hiring the right people and giving them time.

Low-code platforms are a great way to address the perennial scaling issue while at the same time keeping your costs in line.

Here’s a look at how low-code platforms can save you money.

What Is a Low-Code Platform?

Low code platforms use visual modules and drag-and-drop technology to reduce or in some cases eliminate coding from the application development process. Low-code is often associated with rapid application development, meaning that you can go through more iterations of the application and get more feedback on your prototypes before going live.

How Much Does a Low-Code Platform Cost?

Before you can know how much a low-code tool will save you, you need to start with how much you are spending. Low-code platforms aren’t usually very cheap. When you look at general purpose platforms that can build almost any kind of application, the cost fluctuates between $5,000 and $10,000 per month depending on how many applications you want to build, how many users you need, and other factors.

If however, you are only looking to build a certain type of application, such as automated business processes, you can take advantage of low- and no-code platforms that are much more affordable. Many of these are per-user pricing with unlimited apps. For an organization with a user base of 500, the lower price band starts at $4,000/month, and goes up to $7,000.

These numbers give you an idea of the cost of implementing a low-code platform at your organization, but how will it reduce your spend?

3 Ways Low-Code Platforms Will Reduce Your IT Spend

1. Developer cost

The fastest way to see the financial advantage of low-code is to compare it to hiring new developers. A low-code platform should let people create apps at a much faster pace than they were used to before. The exact level of increased productivity depends on the type of apps being developed, but you should be able to double the output of each engineer roughly.

Most companies are going to spend a minimum of $8,000 to bring on a new software engineer. So, for about the same price, or even less, you might have a full low-code platform that all of your developers can use that greatly increases their speed.

This can also be extremely beneficial with the current talent crunch to allow you to increase your output without hiring more talent.

2.Reducing Single Point Solutions

If you don’t have enough developers to make every application your organization needs, it’s likely that every department goes out and finds the best solution for them on the market. That may work well for individual teams, but with IT security standards on your mind, there’s a lot of risk in opening up to so many separate systems. On top of this, each one prices their software in a different way and your expenses can go through the roof.

Recent studies have shown that a low-code platform can replace around eight single point solutions. That can be a huge saving, especially if you are double paying for solutions that require overlapping user bases.

By creating these solutions on a low-code platform, you can greatly reduce your spend.

3.Exponential Growth With Self-Service

The final way to reduce your IT spend is the most dramatic. If you can find a low-code solution that is easy enough for your business leaders to create their own apps, you’ve not only tackled the cost issue, you’ve cracked the scaling one as well.

For example, let’s say a single developer might be able to create two simple automated business process applications a month. With a low-code platform, this can jump up to four or more. But if you had a no-code platform that allowed the business users to make their own, now you are talking about apps being created in the dozens or hundreds with nearly limitless potential.

This is where the true savings can come in.

Riding Low-Code to Better IT Spend Management

Low-code platforms are a great tool and should be part of your IT arsenal. Exactly how much money you save out of them will be up to how you plan to use them. Will they be used as a way to increase the efficiency of your existing programmers, or to eliminate some single-point solutions? Or do you have a bigger scaling dream in mind? No matter what the case, it’s worth it to check out what is possible with low-code today.