Innovation Without the Overhead: How to Prepare for Uncertainty

Employees in all sectors — from IT departments, product teams, to human resources — are trying to pick up the load left by the restructuring of resources. Company leaders are looking for ways to deliver more with the current resources available. But how can organizations produce more, faster, when teams are already resource constrained?

Today, senior leaders are struggling to keep up with the demand for increasing digital innovation and technological solutions due to a shortage of employees with advanced technical expertise. “Senior IT leaders must carefully consider what they are investing in and how those investments can drive productivity, efficiency and growth within their business,” reports Forbes.

Business output is at risk now more than ever. But there are solutions to tick all the boxes for employees already constrained by time, budget, and a lack of tech skills. Let’s take a look at the hiring landscape and what organizations can do to keep up with the demand for innovation.

What the Hiring Landscape Looks Like

As companies continue to reduce headcount, it still stands tech talent is needed in every sector of business. “The vast majority [of organizations], (93%) say the “Great Resignation” has made it more difficult for their IT teams to retain skilled developers, and 86% say it has become more difficult to recruit them in the last two years,” according to a study. Despite turnover and tightening budgets, there are still open roles in the software development field.

According to IDC Market Perspective, it is predicted a “global shortage of full-time developers will increase from 1.4 million in 2021 to 4.0 million in 2025.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measured “about 162,900 openings for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.”

The demand for tech talent is vastly outweighing the supply. With the difficulties in recruitment and retention, how can businesses continue to remain competitive in the marketplace with a non-technical workforce?

Keeping up with the Rising Demand for Innovation

The rising demand for innovation and transformative solutions is being placed at risk due to the increasing technical skill gaps within organizations. So, what are organizations to do when the technology gap within teams begins to impede company progress?

Co-founder and CEO of Thunkable, Arun Saigal, spins this question on its head and asks business leaders to reframe their mindset to think of every team within the business as a software team, regardless of their technical skills.

“Imagine the creativity you could unleash and the operational efficiencies that could happen in your organization if your team was enabled with the tools they needed to create the solutions to their problems,” suggests Saigal. “By empowering employees with the necessary skills and tools to build anything they need to optimize their workday, operational efficiencies, and productivity can be achieved.” With this mindset shift, you unlock a world of possibilities.

Companies can weather the storm of an uncertain future with proper preparation. Let’s take a look at some predictions and how companies can still achieve innovation amidst developer shortages.

What are the Predictions for the Future?

According to industry reports and research, there are three major predictions for the future of work.

The Future of Software Won’t be Built by Traditional Developers

The ironic truth is the future of software won’t be built by the traditional software developer. But why not?

Low and no code technologies have received overwhelming recognition as tooling that can help teams deliver projects in a more effective, efficient manner. No code is perfectly suited to equip teams to do more with less because they have an accessible learning curve compared to coding and require minimal resources to get started. Senior IT leaders are utilizing low and no code tools to cut down development time so they can rapidly develop apps, automate tasks, test new ideas, manage large data sets, and much more. According to Salesforce’s latest study, “almost all organizations (96%) currently use low and no code tools, and 36% plan to increase their use over the next 12 months.”

Technological solutions can be ideated, tested, and launched in a matter of days. Such quick turnarounds enable businesses with the ability to respond and pivot to evolving customer demands and market changes. According to a 2021 Gartner report, 70% of new applications built by businesses will rely on low-code or no-code technologies by 2025.

What does this mean for you? Well, not only does this mean you no longer have to wait for tech talent to add your project to their roadmap to implement the solutions you need. The most innovative companies are now looking to upskill their employees as a way to keep innovation alive.

Upskilling Will Be More Important than Hiring

According to PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, in 2019, four out of five CEOs bemoaned the skill shortage among their workforce, and they identified this as a threat to innovation and overall business growth.

In years past, CEOs searched for cost-effective ways to source the skills they need by either outsourcing work or hiring individuals from outside industries. However, executive leaders are now focused on upskilling and reskilling their existing workforce.

“The best organizations find that developers of the future are the individuals who have the ideas, skills and access to the necessary tools to implement action and accelerate innovation,” says Saigal.

Take, for example, Reina Murooka who pivoted careers as a professional violinist to become a software engineer at Twitch, thanks to Thunkable. “On Thunkable, I used it to actually teach myself how to code. I realized [Thunkable] was relatively similar [to Lisp]; it just builds differently. And then I started to get into that [coding] world. [Thunkable] helped me a lot,” says Reina.

Upskilling non-technical professionals with the tools and resources they need to develop technical solutions not only allows teams to move faster but allows IT departments to focus on larger and more complex projects instead. Companies desperately need a technically skilled workforce, and the harnessing of no code tools like no code mobile app platforms allows employees to innovate and apply the necessary strategies to meet business needs.

The Impact of Equipping People with the Right Tools

Equipping employees with the right tools to build their own solutions means businesses can accomplish goals faster and rapidly lead with innovative solutions.

One example is a real estate education company, Mortgage Educators and Compliance (MEC), that recognized the importance of providing a mobile user experience to their consumers. MEC wanted to create a mobile first app, but no one within the IT department had extensive frontend coding experience, let alone experience ever creating a native mobile app. MEC turned to the best no code mobile app development platform to create their app. As a result they were able to increase their customer base by 180%.

All this would not have been possible without the adoption of a no code app builder like Thunkable.

How to Give Your Company a Competitive Edge with No Code Tooling

The demands for digital transformation strategies are only exacerbated by how IT leaders are being evaluated. According to a study published by Salesforce, IT leaders are being “evaluated on employee productivity (52%), while many are also measured on cost reduction and optimization (50%), customer experience (48%), and employee experience (46%).”

Low code and no code tooling can help with this. No code tooling allows teams to move faster with limited wasted work. Equipping teams with no code tooling and upskilling workforces reduces the vast need for resources to progress. The adoption of low and no code tooling allows you and your team to be…

Solution Oriented

With the right no code platform, you can solve your own problems as you’re given the ability and freedom to innovate. Solution-oriented skills are a key asset for employees of every organization, regardless of market conditions or resources. No longer do marketing, sales, or product teams have to wait and rely on the IT departments and technical teams to implement the solutions or changes they need. In today’s uncertain economic times, no code tools like a drag and drop app builder are the essential tools in the kit which gives people the ability to contribute well beyond the scope of their roles.

Innovation-First Mentality

Teams can create new initiatives, like campaigns, without major investment. Low and no code tooling has a low risk adoption because “the beautiful thing about no code tooling is the startup cost and the barrier to entry are very low. With out-of-the-box software tools, it may take months of preparation and extensive employee onboarding for your team to learn about new software, whereas this can all be reduced to a matter of days with no code tools,” says Saigal, addressing the hesitancies of adopting no code tools.

Are you ready to build the solutions you need?

Preparing for the Future

Providing employees with the ability to build digital transformation solutions not only allows for efficiency, but it enhances productivity and the capacity to complete more projects. Adopting low and no code solutions, automating manual processes, and upskilling workforces enable business leaders to have a larger impact on business goals.

If you are looking to adopt no code tooling, unleash your potential with Thunkable!