Digital transformation is happening all around our industry. Over the past five years, new PropTech innovations allowed CIOs to take advantage of technology trends to respond faster to the ever-changing landscapes of residential real estate. Being agile and nimble in today’s real estate environment is a key competitive advantage - a necessity when considering the new set of challenges placed on landlords and residents related to COVID-19.

Embracing no-code

According to Pitchbook.com, “Low-code and no-code development platforms expedite the creation of new applications with minimal coding requirements and offer tools for non-programmers to create their own apps. These platforms use a combination of drag-and-drop graphical interfaces and prebuilt models and templates that enable non-developers to create software.”

Traditionally, enterprise resource planning (ERP) real estate management (REM) systems are not known for their nimbleness. Most software vendors do a good job at making sure industry best practices are embedded in their systems. However, they do not allow the end user to customize their own best practices. These unique practices are what often differentiate themselves from their competition, and for good reason.

Customizations - generally unpopular among IT professionals - are expensive because of the resources required. They are difficult to maintain and they are difficult to upgrade. Furthermore, customizations are often lost when transferring from a legacy system to the cloud. But no longer. Enterprise no-code development platforms have changed the game and it is time to embrace it.

Merging of the experts

According to CNBC.com Editor Eric Rosebaum, Microsoft estimates that the number of new apps built over the next five years using low-code and no-code platforms will reach as many as 500 million - more than all the applications built in the last 40 years. Add to this, the shortfall of U.S. software developers is estimated at over one million. This requires real estate companies to find more innovative ways to increase management efficiencies across marketing, leasing, properties, residents, and investments to outpace their competition. Merging business experts with IT professionals through a no-code development platform will drive digital transformation and cultivate continuous innovation.

Real estate organizations still need professional developers to do highly strategic and mission-critical projects that deliver high value. With no-code, organizations can build a citizen developer community filled with business experts - a four-year computer science degree not needed. One’s imagination is all that is necessary to build administrative and operational apps that improve workflows and provide a better user experience for executives, investors, property managers, leasing agents, maintenance managers, and residents.

Forbes Councils Member Claus Jepsen states, “Successful IT organizations will be those that provide their employees with the tools and technologies to design and develop their own IT solutions - as well as the classes and education needed to do so successfully. With review and approval processes in place, both IT organizations and employees can find mutual benefit in the creation of ‘citizen-built’ applications.

The benefits of building a no-code citizen developer community are many:

• Lessen the burden on IT

• Eliminate costly consultants

• Spark ideas and drive innovation

• Tap into technologically savvy self-starters

• Advance the business expert’s career into IT

• Develop proof of concepts

• Maintenance of light apps

• Integrate and track data across the organization

• Innovate your way out of spreadsheets

• Build administrative and operational apps

• Create reports, dashboards and visualizations

With a citizen-developer community concentrated on operational and administrative apps, professional developers can focus their attention on larger, more strategic IT projects. This gives IT the following advantages:

• Accelerate enterprise digital transformation

• Advance alignment with IT and organizational goals

• Solve problems - the heart of IT

• Sustainable customizations

• Single source of truth

• Leverage business subject matter experts

• Provide governance, standards and security

• Regulate no-code environments to streamline apps

• Maintenance of complex apps

• Collaborate, train, support and mentor no-code citizens

• Identify new IT talent among no-coders

And, you will put the fun back into development with no-code!

Example of no-code development

At the beginning of COVID-19, landlords had to provide residents with some relief through Deferred Payment Agreements (DPA). The benefits of using a no-code development platform swiftly sprang to the front. One of our clients was able to quickly provide their residents with custom deferred payment agreement options in a total of seven hours - all designed, built, tested, and deployed. Without a no-code development platform, this process would have taken multiple professional developers working full-time over a week or two to deliver this functionality.

Rapidly deploying DPAs to residents is only one example of the many benefits of no-code. Powered by a no-code citizen-developer community the benefits are limitless.

No-code development in the future

According to TechCrunch.com journalist Alex Wilhelm, there are over a dozen reputable stand-alone no-code development platform providers, with more on the way. Recent acquisitions of no-code development platforms by Amazon, Microsoft and Google seem to prove that no-code is the next new wave of disruptive technology. Based on these three technology leader’s investments, it is here to stay.

Conclusion

It is a great time to be an enterprise developer. The benefits of working with a no-code development platform are enormous and the list will only get longer. With business and IT experts working together, the state of innovation in real estate will grow at a rate we have never seen before. The question is, are you ready for the ride?