One year after launching NoCode into beta — Observations, learnings & what next!
Tags: nocode, lowcode, dronahq
Published: 2020-03-19 14:38:45

After completing one year of no-code platform [DronaHQ's](https://www.dronahq.com/?utm_campaign=no-code-launch&utm_source=dev-to&utm_medium=article) launch, co-founder Jinen Dedhia shares his observation, learnings, and must-know facts about No-Code.


March 2019 when we launched DronaHQ NoCode platform for beta access, we kept a simple target — build 50 serious production grade apps for customers on the platform. In alignment with our goal, we focused our sales team and account team to go for use cases and get customers sign up for apps built on platform.
1000+ signups, 30+ serious apps for mid & large enterprises and government in prod and running. 

Let's get into some useful insights to answer questions like:

- what is the limitation of No-Code
- how far can i go with No-Code
- what if we hit the ceiling
- lock in?
- what are apt use cases for No-Code

Before I begin some clarity on DronaHQ positioning & market operators: It plays in enterprise business application market. This market is dominated by COTS, SaaS and BeSpoke service providers. (COTS — Oracle, SAP; SaaS — SalesForce, Workday, Successfactors; BeSpoke — Accenture, TCS, Wipro) Fair to assume Low-Code & No-Code are two new players in this market. Its share is ~2% of the 270bnUSD market.
With the background lets dive into the learnings from our humble beginning. In the context of enterprise business applications — No-Code has no limitations in terms of building applications. 

Below is a Top10 — built on the platform:

a. Vendor receivables — over 2000+ vendors to checks status of PO, invoices ,etc to get clarity.

b. Material management — a construction company building a 2bn USD+ worth sea bridge enabling material managers to collaborate with site managers for supply chain of material and its timely procurement

c. 360 degree feedback — a large bank built and conducted a custom 360 feedback this appraisal season along with custom reports

d. Inspection tool — a small boutique firm switched from iauditor to build a tool to enable their inspectors record their observations and create reports

e. Innovation management — ideas from over 10k managerial executives in an organisation to be managed. Idea to funding cycle fully covered with complex business rules.

f. Scrap management — a large company producing e-waste and other kind of waste built an app to manage scrap to resell cycle.

g. Timesheet — Different customers; different agreement; different logic to link up timesheets to financial systems.

h. Retail store inspection — Large CPG company’s checklist and reporting app for inspecting a store to certifying a store — for their sales reps and 3rd party contractors

i. System for 100 Mn$ govt program management — A system for the govt to manage the spending & create system of records with the right workflow & process built in.

j. Online Assessment — amidst COVID19, visa processing company’s L&D team got their assessment centre go online

Fact: 
All of them are department apps, business needed it, NoCode made it possible. Nothing SaaS or COTS could work. Bespoke would have meant 6+ months to go live.

Limitation: 
I dont see any! Give me a case and I will give you a solution. I have worked on travelling sales man to djikstra and put our NoCode to work. Ofcourse AI/ML/NLP are not a part of the scope of this app — but it can always be integrated with any of those engines!

Hitting a ceiling somewhere? 

Yes ofcourse. We give 4 options to tackle them: 
1) write a code and introduce in the platform 
2) designer to build custom Ui 
3) write a webservice and consume it in the app 
4) export frontend code & take it from there!

Lock in? 

No NoCode players are working on interoperability as yet! imagine if you are using excel spreadsheet in 90’s and no alternative if you had to jump out.

Apt use cases: anything that falls in the umbrella of enterprise business application — think CRM, HRMS. Think plumbing workflows to existing systems or build new interfaces for legacy systems. Capabilities exists!


Learning: 

So here emerges a new powerful option for all business application buyers in addition to Build or Buy, CONFIGURE. NoCode allows creating apps at lightning speed by putting the blocks together and configuring it right! 

However to do it right —

You need an enterprise architect level thinking to get the data structure and process right.

There is a learning curve to master this new tool with high configurability and there is no shortcut.

NoCode tool + a team mix of NoCode experts + fast learners = Magical speed of digitization tailored to your business needs!

Whats Beyond: 
[No-Code tools](https://www.dronahq.com/?utm_campaign=no-code-launch&utm_source=dev-to&utm_medium=article) in the coming decade will see a large adoption for being the platform of choice for running digital programmes! I wouldn’t be surprised to see a market share of No-Code tool alone jumping above 25% in the enterprise business applications space!