The tide is turning on the traditional model where one central IT team builds the tools and technology that power entire businesses. Highly visual no-code automation, combined with the power of AI, is putting control in the hands of non-technical domain experts, enabling them to drive meaningful change across their organisations. In companies around the world, those with the deepest expertise in their field and firsthand knowledge of the challenges and inefficiencies are already designing solutions and sparking innovation where it matters most.
From efficiently automating processes, to rapidly prototyping new products and services, to deploying AI solutions within existing tech stacks, these tools are ushering in a new wave of business agility: Gartner now forecasts that 80% of developers using low-code will be outside formal IT departments by 2026. Organisations that fail to empower innovators within teams to boost business agility in this way will inevitably fall behind.
The Tools To Do The Job
IT leaders are familiar with long backlogs of requests to build integrations, automations and home-grown solutions. But with visual drag-and-drop automation tools, users without deep technical expertise can automate complex workflows, integrate disparate tools, and leverage the power of AI by themselves. No-code offers IT teams an opportunity to rethink their roles, becoming an enabling function for the business while focusing on meaningful, differentiating work.
IT teams still have insight and visibility into what workflows people are producing, technology is still managed centrally, but people with domain expertise in Finance, Sales, Marketing or Operations can move much faster. This is the mindset that fosters true agility and innovation in your organisation.
The Automation Advantage
Companies are using no-code to transform their operations and deliver real-world business success now. Bolt, an Uber competitor specialising in both taxis and e-scooters, has championed no-code automation to accelerate their HR processes. Bolt’s HR team wanted to automate processes, but previously had had to rely on their IT team to build integrations – which could come with wait times of up to six months. With drag-and-drop automation tools, domain experts within the HR team were able to master software in a couple of days, and then build processes and design automations themselves. It enabled them to move much faster.
Car group Stellantis has used the same tools to quickly deploy AI-powered automation, empowering employees with no former IT experience to build their own solutions. In the company’s digital transformation team, people who have been selling cars for years – and who understand these processes intimately – are now automating workflows and integrating AI into processes such as sales and customer support. The combination of domain expertise with the power to build and iterate quickly is driving major change and impact for them, with just one project saving more than 150 hours of mundane work.
The Innovator Mindset
There are already IT leaders who are really embracing no-code, and rethinking how the whole IT team operates. We are seeing people who have been engineers their whole lives using no-code solutions because they realise it makes them faster and more powerful. And we are also seeing people with no technical background at all. But the thing they have in common is an “innovator” mindset: willing to put in the effort to learn, and not being satisfied with the status quo. This mindset will be crucial to building company culture fit for the future.
For this to succeed, individuals must first have the ‘will’ and motivation to proactively enact change. Rather than feeling beholden to CTOs driving change from the top, those who question the status-quo and share their ideas are best-placed to innovate. This must be combined with the ‘skill’ to drive change. Openness to no-code automation – and learning how the tools work – is critical if individuals are going to convert ideas into action. Finally, fostering the right environment for innovation is central to success, equipping colleagues with software, celebrating successes, and encouraging experimentation even when some projects work better than others. It’s where these three critical factors are present – will, skill, and environment – that we see the most impact, and the most engaged teams, because they can drive change themselves.
Bridging the Skill Gap
There is a global technology skill shortage, with IBM reporting that in the coming decade, tech jobs are projected to grow at twice the rate of the overall workforce in America. . No-code automation and prompt-based solutions bridge this gap: they empower more people to solve problems independently. The focus is no longer “do you have the technical skills?”, but instead on whether you understand the business problems you need to fix and your willingness to learn and adapt.
Even to build simple solutions, organisations traditionally needed at least two people: one who understands the business problem, one with the technical skills. Now, you can unify them. It’s not just transformational for businesses. Employees find it easier to stay relevant and learn the right skills.
No-Code Automation Is Reshaping the Business Script
In a world where AI is evolving at an unprecedented pace, no-code automation is key to unlocking its full potential, bridging the gap between vision and execution. When automation and AI are in the hands of people across the business, teams move faster, adapt quicker, and unlock innovation from within. The sooner business leaders embrace it, the greater their competitive edge in an increasingly automated, AI-driven world.
