Low-Code No-Code Development: Salesforce’s Focal Point in 2023

Transformation is a multifaceted journey!

No magic spell can be summoned from a wizard that can make it happen instantly.

Yet, this does not suggest that there’s no way to make it happen.

The digital landscape offers a wealth of endless possibilities if you are keen enough to walk the extra mile to unravel the magic spells!

Oftentimes, these spells are codes written in an encrypted programming language that holds the secret to making digital transformation a breeze.

Here’s the best part!

There are no rules on how you can leverage these codes to your advantage.

While a traditional development approach relies upon creating codes from scratch, which is a cumbersome task limited to technically skilled professionals, the introduction of low-code and no-code technology has made coding possible for everyone.

“The future of app development is low-code, where anyone can participate to solve any business problem,” Patrick Stokes, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Platform, Salesforce.

What Exactly is Low-Code or No-Code Technology?

In common parlance, it’s like a quick guide to becoming a developer with just a few clicks.

With low-code platforms, enterprise employees can engage in development, regardless of their technical background.

Low code is more than a development buzzword!

The term “low-code and no-code” refers to a set of platforms and tools that allow non-developers (i.e., business users) to code in a modular, componentized, drag-and-drop manner.

With the use of low-code and no-code modular methodologies, professional developers can build software more quickly by eliminating the need to code everything from scratch.

In addition to providing modular code for professionals, low-code and no-code tools enable non-professionals, such as marketers, business analysts, and others, to create and test their software applications.

Low-Code and No-Code Technology: Driving Digitalization Across Industries

Now that you know what low-code and no-code technology are, let’s take a look at how these technologies are empowering different sectors.

Forrester found that 90% of IT leaders agree that low-code platforms provide a better customer experience than traditional development platforms.^[i]

Retailers benefit from low-code’s ability to rapidly implement new cost structures or operating systems. In retail, implementing change is especially important during seasonal shifts and peak holiday shopping times.

Furthermore, low-code tools facilitate omnichannel customer experiences and order fulfillment applications for retailers.

With low-code platforms, companies can reduce development times from months to weeks (or even hours), implement real-time updates, and improve their applications.

Together, these features enable low-code users to rapidly scale and change applications.

Simply put, low code and no code technology allows you to build your custom Avengers without having to be Stan Lee or Jack Kirby!

The Advantages of Low-Code Development

The low-code approach lets you create applications that directly solve business problems. The versatility of low-code platforms allows for building innovative applications such as:

• Applications for employee engagement
• Applications for process automation
• Applications for customer engagement
• Applications for data management

There is more to it than just business applications! You can create everything from smart forms to full-blown websites using low-code platforms.

How Salesforce is Empowering its Users With Low-Code Technology

Salesforce has a reputation for being a catalyst for digital transformation.

It has become much more than just a Customer Relationship Management platform. Today, it helps organizations track business progress, make decisions, and generate optimal outcomes.

By arming its users with cutting-edge technology and advanced features, it has ensured that its users are at the forefront of their respective fields.

To help teams drive business outcomes faster, the Salesforce Platform offers low-code tools for interactive app development, AI-driven data protection, identity management, and DevOps capabilities.

The Salesforce Lightning App Builder and Experience Builder empowers its users to create engaging apps for various touchpoints, including digital portals, communities, and mobile apps.

With Lightning App Builder, Salesforce users create and customize Lightning Experience and Salesforce mobile apps using low code.

How Does Salesforce Solidify App Development?

Salesforce offers a low-code platform to its users. However, how does it do that? Let’s explore.

• Metadata-Driven Development Model

The days of hard-coded applications are over; customization is in vogue!

It is necessary to have flexible applications that can be tailored to your business needs without requiring high-level programming knowledge. It is for this reason that Salesforce Metadata is so powerful.

As Salesforce’s foundation, metadata matters a lot more than you might think.

By eliminating the need for code, metadata-driven development makes developing feature-rich applications easy. It allows developers to spend more time focusing on feature requirements and less time worrying about coding because it is done using button clicks and without code.

For example, with Salesforce Lightning platform, app developers can build better apps with a metadata-driven approach.

This implies that the tabs, forms, and links of an application are stored in a database, rather than having to be hard-coded.

• Smarter App Development for Automated Tasks

Automation is essential for working efficiently and effectively. Apps that deliver smart and dynamic information allow you to increase business agility and empower your team.

By leveraging low-code automation solutions offered by Salesforce, companies can improve efficiency across tools and systems to meet new demands, bridge gaps, enable collaboration, and ensure seamless customer experiences.

Salesforce Customer 360 offers a number of powerful features, most notably Flow Orchestrator, to help organizations transform their businesses.

The Flow Orchestrator assists in automating multi-user, complex processes.

With Salesforce’s Customer 360 Platform, users can quickly create mobile-ready, dynamic apps and experiences using component-based architecture.

It’s all orchestrated by App Builder. Administrators and developers can drag-and-drop tools to create flexible, performant, secure, and scalable apps that are fully customized for your users and solve business-critical problems.

• Develop Anywhere With Salesforce Code Builder (Beta)

The Salesforce Code Builder has replaced the Salesforce Developer Console.

With Salesforce Code Builder, you can develop from anywhere using web-based tools. Download the Code Builder (Beta) managed package from the AppExchange and get started.

• DevOps Center (in Open Beta)

Salesforce DevOps Center provides a change and release management process for Salesforce organizations.

Through this tool, administrators and developers can deploy no-code, code solutions in a scalable way using a point-and-click interface. You no longer have to manually track your changes on sticky notes.

The changes are instead captured in a source control system (GitHub). When deploying changes from a sandbox to production, you can collaborate with admins, developers, release managers, and quality assurance.

Tools Offered by Salesforce for App Development

Salesforce introduced some cool features and tools in its annual release that are poised to change the way you code! You might already be aware of these tools if you keep up with all things Salesforce.

In case you missed them, here’s what you need to know:

• Customer Identity Plus

Developers can easily integrate an identity layer across their existing apps with Customer Identity Plus. A company that implements an identity layer across all its digital touchpoints, such as mobile apps and web portals, will eliminate the need for its customers to create separate logins for each channel. The tool helps organizations with a large number of monthly active users consolidate and manage their customer identities.

• CLI Unification

Released during Winter ’22, CLI Unification lets you build anything on Salesforce through a single command line interface. Besides managing platform resources, it allows the management of Heroku, MuleSoft, Tableau, and more.

• Business Rules Engine

Salesforce has announced the general availability of Business Rules Engine, an intuitive tool for building, testing, and automating complex policy-based rules.

Governments can use this technology to automate complicated calculations – such as determining whether the constituents are eligible for food assistance or a reenlistment bonus.

With Business Rules Engine, business users can update their digital tools and rules regardless of their technical expertise.

Now, users can easily launch new programs that automate decisions and adjust them in accordance with changing mission requirements by simply dragging and dropping formulas or reusing templates.

What’s Next?

Salesforce plans to expand its Business Rules Engine into other industries.

• Low-Code Toolkit for Slack Apps

Slack and Salesforce introduced Salesforce Platform for Slack, a low-code toolkit that lets Salesforce developers build Slack apps using data and automation directly from Salesforce Customer 360.

Also, here are the new components and integrations that are available in the Salesforce Platform for Slack:

• Developers can connect Apex code built in Salesforce to Slack’s UI framework with Apex SDK for Slack.
• Salesforce Customer 360 launched three Slack integrations this summer in open beta. Among them is Sales Cloud for Slack, for managing sales data; Service Cloud for Slack, for resolving customer cases; and Marketing Cloud for Slack, for optimizing journey planning and aligning B2B sales and marketing.

What’s Next?

Salesforce’s Flow low-code platform is also connected to Slack. The goal is to automate the creation of new Slack channels and send account status updates by automating simple manual tasks.

Conclusion

Today’s businesses offer multiple channels of communication to their customers. With its B2B and B2C solutions, Salesforce makes it easier for businesses to engage customers, transact efficiently, and deliver products and services.

The Salesforce Platform offers a variety of advanced coding tools that are suitable for organizations looking to move to an agile environment.

In light of recent developments in low-code platforms, especially those made by Salesforce, low-code automation will gain traction.

As it is a means of automating business processes that require little coding, it will allow non-technical business users to get hands-on with automation projects and reduce reliance on developers and software engineers.

Want to Stay on Top of Low-Code Development? Talk to Us!

Statistical References:

^[i] How Banks Can Enhance Customer Experience with Low-code Automation