“Hilf dir selbst, dann hilft dir Gott.” (Help yourself, then god helps you) is a German saying that implies that you shouldn’t always consider waiting until someone comes along with a solution for a problem you might have. And let’s be honest, problems aren’t that rare. Especially when it comes to software solutions for the daily agency life. Often you need to work with the tools the agency provides or you start a fierce battle with IT for a new tool or even worse: EXCEL is the solution. But those tools on the market either:
a.) solve the problem only partially to fit into the budget
b.) they cost a fortune and have too many features you might not even need to solve your problem
Both solutions have their ups and downsides.
But with the AI revolution that is currently rushing through the businesses across the globe things might change. Not only that AI and AI-agents might help you with your stuff, AI provides some interesting new opportunities that were 2 years ago basically impossible. I’m talking about no-code platforms.
Imagine instead to have an idea, that you need to present to your supervisor then he needs to take it to your internal development team, they have to estimate the effort and then it needs to be decided if your tailored solution is worth throwing your development team on it, it may take days of not weeks or months until a solution is ready to be deployed and put into service.
Microsoft did office people like me already a great service with Powerapps and Powerautomate. I love those 2 productivity tools because they are fully integrated into the Microsoft365 environment, but esp. Powerapps needs some learning curve to understand to build useful applications that can run in your internal environment without having struggles with the IT in regards of security reasons. In my personal opinion, this is already a big step forward since it enables non-developers that are willing to take this learning curve into the position to create their own tools that help them with their struggles with tailored solutions. But
No-Code platforms are basically a “next step” in this kind of development since they combine 2 things that are already providing a great benefit to the daily work environment:
AI & tailored solutions for your business
Now, the reason why I put a lot of focus on these no-code platforms is the fact that you are now able, even as a complete developer noob, to create powerful web applications with the latest frameworks on the market only by communicating with an AI. Something that usually requires frontend- and backend developer skills at your service. No discussions, no battle for resources … you simply create your tool on such a platform, present it to IT let them test it and then take the source code and transfer it to a safe environment of your company/agency.
To give you an example:
I created an online application that connects to all of my blocks so that I can write and publish posts on all of my 5 blogs from one central application. No need to switch and log into each blog separately, I do it centrally. It s not done yet (because I ran out of credits) but it s a matter of some hours and then it will work. And I have not to pay a single cent for some solution that is already on the market.
To give you another example to give you a feeling for the time:
I created another application that I will “sell” to my agency to serve a very special purpose. A functioning prototype was ready after 2 hours of prompting. It was working with all core features in less than 8 hours. Less than 8 hours for a fully individual web application including a registration, database, user management (incl. role management for certain types of users) and highly performant, with no limitation in regards to scalability built on the react framework (and I have not the slightest idea how to react works) … build only by writing with an AI. Such a system would have taken days for the frontend and backend developer teams to set this up. And I did it myself with ZERO developing skills.
The potential I see in such no-code platforms is impressive. It will not replace a skilled team of developers anytime soon, but to create solutions in the day to day business this might be an interesting approach. Especially if data security and cost efficiency are topics. The only limitation you might face are the amount of Credits you have and/or your phantasy. But that s basically it.
You only need to embrace this kind of technology and some open ears that listen and your ideas.
Let´s build something today! 😉