Introduction
In today's competitive business environment, organisations are under constant pressure to innovate quickly while maintaining operational efficiency without disrupting business as usual.
This is particularly true for our clients at Beyond, including complex, large-scale systems like the NHS, where the need for innovation has reached a critical point.
However, this is often hindered by traditional IT development processes, which can slow progress to the extent that business operations are significantly affected.
At Beyond, we believe that low-code and no-code platforms offer a transformative opportunity by enabling organisations to rapidly develop applications without requiring extensive coding expertise.
This can lead to significant improvements in patient care, administration, and operations through the ability to quickly test and refine new ideas.
What are Low-Code and No-Code?
At their core, low-code and no-code platforms provide visual, drag-and-drop interfaces for users to build applications, automate processes, run analyses, and create workflows without needing to write code.
Low-code platforms may involve minimal coding, while no-code platforms are designed for users with no coding experience, relying on pre-configured templates and components.
If you are familiar with drag-and-drop coding platforms like Scratch, which are often used in schools, the concept is similar.
This shift towards accessible software development is revolutionary for organisations looking to prototype, test, and deploy new systems rapidly, reducing dependency on highly specialised technical staff.
While it may not always be popular among our technical teams, who are developers at heart, for our consultants and creative problem solvers, it is akin to having a combination of PowerPoint and Figma (a wireframing tool) on steroids for playing around with and pitching ideas.
At Beyond, we have recently adopted Microsoft Fabric as our platform of choice.
Microsoft Fabric is an integrated platform designed to streamline analytics and data engineering tasks by providing a unified environment for data integration, transformation, and analysis.
Its low-code/no-code capabilities allow organisations like Beyond, and our clients, to automate workflows and build data solutions without requiring extensive programming skills.
Below is an outline of the key features that support our data analytics and engineering work, but essentially, using Microsoft Fabric's low-code/no-code features allows us to streamline data workflows and enhance our ability to deliver agile, powerful data solutions more efficiently.
Data Integration and Transformation
Dataflows: Microsoft Fabric enables users to create dataflows using a visual interface, making it easier to ingest, transform, and integrate data from various sources. This low-code approach automates ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes without requiring complex coding.
Power Query Integration: Leveraging Power Query, a no-code tool, users can cleanse and shape data in a visual environment, speeding up the preparation of datasets for analysis.
Unified Analytics Workspace
Synapse Integration: Microsoft Fabric integrates with Azure Synapse, providing a no-code experience for connecting, exploring, and managing data across different environments. This simplifies data engineering tasks, such as setting up pipelines, using a low-code interface to orchestrate and manage data workflows.
Dataflows and Pipelines: Users can create pipelines that automate data movement and transformation across the organisation with minimal coding, helping streamline data engineering efforts and improve productivity.
Collaboration and Automation
Power Automate Integration: Fabric's low-code integration with Power Automate allows users to build automated workflows, such as data refresh schedules, alert systems, and report distribution, eliminating manual intervention in recurring tasks and enhancing operational efficiency.
Real-Time Collaboration: Through integration with Power BI, data analysts and engineers can collaborate on reports and dashboards, connecting data workflows with business intelligence outputs—all through low-code solutions.
AI-Powered Analytics
Cognitive Services Integration: Microsoft Fabric integrates with Azure AI and Cognitive Services, enabling users to implement AI models for tasks such as sentiment analysis, text analytics, and image recognition with minimal coding. This empowers data teams to harness AI-driven insights within their analytics workflows.
Supporting Data Analytics and Engineering Work
Efficiency: By leveraging low-code/no-code tools within Microsoft Fabric, our teams can accelerate the creation of data pipelines, automate manual processes, and develop analytics solutions faster.
Scalability: Microsoft Fabric's seamless integration with cloud services ensures that our data analytics and engineering solutions are scalable, from small datasets to large-scale enterprise environments.
Empowering Non-Technical Users: Non-technical team members can engage in data processes, building analytics and automation solutions without needing advanced coding skills, fostering broader collaboration and innovation across the organisation.
Based on our direct experience, we believe this approach is particularly relevant to the NHS, where the need for digital innovation is at a critical point across clinical and administrative functions.
The rest of this article explores why and how low-code and no-code could be a game changer for your organisation, drawing on our experiences with the NHS.
Relevance to Organisations Today
Low-code and no-code solutions are increasingly relevant to businesses for several reasons:
Speeding Up Development
Traditional software development is generally slow, requiring significant time for gathering requirements, coding, testing, and deploying. Low-code/no-code platforms compress this cycle by allowing non-technical staff to build solutions iteratively in a matter of days, rather than weeks or months, enabling faster time-to-market for new services. The lengthy cycles of development and review are gone, as individuals can adjust on the fly while testing what they have built.
Test-and-Learn Approaches
This rapid development approach means organisations can use low-code/no-code platforms to quickly build and test prototypes or Proof of Concepts (PoCs) without large upfront investments, promoting a test-and-learn culture where solutions can be validated and improved in real-time, based on feedback.
Reducing IT Backlogs
With IT and BI departments often overwhelmed by requests for new applications, reporting fixes, upgrades, or system updates, low-code/no-code platforms can decentralise the development process. Other departments can create their own solutions, reducing the load on IT and allowing them to focus on strategic projects. With platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, built-in governance tools maintain appropriate controls on access and data usage, making this approach more viable than ever before.
Empowering Citizen Developers
The rise of the "citizen developer" enables employees without software development expertise to create business applications. This democratisation of development unleashes innovation and empowers staff to solve problems more directly, driving efficiency across the organisation and enabling ideas to come to life from the front line, where the best insights often originate.
NHS: Challenges and Opportunities
The NHS, with its workforce of over 1.3 million people and a complex infrastructure, faces numerous challenges, including:
Outdated Systems and Legacy Technology
Many NHS systems are outdated, making it difficult to introduce new digital solutions quickly.
Lengthy Development Cycles
Traditional IT development methods are slow, limiting the ability to respond to rapidly changing patient needs or administrative pressures.
Resource Constraints
Budget limitations and a shortage of IT talent make it challenging for the NHS to modernise its systems.
Complex Procurement Requirements and Processes
Past experiences and the significant sums historically involved in development work have resulted in procurement processes that stifle innovation, favouring large, well-established providers over smaller, more agile firms.
Conclusion: The Path Forward for the NHS
Low-code and no-code platforms offer the NHS a pathway to modernisation, helping to overcome some of its most pressing challenges.
By embracing these technologies, the NHS can streamline operations, improve patient outcomes, and accelerate digital transformation.
At Beyond, we are ready to support the NHS in harnessing the power of low-code, no-code, and AI to build a more agile, efficient, and patient-centred healthcare system.