platforms have an array of built-in functionality (reporting, auditing, documentation, security, compliance) that’s ready to activate and use. Not having to custom-develop these functions saves time in design, delivery and adoption. Hand-crafting custom implementations of such functionality not only adds time to development efforts but also increases their fragility. A built-in consistent (i.e., factory) approach to these things makes a platform more valuable and less risky; it’s easy to say “this is how all of the systems report” versus one-off solutions. And once prototypes are in-hand, users quickly get used to (and appreciate) the commonality, no matter what they might have imagined out of the gate. Involvement Which brings us to another point: factories are built on the concept of teamwork. Having users, IT and other stakeholders as active participants not only helps create alignment, it also ensures that solutions move quickly through concept, prototyping, production, deployment and iteration. Factory-style involvement includes different people in different roles contributing different things at different times; everyone has a part to play, and every part contributes to the output. It also contributes to the recurring part of the revenue stream, as it builds a pipeline of change orders and new opportunities. Modifications and finetuning become not only possible but an expected part of the partner lifecycle. Scale Finally, it’s important to recognize what Henry Ford saw in the assembly line: you can’t scale uniqueness. Making every car a custom vehicle means few people could afford them, and the world would tend to treat them like one-off oddities. In exchange for reduced and structured options, cars were made at a scale that transformed the world. The way to help clients achieve true transformation is to focus on a multitude of organizational improvements and efficiencies. No one application induces digital transformation, but being able to quickly deliver a multitude of use cases does. Using a change-friendly low-code platform that facilitates fast deployment and rapid iteration will not only quickly deliver bottom-line improvements for the customer, but it will also create a steady stream of follow-on engagements for any partner. Enterprises today expect to lean on partners to help build critical business applications, but they’re concerned about the ability of those partners to keep up with business needs and mitigate the risk of development projects. Nine out of 10 of these CIOs expect partners to use low-code to meet these challenges. Building on that low-code demand with a factory-like approach to business applications will not only surprise and delight these organizations, it’s also the true secret to creating recurring channel revenue. o Mike Fitzmaurice is vice president of North America and chief evangelist at WEBCON. Low-Code Evolutions Spectrum Source: Gartner What public cloud providers does your organization use? Source: Flexera, 2023 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 Low Code for IT Democratization Low Code for IT Hyperautomation Low Code for Business Composition Innovators and Early Adopters (0% to 20%) Early and Late Majority (20% to 80%) Rest (80% to 100%) Azure AWS Google Cloud Pl tform Oracle Cloud Infrastructure IBM Cloud Alibaba Cloud Other 41% 30% 13% 6% 47% 27% 10% 4% 17% 26% 19% 9% 8% 18% 16% 12% 5% 8% 5% 4% 5% 11% 10% 8% 12% 16% 9% Running significant workloads Running some workloads Experim nting Plan to use 16 CHANNELV ISION | MARCH - APRIL 2023 EMERGENT
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