The Benefits of Integrating Low-Code and Generative AIThe Benefits of Integrating Low-Code and Generative AI

Low-code tools simplify the development process, enabling businesses to customize and deploy generative AI solutions at speed

Tiago Azevedo, chief information officer, OutSystems

December 31, 2024

4 Min Read
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As generative AI emerges as a game changer, adoption rates are increasing. This revolutionary technology is becoming a driver of change in how businesses operate. A McKinsey & Co global survey revealed that nearly 65% of business leaders report that their organizations regularly use generative AI, with this figure nearly doubling in the past ten months.

While the adoption of generative AI is increasing, many businesses are still navigating how to optimize their generative AI strategies. According to insights from Gartner, 52% of AI projects do not make it into production, compared to 46% two years ago. Furthermore, the average time from prototype to production is now eight months, highlighting that businesses must rethink their strategies and streamline processes to unlock efficiency.

Generative AI is rapidly becoming the fundamental tool for businesses, which at its fullest potential, can completely change the way they operate – from operational efficiency to strategic decision-making. Moreover, businesses are signaling the need for an end-to-end solution capable of addressing complex use cases and transforming operations.

The question is: How can businesses unlock the full capabilities of and value from generative AI?

The Path to Seamless Integration

Related:Generative AI Governance Done Right Drives Innovation

Mastering the full potential of generative AI requires dedication – even for the most innovative companies. Integrating generative AI into applications and operations is a multi-faceted process that, with careful planning, can lead to significant benefits and smooth integration. This, however, requires resources and AI expertise as an investment to position businesses to overcome potential integration challenges. As the AI market grows, strategic integration can pave the way for long-term success especially when combined with compliant measures.

Ensuring that generative AI is implemented with the right ethical, security, and governance measures is an important step that businesses can take to ensure a seamless and effective integration in the long run. generative AI relies on data, producing more accurate and insightful results when fuelled by high-quality, domain-specific information. This also makes high data quality and effective data management essential for AI applications to deliver accurate, comprehensive results. This is a vital step for businesses to be able to unlock the full potential of AI and enhance its overall effectiveness. Advanced measures and protocols are also needed to safeguard all sensitive information and data, ensuring not only algorithmic fairness, but also transparency, and accountability.

Related:A Sustainable AI Future Needs Community Data Protection

Another critical element that businesses should not overlook is their strategic approach. Organisations should aim to adopt a lean implementation strategy, inspired by the lean startup methodology. This involves defining a minimum viable product (MVP), iterating frequently, measuring progress, learning from results and incorporating market feedback to refine solutions over time. This process allows businesses to start small and scale fast.

What’s more, having the right expertise to understand the code ensures that the AI model remains relevant and supports the business’s needs effectively.

As AI systems become more sophisticated, organizations need to adopt tools that are designed to address all the practical, ethical and security concerns of generative AI implementation. By having the right strategies and processes in place allowing them to understand and validate every step of the process, businesses can avoid potential negative impacts on business operations and mitigate any legal, financial, or reputational risks.

The Power of Low-Code in Fueling Generative AI Innovation

While AI-assisted technologies gained more popularity recently, the concept behind generative AI technologies isn't completely new. Businesses have been using tools like low-code platforms to automate and speed up application development for decades. Combined, low-code and generative AI can complement each other massively, demystifying the complexity and speeding up the innovation process. It enables organizations to do both – use generative AI capabilities to support software development and build generative AI applications to unlock real business value.  

Low-code tools simplify the development process, enabling businesses to customize and deploy generative AI solutions at speed. This approach helps businesses to unlock generative AI's capabilities, prompting teams to innovate and experiment freely, while effectively addressing potential privacy and security concerns. It also reduces the potential for technical debt and orphaned code, which is often experienced with traditional coding, by focusing on model creation and reusable building blocks.  

What’s more, by combining low-code and generative AI, businesses can also streamline the process and amplify the creativity of software development, serving as a co-worker that offers novel perspectives while enabling human originality. This aligns with the growing market demand for end-to-end platforms that can combine several sources of knowledge, which allows businesses to realize and address their AI opportunities comprehensively.

Forrester’s Principal Analyst, John Bratincevic, points out that generative AI (AppGen) is shaking up enterprise app development by cutting costs and speeding up app generation. This shift challenges traditional models, pushing companies to adapt quickly if they want to stay competitive in this rapidly evolving landscape. Ultimately, businesses hold the keys to unlocking unparalleled value and innovation through incredible opportunities that generative AI offers. With thoughtful decisions, they can shape next-generation processes that propel their operations forward and inspire transformative growth.

About the Author

Tiago Azevedo

chief information officer, OutSystems , OutSystems

Tiago joined OutSystems as chief information officer in September 2019 and is responsible for leading the digital Team to build a world-class business architecture that secures a frictionless customer experience and enables the organization's growth ambition. Tiago merges a fundamental understanding of business, technology and new ways of working, establishing digital as a central part of the organization. 

He has 20+ years of experience, the first 10 in management consulting with Accenture and the latter as a CIO across bluechip companies in several countries including online, publishing and broadcast media environments (Impresa), telecommunications (Vodafone, NOS, Portugal Telecom, Orange), high tech and energy (REN) where he has led large scale digital transformations. Tiago is a recognized thought leader in his field and has advised other CIOs on their digital and transformation strategies. He is a driven and inspiring leader passionate about building high-performing teams that exceed expectations.

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