Small businesses need to use software to stay efficient and increase profits. Now, low-code technology is making it possible to create custom apps without the need for prior coding experience.
Low-Code Software Examples
Small Business Trends contacted FileMaker, a custom app company, to get some low-code software examples of specific areas where the technology they supply helps small businesses.
Productivity
Sometimes, people working on the same project are in different locations if your business is creative. For example, a video or television production company might need to bring things together from across the continent or even around the world.
Being able to see progress from one location is important. Independent TV production company Kung Fu Monkey used a custom app they built to track scripts, projects and ideas. There’s a good lesson for other companies in the entertainment and leisure industry here. Kung Fu Monkey reported an increase in team productivity between 40 and 60 percent.
Orders
Keeping track of orders is a bellwether of any efficient business. There are packaged software solutions available, but most have a very specific use. They fit a mold and template. If your business is in a unique industry, creating an app with this kind of customized software means you always have the information on hand with tablets — and orders are never lost.
Tucci Lumber creates customized baseball bats for discerning hitters. The business used the FileMaker Platform to accomplish this goal. Pete Tucci, the CEO of Tucci Lumber, found he could even build on the customized app that started tracking orders.
“Our app has been such a benefit to the business,” Tucci said in a FileMaker case study. “We’ve been able to increase production and decrease inefficiencies. When we need to further augment or customize the app, the functionality and resources are never in question.”
Data
Collecting data is critical to many small business owners. NMR Group Inc. works in market research, evaluating renewable energy programs. The custom apps help to collect data from businesses resulting in the kind of mistakes happening when this is done manually.
Analysis
Custom apps like the ones from FileMaker give small businesses a deeper view into their sales numbers and what they mean. This can be especially true for smaller businesses getting bigger and companies switching their bookkeeping to an online software model.
Summer Snow Juice noticed bookkeeping errors that kept popping up when they transferred numbers from paper to accounting software. When they switched over to the customized app they built, they found more accuracy and a deeper perspective on sales data through analytics.
Communications
Some small businesses have people who are scattered across the country, state or even around the globe. Communicating sales and inventory data correctly between all the different points was a problem for food services distributor Wood Fruitticher. The comp communications needed to run through a variety of different channels like email, voicemail, PDF files, spreadsheets and handwritten notes. The custom app they built streamlined communications by aggregating useful information through the software.
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