Atlassian and its suite of cutting-edge products have long been empowering organizations to drive greater efficiencies, outcomes, and revenue, especially products like Jira Service Management (JSM) that help in delivering value quickly. To further enhance this value, many organizations today are seeking low-code solutions that allow them to spin up workflows – without additional cost or complexity. This is especially true in today’s era of remote and hybrid work, where delivering timely and efficient service has become extremely challenging. 

Significance of Low-Code 

Low-code development has been popularly used by organizations for several years now: right from creating apps with the click of a button or automating manual processes, low-code has made it extremely easy for teams to get done with their tasks quickly and efficiently. According to Gartner, low-code application development is expected to gather more than 65% of all app development functions by 2024, with about 66% of big companies using a minimum of four low-code platforms. 

Here are some benefits low-code delivers: 

•     Low-code paves the way for better agility as users can create capabilities, access data, and deliver service quickly and seamlessly. They can more easily respond to market changes and ensure the business is up-to-speed with the latest trends. 
•     Since users can accomplish more tasks in less time, without having to rely on additional IT resources for custom processes, low-code also helps reduce costs of hiring costly developers – while making every team member extremely productive. 
•     Given the pace at which the business (and regulatory) environment changes, low-code allows for better risk management. Since users can easily meet new and evolving requirements, it allows them to keep up with the pace of regulatory change and meet deadlines more easily. 
•     Low-code also helps in streamlining change management as changes can be made more quickly and easily. Using pre-built forms and templates, users can quickly create new processes and workflows and adapt them to suit new requirements. 
•     Since every user has the power to build apps or processes that make their jobs easier, low-code also helps in enhancing productivity. Instead of users having to wait for weeks or months for an app to be built by a qualified development team, low-code allows them to spin apps on their own. 

Why are Non-tech Departments using Low-code? 

Although low-code has traditionally been beneficial for IT and development organizations, today, several non-tech departments are using low-code because of the various benefits it offers. Here’s why non-tech departments are extensively adopting low-code: 

•     To boost collaboration across the enterprise, by bridging silos that have existed between business and IT functions. Using low code, teams can have better insight into the efforts of other members, and also work on tasks together in real-time – so shared goals can more easily be achieved.  
•     To drive effective Service Management, through the delivery of services that are modern, robust, and cost-effective. For instance, automations which used to be written by developers, can be built by non-technical staff as basic query without writing any code.  
•     To quicken service delivery, by developing solutions that meet the growing service needs of the business. With low code, non-tech departments can enjoy intuitive user interfaces, drag-and-drop features as well as a slew of integration and support tools that pave the way for faster turnaround of services. 
•     To enhance customer experience, by building customer-driven processes. Since non-tech departments can more easily build dashboards – without any help from the IT team – they can effectively turn insights gained from these dashboards into action and improve the quality and timeliness of products and services delivered to customers. 
•     To enable better governance, through the development of apps and processes from a central location. Since alert triggers can be configured by L1 staff, rather than depending on L3 staff or the development team, quick steps can be taken to implement governance and ensure compliance. 

Atlassian’s Acquisition of ThinkTilt

Given the several service management challenges being faced by organizations and the benefits low-code offers, Atlassian recently acquired ThinkTilt, the makers of ProForma – the easy-to-use, low-code form and checklist builder for Jira and JSM. With this acquisition, Atlassian is better placed to deliver great service and support to users at scale and velocity, while helping organizations: 

•     Overcome existing Service Management challenges: For organizations where development and IT operations operate in silos, ThinkTilt will help remove the barriers between them and provide a unified platform. In addition, other teams such as HR or finance will be able to set up their own service operations – without depending on the IT team to build department-specific processes or workflows. 
•     Power digital workplace practices: As employees begin working from varied disparate locations, they expect access to data and information they need – when they need it. In today’s digital workplace environment, where employees can no longer physically reach out to someone to assist them with their query, Atlassian will now be able to meet the evolving service management expectations of the modern workforce. By allowing organizations to build low-code processes, teams will be able to do their jobs faster: whether it is an HR request to process a new hire or a travel approval needed by a sales professional. 
•     Enhance service delivery and support: ThinkTilt will serve as a great extension for JSM, empowering organizations to enhance service delivery and support. Using dynamic, cascading forms that surface only relevant information, employees can have all the information they need at their fingertips to process requests. They can also use multiple forms per request and allow updates to a request – without needing custom fields or building complex code. 
•     Simplify enterprise-wide management: While interacting with customers and addressing their service challenges, employees expect to be able to reach out to the appropriate team or department – to quickly resolve the issue. ThinkTilt’s acquisition will enable Atlassian to fast-track requests to different teams from across the organization.  
•     Drive scalability: Integration of ProForma with JSM will also pave the way for the delivery of exceptional service experiences. The low-code editor offers support for 24 languages along with 300-plus pre-built form templates that make it easy for teams to drive scalability. Since these templates are built using customer best practices, service management teams can easily meet the growing demands of users and drive value fast – without interruption.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, employees often end up wasting precious time navigating poorly defined processes to reach out to the right team to help with their requests. This is all the more challenging in a post-pandemic world where a majority of the global workforce continues to work from home. For the remote worker part of the hybrid workplace, low-code development via Atlassian can help eliminate the complexity of building new processes, apps, and workflows, allowing organizations to adapt quickly and respond with agility to changing business conditions.