We live in a world of instant gratification (or at least the expectation for it). Today’s consumers are tech savvy, used to fast, seamless experiences and they expect the same from their banking. In turn, more and more banks are leveraging low-code and no code technologies to help meet these demands and expectations. However, financial institutions must keep in mind that these solutions are not a panacea. They require clearly defined goals, project plans and resource support in terms of both budget and leadership. For implementation, they should set realistic goals for rollouts based on the requirements of the project.

Projects can often take longer and require more resources than originally planned and having an agile versus waterfall approach to project development will not solve that alone. It is important to tightly control the scope of the implementation and avoid adding additional features during the initial rollout, especially after the project has started. Doing this will only push out timelines and increase the likelihood of failure. If they are needed, additional features should be added to future rollouts. The initial launch will most likely be a minimum viable product (MVP) with limited users so there is time to test, work out the bugs, and gather feedback to iterate and improve the product.

While many team members may have their own strong opinions on the project, strong leadership is needed to keep everyone focused and moving in the same direction – towards launch. Otherwise, things can go off track rather quickly. It is vital that FIs find a vendor they trust to deliver on time and on budget, rather than just falling in love with a particular product demo and/or sales team. They should run reference checks with other customers and ideally ensure they will have access to the vendor’s product, design and engineering team since they can add features and resolve issues that can surface with any complex deployment involving multiple moving pieces. Finally, institutions must keep in mind they are most likely building something that does not exist in the world, so the goal should be to launch quickly, gather feedback and continuously iterate.

Low-code and no-code support allows FIs to get as close as possible to having a fully built out engineering, design and product team, at a fraction of the cost that recruiting resources and assimilating and leading such a team would normally require. These platforms give institutions the flexibility to build applications that support automation at the point of sale using application programming interfaces (APIs) and/or software development kits (SDKs), as well as integrations to legacy systems like financial cores to automate the opening of accounts and provisioning of services.

Properly managing and maintaining your technology is a serious commitment that requires advanced foresight and the appropriate skilled technicians. Adopting low-code and no-code tools is a powerful resource (and strong ROI) for those FIs that are willing to invest the required time and care to develop the right strategies.

Curious how Prelim can help your FI get the most of out a modern automation strategy? Visit https://prelim.com/ today to learn more and be sure not to miss our upcoming panel at the Bank Automation Summit where we’ll discuss how financial institutions are leveraging these solutions to move into the future of banking!