Warning Nerd Alert! Low-code no-code (“LCNC”) tools for accounting and finance teams

Introduction

Have you noticed the rise in the so-called low-code or no-code tools lately? 

This sudden focus has become a big topic across a range of different business and technology contexts.

But following a recent (small) poll on LinkedIn 70% of people have never even heard of the concept.

This evolution (not revolution) of tools has the potential to make significant improvements for finance and accounting teams for a very small investment.

From business process automation apps, low-code data wrangling tools, deployment and creation of financial models in minutes compared to hours, days or weeks. 

But these types of tools are not new at all and surprisingly have been around for a lot longer than people think, just not widely adopted or applied.

Perhaps the application wasn’t clearly categorized as low-code when it was first launched.

Hopefully, this article will help you and your team gain greater awareness of these tools and technology changes and save big $ investing in technology transformation.

Ok, so what is it? I still don’t get it.

The concept is about transferring the expert coding knowledge (even R1C1 Excel formulas/code) that is required by someone highly skilled to someone who has only a basic awareness of how to build such a tool (like a financial model).

By tool, I am referring to a decision-making tool that is either backwards or forward-looking using data and assumptions,  processed in a model with outputs that drive decisions and ultimately actions.

But don’t forget about business process automation tools, but let’s leave that sector for the next article😁

Some of the modelling low code tools build shallow data like a 3-way financial model (IS, BS and CFS) and other tools have bigger datasets in PowerBI or a predictive model.

But this also extends to apps on your phone and many years ago transformed me (an accountant back then) into a web developer and designer (eventually I got proper help) using Wix and Squarespace.

The low-code / now code tools would sit across the 3-stack tech stack (see our recent articles on this concept). 

The tools would put more power in the hands of users and away from hardcore technology coding folks.

It’s not a rogue group of employees, it still needs to be well controlled (it’s a balance and not meant to be a tussle for tech dominance).

This is not about disrupting technology teams but setting up both the finance and technology teams to work more harmoniously together.

If you can do it quicker and cheaper why wouldn’t you? 

Only read this part if you want to go deeper on this techie / geeky tangent.

Technically speaking from Wikipedia these tools are defined as follows: 

"A low-code development platform (LCDP) provides a development environment used to create application software through a graphical user interface instead of traditional hand-coded computer programming. 

A low-coded platform may produce entirely operational applications, or require additional coding for specific situations. Low-code development platforms reduce the amount of traditional hand-coding, enabling accelerated delivery of business applications. 

A common benefit is that a wider range of people can contribute to the application's development—not only those with formal programming skills. LCDPs can also lower the initial cost of setup, training, deployment and maintenance."

Let’s get a little nerdier down the rabbit hole.

If you have heard of the term abstraction then in effect low-code / no-code is a higher form of abstraction for users at an application vs a coding level.

Ok, so what is abstraction then? 

Here is a simple example to explain its use.

Rather than each time you need to use the xNPV, xIRR or any form of financial formula you are using a defined function from abstracting the actual financial mathematical formula is this condensed function to avoid users having to repeat the same maths time and time again. 

Low code app vs abstraction brings you back up from that detail to a more expansive abstraction into an entire application or financial model with very little manual repetition needed from the underlying code and logic of the model. 

These can also be referred to as content management systems (CMS) when you managing bigger pieces of the application or tools for development. Whether this is for a website or financial model development perspective its the same concept.

LCNC has been around for quite some time (1990’s and early 2000) as part of the 4th generation of programming languages. The market for these tools can be traced back to 2011, however, the concept of “low-code” didn’t arrive till June 2014 by industry analyst Forrester Research. Forbes magazine described it as “extraordinarily disruptive” in 2017. 

Whilst it’s been around, very few recognize the approach as LCNC.

Let’s get back above ground again, shall we??

So what, why should you care?

The use of LCNC will accelerate the adoption of new forms of innovation without the hefty investment and lower ROI projects that are typically seen around most large organisations.

Large IT projects that fail to deliver the outcome needed and if they do, that need changes rendering the solution inflexible in the long term. 

More power needs to go to citizen developers and Modellers. 

Those who adopt LCNC are able to rapidly compete in solution design and delivery faster and cheaper than hardcore programmers. 

Enabling an Excel jockey to be a master data wrangler with PowerQuery comes to mind.

So what’s the balanced view of these tools 🤔

Like all software, nothing is ever perfect and there is no magic bullet either. Some tools are better than others in different contexts and sometimes O365 is all you need. But get ready for the battle of resistance. 

Where does Excel fit in this context? 

Recording VBA was my first low code tool, followed by Modano and now PowerQuery which is the most highly underrated and underutilized data wrangling tool.  I have seen teams jumping into other fancy RPA tools when all that was needed is some PowerQuery magic and perhaps a little bit of M Script.

Slow adoption of similar low code tools in the past is about to change and accelerate dramatically and investment budgets into transformation are under pressure and the need for innovation is ever increasing. 

Even Microsoft is recognizing this trend recently in this article.

What forms of low code tech should finance teams explore? 

The first and absolutely top of my list without a doubt is PowerQuery. 

Thereafter I would explore add-in technologies both within Excel and PowerBI which will automate your model building time and visualisations.

No-code model visualisation tools like Modeler turn Excel and PowerPoint into customizable apps that are highly engaging and don’t require any hosting costs.

Where to learn more? 

Later this year Danielle Stein Fairhurst and I will be exploring some of the most innovative low code tools inside PowerBI that will avoid the need for a lot of complex DAX and M scripts.

It’s an entirely free meetup and I’m looking forward to showing a few of the latest tricks in my bag. 

Follow this link to register.

Stay safe and stay tuned. 

Until then off to play with some low code tools.🤣🤖