3 low-code AI integration ideas to improve work
Organisations face demands from employees and customers to digitise their systems, but traditional software development can be expensive and time-consuming.
For those reasons, leaders are turning to technologies like low-code to build applications and automations. Low-code development requires minimal to no coding, enabling non-developers to create effective solutions without programming knowledge.
At the same time, AI is increasingly being adopted in operations. When combined, low-code and AI can deliver even greater business benefits. Here are three ways the two technologies can integrate to drive new and improved ways of working.
1. Improving citizen development
By automating complex tasks for employees without coding skills, AI in low-code can accelerate the growth of citizen development. Recommendations powered by generative AI (GenAI) enable applications to be built in just a few minutes.
AI can improve the quality of the products that citizen developers build with low-code. For example, GenAI-powered next actions and text-to-flow help users create applications and automate work quickly. If users can put into words what they want their app to do, GenAI can help them generate the code.
As citizen development expands with AI, non-tech workers will increasingly take on technical tasks in their roles with little additional effort. A lower barrier to entry means the skill sets of this group, such as collaboration and problem-solving, can shine.
2. Supporting advanced developers
AI integration with low-code supports more experienced developers with tasks such as:
- Enhanced code completion
- Testing and troubleshooting
- Documentation creation
New efficiencies enable organisations to take a more strategic approach to application development. Using low-code and AI, less experienced developers and non-developers can handle simple tasks while advanced developers oversee higher-value projects.
According to ServiceNow research on AI usage in coding, many IT workers are already implementing AI in development processes such as code generation (37%), bug detection (35%), and automated testing (34%).
3. Democratising how organisations use data
Low-code platforms can reduce complexity and allow non-technical workers to complete tasks, such as data analysis, that were once reserved for technical roles. With AI tools embedded into low-code platforms, non-IT employees can interact with data in new ways, such as:
- Natural language processing: AI-powered chatbots let users query and interact with data through natural language prompts by translating queries into actionable workflows in the low-code platform.
- Data analysis: GenAI tools help employees clean and process complex datasets, identify trends, and interpret their findings with ease.
AI integrations can lower skill-based barriers to using data, helping more workers across an organisation extract insights and make data-led decisions.
Low-code AI example in action
In practice, any ServiceNow developer can build low-code apps even faster when assisted by GenAI. While creating workflows using ServiceNow® App Engine, they can see contextually relevant recommendations. This helps reduce the time and effort to implement automations.
Now Assist for Creator enables developers to easily create code, flow, playbook, catalogue items, and many other platform objects by writing descriptive comments in natural language.
This approach helps free the organisation's development team to focus on strategic tasks. Both citizen and IT developers from other departments can take ownership of application development and deployment—even at scale.
Find out how ServiceNow helps organisations innovate with low-code and AI.