Clearer Reckoning with No-Code

Matthew Newton, Vice President, Chief Architect, CWT

Matthew Newton, Vice President, Chief Architect, CWT

Often strong technology leadership is about appreciating the elemental physics of a situation. In times of a global pandemic, it’s very much the case that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

The COVID-19 pandemic removed all demand for business travel; international and domestic. Almost overnight. And eighteen months later the green shoots of recovery are delicate, precious and prone to sudden localised reverses.

The pandemic has also caused the demand for business travel management information and forecast planning to erupt; domestically and internationally. From the very next day and from all sides; our own business leaders, our clients, their travellers and our partners. Every day that has followed has seen this demand for information and assistance grow exponentially in terms of volume and complexity. If stopping business travel around the world followed the same pattern the restart is most certainly not.

CWT has met this demand for information by embracing and empowering the role of business-led data management, analysis and reporting through our no-code platform AnswerIQ. CWT’s Technology leadership team understand that IT’s role in delivering a truly valuable service is by supporting a diverse range of use cases, ultra-dynamic business needs and the broadest range of stakeholder capabilities. Such services are even stronger when they can be delivered internally and to our customer organisations from the same platform.

By wrapping our AnswerIQ platform with an intuitive and enterprise-grade identity and access management capability along with highly automated metadata loading services CWT Technology have created an environment where leaders and subject matter experts from any part of an organisation can create, maintain and share highly contextual, flexible and uniquely specific insights themselves. Access management, to the platform and to specific areas within, can be safely and securely delegated to business teams to operate themselves. The loading of all relevant metadata for use alongside the operational and referential data provided by CWT has been automated so that any authorised AnswerIQ user can do it personally.

In following a simple set of guiding principles, CWT Technology has already enabled over 400 people within our client’s organisations to develop and access the business travel management insights they need in the formats that mean the most to their audiences

By removing the commonplace bottlenecks of user management and data ingestion CWT Technology has been able to harness the full range of the consumer-grade qualities of Thought spot a key technology that lies at the heart of AnswerIQ.

Now CEOs, CFOs, Travel Managers, Risk Analysts, Customer Executives, Business Analysts and many more are able to see what is happening at any moment. They are also able to collaborate in real-time, with their own relevant metadata and reporting hierarchies, to create views that answer the questions of the moment. Across their own company and with their partners if they choose. Without delay and without having to call on specialist data analysts every time.

Through maximising the use of AnswerIQ’s no-code capabilities CWT has enabled “your reporting, your way” whilst at the same time significantly reducing the need for management reporting to be provisioned through data downloads to Excel and the inevitable proliferation of macros and manual formatting.

In following a simple set of guiding principles, CWT Technology has already enabled over 400 people within our client’s organisations to develop and access the business travel management insights they need in the formats that mean the most to their audiences. By the end of 2021, this business-led analytics community will have grown five-fold to become over 2,000 strong.

These principles are

• Focus on understanding the needs and capabilities of business teams active within specific areas of the enterprise and match these to existing no-code or low-code platforms

• Create excitement and energy through intelligent and transparent IAM and useful and intuitive task automation

• Coach and enable business technologists; resist the temptation to direct or take over

• Continually look to identify the next set of opportunities and use cases that will benefit from no-code or low-code platforms

The capacity for any enterprise’s IT organisation to improve efficiency, accuracy and output of technical solution delivery is finite. Demand for solving business problems was already outpacing the ability to resource and develop tools internally to provide useful technology products and services. Accepting and partnering with business technologist communities will not mean that solution delivery is decentralised or weakened or that those solutions will be less secure or stable. No-code and low-code platforms create the space where the digital skills and transformational energy across the whole enterprise can be brought together effectively and with growing efficiency. IT organisations can focus on those essential non-functional capabilities that determine and control how technology solutions need to behave, in full production and during their ongoing development. Business technologist teams can take a direct hand in building the functional digital capabilities that truly change the way that business value is delivered and how customers are engaged and retained.

The COVID-19 pandemic has immeasurably accelerated the demands for digital transformation and for augmented processes in almost all areas of life. As we look ahead to a post-pandemic business environment it seems clear to many Technology leaders that these levels of demand will not ease up. It is also unlikely that businesses will remain satisfied with the digital advances made since the start of 2020.

“Objects continue to move at a constant velocity”.