QuickBase, a low-code app development platform provider, claims it can help companies achieve a 260 per cent return on investment by allowing non-technical (or ‘citizen’) developers to create apps required by businesses.

The firm commissioned a study through Forrester Consulting which created a ‘composite organisation’ based on four QuickBase customers, including a manufacturing firm and a pharmaceutical company.

According to Forrester, the example organisation saved an average of eight weeks in development time and $19,000 in resource costs per app by using citizen developers – instead of “traditional IT resources” – who can create custom apps without learning code.

Forrested found that the business value to the organisation (employee productivity and additional bottom-line value from the apps created, for instance) was around $4.4 million over three years.

Another advantage was faster time to update and maintain apps. By leveraging citizen developers to make changes and updates to apps in real time, the organisation saved up to two months in development time and $4.5 million in cost savings over a risk-adjusted three-year period.

The organisation also avoided hiring an average of two IT developers, saving a total of $612,000 over three years.

Launched in 1999 in the US, QuickBase was formerly a division of software company Intuit from which it divested last month.