What Kinds of Managers Adopt Low-Code Enterprise Systems?

Introduction

Low-code enterprise systems are being adopted by an increasingly diverse spectrum of managers across organizations, reflecting a fundamental shift in how business applications are conceptualized, built, and deployed. This adoption cuts across functional departments, organizational hierarchies, and technical skill levels, creating a new landscape where traditional boundaries between business and technology are being redrawn.

Types of Managers

Business Technologists

Business technologists represent perhaps the most prominent category of managers adopting low-code platforms. These professionals occupy a unique position within modern enterprises, understanding both business processes and technology capabilities while functioning as essential bridges between business requirements and technical implementation. According to Gartner’s predictions, business technologists are expected to comprise 80% of low-code development users by 2026, up from 60% in 2021. These managers typically operate outside traditional IT departments yet maintain awareness of enterprise-wide architectural concerns, using low-code platforms to enable rapid experimentation and deployment without sacrificing governance, security, or integration capabilities. The strategic importance of business technologists stems from their ability to compress development timelines, democratize technology creation, embed governance into development workflows, and maintain the integration and scalability requirements that enterprises demand. They leverage low-code platforms as essential strategic tools for achieving digital transformation while maintaining organizational agility.

Chief Information Officers

CIOs have emerged as primary champions of low-code adoption, with 86% now considering these platforms a critical part of their technology strategy according to Kissflow’s 2025 CIO Low-Code Strategy Pulse Report. This widespread adoption among IT leadership reflects recognition that the traditional, IT-only model for application development can no longer keep pace with business demands. CIOs are turning to low-code platforms to accelerate application delivery, reduce costs, and address mounting IT backlogs while facing talent shortages. For IT leaders, low-code adoption is driven by several compelling factors including executive pressure (27%), overwhelming application backlogs (26%), and the need to modernize legacy systems. These executives measure success primarily through reduced development costs (57% of CIOs cite this metric), while prioritizing AI capabilities as the most important differentiator when selecting platforms. Primary use cases among CIOs include developing internal tools such as workflows and approvals (71%), legacy system modernization (48%), and expanding ERP or CRM functionality (45%)

Enterprise Architects

Enterprise architects play a pivotal role in low-code adoption, responsible for conceptualizing standardized processes that help align business IT infrastructure with digital operations and strategic business goals.

Their involvement has evolved from technical oversight to providing high-level strategic guidance, developing architectural frameworks that guide platform use across organizations. These professionals focus on creating policies ensuring that applications built with low-code tools align with the company’s overall IT strategy, data governance policies, and security requirements. According to research from KPMG, 91% of companies assign responsibility for low-code guidelines to IT department managers, with 90% of these managers prioritizing scalability, comprehensive developer tools, and security when choosing platforms. Enterprise architects emphasize integration and interoperability, placing greater focus on designing comprehensive integration architectures that handle the diversity of applications being created. Their strategic concerns include platform selection, ecosystem management, governance and quality assurance, and ensuring applications can perform at enterprise scale.

Operations Managers Across Departments

Operations managers represent the largest group of departmental leaders adopting low-code platforms, with 33% of citizen development occurring in operations departments. These managers face inefficiencies that translate directly into lost time, delayed decision-making, and missed revenue opportunities, making low-code platforms transformative solutions to operational challenges. Operations managers use these platforms to automate repetitive operational steps, break down system silos through integration, and build highly customized tools that match exact operational processes Low-code platforms enable operations managers to consolidate multiple operational tools into single applications with built-in automation capabilities, facilitating seamless scaling while boosting team productivity. Field operations managers particularly benefit from low-code adoption, using these platforms to create custom apps for field teams without massive IT builds, enabling direct process creation from the field.

The agility provided by low-code allows operations teams to test new approaches, iterate based on real-world results, and continuously optimize workflows without being locked into rigid systems.

Finance and HR Department Managers

Finance managers are increasingly adopting low-code platforms, representing 25% of citizen development activity. Financial institutions are using these platforms to accelerate digital transformation and meet evolving market demands, with adoption increasing by 40% in 2023. Finance managers leverage low-code to create and modify loan application processes, build custom portfolio analysis tools, automate workflows for client onboarding and KYC processes, and create dynamic dashboards providing real-time insights into market trends and operational metrics. The main benefits for finance leaders include reduced development time (up to 70% faster), greater agility to adapt to market changes, improved operational efficiency, and the ability to innovate rapidly

HR managers account for 23% of citizen development, using low-code platforms to handle numerous employee management tasks including performance management, talent management, benefits administration, absence management, and applicant tracking. These platforms enable HR departments to develop apps for recruiting, hiring processes, training, payroll, requests for paid time off, and vacation requests. Implementation of low-code technology in HR brings faster software delivery, increased productivity, enhanced accessibility for non-technical HR teams, improved collaboration between IT and HR, and scalable solutions that can be swiftly deployed or enhanced in response to evolving business requirements.

Product Managers

Product managers are leveraging low-code platforms to take a more hands-on role in building internal tools and product features, enabling more direct translation of product vision into tangible outputs. These platforms turn the “idea to working agent” process into a fast, low-risk loop that product managers can execute without waiting on engineering sprints. For product managers, low-code provides faster prototyping (launching agents in days rather than weeks), lower engineering dependency, better iteration with built-in evaluation tools, and proven ROI with 70% of enterprises reporting faster time-to-value; Product managers use low-code to quickly build and iterate on product ideas, accelerating the validation process and enabling rapid prototyping. This capability allows PMs to test concepts, gather feedback, and make informed decisions much faster than traditional development processes permit. The empowerment of product managers through low-code represents a fundamental shift in their role, expanding their capabilities beyond requirements gathering and strategic planning to actual hands-on building.

C-Suite Executives and Strategic Sponsors

Low-code adoption has become a top-down decision, with entire C-suites advocating for these technologies. According to research from Mendix, 75% of C-suite view low-code as core to business strategy, with almost half of organizations stating the COO (48%) and CEO (47%) are heavily involved in decision-making surrounding low-code adoption. Executive sponsorship proves crucial for driving adoption across organizations, as leadership support signals commitment and helps overcome resistance to change. COOs and CEOs are involved because low-code is having organizational impact through digital transformation (53% of respondents rank this as their leading use case), improving legacy processes (44%), and reducing operational costs (45%). Upper management support for strategic investments into technologies reached 68% agreement among respondents, highlighting enthusiasm for digital transformation initiatives at the highest organizational levels.

Citizen Developers

While not traditionally considered “managers,” citizen developers represent a crucial adoption category that often includes managers and supervisors across departments. These are employees without formal coding backgrounds who work alongside IT teams to address the growing demand for applications. Research indicates that 41% of non-IT employees are already building or customizing technology solutions, with 39% of firms currently using low-code development to empower developers outside of IT. Citizen developers typically include field supervisors, technicians, operations leads, business analysts, and department managers who use drag-and-drop workflows and real-time tools to drive innovation. By 2025, citizen developers are expected to outnumber professional developers by 4 to 1, with 80% of companies believing that citizen developers have provided their IT personnel with more flexibility and capacity. The adoption of low-code enterprise systems spans an extraordinarily broad spectrum of managerial roles, united not by their position in organizational hierarchies but by their need to solve business problems quickly, their proximity to operational challenges, and their desire to innovate without being constrained by traditional development cycles. This democratization of technology creation represents a fundamental transformation in how enterprises approach application development, moving from centralized IT-driven models to distributed, business-led innovation supported by appropriate governance frameworks. The managers adopting these systems share common characteristics including willingness to learn new technical approaches, frustration with IT backlogs and slow traditional development, deep understanding of their domain-specific business processes, and recognition that speed and agility have become competitive necessities in rapidly evolving markets.

References: