The Biggest Barriers to Low-Code Adoption in Vietnamese Enterprises

Low-code is no longer an unfamiliar concept for Vietnamese enterprises. Most technology leaders have heard of it, many organizations have piloted a few small applications, and industry conferences and market reports routinely mention low-code as an inevitable trend in digital transformation. Yet the gap between “aware of low-code” and “successfully running it at enterprise scale” remains wide.

Many low-code initiatives in Vietnam stall at the pilot stage: a department or two experiments, a handful of small applications appear, and then momentum fades. The problem is rarely the technology itself. It lies in organizational barriers that marketing materials rarely address head-on. This article walks through the biggest barriers, drawn from real implementation experience in Vietnamese enterprises.

Barrier 1: The Belief That “Low-Code Isn't Powerful Enough”

Many IT leaders who grew up on traditional programming still believe that only hand-written code can deliver the flexibility, security, and customization that complex processes demand. In their eyes, low-code is fit only for simple applications like data-entry forms.

This bias is not entirely baseless, since the market has seen earlier generations of low-code platforms with genuine limitations. But it causes many enterprises to overlook a fresh evaluation of today's enterprise-grade low-code platforms, which now support complex integrations, granular permission models, and the ability to extend with custom code when needed.

Barrier 2: No Governance Strategy, Leading to Shadow IT

When low-code is introduced without a clear governance strategy, individual departments often build their own applications to meet local needs, without following shared data standards, security policies, or approval workflows. This is the shadow IT phenomenon: a proliferation of small applications growing outside the central IT team's visibility and control.

In the short term, these applications solve an immediate problem. In the long term, they create a patchwork system that is hard to maintain, hard to integrate, and carries real security risk, since no one owns the lifecycle of each individual application.

Barrier 3: Difficulty Integrating with Existing Core Systems

Most Vietnamese enterprises have already invested heavily in ERP, CRM, or other core systems over many years. A low-code platform only delivers real value when it connects to these systems, rather than existing as a separate data island.

In practice, many core systems in Vietnamese enterprises have been deeply customized over time, come with incomplete technical documentation, or are managed by foreign vendors with restricted access. Building stable API connections becomes a genuine technical challenge, and if not handled well, low-code ends up adding another layer of fragmented data instead of unifying operations.

Barrier 4: Security and Data Compliance Concerns

Since Decree 13/2023/ND-CP on personal data protection took effect, legal and information security teams have legitimate reasons to scrutinize any new platform before it is allowed to process enterprise data and the personal data of customers or employees.

If a low-code platform lacks clear permission controls, does not maintain complete logs, does not support data encryption, or cannot demonstrate compliance, a project can be blocked at the internal review stage, no matter how compelling the promised operational benefits are.

Barrier 5: A Shortage of People Who Understand Both Process and Technology

Low-code reduces the need for deep programming expertise, but it introduces a different requirement: the person building applications must understand actual business processes while also having enough logical thinking to configure the system correctly. This is a hybrid profile between a business analyst and a developer, and it remains scarce in many Vietnamese enterprises.

Without this talent, enterprises typically fall into one of two situations: either becoming fully dependent on an external implementation partner for every small change, or handing configuration work to inexperienced staff, resulting in applications that lack standardization and are difficult to scale later.

Barrier 6: An Organizational Culture Resistant to Process Change

The hardest barrier to spot, but often the most decisive, is the human factor. A process that has run the same way for years, even if it relies on Excel and email, feels safe and familiar to the people who carry it out. Moving to a new digital application, even a faster and more transparent one, requires changing daily work habits.

Without buy-in from middle management and the people who directly run the process, low-code projects are easily perceived as “extra work” rather than a helpful tool, and quietly forgotten shortly after launch.

Where to Start Overcoming These Barriers

• Choose an enterprise-grade low-code platform with open API integration, granular permission controls, and clear security and compliance mechanisms built in from the start.

• Establish a central governance model, often called a Center of Excellence, to standardize development practices and prevent shadow IT from spreading.

• Invest in training internal teams to combine business process understanding with system configuration thinking.

• Start with a process that has a clear, measurable impact, to build trust before scaling across the enterprise.

• Involve the people who actually run the process in application design from day one, instead of imposing a top-down solution.

Conclusion

The biggest barrier to low-code adoption in Vietnamese enterprises is rarely the technology itself. It lies in mindset, governance structure, team capability, and readiness to change established work habits. Enterprises that identify these barriers correctly from the outset stand a much better chance of moving beyond the familiar pilot-then-abandon cycle and building low-code adoption that actually sticks.

Visit kyta.fpt.com to learn more about the Kyta Platform enterprise low-code platform, or reach out via hotline 1900 636 121 (ext. 2) and email support.kyta@fpt.com for consultation.