Solving digital transformation with citizen development

By. Dinesh Varadharajan, CPO – Kissflow

It’s a fact of life that consistent growth is uncomfortable. However, people tend to want to stick with what they know – and that often limits their promise. This is no less true of organisations, who tend to rely solely on IT departments and overlook the untapped potential contributions of their non-IT staff in their modernisation objectives. 

Amid the war for talent and no slowdown in demand for all things digital, businesses need to be able to wean themselves off relying on IT alone if they are to build a future-ready digital enterprise. With IDC noting that Malaysian organisations are at an inflection point in their efforts to pivot towards digital-first strategies, businesses here have a particular interest in doing the most with what’s available.

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People-centric digital transformation

Recent years have highlighted that a people-centric, collaborative approach is crucial to successful digital transformation. Simply put, modernisation is more effective when everyone is equipped to collectively contribute to the cause. No wonder then, that citizen development has grown as rapidly as it has over the last few years. 

As a framework that streamlines processes and automates workflows through low-code and no-code tools, citizen development equips non-IT users to drive innovation with the blessing of the IT team. This way, business users can help stressed IT departments to deliver applications on time, without the risks shadow IT brings. 

More importantly, it enables new processes to be attuned to the needs of the actual people behind key processes in the following ways:

• Innovate faster

Thanks to citizen development, what used to take months can be achieved in a fraction of that time. Enterprise grade apps can now be rolled out faster than ever, as non-IT employees are able to build them via drag-and-drop interfaces and automated workflows. 

2. Transform and upskill simultaneously

Citizen development enables non-IT staff to meet organisational needs, inspire them to innovate, and help design new apps with ease. It also fosters a culture of continuous learning that makes financial sense. Organisations will no longer face the prospect of IT talents leaving due to overwork. Nor will they need to pay top dollar for talents, as non-IT employees are perfectly capable of creating, modelling, and deploying business process apps in minutes.

3. Align design with user needs

Citizen developers are experts in their field and their domain expertise is an often-overlooked bon to impactful digital transformation. The people who interact the most with a given app or process know what data to collect and how to use it, and they can easily build business-critical apps tailored to these needs.

4. More efficiency

In a survey of 1,650 companies, citizen development was found to have saved 1.6 hours per week in 3 years. This improved efficiency was driven by higher job satisfaction, giving companies a competitive advantage in terms of business agility and speed of innovation, as well as talent retention. 

5. Optimise costs

Citizen development platforms cut development costs. Organisations can optimise existing resources and employees, removing the need to outsource work or purchase third-party applications.

6. Free IT to pursue complex projects

There is a mistaken notion that IT teams will be redundant because of low-code and no-code technology. On the contrary, citizen development frees them from being overwhelmed and allows IT to focus on more complex projects.

7. Increased visibility

Citizen development empowers skilled employees to build their own solutions. This increases visibility, paving the way to eliminate redundancies and rein in shadow IT. Organisational transparency is also enhanced by enabling sharing of tools and resources. 

The citizen development revolution: A new chapter in digital transformation

The extraordinary technological advances we’ve seen in the last decade or so forces us to rethink how organisations create value. Organisations are looking to adopt a broad range of technologies that are fundamentally changing work. This underscores the need to bridge the skills gap and deliver the workforce diversity that will position businesses to face future challenges head on down the road.

Low code/no code provides the impetus for citizen development to act as a catalyst for sustained digital transformation. At the end of the day, delivering holistic digital transformation requires a number of building blocks. Empowering individuals of all stripes to create their own solutions inevitably drives successful impact – which only strengthens the company.

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