Digital transformation has become a reality for many organizations, and leaders cannot escape the need to embrace its implications. With the right combination of strategic people, processes, and technology, today's organizations can address their transformation needs through citizen development. Working beyond traditional roles, employees with subject matter knowledge become empowered to collaborate directly with other stakeholders in the company and develop new apps and products. 

While this digital revolution requires business enterprises to rethink their operations, it also presents an opportunity to do things differently. Citizen developers, an emerging group of non-IT-trained application developers, have taken the initiative to support their employers in the digital transformation journey. 

As the name suggests, citizen developers are people who have skills to build applications and services but don't work in IT. They are a new breed of developers—one of today's most important innovations in business. Citizen developers can be found everywhere, from marketing teams to product development departments, from finance organizations to customer success teams. They are becoming increasingly important as companies seek to adopt new technologies like cloud computing and mobile apps—and they play a vital role in helping companies achieve digital transformation. 

Championing Digital Transformation 

The term "digital transformation" tells of the new reality: new technologies disrupt legacy industries. Nine of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 have either merged or don't exist anymore. The fundamental impact is on productivity and efficiency—the new imperative for success—as business models and products transform through more agile, customized, and data-driven processes. 

With the digital revolution comes disruption, and with disruption comes opportunities. The game-changer, however, is citizen development. Thanks to increasing numbers of citizen developers who turn to readily available digital tools, businesses can now access robust software solutions without writing a line of code. 

It is an exciting time for businesses, as they can now access robust software solutions without writing code. But what does this mean for developers? Gartner predicts that half of all new low-code clients will come from business buyers outside the IT organization by 2025. 41% of employees involved in building or customizing technology solutions for their organizations are now non-IT workers. This trend will only grow as low-code platforms continue to be adopted by more businesses. 

The Impact of Citizen Development 

Emerging low-code/no-code (LCNC) development platforms promise to make it easier for citizen developers with limited technical skills to develop business applications. Instead of waiting for developers to write code, the hope is that citizen developers will use LCNC platforms to either automate or enhance their processes, which can then be deployed by IT. It should result in the speedy implementation of ideas that improve business processes. 

Citizen development encourages organizations to reimagine their application development process. Traditionally, a team of 10 professional developers with a mix of senior developers, junior developers, a project manager, and QA resources would undertake an application project. On the contrary, organizations that have set up their Citizen Development Center of Excellence are achieving the same output with 2 citizen developers (who still have their day jobs). 

However, having a citizen development program does not eliminate the need for strong IT governance and oversight of new apps. The key is to ensure that these citizen developers have the right tools and support to help IT deliver quickly on the needs of the business. 

The Need for Digital Transformation

Jeff Bezos of Amazon said, "There is no alternative to digital transformation." It's a statement that is truly applicable to Amazon and any company in the digital age. The world of business has been turned on its head by the digital revolution. In an increasingly competitive market where customers are more informed and demanding, companies must adapt quickly or risk being left behind. 

Here are other reasons why business enterprises need digital transformation: 

Staying relevant in the marketplace 

Digital transformation allows upstarts to compete with established players in a market and legacy organizations to stay relevant in the marketplace. For instance, Walmart competed with Kmart by deploying the latest advancements in data analysis, product scanning, and supply chain management. Hence, teams can reduce costs by implementing automated systems that allow them to do more with less (or no) human intervention. 

Often large companies that do not consider IT or software as their competitive advantage have a small IT team taking care of all IT needs. The team spends most of the time maintaining existing apps and systems. Hence, new requests stay in the backlog. It creates digital transformation debt and frustrates business users. Organizations utilize citizen developers to build apps without depending on IT to avoid such a situation and stay relevant in the market. 

For example, The General Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists (GC-SDA), the governing organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has its headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. The organization has a small IT team that takes care of the global needs of GC-SDA employees serving over 200 countries. GC-SDA, an AgilePoint customer since 2011, used its citizen developers to meet its complex HR business process automation needs. 

Better customer experience 

Businesses can deliver a superior customer experience through digital transformation. They can provide more personalized and engaging services that meet the needs of their customers, and it will help them stand out from competitors who are not yet willing to invest in technology. Businesses can also use their technology investments to generate additional revenue streams by creating new products or services that offer value for their customers.

Increased productivity 

With digital transformation, businesses become more efficient and productive by automating manual tasks and reducing human error. It will give them more time to focus on higher-value activities that require creative thinking, problem-solving and personal interaction. 

An engaged workforce
 

Businesses can use their workforce better with digital processes, enabling them to solve problems faster and more efficiently. For example, a company struggling with high turnover rates could use technology to automate some of its processes and allow employees to focus on other tasks that require human interaction. 

More opportunities for growth 

A company that is open to digital transformation may be able to expand its market reach thanks to technology. It could mean offering products and services globally rather than just locally, likely increasing revenues and profitability. 

Achieving business transformation with AgilePoint 

AgilePoint delivers an enterprise-scale ecosystem of services and capabilities that help organizations automate at scale. It offers 15+ process patterns, 50 domain-specific data entity types, and over 1000 process activities for a secured and swift business transformation.