Putting Information To Work
One perspective on digital transformation is that it seeks to better empower people with information by better empowering information with people.
Digital technology promises to improve our lives with unprecedented information access. But the extent to which we realize the promise depends on how cleverly we employ the information. Digital enterprise is concerned with the maximally productive alignment of people with information—a synergy in which information is made useful by the vital spark of creativity, and people are rendered more capable by the potent reach of technology. The goal is ever-improving customer engagement, powered by the continual influx of ever-more information.
A More Efficient Model
Citizen developers are a move toward a more productive alignment of people with data.
Not so long ago, all but the most basic desktop applications were built by IT, because they alone had both the coding skills needed to develop them and the server access necessary to power them. This model interposed between the business specialist(s) who had identified and best understood the problem and the application that they had conceived as the solution a potentially problematic layer of separation. Project specifications were easily diluted, miscommunicated, or misunderstood; delays were probable due to increased logistical complexity; and costs inevitably rose.
Today, however, with cloud storage and the availability of low-code development platforms, business workers with little or no coding skill can create their own departmental, enterprise, and even public applications. The end user has more control over the finished product, time to market is shortened, and costs are reduced. The enterprise is more agile, more flexible, and more efficient.
The Digital Organization
The citizen developer is digital transformation embodied—people, empowered by information, empowering information. One of the challenges of digital enterprise is creating value from the raw data that digital technology yields, rather than wasting resources by warehousing it to no practical effect. Accomplishing this informational alchemy requires more than a single department specialized in the information itself. It’s the work of the entire organization, engaged in the mission, intimate with the market, informed by experience, and enabled by technology to turn raw data into competitive advantage by innovating customer engagement.
New IT For The New Enterprise
As the democratization of technology progresses, and as companies’ data stockpiles continue to swell, IT increasingly assumes the vital but less proprietary role of data steward—storing data, securing it, and making it readily available and easily accessible to be put to work solving problems and fueling innovation across the entire organization.
Even in citizen-developed projects, IT typically ensures security and compliance, performs complex integrations, and provides some ongoing administration and maintenance. But thanks to the technologically empowered ranks of citizen developers who have stormed the silo and planted the noble flag of digital enterprise, application development has been freed from the black box and delivered into the capable, creative hands of those who best understand the intricacies of the problem and the details of an effective solution.
AVIO Can Help
A skilled and strategy-oriented team of digital transformation specialists, AVIO Consulting is the friend and digital enabler of the citizen developer. We offer platform as a service to get you up and going quickly, building your digital solution in an intuitive, low-code environment.
Letting us shoulder the infrastructure makes you more agile by decreasing your development times, and our extensible service gives you the flexibility to scale your capacity up and down as your development needs dictate, keeping you lean by letting us handle the back-end requirements..
Furthering your digital enterprise is our passion. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you put your data to work more efficiently.