New business trends drive incredible innovation

In the past year, companies around the world have weathered challenges, from extreme global uncertainty and changing stakeholder needs to increasingly restricted resources. Business leaders have to think independently while responding to rapid changes.

In order to provide customers with the products and services they need in a way that customers like, companies must increase productivity and increase their operational flexibility.

User experience (UX) is essential to navigate these changes, not to be overthrown by them. So, how can we improve the user experience and promote continuous business transformation at the same time?

I heard from the highest-level customers that they need to make the work of their employees easier and the process smoother. They obviously want their team to be happy and at the same time be able to consistently perform the best level of work required in these unique times.

This means that the company needs to involve everyone to promote business development, rather than leaving it to senior leaders and IT.

Why civic development is important

The Citizen Developer Movement is essential to promote these work abilities. Citizen development is a business process that enables employees without coding expertise to become software developers. Citizen developers can use low-code/no-code platforms and IT governance to create their own business applications.

The power of this model is that employees without coding skills can play a direct role in providing product and service innovation.

Due to the limited number of professional developers in the world and such large operational demands, citizen developers can also reduce the burden on IT and centralized development teams. Although citizen developers usually operate outside of the organization’s IT domain, they create new business applications on IT-approved platforms.

Today, in many companies, citizen developers are building new workflow applications to seamlessly connect various technology stacks. They use the power of machine learning and analysis while customizing workflows and automated processes.

Typical case: Nationale-Nederlanden

The Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden (NN) used citizen developers to improve its catalog form processing activities.

Driven by the growing demand throughout the company, NN’s IT team used to spend almost two days a week creating catalog forms. This is a major burden for IT employees, preventing them from focusing on higher-value activities.

Paul van Renselaar, product leader of the ServiceNow IT4IT team, said: “We worked with ServiceNow to use its low-code App Engine, pre-built templates and intuitive drag-and-drop interface, to quickly create a self-service catalog management application in Nationale- Nederlanden. “We also let our employees receive training and certification as citizen developers, so 16 teams are now rapidly creating catalog items associated with our services. “

People are the core of NN’s business. “Before we hire and train them, we always consider everyone, build their core competencies and what they need from the platform to best complete the job,” van Renselaar added. “We found that the most effective citizen developers usually have first-line knowledge of each business unit and understand the potential process improvements that can drive innovation, cultivate creative thinking, and reduce application development costs and production time.”

Facts have proved that citizen development will change the rules of the game for NN. Now that business teams can create their own applications, IT teams have more time to redeploy and upgrade their work. This is a major victory for everyone.

Considerations for successful citizen development

When you start the citizenship developer program, it is important to agree on who will develop governance standards for process management, including the establishment of a common service data model throughout the enterprise. Done well, this provides visibility into service and application-related data from different domains, integrated into one view, allowing you to align your IT strategy with company strategy and capabilities.

Another common challenge is figuring out how to safely maintain and expand citizen development programs at a controlled rate throughout the organization. “At NN, a key success factor in expanding our citizenship development program is to show the wider company how it can achieve these work innovations,” van Renselaar said. “It is also important to explain that these capabilities are transferable, especially because processes and processes are the same for any line of business. This is the moment of contact with management and their support is guaranteed.”

Leading with experience

Civic development provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for employees, customers, and the wider community to work better. So, how can organizations achieve citizen development?

van Renselaar said: “We have taken small steps and adopted an agile way of thinking, so we can fail quickly and use the knowledge gained during the journey to improve quickly.” “For those who are just starting out, start small and build gradually. , You will see the benefits immediately.”

If done well, civic development is an intergenerational opportunity for the organization. If you are working hard to get citizenship development to serve you, or just starting your journey, please talk to someone who has done this before and remember to interact with our knowledgeable community.

This article was originally published in Workflow, ServiceNow’s online publication, which covers the evolving relationship between people and technology at work.