White paper empowering Business Users for the Next Era of Digital Transformation With business needs changing at an unprecedented pace

Market
Pulse
WHITE PAPER
Empowering Business
Users for the Next Era of
Digital Transformation
With business needs changing at an unprecedented
pace, there is surging demand for tools that help drive the digital transformation agenda. Conventional IT solutions and practices are not agile enough to deliver competitive advantage. As a result, organizations see potential in empowering business users to fill the gap.
A new IDG MarketPulse survey of IT and line of business LOB) decision-makers found the majority of respondents recognize value in giving business users the capabilities to automate work and data flows to improve overall agility and resilience, or to build more complex applications that can have impact across the business. Forty-four percent of respondents are currently furnishing such tools to non-IT users in some capacity, with another 50% planning to leverage the capabilities sometime in the near future. See Figure SPONSORED CONTENT
IDG Communications, Inc.
FIGURE 1.
PERCENTAGE OF LOB WITHIN
ORGANIZATION WHO COULD BUILD
OWN SOLUTIONS
6% to 10%
11% to 20%
21% to 30%
31% to 40%
n
IT Average
28%
n
LOB Average
21%
28%
29%
19%
9%
22%
19%
28%
15%
Source: IDG

2
EMPOWERING BUSINESS USERS FOR THE NEXT ERA OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Market
Pulse
Despite acknowledgement that business-led automation and customization is central to meaningful modernization efforts, deployment of such tools is not yet pervasive. The IDG survey found less than a quarter (23%) of LOB employees are currently automating day-to-day routines or modernizing existing workflows. Even more telling Almost one in five (19%) respondents capable of leveraging such tools have yet to engage, squandering untapped potential and the creativity of business users to problem-solve for digital innovation. With surging demand for digital solutions to keep pace with rapidly changing business needs—exacerbated during the global pandemic—companies need all the help they can get to accelerate initiatives that remove the operational barriers to better deliver complex, high-stakes results. Traditional IT-led, grand-scale digital transformation strategies are resource-intensive and can take years to complete. There is also growing recognition that central IT organizations can’t meet the pent-up demand. Further, innovators in the business are fully capable of creating the customizations and automations that will make their work more productive. By equipping in-the-trenches subject matter experts and other non-IT users with the right tools, those closest to the business can engage in rapid-cycle innovation to navigate the organizational challenges in the way of modernizing critical initiatives. Armed with unique knowledge, these business innovators can take the lead in solving problems, whether it’s to automate their team’s day-to-day workflows for greater efficiency or create enterprise-scale applications for tracking key equipment across locations and networks, navigating compliance challenges, or managing complex projects.
“Business users know the day-to-day challenges and opportunities far better than IT ever will, so they are more motivated to solve problems explains Deb Gildersleeve,
CIO at Quickbase. If they can create something that saves time … it gives momentum to the transformation process.”