Over the past few years, social, mobile and cloud technologies have exploded. As a result, 2015 is poised for significant growth in the adoption of citizen integration.
Stemming from this advancement in self-service technology is the rapid expansion of applications that make professional workflows easier and more streamlined. Business users are self-implementing workarounds to simplify and speed up their existing tasks, without taking IT based repercussions into consideration.
As the amount of unique applications utilized by employees increases, IT professionals are faced with the challenge of innovating their existing protocols to develop a more flexible and agile approach. Business users are seeing an increase in productivity and efficiency by performing self-service integration, and as such, it becomes especially incumbent upon IT to embrace an “anytime, anywhere, any device” mentality.
Current generation business users increasingly display heightened levels of software integration knowledge, and are utilizing their personal devices to simplify application integration tasks on the job. This shift in business user mentality directly coincides with the corporate push for IT to increase workplace efficiency, underscoring another reason why organizations should adapt to citizen integration.
In addition, users are leveraging an average of 20 – 30 SaaS based applications to handle an assortment of workplace tasks. Developments in employee technology usage hold the promise of a more efficient, productive and streamlined workflow, but must take place within a “walled garden” of IT parameters to ensure security. As such, companies must realize that in order to survive in this digital era, they must reexamine their traditional workflow processes – pushing to accommodate the new generation of business user.
In the past, IT strategically established and managed a company’s integration demands. However, the rapid growth and adoption of mobile, social and cloud technologies have given business users the tools they need to perform integration tasks themselves, freeing up IT focus on higher level, strategic initiatives.
Regardless of industry, IT professionals are gradually shifting from their legacy practices, and implementing an approach that allows for business-user-led innovations, while maintaining backend control.
With all these factors considered, the IT industry is undergoing a large shift in standardized practices. As IT managers continue to adopt and incorporate new protocols, the shift in operations will increase efficiency, allow for future growth and set the stage for 2015 as the landmark year for citizen integration.