HOW IS CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT CHANGING THE AUTOMATION …

HOW IS CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT CHANGING THE AUTOMATION GAME?

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Table of ContentsIntroduction 3

What is Citizen Development and why is It needed now more than ever? 3

The Need For Skills 4

Investing in our People 5

Scale with Confidence 6

The Democratization of Automation 7

What are the key Challenges to Unlocking Citizen Development? 8

Through the Lens of a PRACTITIONER Q&A with Partha Mukhopdhyay, Associtate Director, Automation, Cargill 9

Development to Action: Simplifying the Steps 10

The Age of Citizen Development, Fostering a Culture of Diversity, Equality and Inclusivity 11

Firstsource Case Study 12

Summary 16

Naomi Secor Global Managing Director, SSON [email protected]

2 HOW IS CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT CHANGING THE AUTOMATION GAME?

© 2021 SSON

https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomisecor/

Introduction What is Citizen Development and why is It needed now more than ever? Citizen development is one of the hottest buzzwords. So, what does it mean and why is it gaining so much traction? Citizen Development is an activity that can enable a non-IT person to build and configure business automation applications using new no-code/low code platforms. It holds the promise of enabling your users and subject matter experts to develop and deploy automation with minimal IT oversight and without software coders.

Two major issues for companies is the lack of software development talent and the need to mix subject matter expertise and tech experience. Citizen Development enables a way of getting things done that doesn’t further stress an already stretched IT team and gives the business a sort of self-help solution.

And they thrive on meticulous process execution, motivated to solve business problems faster without having to wait

in line for what could take ages. Citizen Development empowers employees to use their knowledge to fulfill business demands and

contribute to the organization’s digital transformation efforts.

For shared services and global business services organizations,

the CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT value proposition is outstanding.

SSOs have an abundance of process capability, are often tech savvy users,

and play the role of SME for many processes in an enterprise.

HOW IS CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT CHANGING THE AUTOMATION GAME? 3

© 2021 SSON

The Need For Skills According to SSON’s 2021 State of the Industry survey, more than two-thirds of shared services organizations profess themselves relatively neutral with regards to their IA experience to date – a relatively alarming finding. Less than 15% consider themselves very satisfied with the results of their intelligent automation. As we take a deeper look at why the disappointment, skills availability leads as the greatest inhibitor to success.

How satisfied are you with your overall IA experience to date?

22%16%50%

12%0% 100%

Very satisfied

Somewhat satisfied

Slightly disappointed

Very disappointed

N/A - no IA to date

Source: SSON’s GBS and Shared Services State of the Industry Survey 2021

What’s the current hurdle to progressing your automation strategy? [multiple choice]

0%

55%

Skills availability

Funding Green light / business case / commitment

Lack of alignment with enterprise digitization strategy

Human resource availability

Data availability / format

Tools availability

Other

53%

43%38%

32%27% 25%

11%6%

Source: SSON’s Global Market Review: Intelligent Automation in Shared Services


© 2021 SSON

Investing in our People Citizen Development presents the perfect opportunity to learn new skills, close the digital skills gap, empower employees, and contribute to improvements that lead to more success.

So, just how does Citizen Development shrink the digital skills gap?

“You won’t be surprised to learn that 84% of companies say digital skills are more important to their business in 2021 than two years ago. But you might (and should) be alarmed to discover that in the last six years, the UK saw a 40% drop in young people leaving education with relevant skills. No wonder 76% of businesses think that the digital skills gap could further hit their profitability.”

Sundara Sukavanam, Chief Digital Officer, Firstsource

0% 100%

Process expertise

Technical expertise

Communication

Data analytics

Leadership

Systems integration

Project management

Business know-how / customer centricity

Automation (RPA/ ML / AI)

Relationship management

Collaboration

Innovation / problem solving

75%

50%

50%

25%

50%

25%

50%

25%

50%

25%

50%

25% Source: SSON’s State of GBS Digitization

If you are experience skill gaps, in what areas particularly?

Develops an automation

mindset

Enables employees to identify automation

opportunities and build solutions

Teaches employees to develop automation

solutions using a low-code platform

Allows employees to

think differently and embrace

innovation


© 2021 SSON

https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/media/get/Workplace Training and Development Commission Report.pdf

https://www.worldskillsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Disconnected-Report.pdf

https://www.worldskillsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Disconnected-Report-final.pdf

https://www.worldskillsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Disconnected-Report-final.pdf

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundarasukavanam/



Scale with Confidence In addition to addressing the skills availability concern, shared services organizations are deeply focused on scaling their IA initiatives as a critical component of enterprise digital transformation.

Citizen development allows enterprises to scale with confidence. By allowing users to deploy their own automation, organizations save countless hours of research needed to identify processes/bottlenecks and it takes the pressure off internal IT teams. This is a critical advantage of citizen development as the most significant barriers to scaling automation are IT constraints, lack of standardization, and siloed operations.

Employees, such as project managers, continuous improvement leads and heads of analytics are increasingly taking on the roles of Citizen Developers,

using drag and drop platforms to build custom applications and bespoke tech solutions to advance enterprise automation and digital transformation on a global scale.

It’s a win-win solution for the employee and the enterprise they support. Employees are able to think outside of the box to solve problems different from a typical software developer due to their proximity to the business and its exact needs. It is even possible for some Citizen Developers to work closely with their organization’s Center of Excellence, the main owners of the enterprise’s Intelligent Automation agenda, to help identify which processes work best for automation. They play a vital role in helping scale the technologies that underpin a digital transformation.


Who owns the IA agenda in your enterprise?

What are the 3 top barriers to scaling IA? [multiple choice]

0%

65%

Process reengineering / standardization is slow

IT function constraints – implementation, security, governance

Siloed operations limit progress

Complex / too much time required

Cost of tools Too much training / support required

Data not accessible

Other

61%

51%

41%37%

26% 24%

15% 7%

6%8%

21%

27%

31%

Other

Center of Expertise / Business Transformation team

IT / CIO officeBusiness, with support from automation team

Corporate

Finance / CFO officeSSC / GBS

4%3%


© 2021 SSON

8%

The Democratization of Automation The primary motivation of citizen development is to move the creation of automation as close as possible to those who actually manage the processes and best understand what’s needed. Allowing employees to build automation flows can reduce repetitive, tedious tasks, freeing up time to work on projects that require critical thinking and human interaction. With a no-code automation platform, employees who are trained in low code/no code tools and familiar with the IT oversight processes can set up their own automation platform, and they don’t have to depend on developers to write automation scripts.

By enabling non-developer employees to use low-code and non-code platforms to create and manage business applications, you put the route to automation solutions in the hands of the people who best understand the challenge — the workforce.

Despite the somewhat obvious benefits, we have a ways to go when it comes to adopting citizen development. Currently, CoE-driven and controlled expansion and user-driven, CoE controlled expansion are the top two approaches to get from proven IA capability to enterprise-wide implementation. Democratizing automation is not about turning employees into developers. It is about changing mindsets.

Democratizing automation is not about turning employees into developers. It is about changing mindsets.

What do we do from here? Leaders need to reassure employees and demystify technology by encouraging experimentation. Digital transformation may sound big, bold, and dramatic, but employee behavioral change starts with encouraging new habits so that people can identify challenges, explore new ways to tackle them, and approach problem solving with a digital-first mindset. Training, motivating, and mentoring around new habits and the value of minor change is fundamental to the success of Citizen Development Implementation. It enables employees to tap into a part of the company that is not yet automated, giving them the opportunity to have an impact on the greater business. By investing in the training and up-skilling of employees, enterprises will benefit from engaged employees and a greater commitment to data digitalization, one of the key priorities for shared services leaders going into 2022.


What’s your approach to get from proven IA capability to

enterprise-wide implementation?

34%

29%

21%

9%

CoE-driven and controlled expansion

User-driven, CoE-controlled expansion

Democratization of automation (empower users to automate own processes)

Relying on 3rd party consultants to scale automations

Hyperautomation (automation of automation / using automated tools to identify processes and create bots)


© 2021 SSON

What are the key Challenges to Unlocking Citizen Development?

Selecting the right change champions:

Having an employee within each function to promote and

use the platform. But it’s not just employee buy-in you’ll need…

Gaining IT buy-In: IT will NOT want to relinquish

control. Departments will have to work closely with IT to ensure a) IT supports this, and b) there is

good governance in place. Good governance is only possible with

good relationships and…

Selecting the right platform:

Great UI won’t just promote more use, it will also be key to

monitoring and governing behind the scene. In saying that…

Keeping IP (talent) within the business:

A key challenge to CDs is that when they leave, the bots

they’ve built must have a proper handover or else the work

will be irrelevant

Monitoring and Managing the CDs:

This is NOT a set-it-and-forget-it solution. Leaders will have to

monitor/audit every bot that gets deployed especially the

high-end users. Speaking of high-end users…


© 2021 SSON

Through the Lens of a PRACTITIONER Q&A with Partha Mukhopdhyay, Associtae

Director, Automation, Cargill

Q: What do you see as a key challenge to unlocking citizen development?

A: In my humble opinion – it’s the current legacy IT landscape that is incapable of integrating and “speaking” easily to these low code applications. Without a significant IT skillset, citizen developers find it tough to understand, develop and finally manage the bots they build. Most fail at integration touchpoints and boundary conditions.

Q: How do we overcome the hurdles?

A: Need to put right guidance, guardrails, toolsets and training to maximize chances of success for citizen development. Equipped with the right tool set, proper training and a digital mindset, citizen developers can unlock huge productivity and work satisfaction!


© 2021 SSON

https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthasprofile/

Development to Action: Simplifying the Steps When looking at citizen development in its most basic form, the end goal is to empower users to create, and manage their own automation processes with minimal need for developers. Citizen Development does not begin as fully-fledged enterprise-level program. It is imperative that enterprises should start small and test, iterate and improve their process before scaling it into the larger organization. Like automation itself, the new breed of low/no code tools requires some learning. Not all will be well suited to it and governance is required. Democratization does not mean all employees must be developers. It does mean that the capabilities are available to all however. For those who want to learn how, it is prudent to encourage bot and intelligent automation acceptance within your organization so that they can be utilized in the best ways possible.

5 Steps to Get You Started on Your Citizen

Development Program

1. Strategic Intent Identify the business units/departments to pilot the program in and garner executive sponsorship from senior leaders will be critical to your success

2. Governance A steering committee will give you directional guidance and help market the program internally

3. Identify the Size of the Pie Upfront Even if it’s a very rough estimate of cost out or revenue uplift, understanding the scope and possibility is paramount. When designing the program structure, look at the business case/ROI for each business unit that is participating, including the productivity savings that could potentially be delivered by scaling the program up. Work hand in hand with the pilot businesses to ensure that the estimated savings are being delivered through phased scaling

4. Communication is King Clearly articulate the value proposition and develop your change management plan to proactively manage any fears that automation might bring to your employees. Creating an intranet site for the program with FAQs, team performance and dashboards, with regular updates to the entire organization, will create interest and participation from other BU leaders

5. Track and Manage Conduct weekly and monthly connects with your CDO and BU and Automation Leads to track license utilization, automation pipeline and productivity impact


© 2021 SSON

The Age of Citizen Development, Fostering a Culture of Diversity,

Equality and Inclusivity Citizen Development can deliver a step-change in productivity and innovation by diversifying the developer industry. It gives way for representation of varied identities and differences both collectively and as individuals.

By corporations both affirming similarities as well as finding value in everyone’s differences regardless of socio-economic and identifying factors of their workforce, businesses will be open to scaling automation as the varied skillsets of each individual play a part in making company process run as a whole.

People and culture cultivate fair and fulfilling workplaces for all by ensuring business practices and colleague interaction embodies equality regardless of their standing. In providing fair treatment, equal opportunities and fair access to information and resources for all, motivation, production and process efficiency will increase exponentially.

The Citizen Development framework is built exactly from these pillars. Low-coded and no-coded software allows various individuals from all walks of life to be able to have input and influence the processes they use within a corporation day in, day out, regardless of their background. Citizen Development demonstrates in real-time how employees’ roles are moving away from manual, high administrative tasks towards strategic forward-thinking opportunities.

For citizen development to succeed, the individuals who know their jobs and products best are vital in scaling automation across enterprises. In giving these individuals the opportunities and support they need to achieve above and beyond in automation, it is key to ensure each and every employee feels respected and is viewed as a valuable asset to the team.

The beauty of automation is that it does not discriminate against those who design and create it. A bot will not care about someone’s background, giving anyone and everyone the opportunity to branch out into a technology that could give them the means to advance their career and reap the benefits.

Whilst varying factors such as preparation, laying down the underlying automation foundations within business processes, and finding the correct management are essential steps in incorporating citizen development models, without knowledge, training and acceptance by workers who know the product best, the models will not succeed in the long term.

It is therefore critical that enterprises are willing to invest in their employees to ensure the scalability of automation is not hindered.


© 2021 SSON

Firstsource Case Study Firstsource Automation League: Democratizing Automation at Firstsource with Citizen Development Firstsource brings the promise of citizen development to life, making work easier and better for thousands of employees and customers.

Power to our people

People add the magic to a business, and digital transformation is about giving them the tools and skills they need to be wow. But digital transformation needs to happen faster, and we believe the key to speeding it up lies in democratizing automation: making it easy for people to identify opportunities and then design and build their own automated solutions.

Citizen development, as it’s known, is a hot topic. You can read more about it—along with our ambitions and approach—in `A bot for everyone: how to fast track digital transformation in your organization’.


© 2021 SSON

Off the Page and into Practice with Automation League.

In September 2020, we launched a pilot to put citizen development to the test across two of our largest business units. We worked with outstanding automation and training partners to develop a winning methodology: the Firstsource Automation League.

● And it’s delivering January 2021: 100+ bots developed and ready to be used by 1000+ Firstsourcers

● April 2021: Scaling of bots starts

● By June 2021: we aim to deploy 95% of these bots across 400+ employees

Citizen developed bots are already adding value to our internal processes, and to our clients’ businesses.

Our first-hand experience gives us significant insight into what it takes to implement and run a successful citizen development program at scale. This case study summarizes the key lessons we’ve learned along the way:

1. Automation boosts productivity

People are happiest when they’re productive—and that means achieving more, not doing more. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) frees them from tedious and repetitive admin chores, giving them more time to delight customers. Traditionally, it’s worked top down, with the IT team providing solutions for key workforce challenges. But things slow down as challenges pile up in the IT inbox.2

2. Ground up is better for everyone

Automation League changes the rules of the game. Rather than having one Centre of Excellence (CoE) rolling out RPA across the organization, our approach creates smaller CoEs within each business unit. We put the route to a solution in the hands of the people who best understand the challenge—the workforce. This means:

● Bots get used because they work, not because people are told to use them

● Bots are shared across teams and become best practice

● IT Professionals provide guidelines and governance only, and have more time to focus on putting innovative new technologies to work for your business

● Productivity and morale soar, making it easier to attract and retain the best talent

“ We’ve found that people are more engaged and invested in digital solutions when they’ve been part of creating them”

Sundara Sukavanam, Chief Digital Officer, Firstsource

450+ Applied

166 Automation opportunities identified

100 Selected

72 Graduated

100 Approved

Bots that do the businessAutomation League pilot: facts and stats


© 2021 SSON

CASE STUDY




3. Recruit, select and celebrate for success

Democratizing automation doesn’t mean everyone needs to be a developer. The goal is to demystify bots and encourage people to use them to be their best.

Recruit by role. Train people with roles dominated by manually-intensive tasks—e.g., Finance, HR, Training and Auditing. That’s where bots have the greatest impact.

Select by aptitude Some people have more tech interest and aptitude than others. Prioritize them for training increases your chances of creating brilliant bots.

Celebrate and reward Celebrate great bots and reward the people who create them. Recognition made our ‘Citizen Bot Developers’ proud evangelists for automation, and positive internal PR built excitement and momentum. The best and most enthusiastic went on to become ‘Power Users’: creating and sharing more bots within their line of business unit and working alongside IT to identify bots that might be useful to the wider organization.

Automation League pilot facts and stats

● Launched across 2 x business units: +/- 600 people

● 450 raised their hands

● 100 selected: a manageable, statistically relevant, number

● 76 graduated as ‘Citizen Bot Developers’

● 12 (+/- 15%) are now ‘Power Users’: regularly creating and sharing time-saving bots

● >1k Firstsourcers are now using bots created during or since the pilot

4. Training needs to include mindset, method and mentoring

Our project planning research highlighted the importance of training in both the mindset and method of automation skilling supported by rigorous mentoring. Our proprietary Automation League training methodology, developed in collaboration with UiPath and Tiny Magiq, reflects this. And we used the pilot to test and optimize it.

The art of automation

Before anyone gets busy developing bots, they need to identify which tasks Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is best able to help them with. In collaboration with leading digital transformation trainers Tiny Magiq, we developed a curriculum to help with this. It harnesses motivational techniques around the cumulative power of small changes based on Stanford behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg’s model of creating tiny habits.

● Participants used the Magiq Spark mobile journaling app to:

● Identify and prioritize bottlenecks in their process

● Develop positive ideation habits

● Get quick and constructive support from mentors

● Develop storytelling skills to present ideas internally and persuade others of their worth

The app uses gamification techniques to reward and engender consistent behavior.

“The first bot I developed automated Reward and Recognition certificates. Each batch used to take me about 4 hours to personalize, now they’re done in 10 minutes! I’ve now created 6 other bots to help the team save time and money”

Lavanya, HR admin executive, Firstsource


© 2021 SSON

CASE STUDY

The Science of Automation

Gamification techniques also encouraged and rewarded people as they were trained on UiPath’s outstanding Studio X platform. No programming experiences? No problem. StudioX makes it easy to:

● Identify tasks perfect for automation

● Build, publish and run their own automations

StudioX works without IT infrastructure changes. But you do need to ensure everyone can access it on devices they’re comfortable using.

The Classroom in Action

Our citizen developers worked together in small teams—the 100 in our pilot were divided into 5 groups of 20 each. Individuals within teams supported and encouraged each other, and each group was assigned three experienced mentors: an Automation Champion (to advise on the technical side of things) and a Process Owner (to advise on the business application of bots) and a Tiny Magiq mentor (to identify and overcome roadblocks). The virtual classroom sessions were led by UiPath trainers and experts helping participants get their bearings in place from basic coding perspective.

Training took 11 weeks in total:

● 4 x weeks of e-learning and virtual classroom sessions

● 1 x week of ideation

● Ideas were evaluated and prioritized by the Automation Champion and the Process Owner

● 6 x weeks developing automations

Training was adapted and evaluated to ensure if was highly engaging and effective even when delivered remotely.

Automation Skilling in a League of its Own

The Automation League has saved our business time and money. It’s made our people even happier and boosted our service to clients. We’re now putting our first-hand experience to work for our customers. We’re helping them to establish and run efficient and effective citizen development programs that realize their digital transformation ambitions. The Automation League adds value to their organizations by improving productivity and both employee and customer satisfaction.

To find out more about how the Firstsource Automation League framework can help take your business to the next level, please click here.

“It’s heartening to see the impact Firstsource citizen developers have created in a short period of time.” Sukumar Rajagopal, Founder & CEO, TinyMagiq

“ Firstsource is embracing the power and potential of citizen developers with StudioX. It’s a pleasure to partner with an organization as committed to unlocking human potential through automation as we are.”

Brandon Nott, SVP – Product Management, UiPath


© 2021 SSON

CASE STUDY

https://www.firstsource.com/citizen-development/

SUMMARYIt today’s digital-first world, winning companies are those that transform at speed. Equipping people, even those without programming skills, with the right tools and skills hastens digital transformation. Employees are more engaged and invested in digital solutions they help create.

Firstsource’s Automation League makes it easy for the employees on your frontlines to identify automation opportunities based on the challenges they face, and then design and build their own solutions. In doing so, it not only improves productivity but also highlights the role of technology as an enabler and deepens employee engagement with your organizations’ digital transformation agenda.


© 2021 SSON

ABOUT THE SHARED SERVICES & OUTSOURCING NETWORK (SSON)The Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) is the largest and most established community of shared services and outsourcing professionals in the world, with over 180,000 members. Established in 1999, SSON recognised the revolution in support services as it was happening, and realised that a forum was needed through which practitioners could connect with each other on a regional and global basis. SSON is a one-stop shop for shared services professionals, offering industry-leading events, training and certification, market studies, reports, benchmarking, research and analytics, surveys, and more.

ABOUT FIRSTSOURCEIn today’s digital-first world, winning companies are those that transform at speed. Equipping people, even those without programming skills, with the right tools and skills hastens digital transformation. Employees are more engaged and invested in digital solutions they help create.

Firstsource’s Automation League makes it easy for the employees on your frontlines to identify automation opportunities based on the challenges they face, and then design and build their own solutions. In doing so, it not only improves productivity but also highlights the role of technology as an enabler and deepens employee engagement with your organization’s digital transformation agenda.



© 2021 SSON

https://www.ssonetwork.com

https://www.ssonetwork.com



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