Have you noticed the term “citizen developer” popping up during your automation software search, but aren’t sure what it actually means? You’re not alone. At first glance, it seems like a phrase describing a community organizer or civic leader. But in the automation world, according to Gartner, it’s a “person who creates application capabilities for consumption by themselves or others, using tools that are not actively forbidden by IT or business units.”
Still confused? Here are three questions to ask yourself to determine if you are indeed a citizen developer. And if yes, what to look for in a robotic process automation (RPA) tool that can meet your needs.
Do You Have Little to No Coding Experience?
At the most basic level, a citizen developer is someone with little to no coding experience. Maybe you’re able to write a few basic scripts or are a wiz at Excel formulas. Or when it comes to the command line, you might as well be reading hieroglyphics—if you can even find the command line, that is.
Another quick way to tell if you’re a citizen developer is by your department. If you’re in IT, you’re not a citizen developer, you are a full-fledged developer. But you don’t have to stop reading! You too can benefit from low-code automation features designed for citizen developers. If you’re in any department other than IT, you’re one step closer to becoming a citizen developer with RPA.
Do You Have Repetitive Tasks Stealing Your Time That Could Be Automated?
You might not be able to code, but that doesn’t mean you should be held back from the benefits of RPA. There are many processes outside the walls of IT that are ripe for automation. In fact, there are many business processes to automate that RPA bots can check off your to-do list so you can focus on strategic work.
Bogged down by data entry? Automated data scraping and extraction takes the manual work—and errors—out of getting data where you need it to go. Have a weekly report stakeholders rely on? Automated report generation and distribution builds reports for you so you can focus on analyzing the data, not gathering it. You can even automate Microsoft applications to eliminate busywork in Excel, Outlook, and SharePoint. If these sound like repetitive tasks you’re ready to get rid of, you’re another step closer to becoming a citizen developer.
See How Citizen Developers Put Automation to Work
The Automate Use Case Guide
Do You Rely on Your IT Team to Customize Applications to Your Needs?
The IT team is the backbone of every company. Without them, the most basic systems and applications would cease to run. That means they’re incredibly busy, just like you are. And if you rely on your IT team to customize applications to your needs, you’re chipping away at their valuable time—not that they’re unwilling to help! But with an RPA tool for citizen developers, you can build your own automation. Saving both departments time, which is an all-around win for your company.
Citizen development brings automation directly to you—who knows your business processes best. Get automating faster without relying on outside help to build workflows. And when processes or applications change, easily update your automation without filing a ticket. Plus, the IT team doesn’t need to worry about dreaded shadow IT, as they maintain oversight when necessary. Ready to save yourself and your IT department valuable time?
Then, Yes—You’re a Citizen Developer!
Now let’s put it all together: a citizen developer is a business user with little to no coding experience, who has many repetitive tasks on their plate, and doesn’t want to bog down IT with customizing applications. But before you can fully bestow this title upon yourself, you need an RPA tool with features that make building automation easy and code-free.
Automation Features for Citizen Developers
When assessing RPA solutions to fit your needs as a citizen developer, look for the following features and capabilities:
- Drag-and-Drop Task Builders
These are GUIs that let you build workflows by dragging and dropping the different pieces of automation together using a visual representation of your processes not code. - Native and API Integrations
The building blocks of automation come from native integrations between your RPA solution and your most-used applications—like CRMs, ERPs, Microsoft Products, and BI tools to name a few. - Screen Recorders
Record the actions you make on a website or desktop application—like navigating to a portal or downloading files—in real time that are converted into automated actions.
The Citizen Developer’s Guide to Automation
Take a deeper dive into the world of citizen development to discover how user-friendly RPA tools boost productivity, optimize resources, and improve accuracy.