PMG: No-Code Technology Strengthens IT, Business User Ties

The working relationship between IT personnel and business professionals is beginning to grow stronger, driven in part by increased ease of access to applications, according to research from PMG, an enterprise service catalog and business process automation software provider.

According to the company’s recent “2015 PMG IT and UX Study,” IT professionals expressed a 20 percent increase in understanding of users’ strategic objectives, with administrators ramping up their efforts to improve the overall user experience with applications. The survey polled nearly 250 North American IT professionals to understand their relationships with end users.

About 54 percent of respondents said they regularly survey users on the pre- and post-implementation of applications to gauge their satisfaction level, according to the study. Similarly, 63 percent of IT executives said more than half of their organization’s applications no longer require HTML or coding knowledge to operate in an effort to further simplify solutions for business users.

“Investing in and deploying easy-to-use technology is not only beneficial to the user; it’s ultimately valuable to IT,” said Joe LeCompte, principal of PMG, in a statement. “When business users feel empowered, IT suddenly has more time to focus on strategic objectives that enhance the organization as a whole. This positions IT to become more of a collaborative partner.”

IT is also putting a greater emphasis on collaboration within their organizations, with IT expressing the best collaboration happens when working with Operations (94 percent), Finance (87 percent) and Product Research and Development (83 percent).

However, IT executives said they feel there are still several things that need to be done to solidify their relationship with business users, including the need to help users understand ways in which IT can benefit companies in additional roles other than as service providers. According to the study, about 41 percent of users continue to view IT as service providers rather than strategic partners, which limits IT’s interaction to that of a problem solver.

Connectivity is expected to be the largest factor in driving future collaboration between IT leaders and business users, spurred by the growth of the Internet of Things, according to PMG. Bring-your-own-application (BYOA) initiatives remain questionable in terms of their effectiveness in bringing IT and users together; 80 percent of respondents said they are weighing the pros and cons of BYOA before implementing solutions.

IT executives also need to understand that further investment in the consumerization of IT within their organizations is necessary to build the relationship between IT and end users, according to the report. While 42 percent of IT professionals see consumerization as a way to continue improving business satisfaction, more than 30 percent remain unaware of their company’s current budget to support these initiatives.

The push to help enterprise users understand the changing dynamic between IT professionals and end users is not exclusive to PMG’s research; Synnex executive Kevin Murai expressed an interest to help the distributor’s reseller customers leverage the company as a trusted partner in their businesses during the 2015 Spring Varnex Conference in Atlanta.