Tomorrows ERP will be those that empower Citizen Developers

We are just a day away to start a new 2020. 2020 is going to be a year where consumers of ERP systems (users) are going to demand more opportunities for self-development. They will be less likely to continue to accept rigid systems, multi-clicks to do one simple job, non-intuitive screen movements or data picks, or non-responsive systems.

Technology is transforming year after year, and we have seen some intuitive and beautiful technology showcases in simple applications. But when it comes to ERP, it is always the case of big, long, highly validated, and continuously synchronized screen captures with multi-woven approval flows. Younger users are demanding change and severe change. They want to be citizen developers to develop themselves as situation demands. They do not wish the central IT to control what they need, but would like to define, design, and demonstrate what they need by themselves.

Their needs are genuine, as businesses need to be responsive to market dynamics. And market dynamics are very fluid and fuzzy, due to strategic and competitive forces. Hence, the time to change is minimal. But young users are willing to strategize within limited time as situation demands but want the system to be an excellent companion to be able to adapt to dynamic changes.

ERP vendors have spent millions of years, developing several screens and process flows. Will 2020 change the dynamics of these persistent efforts being questioned? Can ERP vendors provide responsive systems where citizen developers can make changes by themselves in minutes or seconds and achieve their objectives? Will just an excellent user interface provide good user experiences in the future? Will the ability to change by themselves will topple all the other goodies that ERP vendors are offering today? Will the cloud be restrictive for citizen developers without having the flexibility to make design changes that they desperately need?

My prediction is that 2020 will start the revolution for ERP users to demand very dynamics solutions that they can interpret, re-design, re-deploy, and re-energize themselves. And by 2023, we will see all the ERP vendors, who have rigid screens built-in on the great maxim of best practices being questioned, being voted unhealthy from user needs perspective, and being rejected unwieldy from user needs perspective.

The best to survive are the ones who provide responsive solutions built on no-code frameworks, where every user becomes a citizen developer to define their own needs. They will make their own ERP playlist, like how they make their music playlists.

That’s precisely the reason that we have built most of our Retail ViVA ERP modules on no-code, intending to make it fully no-code in the next year to come. We want to celebrate the making of citizen developers soon, and we are striving hard to achieve that objective. I hope that I can update more positively on this during 2020, and on the eve of 2021 as well. Till then, it is all going to be making more for the citizen developers from Sathguru!

Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan