I, technologist: The democratization of technology

An undeniable shift is underway: powerful technology capabilities are being put into people’s hands, useable without highly specialised skills. It’s not about a single tool or service but the culmination of an array of democratizing technologies.

Natural language processing, low-code platforms, and robotic process automation (RPA) are just a few of the capabilities and services making technology more accessible. Each has different and unique applications; all are bringing the innovative power of machines into the hands of people with as little friction as possible.

Democratized technology lets people optimise their work or fix pain points on their own. Without needing to request major IT projects, employees can create a custom dashboard for a group’s finances, build an app to approve and automatically fulfil purchase orders and much more.

Suddenly, the power to create technology solutions is entering the hands of people across the enterprise. Organizations can teach non-IT employees to think like technologists – putting the skills gap in the past.

This democratization doesn’t remove IT from the equation, however. IT will still be responsible for the big implementations, scaling successful programmes and injecting the most cutting-edge technology into the business. But democratization frees IT from many burdens that bog down big projects, like not quite capturing the users’ needs or needing to customise for every user and use case.

Instead, IT can focus on large-scale evolutions while the people who are closest to day-to-day business problems can tackle them head-on. Democratized tech tools and capabilities empower people to move from information to insights, addressing problems with technology-driven solutions.

As people transform their relationship with technology, it is imperative that organizations build trust into that technology.

The bottom line? Leaders in the future will be the ones who rethink their approach from “who can I hire?” to “how can I empower?”