Digital transformation comes with a host of benefits. It will help you increase customer satisfaction, gain data-based insights, enable high quality user experiences, and increase the agility of your business. One key to rapidly attaining this kind of digital transformation is through citizen development and governance. By empowering employees to create new apps to meet customer or internal needs, citizen development offers huge potential for digital transformation.

Yet, every business transformation process carries with it some risk. Digital transformation, or digitalization, is no different. While a more rapid approach to digitalization seems like common sense, it is still necessary to ask: what are the risks? And once you find those risks, the next step is being able to mitigate them, with governance. When properly implemented, governance is not a roadblock, but rather a boost for innovation and citizen development.

Digital Transformation: What are the Risks?

While digitalization should not be considered a scary prospect, it is still important to pinpoint what can go wrong. For example, cyber-attacks are an ever-present threat when it comes to online databases and tools. And with this, of course, comes the potential for too much reliance on IT tools to maintain your critical processes. AI can also pose new risks when it comes to governance. In other words, loss of control is very possible.

The Role of Governance in Your Digital Transformation

We have already discussed the importance of governance when working with Microsoft’s Power Platform, which you can see here. But what about more broadly, as it applies to digital transformation as a whole? Well, although the particular solutions that work best for you may change or be different than the ones you implement for Power Platform, the approach will be the same.

Governance must be a global approach to your process, from the ground up. This means making sure it is a priority from the outset, so you can always maintain control of your digitalization efforts. It also means having a concrete understanding of your specific needs. You will want to ask yourself a few questions: How is this process controlled and monitored? What are the measures for success? How will we know when something fails or goes wrong?

Understanding what your digital transformation may look like from this perspective will give you insight into the kind of governance solutions you will need.

4 Best Practices

Only you can know what is best for your needs, but there are still some generally accepted best practices when it comes to governance and digital transformation.

1. Devise a clear and transparent structure/ecosystem for your digital transformation. A detailed approach from the outset will mean less errors or mistakes in the future.
2. Remember the good things. While the primary role of governance is to mitigate risk, it is also to ensure opportunities. In other words, remembering the many wonderful benefits of digitalization while implementing your governance plan, will make it so that users and employees are guided toward this great new future.
3. Cultivate a digitalization culture! Connected with best practice 2, cultivating a digital or data culture means making sure the benefits of such a future are well known to everyone. This begins with those higher up, who must often play a lead role in implementing digitalization processes in their own work, so everyone around them can see the benefits.
4. You do not have to do it alone. This one is more of a bonus, but it is still crucial to remember that there are many governance platforms that can make your life easier, including Runpipe. If your digital transformation means enabling employees to become citizen developers, then Runpipe may in fact be the perfect solution for you.

The Best Way Forward

Just as digital transformation is the key to sustained success in the current technological and cultural landscape, governance is critical to success in digital transformation. Otherwise, you may be rushing toward unseen dangers, and may not be ready when they strike.

The way forward is not a straight line, as each business must define its own existence and boundaries. But the best way forward is surely a creative and flexible approach to governance, especially when it comes to digital transformation, so that you will be ready for any obstacles.

Learn more about governance and the Power Platform here

Learn more about Runpipe here