Citizen Development and other technology trends and its influence on strategic, future-oriented partner management
I am working as an IT Business Analyst within the partner management of cplace. cplace is offering a no/low/pro code project management (PM)and project portfolio management platform (PPM). Its platform flexibility (see figure 1) and the speed with which applications can be implemented are its unique selling points. To stay competitive our partner management examines new technology trends and strategizes based on its finding. In this article I will share some of my latest findings.
Partner management and its importance for (no/low code) SaaS companies
Today’s SaaS market and landscape is increasingly competitive and is flooded by a vast amount of different software providers. At the same time customers become more and more demanding and require end-to-end solution. These market conditions are posing pressure on SaaS companies and require strategic partner management[1].
Usually, these partners come with similar or complimentary competencies and capabilities. Hence, if managed correctly, synergies are created and both parties profit from the partnership. Partner Management includes activities such as incentivization and partner enablement. Furthermore, processes and concepts bring structure in your partner management, to create long-term relationships.
The value generated through these activities is for instance sales momentum through sales partners. Implementation partners can help you to satisfy customer demand and get your software out to the end user. Technology partners could help you to co-develop your products to stay at the forefront of innovation and competitive. Strategic alliance partners are potentially having access to new industries and markets [2].
These values are partly of different nature and hence come with different capabilities that a partner needs to own, in order to deliver these values for you.
To use partner management effectively, one could start analyzing internal capabilities and competencies. The areas that you consider as strategic and of high importance, mostly want to be kept inhouse. Your partner network can contribute essentially with capabilities that do not interfere with your core business. For the sake of this article lets picture a company called “No/Low Code Professionals”. As the name suggest, they are providing a no/low code SaaS platform. It has done its homework and mapped out the core capabilities they want to keep inhouse. Also, capabilities they want to have displayed over their partner network are identified.
They are displayed in figure 2. In this example four different partner capabilities can be seen. The color coding shows the level of technical skills that the different capabilities require. The square size of the different squares defines how much of these capabilities the company is currently covering over the different partners. For simplicity reasons we assume the more demand the company has towards certain capabilities the more partners they have. The partners are shown in the smaller blue squares. These categories can obviously be changed to the specific needs of each partner management department.
This partner capability map shows the following: “No/Low Code Professionals” is doing a lot of consulting and business analysis through their partner network. This includes process mapping and no/low code development for their customers.
Six out of nine partners are on the lower end of the technical skills. Technology and implementation are not the focus for the partner network today. We assume that technology skills are kept heavily within the company.
So far so good, we have established the importance of a functioning partner network. Also, we discovered that partners bring different values and hence capabilities. Then we established a visualization framework on how to display these. Glad, that we have established the essentials and now let’s move on to Citizen Development.
Citizen Development and other technology trends
Hot technologies come and go (or stay) and being prepared to ride the different waves and adapt organizationally and strategically is key to every business in order to maximize efficiency. This article focuses on Citizen Development. However, the principles about partner management implications and change management that are being discussed, are applicable to other technology trends as well.
In the past years no- and low code platforms have seen accelerated raise. Let’s start off with some basic definitions to get everyone on the same page.
No code programming or application development does not require any programming skills of the user. A person working in the business and not IT, has the possibility to create an application using different widgets. These widgets are pre-programmed, but the end user does not require any code to use them.
Low code programming is more powerful, but does require coding skills. With this technology a user with basic coding skills is able to create applications as well. These low code building blocks for an application are also pre-coded. However, they require some customization via coding, if you want to use it. Development and deployment speed are usually significantly increased when using no or low code, which makes it so powerful and high in demand.
Pro code refers to traditional coding skills and requires in depth technical expertise.
“A Citizen Developer is someone who can build applications without coding knowledge but usually with the support of IT” [3]. Citizen Development basically describes the democratization of coding skills via no and low code platforms. As above mentioned, business users will increasingly be enabled to build their own applications. Gartner predicts, that in 2025 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will be based on no or low code — up from less than 25% in 2020.
So, let’s put this trend into practice and apply it to our example company introduced above.
Citizen Development and its effect on partner capabilities.
As stated above, “No/Low Code Professionals” focuses on getting their business analysis and no/low code developments done over partners. Technology wise they are doing very little over partners.
The problem is that with these existing partner capabilities they are betting heavily against the Citizen Development trend. If more and more business users/their customers, are able to develop their applications by themselves, then what are these business analysis partners supposed to do? The business users surely do know their processes they want to put into an application. And its save to assume that they know how to sketch these too.
This end user enablement and heavy adoption of no/low code platforms could put partners with consulting and business analysis skills under pressure. At “No/low Code professionals” four out of their nine partners might not be contributing much value in the future.
Which brings us to the first thesis of the article.
Thesis 1: Citizen Development will cause a shift in demanded partner capabilities
We have established that Business Analysis and No/low coding partner capabilities might not be high in the demand in the future. But what could be required? In order to answer these questions, it can be helpful to think in the concept of a value chain.
The customer will be putting their applications together by themselves and they are able to sketch these processes as well. Now, what is required before doing so? One possible answer could be: to have a strong conceptually understanding, design thinking skills and development execution.
The argument could be made, that a partner capability called “Design Thinking and Design Sprint Enablement” is demanded in the future. This capability would enable business users to come up with good design ideas and excel in creating applications. That would lead to happy customers and hopefully a high retention rate for the SaaS company.
Now, what other capabilities could be of help to get from partners? The business users are now thinking in designs and concepts. As part of that exercise, they are mapping all the different existing applications and how the new application will interact with them. There will still be a great number of established systems that no/low code applications will build around. The new application they are building needs to get data and information from the existing applications. What do they need for that? That’s right, we need connectors that are a) existing or quickly developable and b) don’t take ages to get implemented.
This could be a new partner capability and a rather technical one on top of it. Does the current partner capability map of “No/Low Code Professionals” support this demand? The answer is: no, it does not, since we only have one partner that has high technical skills. After having analyzed Citizen Development as a technology trend, let’s see how our partner capability map could look like in the future.
There is certainly much more analysis to be done in order to understand the trend completely. But again, for the sake of the argument and simplicity we keep it like that.
I have marked the new capabilities and additional partners in green (see figure 3). We see that “No/low Code professionals” would need a lot more partners with technical skills, in order to cover the demand for connectors. Also an entirely new partner capability “Design Thinking and Sprint Execution” is now on the map. Now these changes might not look dramatic on the graph but should surely catch the eye of a partner manager, when planning the mid-term strategy of his/her department.
We have explored, that with new technologies the need for capabilities in partners can and most likely, will change. The above-mentioned theories are just exemplary showing, how a partner management department can structurally approach technological shifts and trends.
Thesis 2: Partner Development and Enablement is key
If we compare our “old” partner capability map and the “new” one, we realize that there is an entire new partner capability “Design Thinking and Sprint Execution” included. It replaced “Consulting and Business Analysis”. In reality, the switch will be gradually, and probably old capabilities are not fully replaced. But again, it’s to make a point in the context of this article.
It is also worth nothing, that the color scheme of the two capabilities is the same. Both capabilities require business knowledge and not so much technical skills. This is an important observation, because it shows, that the partners should have the resources, mindset and abilities to learn the newly demanded capabilities.
A future-oriented strategic partner management understands this, anticipates the demands of tomorrow and supports their partners in the development.
On the other hand, in the “technology” capability “No/Low Code Professionals” have very little partners. Partner enablement and development are tricky, for the simple fact that there aren’t all too many abilities and resources that can be developed. Partner Sales could however take this as a basis for planning their partner acquisitions.
The bottom line is, that we are doing business in fast changing technical, ecological and environmental circumstances. Acting upon the demands of today is most likely not going to be enough to excel in your partner business. Anticipating trends, analysing the demands of tomorrow and strategically position yourself is crucial. So what tools are out there in order to do so? That leads us to the third and last thesis of this article.
Thesis 3: Technology radars will become more and more important in partner management of SaaS companies
This article focused on Citizen Development as a technology trend, but also indicated that there are certainly other trends out there as well. The concepts and ideas presented should be applicable on different technology trends. So, where do we get these from and how do we make them visible?
When examining technology trends, companies usually use tech radars as a tool. A simplified version of a technology radar you can find in figure 4.
Technology radars are usually separated into different phases of technologies. The ones that are pressing are listed under act. They deserve attention and the company needs to put resources into them. Under prepare key technologies that are about to make an impact shall be managed. Proof of Concepts, resource planning and other such activities can be conducted. Under watch technologies that are further down the road are listed. They are maturing, but their impact on the company is not 100% clear yet.
Technology radars are usually set up on company levels, so it might not be necessary for the partner management department to set such a tool up by themselves. Glancing into it on say a quarterly or half year basis in order to anticipate trends might be recommended though.
In our particular example the partner management of “No/Low Code Professionals” should see that Citizen Development is a technology located under the “act” section. If they haven’t prepared this technology trend, its about time to do so. A deep assessment on the nature and the details of the trend, would lead them to the content displayed in this article and could lead them to the thesis that I have been drawing.
One idea of governing the technology trend assessment could be to incorporate it into strategy workshops or have a dedicated technology role within the partner management.
Conclusion
Partner Management of SaaS companies becomes more and more intertwined with the underlying technology. A particular trend that is worth preparing and acting upon is Citizen Development. Preparing for it requires strategic foresight and change management capabilities. As every other trend it poses threats and opportunities to the players on the field and no/low code SaaS platforms need to have it on the radar. How quickly this trend captures traction is to be seen and in the obligation of the partner management to explore. But in my opinion, it is set to have a major impact when the trend picks up pace.
Source Index
[1] Channel Revolution, Utzinger (2011, p.62)
[2] Channel Revolution, Utzinger (2011, p.86)
[3] Citizen Development — the handbook for creators and change makers, Project Management Institute (2021, p. 15)
