Employees often have many ideas to make their jobs more efficient, making it beneficial for enterprises to nurture a culture of innovation in the workforce. Citizen Development is one of Globe’s employee engagement strategies that bring out innovation and support for high-potential initiatives that result in better ways of doing business.
The digital solutions platform encourages individuals and teams to use Google Cloud’s no-code development platform, AppSheet, to create workplace apps without the need for coding.
“Globe understands the desire of our employees to create and innovate, so we motivate them to push their boundaries and think outside the box. We continue to foster digital collaboration, implement an innovation mindset, accelerate decision-making, and create new digital experiences,” said Carlo Malana, CEO at Globe STT Global Data Centres.
Globe’s citizen developer strategy has been reaping the fruits of this program, with results such as higher employee engagement rates and empowerment since its implementation in 2020.
The program saw the deployment of over 200 employee-developed apps, resulting in a 79.8% reduction in processing time and $6.7 million in savings on its first year of implementation. This net economic impact is expected to increase 38% year-on-year.
The idea came up two years ago when Globe recognized that its employees had many ideas for how technology can help automate and improve business processes.
There was an opportunity to create a Citizen Development program for employees. Through this initiative, many great ideas came to life without lengthy programming governance processes, unreasonable costs, and taking bandwidth away from the company’s major development priorities.
Looking to spearhead innovations using technology to enhance the quality of work life is in line with the company’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly UN SDG No. 9, which highlights the role of infrastructure and innovation as critical drivers of economic growth and development.
“We’ve always been looking for innovations among our employees. It is something that we’re very keen on cultivating on our people. AppSheet gave us this flexibility – the perfect tool to engage these innovative minds. It allows us to quickly execute and transform how business is done and improve how we serve our customers,” said Malana.
So far, over 700 employees have been trained to use AppSheet, and roughly 100 are actively developing applications. Almost 650 apps have been built or prototyped, while over 200 have been deployed with an average of 18,000 monthly active users across all deployed platforms. A complex app can now be delivered in two to four weeks, while a simpler one can be done in a week or two. There is less need for testing and documentation, allowing the idea to be developed quickly.
“Using AppSheet in our citizen developer strategy enables our employees to build and iterate business automation apps that fit them as the end-user. They understand precisely what they need, so we eliminate the process of having to pass information from a business analyst to a project manager, then to a developer, simplifying the process altogether,” said Francis Pugeda, Globe’s Head of Emerging Technologies.
“Globe’s adoption of citizen development helped accelerate the organization’s digital transformation program. In the past, we used a lot of manual processes to serve our customers. Now, we are embracing digitalization for end-to-end processes,” added Pugeda.
“Organizations that adopt a democratized and human-centric approach to application development will become more adaptive in today’s fluid business environment and find that they can do much more with less,” said Ruma Balasubramanian, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud.
“Globe is a great example of a company that has done exceptionally well to enable its employees – even those with no programming experience – to build their own customized applications and automated workflows, and reclaim their time and talent. We look forward to continuing to support Globe’s use of cloud-based, no-code platforms for its citizen developers, so they can be a force multiplier in the company’s digital transformation efforts while upholding IT governance and security requirements,” added Balasubramanian.
Globe’s efforts have been recognized by the broader technology and operations community. The citizen developer program won the award for “Best Use of Cloud to Increase Productivity” at the CIO Academy of Asia’s INSPIRE Tech Awards 2021. It was also recognized as a finalist in the Business Transformation and Operational Excellence Awards 2021.
To learn more about Globe, visit www.globe.com.ph.
