Let me start with something that might surprise you: System Integrators aren't failing at workgroup apps because they lack talent. They're failing because they're bringing the wrong toolkit to the job.
I've spent over two decades working alongside SIs. These are brilliant people who've architected some of the most complex enterprise systems you can imagine. They live and breathe governance frameworks, integration patterns, and scalability requirements. But here's what I've learned: the very qualities that make them exceptional at enterprise-grade deployments make them the wrong choice for workgroup apps.
If you're a CTO or CIO reading this, you've probably felt this tension firsthand. Your business teams are drowning in manual processes, yet your SI partner is quoting six-month timelines for what feels like a straightforward workflow tool. Something doesn't add up.
Let's talk about why.
Workgroup apps aren't miniature enterprise systems. They're a completely different species of software. These are the tools your procurement team needs to track vendor approvals, the workflow your HR department uses for onboarding feedback, or the dashboard your regional sales managers built to monitor pipeline health.
They're scrappy, specific, and evolving. And that's exactly where traditional development approaches break down.
SIs architects for scale and compliance because that's what enterprise systems demand. They're thinking about disaster recovery, audit trails, and what happens when your user base multiplies by ten.
But your marketing operations manager doesn't need disaster recovery for their campaign request tracker. They need something that works by Tuesday morning because the campaign launches on Wednesday.
The business unit isn't optimizing for scale. They're optimizing for eliminating the seventeen-step email chain that currently governs their process. Research from Forrester shows that 75% of business applications developed today are built outside of IT departments, precisely because business teams need speed over architectural perfection.
When you send a workgroup app request through traditional development channels, you're forcing it through a framework designed for different problems. The result? Over-specification for needs that will probably change in three months anyway.
SIs bring process discipline because large-scale systems require it. Design documentation, approval workflows, sprint planning, QA cycles, and change control boards. These aren't bureaucratic obstacles; they're essential guardrails when you're building mission-critical infrastructure.
But workgroup apps don't follow waterfall timelines. They thrive on rapid iteration.
Think about how your business teams actually work. Someone identifies a pain point. They sketch out a quick solution. They test it with three colleagues. They realize they missed something. They adjust. They roll it out to the wider team. They continually refine based on real-world usage.
That's not a development methodology. That's how work happens.
When you force that natural iteration cycle through formal change control processes, you don't get better apps. You get frustrated business users who either abandon the idea or build shadow IT solutions in Excel and email.
Here's something I've observed repeatedly: The person running a workflow understands its nuances better than any requirements document ever will.
Your accounts payable specialist is aware that vendor invoices from the APAC region require an additional validation step, but only for amounts exceeding $5,000, and only during the first week of the quarter. They know this because they live it daily.
Translating that tribal knowledge into formal specifications introduces friction and translation errors. By the time it moves through business analysts, project managers, and developers, the key context gets lost.
Citizen development platforms flip this dynamic. The domain expert becomes the builder. They don't need to translate their knowledge. They directly encode it into the solution. The feedback loop shrinks from weeks to minutes.
Let's address the uncomfortable truth: SIs need substantial project sizes to maintain profitability. Their business model requires large engagements with a predictable scope.
Workgroup apps are the opposite. They're small, numerous, and constantly evolving. You don't need one workgroup app. You need thirty-seven of them across different departments, each with modest complexity but high business value.
According to Gartner's research, organizations are creating applications at volumes that traditional development simply can't support. By 2025, 70% of new applications will be built using low-code or no-code platforms.
The math is straightforward: You can't economically route thirty-seven small projects through traditional development. But you can enable thirty-seven business users to build solutions with appropriate IT governance.
When IT builds an app for a business team, ownership is ambiguous. Who maintains it? Who prioritizes enhancements? Who decides what changes when requirements shift?
When business users build their own apps, ownership is crystal clear. They're invested in success because it's their workflow, their efficiency gain, and their problem solved.
I've watched this play out repeatedly. Citizen-developed apps don't sit stagnant. They keep evolving because the people using them are also the people improving them. They don't wait for bandwidth in next quarter's IT roadmap. They just fix what matters.
None of this means SIs are obsolete. Far from it.
Your SI partners remain essential for core systems, complex integrations, and architectural governance. When you're implementing a new ERP, modernizing your data infrastructure, or building customer-facing platforms that require bulletproof security and scale, you want those process-driven, architecture-focused professionals leading the charge.
But workgroup apps? That's a different territory.
The future of workgroup automation belongs to citizen developers. Business users are equipped with the right no-code platforms and appropriate IT guardrails. Not ungoverned chaos, but structured enablement.
If you're a technology leader contemplating this shift, here's the framework that actually works:
Let business users build. Provide them with approved platforms that meet your security and compliance standards. Enable them to solve their own workflow challenges without tickets and queues.
Let IT govern. Set the guardrails around data access, integration points, and compliance requirements. Monitor what's being built. Provide a framework, not a bottleneck.
Reserve SIs for what they do best. Complex systems integration, architectural design, and enterprise-grade implementations. Utilize their expertise where it yields the greatest value.
Think of it this way: SIs build the skyscrapers, the foundational systems that support your entire operation. Citizen developers design the spaces people actually work in, the specific, contextual tools that make daily work flow smoothly.
Your organization needs both. But only if you're deploying each where they create the most value.
Digital transformation isn't just about implementing big systems. It's about enabling the hundreds of small improvements that collectively revolutionize how work gets done.
Those improvements don't happen through six-month development cycles. They happen when the people closest to the work have the tools to solve their own problems.
That's not a threat to IT governance. It's the evolution of it. And it's how organizations actually become digitally transformed, rather than just talking about it in quarterly board presentations.
The question isn't whether citizen development will reshape workgroup automation. It's whether your organization will lead that shift or react to it.
Kissflow offers a no-code platform and IT governance framework that enables citizen development to work at scale. Give your business teams the tools to build their own workgroup apps while maintaining the security, compliance, and oversight your IT organization requires.
See how leading enterprises are empowering thousands of citizen developers without compromising governance.