Digital transformation was important for business growth even before Covid-19 arrived, but the pandemic has made it pivotal. At the center of every digital transformation are software developers, and it seems that decision-makers in the UK are well aware of this fact.
This is according to a new report from cloud communications provider Twilio, based on a poll of CTOs, CIOs and other senior IT decision-makers. Almost all respondents said that technology played a significant role in responding to the challenges of the pandemic and the perceived importance of developers has grown in tandem.
Before the pandemic, 31 percent saw developers as “vital” to their organization’s performance, but that figure has since jumped to 41 percent. Further, Twilio found that almost all UK businesses consider developers important for digital transformation.
However, most organizations aren’t utilizing their developers fully. Twilio argues that they are distancing developers from customers and engaging them too late in the process. As per the report, less than half of organizations engage developers at the start of a project.
Developers also play only a small role in establishing organizations’ overall strategy. Before the pandemic, just over a third of businesses involved developers in strategic decision-making, but this figure hasn’t budged over the past year.
“The organizations that solve customer problems with software are winning in the pandemic, as they continue to actively engage with their customers, even without face to face interactions,” said Marcos Placona, Head of Developer Relations EMEA at Twilio.
“Developers are a creative workforce who can solve major business challenges and create invaluable customer products, if they are given the opportunity – they do not simply write code. Organizations that bring them in from the onset to understand objectives can unleash their power and therefore the power of the code they write.”
